Antiquities Dealer Hecht's Italian Trial Comes to an End

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The trial of the American antiquities dealer Robert Hecht has dragged on for six years and was a watershed event which has helped to alter collecting practices at American museums. Following the indictment, many museums adopted policies that banned the purchase of ancient artefacts whose provenance was not clear. Hecht was being tried for allegedly receiving artefacts obtained by illegal excavation in Italy and conspiring to deal in them. Italian prosecutors had also charged Marion True, the former curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, along with Mr. Hecht. The 92-year old's courtroom drama however ended this week in Rome when a three-judge panel ruled that the statute of limitations on his alleged crimes - like that of True in October 2010 - had expired. The trial had began in November 2005. Another co-defendant, antiquities dealer Giacomo Medici, has been convicted for his role in the alleged conspiracy.

The judges did not express an opinion on [Hecht's] culpability or innocence. But they ruled that a series of objects that had been confiscated from Mr. Hecht’s homes should return to their “rightful owner,” which was identified as the Italian state.

Elisabetta Povoledo, 'Italian Trial of American Antiquities Dealer Comes to an End', New York Times 18th jan 2012.

Not everybody loses sleep about these things

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Fabio Isman in Il Giornale dell'Arte 305, gennaio 2011 raises again the question of: "Un caso delicato turba il mercato d’arte internazionale delle antichità e toglie il sonno a qualche importante museo: quello delle fotografie sequestrate a Giacomo Medici e Gianfranco Becchina". Well, not everybody is losing sleep about the current location of the estimated million archaeological artefacts which suddenly surfaced (from underground?) on the market in Italy between 1970 and 1995 through the agency of «predatori dell’arte perduta». Some dealers of repute are apparently selling them quite openly; though somehow their reconstruction of their collecting history seems a bit lacking (see Looting Matters, 'Toxic Antiquities: Concern for Dealers').

This photo is published by Isman as an example of the sort of material recorded in the Symes archive in Rome. So one might ask where might one find this little naked boy if a collector interested in that sort of thing were to look for him. Where, oh where, would an afficionado of little statues of well-developed but modestly endowed naked boys find themselves an "Etruscan bronze nude athlete" just like this one? Maybe Mr Google knows?

See also: David Gill, 'La "Grande razzia": Photographic dossiers revisited'.

Witschonke, "Make the Medici Archive Public"

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The letters to the Editor section of the "Art Newspaper" contains a letter from Roger Bland's good pal Rick Witschonke referring to an October article, “Medici ‘loot’ for sale?” about the withdrawal of another object from auction because of the appearance of what seems to be an identical item in the Medici archive.

Such images, from the 1995 Medici raid or the 2002 Becchina confiscation, appear periodically in the press when a similar object comes up for sale. The stigma of association with one of these convicted antiquities traffickers is often enough to result in its withdrawal. The larger issue, however, is that US collectors, dealers, auction houses, and museums are compelled to research the provenance of any prospective purchase to ensure it is not recently looted, and yet Italy has not published the Medici and Becchina photo archives that they hold, which would make vetting much easier. Furthermore, it appears that certain individuals (like David Gill and your Fabio Isman) are granted access, with the intent of periodically embarrassing the trade. This strikes me as cynical and counterproductive if the objective is to make the antiquities trade more transparent, and looted antiquities unsaleable. If a collector could go to a public archive (the Art Loss Register, for example), and determine whether a prospective purchase was questionable, the object would likely remain unsold.
—Rick Witschonke, Califon, New Jersey

Surely the embarrassment is not whether an item is sold on the US market or not, but who has been buying objects which are not of licit provenance. And who has been selling them - knowing that. As such therefore, the Medici archive is evidence in a series of ongoing investigations as each of these finds comes to light again. If the archive was published, any stolen goods it figures would remain underground and the links between the present owner and the looter more difficult to research. I doubt whether there are many ongoing FBI investigations where all the basic evidence is displayed online for amateur sleuths to puzzle over (and publish their conspiracy theories on the websites which are devoted to solving this or that crime). Like the full files accumulated as a result of the ongoing 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum thefts: full texts of staff interviews, review of security arrangements and flaws, fingerprints, DNA, inside informers' reports and so on. Make sense? Of course not, it would compromise the investigation.

Who should make the antiquities market transparent? Antiquity dealers selling the stuff they have in their stocks, or the Italian police? Somewhere down the chain of ownership of all those objects is somebody who knows full well that they originated with Medici et al. A whole series of people have sold them on (or may be in the process of selling them on) who are hiding that fact. That's where the transparency is needed. Of course it is not just US collectors who need to know, who need to find out what precisely it is they are buying and where in fact they came from.

That is what the PAS guidelines for buyers of antiquities recommends, that buyers themselves establish the vendor's title to sell.

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More Conspiracy Theory: Gill and the Medici Files

ANS Curatorial staff member Rick Witschonke asks David Gill somewhat impertinently:

Why don't you respond to Pearlstein's question? Why doesn't Italy release the Medici photos? If you have them, why don't you release them?

A puzzling challenge, given that William Pearlstein addressed no such "question" to David Gill in the post (on Kimberly Alderman's blog) on which Gill and Witschonke were comenting. All very odd. It seems to me that collecting ancient coins muddles the brain and perhaps Witschonke is muddling Pearlstein with somebody else (Fincham Tompa, Sayles?). Or something muddled at any rate.

What the lawyer Pearlstein does urge is however interesting, and is precisely what some of the "clean-up-the-market" preservationists have been arguing for some time:

What’s needed is an on-line registery whereby transparancy is rewarded with repose/quiet title after a reasonable claim period, claims are evaluated fairly and bad faith claims are penalized.

But then this is a suggestion which has been rejected outright by the antiquity collecting milieu as a whole and collectors of ancient coins most vociferously among them. (As Kimberly Alderman notes of the coiney milieu as a whole: "Arguments for transparency do seem disingenuous from [those] who refuse to be transparent themselves".)

IF Mr Gill indeed possessed the entire Medici Archives, Witschonke asks why he does not release them. I wonder if - hypothetically - the American Numismatic Society was shown the same material connected with ongoing investigations by a foreign judiciary organ, would Mr Witschonke assume he personally has the "right" to publish the entire archive? By what "right" would he have to do that? Also what "rights" does Mr Witschonke think other people (clients, fellow dealers and others) mentioned in those business archives have? Privacy maybe?

A moment's consideration reveals that the seized archives are evidence in ongoing investigations into a complex network of deals over a long period of time, and in such cases there may be good operational reasons why this material is not made immediately available in its entirity to the whole world and his dog. In the same way the US ICE does not for operational reasons reveal full details of many of the cases it has been working on, still less those on which it is still working. Is there anything unusual about this?

As I say, it seems to me that prolongued contact with ancient coins and ancient coin collectors fuddles the brain and the perceived need to defend the current status quo of the antiquities trade often makes otherwise reasonable people come out with what seem to be totally unreasoned remarks.