Crimean Museum Loans Caught up in Ukraine Dispute

A modern political row has broken out about the fate of some objects lent by Crimean museums to an exhibition due to finish soon in Holland, 'Crimea: Gold and Secrets from the Black Sea,' on display in the University of Amsterdam's Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam. The question is whether the objects should be returned to their original homes in Crimean museums, whether they should go to Kiev, or Russia. The Bakhchysarai museum has lent its Dutch partners more than 1,000 objects, 1% of the total collection but some of its most precious items, in particular a number of pieces of Scythian gold (previously mentioned in Russian propaganda): 

Mid-last year, the museum and palace complex's officials sent the gold along with artifacts from three other Crimean museums to Germany for the biggest-ever modern exhibit of Crimea's ancient treasures abroad. The exhibit, "Crimea: Gold and Secrets from the Black Sea," then traveled to the Netherlands this year, where it remains on display in Amsterdam. Now officials here fear they will never see their precious Scythian gold on the premises again. The trove has become subsumed in a cross-national dispute that has come to reflect the nature of the Black Sea peninsula's complex and contested history. "The objects left when it was one government. Now they are supposed to return and it is another government," said Oksana Alpashkina, head conservationist at the Bakhchysarai Historical and Cultural Preserve—which oversees the Crimean Tatar palace from the days of Ottoman rule and a collection of older objects including the Scythian gold. "I think it is an unprecedented situation." Ukraine's new authorities in Kiev, which in February toppled former President Viktor Yanukovych after months of pro-European protests, have suggested the artifacts in Amsterdam shouldn't return to state museums in Crimea because the items belong to Ukraine rather than Russia, which has taken control of the peninsula—including its museums. "All museum objects that are being displayed abroad will return to Ukraine," said Yevhen Nishchuk, the one-time master of ceremonies at the Kiev protests and now Ukraine's Culture Minister. He called it a matter of "national security for the Ukrainian government's cultural possessions." 

For the four Crimean museums participating in the exhibition, such uncertainty raises conservationists' worst fears: that they could lose some of the most treasured pieces in their collection.

Paul Sonne, 'Scythian Gold Caught in Ukraine Dispute', Wall Street Journal March 30, 2014