The Cultural Property Implementation Act: Is it Working?

The Cultural Policy Research Institute, transparently a dealers' lobbyist group masquerading as a rather ineffective research institution based in Santa Fe, is hosting a meeting today: The Cultural Property Implementation Act: Is it Working? at the Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. I suppose the answer depends on whether you regard it as a cop-out law (in which case its working very well) or something which was actually intended to implement the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (in which case it most certainly is not). Is the CCPIA in any way able to effectively stop the import of illegally obtained artefacts from the looting of the Cairo Museum and archaeological sites in Egypt this very moment? (No, the Egyptians would have to ask nicely, make a number of promises, wait for the CPAC to meet a couple of times beforte this could even be "implemented", by which time who knows what could have passed onto the US market?).

The usual culprits are speaking at the seminar alongside a few token assorted others, but they each seem to get ten minutes (within antiquity collectors' attention span I presume), so I guess it will not be a very intellectually challenging meeting. No doubt we will be getting a blow-by-blow account from the observing Mr Tompa in due course. Hooray. If US dealers and collectors had any decency they'd be recommending that the US stop pretending to implement the Convention and withdraw from it and rename the CCPIA the 'United States Antiquities Market Protection Act'. But then if the majority had any real decency, the global antiquities market would not look like it does today anyway and America would not need a Reagan-era cop-out act.