Category: Antiquities

We Visited Morgantina and Aidone, they were great

This June I had the chance to visit the town of Aidone in Southern Sicily. It’s a town that I’ve written and thought a lot about, so when we had the opportunity to pop up from teaching in Valletta for a long weekend, we jumped. Its fame comes as the result of a series of looting scandals.

The village and the archaeological site has been written about a great deal, but I haven’t come across many who have actually visited the site and the Muesum. For decades, the site it represented in a tangible way the competing interests of illicit looters and archaeologists. Archaeologists would excavate during the summer, looters would raid the site after they left. Year after year the cycle continued.

If you are reading this you probably have some strong feelings about where the Dea di Aidone (aka the Getty Goddess) should reside. This short essay is a collection of my own thoughts about the ancient site of Morgantina and the nearby town of Aidone.

To give a bit of the history as I understand it, the island of Sicily was subject to the control of many Mediterranean civilizations, and Morgantina’s history reflects this. Morgantina was founded perhaps seven or eight centuries before Christ. At some point it came under the control of Syracuse. Much of what now exists at this site reflects a city at the edge of the ancient Greek world. At some point in the third century BCE Morgantina may have chosen to throw their lot in with Carthage, a choice which likely proved costly when it was finally captured by Rome. Morgantina may have fallen on hard times, and the city itself seems to have been largely deserted by the First Century CE.

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The baths at Morgantina. Notice the painting on the walls

Thesite has been the subject of a number of archaeological excavations, mainly by American archaeologists, and also the target of antiquities looters who ultimately sent objects on through the illicit black market in antiquities. Many of the most beautiful items looted ended up in American Museums, notably the Getty and the Metropolitan Museum of art. This seems to me to be a notable correlation. How is it an accident that most summers for the last 60 years have seen american archaeologists digging at Morgantina, and also the museums of the United States acquiring works from the very site. Assigning blame to the archaeologists who dig there, the local officials for protecting the site, or the museum curators who

A detail from one of the 16 pieces of the "Morgantina Silver"
A detail from one of the 16 pieces of the “Morgantina Silver”

acquire this material seems unproductive for this short essay. But visiting the Museum in Aidone and the site of Morgantina I was struck by what a colossal policy failure the looting represents.

Continue reading “We Visited Morgantina and Aidone, they were great”

Italy reached an agreement with the Glyptotek

Contents of a tomb from the Sabine Hills, north of Rome
Contents of a tomb from the Sabine Hills, north of Rome

Italy and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek art museum in Copenhagen on Tuesday announced an agreement for the return of antiquities taken illegally from Italy.

Objects repatriated include the contents of a tomb from near Fara north of Rome. Those objects had allegedly passed through Robert Hecht, a familiar name to those who follow illicit antiquities. Hecht passed away in 2012, and had been the subject of a criminal trial in Rome in 2005, allegedly for dealing in illicit antiquities.

Robert Hecht described buying the Etruscan chariot from Giacomo Medici:

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Italy Squandered €150m in Culture Funding

La dea di Aidone
La dea di Aidone

The Art Newspaper reported last week after examining EU documents, that Italy has been stripped of €151m in culture funding next year because regions have failed to spend funds allocated. This includes the loss of funding for Aidone, which is the village near the ancient site of Morgantina:

The EU rejected a request for €2.4m from the Archaeological Museum of Aidone to renovate its galleries because of incomplete documentation and the lack of an “economic framework”. The museum was due to welcome back the Head of Hades (400-300BC), a Hellenistic terracotta fragment that was restored to Sicily by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in January. But the sculpture, thought to have been illegally excavated from a sanctuary at Morgantina in the 1970s, remains in limbo in Palermo, partly because the Aidone museum has not prepared a suitable display for it.

This is a really sad development. It seems now very difficult to square the argument that works of art must be returned when the requesting nation cannot properly manage funding that is available. The step here needs to be capacity building for these smaller museums and regions to properly instruct the employees the expectations of grant requests and the expectations.

There may be another side to this story. The English-language reporting of happenings in Italy often have a Northern-European bias. But its hard to put a positive spin on such wasted resources.

We’ll hopefully be in Aidone and Morgantina in a week’s time—we are able to sneak away from my cultural heritage law course in Valletta, Malta. I hope to have some images and thoughts on the site and museum in Aidone soon.

Tina Lepri & Hannah McGivern, Italy squanders €150m in EU grants, http://theartnewspaper.com/news/conservation/italy-squanders-hundreds-of-millions-in-eu-grants/.

House Task Force discussing Terrorism Financing and Antiquities

This morning a Congressional Task Force to Investigate Terrorism Financing is discussing terrorism and the antiquities trade:

Witnesses include:

Here is the Memo prepared by the Congressional Research Service prepared for the House Committee on Financial Services:

 

041916 Tf Supplemental Hearing Memo

Student Note on the Retroactivity of the 1970 Convention

Katarzyna Januszkiewicz has placed a student note in the Brooklyn Journal of International Law examining the “Retroactivity in the 1970 UNESCO Convention: Cases of the United States and Australia“.

From the Introduction:

This Note explores the domestic application of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Convention on the Means of prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property of 1970 (“UNESCO Convention” or “Convention”) by both the United States and Australia. The currently growing trend of returning looted artifacts to their countries of origin highlights the need for stricter law enforcement procedures and a possible reevaluation of the U.S. policy of the nonretroactive application of the UNESCO Convention, as applied to domestic law. As a major market country, the United States can lead the way in encouraging repatriation and in establishing better relations with source countries that do not have the resources to fight for their lost heritage on their own.

The Note argues that the non-retroactive features of the Convention lead to problems with it, which I’d argue is not really a major flaw of the Convention. Overall its a useful student note, but one that could have benefited from some editing by someone more familiar with the Convention and the literature examining it. Law students, if you are writing on cultural heritage, please get in touch. I’m happy to read drafts and offer suggestions on your writing and arguments.

On those Asia Week Seizures

Image from ICE, CBP, This seizure contained a 2nd Century Bodhisattva schist head from the Gandhara region (likely from what is now known today as Swat Valley, Pakistan,) and is estimated to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Image from ICE, CBP, a 2nd Century Bodhisattva schist head from the Gandhara region (likely from what is now known today as Swat Valley, Pakistan,) and is estimated to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Asia Week in New York is an effort by galleries and Museums to exhibit Asian art and promote sales. According to Tom Mashberg’s reporting in the New York Times, it generated $360 million in sales last year.

But this year the event also generated considerable law enforcement attention, with by my count the seizure of eight antiquities. At least so far It revealed again the depressing scope of antiquities looting networks. Even when a network is revealed, and dismantled, objects appear again on the market for years after a successful investigation—in some cases decades or more. The ICE press release estimated that the Kapoor investigation and Operation Hidden Idol has secured over 2,500 objects, worth an estimated $100 million, with a total of four arrests.

The seizures at Asia Week this year stem largely from the investigation by Federal Agents, in cooperation with Indian authorities, of Subhash Kapoor.

Chasing Aphrodite has comprehensive coverage, and offers this background on the investigation:

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Athenians’ Group Seeks Justice for the Parthenon Sculptures

The Parthenon Sculptures at the Duveen Gallery, in the British Museum
The Parthenon Sculptures at the Duveen Gallery, in the British Museum

An Athenian cultural association has brought a claim before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg seeking the return of the Parthenon Sculptures held by the British Museum. This year marks the 200th anniversary of Parliament’s decision to purchase sculptures stripped from the Parthenon from Lord Elgin. At present most of the surviving sculptures rest in London at the British Museum.

Alexander Herman for the Institute of Art & Law blog summarizes the allegations:

The claim is aimed at the United Kingdom and alleges violations of the following rights under the European Convention on Human Rights:

cultural identity as an aspect of «the right to respect for private life» (Article 8 of ECHR);

cultural identity as an aspect of «the freedom of conscience» (Article 9 of ECHR);

the right to access cultural information, as an aspect of «the freedom of expression» (Article 10 of ECHR);

the «right to an effective remedy» (Article 13 of ECHR); and

the right to property, in the sense of integral public access to the monument (Article 1 of the Additional Protocol to ECHR).

The Athenians’ Association, which has existed since 1895, argues in a statement that it hopes to “raise international public awareness and to have justice rendered” and “hopes that the truth will prevail, that the monument will be restored and that history and tradition will shine forth for the good of mankind”.

I’ve laid out my argument as well, that cultural justice demands the reunification of this work of art.

  1. APPEAL OF THE «ATHENIANS’ ASSOCIATION» BEFORE THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS FOR THE ACROPOLIS SCULPTURES, Σύλλογος των Αθηναίων (Feb. 18, 2016), http://www.syllogostonathinaion.gr/prosfigi-gia-ta-glypta-tis-akropoleos/appeal-of-the-athenians-association-before-the-european-court-of-human-rights-for-the-acropolis-sculptures/.
  2. Derek Fincham, The Parthenon Sculptures and Cultural Justice, 23 Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal 943 (2013).

Will Internal Audits be the New Norm for Museums?

This Kushan Buddha statue, bought by the National Gallery in Australia is one of the "questionable" objects flagged in the museum's internal review
This Kushan Buddha statue, bought by the National Gallery in Australia is one of the “questionable” objects flagged in the museum’s internal review

Good news for those who want to encourage museums to thoroughly examine their collections. The National Gallery of Australia has determined that 22 antiquities from Asia have “insufficient or questionable provenance documentation.”

Chasing Aphrodite has a comprehensive roundup, including the dealers and collectors who had possession of these objects:

Continue reading “Will Internal Audits be the New Norm for Museums?”

Cambodia and Museé Guimet reunite Khmer statue

7th century sculpture of Harihari
7th century sculpture of Harihari

One of the powerful symbols of the gulf separating museums and source communities are the fragments of sculpture which populate so many galleries. It is the best interest of these museums and the source communities to cooperate when possible, which makes the news from Cambodia welcome.

This 7th-century Khmer head has been in the possession of the Museé Guimet for almost 130 years. But now the Art Newspaper reports the statue and the rest of the statue will be reunited:

The head, which has been in the Musée Guimet’s collection since 1889, will remain in Cambodia for the next five years, says the museum curator Thierry Zéphir. It will be reattached to the decapitated body of Harihara, which the National Museum of Cambodia acquired in 1944, after the museum’s conservation team—led by Bertrand Porte of the French School of Asian Studies—confirmed they were a match.

The head was discovered in the late 19th century in a ruined temple at Phnom Da by Etienne Aymonier, a French colonial administrator and the first archaeologist to survey the remains of the Khmer empire. The Lyon industrialist Emile Guimet acquired the fragment, along with other Cambodian artefacts shipped to France for the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, for his ambitious new museum dedicated to the religions of the Far East.

The head of the Harihara statue, which represents the combined gods Vishnu and Shiva, will be on display to the public at the Cambodian national museum today.

  1. Hannah McGivern, French museum reunites head with decapitated Khmer statue (2016), http://theartnewspaper.com/news/conservation/french-museum-reunites-heads-with-decapitated-khmer-statue/ (last visited Jan 20, 2016).

International Cultural Heritage Law Course, Malta

valletta-Malta

This summer I’m slated to teach a two hour credit course on International Cultural Heritage Law in Malta through South Texas’ Malta program, alongside courses in Comparative Tax; and Democracy, Politics and Courts.

More information is available here.

Here’s my course description:

The course will examine the intersection between law and material cultural heritage. It will show how domestic and international law works to resolve disputes over ancient sites, works of art, and antiquities. A particular emphasis will also be the legal instruments which prohibit the intentional destruction and wholescale looting of ancient culture. We will examine international conventions, domestic laws, and analyze the prominent cases which have arisen over cultural heritage disputes.

If you are a law student interested in summer study opportunities, I hope you’ll consider it.

 

Malta