April 8, 2008

Stolen and Looted!

In December 2007, students from Monticello Middle School completed a pilot of Raiders of the Lost Art, a new outreach program in a series addressing issues of cultural property and provenance. Building on many hours of research and preparation, students appeared in costume as an international cast of characters for the debut of “From All Sides,” a talk show in which the topic of discussion was the looting of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad.

The students began their work in September by reading a news article in The Christian Science Monitor; written just after the April 2003 looting occurred. After an opportunity to handle and examine replicas of Mesopotamian artifacts similar to those in the collections of the National Museum, students engaged in a lively discussion of the varied reasons for looting. Next, students were given a specific character to present at the talk show: one of eight personas including looter, museum staff, reporter, archaeologist, art dealer, and US military personnel. The roles were randomly drawn, putting some students in the position of having to develop and present ideas, motivations, and opinions with which they personally disagreed.

Michelle McKinney, a media center specialist at Monticello Middle, worked with seventh and eighth grade students participating in the project, while Michele Hillard, an art teacher at Washington Elementary, worked with sixth graders. These two educators, together with museum educator Brook Taylor, helped students conduct research, write letters to the editor in response to the article they had read, and prepare arguments and counter-arguments for the tough questions they might be asked in the talk show. Sample some of their responses by clicking on the clips below or browsing the letters they wrote. 

We invite you to learn more about museums and associated issues of provenance and cultural property by attending Contested Cultural Heritage in a Global World, a conference to be held at Spurlock Museum on Friday, April 25.  The keynote address, “Mayhem in Mesopotamia”, will be delivered by Dr. Donny George Youkhanna, former director of the National Museum in Baghdad and now Visiting Professor of Anthropology at SUNY Stony Brook, on April 24 at 7:30 pm. General conference information and registration details are also available.