The Universal Museum: time for a rethink?

I have been re-reading the essay, "The Universal Museum: a special case?" (ICOM News 1, 2004), by Geoffrey Lewis, the chair of the ICOM Ethics Committee.

The real purpose of the Declaration was, however, to establish a higher degree of immunity from claims for the repatriation of objects from the collections of these museums.

His comment was on the "Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums" (December 2002). The declaration included this statement:

Calls to repatriate objects that have belonged to museum collections for many years have become an important issue for museums. Although each case has to be judged individually, we should acknowledge that museums serve not just the citizens of one nation but the people of every nation. Museums are agents in the development of culture, whose mission is to foster knowledge by a continuous process of reinterpretation. Each object contributes to that process. To narrow the focus of museums whose collections are diverse and multifaceted would therefore be a disservice to all visitors.

It was signed by:

• The Art Institute of Chicago; 
• Bavarian State Museum, Munich (Alte Pinakothek, Neue Pinakothek); 
• State Museums, Berlin; 
• Cleveland Museum of Art; 
• J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; 
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; 
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Louvre Museum, Paris; 
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 
• The Museum of Modern Art, New York; 
• Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence; 
• Philadelphia Museum of Art; 
• Prado Museum, Madrid; 
• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam;
• State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; 
• Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid; 
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; 
• The British Museum, London

It is perhaps telling that since the declaration five of these universal museums have handed antiquities over to other coutnries. These include:

• The Cleveland Museum of Art to Italy
• The J. Paul Getty Museum to Greece and Italy
• The Louvre to Egypt
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York to Italy
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to Italy

These were all objects acquired since 1970. Such repatriations perhaps demonstrate the flawed thinking behind the "Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums". 

Has the time come for these major museums to review their policies? Is the declaration now worthless? 

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Looting Matters: The Corrupting Influence of Forged Antiquities

Looting Matters: The Corrupting Influence of Forged Antiquities

Comments on forged antiquities in the response to the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition.

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The intellectual consequences of forgeries

London's Victoria and Albert Museum has been hosting a short-lived exhibition of Fakes and Forgeries. The show has been mounted with the collaboration of the Art and Antiques Squad of the Metropolitan Police. One of the pieces on display was the Amarna princess --- created by Shaun Greenhalgh --- that was sold to the Bolton Museum with the support of the National Arts Collection Fund. The statue was even supplied with a false collecting history, namely that it had once resided in the Silverton Park collection. Greenhalgh was also responsible for the creation of the Roman Risley Park lanx.

The creation of forgeries and their admission to the corpus of knowledge can have serious intellectual consequences. This is the case for some Cycladic marble figures that were attributed to the hand of a supposed third millennium BC sculptor ('The Stafford Master') only to find that they were modern creations. Doubts about the antiquity of the 'artisan' had been raised when it was realised that the statues attributed to 'him' had not come from any known archaeological contexts.

The Bolton Museum case finds a parallel in the acquisition of the 'Getty kouros'. This sculpture, like the 'Amarna princess' was 'falsely historied' placing its initial acquisition around 1930.

The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas also appeared to acquire what appeared to be a possible modern creation in 2000. It was reported that the 'Sumerian' statue had been purchased from a New York antiquities dealer --- Phoenix Solo --- for $2.7 million (Gabriella Coslovich, "Former state art gallery chief buys into another controversy", The Age (Melbourne) August 21, 2001; see also Russell Berman, "Antiquities Dealers Suddenly Emerge Into Sunlight", The New York Sun April 14, 2006). The statue was apparently returned to the dealer for a refund ("Museum wants refund for $2.7 million statue", AP August 17, 2001; see also Adam McGill, "The Kimbell and its critics", D - Dallas / Fort Worth February 1, 2002).

Forgeries have corrupted collections for centuries. So how can museums and collectors avoid them? One strategy is to insist that the object has a documented collecting history that can be verified. Such a 'provenance' (see earlier discussion of the term) needs to be the subject of a rigorous due diligence search. And such a search will, at the same time, protect the museum or private collector from acquiring a genuine ancient piece that had been looted in recent years.

Scholarship cannot ignore forgeries.

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Michael Brand's Departure from the Getty

Lee Rosenbaum of Culturegrrl has an important interview with Michael Brand about his departure from the J. Paul Getty Museum. She also carries a comment sent to the staff at the Getty about the Fano Athlete story.

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The Fano Athlete: LA Times and Correction

Last month I drew attention to the story covered in the LA Times about the Fano Athlete. Although I did not quote the correspondence from Bernard Ashmole that suggested the acquisition of a bronze statue had been a "crime", my attention has been drawn to a correction in the LA Times:

The letter from the late antiquities expert and Getty adviser Bernard Ashmole, which referred to the museum's "exploits over the bronze statue" as a "crime," was describing a different bronze statue in the museum's collection. Garrett, who initially told The Times the letter referred to the bronze athlete, now says he was mistaken.

I have earlier rehearsed the apparently undisputed collecting history of the statue as it passed through Italy.

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Morgantina Antiquities Set for Return and Display

The agreement between North American museums and Italy have included three lots of material associated with Morgantina:

• The Morgantina silver hoard (from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• The acrolithic Aphrodite (from the J. Paul Getty Museum)
• The acrolithic sculptures (formerly on loan to the University of Virginia Art Museum in Charlottesville)
  

The names of Robin Symes and Robert Hecht have been linked with parts of this batch. 

Together this group of objects represents some $22 million worth of acquisitions.


The Italian press is now reporting on the planned reception of the pieces and the expected display in Sicily ("La Venere di Morgantina torna in Sicilia", ANSA January 27, 2010).

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"A deficit of trust": lobbyists and Obama

I had a cup of tea with a colleague this afternoon as we got to grips with a substantial questionnaire. In a casual moment he asked if I had listened to the highlights of President Obama's first State of the Union address on the BBC. He thought that I would be interested in Obama's comments on lobbyists in Washington (see earlier comments).

So I sat down with the BBC transcript and here is the relevant section (45 minutes into the speech):

Let's meet our responsibility to the citizens who sent us here. Let's try common sense. A novel concept.


To do that, we have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now. We face a deficit of trust - deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue - to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; to give our people the government they deserve.

That's what I came to Washington to do. That's why - for the first time in history - my administration posts on our White House visitors online. That's why we've excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs, or seats on federal boards and commissions.

But we can't stop there. It's time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or with Congress. It's time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office.

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Antiquities and Jihadists

Earlier this month I drew attention to the speech of Giuseppe Proietti linking Mohamed Atta to the attempt to sell antiquities in Germany. My prompt had been the Fall number of the Journal of Art Crime.

I now see that the February number of the Art Newspaper has also taken up the story (Cristina Ruiz, "9/11 hijacker attempted to sell Afghan loot: Mohammed Atta offered artefacts to German archaeologist", January 27, 2010). Ruiz gives credit to the Journal of Art Crime.

If this story is accurate, based apparently on a security report from the German intelligence services, then there are more serious issues at stake. Archaeologists have been raising the issue of the looting on archaeological sites to provide material for the market. And there have been concerns about the way that archaeological material has been used to fund organised crime (or, in this case, terrorism).

What if those buying looted antiquities derived from Afghanistan inadvertently (or "in good faith") helped to fund the attacks on the Twin Towers? It makes the provocative comments of a senior North American academic, quoted in an interview in the New York Times (Robin Pogrebin, "$200 Million Gift Prompts a Debate Over Antiquities ", April 1, 2006), seem more than inappropriate. In talking about archaeologists who hold an ethical position, the archaeology professor is reported to have said:

''The jihadists, as I would call them now -- who think that to even publish anywhere an item that doesn't have a provenance is forbidden -- this is an utterly ridiculous position,'' he continued. ''If you took that position, we wouldn't know anything about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Those were found by Bedouin in caves beside the Dead Sea. None of them were found by archaeologists. If you followed the purists, you would totally ignore it.''

I have commented before on one of the responses to this debate.

Imagine a collector of antiquities justifying an acquisition in these (fictitious) terms: "This sculpture may have been sold by jihadists who needed money to fight NATO forces in Afghanistan".

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Antiquities seized near Foggia

There is a report in the Italian press of a seizure of antiquities at Rodi Garganico in the province of Foggia ("GDF sequestra 108 reperti età Dauna in Puglia", ANSA, January 25, 2010).  The pieces date from the 6th to the 4th centuries BCE.The objects include 18 pots, 7 fibulae and items of personal jewellery, 5 spearpoints, and 78 fragments of pottery.

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Cyprus: pots and coins

There has been a reminder of the scale of looting on Cyprus. There is a report by Menelaos Hadjicostis on the breaking up of a major "smuggling ring" ("Cyprus police bust large antiquities theft ring", AP January 25, 2010). The raid found pottery and limestone sculptures as well as silver and bronze coins valued at 11 million Euros. Ten Cypriot nationals were arrested and five others, including a Syrian national, were on the run. The antiquities are reported to have been found in the region of Limassol and Paphos.

A seizure like this is a good reminder of the need for agreements to protect the finite cultural resources of Cyprus. This includes the MOU between Cyprus and the United States. The presence of coins in the haul shows that coins need to be part of any agreement. It also explains why coin dealers have been challenging the agreement.

• MOU between Cyprus and the US
  

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