Repatriation – Page 12 – Illicit Cultural Property

Voluntary Returns

A couple interesting returns of objects, both of which which appear to be completely voluntary.

An extremely valuable letter by Abraham Lincoln dated November 14, 1863 — missing from public records for maybe 100 years — has been donated today by a private collector to the National Archives.

The brief note on Executive Mansion letterhead in the President’s handwriting signed “A.Lincoln” was sent to Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase. It was written five days before Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, providing insight into the president’s regard for a personal friend and his interest in West Coast politics even in the midst of the Civil War.

National Archivists discovered the Lincoln letter being sold online in 2006. It originally had been torn or fallen from an 1880 bound volume of government correspondence to the Treasury Department. There is no evidence that the letter was ever stolen, and how it went missing remains a mystery.

When contacted by Archivists, the letter’s owner, Lawrence Cutler, a private collector in Tempe, Arizona decided to donate it during the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birthday. Cutler would not disclose what he paid for the letter at auction three years ago, but said a similar Lincoln letter sold for $78,000.

The next is a group of objects donated to Eton College, which have been returned to Egypt:

Four sons of Horus, New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty or later after ca 1295 B.C.

LONDON. Eton College, in the south of England, has returned more than 450 antiquities to Egypt, after it was realised that many had probably been illegally exported. Last month we reported that the main part of the school’s collection, bequeathed to the school by Major William Myers in 1899, is going on long-term loan to Birmingham University in the UK and Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University in the US (The Art Newspaper, May 2009, p7).

The returned antiquities had been donated to Eton over a century later, in 2006, by the family of the late Ron Davey, a London-based Egyptologist. He in turn had received most of them as a bequest from his friend, Peter Webb, who had died in 1992.

When the antiquities arrived at Eton three years ago, they were examined by curator Dr Nicholas Reeves. The donation comprised 454 items, including ushabti figurines, beads and amulets, textile fragments, potsherds, coins and other small objects.

Both the letter and the Egyptian antiquities do not seem to be terribly valuable, but the individual dealer and Eton College have both seemingly unilaterally decided to return the objects to their proper stewards. But one wonders if either the letter or the antiquities are particularly valuable or noteworthy. If they had been, would the decision to return them been more difficult? I think it probably would have been.

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

Threedy on the Role of Storytelling in NAGPRA Repatriation

Debora L. Threedy, University of Utah College of Law, has a piece in the Journal of Land, Resources and Environmental Law, Vol 29 No 1 (2009), CLAIMING THE SHIELDS: LAW, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ROLE OF STORYTELLING IN A NAGPRA REPATRIATION CASE STUDY. Here is the abstract:

After some odd twists and turns by the end of the twentieth century the shields were in the possession of Capitol Reef National Park. At that point, three claims were filed for repatriation of the shields under the auspices of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA or the Act).

In this paper, I use the controversy surrounding the repatriation of the three shields as the basis for examining the question of who owns the past. In particular, I examine how the repatriation process under NAGPRA addresses that question. I do this through the methodology of a case study. Because of the fact-intensive inquiry required under NAGPRA, and because NAGPRA repatriation cases are not typically resolved through court litigation, a case study seems an appropriate way to proceed with this examination.

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

Cleveland Museum of Art Returns 14 Objects to Italy

Today the Cleveland Museum of Art will hand over 14 looted works of art to Italy, including this Donkey-Head Rhyton, (c. 475 BC). Steven Litt has an account for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. These works were likely looted between 1975 and 1996, and were the subject of an agreement reached last November. In exchange for the return, Italy will lend 13 other objects of comparable quality for renewable 25-year periods.

Timothy Rub, the CMA Director says in Litt’s piece that the agreement was “open and fair and equitable to all parties. I was pleased then, and still am, that we reached a conclusion that was just that . . . My focus going forward, and the principal point of contact with the Italian government, has been on what we intend to do in the future . . . We have some work to do in terms of finalizing requests to a number of museums with the blessing and concurrence of the [Italian] cultural ministry.”

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

The "Collaboration" Begins at the Getty Villa

These are the first two works from Italy to arrive at the Getty Villa as a part of the agreement reached in 2007. These bronzes, Ephebe as a lampbearer and Apollo as an archer will be loaned for two years. The Ephebe will go on display at the end of April, and the other will be displayed in a year after study and conservation. Karol Wight, the Getty’s curator of antiquities says in the LA Times’ art blog “We want the partnership to be mutually beneficial . . . But of course our concerns are highly aesthetic.”

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

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

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.

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

"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.

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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