Donna Yates on the Sotheby's Paris sale of the "Barbier-Mueller Collection" of Dugups

There is a fantastic post by Donna Yates on: "The Sotheby's sale of the Barbier-Mueller Collection: waxing and waning on Peruvian law". This is the first of a projected series of three posts on this sale of some 300 "works of art" (dugup archaeological objects) from this family's collection due to be flogged off at the end of this month. The first makes the point that there might be a reason why this material is being handled by Sotheby's Paris branch, rather than the New York one:

For decades and decades New York has been the venue for the house’s Pre-Columbian sales. If that isn’t where the market for this material is, it is at least where people expect to buy it. However the movement of the collection into the United States for sale might just be problematic. 

She then has a "quick rundown of why" (the 1997 MOU, the New York office has had experiences ignoring "Peruvian requests to halt the sale of certain artefacts before, causing the feds to seize said items").

Basically, the moment Sotheby’s takes any of this stuff across a border, things could go off the rails, and if they tried to bring it into the US for a sale, the US would be obliged to halt the shipment at customs and investigate Peru’s claim of ownership because you can’t just take Peruvian antiquities into the US any more. Or at least you aren’t supposed to be able to. Best leave it in Paris and let whoever buys this stuff deal with the trouble.

Much of the rest of the post is concerned with trying to understand the Peruvian claim that “from April 2, 1822 Peruvian regulations prohibit the removing of archaeological goods without government authorization” which in itself is worth a read.

Vignette: Dug up in Peru, being flogged off half way round the world in Paris