Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Dirty Dishes

The New York Times is reporting that some dishes that were evidently taken from one of Saddam's palaces are being repatriated to Iraq after being seized by US Marshalls. See http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/looted-dishes-used-in-art-project-returned-to-iraq/

The plates had evidently attracted the notice of Iraqi officials after being used for performance art by an Iraqi-Jewish American whose parents had been driven from the country in 1946.

This seems to be yet another case of cultural property overkill. And I wonder whether the Iraqi diplomats would have been as keen to demand repatriation of the dinner plates if the artist had not been from an Iraqi-Jewish family.

Shouldn't the artist and his family be the ones who deserve reparations?

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