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In an earlier post here Greece Cultural Property 2010: Please Sign a Petition Too, I announced that a SAFE petition had been set up and invited blog readers to sign it and persuade others to. I am pleased to see that many have, I see the names of the great and good, the Director of the CBA (thanks Mike), his US counterpart Brian Rose, John Carman, David Gill, Ton Cremers, Kathryn Walker Tubb, Francis Deblauwe, Chuck Jones, Donny George Youkhanna, Roger Atwood, Cindy Ho, a goodly number of British archaeology pals and ... some British metal detectorists (thanks Pete, Tony, Kevmar and all the rest of you - not seen Gary yet though) . Why, there is even a rebel from the ANS (nobody identifiably from Bavaria though), let's have some more coin collectors!So far there are 420 signatures, so we've already topped the number of public submissions to the Department of State in support of an MOU. This poor turnout was probably due to poor publicity beforehand, let us show that more people would have signed if the DoS had made its request for opinions more widely known. Let us see just how many we can collect before 12th October. Now if only we could get Jennifer Lopez (a great fan of ancient Greek culture apparently) to Twitter it...
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Please also sign the petition in support of the US-Greece bilateral agreement to protect cultural heritage of Greece against illegal export.
http://www.petitiononline.com/greekmou/
Here's why:
http://www.savingantiquities.org/Greecemou.php
And tell everyone who cares to do the same.
Spread the word.
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http://www.petitiononline.com/greekmou/
Here's why:
http://www.savingantiquities.org/Greecemou.php
And tell everyone who cares to do the same.
Spread the word.
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J-Lo's husband, Marc Anthony, has a pretty nice collection of antiquities including many Greek vases. I think he is the source of her love for Ancient Greece - so you might like to look at the collection (they are in the background of a few 'at home' photos of them in magazines, where he speaks of his love of collecting) - but you might perhaps find it more fruitful to look at him collecting than to count on their support?
ReplyDeleteThanks Dorothy, that must be what I was thinking of. Of course an ethical collector CAN be a supporter of measures to cut down on illegal exports of antiquities. After all, it is not a 'ban'. So it depends what kind of a collector Marc Anthony is.
ReplyDeleteI found a photo of his house - was telling David Gill about it a while back - and uploaded it here. http://phdiva.blogspot.com/2010/09/jennifer-lopez-and-marc-anthonys.html
ReplyDeleteOf course one can be an ethical collector. But a pity more are not.
I don't know why someone doesn't cut out the middleman and run "Dig it Up and Take it Home" holidays exclusively for Americans whereby thousands of artefacts are removed from Greece and taken home to the States by the actual excavators every year.
ReplyDeleteOh no, sorry, that's England isn't it!
(Google "Metal Detecting Holidays")