Category: Repatriation

Why Get so Worked up over the Ka Nefer Nefer Mask?

I’m a bit puzzled by all the criticism being directed at the St. Louis Museum of Art. The looting of antiquities destroys archaeological context, but the Ka Nefer Nefer mask was not looted. Both the Museum and those who would have the mask returned to Egypt agree that the mask was professionally excavated in 1952. Egypt has claimed the mask was stolen from a storehouse at some point, while the Museum argues it researched the provenance and found no information to indicate it had been looted. One may argue that the acquisition procedures of museums are generally lacking. And we can certainly criticize the imperfect procedures implemented by the museum to ask questions of the mask in this case—though they did ask some questions in good faith. Though there was no export permit for the mask, but I’m not sure that justifies the criticism of the museum for its suit against the federal government. The museum is only asserting that the Federal government sat on its hands and waited too long to bring a forfeiture claim. This is a perfectly reasonable cause of action, particularly given the enormous benefits to the government and the claimant when a civil forfeiture is brought.

If you are upset that no claims were brought earlier, why not criticize the U.S. government for waiting so long to bring a forfeiture proceeding? I think one of the frustrating things about these repatriation issues are what I’d call the tone deaf nature of much of the rhetoric irrespective of the merits of the claims. This claim is not the same as every other repatriation claim, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. And though I’d agree that many objects need to go back, not all of them do. Universal repatriation should not be the preferred remedy. The Museum here certainly could have checked closer into the history of the mask, but Egypt also didn’t realize the mask was missing. As Mark Durney pointed out, this might be a good reason for renewed emphasis on documenting objects which are in storage. If you don’t, it will be difficult to leverage the trade into ending the sale of objects completely, and that argument loses persuasiveness when the same rhetoric is used for each and every dispute, irrespective of its strengths and weaknesses.

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

Yale and Peru Finalize Agreement

On Friday, Yale University signed an agreement with Peru over the disposition of objects removed from Machu Picchu nearly a century ago. The agreement, which will avoid continued litigation will create a joint Center for the Study of Inca Culture in Cusco, Peru. The center will preserve the artifacts, make the objects available for study and display, and promote research. This looks to be a beneficial agreement for all the parties involved. There will be a new joint research center in Cusco, pairing Yale University with the University of San Antonio Abad del Cusco. And though the objects will no longer be in Connecticut, the objects will be available for future study, and will still be cared for. And finally, Peru’s suit against Yale is no longer necessary to resolve the dispute. A memorandum of understanding was created in November, but Peru had backed out of agreements in the past with Yale. This time though, the dispute looks to be resolved for good.

As always, the best place for coverage of the dispute is the Yale University paper, and reporter Sarah Nutman is writing a series on the returns:

Since Yale and Peruvian officials signed a Memorandum of Understanding outlining the return of the objects last November, both sides have been eager to underscore the goodwill between the two parties. The document, they say, allows Peru and Yale to move beyond the mistrust that has often characterized their interactions over the century-long struggle — it has eliminated any underlying disagreement. 
For the most part, the two sides agree. Peru will repatriate thousands of pieces. Some will arrive in time for the centennial this July; the rest will be in Peru by December 2012. But there remain aspects about which Yale and Peru tell very different stories. For instance, how the pieces came to stay in New Haven for so long, and why, after nearly a decade of bickering, Yale simply offered to cede them to Peru.

  1. Sarah Nutman, Yale and University of Cusco sign collaboration agreement, Yale Daily News, February 11, 2011, http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/feb/11/yale-and-university-cusco-sign-collaboration-agree/ (last visited Feb 14, 2011).
  2. Sarah Nutman, Returning to Machu Picchu, Yale Daily News, February 14, 2011, http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/feb/14/returning-to-machu-picchu/ (last visited Feb 14, 2011).
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

The Morgantina Treasure Returns to Sicily

“Here they are not orphans.”

So says Enrico Caruso, the director of the Archaeological park in Morgantina upon the installation of the Morgantina Silver in Aidone, Sicily. The 16 ancient Greek silver objects had been partially returned to Italy as a part of a 2006 agreement between Italy and the Met, and will now be on display near the site where they were likely looted nearly 30 years ago. Both Italy and the Met will share joint custody of these objects, and the objects will rotate between Aidone and the Met every four years. In this way visitors to both the Met and Aidone will be able to decide for themselves where they prefer to view and appreciate this collection of objects.

One of the tireless campaigners for the return of the silver objects has been Malcolm Bell III who is quoted in the New York Times:

“’The silver can perhaps shed light on the brutal, dramatic circumstances of the final years of the Second Punic War and, seen within the framework of the house, we get a sense of the art and the material culture of Hellenistic Sicily,’ said Malcolm Bell III, professor emeritus of art history and archaeology at the University of Virginia and the director of excavations at Morgantina. ‘They have truly been recontextualized, and that is really important.’”

The Morgantina Objects, as displayed at the Met

And yet I think the reason this recontextualization is important can be tied to the experience of viewing the landscape, the situs of the objects, and the current culture in the region.

Next year the Getty will return the statue of Aphrodite to Aidone, and residents there surely hope visitors will seek out the repatriated objects and boos the local economy. One of the striking themes which emerged from Elisabetta Povoledo’s reporting of the story are the economic benefits which will accrue to the city and territory when visitors flock to see the ancient objects. There appears to be a shift in culture, away from tolerating the looting of sites and the clandestine sales of these objects and a move towards responsibly managing these pieces of heritage.

And yet I wonder as well whether much would be made of this collection of silver, or the Aphrodite had these objects not been displayed in Los Angeles and New York, and then sent back in a very public way.

  1. Elisabetta Povoledo, Morgantina Silver Returns to Italy in Aidone Museum, The New York Times, December 5, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/arts/design/06silver.html?_r=2&sq=Morgantina&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=1&adxnnlx=1291737663-LJxPa3Cb/2lTVd2f0CM/fg (last visited Dec 7, 2010).
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Egypt Secures Return of 19 Objects

One of the 19 objects returned to Egypt by the Met

The Met will return object to Egypt which had been unlawfully removed from Egypt after the excavation of Tutankhamen’s tomb. Archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb in 1922, and at the time some archaeologists may have kept some of the objects they found.

As the Met’s Director Thomas Campbell said in a statement “Because of precise legislation relating to that excavation, these objects were never meant to have left Egypt, and therefore should rightfully belong to the government of Egypt”.

These objects will likely assist Dr. Zahi Hawass in his attempts to secure the return to Egypt of objects which are very famous, which were removed from Egypt much longer ago—the Rosetta Stone and the Bust of Nefertiti. Hawass has made clear that he is seeking to fill a new national museum in Cairo with many of these renownd objects.

  1. Kate Taylor, Met to Repatriate Objects From King Tut’s Tombs to Egypt, The New York Times, November 10, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/arts/design/10met.html?_r=2 (last visited Nov 11, 2010).
  2. Ashraf Khalil, Egypt Hunts Ancient Artifacts, wsj.com, November 11, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704689804575535662169204940.html (last visited Nov 11, 2010).
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

China Wants its Rabbit and Rat Back

China looks to be redoubling its efforts to repatriate the bronzes from the Summer Palace, enlisting Jackie Chan, erecting a statue of Victor Hugo who decried the looting in 1860, and circulating a petition.

From AFP:

China has renewed a call for the return of relics looted from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing 150 years ago — an act seen as a cause of national humiliation at the hands of Western armies.

The Yuanmingyuan, a summer resort garden for the emperors of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), was pillaged by a joint British and French military expedition during the second Opium War on October 18-19, 1860.

Cultural officials have urged private collectors in China to forgo profits from the antiquities trade and return the looted relics, the China Daily reported Tuesday.

The Yuanmingyuan park authority has also called on museums to return such items, and for a boycott on auctions featuring relics, the Global Times added. . . .

“At least 1.5 million relics from the Yuanmingyuan have either been looted or otherwise lost over the years,” the China Daily quoted Chen Mingjie, head of the Yuanmingyuan park administration, as saying.

Xinhua news agency, citing the UN cultural body UNESCO, said some 1.64 million Chinese relics are housed in more than 200 museums in 47 countries, some of which are believed to have been looted from the Yuanmingyuan.

In recent years, cultural relic experts from China have sought to categorise and bring back looted Chinese antiquities, but their efforts have been waylaid by legal and historical obstacles, the China Daily said.

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

Five-year Trial of Marion True Ends

The Italian case against former Getty Museum antiquities curator Marion True, seen at the Los Angeles museum in 1998, has abruptly ended.
Marion True, while still at the Getty

Jason Felch reports today that the trial of ex-Getty Museum curator Marion True concluded with a “whimper” today.  That seems exactly right.  No verdict was reached, no dramatic finish, only the mundane operation of an Italian legal technicality which ended the trial because too much time had elapsed. 

Italy’s renewed focus in recent years on the flow of antiquities into American Museums has resulted in a number of embarrassing returns by American institutions, and no one exemplified that shaming more than Marion True, who would be photographed every time she entered the court.  This trial has been proceeding along in fits and starts for the last five years.  When she was charged, it was the first time an American Museum official was charged by a foreign government, but it has not been the last.  The trial was a lightening rod of sorts, channeling opinions about the antiquities trade and the American Museum community, all to one very high profile, but also very slow legal proceeding.  As Felch points out, during the 5 year legal proceeding we have seen the return of more than 100 looted or stolen antiquities from American museums to Italy.   

  1. Jason Felch, Charges dismissed against ex-Getty curator Marion True by Italian judge [updated] LA Times Culture Monster, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/10/charges-dismissed-against-getty-curator-marion-true-by-italian-judge.html (last visited Oct 13, 2010).
  2. Nadja Brandt, Italy Drops Conspiracy Charges Against Ex-Curator Marion True, Getty Says, Bloomberg, October 13, 2010, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-13/italy-drops-charges-against-ex-curator-marion-true-getty-says.html (last visited Oct 13, 2010).
  3. Elisabetta Povoledo, Case Involving Former Curator Marion True Ends, Arts Beat, New York Times, http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/case-involving-former-curator-marion-true-ends/ (last visited Oct 13, 2010).
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

More on the Return of Cultural Heritage to Iraq

Yesterday on “All Things Considered” Farah Stockman talks about the return of the statue of King Entemena and other objects. Stockman talks about the comments of the Iraqi Ambassador:

It was very moving to hear him talk about the statue and what it meant to him personally to have it come back and how it was this metaphor for Iraq, basically how, you know, how destruction is so much quicker than construction. He said it took four days for them to loot all these things, and it’s taken seven years for us to get even a third of them back. And he said we’ll be working on this for 20 years, and we may never get them all back.

As good a description as any about the harms which flow from theft and destruction of heritage.  Yet a complicating factor in Iraq is ensuring that returned objects are cared for.  Larry Rothfield says the loss of another shipment of repatriated objects is “one more piece of evidence, if that were required, that the State Department dropped the ball completely by focusing its efforts on restoring the museum rather than on helping the Iraqis get their cultural policy infrastructure set up properly”.

  1. Looted Iraqi Relics Return Home : NPR, , http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129731037 (last visited Sep 9, 2010).

Audio after the jump.

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

Are Iraq’s Antiquities in a Revolving Door?

A 4,400 year old statue of King Entemena looted and now returned

In a ceremony today 542 works of art and objects were returned from the United States to Iraq.  Among the items returned were:

[A] 4,400-year-old statue of King Entemena of Lagash looted from the National Museum . . . an even older pair of gold earrings from Nimrud stolen in the 1990’s and seized before being auctioned at Christie’s in New York last December; and 362 cuneiform clay tablets that had been smuggled out of Iraq before the invasion . . .  There was also a more recent relic: a chrome-plated AK-47 with a pearl grip and an engraving of Mr. Hussein, taken by an American solider as booty and displayed at Fort Lewis, in Washington.

Yet a senior Iraqi official admitted that 632 other pieces returned by U.S. forces have apparently gone missing.  They were supposed to have been shipped to the Iraqi Prime Minister’s office via a flight authorized by Gen. Petraeus, Steven Lee Myers reports for the NYT that antiquities returned to Iraq are in a “revolving door”. Iraq’s ambassador to the United States Samir Sumaidaie told reporters ““We asked the US military to move it to Iraq. When the pieces arrived in Iraq, they were delivered to the office of the prime minister and now we are trying to find them”.  Perhaps the attention paid to these newly returned artifact will help to recover the previous shipment.  

  1. Steven Lee Myers, Iraq’s Looted Treasures in a Revolving Door, The New York Times, September 7, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/world/middleeast/08iraq.html?_r=1&hp (last visited Sep 7, 2010).
  2. The Associated Press: Hundreds of looted artifacts returned to Iraq, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hwK_CSpBxsNuVUEaDuOwmSSCiqGwD9I344LG2 (last visited Sep 7, 2010).
  3. Jane Arraf, 542 antiquities looted in Iraq war return home. Where are the rest?, Christian Science Monitor, , http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0907/542-antiquities-looted-in-Iraq-war-return-home.-Where-are-the-rest (last visited Sep 7, 2010).

Video from the NYT after the jump.

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

Italian Carabinieri Announce Operation "Andromeda"

Italian authorities today from the Carabinieri Art and Antiquities squad held a press conference at the Colosseum in Rome to announce the return of 337 antiquities, worth an estimated 15 million euros.  They had been seized from a Japanese antiquities dealer in Switzerland in 2008.  In 2008 Italy and Switzerland entered into a bilateral agreement which allowed for cooperation on antiquities investigations, perhaps this seizure is a product of that arrangement  David Gill points to images and a press release by the Carabinieri.  He notes “It appears that this is part of a major investigation into the assets of London-based dealer Robin Symes”. Among the objects returned are pieces of Greek pottery, frescoes, bronzes statues, and marble sculptures.  General Giovanni Nistri noted today, “We could make 10 museums abroad with what we’ve brought back”. 

  1. Andrew Davis, Italy Repatriates EU15 Million of Antiquities From Switzerland – Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-16/italy-repatriates-eu15-million-of-looted-antiquities-found-in-switzerland.html (last visited Jul 16, 2010).

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

US Returns Angkorian Sculptures to Cambodia

 The United States returned seven sculptures today which had been smuggled out of Cambodia.  The statues were recovered in Los Angeles in 2008.  They objects include two heads of Buddha, a bas-relief, and also an engraved plinth.  I’m unable to find any details about the seizure at present, but these returns may be tied to the investigation of Galleries and Museums in California in early 2008. 

  1. AFP: US returns stolen Angkorian sculptures to Cambodia, AFP (2010), http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5goRoNfmLD0vbnGwi6ospmF1MBRmQ (last visited Jun 17, 2010).
  2. The Associated Press: US returns 7 stolen ancient Cambodian sculptures, AP (2010), http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iDRqLsyg_5D0Sim77b6ZhkroOlXAD9GCTS800 (last visited Jun 17, 2010).
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com