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Milken Institute Brainstorms Funding for Israel Heritage Sites

(Los Angeles Jewish Journal) Michele Chabin - Israel's 30,000 archaeological and other heritage sites far outnumber the financial means to support them. The Milken Institute, an economic think tank, has come up with a plan to alleviate the problem through start-up financing models used in the private economic sphere. The entire 2008 budget for the Israel Antiquities Authority was a mere $36 million. Even worse, Israel's Nature and Parks Authority, which maintains the sites once they are excavated, received just $4 million in 2009 for site development. Glenn Yago, Milken's director of capital studies and the report's co-author, said a handful of Israeli archeological sites and attractions, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and Masada, are already self-sustaining, even profitable. "Archaeology created an enormous amount of value," Yago said. "Intellectual property became commercialized into an array of products that became income-producing properties." Yago gave especially high marks to the city of Rome's award-winning Rome Reborn project, a three-dimensional virtual tour of ancient Rome. Just as the Rome Reborn project has generated "a tremendous amount" of income via tourism, video game development, movies, education, and related products, a Jerusalem Reborn project, which would depict the city in the time of the Second Temple, is being developed. (Los Angeles Jewish Journal)
2011-03-25 00:00:00
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