"Nationalists", animalists and arborealists

To be honest I am getting a bit bored with the uncritical way collectors in general (and the gatherers of heaps of decontextualised dug-up ancient coins in particular) refer automatically to all who think ill of the illicit export of illegally excavated antiquities as "nationalists". They got this from flicking through Cuno's book, but really seem to have been unable to critically reflect on what they are asked to believe.

We are talking about illegal export. I do not know whether collectors would agree, but it seems pretty reasonable to me that states should be able to determine what should pass across its borders and under what conditions. So when a nation (the USA for example) declares the export of a certain technology impermissable, is that too reprehensibly "nationalist" in the eyes of an antiquity collector? Or the movement of underage girls as sex slaves across the border, pornography or poached ivory, those too are "nationalist" policies? What makes restriction on certain items "nationalist" in the eyes of the coineys etc., while others are not?

To take the argument further, are all who oppose unrestricted commercial whaling (I'm one) "animalists"? Those who oppose unrestricted commercial logging in various parts of the world (I do) "arborealists"? Those who (like me) oppose the avoidable pollution of our inland waterways by commercial concerns "hydrologists"? It seems to me that those who gaily throw about the "nationalist" label for those who would like to see an end to the no-questions-asked trading in illcitly antiquities alongside the others really have no idea what they are writing about. Or indeed what the terms they use actually mean and articulate with the real world.

To want to restrict the trade in illicitly obtained antiquities is not "nationalist", or even "archaeologist", but since the resource is finite (non-renewable) and fragile, it is a conservationist, preservationist and environmentalist approach. Why can it not be recognised by the dealers and supporters that what the people on this side of the fence are urging is an ethical, responsible, proactively Green approach to the archaeological record, its wise use in a sustainable manner? Traders in illicitly obtained artefacts ripped from archaeological sites are like those who trade in poached ivory. Nobody calls wildlife preservationists "nationalists" because they oppose the removal of poached ivory across international borders and call for the punshment of those responsible. Do they? Perhaps a coiney can point me to where wildlife preservationists are thus labelled by the poachers.

Very often if we examine the context of their words, the pro-collecting writer labelling their opponents as "nationalists" is confusing two separate issues, that of protecting the archaeological record against illicit commercial exploitation, and the "repatriation issue". Introducing the latter confusion is a favourite rhetorical ploy of no-questions-asked antiquity dealers and their supporters.

What we see being repatriated at the moment are artefacts which have been stopped at the borders and found to be deficient in the supporting documentation that they wwere legitimately acquired. In other words, in the eyes of the law, they are regarded as illegally exported from the country of origin. After that has been ascertained, the objects are returned to the place whence they came (after that has been established at public cost). To represent, as the dealers' lobby currently does, the struggle against the trade in illicitly obtained artefacts merely as some desire of some "nationalists" to send all artefacts back to their source country is a gross oversimplification which is simply an insult to the inelligence of their readers. Or are the lobbyists and those that listen to them so challenged intellectually, that they actually do believe this is true?


Vignette: lone survivor Presumably the collectors' lobby would say the "arboreal nationalists" got there too late (?).

This equally important, although different story about ancient Athens' place, in world cultures

Hannah Bolton, the British Museum's spokesperson does not have an enviable job these days. It is bad enough that she has to speak up in favour of the Portable Antiquity Scheme's disturbing "partnership" with portable antiquity collectors in the UK. Now the poor lady even has to side with James Cuno over universalism in collecting. The opening of the Parthenon Museum in Athens of course puts the BM in extremely bad light and they are going to have to do a lot more nifty PR work now to escape increasing international condemnation (for example, listen to David Gill waxing poetical on Looting Matters). Elena Becatoros (New Acropolis Museum seeks missing frieze return, Associated Press Sat. Jun. 20th 2009) quotes Culture Minister Antonis Samaras at the opening ceremony on Friday night as saying:

"We cannot dedicate this magnificent new museum with full hearts [...] We cannot illuminate fully the artistic achievement created in 5th Century (B.C.) Athens, because almost half of the sculptures from the Parthenon were taken from here 207 years ago to reside in enforced exile 4,000 kilometers away [...] The abduction of these sculptures is not only an injustice to us Greeks but to everyone in the world [...] They were made to be seen in sequence and in total, something that cannot happen as long as half of them are held hostage in the British Museum".

In reply Ms Bolton could only lamely reply:

"I think they belong to all of us. We are all global citizens these days [...] here in the British Museum, they can tell this equally important, although different story about ancient Athens' place, in world cultures".

What nonsense. Half of the marbles tells a very fragmentary story, when instead the "global citizens" can hop on a plane, train or coach to Athens to see the whole frieze telling the story it was meant to tell, and not the one modern collectors want to impose on it. The British Museum could equally "tell that story" about fifth century Athens with other "things" it has in its huge storerooms, including other items from Periclean Athens no doubt (vases, or any bits knocked or pried off other monuments they may have knocking about in the British public collections from over two centuries of Grand Tour collecting).

In any case, the only "story" these torn off, sawn off, dragged-away, overcleaned battered fragments of marble arranged around the inside walls of a cramped London museum gallery currently tell the viewer is a sad one. Only one of the greed of a small minority of British collectors and souvenir hunters in the past. The act is one that characterises the centuries before 'last minute' flights and cheap weekend breaks in almost any capital of Europe make the new museum accessible to all (to the same group of people at least that can afford the train fare to the British capital and a night in a London hotel, which is what the "Marbles" cost most people that see the "Elgin" marbles today).

OK, so let us hear this "this equally important, although different story " the British Museum feels it can tell us "all" about "about ancient Athens' place in world cultures" which London claims can be told better in a 1930s gallery tacked onto the side of the Greek rooms in London than a new museum in Athens right by the buildings concerned. I think we'd "all" like to hear it.

Opoku on the Unfulfilled Promise of the Next Cuno Book from Princeton

Readers of the Cultural Resource Preservation literature cannot fail to have noticed that last year James Cuno, the director of the Art Institute of Chicago published a book Who Owns Antiquity? (2008) which was met with many serious criticisms (see a list of reviews in Looting Matters). Instead of answering these, Cuno subsequently over the next few months wrote a number of articles which merely reiterated the same arguments. Now his publisher has released another book of collected articles under Cuno’s editorship (several of which are outdated reprints) apparently making very much the same points, suggesting it is intended to provide a cover for the gaffe of writing the first book.

This work, Whose Culture? The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities (2009) has apparently been written with the intent of challenging “the perception of museums as rapacious acquisitors of ill-gotten goods and to argue instead that our public museums build their antiquities collections responsibly and for the public’s benefit”. This is all well and good, if museums really are acquiring their exhibits responsibly and curating them properly, then nobody has any doubt that museums are beneficial institutions in many regards. Institutions, indeed, with “promise”. What is in question, however, is the degree to which museums (worldwide) have been fulfilling these obligations over the past few decades. Clearly though, the answer is not simply to encourage the no-questions-asked collecting of so-called portable antiquities in scattered and ephemeral personal collections, which is what (as we all know) the pro-collecting lobby will be using Cuno’s book for, despite this not being the author’s intention.

Cuno's new book has just received a lengthy review by the indefatigable Kwame Opoku. (Whose “Universal Museum”? Comments on James Cuno’s “Whose Culture”?). Like most of his recent texts on these issues, it is a good read, (but a lengthy “fresh-pot-of-coffee, plump-up-the-cushions-first” one).

Dr Opoku is as we all know primarily interested in the restitution to their original cultural context of items taken from other countries (especially Africa) as a result of colonial attitudes – and their hoarding by the retentionist countries that hold them in their museums and will not give them back (which is an expression of the continuance of those attitudes). What is interesting though is the degree to which he finds that Cuno’s arguments for the continued expansion of “universal museums” overlap with those of private collectors of decontextualised archaeological artifacts as objects of commerce. It is therefore of interest to me because to a high degree the comments critical of Cuno apply equally to the views of the so-called “collectors rights” lobby in general.

In reading Opoku’s text, I highlighted a few fragments of text which I found significant from the latter point of view, and I'd like to add a few comments of my own to whet he wrote, so this is a sort of a review of a review. I am not sure I will be buying the latest of Cuno’s books, getting every single new work like this over here is an expensive game. Despite the advance of the discussion around them, it would seem that the pro-collecting literature also seems to be getting very repetitive and ultimately unsatisfactory.

Opoku starts off with a discussion of Cuno’s “Introduction” to the volume. He states: “The editor of Whose Culture? has an astonishing way of presenting statements that are wrong or only partially correct as if they described the obvious plain truth that everybody would accept without hesitation” and then discusses a few of them. These apparently include the tired old suggestion that modern societies really should have no claim to the archaeological heritage in the soil of the land they inhabit as they are not genetic descendants of the “vanished cultures”. This argument of the ‘Cunoites’ is of course the result of the application of nineteenth century views of identity based on genetic descent. It totally fails to take into account that in many branches of the humanities, after several decades of penetrating discussion of identity and ethnicity, we see the problem as a far more complex one including ideas about power of place and shared responsibility for care of the historic environment – developments that private collectors in general simply do not wish to consider.

Opoku writes: “Cuno is obviously a past master in misrepresenting the argument of others and in displacing the weight of the argument in directions that distort the real issue. He continues to misrepresent the main argument of the archaeologists against illegal diggings and the acquisition of unprovenanced objects. He creates the impression that archaeologists are against the acquisition of looted objects or objects without clear histories because they consider them to be of no great value or as not providing any valuable information”. Dr Opoku is no archaeologist, but can see the fallacy of this argument – as one would hope most educated people (the ones who are not portable antiquity collectors) can. Opoku realizes that the main concern of archaeologists “is that illegal diggings or looting deprive us of the possibility of studying artefacts in their context and that by removing these objects we lose valuable information which may never be recovered. Furthermore, the purchase of objects without clear history encourages plunder […]”. In a nutshell.

Opoku says that having ignored that issue totally, the art institute director “takes some pages examining famous objects which, according to present standards, were procured without any clear history, out of their context but have nevertheless provided useful information about the societies that produced them” including the Laocoön and Rosetta Stone as “examples of […] objects [that] would be, according to Cuno, regarded as meaningless by archaeologists and rejected as unprovenanced by today’s standards”. Really? Are archaeologists such an ignorant bunch of oiks that any of them actually would “reject” such items as “meaningless”? My question is however what meaning Mr Cuno would see in a rimsherd of Dragendorff form 29 terra sigillata? (One of my personal favourites and relatively chronologically and functionally distinct), or a coarseware cooking pot base with burnt food residue in it.

Opoku rightly observed that the function of Cuno’s paper tiger argument is to shift the weight of the argument of the archaeologists “from the damage and loss that unlawful digging causes to archaeological sites and placed on the value of the single object or objects looted”. As Dr Opoku points out, this seems like the sort of twisted logic we hear all to often from the pro-collecting bunch, who simply fail to address the core issues (and one cannot but conclude that this is deliberate).

Opoku points out that the common ploy of the pro-collectors’ “rights” lobby of placing all the blame for their woes on (“elitist, ivory tower”) “archaeologists” who – it is argued - have some other “agenda” than merely preserving archaeological sites from plundering, is also a false one. “What is not said in all these comments is that it is not only the archaeologists who wish to preserve such sites but also lawyers, administrators and a whole lot of others”. I would guess many educated members of the public too would prefer the archaeological heritage from the countryside around their homes being used to enrich knowledge about the history of the area (for them, their children and children’s children), rather than merely helping contribute to the back-payments on some antiquity seller’s new Porsche.

Opoku notes that “the retentionists of looted artefacts, have a very remarkable facility of attributing to all those who seek the recovery of their cultural artefacts a political motivation or design. This is assigned without any reference or relevant information from the persons concerned but solely on the basis of the statement of the retentionists”. An example of this is the alleged way in which laws protecting the archaeological heritage serve “to support a state’s nationalist political agenda: its claim on cultural continuity since antiquity […] archaeology and antiquities at the service of modern nationalist identity politics”. As Opoku notes, “it is doubtful whether many intelligent people would accept this misleading picture by Cuno and his supporters”. I wonder how many of Cuno’s supporters in the collecting world would care to apply his arguments to the USA’s own 1979 Archaeological Resource Protection Act and the fates of the cultures of various groups of Native Americans. That certainly would place a different slant on a model which so far is (disgracefully) being applied by US collectors only to the culture and identity of an “other”. Opoku summarises his comments by saying that Cuno’s introduction “clearly does not provide anything new except more attacks on the archaeologists and those he regards as nationalists”. Nothing new in that then, that is all the pro-collecting lobby can manage also.

In order to bolster his own atavistic views, Cuno enlists the help of a few similar-thinking museum directors and scholars, the first part called (collectors should note) “The Value of Museums”, consists of articles by Neil Macgregor, Phillipe de Montebello (both originally delivered at a 2006 Association of Art Museum Directors conference), and Kwame Anthony Appiah (the latter as David Gill has noted is a reprint of an article available online here).

The second part of the book (entitled “The Value of Antiquities”) contains three texts pointing out what in the views of their authors we can learn from unprovenanced artefacts, even if we do not know their archaeological context. James C.Y.Watt (Chairman of the Metropolitan's Department of Asian Art ) apparently reckons (“Antiquities and the Importance - and Limitations - of Archaeological Contexts”) that archaeological context is more important in the case of early historical periods but this importance diminishes with time and “after arriving at a critical point in the accumulation of archaeological data of a certain type of site of a certain period, further excavation data becomes (sic) superfluous” (!). As an archaeologist, both of these reported statements seem utter nonsense to me - does he really say this? The contribution by Sir John Boardman, entitled “Archaeologists, Collectors, and Museums” is another of those reprints so adds nothing we’ve not heard before to the debate, it is a repeat of his criticism of fellow archaeologists (not all of it undeserved) we are already familiar with from this classicist. I’ll probably discuss the notions behind the third (Owen) in another post here.

Part Three is called “Museums, Antiquities, and Cultural Property” which has three texts purporting to examine the nature of cultural heritage and the underlying philosophical and political currents. Two of its three articles ( Gillman and Merryman) are also reprints.

Dr Opoku criticizes Cuno for his statement “Some readers will be disappointed that not “all sides” of the debate are presented here. It is our view that other books already do this and well enough that we needn’t repeat the “both sides of the argument” formula here”. He comments that this statement of Cuno “sounds like an open abandonment of all pretence to objectivity and impartiality”. I see nothing wrong in this. Many onlookers may of course be undecided and confused by opposing arguments they cannot place comfortably in context maybe. Nobody seriously involved in the discussion can seriously claim to be impartial in this debate where totally opposing interests are confronted in the no-questions-asked market and collecting of portable antiquities. What however is disappointing is that there already other books (including Kate Fitz Gibbon (ed.) Who owns the past: Cultural Policy, Cultural Property, and the Law - Rutgers University Press 2005) which presents the ACCP/ collectors’ “rights” arguments in an equally partisan manner (just as there are many more which present the views of the resource conservation lobby), but Cuno and Princeton University Press have in effect produced nothing new. It’s the same old arguments, the same dialogue of the deaf, the same pars pro toto and straw man constructions being churned out – and totally ignoring the fact that a number of perfectly pertinent questions were raised in response to Who Owns Antiquity? One may only charitably suspect that for some reason Princeton had signed a contract with Cuno for this second book well before the extent of the critical comment on the first book became obvious. Does this mean we can expect a third one in the series? A Cuno Trilogy where in the final (?) one Cuno does his best in the spirit of academic enquiry (as would befit a book published by Princeton University Press) to seriously address at last the questions raised by the first two?

Cuno against the world

The onslaught against James Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute in Chicago, continues with a well written and genuinely interesting article by Tom Hundley from the Chicago Tribune which places it firmly in the context of the acquisition by US private collectors (and through them museums) of looted objects from post Gulf War Iraq and pits Cuno's abrasively phrased and controversial views against those of the archaeological conservation lobby:

A war of words has broken out between the two camps. Archeologists
argue that major museums and the wealthy private collectors who often sit on their boards have hastened the destruction of archeological sites by their willingness to pay high prices for objects that have almost certainly been looted. The museum directors and private collectors contend that by rescuing these artifacts from the vicissitudes of the black market they are giving safe shelter to the historical patrimony of all mankind. The high-end trade in illegal antiquities is centered in New York and London, but Chicago has emerged at the vortex of the debate

The article concisely summarises the main arguments of Cuno's recent book and discusses each of them, none too sympathetically. The author points out that:

Earlier this year, Cuno was on almost everyone’s shortlist to become the next director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art after the aristocratic and long-reigning Philippe de Montebello announced that he was stepping down. Although the Met ultimately picked one of its own curators for the post in September, Cuno’s book, which features a photo of the heavily guarded entrance of the Baghdad Museum on the front cover and a ringing endorsement from de Montebello on the back, was seen by some as a not-so-subtle pitch for the job. As it turned out, the controversy that has grown up around book may have hurt his chances.

Let that be a lesson to those who go around attacking archaeologists and conservationists. More here: Loot! Chicago at center of battle between archeologists, collectors. See also Kimberly Alderman's Cultural Property & Archaeology Law Blog.

Photo: Artefact hunters searching at Isin, Iraq, January 2004. From the book "Catastrophe!: The Looting and Destruction of Iraq's Past" (Photo by John M. Russell, Massachusetts College of Art)

Kwame Opoku challenges Universal Collection arguments

In a wickedly elegant and well argued essay, tireless campaigner Dr Kwame Opoku raises a number of extremely pertinent points about the accusations thrown out by the Universal Collection advocates who oppose the repatriation of cultural property taken under dubious circumstances from other countries. In particular he cites the recent provocative book Who Owns Antiquity?: Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage by James Cuno, the publication of which has emboldened a few wannabe clones in the collecting world to join their voices to the clamour against “retentionist nationalism” and the policies lying behind the 1970 UNESCO convention.
The “universal collectors” see the nationalism in their own culture as benign while in foreign source countries it is dangerous, needing to be eradicated. The concept of nation-State:

gives countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon a certain amount of control over their own resources and cultural artefacts. These opponents of nationalism turn out almost invariably to be persons who would like to see the world governed by the forces in place. They would like to have a free-for-all situation where the stronger get what they want and the weaker ones can go to hell with their complaints.

Opoku notes that none of those playing the “Universalism” card offers:

any evidence that nationalism has any deleterious effect on restitution or on culture except that it prevents the large museums from continuing their old practice of taking objects from wherever they want. It also appears that they resort to accusations of nationalism only when there is a discussion on restitution of stolen or looted cultural objects that are in the so-called “universal museums” in the western world. We are still awaiting their explanation why nationalism in the case of claimants is somehow less respectable but not in the case of the western retentionists who are hanging onto stolen or looted property […] Cuno and his supporters should bring evidence why “retentionist nationalists” in some countries - Egypt, China, Turkey, Greece, Italy and Nigeria - are to be suspected in their motives for demanding restitution but “retentionist nationalists” in USA, Great Britain, Germany and France are not to be questioned in their motives for holding on to looted or stolen cultural artefacts.

He concludes that

With the hope of having contributed to clearing away this diversionary accusation of nationalism, the retentionists of the western museums should now offer more solid arguments, if they have any, for holding on to stolen or looted cultural objects from other countries. They should not present us arguments that do not help in understanding or solving the issue of restitution of stolen or looted cultural objects that are in the European and American museums. Their untenable contentions obscure the issues rather than enlighten us on the asymmetric nature of power in the colonial and imperialist system that made such illegal and unjustified robberies possible. The unresolved problems arising from colonialism will not simply disappear and the earlier serious efforts are made to reach acceptable solutions, the better for all of us

The whole article is well worth reading in its entirity, and it will be interesting to see whether the Universal Collectors reply with anything more than embarrassed silence...

The Antiquities Trade and the United Nations

Pro-collecting polemists in recent weeks have been vigorously alleging that protection of the archaeological heritage of a state is driven by “nationalism”. The trend began developing some time ago, but interest in this model in collecting circles in the US in particular seems to have been revived by the discussions around James Cuno’s book “Who owns Antiquity”.

Is it actually “nationalism” to want to attempt to curb the destruction of the archaeological record of a region to feed the international market for looted portable antiquities? It seems to me that in the way it is used by portable antiquity collectors, this argument is in fact largely a confusion of several different things. Its main function in the portable antiquity trading milieu is to act as another of those foundationless ‘collective identity mantras’ and self-justifications exploited as an excuse for inaction. Matters are not so simple, the argument takes on a totally different (and somewhat sinister) shade of meaning when contrasted with the attitudes of portable antiquity collectors in the UK busily acquiring their own “pieces of their own past” (more of that another time no doubt).

When I look at the ‘arguments’ being currently thrown about with abandon on the US collecting forums in support of their notions, I cannot help but get the impression that their authors really have not taken a close enough look at what has been going on in the heritage world in the last twenty years. The intellectual position the dealers and collectors are proposing to attack seems a throwback to those of the 1970s or 1980s and is quite unrelated to the discussions currently going on in the international heritage world. I guess this is due to them remaining outside these wider discussions of what are, after all, conservation issues in which they apparently have no practical interest.

Another tendency is emerging with greater clarity in some areas of the milieu. Their new ‘cunning plan’ is to attack the United Nations, and more particularly the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) since it is the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property which lies at the basis of much of the current criticism of the trade and which if more generally applied in an effective manner would place obstacles before those dealers and collectors wishing to ignore certain niceties such as export licenses and establishing legitimate provenance.

In particular a proposed focus of these attacks is suggested to be "the UNESCO practical use of nations to represent cultures” (pardon?). It is suggested that “the latter should be especially embarrassing to archaeologists (sic) because it shows that they are buying into an argument that they cannot support from their intellectual perspective. This hypocrisy should really be exposed dramatically”. I am sure we all look forward to the exposure of any hypocrisy there may be in this line of argument, but whether or not it will be found to have come from the conservation lobby remains to be seen.

It might be useful to remind ourselves of the nature of the UNESCO “intellectual line” over the supply of portable antiquities to the collectors’ market that “archaeologists” (sic) would allegedly be unable to “buy into”. A good place to start would be the wording on that topic of the 1970 Convention itself:

RECALLING the importance of the provisions contained in the Declaration of the Principles of International Cultural Co-operation, adopted by the General Conference at its fourteenth session,
- CONSIDERING that the interchange of cultural property among nations for scientific, cultural and educational purposes increases the knowledge of the civilization of Man, enriches the cultural life of all peoples and inspires mutual respect and appreciation among nations,
- CONSIDERING that cultural property constitutes one of the basic elements of civilization and national culture, and that its true value can be appreciated only in relation to the fullest possible information regarding its origin, history and traditional setting,
- CONSIDERING that it is incumbent upon every State to protect the cultural property existing within its territory against the dangers of theft, clandestine excavation, and illicit export,
- CONSIDERING that, to avert these dangers, it is essential for every State to become increasingly alive to the moral obligations to respect its own cultural heritage and that of all nations,
- CONSIDERING that, as cultural institutions, museums, libraries and archives should ensure that their collections are built up in accordance with universally recognized moral principles,
- CONSIDERING that the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property is an obstacle to that understanding between nations which it is part of Unesco's mission to promote by recommending to interested States, international conventions to this end,
- CONSIDERING that the protection of cultural heritage can be effective only if organized both nationally and internationally among States working in close co-operation, […].

The nitty gritty of the body of the Convention follows on soon after this. This is of course is the main source of angst for collectors who do not want to worry about the issues of precisely how an item they want to buy came onto the market where they find it. (Such reflection would only get in the way of deciding whether it is “authentic” and the price is right, which seem from their forums to be their main concerns when buying archaeological items from foreign lands from a dealer.)

I am sure that it may be comfortable for the unconcerned collector to be dismissive of the Convention, but to claim that there are intellectual grounds for doing so seems to involve not a little special pleading. It will be interesting to see where these polemicists will find grounds to show which of the eight propositions in the preamble of the Convention is alleged to be “embarrassing” to the archaeologist to support. They all seem pretty reasonable to me. I look forward to the reasoned argument by the pro-collecting milieu that we should all be ashamed to hold such things as self-evident, and why they feel themselves to be justified in flying in the face of international opinion on these matters.