State Department extends cultural property MoU with Nicaragua (despite AAMD opposition). When is the US going to abandon its selective and discriminatory selective policy of heritage protection, of the nearly 200 countries in the world, the cultural heritage of more than 97% is NOT protected in any way by the measures of the so-called "Convention on Cultural property Implementation Act". Before the USA dictates terms about how other nations should deal with the illicit trade, perhaps they need to look at how they can do more about that 97% that their own legislation (and therefore law enforcement) do not deal with. Shame on you.
Before the USA is completely regarded as shameless consider the following from the post: "The MFA even hired a curator for provenance to bring real integrity to its collecting practices. The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art joined the MFA, and they are now among the institutions that employ full-time provenance researchers who perform due diligence investigations to find out the true collecting histories of pieces." Please don't paint the entire us with a single brush as there are some that are trying to make a difference.
ReplyDeleteI think you miss my point. Are illegally exported antiquities from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, or several tens of other countries protected from import into the USA by the CCPIA? Well, no, yet they are all NATO allies (and 1970 Convention states parties). Don't you think the citizens of these countries deserve at least the same consideration not to have their cultural property smuggled onto the US market as those of Nicaragua? If not, why not? How many US private collections do not have a "provenance (sic) curator"? How many do?
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