- Boy George (yes that one) agreed to return a looted icon to Cyprus after the church community saw the icon in a TV interview.
- Switzerland’s Federal Culture Office is calling for a simplified and more accessible provenance research process, particularly with respect to Nazi-era spoliation.
- Three works—a Samuel Peploe, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and Federico Barocci—were missing after an audit of the Glasgow Museums collection. They have been recovered after a curator saw the Corot listed in a catalog.
- The United Kingdom’s Culture Minister Ed Vaizey announced yesterday that this work has been denied export temporarily, in the hopes a domestic buyer will purchase the work.
- Rutgers University’s Zimmerli Art Museum has voluntarily agreed to return a work confiscated by the Nazi’s to the grandson of the original owner.
- Plans to draw tourists to the Roman city of Jerash in Jordan.
- Tip of the iceberg: the British Museum kept 99% of its collection in storage during 2009-10 (via).
- The import restrictions on certain objects from Italy have been announced. Let the rational appraisal begin.
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| “Portrait of a Young Woman” perhaps by Peter Paul Rubens |
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com
I hope you are not suggesting that the concerns of Congress and the collectors and small businesses of the numismatic trade who actually have to live with this foolishness are somehow irrational. Bottom line, there has been no material change in the situation on the ground to justify a change in precedent and collectors and dealers now are required to produce information that does not exist for most coins and is not required of Italians or anyone else for that matter. The AIA and other academic supporters of this either have absolutely no clue about the challenges this poses to small business or perhaps more likely at least for some of them, they hope this will help kill off private collecting. Perhaps, a requirement that archaeologists actually publish their coin finds in a timely matter be added to the MOU too.