The Fordham Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art

Robin Pogrebin ("Fordham Opens Its Gift: An Antiquities Museum ", New York Times, December 6, 2007) has reported on today's opening of the Fordham Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art. This collection was formed by a former classics student of Fordham. The NYT reports:

For some four decades, William D. Walsh browsed auction catalogs in search of the ancient artifacts that would gratify his passion for classical antiquity.

In other words during the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and in this decade, Walsh has been buying antiquities at auction. Pogrebin continues:

Mr. Walsh said he acquired every piece at public auctions — not through a private dealer — and therefore hopes that the provenance of his artifacts is clean and accounted for. “I’ve always focused on keeping the auction house between myself and the seller,” he said.

But it is well documented that antiquities have been surfacing through auction houses. Why did one well-known auction house close down its antiquities department in London? Why had some of the antiquities returned from North American museums to Italy passed through established auction houses?

Pogrebin tries to get some balance in his report and quotes Richard Hodges, the director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology:

It’s a slightly imprudent act on the part of the university [sc. Fordham], because a lot of it is not provenanced ... The message that it sends is there is nothing wrong with looting and buying illegal objects. Fordham needs to be very careful about this.

The collection is described by Jennifer Udell, the curator, as follows:

It spans several periods, Mycenaean, Villanovan, Classical Greece, Geometrical, Archaic Roman, Imperial Roman, Republican, Etruscan, South Italian.”

The press release highlights the following:

• a bronze bust of Roman emperor Caracalla of the Severan Dynasty, circa 200
  A.D.;
• several large ceramic vessels from the ancient Etruscans, whose culture flourished in central Italy in the centuries before the rise of the Roman Empire;
• a nickel-size Athenian silver coin, with an owl insignia, dating from the 5th or 6th century B.C.;
• an 8-foot high male funerary statue from Rome, circa 10 A.D.;
• a marble bust of Augustus, adopted son of Julius Caesar and the first emperor of Rome.

It will be interesting to see the sources and histories of the pieces in due course.