Stealing somebody else's past

Over on Mark Durney’s “Art theft Central” blog is a thought-provoking post made yesterday about “Motivations Behind Art Forgery”. It is based around a 2005 paper "Criminal and Victim Profiles in Art Theft: Motive, Opportunity and Repeat Victimisation" by Dr. Simon MacKenzie of the Department of Criminology at the University of Glasgow. This is about people who take works of art from walls and walk off with them depriving the rest of us of them. I could not help however in thinking that some of what he says also applies to those that collect what they see as “art” which has come from the destruction of archaeological contexts which is a common heritage. Durney thus summarises McKenzie’s arguments with page numbers in brackets:

Mackenzie categorizes art thieves as being either "art-motivated" or "profit-motivated." The art-motivated thief, “wants the art for his own personal possession. He wants to live with it, view it in detail, repeatedly and at his leisure... art-motivated thieves will therefore perhaps focus on the ways museums diminish the viewing experience through crowded rooms, transparent screens around the artworks, and inappropriate illumination. They might also consider the love with which they will cherish the work to outweigh the loss to the museum or the public (3). Conversely, Mackenzie states the profit-motivated thief is less likely to work alone and is more likely to damage the art in carrying out the theft as such destruction is seen as an "acceptable consequence of a fast and effective theft (4)." Additionally, he goes on to discuss how "the work of the fence is central to the effective disposal of stolen goods (6)." Profit-motivated thieves require these intermediaries because fences, "often possess social and marketing skills which thieves do not, and are thus able to access non-criminal buyers who can neutralise any suspicions of the illicit status of the goods with reference to the presentability of the fence, and the legitimate business face he sets up (6)."

The “Profit-motivated thief” finds its obvious parallel in the portable antiquities world in the artefact hunter/looter. The “fence”, well that is obviously a parallel to those oh-so respectable antiquity dealers that have the social and marketing skills, though the objects they deal in are sometimes potentially or in reality of less-than-legitimate origin.

McKenzie does make the point that the buyers in his case are "non-criminal", but what about the collector who does not care where the object comes from and will not enquire into whether it was legitimately obtained because he “wants the art[efact] for his own personal possession, wants to live with it, view it in detail, repeatedly and at his leisure” who bangs on about “the ways museums diminish the viewing experience” and who “consider the love with which they will cherish the work to outweigh the loss to the […] public”? Does that not sound a little familiar?