VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Francis has decided to send back to Greece the three fragments of Parthenon Sculptures that the Vatican Museums have held for centuries, the Vatican announced on December 16.
BERLIN (AP) – Germany’s foreign minister will personally take 20 artifacts looted by Europeans during colonial times back to Nigeria when she visits to Africa’s most populous country next week, her spokesman said December 16. The symbolic gesture follows an agreement earlier this year between Berlin and Abuja that will see all 514 so-called Benin Bronzes held in German museums handed back to Nigeria.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) – It’s a first symbolic step in a homecoming that will long outlast the 10-year Odyssey of ancient myth. For decades, an important part of Greece’s cultural heritage sparkled only for the very few in a U.S. billionaire’s private collection, until a groundbreaking deal for its gradual return to Athens. Now 15 of the prehistoric masterpieces have gone on public view for the first time in a temporary display in Athens, ahead of their final return, together with the remaining 146 works, by the year 2048.
LONDON (AP) – The British Museum has pledged not to dismantle its collection, following a report that the institution’s chairman has held secret talks with Greece’s prime minister regarding the return of the Parthenon Sculptures, also known as the Elgin Marbles. The report by the Greek newspaper Ta Nea is the latest twist in the long-running dispute centering on the ownership of the ancient sculptures, which originally stood on the Acropolis in Athens and have been part of the British Museum’s collection since 1816.
CAIRO (AP) – The debate focusing on who owns ancient artifacts has been an increasing challenge to museums across Europe and America, and the spotlight has fallen on the most-visited piece in the British Museum: the Rosetta stone.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) – A U.S. museum has returned a valuable 1,000-year-old Christian manuscript to a monastery in northern Greece it was looted from by Bulgarian forces more than a century ago, together with hundreds of other documents and artifacts.
NEW YORK — In Maya art — one of the greatest artistic traditions of the ancient Americas — the gods are depicted in all stages of life: as infants, as adults at the peak of their maturity and influence, and finally, as they age. The gods could perish, and some were born anew, providing a model of regeneration and resilience. Opening November 21 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and continuing through April 2, 2023, the exhibition Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art will bring together nearly 100 rarely seen masterpieces and recent discoveries in diverse media — from the monumental to the miniature — that depict episodes in the life cycle of the gods, from the moment of their birth to resplendent transformations as blossoming flowers or fearsome creatures of the night.
ROME (AP) – Italian authorities on November 8 announced the extraordinary discovery of 2,000-year-old bronze statues in an ancient Tuscan thermal spring and said the find will “rewrite history” about the transition from the Etruscan civilization to the Roman Empire. The discovery, in the sacred baths of the San Casciano dei Bagni archaeological dig near Siena, is one of the most significant ever in the Mediterranean and certainly the most important since the 1972 underwater discovery of the famed Riace bronze warriors, said Massimo Osanna, the Culture Ministry’s director of museums.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – Federal agents in Memphis have seized a potentially 3,000-year-old ancient Egyptian artifact that was shipped in from Europe.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) – Greece has struck a complex deal for the eventual return from a U.S. billionaire’s private collection of 161 top-quality ancient Greek artifacts dating from more than 4,000 years ago, marking a new approach in the country’s efforts to reclaim its cultural heritage.