Interesting story: Saddam Hussien's looted Wedgwood plates end up in the East Village, then are repatriated with help of State Department to Iraqi people.
December 14, 2011, 2:41 PM Looted Dishes Used in Art Project Returned to Iraq By RANDY KENNEDY
Over the last several years, as cultural patrimony cases have roiled the artworld, federal marshals have made surprise visits to numerous American museums and galleries to cart away artifacts that foreign governments claimed were looted. Such a visit has never been much of worry for the people who run Creative Time, the scrappy New York public art organization that helps contemporary artists realize unusual projects like turning a building into a musical instrument or painting signs for Coney Island midway merchants.
But on Tuesday a marshal and a marshal’s assistant arrived at the organization’s offices in the East Village to take custody of an even more unusual trove of cultural booty: Saddam Hussein’s dinner plates, or at least some of those that were believed to be in use in his palaces when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.
The plates were taken out of the country illegally, according to Iraqi officials. Creative Time, which bought them on eBay for Michael Rakowitz, an artist whose Iraqi-Jewish grandparents fled Iraq in 1946, said it believed that an American soldier and an Iraqi citizen first bought them from Iraqis who had looted and carried on a brisk trade in such palace wares some time after the invasion. Read rest of story by clicking here