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The Cultural Property Research Institute (CPRI), run from a downtown New Mexico lawyer's office and apparently the offspring of the defunct ACCP, has announced that in 2009 it will “initiate research into a number of important cultural policy issues” which it claims will “Link People and Culture”. These include:
“Exploring ways to harmonize US laws and regulations that apply to transfer and ownership of antiquities”. This will explore the use of the different U.S. domestic laws in the protection of the archaeological heritage. Many of our archaeological colleagues in the States argue that the current system is fragmentary and inconsistent and loopholes and inconsistencies mean that it fails to offer holistic protection to the archaeological heritage of the US. The CPRI will "provide summaries and analyses useful to museums, educational institutions and the general public". Perhaps it will highlight some of the inconsistencies in a way which will ease the process of beneficial change to provide stronger protection. Let’s hope so.
Exploring the effect of various national preservation policies on damage to archaeological sites and objects.National policies “toward development, private ownership, enforcement and export, among other matters, can have profound consequences for the integrity of archaeological sites and the preservation of individual objects”. The CPRI intends to gather and collate information on such policies in “a small, selected group” of countries to determine “their effect on site damage (sic), and possible remedies (sic)”. It makes one wonder by what criteria they will be “selecting” that small group of countries to cover a globally representative range of legal and social contexts. Let us hope the USA is one of them. Just how well are US policies protecting the archaeological heritage against development, private ownership enforcement and export and how that compares with other countries?
“Developing different models for a registry that can be applied to privately-owned objects”. It is good to see that the Institute recognizes that the main problem with the current status quo of the antiquities market is the total lack of transparency about (and lack of real interest among most collectors in) where antiquities on the market are coming from. This means that illicitly obtained artefacts can be peddled undetected alongside those of legitimate provenience. Some means of properly registering collections and objects in them allowing the tracing of proveniences of objects coming onto the market is clearly a way forward. Portable antiquity dealers are adamant that they will not themselves adopt such a system, so it is good to see the lawyers taking a more amenable stance towards such ideas. “The CPRI will pull together, explain and compare the models that have been proposed and others that may also serve the purpose of inclusive registry. A draft report will be published on the CPRI website by the end of 2009”. That’s something to look forward to. A register beginning with the location of legitimately-obtained artifacts on 31st Dec 2010 would be a neater and more practical watershed than the 1970 date of the UNESCO convention, and better than nothing.
A fourth topic the CPRI intends to examine is “Determining the number of artistically and academically significant, privately-owned objects in the United States” that because of ethical considerations are currently excluded from acquisition by US museums.
The CPRI uses the euphemism “orphan objects” to refer to items that have no documented provenance (“those that cannot by self-rule be acquired or accepted as loans by US museums”) [“self rule”?]. That in itself speaks volumes. They say that the number of such items in private collections and on the US market “continues to grow”, now wait a minute… surely a research institute of this nature might here – before it addresses ANY other topic – ask and answer for the public just why that is so. Passing over that question in silence would be a meaningful omission. Nevertheless at present that is what the CPRI website does. The CPRI merely see the need to compile “accurate data on the nature and volume” of artistically and academically significant material in private hands. This research aim however is unclearly formulated. Quite apart from defining what (and for whom) is "artistically and academically significant" the scope of this survey is left undefined. While initially it is stated that it will cover US private and commercial holdings, it then goes on to say it will look at the scale of the phenomenon “in a particular cultural/historical area, with a view toward establishing credible order-of-magnitude figures, over time, for all cultural/historical areas”. Areas of the USA? Perhaps all will become clear when “initial conclusions" are "published on the CPRI website by the end of 2009”.
Now sadly, I personally see nothing in the proposals for the first four research topics of this "Institute" which really would in their own right actually go any way to "linking people with culture". 380 km away in Blanding in the next state there has been a major action by the authorities to counter the destruction of archaeological contexts of significance by antiquity collectors and dealers, this would seem to be a useful place for an institute concerned with researching and educating about cultural property and its significance to begin its outreach. Why all the attention paid to the legislations of foreign "source countries" when there is so much to do and so much scope for useful work at home?
These CPRI projects have also been commented on by David Gill. [I thought the question about the donation by US private collectors of objects to museums in the "source countries" they had been taken from rather than the United States was a particularly apt one].
Photo: The Institute's headquarters, 215 W. San Francisco St. Suite 202c.
“Exploring ways to harmonize US laws and regulations that apply to transfer and ownership of antiquities”. This will explore the use of the different U.S. domestic laws in the protection of the archaeological heritage. Many of our archaeological colleagues in the States argue that the current system is fragmentary and inconsistent and loopholes and inconsistencies mean that it fails to offer holistic protection to the archaeological heritage of the US. The CPRI will "provide summaries and analyses useful to museums, educational institutions and the general public". Perhaps it will highlight some of the inconsistencies in a way which will ease the process of beneficial change to provide stronger protection. Let’s hope so.
Exploring the effect of various national preservation policies on damage to archaeological sites and objects.National policies “toward development, private ownership, enforcement and export, among other matters, can have profound consequences for the integrity of archaeological sites and the preservation of individual objects”. The CPRI intends to gather and collate information on such policies in “a small, selected group” of countries to determine “their effect on site damage (sic), and possible remedies (sic)”. It makes one wonder by what criteria they will be “selecting” that small group of countries to cover a globally representative range of legal and social contexts. Let us hope the USA is one of them. Just how well are US policies protecting the archaeological heritage against development, private ownership enforcement and export and how that compares with other countries?
“Developing different models for a registry that can be applied to privately-owned objects”. It is good to see that the Institute recognizes that the main problem with the current status quo of the antiquities market is the total lack of transparency about (and lack of real interest among most collectors in) where antiquities on the market are coming from. This means that illicitly obtained artefacts can be peddled undetected alongside those of legitimate provenience. Some means of properly registering collections and objects in them allowing the tracing of proveniences of objects coming onto the market is clearly a way forward. Portable antiquity dealers are adamant that they will not themselves adopt such a system, so it is good to see the lawyers taking a more amenable stance towards such ideas. “The CPRI will pull together, explain and compare the models that have been proposed and others that may also serve the purpose of inclusive registry. A draft report will be published on the CPRI website by the end of 2009”. That’s something to look forward to. A register beginning with the location of legitimately-obtained artifacts on 31st Dec 2010 would be a neater and more practical watershed than the 1970 date of the UNESCO convention, and better than nothing.
A fourth topic the CPRI intends to examine is “Determining the number of artistically and academically significant, privately-owned objects in the United States” that because of ethical considerations are currently excluded from acquisition by US museums.
The CPRI uses the euphemism “orphan objects” to refer to items that have no documented provenance (“those that cannot by self-rule be acquired or accepted as loans by US museums”) [“self rule”?]. That in itself speaks volumes. They say that the number of such items in private collections and on the US market “continues to grow”, now wait a minute… surely a research institute of this nature might here – before it addresses ANY other topic – ask and answer for the public just why that is so. Passing over that question in silence would be a meaningful omission. Nevertheless at present that is what the CPRI website does. The CPRI merely see the need to compile “accurate data on the nature and volume” of artistically and academically significant material in private hands. This research aim however is unclearly formulated. Quite apart from defining what (and for whom) is "artistically and academically significant" the scope of this survey is left undefined. While initially it is stated that it will cover US private and commercial holdings, it then goes on to say it will look at the scale of the phenomenon “in a particular cultural/historical area, with a view toward establishing credible order-of-magnitude figures, over time, for all cultural/historical areas”. Areas of the USA? Perhaps all will become clear when “initial conclusions" are "published on the CPRI website by the end of 2009”.
Now sadly, I personally see nothing in the proposals for the first four research topics of this "Institute" which really would in their own right actually go any way to "linking people with culture". 380 km away in Blanding in the next state there has been a major action by the authorities to counter the destruction of archaeological contexts of significance by antiquity collectors and dealers, this would seem to be a useful place for an institute concerned with researching and educating about cultural property and its significance to begin its outreach. Why all the attention paid to the legislations of foreign "source countries" when there is so much to do and so much scope for useful work at home?
These CPRI projects have also been commented on by David Gill. [I thought the question about the donation by US private collectors of objects to museums in the "source countries" they had been taken from rather than the United States was a particularly apt one].
Photo: The Institute's headquarters, 215 W. San Francisco St. Suite 202c.
2 comments:
Not only that, the Blanding cases seem to have a significant offshoot in Santa Fe itself, involving several dealers who are apparently also under investigation. There was an article in the Salt Lake Tribune about this a couple of days ago.
Yes, I saw that. All the more reason then for an Institute " Dedicated to the study of national and international policies to protect and preserve the world's
antiquities, monuments, and archaeological sites, and to advance human knowledge for the benefit of all" should begin with outreach to the US public about the threat to these sites and monuments at home caused by no-questions-asked collecting of portable antiquities (cultural property).
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