Shiva Returns to India

In August 2008 I commented on the Shiva acquired by the National Gallery of Australia.

The BBC has now reported that the museum will be returning the bronze to India along with another from the Art Gallery of New South Wales ("Australia to return 'stolen' Hindu statues to India", 5 September 2014). The story quoted a statement from the Australian Prime Minister's office:

Returning the sculptures "is testimony to Australia's good citizenship on such matters and the importance with which Australia views its relationship with India".

I hope that the Prime Minister and his government team will reflect on how these two major museums acquired the objects in the first place. What went wrong with the due diligence process? How could museums in Australia adopt a more rigorous acquisition policy?

And what about the other objects that were derived from the same source? Will those same Australian museums be handing them over as well?

For the earlier statement from Canberra see here.

Comments

drgallery said…

I introduced a new Art Acquisition Policy for the Art Gallery of New South Wales in December 2012 in the wake of the first Subhash Kapoor revelations and six months after starting work here in Sydney. All our subsequent acquisitions have followed the new policy although it was only formally enacted this year. The new policy can be found on our web site:

http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/about-us/corporate-information/policy-documents/art-acquisitions/

Michael Brand
Director
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Sydney
Australia

8 October 2014 at 01:24

The scale of the returns to Italy

I have been busy working on an overview, "Returning Archaeological Objects to Italy". The scale of the returns to Italy from North American collections and galleries is staggering: in excess of 350 objects. This is clearly the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the material that has surfaced on the market without a history that can be traced back to the period before 1970.

I will provide more information in due course, but the researcher is a reminder that we need to take due diligence seriously when it comes to making acquisitions.

Stele returns to Greece

The Hellenic Ministry of Culture has announced (Saturday 8 September 2018) that a stele that had been due to be auctioned at Sotheby's in London in June 2017 has been returned to Greece (Friday 7 September 2018). The identification had been made by Cambridge-based forensic archaeologist Dr Christos Tsirogiannis.

It appeared that the stele had been supplied with a falsified history as its presence with Becchina until 1990 contradicted the published sale catalogue entry. It then moved into the hands of George Ortiz.

A year ago it was suggested that Sotheby's should contact the Greek authorities. Those negotiations appear to have concluded successfully.

The 4th century BC stele fragment, with the personal name, Hestiaios, will be displayed in the Epigraphic Museum in Athens. It appears to have come from a cemetery in Attica.

"Beating sites to death"

Policy decisions for protecting archaeological sites need to be informed by carefully argued positions based on data. Dr Sam Hardy has produced an important study, “Metal detecting for cultural objects until ‘there is nothing left’: The potential and limits of digital data, netnographic data and market data for analysis”. Arts 7, 3 (2018) [online]. This builds on Hardy's earlier research.

Readers should note Hardy's conclusion about his findings: "they corroborate the detecting community’s own perception that they are ‘beat[ing these sites] to death’".

Pieterjan Deckers, Andres Dobat, Natasha Ferguson, Stijn Heeren, Michael Lewis, and Suzie Thomas may wish to reflect on whether or not their own position is endangering the finite archaeological record.

Abstract
This methodological study assesses the potential for automatically generated data, netnographic data and market data on metal-detecting to advance cultural property criminology. The method comprises the analysi…

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