James Cuno, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, previews his new book MuseumsMatter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum and Who Owns Antiquity? for Foreign Affairsmagazine:

My longstanding sympathies on this issue are with Cuno. The natural extension of Gunay'sargument is that the regimes that currently govern a given territory somehow have exclusive rightsto any object that has ever been on that plot of land, may do whatever it is they wish to with it,and that the only way anyone should be allowed to ever see said object is to visit that country.This, despite the fact that most of the great antiquities in places like the Louvre or MMOA werediscovered by Western archaeologists in digs financed by Western sources and have been preservedbecause Westerners cared enough to do so. Indeed, current regimes often intentionally destroyancient artifacts.

Cuno and I agree that stolen artifacts are a different matter, and that the presumption shouldbe for their repatriation. But it's not at all obvious why the current government in Egypt, forexample, should enjoy custody of every artifact of the Pharaonic period.

To read the complete article, see:
The CaseAgainst Repatriating Museum Artifacts?(www.outsidethebeltway.com/the-case-against-repatriating-museum-artifacts/)