SLAM: The Game is (Hopefully) on Again

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Rick St Hilaire has reported ('United States Files Motion in SLAM Mummy Mask Case' April 7, 2012) that the US Government is not giving up its fight to see museum-professional-right triumph over museum-wrong in the case of the Ka Nefer Nefer mask. I for one am glad to hear that the game is on, and hope this time the gloves will be off.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in St. Louis filed a motion today in response to a federal district court's ruling earlier this week dismissing the government's forfeiture complaint against the Ka Nefer Nefer mummy mask located at the St. Louis Art Museum (SLAM). The prosecutor asks the court for an extension of time to file a motion for reconsideration of the court's decision or to file an amended complaint [...] The government's response today sets the stage to either file a revised complaint that meets the court's articulated demands or to appeal the court's dismissal order if a motion to reconsider the decision proves unsuccessful.

Meanwhile if you Google Earth SLAM, you will see a shocking photo of the museum surrounded by a huge building site; all those works of art are kept in a building swept by the dust thrown up by the operations, subjected to the vibrations from pile-drivers and machinery. Are these the sort of conditions under which those Egyptian antiquities should be curated? Surely the collection should have been removed from the building in the course of such operations? Were they?

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