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In the middle of March this year, coin collecting lawyer Peter Tompa broke the news of a comeback by the American Council for Cultural Policy ("ACCP to Restart in Response to Plea by Noted Academic for Inclusive, Neutral Forum?") . I commented on it here at the time. Tompa wrote:
“The Institute brings together distinguished legal specialists, museum professionals, academics, archaeologists, collectors, arts specialists and members of the public to build a viable legal framework for the protection of world historical remains”. Hmmm. “The Institute will receive financial support from individuals, foundations and organizations”. Like the ACCP, the focus seems to largely be on the US collector and US collections.
Apart from its “Board of Directors” there will be “a nonvoting Advisory Board that includes scholars in the fields of art history and archaeology; museum officials, staff and volunteers; art collectors; professionals in the art trade; and legal specialists with knowledge of specific relevance to the purpose of the organization”. With regard the focus of the ACCG FOI request it will be interesting to see how transparent the CuPRI is about the recommendations of the archaeologists on its own advisory board (not named on the website).
According to its website, this “institute” has five “directors”:
William Pearlstein (corporate attorney - former ACCP, - CPRI Board of Directors member)
Peter K. Tompa (attorney - CPRI Legal Officer)
Anne Metcalf (Metcalf Federal Relations, "bringing the needs and issues of cultural, educational and natural resource organizations before government" - Secretary)
Arthur A. Houghton (former Getty curator, former ACCP - CPIR President)
Kate Fitz Gibbon (attorney, former ACCP Advisory Board - CPRI Vice-President, whose office coincidentally has the same address as the CPRI’s)
One might wonder at an international research institute concerning items taken from archaeological contexts whose board of directors is composed largely of US lawyers who from their own CVs on the CuPRI website seem to have no experience of running a research institute, let alone one concerning archaeology.
More to the point, one would have thought that a group of cultural property lawyers producing a "resource" purporting to present international legislation concerning cultural property might have got their legal facts right. For many of the countries whose legislation they have found texts to reproduce on their website, the laws are lamentably out of date (e.g., Cambodia, Australia and most significantly [see above] Afghanistan) or incomplete (Great Britain). There is much fuller and up-to-date resource of the legislation containing summaries and full texts on the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) Art & Cultural Property Educational Resources, to which CPRI can more usefully point their users.
In the middle of March this year, coin collecting lawyer Peter Tompa broke the news of a comeback by the American Council for Cultural Policy ("ACCP to Restart in Response to Plea by Noted Academic for Inclusive, Neutral Forum?") . I commented on it here at the time. Tompa wrote:
"Cultural Property Observer" has learned that former members and supporters of the American Council for Cultural Policy indicate a growing interest in creating a neutral forum for the discussion of preserving cultural sites and antiquities in Afghanistan that appears to be otherwise unavailable elsewhere. […] Former members of the ACCP indicate that given the apparent inability of any other NGO to provide an inclusive, neutral forum of the nature that is needed, they have begun to discuss the reactivation of the ACCP for this purpose.Apparently they realized that keeping the old name might be a bit of a hindrance to credibility, this it seems is the genesis of a new body with the grandiose title of an “Institute” and dropping the nationalist adjective “American”. Thus we get the “Cultural Policy Research Institute" - “a 501(3)(c) nonprofit organization - a public charity dedicated to advancing public education and understanding of the issues that underlie the ownership and disposition of cultural property”. Well, of course what is the main issue is not so much the "ownership", but origins of the coveted items. I wonder to what extent the new group will be educating and enhancing US "understanding" of those issues?
“The Institute brings together distinguished legal specialists, museum professionals, academics, archaeologists, collectors, arts specialists and members of the public to build a viable legal framework for the protection of world historical remains”. Hmmm. “The Institute will receive financial support from individuals, foundations and organizations”. Like the ACCP, the focus seems to largely be on the US collector and US collections.
Apart from its “Board of Directors” there will be “a nonvoting Advisory Board that includes scholars in the fields of art history and archaeology; museum officials, staff and volunteers; art collectors; professionals in the art trade; and legal specialists with knowledge of specific relevance to the purpose of the organization”. With regard the focus of the ACCG FOI request it will be interesting to see how transparent the CuPRI is about the recommendations of the archaeologists on its own advisory board (not named on the website).
According to its website, this “institute” has five “directors”:
William Pearlstein (corporate attorney - former ACCP, - CPRI Board of Directors member)
Peter K. Tompa (attorney - CPRI Legal Officer)
Anne Metcalf (Metcalf Federal Relations, "bringing the needs and issues of cultural, educational and natural resource organizations before government" - Secretary)
Arthur A. Houghton (former Getty curator, former ACCP - CPIR President)
Kate Fitz Gibbon (attorney, former ACCP Advisory Board - CPRI Vice-President, whose office coincidentally has the same address as the CPRI’s)
One might wonder at an international research institute concerning items taken from archaeological contexts whose board of directors is composed largely of US lawyers who from their own CVs on the CuPRI website seem to have no experience of running a research institute, let alone one concerning archaeology.
More to the point, one would have thought that a group of cultural property lawyers producing a "resource" purporting to present international legislation concerning cultural property might have got their legal facts right. For many of the countries whose legislation they have found texts to reproduce on their website, the laws are lamentably out of date (e.g., Cambodia, Australia and most significantly [see above] Afghanistan) or incomplete (Great Britain). There is much fuller and up-to-date resource of the legislation containing summaries and full texts on the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) Art & Cultural Property Educational Resources, to which CPRI can more usefully point their users.
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