A path to restitution: Armenian Genocide looted art

At the earlier NAASR event: Michael Bazyler, grinning mouth-full of fake white teeth, rolled-up suit sleeves to appear hip, wearing purple-tinted “John Lennon” sunglasses to match his purple bow-tie, proclaiming “litigation is the last solution” then proudly announcing “suing is what Americans do best” and citing example after example of such litigation and their associated “hero” lawyers engaged in “restitution” for their own ultimate enrichment. Astonishingly, he actually cited the NY Life Insurance case as an example to follow despite that one ending simply as an exercise in enriching all the lawyers involved.
In 1984, during the first of what was to become yearly visits to explore Turkey’s Armenian past, I visited Adana’s archaeological museum and remember seeing a display case full of coins, neatly laid out in chronological order from Hellenistic times to the late Ottoman Empire era. Notable was the complete omission of all coins belonging to the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. As time progressed I found this situation paralleled throughout Turkey – there was nothing identified as Armenian in Turkish museums located either within the territory of historical Armenia or within areas historically inhabited by Armenians. AGLA is a virtue-signalling vanity project whose agenda walks hand-in-hand with Turkey’s genocide-denial and cultural genocide agendas. Armenian culture is inextricably linked in important and revealing ways to wider cultures dating from the Classical-era down to the present day and this requires artefacts from Armenia to be held and be accurately presented in the collections of important museums and galleries. Modern Armenia also gains political advantage by having Armenian objects proving Armenia’s importance on public display in the World’s major museums. To actually boast about creating a hit list of Armenian objects to be appropriated from American collections is more than an attack on history, on the concept of museum collections, and on academic research – it is an attack on Armenia.