Parthenon Marbles Research Articles

Demokratia: Will the Greek Ideal Work in Greece’s Favour to Return the Parthenon Marbles under International Law?

Abstract This article reviews the recent publications concerning the centuries-old dispute over the Parthenon Marbles. The discussion focuses on the application of international law to the question of the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece, and reviews Professor Catharine Titi’s book The Parthenon Marbles and International Law, with reference to and comparison with Alexander Herman’s book The Parthenon Marbles Dispute. This review specifically evaluates the question of whether there is a customary international law on the return of unlawfully removed cultural heritage, which would require States, and specifically the United Kingdom, to be bound to such a rule. The existence of this rule would strengthen the efforts of Greece to argue for the return of the Marbles, which Titi argues is best resolved through diplomacy, and not recourse to the European Court of Human Rights or the International Court of Justice. Despite a growing global discussion about the need for repatriation of colonial-looted cultural objects, it remains to be seen whether it will have any impact, or indeed put pressure on, the Trustees of the British Museum or the UK Parliament which must pass an act to deaccession the Marbles from the national collection.

Analyses of the brown stain on the Parthenon Centaur head in Denmark

In 1688 two sculptural fragments, a head of bearded man and a head of an unbearded youth, arrived in Copenhagen, sent from Athens as a gift to King Christian 5. They were placed in the Royal Kunstkammer, their provenance given as the Temple of Artemis in Ephesos, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Almost a hundred and fifty years later, in the early 1820’s they were noticed and studied by two scholars independently visiting the Kunstkammer. However, both concluded that the two heads belonged to one of the metopes decorating the south side of the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis in Athens, showing fighting between Greeks and the mythical Centaurs, part man and part horse. In the 1830’s another sculptural fragment, a horse’s hoof, obtained through the German archaeologist and state antiquary of Greece, Ludwig Ross, reached Copenhagen. It was forwarded by the Danish consul to Athens, C.T. Falbe, as a gift to King Christian 8. The inventory reads: ‘… was found on the Acropolis near the Parthenon temple and is supposed to belong to one the Centaurs on the metopes.’ The present paper focuses solely on the head of the Centaur.A brown stain was noticed on the Parthenon marbles as early as 1830 by the British Museum and has ever since eluded a deeper understanding of its genesis despite many investigations and attempts of analyses. A quite similar brown stain can be observed on the Centaur’s head in Copenhagen as well.The present study reports analyses by LA-ICP-MS, SEM–EDX, µXRD, GC–MS, and LC–MS-MS, as well as optical microscopy of five small samples sequestered in 1999 from the Centaur head curated by the National Museum of Denmark. Our analyses show that the brown stain consists of two consecutively added surficial layers of the calcium oxalate minerals whewellite and weddellite. Despite a thorough search using proteomics, we have found no viable organic precursor material for the oxalates. Our results do not solve the mystery of the formation of the brown stain, but they do further qualify the structure and characterization of the brown stain.

THE PARTHENON MARBLES – IS IT JUST A LEGAL DISPUTE?

Disputes and efforts to recover works of art, on the state and private levels, are important areas of legal activity. We can look at these legal disputes both from theoretical and practical points of view. The article deals with the issue of recovering from Great Britain the Parthenon marbles taken by Lord Elgin from Greece at the beginning of the 19th century. It is one of the longest disputes over works of art in modern Europe. The solution may not lie in the law in the strict sense, but perhaps in simpler foundations referring to the elementary morality on the basis of which this law was created.

“Your Shadow Blocks My Sun”: Reading Alternative Narratives in The New Parthenon and Other Films by Penny Siopis

In The New Parthenon, as with her other films, Penny Siopis pieces together fragments of found footage of anonymous home videos, shot handheld on 8 or 16 mm film. The films are digitised first for sampling, but not digitally remastered, and are then combined with music and subtitles from various sources. These films narrate the stories of individuals, set against significant historical and political events. Evocativeness and anxiety are induced by the un-specificity of the connections between images and subtitles, heightened by the materiality of the amateur home video footage, often centred on quotidian family life and holidays, that has been reframed to narrate events that continue to reshape nations. I introduce the construction of a nation as a political community and examine how Siopis subverts narratives that connect ancient and contemporary Greece and its own internal antisemitic and nationalist conflicts to those of apartheid South Africa and imperialist Britain. I propose that the numerous representations of souvenir replicas and icons in The New Parthenon appear to perform a witnessing role to public and personal histories, while symbolically holding historical traumas in frozen form. I focus on Siopis’s mediated views of the Acropolis structures in the film, considering the symbolic bleaching of the Parthenon Marbles in the nineteenth-century British imaginary to track whiteness as a signifier of power. Siopis migrates this to signifiers of apartheid South Africa in order, I argue, to critique the narratives that maintain national imaginaries and to propose instead an aesthetics of reattachment.

CAN INTERNATIONAL LAW PROVIDE GREECE WITH A SUITABLE AVENUE FOR THE PARTHENON MARBLES REPATRIATION?


 The Parthenon Marbles (‘the Marbles’) extraction from Greece to the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century by Thomas Bruce, 7th Lord of Elgin, where it remains today in the British Museum, has been part of controversial public debate about who possesses lawful title over the Marbles. Greece has made numerous demands for the restitution of this historically and culturally significant piece, yet the United Kingdom has denied these requests and is protected by domestic legislation from returning the Parthenon Marbles. Currently, it appears the most suitable avenue of restitution for Greece is by pursuing legal action under international law. Based on the evidence collected, Greece has a strong claim for restitution, however there are jurisdictional difficulties and the non-binding nature of advisory opinions which will need to be overcome for a successful outcome.

The Hybrid Dialectics Interview between Warren S. Neidich and Erik Morse

This interview between the writer and critic Erik Morse and the artist and theorist Warren Neidich took place over the course of two months in the fall/winter 2021–2022. The interview focuses on a body of work entitled the Hybrid Dialectics produced between 1997–2002 that served as bridge between his earlier perfomative reenactments and fictitious documents entitled, American History Reinvented,1985–1993, and his more recent neon sculptures most notably the Pizzagate Neon, 2017–2021 and his A Proposition for an alt Parthenon Marbles Recoded: The Phantom as Other (2021–2022). Neidich's project extends his interdisciplinary experiments carried out in the fields of cinema studies, structural film and apparatus theory which foregrounded cinematic devices and tools at the expense of the image. This forms the foundation of Neidich’s engagement with photographic medium as a form of politicized aesthetics embedded in a bidirectional embodied and extended cognition. His hybrid dialectics take off where artists like Michael Snow and Tony Conrad left off. They are the result of grafted neuro-opthalmologic devices, used in the measurement of squint and skewed gaze, upon the photographic lens which results in a destabilized and estranged image; making them other and queered while at the same time challenging the stillness of the photographic object. The neuro-photographic assemblages release the vibrant energy of their human and non-human subjects distributing them across the surface of the photographic paper. These portray a lexicon of control that would later appear again, in his recent neon sculptures in the form of the Google effect, meme magic, and click bait. The Hybrid Dialects represented forms of dissensus against what Guy Debord called the Society of the Spectacle where as Neidich’s recent neon work is a rebuttal of the consciousness industry of social media and Big Data.

Athens or London? The Parthenon Marbles and economic efficiency

In the early part of the 19th century sculptures on the Parthenon in Athens were removed under the direction of the Earl of Elgin, then the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which at the time included Greece. The sculptures were brought to Britain, finding their way to the custody of the British Museum in London in 1816, where they are viewed by millions of visitors annually. A debate long has simmered as to whether these Parthenon Marbles, which date from the 5th century BCE, should be returned to Athens or remain in the United Kingdom. Much of the debate concerns the legitimacy of Elgin's original transfer of the Marbles and, relatedly, their current rightful owner. This article employs a Law-and-Economics, efficiency-based lens to examine the “property dispute” surrounding the Marbles. The efficiency inquiry centers on what location for the Marbles will do the best job of satisfying human preferences, which depend to a large extent on access to the Marbles and the quality of that access. Coase-like reasoning is applied to the question of the “highest-valued” location of the Marbles, supplemented with behavioral economics concepts involving cultural identity and endowment effects. The article concludes by offering some contours for a potentially Pareto-improving agreement that would result in the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles in Greece.

The Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum

The Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum

Il Convegno AICA del 1984. La Presidenza Hăulică e la questione dei Marmi del Partenone

"The 1984 Conference of the International Association of Art Critics. The Presidency of Dan Hăulică and the Issue of the Parthenon Sculptures. In 1984, the Conference of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), chaired by the Romanian Dan Hăulică (1932-2014), was organized for the first time in Greece; the event offered an opportunity for historians and art critics of various nationalities to meet. The theme of the conference, „Contemporary art and the Greek world. The XXth century in the face of the civilizations that have followed one another in the Greek space”, on the one hand honored the host country and on the other, placing the accent on the relationship between XXth century art and the Western artistic tradition, was part of the international discussion on the end of the avant-gardes. The complex relationships between the ancient and the contemporary were discussed in terms of influences, continuity and discontinuity. Particular attention was paid to the concept of myth and the mythical dimension of contemporary art. On the other hand, the generic definition of „Greek world"", intentionally chosen by the Greek section of the AICA, re-proposed the national narrative of an essentially unitary historical-artistic development. The Conference also had a dimension of international political significance connected to the fact that the previous year the AICA, an organization affiliated with UNESCO, had approved a motion for the return to Greece of the Parthenon marbles kept at the British Museum. In Athens, the confirmation of solidarity with the Greek cause was also a matter of electoral campaign for the renewal of the Presidency of the AICA. Keywords: AICA Congress, art discourse, contemporary art, Parthenon marbles, classical heritage, myth "

Reading Keats’s “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles”: The Materiality and Mortality of the Fragmented Marble

Keats’s sonnet “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” (1817) records the poet’s aesthetic reaction to Greek marble statues installed in the British Museum, which were originally part of the Parthenon in Athens and transported to Britain by Lord Elgin. The marbles’s aesthetic effect on Keats, I would argue, is inextricably bound up with his instant recognition of their materiality, which becomes plainly evident to him in their fragmentary state. The syntactic fragmentation of Keats’s sonnet (especially its sestet) appears to imitate, ekphrastically, the fragmented forms of the sculptures. The aesthetic experience related in the sonnet arises from Keats’s intense awareness of the decay of the marbles: they have eroded away over time and were cut into pieces by man’s activity. In Keats’s view, the aesthetic power of ancient artifacts has a basis in their material limits. While most of the enthusiastic reviews of Elgin’s collection at the time disregarded its fragmented condition, Keats is made painfully aware of that condition―perhaps thanks to his lack of in-depth knowledge of classical Greek art―and thereby of his own mortality. In his sonnet on the Parthenon marbles, thoughts of materiality and mortality are closely interwoven. The state of physical deterioration to which even the great art of the past succumbs―that is to say, the obvious fact that even the marbles do not outlast time―forces him to contemplate his own death, and further, the fragility of poetic fame. The broken nature of the marbles held in the museum leads Keats to appreciate their aesthetic beauty in relation to the history in which they are steeped. The material decay that temporality has caused to the Elgin Marbles overwhelms the poet with a sense of mortality, fate that he himself and all artistic achievements, perhaps his own poetry, cannot be spared.

The Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum

In the early part of the 19th century sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens were removed from the Acropolis under the direction of the Earl of Elgin, then the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which at the time included Greece. The sculptures were brought to Britain, finding their way to the British Museum in London in 1816, where they are viewed by millions of museum visitors annually. A debate long has simmered as to whether these Parthenon Marbles, which date from the 5th century BCE, should be returned to Athens or remain in the United Kingdom. Elements of the debate include questions about: the legitimacy of the initial relocation of the statuary; the quasi-legal impact of more than 200 years of British stewardship; the risk-mitigating role for dispersal of art; and, the influence on other art and museums of any precedent that might be established by return of the Parthenon Marbles.This paper surveys the arguments on both sides of the debate. A Law-and-Economics lens is employed to examine the “property dispute” surrounding the Marbles. Coase-like reasoning is applied to the question of the “highest-valued” location of the Marbles, supplemented with behavioral economics concepts involving cultural identity and endowment effects. The paper concludes by offering some contours for a potentially Pareto-improving agreement that would result in the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles in Greece.

The Parthenon Marbles Revisited: A New Strategy for Greece?

Cultural property disputes raise questions of ownership, possession, alleged destruction, and looting, and are confounded by legal vacuums, and idiosyncratic statutes of limitations. Should objects of cultural heritage of a specific nation that have been removed in the past be returned to their source nation? This article addresses the perennial such claim, the claim Greece addressed to the British Museum for the return of a collection of Marbles from the Parthenon and the Acropolis of Athens. This article identifies a trajectory towards a more effective outlook on cultural property disputes transcending the traditional ownership versus value debate reflected in the recent scholarship. I argue for a shift in the context of the discussion from one of legal title and ownership to one of negotiation, cooperation, and advancement of both nationalist and internationalist ideals. It adds a new and neglected approach to an old unresolved debate by suggesting two primary arguments: (1) an inalienability argument based on Margaret Radin’s theory of personhood; and, in the alternative, (2) a reassessment of the cultural nationalism/internationalism debate through a more modest integrated approach, and new negotiation strategy based on prior successful returns of cultural property objects. First, Margaret Radin’s theory of personhood gives the country of origin a normative argument based on the link between some forms of cultural property and personhood, against typical commensurate perceptions of property. Second, and in the alternative, when the notions of cultural nationalism and internationalism are not approached as mutually exclusive the two can flourish together under clarified objectives that do not mesh with each other's agendas but rather bolster one another. This article then examines successful return strategies under this new integrated cultural nationalism/internationalism approach using the Four Quadrant Negotiation Model. Ideas such as loan agreements, trading and exchange of cultural artifacts, touring collections, exclusive excavation agreements, joint trusteeship, fractional ownership, personnel education, and liability waivers all provide excellent starting points in a negotiation not on how Greece can get the Parthenon Marbles back but on how to form a partnership between Greece and the British Museum that will promote collaboration, international exchange of cultural heritage, as well as public access, and education.

"This was a great, big room full of dead things": British Children's Literature and the Museums Debate

"This was a great, big room full of dead things"British Children's Literature and the Museums Debate Aishwarya Subramanian (bio) Earlier in 2020, as part of post-Brexit trade negotiations with Britain, the European Union raised the issue of the return of "unlawfully removed cultural objects" (Baczynska and Chalmers), an act widely interpreted as a reference to Britain's continued possession of the Parthenon marbles that were removed from Greece under dubious circumstances by the Earl of Elgin at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This was the latest in a series of recent events that have drawn public attention to the extent to which Britain's museums symbolize a history of cultural plunder, particularly of Britain's former colonies. Article 11(2) of the 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides the right to redress, including restitution, with respect to their "cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property" taken without free and informed consent; however, in the last five years in particular there has been a rise in activism calling for a restructuring of Britain's heritage spaces. Describing the shift in priorities of Britain's Museum Detox network toward "the international project to decolonize museums," Sara Wajid and Rachel Minott note that this was "part of a growing swell of action both within and beyond the museum sector," citing the Brexit referendum and the rise of far-right nationalism across the world as reasons why "a political activism that had become dormant seemed to be regenerated" (Wajid and Minott 27). During this period, debates over how museums in Western Europe should deal with their imperial collections, and more broadly how Britain should memorialize its history of imperial violence, have raged. In addition to the global, student-led Rhodes Must Fall campaign,1 these years saw the rise of the Museum Detox network, the Countering Colston campaign at the University of Bristol, and individual projects such as Alice [End Page 153] A. Procter's Uncomfortable Art Tours and the Untold Histories tours run by a group of Cambridge academics.2 The summer of 2020 saw the toppling of a statue of Edward Colston, a merchant heavily involved in the British slave trade, by antiracist activists in his native city of Bristol. This action brought even wider public interest to the lingering presence and glorification of empire in Britain's public spaces. The "museums debate" has even received acknowledgement from Hollywood: in a scene in the film Black Panther (2018), the character Erik Killmonger first correctly identifies and then takes a misidentified Wakandan ancestral weapon from a fictional British museum, condemning the theft through which the museum acquired it in the first place. These contemporary social and political challenges to the imperial authority of European museums have taken place alongside ongoing demands for the return of imperial loot. Particularly significant have been calls for the British Museum to return the ancestral figure Hoa Hakananai'a to Rapa Nui (Bartlett) and the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria (Akwagyiram, Hicks). Several of the movements mentioned above are youth-led, and children's and youth culture has a major stake in these questions of heritage, history, and the UK's national story. So it's unsurprising that recent British children's literature has begun to engage more directly with this ongoing debate, albeit, as I will show, with only partial success. In a 1999 keynote speech, presented at a conference on heritage and cultural diversity, Stuart Hall describes "National Heritage" in the British context as: the whole complex of organisations, institutions and practices devoted to the preservation and presentation of culture and the arts—art galleries, specialist collections, public and private, museums of all kinds (general, survey or themed, historical or scientific, national or local) and sites of special historical interest. (3) For Hall, the emphasis on the past and on tradition makes the national heritage a discursive practice, in which a shared "national story" and social memory are constructed and disseminated to the public.3 Culture, and children's culture in particular, plays a significant role within this discourse. Valerie Krips has described the turn toward the development of heritage in twentieth century Britain in the wake of the two World...

The Parthenon Sculptures and Cultural Justice

From government and philosophy to art drama and culture, the ancient Athenians, as most everyone knows, gave future generations so much. Yet the pinnacle of their artistic achievement, the Parthenon, remains a damaged and incomplete work of art. 2012 marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the last removal of works of art from the Parthenon. That taking was ordered by an English diplomat known to history as Lord Elgin, and it reminds us that cultures create lasting monuments. But not equally. Cultures which remove the artistic achievements of other nations have increasingly been confronted with uncomfortable questions about how these objects were acquired. Nations of origin are increasingly deciding to press claims for repatriation of works taken long ago. They proceed through history mindful of the irresistible genius of their forebears have created and are unwilling to cease their calls for return. The majority of the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon in Greece now are currently on display in the British Museum in London. The Greek government and cultural heritage advocates, have been asking for reunification of these sculptures in the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. Greece has offered a number of concessions, but the British Museum and the British Government have repeatedly refused to seriously discuss reunification. Mounting pressure on the British Museum, and the inescapable fact that the Parthenon was an ancient unified work of art both mean that the Parthenon marbles will either eventually be returned to Greece or subject to an endless repatriation debate. Here I offer a series of principles which the Greeks and the British Museum can take to jointly create a just return. Because the way the British Museum and Greece resolve this argument will have much to say for the future of the management of our collective cultural heritage.

Discourses of cultural heritage in times of crisis: The case of the Parthenon Marbles

The paper focuses on the commodification and politicisation of cultural heritage using as a case study the ongoing debate on the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the U.K. to Greece, recently reignited by the press release for the movie The Monuments Men in 2014. Greece has been in the throes of a severe financial crisis for over six years with the ever imminent threat of Grexit constantly disputed. In parallel with this ongoing turmoil, discourses of Greek antiquity have been persistently prominent in the media. In this context, we problematise the complex nexus of relationships between the financial crisis, national identity and cultural heritage. We combine the Discourse‐Historical Approach and Interactional Sociolinguistics drawing data from an online forum, and investigate how the users negotiate pro‐/anti‐return positions and make the financial crisis relevant in the argumentation process. The analysis shows that history, identity, value, and debt are recontextualised in relation to the Parthenon sculptures. The analysis identifies an underlying process of value trade off and brings the current political and economic environment to the fore. We close the paper by foregrounding the implications of our study and provide directions for further research.

Alternative Dispute Resolution and Insights on Cases of Greek Cultural Property: The J.P. Getty Case, the Leon Levy and Shelby White Case, and the Parthenon Marbles Case

Abstract:This article examines the pros and cons of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). It also examines two cases in which Greek cultural treasures were returned to their country of origin by a US museum and a US collector on the basis of negotiations: the J.P. Getty Museum and the Leon Levy and Shelby White cases respectively. The Parthenon Marbles case is also examined, especially in light of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s recent (2013) invitation to the United Kingdom (UK) to accept mediation on the matter and the UK’s even more recent (2015) rejection of the invitation. In all three cases, the facts are set out and the author attempts an assessment of the ADR means used. Conclusions are drawn as to whether ADR is a feasible and beneficial option for the parties and whether, nowadays, it constitutes the norm in cases when cultural treasures are returned to their countries of origin.

The Caryatids in the New Acropolis Museum: Out of Sight, Out of Light, Out of Mind

This paper argues that the display of the iconic Caryatids in the New Acropolis Museum has been seriously compromised by the overriding desire amongst Greek politicians and heritage professionals to use the museum to reinforce their long-standing request for the return of the Parthenon Marbles. In designing a museum geared primarily to achieving the repatriation of the sculptures taken from the largest of the temples on the Athenian Acropolis, the museum’s architect has ensured that these marbles were presented within sight of their former monumental home, exhibited in a manner that imitates the architectural layout of the Parthenon, while the large windows of the museum allow vast amounts of natural light to illuminate the marbles. By contrast, the five Caryatids that remain in Athens have been treated with considerably less respect for such restitutionist sensibilities. Displayed within the concrete heart of the museum, lacking views of the outside world, let alone to the Acropolis, and with limited access to direct natural light, the marble women are positioned with no consideration for their original alignment. The important functional role of the Caryatids as integral structural elements within the architecture of the Erechtheum is also poorly represented in the manner of their current museological display in Athens.

3D Printing: Cultural Property as Intellectual Property

Long before the onset of the now-emblematic quarrel between England and Greece over the Parthenon marbles, nations and tribes have squabbled over the extraterritorial transfer of objects of purported cultural significance. Over the past few decades, however, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of cultural property repatriation claims, mostly targeting U.S. collections. The value of cultural artifacts is generated largely by the intellectual expression they manifest. Digital technologies make increasingly possible the creation of reproductions of even three-dimensional artifacts, which are indistinguishable from the originals. This development challenges our attributing value to the “aura” of the original renderings of tangible cultural artifacts. Stripped of their auras, the worth of these objects devolves to the sum of the value of the physical materials deployed in their creation, and that ascribed to the perceptible intellectual expression they contain. If we were to perceive cultural artifacts fundamentally as works of information rather than of tangible property, the location of the original instantiations of them would be of little significance. Three-dimensional technologies might soon permit source nations to retain the essential intellectual value of cultural artifacts found within their borders, while simultaneously capitalizing upon sales of the originals to collectors who will pay for their “aura.”

3D Printing: Cultural Property as Intellectual Property

Long before the onset of the now-emblematic quarrel between England and Greece over the Parthenon marbles, nations and tribes have squabbled over the extraterritorial transfer of objects of purported cultural significance. Over the past few decades, however, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of cultural property repatriation claims, mostly targeting U.S. collections. The value of cultural artifacts is generated largely by the intellectual expression they manifest. Digital technologies make increasingly possible the creation of reproductions of even three-dimensional artifacts, which are indistinguishable from the originals. This development challenges our attributing value to the “aura” of the original renderings of tangible cultural artifacts. Stripped of their auras, the worth of these objects devolves to the sum of the value of the physical materials deployed in their creation, and that ascribed to the perceptible intellectual expression they contain. If we were to perceive cultural artifacts fundamentally as works of information rather than of tangible property, the location of the original instantiations of them would be of little significance. Three-dimensional technologies might soon permit source nations to retain the essential intellectual value of cultural artifacts found within their borders, while simultaneously capitalizing upon sales of the originals to collectors who will pay for their “aura.” * BA, Oberlin; JD, American Univ.; MA, PhD, Stanford; MIMS (Masters, Info Systems) Berkeley; Lecturer, USC Law School, ccronin@law.usc.edu. CRONIN, 3D PRINTING: CULTURAL PROPERTY AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, 39 COLUM. J.L. & ARTS 1 (2015) 2 COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF LAW & THE ARTS [39:1

3D Printing: Cultural Property as Intellectual Property

Long before the onset of the now-emblematic quarrel between England and Greece over the Parthenon marbles, nations and tribes have squabbled over the extraterritorial transfer of objects of purported cultural significance. Over the past few decades, however, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of cultural property repatriation claims, mostly targeting U.S. collections. The value of cultural artifacts is generated largely by the intellectual expression they manifest. Digital technologies make increasingly possible the creation of reproductions of even three-dimensional artifacts, which are indistinguishable from the originals. This development challenges our attributing value to the “aura” of the original renderings of tangible cultural artifacts. Stripped of their auras, the worth of these objects devolves to the sum of the value of the physical materials deployed in their creation, and that ascribed to the perceptible intellectual expression they contain. If we were to perceive cultural artifacts fundamentally as works of information rather than of tangible property, the location of the original instantiations of them would be of little significance. 3D technologies might soon permit source nations to retain the essential intellectual value of cultural artifacts found within their borders, while simultaneously capitalizing upon sales of the originals to collectors who will pay for their “aura”.