Cyprus-Forum.com

[Lit]

The Menil Is to Return Frescoes to Cyprus

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
Published: September 23, 2011

ROME — The Menil Collection in Houston announced on Friday that next year it would return to the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus 13th-century Byzantine frescoes that have been one of the museum’s main attractions for more than a decade.

The philanthropist Dominique de Menil, who founded the museum with her husband, John, and died in 1997, bought the frescoes in 1984 on behalf of the church, after evidence emerged that they had been looted from a Greek Orthodox chapel outside the village of Lysi, in the Turkish-controlled Famagusta district of Cyprus.

The return fulfills the terms of an agreement between the Church of Cyprus and the Menil Foundation, which runs the museum and which paid $520,000 for the frescoes, and later $530,000 more for their restoration and conservation. In exchange, the foundation was granted a long-term loan of the frescoes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/arts/ ... yprus.html

[Hermes]

It's great that these artefacts are being returned to Cyprus. It also reminds us that the Turkish invasion of Cyprus was an act of criminal plunder on a colossal scale. Much of the theft has taken place with tacit or active approval from the Turkish army. The plunder not only served as a source of income for criminals in the north and shady antiquity dealers, it was also a deliberate attempt to eradicate the religious and cultural heritage of the north. What has happened in the Turkish occupied zone constitutes pillaging of world cultural heritage and is a war crime according to international conventions. May the barbarians who have desecrated our land rot in hell.