Author: Derek Fincham

In the News

I saw a couple of noteworthy items in the papers this morning.

First, there was an interesting note of a legal event held in London last week. Edward Fennell of the Times Online in his “In the City” feature talked about this event:

Last week Withers hosted one of the most curious legal events I have ever attended. In a gripping account to a smart multinational audience of art professionals, insurers and well-heeled collectors the firm’s art recovery expert, partner Pierre Valentin told how he helped to recover paintings from the Bakwin collection that had been stolen in America in the 1970s.

Working with the Art Loss Register (which operates in that seductive area where culture and money meet glamour and crime) Mr Valentin described a Hitchcock-like thriller featuring painstaking research, dodgy Russians and even murder – but all ending in happy success for the resolute legal sleuth. As the tale unfolded we could see on display the very “McGuffin” that had driven the drama – the collection of paintings themselves by Cézanne, Matisse, Soutine, Vlaminck By the end of an astonishing evening Withers had proved itself a true ornament to the City’s legal scene.

I take it Whithers must be a firm of Solicitors. Sounds like some fascinating stories. I do not know about this particular case, but I am familiar with Pierre Valentin. It sounds fascinating. Here is hoping he makes it up to Scotland.

Second, I noticed an AP story by Ariel David which has been picked up by a number of papers in recent weeks. I haven’t noted it before but it is an interesting story of the notorious tombaroli Pietro Casasanta who has testified at the True/Hecht trial and Rome. Here is an excerpt:

It used to be so easy for the “tombaroli,” Italy’s tomb raiders.

Pietro Casasanta had no Indiana Jones-type escapes from angry natives or booby-trapped temples. He worked undisturbed in daylight with a bulldozer, posing as a construction worker to become one of Italy’s most successful plunderers of archaeological treasures.

When he wasn’t in prison, the convicted looter operated for decades in this countryside area outside Rome, benefiting from what he says was lax surveillance that allowed him to dig into ancient Roman villas and unearth statues, pottery and other artifacts, which he then sold for millions of dollars on the illegal antiquities market.

“Nobody cared, and there was so much money going around,” he recalled. “I always worked during the day, with the same hours as construction crews, because at night it was easier to get noticed and to make mistakes.”

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Night Metal Detecting Looting Britain?

Archaeologists claim so, at least in Jasper Copping’s article in the Sunday Telegraph. They claim the practice, called “nighthawking”, is destroying context in a number of protected sites. These detectors then sell the works on the internet or eBay. These claims of antiquities transactions on the internet are thrown about a great deal, but I’m aware of no concrete study or even much in the way of supporting evidence of this claim, though there are sometimes anecdotal claims which are thrown about.

It seems that English Heritage and the British Museum have commissioned a £100,000 study into the scope of the activity, which might lead to new legislation to deal with offenders.

There certainly are problems with the Dealing in Cultural Objects Offences (Act), which makes it difficult to establish wrongdoing when purchasers do not inquire into an object’s provenance. If new legislation is forthcoming, to be truly effective it needs to pinpoint the difficulty in regulating good faith purchasers, and raise the bar for the inquiry which must go into their decision to buy.

The nighthawking problem does reveal why protecting rural and historic sites can be so difficult. The Treasure Act has problems to be sure, but I have argued that it is a good and pragmatic compromise between archaeologists and antiquities collectors. When qualifying treasure is found under the Treasure Act (which applies only to England and Wales), finders are required by law to report the finds, and are rewarded for doing so. The forthcoming study will be interesting, and the actions by these unscrupulous detectors may run the risk of destroying the delicate compromise which the Treasure Act has created.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

More on Odyssey Marine

NPR’s All Things Considered had an interesting story on Odyssey Marine yesterday. It’s a good chance to hear both sides of the debate.

One of the founders of the publicly traded company, Greg Stemm said, “The only thing we’re saying right now is that we’ve really recovered about a half-million coins, and a number of artifacts that are from the colonial period … that were in the Atlantic Ocean.”

But the attorney representing Spain, Jim Goold says “The U.S. has a lot of Navy and other ships that have sunk around the world… The idea that … anyone can take U.S. government property just by looking around in the water and pulling it up without authorization … just doesn’t work. And that’s not what the courts say.”

It will be interesting to see how this case unfolds. It strikes me there is a tremendous tension between studying the wreck scientifically and commercially excavating it. The UNESCO Underwater Heritage Convention precludes commercial exploitation of wrecks. Finding a workable compromise between commerce and archaeology is particularly difficult with underwater heritage. This massive half a billion recovery from the still unidentified wreck underlines the problem.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Morgantina Antiquities


Elisabetta Povoledo has an article in today’s NY Times on the Morgantina Aphrodite currently on display in the Getty Villa. I’ve written about this particular dispute many times, most recently in relation to the Getty’s Francavilla Marittima project which brought together experts to try and determine where precisely the statue originated.

Here’s an excerpt:

In the Aidone Archaeological Museum, which houses artifacts from a nearby dig at an ancient Greek settlement called Morgantina, visitors settle for a large poster at the entrance depicting the statue and announcing a national campaign to bring it back.

“This is her rightful place,” said Nicola Leanza, the culture minister for Sicily, who, like many others, argues that the goddess was illegally excavated from Morgantina.

The Getty, which bought the statue in 1988 for $18 million, isn’t so sure.

For nearly two decades it fended off the Italian government’s sporadic claims to the sculpture. But as the demands grew more pressing, the Getty acknowledged that there might be “problems” attached to the acquisition. In November it announced that it would study the object and reach a decision on whether to hand it over within a year.

“We are on target to achieve that objective,” Ron Hartwig, a Getty spokesman, said in an e-mail message. (The museum has already offered to transfer title to the statue.)

Yet the people of Aidone are tired of waiting. For this town the statue has become a blazing symbol of Italy’s legal and moral battle against foreign museums and private collectors that bought archaeological artifacts with hazy backgrounds, plundering the nation of its heritage.

It’s an interesting article which summarizes Italy’s position, and why repatriating antiquities means so much to individual communities both because of the cultural wealth, but also in terms of new visitors. That may also indicate why the institutions currently holding them are loathe to return them even though they may have been acquired without enough due diligence of checking into their provenance.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Ransom or Prison


Last week a man was sentenced to five years in prison for the theft of this Benvenuto Cellini salt-cellar. The 500 year-old work may be worth as much as $50 million. Robert Mang stole the gold an enamel sculpture from Vienna’s Fine Arts Museum in 2003, easily skirting the security cameras and alarm systems.

He knew of course that there was no legitimate market for the object, so instead hid the salt-cellar under his bed and then buried it in a forest. He sent a number of ransom notes to the museum’s insurance company threatening to melt the work down if he wasn’t paid €10-million. A number of thieves attempt to ransom their ill-gotten gains back to the insurance companies or original owners, and its unclear how often a ransom is paid. In this case certainly, the owners and insurers made the rigt decision, but it must have been a difficult one in the face of the potential destruction of the work.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Rutelli, Repatriation and Cultural Policy

Lee Rosenbaum has some very interesting things to say over at Culturegrrl on the press conference Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli had yesterday at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York.

First, as Lee says,

Robert Stiriti (second from left, above), attaché at the American Embassy in Rome for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told me that criminal charges “are pending” in Italy (but have not yet been filed) against an American private collector who owned several objects (including the marble sarcophagus of a child) recovered by ICE on Oct. 20 from his New York residence.

Also, Rutelli announced there may be a forthcoming agreement between Italy and Princeton concerning some objects, which would likely involve some loans from Italy.

The two cornerstones of recent Italian repatriation efforts have been the threat of prosecution along with cultural loans if objects are returned. It’s a strategy that has worked quite well. The engine behind these efforts is the political goodwill engendered in Italy when objects are returned. That seems to make Italy unique, perhaps in all the world, where cultural policy matters.

It brings to mind a time when perhaps cultural policy mattered in America.

There’s been a lot of discussion about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Pentagon of late. I always enjoy stories of the Works Project Administration making art and building places like Red Rocks and The Supreme Court Building during the great depression. Steve Vogel has been making the rounds on npr and the daily show for his new book The Pentagon: The Untold Story. They broke ground on the building 3 months before Pearl Harbor (on September 11, 1941). The initial site was supposed to be opposite the Lincoln Memorial. But President Roosevelt was pressured by the fine arts commission to move the building site. They didn’t want to disturb the vista between Lee’s Mansion and the Lincoln memorial. The President who led America through the great depression and WWII stopped to consider the view for future generations. I couldn’t imagine the current executive taking such considerations; I think that tells volumes about how cultural policy has changed dramatically.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

FBI Recovers Buck’s Manuscript

The Philadelphia office of the FBI has announced it has recovered a 400-page manuscript stolen around 1966 from the author’s farm. The Good Earth manuscript by Pearl Buck won the Pulitzer prize, and was the driving force behind the author’s Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s not clear whether the FBI’s Art Crime Team was involved in this recovery, as they are based in Philadelphia, or whether it was agents from the Philadelphia office who made the recovery. There is no precise value for the manuscript, but it is surely priceless for literary scholars.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Vigango from Kenya


Robin Pogrebin has an interesting article in today’s New York Times on a decision to return 9 wooden grave objects to Kenya. A ceremony at the UN yesterday marked the decision. They had been purchased by Lewis and Jay allen and were on display in their Park Avenue apartment. Their daughter decided to return them to Kenya after learning of their significance to Kenyans. It took her four months to arrange for their return. That seems to be an underconsidered problem with many source nations: they need to make it easy for individuals to repatriate artifacts to ensure they aren’t subject to criminal liability and that there are places to hold the objects.

It seems the statues are used to decorate graves, and often become part of ongoing ceremonies, discussions and celebrations. It would be as if someone took the headstone from your grandmother’s grave and displayed it in their living room. The clear implication is that all vigango are stolen in one form or another. They are valued by collectors in the US, Europe and Japan because they are beautiful works of african art, but they may not know they were meant as grave decoration. This strongly indicates all exported vigango were stolen.

But some US museums have them in their collection, and are loathe to return them. The ethical and legal grounds for their return is very strong, the only thing missing from a repatriation would seem to be an initiative by the African source nations.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Repatriation and Macchu Picchu


There was an outstanding piece in yesterday’s New York Times magazine by Arthur Lubow on the fate of objects excavated by Hiram Bingham from Macchu Picchu. He found the ancient city in 1911 and excavated the site in 1912 and 1914. The objects he excavated are currently held by Yale University. There is also an excellent slide show of pictures taken during the original excavation. The piece does a great job of highlighting how difficult it can be to generate consensus in cultural policy.

At issue are the artifacts Bingham took back to Yale, which Peru argued were only to be on temporary loan. The excavated artifacts at New Haven are:

a bit of a letdown. Mostly, the pieces are bones, in varying stages of decomposition, or pots, many of them in fragments. Unsurpassed as stonemasons, engineers and architects, the Incas thought more prosaically when it came to ceramics. Leaving aside unfair comparisons to the jaw-dropping Machu Picchu site itself, the pottery of the Inca, even when intact, lacks the drama and artistry of the ceramics of earlier civilizations of Peru like the Moche and Nazca.

However, many Peruvians want the objects returned, in a dispute which echoes the claims made by the Greeks for the return of the Parthenon Marbles. However in this case I think Yale has a much stronger ethical claim.

Hilda Vidal makes the argument for the return of the collection:

“My opinion reflects the opinion of most Peruvians,” Hilda Vidal, a curator at the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History of Peru in Lima, told me. “In general, anything that is patrimony of the cultures of the world, whether in museums in Asia or Europe or the United States, came to be there during the times when our governments were weak and the laws were weak, or during the Roman conquest or our conquest by the Spanish. Now that the world is more civilized, these countries should reflect on this issue. It saddens us Peruvians to go to museums abroad and see a Paracas textile. I am hopeful that in the future all the cultural patrimony of the world will return to its country of origin.”

Part of that makes a good and sound argument to be sure, but you aren’t going to get far in a repatriation dispute by arguing the museums in Paris, New York, London, etc. should be emptied. Likewise, I have a difficult time lumping Bingham in with the Spanish conquerors who stripped temples and melted down gold to return to Spain. That doesn’t mean Bingham is a revered figure in Peru by any means. Rumors (which have been discredited) suspect Bingham of smuggling out gold during the excavation. Also, some accuse Bingham of not even discovering the ancient complex, which had always been known to local farmers.

Lubow correctly points out though that these antiquities and remnants of ancient cultures are used as objects of political power today. And they also have value for lots of other interest groups. As he said, “Historic relics have pragmatic value: politically, for purposes of national pride and partisan advantage; economically, for display to tourists, museumgoers, magazine readers and TV-program watchers; scientifically, as research material for scholars pursuing academic careers; and, most nakedly, as merchandise for dealers in antiquities.”

That’s exactly right, and all these interest groups make it difficult to forge cultural policy. The strict national patrimony laws of Peru even make it difficult for reasonable compromise with Yale. Yale has generously offered:

The university showed me two letters sent to Peruvian officials in which Yale offered to send back “the museum-quality (that is, whole) objects excavated by Bingham at Machu Picchu” for display in a “state-of-the-art museum exclusively dedicated to Machu Picchu” that would be opened in Cuzco in collaboration with Yale on the centennial anniversary of Bingham’s 1911 discovery of the site. To help raise money for the museum, Yale would resurrect its touring exhibition, which — including dioramas and ceramics — would end up permanently in Cuzco. This represents a significant concession over Yale’s past proposal to divide possession of the approximately 300 display-worthy objects. The research collection, however, would continue to reside in New Haven. “The museum-quality pieces are the ones that people will want to see,” Shailor, the deputy provost, told me. “I don’t think they will want to see the end of a little finger or five dog bones, but these are extraordinarily valuable from a research perspective.” When I spoke with him in early May, Levin said that Yale is prepared to concede Peruvian title to the entire collection, but only after the ultimate physical allocation of the objects has been negotiated. In other words, Peru’s pride will be assuaged if Yale’s research needs can be met. Whether Peru will consent to those terms — indeed, whether the GarcÃa government is at liberty to do so, legally or politically — is uncertain;

The offer strikes me as a fair compromise which would be a win for both sides, especially considering the current state of the museum near the Aguas Calientes train station:

I found evidence of none of those amenities. The doors were open to the air, which was moist from the nearby river, and the sole official was a caretaker who sold tickets and then exited the building. On display in the attractive (if unguarded) museum are the finds that Peruvian archaeologists have made at Machu Picchu in the years since Bingham’s excavations.

And that gets to the heart of repatriation disputes. Like it or not Yale has a great deal of funds at its disposal and is capable of performing good scientific study, while in Peru, the artifacts could be at risk of theft and are not climate controlled. It seems Yale’s offer to fund a museum in Peru would be an excellent opportunity for Peruvians. Yet it seems many of the strident cultural nationalists have a hard time with even this compromise.

Hat tip to Donn Zaretsky at the art law blog for pointing out the article.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com