Two Khmer Statues in the Met: What Are They Doing There?

The Cambodian government is being kept busy trying to piece together the history of two objects in the Southeast Asian galleries of New York's Metropolitan Museum. These two life-size 10th-century sandstone statues, called the Kneeling Attendants, currently "flank the doorway of the gallery where the Met displays its small but globally significant collection of artifacts from the glory days of Khmer civilization". They had been on display since 1994 when the Met opened its new Southeast Asian galleries. The heads of the two statues had been donated in 1987 and 1989, and the two torsos were given together to the museum in 1992. It now appears that they were taken around 1970,

at about the same time as a companion piece, a mythic warrior figure that the United States government sought to seize last month on Cambodia’s behalf from Sotheby’s, where it had been placed for sale [...]  Anne LeMaistre, the Unesco representative in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, said her agency is assembling a report laying out evidence that the Met statues and the Sotheby’s warrior belonged to a 12-statue Khmer empire grouping first broken up when Cambodia was destabilized by civil war. 

The evidence accumulated in the case of the 'Sotheby’s Koh Ker piece', indicates that the temple was savagely looted after 1970, during Cambodia’s chaotic and bloody years of civil war, genocide and Vietnamese occupation. There is testimony from villagers who say the temple was virtually unmolested until the 1970s, and the not insignificant detail that until the late 1960s the area lacked the roads needed to carry away large and heavy statuary. The Met had (obtained) no information to say how and when these objects had left the country, or from what site they had come (though the style should have suggested that they were from the Koh Ker site in the period of its greatest glory).

Archaeologists believe the Kneeling Attendants stood for about 1,000 years at the Prasat Chen temple in a vast site called Koh Ker, about 200 miles northwest of Phnom Penh, said Eric Bourdonneau, who directs a project at the site overseen by the French School of Asian Studies. The Met statues, the experts say, stood a few yards from the Sotheby’s warrior, a figure known as Duryodhana. 

One of the heads and both torsos are listed as gifts from Douglas A. J. Latchford (a British citizen living in Thailand who has a vast collection of Khmer antiquities). The New York Times journalists contacted  Mr. Latchford, 80, in Bangkok, he gave some interesting information:

he came upon the three items when they were the property of Spink & Son, a London dealer known for its sales of Asian art. “Spinks had had the pieces for some time,” Mr. Latchford said, “and they had not sold, so in honor of the curator, who was Martin Lerner, they requested that I would provide financial aid to donate them, and that’s what I did and why they are in my name.” Mr. Latchford said that he did not know where Spink had gotten the items, that he never took possession of them, and that he does not have any documents from the transaction. He recalled spending about £10,000. A spokesman for Spink said it no longer has any of the paperwork from that era. The family that donated the head of the other statue in 1987 also found it at Spink, a year before the gift, and said it had not come with any information on its provenance. Marsha Vargas Handley, the wife of Raymond G. Handley, one of two donors, who has since died, said the purchase price was $42,000. 

It will be recalled that Spinks (suppliers too of the ACCG illegal import stunt coins) was also mixed up in the story of the other Koh Ker statues in the news recently... Note the interesting discrepancy in prices, one knocked-off head Spinks was able to sell, without its torso (which it seems to have had), for 42000 green ones, but a few years later they were glad to offload the other bits for a far smaller sum. Perhaps most collectors on being shown the stuff were more cautious about its legitimacy than the Met.


In the wake of the Sotheby’s case Cambodian officials have formed a task force to return artifacts removed from their country and possibly held by American and other foreign museums.

Source: Tom Mashberg and Ralph Blumental, 'Cambodia to Ask Met to Return 10th-Century Statues',  New York Times, June 1, 2012.

Additional note: Kimberley Alderman has a rather scathing post about this story here, taking issue with a side-point to the main issue: 'New York Times to Assign Cultural Heritage Articles to Uninformed Generalists'("it’s not really a story yet because Cambodia hasn’t actually asked the Met to return anything. But, apparently, they will. That’s fine, ask away, and then we’ll discuss it"). In my opinion, there is something here to be thinking about before the Cambodians get their request on paper - and even if they do not.

If there were indeed twelve statues in the group, do specialists know where the other eight are? I don't suppose it would do any harm to ask Spink's...

Photo: Kneeling Male Attendant Cambodia, Angkor period, Khmer style of Koh Ker, ca. 921–45 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

SLAM Bumper Sticker

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The  Malibu office of the Association for Museum Professional Excellence  (AMPE) has brought out a bumper sticker to publicise the damaging effects of museums retaining artefacts which they know are of dodgy provenance.

The St Louis city fathers evidently see it as a source of pride to exhibit stolen objects in their art museum. This ignores the feelings of good decent folk having the stigma attached to admitting that they are a citizen of such a place. This campaign will hopefully lead to the Museum Trustees becoming more aware of the damage they are doing to the image of their city by refusing for so long to do the right thing. In the coming weeks, these bumper stickers will be available from a AMPE office near you, except in St Louis of course (SLAM does not belong to the AMPE).

The Schimmel Collection

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The Turkish government is currently seeking the return of 18 objects from the Ancient Near East Galleries of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (initially reported by Martin Bailey in the Art Newspaper earlier this month, now discussed in the Chasing Aphrodite blog, 'Exclusive: Turkey Seeks The Return of 18 Objects From The Metropolitan Museum of Art', Chasing Aphrodite blog, March 20, 2012.). They all come from the collection made by industrialist Norbert Schimmel (here too). Most of the objects have no documented ownership history other than being in the Schimmel Collection by the mid 1960s or 1970s. As Felch and Fremolino note:

Turkey claims all of them were illegally excavated and smuggled out of the country after the passage of a 1906 law that gave the state ownership of its cultural property. All the contested objects are from the Norbert Schimmel Collection, which the museum has described as “the finest private assemblage of its kind in America” and “one of the most important gifts of ancient and Classical art ever presented to this museum.” Between the 1950s and his death in 1990, Schimmel was a member of the Met’s board of trustees and acquisitions committee. In 1989, he donated 102 objects from his collection to the Met. [...] The Schimmel Collection was published in a 1974 volume entitled “Ancient Art:The Norbert Schimmel Collection.” The editor of the volume was Oscar White Muscarella, a former Met curator who has been an outspoken critic of the role museums have played in the illicit antiquities trade. We’ve asked Muscarella for his thoughts on the Turkish claim and will post his response when we have it. It is interesting to note that for some reason Turkey waited 38 years after the publication of the collecting before asking for the objects back.

David Gill ('Norbert Schimmel as the model collector') notes comments by Shelby White on Norbert Schimmel and precedents for the return of items from the collection to the places they had been removed from (an eye of Amenhotep III, an Apulian dinos ). He also notes Schimmel's role in the funding of the purchase of the Morgantina hoard.


See also: Benjamin Sutton, 'More Antiquities Woes for U.S. Museums Loom, As Turkey Demands 18 Artifacts From the Metropolitan Museum', ArtInfo, march 20th 2012.

Paul Barford: Turkey Seeks Surrender of Part of the Met's Norbert Schimmel Collection Cultural Property Repatriation News and Issues.

Rosie and the Looters

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For those, like me, who think this blog has been suffering from a surfeit of coineyism over the past few days, here's a (sort of a) good news story not involving round pieces of metal with pictures and writing on them. Rosie the rhino at Ipswich Museum has been given a new horn, after thieves stole the original last July. Rosie is part of my childhood, hours spent in Ipswich Museum enjoying myself looking at "stuff" while the parents spent hours doing more boring things in the town centre's shops. Rosie stood in the middle of the groundfloor gallery, still in its Edwardian layout with crowded cases of all sorts of wonders. OK, you are not allowed to, but in those days you could reach out an awed hand and gently and respectfully touch her, feel her skin, stroke the horn. I admit I did. The Museum's Edwardian splendour has gone now, but 105 year old Rosie remains (too big to go in a cupboard in a storeroom I guess), and that is where the thieves found her. They ripped off her horn and scuttled away into the night to sell it to some gangland ruffians, leaving the exhibit damaged and defiled, a broken symbol of today's greed and lack of respect for anything precious.
Rosie has been made whole again, and next time I am in England have promised myself to make a pilgrimage to Ipswich to see her, say hello. Perhaps I have to satisfy myself that the glass fibre replacement horn looks as good on her as they say. Convince myself the tragic story has an ersatz happy ending, that although revenge has not been exacted on the perpetrators of this dire deed, and the creeps that bought the horn and put it to whatever-use, Rosie's looking as good as ever, nothing has changed.



If only it were so easy to patch up the damage done to an archaeological site when looters rip out all those coi... artefacts to sell 'no-questions-asked' to those gangland ruffians that supply part of the market, peopled by creeps that buy artefacts to put to whatever-use, but the process leaving the sites damaged and defiled, a plundered symbol of today's greed and lack of respect for anything precious.

Photo: The wondrous Rosie in her 105th Birthday Party dress with her new horn (Photo: BBC).

Hat tip to David Gill who shared this news with me.

Why European Museums Are Going to be Less Happy to loan the US Anything

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The American "collectors' rights" lobbyists are always moaning about how loathe those foreign nations are to loan them objects (which they say are their "right" under the US-drafted CCPIA). Yet what happens when they do? We saw an Italian painting seized from a Florida museum which is not going back to Italy. Ancient artefacts loaned and being studied in Chicago were the subject of a court case by people who wanted to get their hands on them and sell them off as assets of the Iranian state. Yale University dragged its feet over giving back material from Machu Picchu loaned decades ago for study. Now the Polish press are up in arms. Auschwitz-Birkenau is a protected site, it is a World Heritage Site, and yet out of the goodness of the heart of the Polish people we lent the Holocaust Museum in Washington half a barrack building from Birkenau.

It was a ten year loan in 1989. That loan was renewed for another ten years, so they've had it twenty years. The loan expired in 2009. Now it is time for it to come home. Guess what? The Americans don't want to give it back. Piotr Cywiński, the Director of the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau has asked for it back. According to the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, Washington has stopped answering letters on the subject, and is trying to engage the US Jewish community to put pressure on the Poles to let it stay.

According to the newspapers, they are using all sorts of arguments. the object is "too fragile to travel" (what, it has been in the care of a US museum a mere two decades and is now in a worse state than when it arrived there?).

What really hurts is the other one being reported in the Polish papers which is a pure and simple ignorant insult by simple ignorant people to raise the passions of a simple and ignorant American public (coiney style):

W gazetach pojawiły się zaś sugestie, że Polacy jako współodpowiedzialni za Holocaust nie zasługują na to, aby opiekować się obiektem.

["in the newspapers - ie the American ones - the suggestion has been made that since the Poles were co-responsible for the Holocaust they do not deserve to look after this object"] In that vein, we could add that as a hotbed of Holocaust Denial, the US certainly is not.

[In passing we may note that the US newspapers are not exactly busting a gut to produce an account of the operation of Birkenau which corresponds to reality, the accounts I have seen contain several factual errors]

The segment in Washington is half a prefabricated barrack block from Birkenau, the other half remains on the site.

"We have indicated many times that this half of the barracks must return, that there is no other solution in accordance with the law," Cywinski said. "It's a very important object, not just for Washington but for the integrity of Birkenau, the last authentic site of Holocaust remembrance among all the major death camps." [...] The fate of Cywinski, the Auschwitz museum director, is at stake in the matter. Under the law on protecting historic artifacts, he could be jailed for up to two years if he fails to obtain the return of any object on loan.

The Polish law is designed to make sure that nobody has any leeway in allowing Polish artefacts to leave the country permanently Poland is trying to protect the artefacts in its care, all of them.

Of course nobody here has anything whatsoever against Americans getting on a plane and coming to see the whole Birkenau complex, not just the portable antiquity that they've made of just one tiny bit of it. After all, is that not precisely what they want all the citizens of other nations to do to see the bits and pieces collected in US "universal" (encyclopaedic) museums? Poland was home to Europe's largest Jewish community of some 3.2 million before World War Two, but most of them died under the Nazi occupation. The Auschwitz-Birkenau open-air museum covers more than 200 hectares (500 acres) and 155 buildings, including the gas chambers, 300 ruined facilities and hundreds of thousands of personal items.

Members of my family and the families of several people I know died in Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were not Jews.

America, give back what does not belong to you, please.

Psm, 'USA "pożyczyły" barak z Birkenau. Teraz nie chcą go oddać' PAP 28th Feb 2012

Vanessa Gera, 'Poland, U.S. tussle over Auschwitz barrack on loan', Washingtom Times', 26th February 2012.

Vignette: Washington Holocaust Disneyland: A ten year LOAN from Poland, the Americans want to keep it.

Turkey to Reallocate and Deaccession Certain Museum Artefacts

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It is being widely reported by antiquity collectors that Turkey is planning to deaccession certain artefacts held in museum collections. This is significant since Turkish law establishes that found archaeological material is state property, and - since there is quite a lot of archaeological material to be found in the soil of Turkey - the museum storerooms to which this material is sent are becoming overcrowded. It makes sense then to establish a sensible and well-defined accession policy and a means of ethically disposing of anything surplus to it. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism has therefore decided

to pass a number of statutory amendments relating to the holding of artefacts by museums. The changes, which were proposed by the Board of Protection of Cultural and Natural Assets and first announced in the Official Gazette on Jan. 19, dictate that artifacts which are not being used by museums can be valued by a specially formed commission and sold. The controversial statutory section now dictates that items which have been brought to museums and have not been claimed by valid owners or put to use by the museums within the period of one year can be sold by the state to collectors following an evaluation process by a commission of experts.

There are of course fears among archaeologists and conservation groups that unless proper safeguards are built into the system, it is possible that this will give rise to an ethos of cashing in on culturally and historically important artefacts by selling them to rich collectors, perhaps foreign, rather than investing resources in facilitating their preservation for the common good.

Many fear such changes could mark the beginning of a mercenary consideration of archaeological finds whereby the financial value of artifacts is placed above their historical significance. The head of the İstanbul branch of the Archeological Association, Dr. Necmi Karul, told the Vatan daily in comments published on Feb. 18 that the changes undermine the most basic of archaeological principles, namely that any artifact from any period of history is part of a shared culture and should, thus, remain as such.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism has clarified in a press release that the changes would allow for a better management of museum collections, and rather than selling off antiquities for cash, priority will be given to opening new avenues for the exhibition in other institutes of artefacts which are not being put to use or valued. It will be interesting to see how Turkey puts such a scheme into action, and how many artefacts leaving Turkey with documentation of legal origins as officially deaccessioned objects will be stripped of them by the no-questions-asked antiquities market in subsequent years.

Zaman, 'Controversy over price-tagging of artifacts continues', Sunday's Zaman 22 February 2012.

Police Detain Olympia Museum Raid Suspect

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Sam Hardy (Samarkeolog) has been following the Olympia Museum raid stories and indicates on the Conflict Archaeology blog ('Police detain suspect for Olympia museum robbery') that Kathimerini has just reported that Greek police have ‘detained’ a ‘foreign national’ on suspicion of involvement in the armed robbery of the Museum of the History of the Olympic Games. He is thought to have been a member of a group that raided jewellery shops in the area and is also suspected of participation in two other recent other armed robberies, one in Olympia, one in Krestena. In these (as in the Museum), the perpetrators used sledgehammers to break into showcases. There too they "threatened passers-by, shot into the air with Kalashnikovs to intimidate people and managed to escape by minor roads, which they knew in every detail". It seems that the seven minutes security video which records the raid allowed police to identify one of the masked indiiduals shown. It seems that if this person faces charges, there is forensic evidence which will aid a conviction, it seems that while waiting for the guard to come to work the robbers ate cheese pies and drank coffee by a stream below the site and DNA evidence may be obtained from the cups and packaging, there were also reportedly fingerprints on duct tape used in the robbery. Anyway, let us wait and see whether Greek police will press charges, or release the suspect.

Tips for finding looted artefacts at your local museum

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We all missed this one. The Elginism blog (February 17, 2012) has a post: "Tips for finding looted artefacts at your local museum" which refers in turn to an old (June 8, 2011) post on the "Chasing Aphrodite" blog: "Five Tips for Finding Loot at Your Local Museum". This certainly seems worth publicising. Like for example to schoolteachers preparing activities for their class for a school excursion to a local museum. Any "(probably looted) Ancient Coins for Education" programme would certainly take second place in any lesson on social responsibility and the pernicious extent of culture-crime to "Loot Hunt in the Local Museum as Education". Why not?

Fincham on Olympia Theft and Coiney Wrongheadedness

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Derek Fincham has a comment on the Olympia theft which is worth highlighting:

Last week was a bad week for antiquities protection, as thefts of antiquities from both Montreal and Olympia in Greece were revealed. [...] Both instances are troubling examples of thieves overcoming museum security. But, to borrow a phrase from Prof. Merryman, no thinking person would use these thefts to argue that (1) Western museums should repatriate all their antiquities; or (2) Greece should sell its "surplus" antiquities to alleviate its culture funding difficulty. Both propositions are wrongheaded. They are a reason why cultural heritage policy has such difficulty getting off the ground, if the discourse can't even acknowledge and admonish thieves as thieves.

Well, it's not any "discourse", it is mainly just selfish US collectors and dealers that see opportunities to score points off the current misfortunes of the source countries. They will not admit that stolen artefacts are stolen and not theirs to own "by rights".


UPDATE 20.2.12
The point about the western museums was initially a bit unclear to me, Dr Fincham (pers. comm.) confirms that what he meant was: "I saw folks argue that the Montreal theft means western museums aren't safe places for antiquities either, the implicit argument being that they should all go back to their nation of origin. It misses the point. Theft is theft".

Museum at Olympia Robbed in Daring Raid

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The news that is guaranteed to send US antiquities dealers into paroxysms of delighted 'gottcha' - excitement is that about 7:30 this morning, the Museum of the History of the Olympic Games in Ancient Olympia (a UNESCO World Heritage site) in southern Greece was robbed. Two (?) masked artefact thieves armed with Kalashnikovs and reportedly speaking "broken Greek" ambushed and overpowered a 48-year old female museum guard starting her morning shift having previously knocked out the alarm. The criminals demanded that she tell them where the "golden wreath" (the museum has no such object) was kept. Before she had time to summon help, the intruders tied her up and gagged her and then set about smashing the reinforced glass fronts of selected cases with a hammer and stole dozens of items on display. The robbers are believed to have escaped in a car driven by an accomplice. It is reported that an inventory of the missing items was not yet available, but local authorities and police said about 68 bronze and pottery artefacts are estimated to have snatched, they were apparently mainly figurines, but the thieves also took a gold seal ring dating to Late Bronze Age Mycenaean times. Greek state television has reported that culture minister Pavlos Geroulanos immediately tendered his resignation after learning of the robbery and was at the scene soon afterwards. Police have set up roadblocks in an attempt to prevent the thieves leaving the area.

Sources:
BBC
Associated Press
Daily Mail (updated)
Al Jazeera
New Europe
Savvas Hadjigeorgiou, 'Thieves Break Into Ancient Olympia Museum In Greece', CyprusNewsReport 17/02/2012.


Video

Photos: Objects from the Museum, some of which may have been among those taken. Aerial view of site of robbery from the BBC.

Artefacts Stolen from Montreal Museum

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Two antiquities were stolen in late October 2011 from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in a brazen daytime theft during visiting hours, but details were not released to the public earlier "because of an ongoing investigation by the Sureté du Québec and AXA Art, one of the world’s largest art-insurance companies". Hmm.

One of the stolen pieces is a marble head from the Roman Empire, dating from the first century AD. The second, and far more valuable item, is a Persian low relief of the head of a guard, dating from the fifth century BC. It is made of sandstone, and estimated to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Both pieces are small, about 20 by 21 centimetres, and had been part of the permanent collection of the Montreal art institution for decades.

They have video footage from the museum’s security-camera system of a suspect, who is male, about 5 foot 7, and in October 2010, four months ago, was wearing jeans, running shoes, a black jacket and dark baseball hat as he strolled through the museum. A reward of $10,000 is being offered to anyone who can identify the suspect.

According to the museum, the theft is an isolated incident. Items on display are protected by security systems that include motion detectors and guards patrolling the galleries.

The article discusses several other thefts from Canadian museums in recent years. It seems art thieves can attack anywhere, any time - no matter what security measures are in place to deter and prevent them. Let us see how soon it is before these items "surface" on the dodgy art market.

Joshua Knelman, 'Two valuable artifacts stolen from Montreal museum', Globe and Mail (Toronto) Feb. 14, 2012

US Support for Yanukovych's Government Spills over into (lack of) Cultural Property Debate

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This is how Ukraine treats the political opposition. This is a photo of Julia Tymoshenko in her Kiev jail cell after her recent political show trial organized by pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. She is reported by her family to be seriously ill and mistreated (for example she is deprived of sleep like US Guantanamo prisoners because the light in her cell is never turned off) and she has been refused access to medical treatment. The Polish government recently pledged support for her family's efforts to appeal the conviction which many see as wholly politically motivated.

Yanukovych promised to revive the Ukrainian economy if elected, he has not done so, things are getting worse. In a diplomatic cable which was leaked by Wikileaks, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine in 2006 reported back to the DoS that he had learnt that Yanukovych’s party is partly composed of “pure criminals" and "criminal and anti-democracy figures". One would have thought that this is the kind of government that the United States would not be having any truck with. Not so.

The Museum of Russian (sic) Art in Minneapolis, Minnesota is currently hosting an exhibition of "Antiquities from Ukraine: Golden Treasures and Lost Civilizations" (October 1, 2011 - February 19, 2012). Artefacts "dating from the Neolithic age to the Byzantine (sic) era, unearthed in present-day Ukraine" are presented in the exhibition of "this private collection from Kyiv, Ukraine" in conjunction with Yanukovych's government and "The Museum of National Cultural Heritage PLATAR".

Note the name of this "Museum". Elsewhere we read:

The amazing PlaTar Collection, showcased in Ancient Ukraine, covers at least six thousand years of Ukrainian history! The organizers hope the exhibit will introduce the U.S. to the wonders of Ukraine, from the little-known Neolithic Trypilian culture through the medieval Kyivan Rus’—a remarkable historic foundation for the modern nation-state of Ukraine.

we recall that US collectors state that private collecting of antiquities is a way to combat "nationalism(s)". Yet here we have a private collection which does precisely the opposite. It is interesting too that it is being promoted by (and is promoting) the government which came to power declaring it was going to "fight Ukrainian nationalism".

The PlaTar Museum is of course nothing of the sort. It is the private collection of the late Serhiy Platonov, a successful businessman and Serhiy Taruta, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Industrial Union of Donbas Corporation and a friend of the Platonov family. Ukraininan archaeologists maintain that the majority of the archaeological artefacts included in this collection came onto the market from so-called "Black Archaeology", in other words illegal looting of archaeological sites. By buying them, these two collectors maintain "saved them from being sold abroad" (but how many other artefacts from the same looting they they did not see or want vanish into countless foreign collections?). What they were doing however was financing the continuance of the looting. Besides the scale of the damage done to the archaeological record of Ukraine, it is no great comfort that the objects passed into state hands when Platonov died.

This exhibition was shown previously in early 2011 in the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, whence it travelled to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Houston, Texas (June - Oct 2011), followed by The Museum of Russian Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota. So it is getting quite a bit of exposure and earning Yanukovych's government political kudos, business orders and - most probably quite a bit of cash. All this at a time when in the Smithsonian there was debate about whether exhibitions of this type involving - in their case salvaged and not - even looted material should go ahead in American museums. As far as I can see, there has been absolutely no debate in America about the display of items from the PlaTar collection in US museums. Perhaps there are political reasons why the US can oppose the treatment of the global archaological/cultural heritage by the Indonesian government with more firmness than in the case of Yanukovych's Ukraine?

There is not much point the AAMD holding out for more museum loans in return for playing nice and not buying unlawfully exported artefacts when it turns out that US museums are quite happy to mount exhibitions of material which comes from private collections which includes material coming from "Black Archaeology" in its collections. If they are willing to show this kind of material, and the US public is happy to go along to such exhibitions without a murmur, then what is the point of any bilateral cultural property agreements at all?

How ironic that Julia's imprisonment is due to alleged corruption, yet in a country with such a depth of poverty, stinking rich businessmen who are accused of buying enormously valuable and potentially illegal artefacts (like a number of other collectors in Ukraine in recent years) not only were never properly investigated, but are now being praised by the same government. That is not corruption? Let the Ukrainian government publish the full collecting history of every object sent in that exhibition to the US.



I wrote - too briefly it now seems - on the PlaTar Collection in my article 'commerce de vestiges archeologiques dans l'est de l'Europe' in "Halte au Pillage!" (Paris 2010)

Photo of Jailed Julia (from an article about her daughter appearing before US senators with an appeal for help). Smiling Julia from forumua from the days before she was imprisoned like Rapunzel in Yanukovych's prison system.

University of Chicago Persian antiquities Crisis

The National Iranian American Council ("a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the interests of the Iranian-American community") is warning that a new proposal by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) which will soon be considered by the full Senate as part of its latest Iran sanctions bill will "make it easier for individuals to seize and auction off priceless ancient Persian antiquities held by American museums and universities in order to collect court judgments against the Iranian government". I am not clear how that works as Sen Menendez's proposals seem to refer to financial institutions, but just in case thought I'd mention it here.

The Wikipedia summary of this bizarre and disturbing case can be seen here: University of Chicago Persian antiquities crisis. Check out the lawyer behind such culturally philistine ideas, Providence, Rhode Island attorney David J. Strachman. Obviously US collectors and dealers are going to be self-interested head over heels about that, Strachan says a number of them have expressed interest in acquiring this stuff.

Princeton Statement: the Numbers

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David Gill reports that Princeton has at last released a statement about the return last month of some objects from its collections to Italy ('Princeton University Art Museum, Italy reach new antiquities agreement' The Trustees of Princeton University). Gill notes that the statement issued on behalf of this new Jersey university on behalf of the Trustees of teh Art Museum is lacking somewhat in details, but what struck me was the wy the number of objects acquired/relinquished was portrayed:

Under the agreement, six works were returned to the Republic of Italy in December 2011 [...] a black-glazed askos; a pair of fhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifemale statuettes; four fragments of a red-figure calyx krater; fragments of an architectural relief; a pithos in white-on-red style; and a group of fragmentary architectural revetments

Meanwhile, what is more revealing about the sort of things the 'art museum' has been buying for its "research and teaching" and gives a better idea of the scale of the return:

tra cui un askos a forma di astragalo, due statuette di donna, di cui una che suona un tamburello e l’altra la lira, un pithos a figure rosse e bianche, raffigurante animali, e 166 frammenti (quattro di un cratere a figure rosse, cinque di rilievi architettonici, un gruppo di 157 elementi architettonici con figure di tori);

Now, I can understand a need to have some hand-specimens of red figure pot fragments so the student can see the difference between it and modern flower-pot so they don't make idiots of themselves when they go out in the world with a Classics degree from Princeton, but 157 knocked-off bits of building facade?

Vignette: the facade of the Princeton University Art museum

En lingerie au Musée d'Orsay

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The video of three attractive young ladies walking through the Impressionist galleries of the Musee d'Orsay last month in their firm's lingerie has caused quite a bit of controversy in France. The main cause of the fuss is that (allegedly) the event was videorecorded without getting the museum's permission (the Museum does not allow photography of its collections).

As Art Info recounts:

The clip shows three women in trench coats standing in front of the Musée d'Orsay’s Impressionist collection. The women suddenly strip down to their underwear and strut in front of the stunned — but clearly amused — spectators before running for the exit. The stunt could have been a refreshing piece of guerrilla performance art if it hadn’t been constructed solely as a big-money advertising blitz. [...] The Musée d'Orsay administration didn’t find any humor in the happening. "I am in charge of filming [in the museum]; such a scenario could never have been accepted, it's unimaginable," Amélie Hardivillier, the museum's communications director, told Libération. According to Le Figaro, Musée d'Orsay president Guy Cogeval plans to write to Etam's C.E.O. to demand that the link to the video be removed from the company's Web site and all other platforms — or else the museum's legal department will take action. Etam's viral video has not been good for the museum's reputation, with many bloggers assuming that the shoot had the institution's seal of approval.

I have two questions, first of all the stunt is not exactly what one might term "indecent", the onlookers seem amused (bemused) rather than shocked, and it seems to have been filmed in natural light. So I cannot see why Ms Hardivillier would have refused permission - provided the requisite fee was paid (and here is the key to the issue perhaps). If no damage is done to the artworks themselves or their setting then why can they not figure in ephemeral advertising as just one of the social spheres in which they function in the consciousness of modern society? They are not holy relics.

Secondly, one might wonder how in a packed gallery somebody can pull out an unauthorised professional video camera (probably a relatively big one for that quality of photography) and calmly film the girls visiting the museum (dressed) and why when the whole team is parading and prancing around (undressed) and then running right through the museum, not a single security guard or gallery superintendent is in sight anywhere to even admonish them, let alone stop the unauthorised activities. This is a major museum, in the gallery containing a major collection of impressionist art, and nobody is there supervising the crowd? Incroyable.

Or is the Museum's pretended indignation part of the publicity stunt?

And what happened to the trench coats?

Vignette: edited screen capture from You Tube version of video produced by lingerie firm in question

Artefact Loans: Be Careful of Lending Museum Objects to the US

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This is both good and bad, depending on which way you look at it. As Rick St Hilaire (Court Forfeits Cristo Portacroce After Italy Does Not Show Up) reports on the case of a sixteenth century painting formerly on display in Tallahassee Florida at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science since March 18, 2011, which had been part of an exhibition of 50 Baroque paintings on loan from the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, Italy:

The forfeited Cristo Portacroce.
Courtesy ICE

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida has ordered the forfeiture of the painting, the Cristo Portacroce Trascinato Da Un Manigoldo. The court issued the default judgment once the previous possessors, Italy and its Brera Art Gallery, failed to make a claim for the return of the artwork. The court's ruling was brief: "Upon Application of the Plaintiff(s) in the above styled cause and having examined the records and there appearing to be no responsive pleadings filed by the defendant(s), default is hereby entered against the Italian Republic, Ministry of Culture, and the Pinacoteca di Brera, on January 3, 2012."

So, on one hand another Holocaust claim has been resolved in favour of the heirs of the victims, which is good. On the other serious damage has been done to the reputation of the US as place you can send temporary loans of museum objects.

This is also yet another case where a US court has assumed the competence to determine issues about cultural property belonging to another country (the original Odyssey Salvage permit for the "Black Swan" as it was then - also Florida, the ruling against Russia over a Jewish archive held in Russia being just two annoying cases that come to mind in recent years). In this case an Italian museum loaned an object to a US one in good faith, only to have the item in a public collection (in the eyes of the Italian government legally owned - or at least not illegally owned by the public institution) taken away and awarded to a private individual. This is setting a precedent and creates a situation where international loans of cultural property to US museums are not now going to be undertaken lightly, and these of course underpin the bilateral cultural property agreements the US signs with other nations in a pretence to be implementing the 1970 UNESCO Convention.

The background to this case has been discussed by St Hilaire here and here.

Stitching up the Sforzas (II)

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I'd not mention this here were it not for how rude the art expert got about me trying to make sense out of the news reports linking it to Poland. The Independent carries an article about the drawing known as La Bella Principessa, "a controversial work which made headlines around the world in September" after claims were made that it was a genuine, £100m Leonardo, not a later fake, as previously believed. The article ('The Da Vinci feud: has the National Gallery snubbed a Leonardo masterpiece?' The Independent, 1 November 2011) discusses how:

Letters and emails seen by The Independent show how the gallery's director, Dr Nicholas Penny, unceremoniously severed communications with the Canadian owner of La Bella Principessa [...] Peter Silverman, [...] in one email to Dr Penny, Mr Silverman wrote: "I am rather dumbfounded by your silence, indifference and lack of support on this Leonardo thing." The row eventually became so fierce that Mr Silverman instructed lawyers to act as an intermediary between him and Dr Penny. In a letter dated 19 September, the exasperated gallery director told him: "I do not think there is going to be anything to be gained from further correspondence on this point," calling time on a debate that has lasted for more than three years [...] In 2008, Dr Penny told Mr Silverman he was "deeply suspicious" of the drawing.

Obviously getting it in the exhibition would do a lot to legitimise the claim of this work to be a genuine Leonardo, and boost its value accordingly. In the same way Renfrew urges museums not to show recently surfaced antiquities from private collections which do not have a kosher collecting history, this is because the mere fact that it was exhibited in such a venue and maybe mentioned in a published catalogue is then presented by the seller as in some way enhancing the "legitimacy" of the antiquity.

The Heritage of Heritage Salvage

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Over on Meg Lambert's blog is posted a comment which merits drawing attention to. It highlights the problems of treating unique archaeological complexes as artefact mines. The text is a report of Mr Agus Sudaryadi (Coordinator for Underwater Archaeology, Office for Cultural Heritage Preservation of Jambi, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Indonesia) referring to The Belitung shipwreck site after commercial salvage in 1998

The Belitung Shipwreck Site, located at 17 m depth in Belitung waters, Indonesia, is a shipwreck site containing Tang Cargo Treasure that was lifted by private salvage companies, PT. Sulung Segara Jaya and Seabed Exploration Company in 1998. The salvaging process [wa]s done without involving Indonesian archaeologist. The ship is an Arab dhow with 15.5 m long that includes 60,000 pieces artifacts from Tang Dynasty period. At present these artifacts are under the management of Singapore Sentosa Leisure Group. In 2010, the Office for Cultural Heritage Preservation of Jambi conducted the first underwater archaeological survey at the Belitung Shipwreck site in order to find out the recent conditions of the site after salvaging in 1998. The result shows that the site is extremely ravaged, where unidentified ceramic fragments spread out in a radius of ± 20 m². It seems clear that the ceramics fragments have been removed by the company then thrown back into the sea because they were considered non-commercial. Meanwhile, the shipwreck was not found anymore. It was only a big form hole with 6 m wide and 15 m long, which seems to be the ship place. The remaining wrecks are now just a few small wood fragments and a sizable chunk of wood sitting, seems as a mast foundation.

Avenge the Armenians: Steal From the Turks?

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In the blog "Keghart.com", we find a strange compilation of two letters the Boston Globe declined to print in reply to the article by Geoff Edgers about Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a statue: “MFA sends ‘Weary Herakles’ statue back to Turkey,” (Sept. 24, 2011). They were written by two US Armenians Berge Tatian and David Boyajian both of Massachusetts. Tatian (from Newton MA) objects to the return:

[...] It's as if I find a work of art on my property and then go around claiming it as part of my patrimony. The Turk's complaint over looting is pathetic if not laughable when they themselves are guilty of the most egregious crime of looting, that of the properties of the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians of Asia Minor, after destroying their heritage.

Boyajian of Stoneham MA also objects for much the same reasons:

[...] Turkey has exterminated the indigenous peoples of Asia Minor – Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians – and tried to erase all traces of their existence, while harassing the few who are left. Turkey has destroyed, deliberately misidentified, or grossly neglected most of the churches, cultural landmarks, and villages of these ancient peoples, whom Turks conquered after arriving from Central Asia. Hundreds of such villages have also been assigned Turkish names to erase the fact that these were the lands and homes of people whom Turkey annihilated. [...] Rather than returning the Herakles statue, the MFA should be shedding light on Turkey’s acts of cultural destruction and genocide.

Well, of course this is all about the Armenian genocide of 1915-23, and these two are just trying to entangle the Greek statue in their own quarrel about their own history and identity. We note again the use - so unusually prevalent when reading cultural property arguments written by Americans - the "two wrongs make a right" ("it's OK to steal from the citizens of Turkey because they are all descendants of slanty-eyed culture-damaging monsters from central Asia"). This is the rhetoric of the playground rather than an adult argument.

First of all of course Berge finding an ancient object on his own property in Massachusetts is free to do with it, and call it, what he wants. That is what US law states. That's what US property owners do to native American artefacts found by the thousand on eBay. In the same way Turkish law states certain things about antiquities. The upper half of the Herakles statue was removed in a clandestine fashion, and not reported or subject to the export licencing procedures. it was illegally removed from the site and the country. Those, and no other, are grounds enough for it to go back. In the same way as if Mr Berge had had his car stolen from his driveway, or a Chinese vase from his living room. Its not anything to do with "culture" or "looting", it is theft.

Tatian and Boyajian write as though the establishment of a Turkish nation was the only case ever in world history of population displacement with all that goes with it. Far from it. The process affected my country several times since the end of the eighteenth century. Despite all the historical grievances, the Poles don't go running round advocating stealing from the Russians, Germans, Austrians and Hungarians because of what they were doing to Poland at the time of the Armenian 'holocaust'. It is perfectly natural that villages in the Ukraine which were once Polish now have Ukrainian names, and villages in what was once Germany in the west of Poland have names that can be inflected in Polish and not their original German names which often cannot.

Likewise maybe Tatian and Boyajian would like to give us a list of the preserved places of worship, burial grounds, cultural landmarks, and villages of the ancient peoples who the colonists found here (the Wampanoag tribes) which are the traces of the existence of these peoples and their cultures in Massachusetts (which of course has territorial boundaries entirely coterminous with those of the native groups living there before the colonisation). And where are the thousands of Wampanoag tribesmen? The ones that survived the so-called King Phillip's War? The Narragansett, Wampanoag, Podunk, Nipmuck ? And of course "Newton" and "Stoneham" have well-obvious Wampanoag etymology, don't they?

What, given their own history of cultural replacement, do Tatian and Boyajian imagine gives the people of Boston, MA any right to keep foreign stolen artefacts on the grounds which they cite?

Vignette: The Wampanoag, cultures and communities gone before the Trail of Tears.

Italy to Help Iraq Preserve the Past

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It has been announced by the spokesperson for the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities that Italy has agreed to train Iraqi archaeologists and modernize several halls of Iraq’s National Museum.

Abdulzahra Talaqani said some of the halls dedicated to the Assyrian and Islamic civilizations were to be rehabilitated by the Italians. He said the sides have signed a memorandum on the latest Italian assistance to the country’s national heritage.“The Italian side, in accordance with the memorandum, shall rehabilitate the 2nd Assyrian Hall in the museum and an Islamic hall. The agreement also calls for the training of Iraqi personnel involved in excavation and tourism,” said Talaqani. The Italian side will pay for the rehabilitation and the training, he added. Italy is actively involved in upgrading Iraqi museums. Previously, it rehabilitated two other halls in the museum and offered designs for the repair and modernization of provincial museum in Najaf, Nasiriya and Diwaniya. Italian experts have organized several seminars for their Iraqi counterparts on how to preserve and safeguard antiquities."

We recall that it was the Italians who (as part of the US-led 'Coalition of the Willing' which shamefully attacked Iraq in 2003) took the cultural preservation more seriously than most, sending a team of specially trained carabinieri there to protect archaeological sites. It is good to see this activity followed up in times of peace by concrete action in the form of international co-operation and exchange of expertise.

Shaymaa Adel, 'Italy to train Iraqi archaeologists and rehabilitate National Museum', Azzaman, September 30, 2011

Vignette: Assyrian hall in National Museum in Baghdad