One US Coiney on the Politics of Dugup Coin Collecting

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Over on Moneta-L dialogue about coin collecting took a political turn the other day with collector Chris Exx (a former commentator on this blog) holding forth about US foreign policy. Observing in general, "the US regularly "ignores the concerns" of countries all over the world" (he said it, not me), he suggests that "it is inconsistent for the US to suddenly gain an extreme anti-colonial conscience concerning coins that is diametrically opposed to its everyday actions". Antiquity collectors of all types love playing the victim, and so he asks plaintively of his homeland: "Why is it that we are being used to expatiate its sins?" Well, as I have noted here many times, the United States does not exactly bust a gut to honour its commitments under the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property. In fact the efforts made are pretty minimal compared to the scale of the US trade in archaeological artefacts. The CCPIA sees to that. But its nice to see that a collector is aware that the attitude to which dealers and collectors subscribe is nothing more nor less than a colonialist one.

Mr Exx adds: "I thought collecting ancient coins was the hobby of kings. Where are the rich and powerful ancient collectors to protect our interests as so many other interests are protected?" I suspect the answer to that is that rich and powerful collectors do not have to worry so much about minor things like import restrictions. They have their ways around them no doubt, and if they do not work, their lawyers. The people who are obviously doing a lot to "protect interests" are rich and powerful US antiquity dealers with their political lobbying and other activities.

Then, diappointingly, Mr Exx comes out with the US coineys' "dirty brown untrustworthy un-American foreigners" trope:

Furthermore, it is extremely unlikely that anybody would benefit in most source countries [from curbing illegal exports of antiquities - PMB] outside of a corrupt cabal. And would the antiquities actually be safe? For example: Send antiquities back to the Egyptian government? WHAT Egyptian government? It is totally in flux. And what happens when an extremist party takes control and decides that these objects are the work of the devil and destroys them? Wonderful gigantic Buddhist statues were destroyed in Afghanistan through the same logic. This is not to say that Egypt or Afghanistan or any other country should not have any antiquities. But they are safest distributed throughout the world where they are not totally subject to local conditions. These antiquities represent the patrimony of all of us and should be available to everyone, not solely to the random modern government that happens to currently control an area that they MAY have come from.

Well, we seem to have heard that lot somewhere before. Let's just take ONE step backwards. There are laws about these things. The US collector may not like Egypt having its own laws, but it does. The international community respects the right of sovereign states to declare what material culture it likes its cultural property (1970 UNESCO Convention Article 1) and agrees in that Convention (to which the US is also a state party, though you'd never believe it) to respect those laws.

There are of course no corrupt cabals in the United States, are there? But we "all know" that almost every other country, all those source countries of antiquities the American collectors imagine they have "collectors' rights" over in South and Central America, Africa, Asia and the warmer bits of Europe, well they all do don't they? It must be true, ACCG's Peter Tompa's blog is full of "evidence" of that.

For Mr Exx, far more important than the rights and wrongs of buying stolen and smuggled artefacts (and the archaeological destruction and cultural depletion these acts represent) would seem to be that if they were elsewhere than in his personal ephemeral antiquity collection in his home: "would the antiquities actually be safe?" Again an expression of object fetishisation. This is a distortion of the the Universal Museum argument isn't it? (It was Phillipe de Montebello who popularised the "they are safest distributed throughout the world where they are not totally subject to local conditions" argument.) But that refers to the protection offered by institutions, and not private collectors.

Exx of course jumps on the extempore opportunity to mention Egypt. Are artefacts in Egypt safe? I'd say in general they are a good deal safer than in a cupboard in Mr Exx's back bedroom. Of course a few months ago when Egypt's government and military were being backed up by lots and lots of US aid, Mr Exx probably he'd have chosen a different example. He seems to have an inordinate faith that the USA will always be the same as today, a transatlantic Thousand Year Empire. But it's his own coiney advocates, ACCG's Dave Welsh for example who are pugnaciously proclaiming that come the Glorious People's Revolution, bureaucrats of the current ruling regime ought to be "strung up on the lamposts down Constitution Avenue". (Religious fundamentalism is not so far to seek in his own country too; the Bible forbids the making of graven images for Christians and Jews alike, just as the tenets of Islam; how long are Americans going to continue to ignore that?)

These antiquities represent the patrimony of all of us and should be available to everyone, not solely to the random modern government that happens to currently control an area that they MAY have come from.

Whoah, which antiquities? Those brought back from the Grand Tour in deep yesteryear, or freshly "surfaced" items bought on the no-questions-asked market in the past few years? There is a vast difference here.

In any case, they are not "available" to anyone locked in a cupboard in Chris Exx's back bedroom, are they? Frankly, I think if he has the disposable income to buy antiquities at all, Mr Exx is probably far better placed financially and socially to hop on a plane to Cairo to have all sorts of antiquities "available" to him in collections there, than the average inhabitant of Fustat to get a visa to the USA, hop on a plane, and see some antiquity taken away clandestinely from Egypt and stuck in a showcase in the Museum of Antiquities in Mr Exx's home town, or in Mr Exx's back bedroom cupboard.