The CultureGrrl Curriculum: The Syllabus Travels to Greece

Elia.gif
Ricardo Elia

As I briefly mentioned some time ago, I will be speaking on Mar. 18 at the Athens International Conference for the Return of Cultural Objects to Their Countries of Origin. Go to p. 12 to see my panel---"Museums, Sites and Cultural Context." What exactly do they mean by this? No guidance given.

So I interpreted my assignment in inimitable CultureGrrl fashion, with an irreverent PowerPoint photo essay illustrating and critiquing how American museums display, interpret and suggest a context for antiquities about which they have varying degrees of information (some having been professionally excavated, some not). I'm not sure that's what they had in mind, but perhaps I'll provide some relief from all those earnest legal and archaeological dissertations.

How do I manage to get myself mixed up in these groups where I don't really fit in? Perhaps, for the Athens event, it relates to my status as professional archaeologist of museums, digging for best and worst practices and investigating the arcane rituals of that endangered tribe, American museum professionals.

Actually, I think I have a pretty good idea of why the Hellenic Ministry of Culture decided to invite me---my NY Times Op-Ed piece advocating the reunification of the Parthenon marbles could not have hurt my cause.

The only fellow American on my panel is Ricardo Elia (above), Boston University's associate professor and chairman of the archaeology department. I already knew a little about him from David Gill's Looting Matters blog, but I hit the web to find out more.

There he was, on BU's very public Rate My Professor site. Happily for the Athens attendees, he's rated high for "clarity." The students appreciated his sense of humor and enjoyed his class. But wait, what's this? His "hotness" score was zero! Looks pretty hot to me. Maybe you just gotta be over 40.

The speakers on other panels whom I'm really hot to see include Americans Malcolm Bell and Joan Aruz; Italians Paolo Ferri and Louis Godart; and, of course, my aforementioned blogging buddy, David Gill of the U.K.

I'll look forward to giving you my impressions of the site where the conference will be held---the New Acropolis Museum, expected to open to the public in September.

You won't even miss me, art-lings: Although I'll be posting little, if at all, while in Greece, I'll be leaving you in excellent hands---a very distinguished guest blogger, famous and widely read for his brilliant insights and lively writing. His name is oddly appropriate for his task of filling in.

More on the surrogate CultureGrrl (can a guy be a Grrl?), next week.
March 6, 2008 12:23 PM | |

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CULTUREGRRL , aka Lee Rosenbaum, is your inside guide to the artworld, consulted daily by the most important museum directors and curators, art dealers and auctioneers, collectors, scholars, critics, journalists and art lovers.
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LEE ROSENBAUM
I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I've been a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and the annual conference of the Museum Association of New York, and on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University. more

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Me Elsewhere

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MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection(museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Michael Conforti Profile
Making Sales Look Stronger
Lee Krasner's "Little Image "Paintings
Ando-Designed Stone Hill Center for Conservation and Clark Exhibitions
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Her Art Came First: Anne d'Harnoncourt's Labor of Love

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Museum of Arts and Design Opens
New Met Director, Brian Lehrer Show
Tom Campbell Named Met Director
Whitney Museum's Expansion
Fake Coptic Art at Brooklyn Museum
Spring '08 Art Auctions
Should Veterans or Newcomers Lead Arts Organizations?
Murakami at Brooklyn Museum
Whitney Biennial
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on Fall '07 Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Philadelphia Museum's "Gross Clinic" Deaccessions
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

more of me elsewhere

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on March 6, 2008 12:23 PM.

Whitney Biennial, Continued: My WNYC Podcast was the previous entry in this blog.

Court Decision: Fisk Can Keep Stieglitz Collection, Subject to No-Sale and Must-Exhibit Stipulations is the next entry in this blog.

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