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Curator Says Iraq Looting Of Art Overestimated

How many works of art were stolen or broken during looting of Iraq’s National Museum? John Curtis, a curator at the British Museum estimates that “30 or 40 major works – some extremely significant – that remained on display last month are missing and that 15 are broken. The number missing from storage areas is still unknown. Initial reports suggested a much higher toll, which Curtis attributed to ‘poor information’.”

A Best-Of List To Cut Through The Hype

Why make a list annointing the “best” writers in a country? Granta editor Ian Jack thinks “it’s useful for readers to have a list that cuts through the marketing hype that declares every new book to be a masterpiece and tells book buyers that these writers are genuinely worth reading.” The Granta lists, of course, have been widely debated…

British Museum Curator: Location Of Iraq Art Known

American and Iraqi officials probably know where most of the art from Iraq’s National Museum is, says a top curator from the British Museum. “In a news conference at the museum and a subsequent interview, John Curtis said he believed that American authorities now knew the locations of the artifact repositories but that as a precaution against further looting were not disclosing them. In Iraq yesterday, American and Iraqi officials appeared to support this assessment, saying they still did not know precisely what was missing from the National Museum, because they had not yet had access to sites where art objects may have been hidden, or to rooms inside the building that were among the looters’ targets. But Mr. Curtis said the officials ‘certainly know’ where the hiding places are.”

Ashcroft: Iraq Museum Looting By Criminals

US Attorney General John Ashcroft told an Interpol meeting that “organized crime was involved in the looting of Iraq’s national museum and the United States will fully back international efforts to retrieve the stolen artifacts. The comments came at a conference of art experts and law enforcement officials aimed at creating a database listing items looted in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.”

Making Sense Of Iraq Museum Looting

The story of looting of Iraq’s National Museum is confusing. “Questions abound. What exactly was stolen? How significant was it? Can it be recovered? The story seems to change every day. Experts do agree on one thing: The losses at museums, libraries and other places were catastrophic even if smaller than first feared.”

The Next New Thing – Distributed Journalism?

Distributed research offers out projects over the internet – Information is freely available and researchers take little pieces of a problem and work on them. Many people work on many parts of a problem, sharing their results until a solution emerges. “Distributed journalism works similarly. Different lines of inquiry will occur to different people, who bring different kinds of knowledge to bear on the same topic. The ability to concatenate that information online – particularly via those motley commentary sites and open diaries called blogs – makes the information discovered by each available to all.”

Are Recording Studios Obsolete?

“In just a few years, the commercial recording studio has become an endangered species. Between a troubled record industry and new technology that makes studios and their expensive equipment all but obsolete, only a handful are still able to stay in business. With the extraordinary capabilities of the digital recording system called Pro Tools and the rapidly dropping cost of hard disk storage and blank CDs, musicians can set up their own recording studios for a fraction of what it used to cost to make albums at commercial facilities. The days are over for a pure music recording studio.”