Archinect - News

Pope Francis announces return of Parthenon fragments in a potential precedent-setter

2022-12-20T18:39:00-05:00

Pope Francis will send back to Greece the three fragments of the Parthenon Sculptures that the Vatican Museums have held for two centuries, in the latest case of a Western museum bowing to demands for restitution of artifacts to their countries of origin.

The bequest was labeled a “donation” from the Vatican by Pope Francis, who also called it “a concrete sign of [his] sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth.”

The British Museum, meanwhile, is also reportedly in talks with Greece to return parts of its argued-over trove of Elgin Marbles as early as next year. A timeline for the Vatican's return to the Acropolis Museum has not yet been verified by either party.

Previously on Archinect: The British Museum is under fire after refusing Parthenon Marbles 3D scan

An altered AD photoshoot landed one wealthy Bay Area couple in hot water over potentially looted Cambodian relics

2022-08-16T16:23:00-04:00

The January 2021 issue of Architectural Digest featured a remodeled $42 million San Francisco residence described as a Spanish Renaissance Revival palacio. [...] ...shows ancient Khmer sculptures resting on the same pedestals. The Cambodian government says those stone relics, depicting the heads of gods and demons, match a set that was looted years ago from one of the nation’s sacred sites.

The tony $42 million Peter Marino-designed San Francisco manse was the subject of a multi-page spread in the January 2021 edition of the magazine. A spokesperson for Architectural Digest said that photoshopping was required by “unresolved publication rights around select artworks,” but an eagle-eyed attorney working for Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts who originally spotted the empty plinths indicated their resemblance to a pair allegedly taken from one of the country's most sacred sites a few years ago.

“It’s easily one of the most important statues in the temple, and probably all of Koh Ker,” Bradley J. Gordon is reported to have told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). “By having this in their collection, the Lindemanns essentially had the Cambodian equivalent of a sarcophagus stolen from King Tut’s tomb sitting in their living room.”

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The new Bët-bi Museum by atelier masōmī will continue a shift toward cultural justice in Senegal

2022-05-17T12:32:00-04:00

A historic new museum is set to take shape in West Africa, the vision of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and designer Mariam Kamara of Niger’s atelier masōmī.

Bët-bi is said to be the first institution dedicated to the (temporary) collection and display of repatriated objects taken from their native lands in a reversal of controversial practices which have been at the heart of many Western museum operations since their beginnings in Colonialism.

Image courtesy atelier masōmī

The studio beat out four other firms based in Africa for the commission, including Rwanda’s MASS Design Group and the Moroccan firm Aziza Chaouni Projects.

Located in the Kaolack region of southern Senegal, Bët-bi (or “The Eye” in Wolof) aims to position itself as an intermediary between Western art-collecting institutions and surrounding nations in addition to serving in its functional capacity as an educational fount to the area. In this regard, its mission and scope are similar to that of the planned Ed...

The UK is once again declining to change its stance on the Parthenon Marbles following a UNESCO statement

2021-10-06T16:43:00-04:00

The fate of the British Museum’s heavily contested Parthenon Marbles (also referred to as the Elgin Marbles) has once again come under clout after the UK decided to reject UNESCO’s request to reassess its position on repatriating the 2,500-year-old relics to their country of origin.

The UK is continuing on their insistence that the marbles were acquired through a legal means in the form of a contested firman granted to their namesake the Earl of Elgin by the Ottoman Empire around 1801.

The UN’s cultural arm had issued a statement at a recent ICPRCP meeting outlining its position that the dispute indeed constitutes an “intergovernmental issue” and not, as both the government and museum claim, an institutional one that can be sorted out “independently of the government and free from political interference,” according to UK officials.

Previously on Archinect: Brexit could force British Museum to return Parthenon Marbles to Greece

“The Museum is a unique resource for the world: the brea...

Adjaye Associates selected to design museum in Nigeria for repatriated artifacts

2019-10-04T13:39:00-04:00

Architect David Adjaye has been selected to design a new museum in Nigeria that may one day hold cultural and artistic works that were previously looted from the region by colonial powers.

Adjaye Associates, who helped design the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., has been commissioned to undertake a feasibility study with local partner Agram Architects for the new Benin Royal Museum in Nigeria, Art News writes.

Adjaye currently consults for the Benin Dialogue Group, a cultural repatriation-focused entity that includes representatives from major European and Nigerian museums. During the colonial era, many of West Africa’s most precious art and cultural objects were stolen by colonizing powers, and as a result, now sit scattered across the world’s museums, including the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, according to Art News.

The Benin Dialogue Group is working to coordinate the tricky task of repatriating some o...

The OMA-designed Lusanga International Research Centre on Art and Economic Inequality aims to expose and redress economic inequalities

2017-03-31T12:45:00-04:00

Located on the former site of a Unilever palm oil plantation in the Congolese forest, the Lusanga International Research Centre on Art and Economic Inequality, or LIRCAEI, is a new white cube museum space dedicated to “the transformation of former plantation spaces into areas for artistic critique, beauty, and ecological diversity, through funneling art world capital back to the plantations it was originally extracted from—to create, in other words, a post-plantation.” Designed by OMA, the Centre seeks to retain profits from the community, which produces sculptures made from cacao among other works, and then buy back land to finance further development. OMA has developed a master plan in collaboration with the local community, “with the goal of establishing the center as a legitimization machine, investigating and relaying the artistic visions and works of plantation workers in the Congo and throughout the global south on the site of their former exploitation.”

“Plugged into internat...

Shoring up America's infrastructure by repatriating money stashed overseas

2016-08-11T13:17:00-04:00

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump may have a lot of differences in temperament and policy, but common to both campaigns are promises to invest heavily in the country’s crumbling infrastructure. It’ll be a hard task to get the bill through a Republican-controlled, miserly House — particularly for a President Clinton. But there’s a pot of gold that both candidates could possibly dip into: the some $2 trillion in cash stashed overseas by American companies. A repatriation tax holiday could be used to fund infrastructure projects according to Dan Clifton, head of policy research at Stategas, as reported by CNBC.

For more on the state of American infrastructure, check out these links: