Thanks to everyone who came to my lecture yesterday - you were a great audience and the questions were excellent!
If anyone is interested in following up any of these issues, here are some links.
First of all, here is Clarke on Wikipedia. If you want to find out about any more collectors of that period, one of the most fun is Giovanni Belzoni, aka the Strongman Egyptologist. Both Clarke and Belzoni make appearances in Edge of Empire by Maya Jasanoff - it's one of my favourite books on the subject because it deals with the thorny issue of empire in a way that does justice to the subtleties of the motivations involved (ie people were collecting 'for' the empire, but also because they had personal motivations like a love of the subject. There's no point in denying the political side, but equally it was about a lot more than that).
On the subject of the "Elgin"/Parthenon Marbles, I was interviewed on Ozzie radio a few weeks ago - click here to hear what I said.
There is a British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles whose website has a lot of detail on why they want the marbles returned. They also help run a website called Marbles Reunited which has some good graphics showing you which bits are where. In the interests of balance, here's the British Museum's position.
If thinking about this gets you interested in wider issues of cultural property and whether things are better displayed in their original context or all over the world, you might be interested in a book that's creating a buzz (and a lot of controversy) right now, James Cuno's Who Owns Antiquity. It was literally published a couple of days ago so I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive from Amazon, but if anyone reads it and loves/hates it I'd love to hear what you think!
Enjoy the rest of the week!
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2 comments:
Hi Katharine,
I enjoyed your talk, and thanks for the links here on your post. I will enjoy looking at them.
(My degree was in Greek and Roman Studies, so your talk made me think about lots of subjects I'd studied in the past, but not thought about for a long time! Hopefully I will be able to find a way to incorporate issues / topics from the museum studies course, with examples and objects that I studied during my honours degree.)
Helen
Thanks Helen - glad you enjoyed the talk!
I think Greek and Roman Studies is a fabulous background to do Museum Studies with. It's equally interdisciplinary and gives you a good grounding in the elite culture that was important when museums were first developed. I'm sure you'll find lots of connections!
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