DECLARATION FOR THE

DEPORTATION OF ART

[ARTiFACTs Dossier made public] Contact : deportart@yahoo.com

With the unprecedented rise of discriminatory immigration policies placed on Arab Americans, including, but not limited to, detainment, incarceration, and deportation throughout the United States of America, this Society questions the illegal possession and forced carceration of the worlds most prominent exile and refugee, the artifact. In the week of December 12, 2002, directors of eighteen leading museums in Europe, including the Louvre, the Prado, and the Hermitage, and in the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of art, ratified the “Declaration on the importance and value of universal museums”. The following is taken from a Los Angeles Times article published on December 12, 2002 :

“The ‘declaration on the importance and value of universal museums’ ack-


knowledges that many masterpieces were seized in colonial times under


conditions that are not comparable with the current ones and it deems


repatriation an important issue that museums must decide case by case.


But the directors contend that museums are a ‘valid and valuable’ repo-


sitory for world treasures, and that whittling ancient masterpieces from


their collections would undermine their mission of spreading knowledge


and interpreting the past. ‘Without museums displays’, the directors


wrote, ‘the universal admiration of ancient civilizations would not be so

deeply established today...”

THE SOCIETY FOR THE UNDENIABLE RIGHT OF AN ARTIFACTS RETURN TO ETHNICITY

refuses to acknowledge ANY such ‘Declaration’ of ANY ‘Universal Museum’!!

It is under the guise of nouveau colonization that museums feel free to detain artifacts that make

no sense out of their homeland.

It is under the guise of nouveau colonization that museums maintain their reputation of oppressor

by acknowledging that ONLY THEIR INSTITUTION can create and maintain ‘universal admiration’ of

artifacts.

THE SOCIETY FOR THE UNDENIABLE RIGHT OF AN ARTIFACTS RETURN TO ETHNICITY

demands the UNCONDITIONAL release of antiquities looted by the institution known as the Museum.

We firmly hold to the truth of an artifacts return to ethnicity.

We denounce an artifacts possession under the guise of nouveau colonization.

We strongly suggest to : DEPORT ART NOT ARABS!!

www.deportart.org