Turkish Chamber in Dresden

[ariel]

Several years ago in Vienna I saw a beautiful Algerian nimcha with a label " tulwar" ( or something like that).
Luckily, the director was there by a crazy chance and I approached him. He was horrified: he never had time to actually inspect the main exhibition. He took me to his office and pulled out old boxes with original documentation. Small cards, faded ink.... That was the extent. He also showed me pics of literally hundreds of Oriental arms and armor for sale from a major Italian collection. The museum had no funds to even think of acquiring one.....


Jens is right: training volunteers to perform simple manual tasks or computerize archives is the only feasible solution. History is being lost under our collective noses.
I hoped Dresden would be an exception, but fat chance....

[iskender]

gentlemen you must look at it and realise that we are the sole curators of ancient goods for the comming generations! the goverments and museums in the whole world are running out of money,also the interrest of the mainstream-people these days is in fastfood and computer-games .i have seen from india to france even in the usa collections where remarkable items are rotting without a chance of conservation! a further problem is the tigthening of laws on privat owned antiqities because with the new laws you shoud be able to prove where the item has come from and where it was the last 20 years! men in my age have tausends of objekts bougtht legally over many years ,now we stand with our collections in the rain an are more or less criminals! i wish to apologize for being such a pessinist! greetings iskender

[estcrh]

Originally Posted by iskender

gentlemen you must look at it and realise that we are the sole curators of ancient goods for the comming generations! the goverments and museums in the whole world are running out of money,also the interrest of the mainstream-people these days is in fastfood and computer-games .i have seen from india to france even in the usa collections where remarkable items are rotting without a chance of conservation!

a further problem is the tigthening of laws on privat owned antiqities because with the new laws you shoud be able to prove where the item has come from and where it was the last 20 years! men in my age have tausends of objekts bougtht legally over many years ,now we stand with our collections in the rain an are more or less criminals! i wish to apologize for being such a pessinist! greetings iskender

Very true, as for owing items with even a small amount of prohibited ivory etc, I am myself am conserned about purchasing items from outside my own country for fear of confiscation, and what happens when you want to sell them somedy? I have noticed more sellers simply labeling an item as "bone" or "horn" rather than take the risk of saying "ivory" or "rhino".