Tag: Uncategorized

• Export has temporarily been denied for View of the Rialto Bridge by Francesco Guardi.
• The sale of public trust artwork continues. Donn Zaretsky wonders  if museums are betraying their trust when the public loses all that public trust artwork. Steven Litt looks at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s deaccession of works which were “never, ever going to [be shown]”. Perhaps steps should be put in place to efficiently manage these sales in the same way the UK temporarily delays export of works of art?
• Larry Rothfield says William Brown has overlooked the biggest threat to Libya—antiquities looting. And He suggests specialists should think about how to “plan, fund and manage the physical security of archaeological sites”. 
• But a new government, and support for the Libyan antiquities department has already discovered lost cities in the desert.
• The Getty now has a repatriation dispute over eight illuminated gospels from Armenia.
• How much will climate change affect cultural heritage management? Heavy rains are again plaguing Pompeii. The drought in Texas has exposed a number of historic wrecks. 
• A thorough cleaning results in an inadvertent act of art negligence.
• The unfortunate politicization of heritage at UNESCO.
• 1 in 10 museums have experienced object theft in a survey conducted by ICCROM and UNESCO.

Thousands of antiquities are reported to have been stolen from a Benghazi bank vault in Libya. The objects are small, portable and very valuable. The collection has not been displayed for many years and has not been sufficiently documented. Chances for recovery would therefore be very remote.

The thieves targeted a collection known as the Treasure of Benghazi.

It included more than 10,000 pieces, with coins dating back to Greek, Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic times, but also other treasures such as small statues and jewellery.

Most had been discovered during the Italian occupation of Libya and were taken out of the country.

They were then returned to Libya in 1961 after the country’s independence.

The collection has been kept in the vault of the Commercial Bank of Benghazi ever since, waiting for the opening of a museum that was never built.

The coins were never photographed or documented and seemed to have been forgotten, according to Dr Saleh Algab, the chairman of the Tripoli Museum.

Although not the only collection of ancient coins in Libya, Mr Algab said they were a hugely valuable representation of the mosaic of Libyan history – an important reminder for Libya’s sometimes fractious, at times antagonistic, regions and ethnic groups that they all belong in one Libya, he said.

BBC News – Looted Libyan treasure ‘in Egypt’:

Five years and counting, thanks for reading:

http://illicit-cultural-property.blogspot.com/2006/09/from-buddha-to-scream.html

Hillary Clinton, at the Acropolis Museum in Greece

The United States has signed a bilateral agreement with Greece to impose import restrictions on certain archaeological and Byzantine objects dating from before the 15th Century. The agreement flows from the United States’ implementation of articles 7(b) and 9 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention.

One might be under a misimpression by reading some accounts of this signing by amateur international lawyers. To be clear, the United States has taken a unique view on the 1970 UNESCO Convention, but we should remember that the United States was the first ‘market nation’ to sign on to the convention, and no reasonable appraisal of the U.S. actions with respect to the UNESCO Convention would deem them unserious.

In fact, one might deem them more rigorous than other nations who have signed the convention but taken little or no concrete action. Though the financial burden of making a case before the Cultural Property Advisory Committee can be high, the process is straightforward, and allows for U.S. Customs agents to have clear classes of objects which they are looking out for.Those who argue that U.S. implementation does not reflect a commitment to fight the illicit trade in antiquities (an intellectually lazy assertion, particularly when it has little supporting evidence or argument) might be well-served by actually reading the text of both article 7 and 9 of the convention, and even seeking out Patrick O’Keefe’s very fine commentary on the convention itself.

Art.’s 7(b) & 9 taken together are the key provisions which the United States has enacted via the Cultural Property Implementation Act, and the Cultural Property Advisory Committee makes determinations on the imposition of import restrictions and creates a relatively streamlined process for creating bilateral agreements. Without the CPIA, treaties and bilateral agreements would be far more difficult to create because these agreements would have to go through the U.S. Senate for ratification.

Art. 7 (a) prevents national museums from acquiring cultural property originating in another State Party which has been illegally exported. If we think about this in terms of the US, what does consistent with national legislation mean? Which museums are ‘instrumentalities’ of the US government? Just the Smithsonian? There is after all no ‘American Museum’ along the lines of the British Museum or the Louvre. As a consequence, the U.S. has not implemented this article.

Art. 7 (b)(i)requires States to prohibit the import of cultural property stolen from a museum, religious or secular public monument or similar institution. Note that it requires an inventory. Very few museums have created such an inventory.

Art. 7(b)(ii) actually requires that a nation “pay just compensation to an innocent purchaser”, or one who has valid title if the object is returned.

Art. 9 is the crisis provision of the Convention. When you look to the text, terms like cultural patrimony, jeopardy and pillage are undefined. The protection of this Article extends only to “Archaeological and ethnographical materials”. It requires nations to erect import restrictions on certain classes of objects if they are in danger.

Patrick O’Keefe Argues:

[P]illage and jeopardy of a cultural heritage occur where the remains of a particular civilization are threatened with destruction or extensive movement abroad or when the sale of certain archaeological objects on the international market sets off a broad campaign of clandestine excavations leading to the destruction of important archaeological sites. …[I]t should not be considered open to a State Party to refuse to act on the ground that, in its opinion, the pillage complained of was not in fact putting the cultural heritage of the requesting State in danger. …Article [9] was against illicit traffic in cultural objects, and …the requesting State should not, therefore, be required to produce evidence as to the degree of damage or size of the illicit trade in these objects.

Art. 9 has two prerequisites: the cultural patrimony must be in jeopardy from pillage of archaeological or ethnological materials and there must be a “concerted international effort”. So first you need to determine whether the looted objects at issue are part of the cultural patrimony of an aggrieved nation.

It can be tempting for some to lose sight of many of the other sections of the UNESCO Convention. The convention imposes obligations on both market nations and those rich with cultural resources. These obligations represent the other side of the market and obligates nations of origin to protect their own sites and museums, to police their borders and to educate their people about the value of conserving cultural heritage. These obligations include establishing a government agency that will assist in the preparation of laws for the regulation of cultural objects, establish a national inventory of protected property, promote scientific and technical institutions and supervise archaeological excavations; establishing a licensing system for the export of cultural objects and requiring dealers to maintain registers with information on the origin, supplier, description and price of items sold.

Mes Aynak, a 1400 year-old Buddhist monastary will give way to a Copper mine

• A Chinese mining company has been granted a 30 year lease to mine copper from one of the world’s largest untapped reserves in Afghanistan, but the mining will damage the 1400 year-old Mes Aynak complex. Archaeologists have been given 3 years to salvage the site, while a proper excavation would take closer to 10 years. The US military is chipping in $1 million for the salvage.
• Donn Zaretsky runs down the coverage of the settlement of the Brandeis-Rose Art museum deaccession lawsuit.
• The difficult task of conserving Ur in Iraq.
• Request denied: Italy asked if the Louvre might give up the Mona Lisa for a temporary exhibition, but the move would cause “incalculable damage” and was not worth risking.
• Cultural heritage preservation Houston style: an original 1967 model of AstroWorld has been saved for future generations and been purchased from Craigslist, the engineering firm which purchased the model plans to donate it to the Houston Public Library.
• Truth is an absolute defense: David Grann, author of a terrific piece on art authentication last year for the New Yorker has been sued by one of the subjects of the piece, art-authenticator Peter Paul Biro. 
• The AV Club reviews Chasing Aphrodite.
• The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will close for 6 months for security upgrades and renovations.
• Eight Old Master paintings will be repatriated to the Netherlands.
• The University of Sydney decided the considerable sum a donated Picasso could bring by a sale outweighs the value in keeping and displaying the painting.

The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) has selected Dr. David Gill, Reader in Mediterranean archaeology at Swansea University and a writer of a related blog, looting matters, for the 2012 Public Service Award. Gill has been an outspoken critic of the antiquities trade and the looting of archaeological sites, his writing has made a direct connection between looting and the market in antiquities, and plays an important role in showing the scope of the problem. He does not propose solutions, rather his work offers a slow accumulation of anecdotal examples of the problem and the presence of looted antiquities in museums and auction houses. I wish him continued success and look forward to many more opportunities to discuss (and argue about!) these vexing problems.

Le Marche by Camille Pissarro

So writes Second Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch in an opinion rejecting the innocent owner claim of Sharyl Davis. The case, previously discussed here, is an example of the Federal forfeiture power and pitted two seemingly innocent parties against one another. Ms. Davis, the loser in this dispute purchased this Pissarro monotype in 1985 for its market value, and had no knowledge that it had in fact been stolen from a Museum in Aix-les-Bains in France in 1981. 

“I have argued against the laws, but I haven’t broken the laws.”

So says James Cuno in Jason Felch’s report on the new Getty president and chief executive:

Cuno’s awkward embrace of a point of view he has long criticized creates a potential stumbling block for the Getty, which today relies heavily on cooperative relationships with Italy and other nations Cuno has openly criticized.

As director of the Chicago Art Institute since 2004, Cuno has rarely had to wrestle with claims by other countries that certain antiquities belong to them and not the museum that acquired them. The position Cuno staked out is largely a philosophical one, embracing the concept of “cosmopolitanism” — that antiquities are the common heritage of mankind and not the property of one nation.

He has denounced what he considers politicized claims by modern nations like Italy that, in his view, have only weak ties to the ancient civilizations that once occupied the same land.

Cuno’s arguments are perhaps the clearest articulation of a view that American museum officials used for decades to justify the acquisition of antiquities with no clear ownership record. That practice has largely ended as direct evidence of looting forced leading museums, collectors and dealers to return hundreds of objects to Italy and Greece in recent years.

Yet while many museums moderated their stances during that controversy, Cuno became more outspoken.

“Cultural property is a modern political construct,” he said in a 2006 debate at the New School hosted by the New York Times. In March of this year, he described laws that give foreign governments ownership over ancient art found within their borders as “not only wrong, it is dangerous.”

1. Jason Felch, James Cuno’s history of acquiring ancient art – latimes.com, L.A. Times, May 12, 2011, http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-cuno-antiquities-20110512,0,7395453,full.story (last visited May 12, 2011).

“I have argued against the laws, but I haven’t broken the laws.”

So says James Cuno in Jason Felch’s report on the new Getty president and chief executive:

Cuno’s awkward embrace of a point of view he has long criticized creates a potential stumbling block for the Getty, which today relies heavily on cooperative relationships with Italy and other nations Cuno has openly criticized.

As director of the Chicago Art Institute since 2004, Cuno has rarely had to wrestle with claims by other countries that certain antiquities belong to them and not the museum that acquired them. The position Cuno staked out is largely a philosophical one, embracing the concept of “cosmopolitanism” — that antiquities are the common heritage of mankind and not the property of one nation.

He has denounced what he considers politicized claims by modern nations like Italy that, in his view, have only weak ties to the ancient civilizations that once occupied the same land.

Cuno’s arguments are perhaps the clearest articulation of a view that American museum officials used for decades to justify the acquisition of antiquities with no clear ownership record. That practice has largely ended as direct evidence of looting forced leading museums, collectors and dealers to return hundreds of objects to Italy and Greece in recent years.

Yet while many museums moderated their stances during that controversy, Cuno became more outspoken.

“Cultural property is a modern political construct,” he said in a 2006 debate at the New School hosted by the New York Times. In March of this year, he described laws that give foreign governments ownership over ancient art found within their borders as “not only wrong, it is dangerous.”

You can read the Getty’s acquisition policy here: http://www.getty.edu/about/governance/pdfs/acquisitions_policy.pdf

Not much room for acquiring illegally-acquired objects

1. Jason Felch, James Cuno’s history of acquiring ancient art – latimes.com, L.A. Times, May 12, 2011, http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-cuno-antiquities-20110512,0,7395453,full.story (last visited May 12, 2011).

Seven works of art have been stolen from the Palace Museum inside the Forbidden City in Beijing. The items were stolen when the thief may have knocked a hole in the wall:

This will be an embarrassment for those who run the Palace Museum. 

One official has already said that there was a lapse in security. 

“Certainly we can only blame the fact that our work was not thorough enough if something like this can happen,” said official Feng Nai’en at a news conference. 

An investigation has begun to see where improvements can be made and the museum is checking to see if any other objects have been taken. 

Perhaps more embarrassing though is the fact that these items were on loan from Liangyicang, a private collection in Hong Kong. 

The Beijing News reported that the Hong Kong museum had not insured the items for as much as it could have because it believed they would be safe in Beijing. 

The Palace Museum is based within the Forbidden City, home to the country’s emperors during the Ming and Qing dynasties. 

The complex is made up of courtyards, palaces and gardens. It became a museum in 1921 after the fall of the last emperor Puyi a decade earlier.

1. Michael Bristow, Rare theft from Forbidden City, BBC, May 11, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13356725 (last visited May 12, 2011).