Repatriation – Page 12 – Illicit Cultural Property

Palestinian PM Makes Claim for Dead Sea Scrolls

The Toronto Star has a nice piece on the demand by the Palestinian Authority to cancel an exhibition of Dead Sea Scrolls. Palestinian officials claim the objects were stolen by Israel from Palestinian territories. It is an indication of the increasingly prominent role antiquities are playing in national politics and notions of national heritage and even past wrongdoing. The calls share similarities with other nations who have urged repatriation of objects, from Scotland to Peru and others. Hamdan Taha, the director-general of the archaeological department of the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, “The exhibition would entail exhibiting or displaying artifacts removed from the Palestinian territories . . . I think it is important that Canadian institutions would be responsible and act in accordance with Canada’s obligations.”

The Royal Ontario Museum will host a six-month long exhibit of the scrolls, operated in conjunction with the Israel Antiquities Authority. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of about 900 manuscripts, dating to 70 AD. The caves in which the scrolls were found were located near Qumran (see map below), in what is now the Palestinian West Bank. From the piece in the Toronto Star:

Beginning in 1947, and for nearly a decade, experts from the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem, the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, and the École biblique et archéologique française excavated the caves and salvaged the scrolls, only a few of which were found whole. The rest were scattered into thousands of fragments.

Written mainly in Hebrew, and partly in Aramaic and Greek, the scrolls include about 200 copies of portions of the Jewish Bible.

At first, the scrolls were housed in the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem, which was under Jordanian control at the time.

After the 1967 Six Day War, however, Israel unilaterally absorbed the eastern sections of the city, an act most Western nations – including Canada – regard as illegal under international law. The Israelis removed the scrolls from East Jerusalem and took them to the western city, where they remain.

According to Shor at the Israel Antiquities Authority, portions of the scrolls frequently have been put on display in other countries – including the United States, Britain, Switzerland, Germany, and Australia – over the past 10 years or so.

This raises the question, should nations use these antiquities as instruments of foreign policy? Will the end result be more difficulty in holding international loans and travelling exhibitions?

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French judge Denies China’s Claim for Summer Palace Bronzes

A french judge on Monday denied China’s claims for these two bronze objects, looted from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860, to be auctioned at the Yve Saint Laurent auction tonight in Paris. They had been transferred a number of times during the 20th century, and the alleged wrongdoing took place nearly 150 years ago. If China wants the objects back they have only two options.

First, as Pierre Berge, Saint Laurent’s partner, offered earlier “The only thing I ask is for China to give human rights, liberty to Tibet and to welcome the Dalai Lama.”

Or second, they could purchase the objects at the auction. As Barbara Demick’s piece in the L.A. Times notes:

An entire museum in Beijing run by the Poly Corp., which is operated by a state-owned military enterprise, is filled with repatriated artworks, including several other bronze animal heads that along with the two held by Saint Laurent were part of the set of 12 representing the signs of the Chinese zodiac.

The museum bought the tiger, monkey and ox through auction houses in Hong Kong in 2000, while the pig’s head was recovered in New York by Hong Kong casino magnate Stanley Ho, who in turn donated it to the museum.

But the Chinese are increasingly resentful at the high prices they’ve had to fork out. Ho reportedly paid $9 million in a deal brokered by Sotheby’s to get the horse head back from Taiwan. Christie’s was reported to be asking $10 million each for the rabbit and rat in behind-the-scenes negotiations in the last few years with prospective Chinese buyers.

“It is really shameful. They are like kidnappers demanding ransom to give back your own child,” said Li Xingfeng, one of a group of 81 Chinese lawyers who filed the lawsuit last week in Paris trying to block the sale. They have vowed to pursue the case to recover the heads from whomever might buy them.

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"it’s got great historical significance and ought to be returned.”

So says Patty Gerstenblith, quoted in today’s New York Times article detailing the efforts of China to prevent the sale of two bronzes taken during the burning of the imperial Summer Palace in 1860:

Liu Yang, a Beijing lawyer who is helping to organize the lawsuit threatened in France, said he had located a descendant of China’s royal family to serve as plaintiff in the case.

“The Old Summer Palace, which was plundered and burnt down by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860, is our nation’s unhealed scar, still bleeding and aching,” Mr. Lui said. “That Christie’s and Pierre Bergé would put them up for auction and refuse to return them to China deeply hurts our nation’s feelings.”

Mr. Liu also asserted that the sale would violate a 1995 United Nations convention governing the repatriation of stolen or illegally exported cultural relics.

But Patty Gerstenblith, a professor of law at DePaul University in Chicago who specializes in cultural-property issues, said that France never ratified the convention and that even if it had, the agreement does not apply retroactively to objects looted decades or centuries ago.

“My view is this was looted, but it would be difficult to get that legally back,” she said in a telephone interview on Monday. “But it’s got great historical significance and ought to be returned.”

Professor Gerstenblith suggested that one solution might be for the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé Foundation to negotiate with China and offer it at a reasonable price. “It would probably be in the best interest of everybody if they made a deal privately with China,” she said.

Previous posts on this dispute here and here.

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334 Antiquities Returned to Peru… but what result?

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have released a statement announcing the return of 334 objects to the Peruvian government.

Of particular interest is how the objects were seized:

On March 1, 2007, a CBP officer at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport referred Lanas-Ugaz, who had just arrived from Lima, Peru, for a secondary examination. During CBP’s inspection of Lanas-Ugaz’s luggage, officers noted several items in bubble wrap, including a clay figurine of a man in a chair and clay bowls. CBP officers held the five items as possible pre-Columbian Peruvian artifacts, which are protected under the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act. CBP contacted ICE, which had the artifacts evaluated by archeologists from the American Museum of Natural History. Museum archaeologists confirmed that the items are authentic pre-Columbian and have significant cultural value.

Four days later, ICE, CBP and Laredo Police Department officers executed a federal search warrant at Lanas-Ugaz’s home in Laredo. They discovered many additional authentic artifacts, which included: textiles, ceramic figures, wood sculptures, and metal and stone art. All the items had been illegally exported from Peru into the United States. Lanas-Ugaz, a U.S. citizen, was arrested at his home without incident.

Lanas-Ugaz reached a plea agreement:

Lanas-Ugaz pleaded guilty May 16, 2007, to one count of knowingly and fraudulently importing into the United States merchandise that is against the law to sell, and receiving stolen goods. On Sept. 13, 2007, he was sentenced to three years probation and a $2,000 fine; he also paid $100 to a crime victims’ fund.

That’s a pretty slight sentence for a crime which carries a maximum punishment of 5 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. One thing the press release does not discuss is why the sentence was so slight, and if Lanas-Ugaz is continuing to trade in antiquities.

According to the Department of Justice press release in 2007, Lanas-Ugaz operated a website, perularedo.com, which offers Pre-Columbian artifacts for sale. A simple google search of “perularedo” reveals there is an ebay seller, by that name selling antiquities from Peru, the last sale appeared to be as recently as September 2008.

One wonders if this antiquities dealer has decided to cooperate? Has he left the antiquities trade for good? Is he continuing to sell antiquities under a different name?

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100 Objects Returned to Panama

http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel09/images/panamahigh4.jpg

Yesterday the FBI announced the return of 100 antiquities to Panama, including this very small piece of jewelry. The objects were seized during an investigation “conducted by the FBI’s Portland Division”:

The FBI’s investigation revealed that the widow of an amateur archeologist was storing the items in and around Klamath Falls, Oregon. The investigation showed that the individual acquired many of the items while working as a teacher on a U.S. military base in Panama during the 1980s. It was also during this time that he married his wife, then a Panamanian citizen. The two brought many of the items with them when they moved back to the U.S. in the late 1980s. Over the years, the couple sold some of the items at various markets and on the Internet. The Klamath Falls man died of natural causes in October 2004.No charges are expected.

The 1972 Panama Constitution and a 1982 Panamanian law make it illegal for any person to own antiquities from that country. Only the government of Panama may own such items, and give permission for archeological digs and/or transport of antiquities out of the country.

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Egypt Returns Stolen Antiquity to Iraq

The AP is reporting on Egypt’s return of a bronze statue to Iraq. Zahi Hawass, ever the showman knows how to run a press-conference. I was also surprised to read Egypt has recovered some 5,000 objects from Iraq. The smuggler currently faces a 3-5 year prison sentence, but it could escalate to a troubling 25 years if the Egyptian parliament enacts a new law. I’m a proponent of serious penalties for antiquities smuggling, put a 25 year ex poste facto sentence seems outrageous, especially one enacted after the criminal activity:

Egypt’s antiquities chief unveiled Sunday a bronze statue of what he described as an ancient Mesopotamian goddess that had been looted from Iraq.

Zahi Hawass said an Egyptian man working in Jordan was caught at Nuweiba port trying to smuggle the statue into the country.

In the course of the ceremony, Hawass sliced through the plastic bubble wrap covering the 10 centimeter tall statue and handed it over to the Iraqi Charge d’Affaires, Abdel Hadi Ahmed.

“When the invasion of Iraq began in 2003, we wrote to the British and American governments asking them to protect Iraq’s heritage and museums,” said Hawass. “But that didn’t happen.”

Hawass said that since then his office has been tracking stolen Iraqi artifacts and has recovered some 5,000 items.

Hawass, who is a vigorous campaigner to recover Egypt’s own stolen antiquities, said he will not do business with museums that buy stolen Iraqi artifacts.

The antiquities chief said he couldn’t tell exactly the age or historical background of the statue, but said its headpiece suggests it is a female fertility deity.

Hawass said the smuggler now faces between three to five years in jail, but this could change to 25 years if a new law is approved in parliament next month.

Iraqi diplomat Ahmed told reporters that 24,000 stolen artifacts have been returned to Iraq as of July 2008.

According to UNESCO, between 3,000 to 7,000 pieces are still believed missing, including about 40 to 50 that are considered to be of great historic importance.

The smuggling of stolen antiquities from Iraq’s rich cultural heritage is allegedly helping finance Iraqi extremist groups, according to the U.S. investigator who led the initial probe into the looting of Baghdad’s National Museum.

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Limiting Art and Antiquities Restitution?

So argues Norman Rosenthal in the Art Newspaper today. The former Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy does not see the merit in the current expansion of restitution and repatriation. He draws parallels between antiquities restitution cases and the claims involving Nazi looted artworks.

Since the late 1990s there has been a strong push towards provenance research of collections and museums, and restitution of items that were looted or taken by the Nazis during their period of power in Europe from 1933 to 1945. This process has been ongoing for ten years, and the items in question have often been claimed by people distanced by two or more generations from their original owners.

I have, perhaps, an idiosyncratic, non-politically-correct view that many people will disagree with, but I believe history is history and that you can’t turn the clock back, or make things good again through art.

History has always looked after works of art in strange ways. Ever since the beginning of recorded history, because of its value, art has been looted and as a result arbitrarily distributed and disseminated throughout the world. Of course, what happened in the Nazi period was unspeakable in its awfulness. I lost many relatives, whom I never knew personally, and who died in concentration camps in the most horrible of circumstances. I believe, however, that grandchildren or distant relations of people who had works of art or property taken away by the Nazis do not now have an inalienable right to ownership, at the beginning of the 21st century. If valuable objects have ended up in the public sphere, even on account of the terrible facts of history, then that is the way it is.

If, because of provenance research, works of art are taken from museums, whether in Russia, Germany, France, the US or the UK, and are then sold on for profit or passed around for political expediency, it is nearly always the rich who are making themselves richer. The vast majority of individuals, who were beaten up or killed during the Nazi period—or indeed by other oppressors in different parts of Europe—did not have art treasures that their children and grandchildren can now claim as compensation. The concept of the “universal museum” is also, in certain circumstances, a politically useful euphemism. Nonetheless, it has to be good that important works of art should be available to all through public ownership. Restitution claims from museums go against this idea and result in the general culture being impoverished.

He makes a good point that much of the restitution litigation has been very profitable for both attornies and auction houses. But these claims are in response to very clear violations of the law. Perhaps we need to be more careful about what circumstances an art or antiquity claim should be made, but when laws are broken claimants should have a right to justice. He concludes by arguing for a statute of limitations on these claims. However such limitations periods currently exist. The difficulty is not the amoutn of time we might choose for a period, but rather what circumstances trigger the running of that limitations period.

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Peru Files Suit Against Yale

Last Friday, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Peru quietly filed suit against Yale University seeking the return of a number of objects from in and around Machu Picchu. The objects were excavated and removed to the United States by Hiram Bingam in the early part of the 20th Century. This is the culmination of a long process between Peru and Yale, in which the parties had seemingly agreed to a beneficial compromise for both. The suit will of course be interesting to unfold, as it would seem to push the boundaries for a court resolution of a dispute over objects which were removed from Peru in the waning years of the imperial age.

The suit was expected, as Peru had made the tentative decision last month to bring suit. This after what had appeared to be a happy resolution to the dispute, with Yale offering a very substantial settlement including an international traveling exhibition and the construction of a new museum and research center in Peru in exchange for a new 99-year lease on the objects.

That deal fell through, and now Peru has decided to seek redress in Federal Court.

I’ve had a chance to quickly read over the complaint and I see a number of interesting issues:

The degree to which the 1970 UNESCO Convention may apply — as an international instrument and policy imperative.
If there will be further development of the requirements neeeded to establish national ownership over an object. The complaint cites an 1893 Decree which prohibited removal of objects absent special permission from the government. A potential issue may be what kind of special permission –if any — Hiram Bingham had from Peruvian authorities at the time.
Also, there will likely be an interesting back and forth over whether Peru’s suit is timely. The complaint argues that there has only recently been a demand and refusal of the objects, though there appears to be the possibility of a strong laches defense for Yale given the time which has passed since the objects left Peru. Yale may have a strong defense by arguing it has held the objects in a transparent way, and Peru has impinged Yale’s rights by waiting so long to bring a claim.
Finally, there may be interesting conflicts of law issues which arise.

A win for Peru in court may set a precedent for other future claims from the imperial age, and may extend further the window for nations of origin to seek the repatriation and restitution of objects. This would be a powerful legal option going forward, in which the pendulum has seemingly already swung back to favor nations of origin already.

However even if the court dispute is unsuccessful, Peru may still have a good outcome if they can sway public opinion at home or abroad. I have more questions than answers at this point. I wonder to what extent Peru may be seeking a public shaming of Yale in the hopes of punishing them or forcing them to apologize for taking these objects away. It should be noted that the objects themselves are primarily interesting for their intellectual value. They are not prized for their inherent beauty or value. Their primary purpose would seem to be to assist in research and other pursuits. One wonders if Peru would be able to perform this research function as well as Yale University? Or, if those intellectual pursuits might have been best advanced if Peru had been able to reach an agreement with Yale which would have resulted in the construction of a research center in Peru. Isn’t the ‘star’ of the ancient city the well-preserved ruins themselves?

The initial complaint is here ($).

Hat Tip: Peter Tompa.

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Stolen Antiquities Returned to Egypt

From the AP:

Dozens of ancient artifacts stolen by a former U.S. Army officer were returned Wednesday to the Egyptian government.

Officials said the items, such as small urns, came from the Ma’adi archaeological site outside Cairo and date to 3600 B.C. or earlier.

Army helicopter pilot Edward George Johnson, a chief warrant officer from Fayetteville, N.C., was arrested in February in Alabama on charges of transporting stolen property and wire fraud. He pleaded guilty in July to possessing and selling stolen antiquities and was sentenced to 19 months of probation.

“When (Johnson) stole these items from Egypt, he robbed a nation of part of its history,” said Peter J. Smith, head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s New York office. “The repatriation of the Ma’adi artifacts reunites the people of Egypt with an important piece of their cultural heritage.”

Johnson was deployed to Cairo in September 2002 when about 370 artifacts were stolen from the Ma’adi Museum. He sold about 80 pieces to an art dealer for $20,000.

The government said experts had determined a majority of the items he sold had been stolen from the museum. The pieces had been excavated from the Ma’adi site in the 1920s and 1930s.

I discussed the arrest of “Dutch” back in February.

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Greek Icon Returned

This 14th century icon was returned to Greece this week, 30 years after it was stolen from a monastary in Serres, Northern Greece. The work was recovered by the Art and Antiques Squad in 2002.

From Helena Smith’s piece in the Guardian:

It emerged in London in 1980 when a British Byzantinist, Professor Robin Cormack, spotted it in a suitcase in a restorer’s atelier. It had been touched up by the looters to make it more saleable in the underground art market.

“It had been cut in two by the looters. Seeing what it was, Robin realised it must have been stolen and advised them to return it to Greece,” said the cultural attache at the Greek embassy in London, Victoria Solomonides, who travelled with the icon to Greece.

“That did not happen and 10 years later the plot thickened when he was called by the British Museum to value an icon. It was the same one.”

On the advice of Cormack, curator of the Byzantium exhibition currently on at the Royal Academy of Arts, the British Museum decided not to buy the icon.

It seems then in 2002 a Greek art dealer offered to sell the work to the Benakis Museum in Athens for £500,000. It seems the High Court has ordered the return of the work in a proceeding “Six weeks ago”. I’ve attempted to track donw the ruling this morning on baili.org, but I suspect the ruling is unpublished. If any of my kind UK readers could confirm this, I would be most grateful.

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