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 __________________________________________________________________ Mail submissions to [log in to unmask] For information about joining ARLIS/NA see: http://www.arlisna.org//membership.html Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc) to [log in to unmask] ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance: http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/arlis-l.html Questions may be addressed to list owner (Kerri Scannell) at: [log in to unmask]