US Dugup Dealer Shows True Colours and True Aims of their Anti CCPIA Movement

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The news of the armed robbery of the Olympia Museum was greeted with shock and dismay by the cultural community today, but among those involved in the trade in antiquities there was a totally different reaction. Dugup antiquity dealer Dave Welsh (Classical Coins) for example urges the immediate suspension of the implementation by the US of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. He treats this theft by armed raiders as:

incontrovertible evidence that Greece, given her present difficulties, cannot at this time be considered a safe custodian for ancient artifacts. The USA should immediately suspend repatriation of artifacts to Greece and enforcement of import restrictions requested by Greece, until an impartial investigation determines whether the Greek government is capable of providing secure custody of the artifacts for which it is presently responsible.

What astounding nerve! First of all it is certainly not up to the United States of America to be the judge of whether another sovereign state should be a custodian of ITS OWN cultural property. This is sheer US imperialism raising its ugly head once again in dealers' dealings with the weaker nations of the world. Mr Welsh and his ACCG cronies would obviously willingly and without scruple take advantage of Greece's weakened position to keep in the USA any stolen Greek artefacts that may be found in that country. Disgusting.

Secondly, the UNESCO Convention (see Art. 7 for example) and the CCPIA which implements it (19 U.S.C. 2607 and 2610) is meant to deal precisely, and arguably even primarily, with just such circumstances as we have here. A museum has been robbed and states parties to the Convention are asked to keep an eye open for the loot and stop it being imported into and acquired in their own territories. It is precisely at such a moment that Mr Welsh wants to prevent the Convention being implemented in the case of Greece? This would not by any chance have any connection with Mr Welsh's own involvement in the trade in artefacts of (among others) Greek origin would it? Why would any dealer want to see a suspension of the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property as a result of a major museum theft in one of his "source countries"?

Thirdly, the only reason this raid was carried out was so the thieves (and we may speculate that they could be part of an armed - and even foreign - organized criminal group) could get their hands on valuable finds which they will try to monetise. Where? Pottery has minimal scrap value, so it seems they were taking items with a thought for their value on the no-questions-asked antiquities market. The very same international antiquities market that Dave Welsh and his organization the ACCG apparently support and wish to maintain. This raid would not have happened had there not been a market where stolen antiquities can safely be sold off, only to "surface" anonymously later. Collectors who buy stuff without requiring information where actually it came from are as much to blame for these sorts of thefts as those who see in the current state of the market a golden opportunity too good to miss.

Fourthly, it took kalashnikovs to loot this museum and the violent treatment of a museum guard. The ANS money Museum in the USA was robbed much more easily, through a fault in the internal auditing system which allowed a thief to take a million dollars worth of objects probably over a period of time, and earlier another theft of the same type to take place. As I said earlier, there has not been a peep about this on the coiney anti-preservationist blogs, let alone a call from US coineys for a deep investigation of museum security in the US. And these are the people whingeing about "discrimination"...

Finally, it is misleading to present the fight against the trade in illicit antiquities merely as a drive for "repatriation". Its not about what to do with the proceeds of crime, but preventing the crime. Let us not ignore the crime, let us call a spade a spade - even if no-questions-asked traders and collectors cannot bring themselves to.

Vignette: Dodger and Fagin discussing a "newly surfaced" coin. Some dealers in such "collectables" apparently hanker for a return to the golden period of culture-theft before the UNESCO Convention, they apparently would feel better working in a more nineteenth-century mode.