Dallas Museum Of Art Analysis

There are those that walk the line between supporting art repatriation and denying art repatriation. Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, Maxwell Anderson, is one of those people. Anderson believes that efforts should be taken to return these stolen artifacts to their country of origin and he has even enforced the art repatriation campaign within the Dallas Museum of Art. Though he shows great support for the movement he does have his limits. He believes that after a certain, unspecified, amount of time the artifacts become apart of the heritage of the museums in which they are currently housed and therefore, only that museum has an origin claim to those pieces. Infact he says “We cannot go back in time, the only thing you can do is look forward …show more content…
Rorschach acknowledges that many artifacts have changed hands in distressing ways over time (Rocca, 2013). Rorschach believes that recently acquired artifacts should be “handled with the utmost seriousness.” However, older artifacts such as the Rosetta Stone have been in their current museums too long to be reclaimed. Furthermore, Anderson contends that political figures are exploiting the topic of art repatriation whereas archaeologists, art historians, scientists and museum officials have the job of protecting artifacts and heritage, but not to solve the nation building efforts of countries (Rocca, 2013).
Based on my research, the issue of art repatriation is a grey area. A culture is entitled to its history and the artists that created these artifacts would very well have wanted their countries to have access to their own history. However, in the case of Egypt, the major arguments fighting against the country revolve around time and timing. By time I mean that critics believe that after a certain amount of time has passed the artifact becomes a part of the heritage of the museum in which it is housed (Simpson, 2009). Therefore the claim is to that museum and the culture in which the artifact …show more content…
Both feel that they have a legitimate claim to these artifacts no matter the amount of time that has passed of the present conditions at hand. Someone is going to lose out either way the verdict goes. The largest issue is what happens to these artifacts in the middle of litigation. Cases can take anywhere from months to years to fight and come back with a verdict. In the case of genie that once graced the walls of an Assyrian palace, it disappeared from the wall and resurfaced in London 20 years later. Since 2002 the genie has sat in the vault of the Languard police (Tharoor, 2016). That is 14 years of this art piece being locked behind bars and removed from the public eye. One thing that both sides of the debate agree on is that the artifacts deserve to be view by the public. The genie case is one that displays another great fear. This fight for art repatriation could lead to the loss of cultural awareness as these long cases keep people from being able to view and learn about these pieces first