Can anyone provide more detail on what transpired at the Interpol meeting,
held in Lyon, on tracking looted art objects and manuscripts from Iraq?

A news report on the meeting just on the BBC's website today
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3003995.stm
has some quotes from those in attendance but little new information.

An AP report, headlined "Ashcroft: Organized Crime Stole Iraq Art"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2643979,00.html
quotes the US attorney-general attibuting the looting of the Iraq
Museum to organized crime, alongside more cautious statements from
museum experts - and from Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of coalition
forces in Iraq - saying that there is as yet no firm evidence of an
organized crime link.  Also the following from British Museum keeper
John Curtis:

      A British Museum official who recently returned from Iraq
      estimated on Monday that 30 to 40 antiquities were missing
      from the National Museum in Baghdad - fewer than initially
      feared.

      But John Edward Curtis also stressed that no one knows the status
      of 100,000 to 200,000 antiquities kept in storage, as well as an
      untold number of smaller, portable items that museum officials
      removed for safekeeping months before the war.
      [...]
_________________________________________________________________________
The Denver Post
Tuesday, May 6, 2003

Art treasures regarded among masterpieces of Mesopotamia

By Kyle MacMillan, Denver Post Critic-at-Large

While most aspects of the Iraqi war have stopped making headlines,
the looting of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad is gaining more
international attention than any cultural tragedy in recent memory.

Questions abound. What exactly was stolen? How significant was it?
Can it be recovered? The story seems to change every day. Experts do
agree on one thing: The losses at museums, libraries and other places
were catastrophic even if smaller than first feared.
[...]

Information about exactly what was ransacked and who did it was
in short supply last week at an international meeting of experts
at the British Museum in London, which has the largest collection
of Mesopotamian art outside of Iraq.

"Regrettably, I think the real headline and the real status is,
we still don't know a heck of a lot," said Tim Whalen, director
of the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles.  He attended
the gathering along with representatives of such institutions as the
Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
[...]

[Linda] Komaroff of the Los Angeles County Museum remains confident
that most of the objects that were stolen will surface again, but
it might take decades.

"The looting that took place during and after the Second World War
is still being sorted out," she said, "and that was 50 years ago."

Even in the cases where good documentation does exist, nothing
can substitute for the real thing, especially as technology and
archaeologists' understanding of objects continue to evolve.

Scientists are now able, for example, to return to ancient pots
in museums and do analyses of what was cooked in them, something
that was impossible even a few decades ago, [Robert] Cohon of the
Nelson-Atkins Museum said.

"In 1960 we didn't know what to look for. In 2003, we know what
to look for a little bit better," he said. "New tests can be done.
In 2030, what are we going to be able to do with this material?
Probably wonderful things, and you need the object."

FOR MORE, SEE
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~78~1371154,00.html
_________________________________________________________________

SEE ALSO
"What can be done to recover Iraq's art" (Wash.Post Apr 25, 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39954-2003Apr25


Andras Riedlmayer
Fine Arts Library
Harvard University

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