Art Newspaper: The Grande Razzia and the market

In the article by Fabio Isman ('Looted from Italy and now in a major Spanish museum? ' Art Newspaper online 13 Jul 2010) discussed above is an interesting cameo description of the art market:

One of the consequences of the virulent grande razzia (“great raid”) of antiquities across Italy that began in the early 1970s (involving at least one million illegally excavated objects introduced to the market and often sold abroad, ten thousand investigations, and the ransacking of tens of thousands of archaeological sites), is the dispersal of illegally excavated artefacts around the world, where they have become rootless, reduced to mere pieces of furniture, dumb objects no longer able to connect us with the ancient world from where they originated. [...] the “traffickers” laundered their spoils in exactly the same way that the mafia launders its “narco dollars”. They would make use of the major auction houses, usually in London, sometimes employing aliases but often under their own names or through their own companies, and sell objects of deeply suspect provenance. These they would occasionally buy back themselves, thus giving the objects a far less suspicious history, and meaning that the sellers had then effectively dictated their worth.

The consequences of this was a large number of trashed archaeological sites in Italy, but - predictably - the newspaper focusses on the objects:

Consequently these antiquities, wrenched from the past, ended up all over the place. The American museums in particular almost fell over each other to get their hands on the most attractive ones, often knowingly buying objects of shadowy provenance, from unscrupulous dealers or middlemen acting on behalf of the tombaroli (tomb robbers) and excavators. However, a number of highly respected historic institutions also got caught up in the archaeological “black market” trap, institutions which in all likelihood had no idea where the amphorae, vases, kantharoi and kylikes they were buying came from. In these cases, they were certainly not doing anything illegal; but such activities raise an ethical question. Is it right, or moral, for museums (places established to conserve and exhibit objects, but also to educate and promote culture) to display artefacts plundered after the 1970 Unesco Convention, (on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property) rather than, as in centuries past, during wars and conquests? What type of “culture” are these museums exhibiting, promoting and teaching: the culture of clandestine excavations and fraud?

Indeed. What kind of "culture" is represented by the "Internationalising" dealers and private collectors that persist in seeing it as their "collectors' rights" to persistently ignore the presence of looted antiquities on their no-questions-asked market?

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