David Gill posts a question on his 'Looting Matters' blog about the polaroid images which have been seized in Geneva and Basel and which reveal that various items were in the hands of certain now-infamous Swiss-based middlemen. He points out that museums may well have 'learnt the lesson', but asks whether private collectors and dealers catering for the private collectors' market may still be pressing on with commerce in objects which may be suspected (or known) to have passed through these hands.
A number of sales are forthcoming. What will emerge?I have a feeling that it will emerge that antiquity collectors are slow learners and we might be hearing on LM about a few more private collectors with objects to sell anonymously hoping nobody is going to catch them out. It's not a question who has access to which polaroids, it is about who has bought what without enquiring too deeply about where it actually came from, and who is about to buy stuff with the same lack of diligence and care.
3 comments:
paul,as a collector i have to rely on the due diligence of the auction house in that the provenance they publish is true.how do you suggest a collector can possibly research a piece if the collection was not published or the consignor is not someone famous or known.i have often tried to research a name given to me as provenance but other than googling the name to see what comes up,what else can be done.i myself wouldnt buy anything without provenance of at least 25-30 years,at least i would know that the piece was not dug up yesterday and i would have thought that a piece bought at say sothebys in the late 70s should be ok but as we know it isnt..i realy would like to know what you expect us to do if the information is not there and dont say "just walk away"and dont buy because if a piece has a provenance of 25-30 years thats not going to happen and most collectors will buy.believe me,most collectors dont want to throw their money away or support looting
kyri.
Well, first of all the auction house cannot come up with any more information than the consigner supplies. If the person selling the items has not verifiable information, then the auction house cannot do any due diligence through checking it even. So as a buyer, relying on the auction houses doing the due diligence is a bit of a cop-out argument isn't it? David Gill has shown how even the most "reputable" auction houses let items through that simply should not be out there being sold by companies with pretensions to respectability.
Well, of course I am not expecting a buyer to do any researching of information that is not there. But then, I really do expect that a truly responsible collector would indeed walk away from a deal in such a market where the licitness of the item cannot be verified with any degree of certainty. I really do expect dealers and other sellers who claim the object they want to flog off is "legit" to actually be able to prove it in each individual case, rather than reacting to the question with a pained expression and a "what, don't you TRUST me, a man/firm of my reputation?". No, actually I would not trust an antiquity dealer these days any further than I could throw him.
A provenance of 25 years takes you back to 1986, well after the market started the expansion which required the injection of oodles of freshly-dug artefacts (aka looted artefacts) to sustain.
I wouldn't collect in the first place, but maybe go volunteer in a museum or on an excavation to satisfy your need to 'interact' with the past... You benefit, they benefit, the archaeological record benefits.
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