Tuesday 10 April 2012

SLAM: "We don't have any interest in possessing a stolen object"

David Linenbroker, the attorney for the St Louis Art Museum (SLAM), has spoken about the legal ruling over the Egytian mummy mask acquired by the museum ("Judge: 3,200-year-old mummy mask can stay in Mo.", AP, April 5, 2012).
We don't have any interest in possessing a stolen object ...We've been facing all this innuendo for years.
I am delighted that SLAM does not want to "possess" stolen objects.

The same report states:
Museum officials have said they researched the mask's ownership history before buying it and had no indication there were questions about how it arrived in the U.S. The museum's research showed the mask was part of the Kaloterna private collection during the 1960s, before a Croatian collector, Zuzi Jelinek, bought it in Switzerland and later sold it to Phoenix Ancient Art of New York in 1995. The art museum purchased the mask from Phoenix Ancient Art.
It is now clear that the mask could not have entered the "Kaloterna collection" in the early 1960s as the object was still in Egypt. The collecting history for the mask appears to be seriously flawed. Why? What could be the motive?

What does Linenbroker understand by "innuendo"? Perhaps he could produce the authenticated documentation demonstrating the full collecting history of the mask. Perhaps he could explain the apparent fact that the mask was still in Egypt at the time that the museum claimed it was in a private collection in Switzerland.

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