More Conspiracy Theory: Gill and the Medici Files

ANS Curatorial staff member Rick Witschonke asks David Gill somewhat impertinently:

Why don't you respond to Pearlstein's question? Why doesn't Italy release the Medici photos? If you have them, why don't you release them?

A puzzling challenge, given that William Pearlstein addressed no such "question" to David Gill in the post (on Kimberly Alderman's blog) on which Gill and Witschonke were comenting. All very odd. It seems to me that collecting ancient coins muddles the brain and perhaps Witschonke is muddling Pearlstein with somebody else (Fincham Tompa, Sayles?). Or something muddled at any rate.

What the lawyer Pearlstein does urge is however interesting, and is precisely what some of the "clean-up-the-market" preservationists have been arguing for some time:

What’s needed is an on-line registery whereby transparancy is rewarded with repose/quiet title after a reasonable claim period, claims are evaluated fairly and bad faith claims are penalized.

But then this is a suggestion which has been rejected outright by the antiquity collecting milieu as a whole and collectors of ancient coins most vociferously among them. (As Kimberly Alderman notes of the coiney milieu as a whole: "Arguments for transparency do seem disingenuous from [those] who refuse to be transparent themselves".)

IF Mr Gill indeed possessed the entire Medici Archives, Witschonke asks why he does not release them. I wonder if - hypothetically - the American Numismatic Society was shown the same material connected with ongoing investigations by a foreign judiciary organ, would Mr Witschonke assume he personally has the "right" to publish the entire archive? By what "right" would he have to do that? Also what "rights" does Mr Witschonke think other people (clients, fellow dealers and others) mentioned in those business archives have? Privacy maybe?

A moment's consideration reveals that the seized archives are evidence in ongoing investigations into a complex network of deals over a long period of time, and in such cases there may be good operational reasons why this material is not made immediately available in its entirity to the whole world and his dog. In the same way the US ICE does not for operational reasons reveal full details of many of the cases it has been working on, still less those on which it is still working. Is there anything unusual about this?

As I say, it seems to me that prolongued contact with ancient coins and ancient coin collectors fuddles the brain and the perceived need to defend the current status quo of the antiquities trade often makes otherwise reasonable people come out with what seem to be totally unreasoned remarks.