Paris Barbier-Mueller sale Issues

Archaeologist Donna Yates has the second of her projected three posts on the Sotheby's Paris Barbier-Mueller sale. This one (March 4, 2013) concerns "The collection's issues". Like the first one this is well worth a read. The post considers the dates of accession of the objects as a whole and or Peru in particular (see her telling histograms) She begins by noting that "Sotheby's is VERY very very very VERY quick and eager" to point out that the collection began with a purchase of a Latin American artefact in 1920:

Sotheby's goes on to emphasise that the collection is "century-old". Why? Because most of the collection is not "century-old"; by setting recently acquired items near old items the auction house is trying to get people off their back. Good luck.

Yates also considers the interesting question "Why are they selling this stuff?", the answer to which is prosaically simple. Yates characterises the material on offer as:

 pretty much your standard hodge-podge of "Precolumbian" things from up and down the Americas. [...] Everything is pretty standard marketable stuff: the popular things people buy for whatever reason. 

She goes further, stressing the intellectual consequences of these items circulating divorced from their archaeological context:

a lot of the items are exactly the sorts that have been (controversially) called fakes by Karen O. Bruhns and Nancy L. Kelkerin Faking Ancient Mesoamerica and in Faking the Ancient Andes. I can certainly see how many of these things are just too perfect, too appealing, too modern, and totally unknown in the actual archaeological record. Take that with a grain of salt, but don't just accept these things are all 'real'. 

But that is exactly what the two-volume 'scholarly' books produced about the objects in this sale are saying. Sotheby's reputation relies on them being authentic dugups, so it is as authentic dugups they are represented. Perhaps here too, the boundaries between truth and deceit are blurred once again by the no-questions-asked antiquities market.

There is an interesting discussion of the "1970 problem" that collectors' lobbyists would be well advised to read (twice, so it sinks in) Dr Yates has been through the whole catalogue and found that according to Sotheby's there are "152 lots with provenance dates before 1970 and 161 lots with provenance dates after 1970" but 

the slight majority of items in this sale are post-1970 anyway so are unclean no matter how you look at it.

She then goes on to discuss the Peruvian case, again with reference to the actual legislation ("under Peruvian law, Peru has owned all archaeological things since 1929 (or perhaps 1822)...") rather than the date of the UNESCO Convention. She then discusses Guatemala with particular reference to a group of items formerly in the Barbier-Mueller Pre-Columbian Art Museum in Barcelona (including the Rio Azul mask) . Is it possible that Guatemala too is going to try and get Sotheby's to stop the sale of at least those of 'freshest' provenance in the collection on offer?