How sad, that the cradle of civilization should slight one of their greatest children of recent times. Am I right in thinking that the Elgin marbles (Alien Marvels according to some) are still on the shopping list?

If one were to attempt an intelligent response to the poll question, surely it could be asserted that Callas deserved both titles at different phases of her career?  Though I would dispute the nomenclatures - 'wailing banshee' is a bit harsh and what I do know of MC suggests that her behaviour, for much of her life, was hardly angelic.

But where do you draw the line when talking about returning art to its "place of origin"? 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7058383.stm

Yes, that exhibition has been causing quite a stir at this end   There's a bit of exaggerated fibbing going on in the reporting of this, because it's not true there have been no major Russian art exhibitions visiting the UK of late.  The Kremlin had an exhibition in London in 2006, themed around "foreign patronage" - the items were primarily those donated to the Russian Tsars by foreign powers in search of trading privileges.  Since Britain was Russia's major trading partner throughout the C16th and C17th  (the activities of Richard Chancellor's "Muscovy Company" and his opening of the White Sea shipping route) much of the material was British in origin, primarily the Kremlin's unique collection of English Silver, which is the finest in the world. Mme Gagarina (yes, she's his daughter) opened the London show in person, as she is the Chief Curator of the Kremlin collections.  The Hermitage also had an exhibition in London, earlier in 2007, of historical firearms, which attracted enormous attention in that narrow field of interest - once again, nearly all the pieces were of foreign origin and had come to Russia as donations or, errr, bribes.  Neither of these exhibitions was - as far as I know from my buddy at the Hermitage who set-up the firearms one - threatened with any legal attempts to sieze the items on display.  The words "black propoganda aimed at promoting the show" and "outrageous grandstanding" were muttered by phone over the weekend

Chrs

The 'Hermitage Rooms' in Somerset House have been holding a continuous series of exhibitions of works from the Hermitage since they were set up six or seven years ago, and very good some of them have been too. There was also a big Kandinsky exhibition at the Tate a couple of years ago which included items from both the Hermitage and the Pushkin Museums. That said, I don't think London has had anything to match the goodies apparently coming to the RA next year since the last big Hermitage loan exhibition at the National Gallery in about (1980-something?). Hype and grandstanding or not, I'm happily drooling already.