Funding antiquities in Israel

FUNDING ANTIQUITIES IN ISRAEL:

Milken Institute brainstorms funding for Israel heritage sites

by Michele chabin, Contributing Writer (Jewish Journal)

Jerusalem — It’s one thing to unearth ancient artifacts, remnants of glorious past civilizations; it’s another thing to pay for their excavation, maintenance and conservation.

That’s long been the challenge for Israel — and other nations with historically deep roots — whose archaeological and other heritage sites far outnumber the financial means to support them.

The Milken Institute, a Santa Monica-based economic think tank, has come up with a plan to alleviate the problem. Its recent report, “Cultural Heritage as an Economic Development Resource in Israel,” says the kinds of start-up financing models used in the private economic sphere “could not only help preserve and protect” the country’s 30,000 identified archaeological sites, “but also provide local and national economic growth.”

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The plan seems mostly to involve ways of generating private funding. I hope some of the ideas are successful.