The Sands of Time: Sue McGovern-Huffmann and the Fading Wild Apricots, Five years On.

Mission Statement: " To advance the responsible
and legal trading and collecting of ancient and ethnographic art"

In August 2014, Washington dealer Sue McGovern-Huffmann (Sands of Time Ancient Art)  and her pals started up the ambitiously-named Association of Dealers and Collectors of Ancient and Ethnographic Art (ADCAEA), an organization 'dedicated to providing resources, education, networking and support to advance the responsible and legal trading and collecting of ancient and ethnographic art'. Leaving aside the question of whether there is such a thing (or rather whether all antiquities are 'art'),  there are other problems with this organisation that have been covered over the years in this blog.  It seems that five years on, the 'officers' [sic] still are: Sue McGovern-Huffman, Sands of Time Ancient Art (President), Richard Banks, Collector (Vice President), Peter Tompa, Bailey and Ehrenberg PLLC (Secretary), Joseph Lewis II, Collector (Treasurer) and 'Randy' Hixenbaugh, Hixenbaugh Ancient Art (Board Member). Most of these folk have been figured in the pages of this blog over the years, rarely flatteringly.

A clutter of antiquity: Interior of
Sands of Time Antiquities, Georgetown, DC
 (Curator's Eye Marketing Solutions) 

Membership in the Association 'is open to any person who is interested in the responsible collecting or study of ancient and/or ethnographic art' who is willing to pay the annual fees for membership (at Student, Collector, Friend, Dealer, Patron or Corporate/Institutions level). It is not known how much money was raised for this group by such means, but one wonders what fee-paying members have got for their money in the past three years, when the website suggests this organisation has been moribund and failing to report any progress at all in fulfilling its six alleged 'objectives'.

There is a 'Code of Conduct' for members, but no statistics are available for how numerous that 'membership' actually is these days. In any case, the fact that two dealers on the ADCAEA board and two dealer-members (Sands of Time, Hixenbaugh, Ancient Resources and Art for Eternity) seem to have recently shifted freshly-surfaced Isin foundation cones indicates that this 'code' is in fact not worth the paper it is printed on.

Entries in the blog end two years ago in July 2017 with two posts on opposing US attempts to regulate the illegal import of artefacts into the country, and a third anonymous one on behalf of the American Committee for Cultural Policy (CCP) [no policy-makers, but a misnamed antiquities dealers' interest group]. That hardly speaks for a willingness of the ADCAEA as a wannabe spokesbody for all 'dealers and collectors of ancient and ethnographic art' to actually be involved in  advancing their 'responsible and legal trading'.

In Polish we would say „Kończ waść, wstydu oszczędź” - end this now, save the embarrassment. Pathetic.