The meaning of the Lascaux cave paintings/Louvre cuts admissions/Sarcophagus returns to Egypt!

Pretending the intro music is here. Hello everyone, welcome back to Buy More Art. This is a weekly news show where I discuss contemporary events in the art and history fields.

I'm your host and personal curator, Amara Andrew. The format for the show that I typically follow, that I typically don't follow, but I'll kind of follow this week, is one traditionally used by Western brides: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. This week, though, we have one something old, one something new, and one something borrowed/stolen.

Ooh! This week, we're talking about the true purpose of the Lascaux cave paintings, the Louvre drastically cuts admission rates, and the return of a wooden sarcophagus to Egypt. All that and more coming up on this episode of Buy More Art.

Let's get to it. So, you may see or hear that there's a very big difference with this episode. I am currently, well currently, right now, as of this recording, I am on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, as you can see.

So, apologies for all of the noise and all of the wonderful stuff, but I thought it would be fun to do this instead of just where we're staying. So, welcome to Ocean Drive in Miami. We're here.

It is one of our absolute favorite places to be, meaning me and my boyfriend Jeff, who is very nicely holding the camera right now. So, we're here. We literally just flew in, like an hour or two ago, and I was like, I need to record my podcast!

So, here we are. Again, apologies if this sounds really weird. I won't know until I listen back, so we will find out.

So, we're here. It's going to be Art Deco weekend, like I said. So, I can't wait to share that.

Subscribe to my TikTok and Instagram, and you can see all that lovely stuff. It's so weird having people around, 'cause normally it's just you and I in a room, but now we're out in the world right now. Anywho, we'll see how this goes.

So, without further ado, I do have one update. Oh, I also wanted to talk about Patreon. I have one, go check it out, blah, blah, blah.

Link in the description, no pressure, whatever. But, I do have an update about the Parthenon or Elgin Marbles. So, in episode 13, I talked about the rumor that Greece and London were actually like in talks about having the Parthenon or Elgin Marbles returned to Greece from the UK.

Well, it gets a little trickier. So, on January 4th, it was reported that for the first time, the British Museum confirmed that it was in talks to return the marbles to Athens, but something new has developed, unfortunately. So, when I read these articles a couple weeks ago, I actually understood that, I thought that the marbles were going to be like fully returned to Greece.

Apparently, though, it's now only a portion of the marbles are going to be sent to Athens on rotation over several years. So, that means Greece doesn't actually get the marbles back permanently. The UK, British Museum, sorry, I'm like lumping everything together, but the British Museum is kind of being an asshole and is saying like, "Oh, well, we'll give it back to you, but only a little bit, and like, only sometimes." And Greece also was like, "Absolutely not.

We are not going to have our stuff on loan to us for only a certain amount of time." So, Greece in response said, and this is from the Greek Ministry of Culture, they said, quote, "We repeat once again our country's firm position that it does not recognize the British Museum's jurisdiction, possession, and ownership of the sculptures as they are the product of theft." And I also wanted to point out the Parthenon Elgin Marbles aren't only located in Britain.

There were some in Italy. However, in May, Italy announced that a fragment of the Eastern frieze that was supposed to be on a four-year loan to Athens would just remain there indefinitely. It was going to be theirs from now on, which I think is really sweet.

Sort of related, I guess. The Vatican once held three fragments of the marbles, but they returned those as a quote, "donation from the Pope to the Greek Orthodox Church." And it was, quote, "a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth." That is the Pope. For the first time ever, I agree with the Pope.

So, anyway, I'm not bringing religion into this, but I think it's absolutely awesome that Italy's like, "Hey, we get it. We're going to give you your stuff back." So, yeah. So, that's the only update I have.

So, let's just get right into the episode.

So, this week's something old, I want to talk about the Lascaux cave paintings in France. They're super popular because they're really early depictions of animals by early peoples and stuff. They're really cool, you should check them out.

Or, actually I'll have an image somewhere up here. Sorry, I'm like a little thrown off today. There are over 600 paintings within these like, elaborate set of caves that are in France.

They're really cool. I hope to go there one day. So, the drawings that are within these caves are of large animals, and they're they're mostly well known for being like, super old, they're 20,000 years old, and for being depictions of animals, and like, being really well done and like, beautifully done, too, which is cool.

Apparently, these drawings, though, are now believed to be more than just an artistic expression. So, these drawings are now believed to actually be a primitive writing system that recorded detailed info about the lives of animals, as well as serving as kind of like a type of lunar calendar. Isn't that cool?

And, this is like brand new info, which is cool. This is brand new information! I keep thinking of like, Phoebe from Friends who's like, "This is brand new information!" But, it really is.

So, a researcher named Ben Bacon, which, awesome name, by the way, and he may or may not be related to Kevin Bacon, I have no idea, but he figured out that some of the spots and the lines that were next to the animals within these came painting cave paintings actually tracked certain cycles for the animals. It tracked their reproductive cycles.

That's so cool! What's also cool about this, though, is that this type of recordkeeping predates other systems by about 10,000 years. So, I said that these are 20,000 years old, that's a lot, long fucking time!

So, I'm just curious what other sorts of ancient sites and artworks are going to be like figured out like, "Oh, this tells this," or, "this tells that." Like, I know we know that kind of with Stonehenge and a couple other ancient things where they like, they face like the solar whatever, like summer solstice and things like that.

So, I don't know, I just thought that was really cool, so I just wanted to share it with you. So, on to our next story.

Our something new this week, so, we've all, well maybe not all, that is a, a grand expression, I'm so sorry, but on TikTok, you see these videos of people who are like, shoved tightly into the gallery where the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre. Well, those days might be over for the entire Louvre, not just that one gallery. Since June 2022, the Louvre, which is apparently the world's most well-attended museum, so congratulations, has started limiting its daily visitors from 45,000 to 30,000, and they say that this is just being done, quote, "in order to facilitate a comfortable visit and ensure optimal working conditions for museum staff." So, we've seen this with like, COVID activities, how, just less people were attending museums, and like, a lot of them weren't even open, as well, just because of COVID and gatherings and things like that.

In 2019, so pre-COVID, 9.6 million people visited the Louvre. I don't have the numbers for 2020, unfortunately, but the Louvre was closed for most of 2020, so, probably wasn't that much. In 2021, though, they had 2.8 million visitors, so, very, very low compared to the almost 10 million people two years prior.

And then in 2022, they had 7.8 million visitors, so, basically back to pre-pandemic levels, almost. So, with this new change in the amount of people being admitted, the Louvre will now be able to see a maximum of 9.3 million visitors throughout 2023. So, that's going to get straight back to 2019 numbers, basically.

I do wonder if other museums will start adopting this practice of limiting how many people can go in. I know like, at the Art Institute, normally we live in Chicago, but now we're living in Miami for right now, but in Chicago at the Art Institute, they actually closed the museum for two days during the week, which they had never done before, so, that's something new.

I just, I wonder how this is going to go for museums and then it'll trickle down to the museum workers who work in there, and if like, there'll be enough jobs, and like, all these different things. So, I just wonder what this means for the future of museums, I hope it'll be okay. I am optimistic that things will be okay, but you never know what this could signal, so it's just like the art insurance for climate change and all that stuff.

People did not fucking like that, I want to say. Anyway, I just thought it was interesting that the Louvre is actually limiting the amount of people, so, if you have a trip in mind to go to the Louvre, maybe it'll be more comfortable for you in the future.

Okay, so, this is going to be a lightning round episode. So, we only have one more story. So, our something borrowed/stolen this week, at the end of December 2022, the Egyptian government welcomed an ancient wooden sarcophagus back home from the United States.

So, it was repatriated from the United States back to Egypt. This sarcophagus was looted from the country nearly 15 years ago, so, not as long as I thought. I thought it was going to be like, 100 years ago, but it was only 15 years ago, which I thought was like a little too recent, which is weird.

But it was looted and allegedly trafficked by a well-organized network that has looted countless antiquities from the region in Egypt. The sarcophagus was smuggled into the US via Germany, and was actually featured in the Houston Museum of Natural Science prior to its return in Egypt. So, if you'd been to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, you probably saw this sarcophagus.

This sarcophagus measures about like, 9 and 1/2 feet long, and it's dated to the late Dynastic Period, so it was sometime between 664 BCE and 332 BCE, and it's believed to belong to an ancient priest named Ankhen- Ankhenmaat. God damn it! I thought I would have that ready.

I was like, I got this! Ankhenmaat. And this sarcophagus is just one small part of a really large effort, just like we talked about with Mexico a couple weeks ago, this is just one small part of a major repatriation effort by the Egyptian government to have their stolen antiquities returned.

I thought this number was fascinating, just to wrap up the story. In 2021, Egyptian authorities saw the return of 5,300 looted artifacts from across the globe. That shit is bananas!

Beep! So, I'm really happy that they're actually getting their stuff returned to them. I know repatriation is a huge sticking point for a lot of people.

You're Nobody's in between on repatriation. You either absolutely fucking hate it, or you absolutely love it. I am very much in favor of it.

I think it's I'm not going to get too into the weeds because some people are very aggressive online. However, I'm just very excited to see that, you know, people who are asking for their stuff back are getting it back. Hopefully that will happen with the Parthenon Marbles and the British Museum will stop being a bag of dicks, but we will find out, I guess.

So, anyway, that was this episode of Buy More Art. Sorry, it's a little haphazard. It might not sound super great, but, you know, it's it's a novel experience for all of us.

So, thank you for coming to Miami with me. And, the next episode will probably be here as well, so, yeah, we'll just see. Again, subscribe to my TikTok and Instagram if you want to see Art Deco weekend.

I'm going to be recording the shit out of it. I'll probably post it on YouTube, too, so you can go there and check it out. Like and subscribe if you do enjoy the show.

Please give it like a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. It definitely helps. It really works, and I'm just blabbering on, and on, and on, 'cause people are watching me, and I feel weird, so, anyways, I'm going to cut it right there.

But as always, I'm Amara Andrew, and never stop creating.

This was weird!