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Arti-facts

6 comments on Arti-facts

Arti-facts
: David Galbraith points out the hypocrisy of the outcry over the plundering of museums in Iraq:

Curators are outraged by the loss of Iraqi antiquities, but unless they offer up some of their own collections they are hypocrites. Looting during war was the very process by which much of the contents of Western museums was originally obtained. There are two solutions to the loss of antiquities in Iraq: 1. document and try and get back objects as they come on the market; 2. fill the Iraqi museums with objects sitting in the US and UK. Not surprisingly I don’t hear anyone at institutions like the British Museum suggesting the latter.

6 responses to “Arti-facts”

  1. MommaBear Avatar
    MommaBear

    With many well-founded rumors about the looting started even before the war started by members of staff, Ba’athist Party members, and others knowledgeable about the worth of the contents, MB becomes less and less concerned about these losses not being “prevented” by troops busy fighting for their lives!

  2. rick mcginnis Avatar
    rick mcginnis

    Actually, I read a story today that the British Museum HAS offered to loan the Iraqi Museum artifacts to exhibit.

  3. DoryO Avatar
    DoryO

    Quote from 1/24/2003, Boston Globe article about how looting occurred after 1991 uprising and was EXPECTED in this war:
    “With war preparations quickening, a handful of experts is planning to evacuate collections, barricade doors, and tape windows. Former antiquities director Said has another suggestion: sleep at the Iraqi Museum and the archeological sites. During the 1991 war, he spent every night at the museum.”
    The article also states that in 1991 some items were moved to regional museums after the Baghdad museum had come under “heavy bombing as US warplanes targeted a telecommunications facility across the street.”
    The gist in this January article is that the Pentagon was asked not to TARGET museums and archeological sites with bombing but was not specifically asked to protect them from looting. Iraqis seemed at that time to see that role as their own. Now we are hearing a different story.
    http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/exlibris/2003/01/msg00219.html

  4. Thomas Nephew Avatar
    Thomas Nephew

    DoryO, I don’t think some museum director and staff camped out at the museum would have put much of a crimp in the looting, it just would have added some more corpses.
    I’m not inclined to make a federal case of this against the US military, as opposed to the looters themselves.
    But I also think none of us (pro-war and anti-war people alike) should make a political football out of what is an absolute tragedy. Instead of being defensive, let’s be pragmatic, and urge the US to bend every available effort to retrieving artifacts and blocking smuggling. We should offer rewards and/or amnesties for the return of artifacts.
    Whether it’s ultimately US moral responsibility or not, this tragedy will undermine our friends in Iraq and thus our hopes for democracy there. Let’s not let that happen.

  5. Moira Avatar
    Moira

    From today’s New York Times (4/17)—http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/17/international/worldspecial/17MUSE.html:
    “In one possibly encouraging sign, several people in the Al Awi neighborhood that surrounds the museum said they did not see looters leave with any antiquities, even amid gun battles and looting that lasted two days.
    An imam who lives behind the museum said he stood outside the museum for several hours on the first day of the looting, begging them to stop. “I kept reminding them that this is their country and it was against Islam to steal,” said the imam, who asked not to be identified.
    But he said the only items from the collection he saw stolen were several old rifles. Mostly, he said, he saw looters take chairs, typewriters, ceiling lamp fixtures and other items from the museum’s offices, as happened at nearly every other government office in the capital.
    Abed El Rahman, a museum security guard who lives on the premises, also said that rifles were the only items he saw stolen from the collections. “But many people were carrying boxes,” he said. “I don’t know what was in the boxes.”
    Other Western art historians are wondering how missing statues that normally need to be moved with a forklift could have been carted off. Really, the more that comes to light, the more it seems that the museum was really looted well before the common rabble showed up on Thursday.

  6. agr Avatar
    agr

    If you accept the bizarre notion that looting of art treasures is war time is still legit, than what happened is even more inexcusable, since the U.S. Government would have had first claim as spoils of war. Our failure to protect cultural sites, hospitals and banks while shielding the Oil Ministry building gave our enemies a tremendous propaganda victory. The military outcome of this war was never in doubt, the real game was always political. The lack of planning for the fall of Baghdad could cost us the goal of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis and undermines the the sacrifice of our soldiers.