The return of three antiquities acquired in 2002 and 2003 raise a number of issues for the curatorial team at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University. The museum appears to overlook a number of 'facts' in the way that it has written about the return.
First, a Greek journalist, Nikolas Zirganos, raised the issue of three pieces back in 2007: two of the pieces are included in the return.
Second, there was a suggestion that the Greek authorities had raised concerns about the three pieces at the time.
Third, the identifications had been made by Christos Tsirogiannis.
Fourth, discussion of these issues had been raised on social media and in an academic paper by 2009.
Yet, reading the Emory press statement you would never realise that concerns had been raised over such a long period of time. You could even have been forgiven for thinking that the road to repatriation had been researched by one of their own. Why did it take the museum so long to enter negotiations with the Greek authorities?
The link to the page listing the three objects does not give a complete picture of the owners / handlers of the three pieces. Indeed, there is no mention of the association of one of the items with Japan.
It would have been helpful if the museum had given the full (and correct) history of each of the pieces. And the suggestion that two of the pieces are associated with a particular dealer pointed to problems with the collecting history. Yet the third piece mentioned by Zirganos was linked to this same dealer: why has this been excluded from the agreement? Is it assumed that the full history had been disclosed?
How much of the supplied information is trustworthy? What is the basis of this knowledge? Is there supporting evidence?
What other pieces in the collection need to be investigated with the same level of rigour?
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