Fragments attributed to the Berlin painter

What questions should we be considering when we study the fragments of Athenian red-figured pottery that are dispersed between different collections and museums? This short study takes the example of some five pieces attributed to the Berlin painter (BN3, BN9, BN12, BN29, BN38); two have been returned to Italy. When were these fragments moved to different collections? Who was involved? In the case of two of the pieces, the initial fragments were presented to the museum only to be followed by purchases from a different source. Such a pattern of acquisition is not confined to the Berlin painter.

This paper questions the position taken by James Cuno that scholars should not seek the clarify the "provenance" (I prefer "history") of such fragments. 

The fragments are a reminder of the information that has been lost by the unscientific removal of Athenian pottery from funerary and other archaeological contexts.

Reference

Gill, D. W. J. 2020. "Fragmented Athenian Pots and the Berlin Painter: Recent Breaks?" Academia Letters, Letter 40: 1–5. [DOI]

Please return the Icklingham bronzes to the United Kingdom

The New York Times piece on the "repatriation" of antiquities raises issues beyond Syria and Iraq (Tom Mashberg and Graham Bowley, "Islamic State Destruction Renews Debate Over Repatriation of Antiquities", March 30, 2015). James Cuno, the advocate of retentionism, is concerned that antiquities are taken out of potential war zones and are placed somewhere safe. He is quoted:

“Calamity can happen anywhere, but it is unlikely to happen everywhere at the same time,” Mr. Cuno said in an interview. “I say ‘distribute the risk,’ not ‘concentrate it.’ ”

I presume that Cuno would be happy for looted antiquities to be returned to museums in "safe" countries.

Can I suggest readers of LM turn to page 21-22 of Who Owns Antiquity? to read about a Roman bronze that was welcomed into a Harvard exhibition while Cuno was director? The bronze was removed from a Roman town in Suffolk. And I have discussed it in my review of Cuno's volume for the American Journal of Archaeology.

Would Cuno like to ask the present proprietor of this bronze (and the other pieces found at Icklingham) to return them to the United Kingdom as soon as possible so that they can be placed on public view?

James Cuno: "the lone voice in the wilderness"

I see that James Cuno presents himself in the New York Times as "the lone voice in the wilderness". But he needs to see how he has failed to obtained a balanced view over the acquisition of recently surfaced antiquities. He should read my review of Whose Culture? a volume that could be considered partial and partisan.

Interestingly Cuno's colleague at the Getty, Tim Potts also has a view on the debate: “It has become an article of faith that any form of trade in cultural items is bad”. In the same review of Whose Culture? I asked what had happened to his voice, especially as he was recorded as the co-organiser. Perhaps he would like to comment on some of the acquisitions he made and why one had to be returned to the vendor. What is the full account?

Perhaps the trade in cultural items is not as good as he would like us to believe it is.

James Cuno Revives "Culture Wars"

I have been unimpressed by James Cuno's attempts to be a commentator on the looting of archaeological sites. I have reviewed his works elsewhere:

• Who Owns Antiquity? (2008) [academia.edu]
• Who Owns Culture? (2009) [academia.edu]
• Museums Matter (2011) [academia.edu]

Now Cuno has decided to reopen the discussion with an essay, "Culture Wars: The Case Against Repatriating Museum Artifacts
", Foreign Affairs November / December 2014.

Cuno overlooks some issues that are very relevant to the debate about repatriation. What about the Egyptian material from the Tomb of Tetatki that had been acquired by the Louvre? Is the AAMD 2008 acquisition policy as tight as Cuno suggests?

Cuno limits the information about the returns to Italy as a result of the Medici Conspiracy to what was displayed in the Nostoi exhibition in Rome (and Athens).

it was the Medici scandal that eventually led the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Princeton University Art Museum to send those 69 objects back to Rome in 2007.

To that list of institutions (some linked to Gianfranco Becchina rather than Giacomo Medici) we could add (among others) the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Toledo Museum of Art. The Dallas Museum of Art took the initiative to return material without being asked. And there are other major collections in North America where acquisitions are linked to Medici (e.g. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts). And my running list from 8 major museums adds up to 326 items returned. (And then we can add in material from a private collector, auction-houses, and dealers.) It does look as if Cuno has down-played the scale of the problem. And while we talk about figures, over 60% of the objects returned from those museums were acquired in the 1990s or 2000s.

Cuno also could have discussed the loan of archaeological material from Italian collections to museums such as New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and to Dallas. And Princeton was allowed to retain some material although the title was given to Italy.

Perhaps Cuno needs to reflect on the lessons derived from the Medici Conspiracy and respond to the constructive comments by thoughtful museum directors such as Maxwell Anderson.

Cleveland and the Apollo

The latest number of the Journal of Art Crime has appeared. This contains my essay on the so-called Cleveland Apollo.

"The exhibition of the Cleveland Apollo and the thinking behind the publication of Bennett’s book reveal what Roger Bland of the British Museum once described (in a review of James Cuno’s work) as “an example of US cultural imperialism at its worst”. Bennett has reignited the debate and prepared the way for a full and balanced discussion of the so-called Cleveland Apollo at some future managed event at the Cleveland Museum of Art."

• Gill, D. W. J. 2013. "Context matters: The Cleveland Apollo goes public." Journal of Art Crime 10: 69-75.

George Zakos and Chicago

Readers of The Medici Conspiracy will be aware of the links between Robert Hecht and George Zakos. In 2008 the Art Institute of Chicago acquired some 58 votives, perhaps derived from Thessaly in Greece [Annual Report]. They date to the Geometric and archaic periods. The collecting history of the pieces is given as follows:

George Zakos of Basel, Switzerland since at least 1965 as reported by the owner of Ariadne Galleries to Mrs. Walter Alexander [email in curatorial file]; purchased by Ariadne Galleries of New York, New York in or around 1975; purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Walter Alexander of Geneva, Illinois in 1985; donated to the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois in 2008.

These objects now appear on the AAMD Object Registry. Their acquisition is justified as follows:

based on the results of provenance research, the Art Institute of Chicago can make an informed judgment that the object was outside its probable country of modern discovery before 1970. The collection of fifty-eight objects was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Alexander in 1985 from Ariadne Galleries of New York, New York. According to Mrs. Walter Alexander, the owner of Ariadne Galleries reported to her that he purchased the entire collection from George Zakos of Basel, Switzerland, around 1975, and that it was his understanding that Mr. Zakos had owned the objects for at least ten years. The Art Institute of Chicago has been unable to confirm this information with Mr. Zakos, as he is now deceased.

The Ariadne Galleries are linked to the handling of the Icklingham Bronzes removed from Suffolk, England.

So how did the curatorial staff at the Art Institute of Chicago pursue a due diligence search? Did they see authenticated documentation? Did they research the background of the dealers? When did these Thessalian antiquities leave Greek soil?

And what does this acquisition tell us about the then President and Director of the AIC, James Cuno?

Cuno and the Encyclopedic Museum

Next week I am due to be lecturing on the Encyclopedic Museum in Cambridge. I am grateful to Lee Rosenbaum of Culturegrrl for her comments on James Cuno's Davos discussion on the subject. Many Encyclopedic Museums have returned large numbers of antiquities since the Declaration on the Universal Museum.

I think that we are going to have a good debate in Cambridge.

Details
Wednesday, 6th February 2013, 4.30-6.00 pm
Heritage Group Research Seminar
McDonald Seminar Room

Does the Encyclopedic Museum Matter?

All welcome.

It is hoped to set up a videolink via gotomeeting. Please email me to be included.

The Encyclopedic Museum

Metropolitan Museum of Art © David Gill

The topic for the UCS Heritage Group in January 2013 will be the Encyclopedic Museum. All welcome.

If readers of LM would like to participate via videolink please let me know.

UPDATE: There will be a link via GoToMeeting. Please contact me in early January for connection details.

Symes material returned from the Getty

The J. Paul Getty Museum has kindly been in touch and explained that while the return of material is newly reported, the objects were returned in the spring.

Julie Jaskol, Assistant Director for Media Relations at the Getty, kindly writes:

They were donated to the Getty by Robin Symes in 1988, and after research conducted by the Getty, now are under study in Rome. We initiated a study of the fragments (many no more than chips) several years ago when research indicated that joins were possible, but we weren't able to make this connection until the Italians published the Ascoli Satriano vessels some years after their discovery. 

In his letter to Director General Luigi Malnati last January, Jim Cuno said, "The Getty acquired these objects as a gift in 1988, in the hope that they would be preserved and studied and eventually reconnected with other fragments of the same objects. Happily, careful scholarship has led to that result. Working with colleagues in Italy, Getty curators have determined that the fragments in our possession are very likely to match with vessels from Ascoli Satriano. It is our hope that the fragments can be examined to ascertain their pertinence, and rejoined to these vessels." 

Dr. Malnati invited Claire Lyons to join a committee formed as a research collaboration to examine the pieces. 

The pieces are: 

88.AA.140-.42 - fragments of marble vessels, handles, rims (86) 

88.AA.143 -- four marble stands 

88.AA.144 - three marble feline paws

The items appear in the Journal of the J. Paul Getty Museum 17 (1989), 111 under no. 14, "158 fragments of vessels and sculpture" [JSTOR]. 67 of these fragments were linked to a statue of Apollo (inv. 85.AA.108) since returned to Italy. The source is listed as 'by donation'.

What other gifts did the Getty receive from Symes?

The Cleveland Drusus without a "slam-dunk paper trail"

Source: Cleveland Museum of Art

Newsweek has reviewed the recent criticisms of Cleveland Museum of Art's acquisition of the apparently recently-surfaced portrait of Drusus ("Who Owns Antiquity?; Two U.S. museums wrestle with the provenance question", September 17, 2012). The acquisition is defended by the director, David Franklin, who accepts that "the 2,000-year-old marble head didn't come with a slam-dunk paper trail proving that it could not have been illegally unearthed since the time of the UNESCO convention".

Newsweek should have explored the sale in Paris. How reliable is the reported collecting history that attempts to place the Drusus in Algeria?

Franklin felt this oral history gave him enough to run with: "We did as much if not more than anyone could have done to research this object ... If all the arrows are pointing in one direction, you can make a reasoned assumption," he says. The inevitable risks that this assumption might turn out wrong are balanced, he feels, by the open access that scholars and visitors now have to this wonderful work of art.

Cleveland is clearly now admitting that there is no verifiable and authenticated documentation for the head.

Franklin makes his appeal to James Cuno's Who Owns Antiquity? Perhaps he needed to read some of the reviews to understand the weakness of his position. I would draw Franklin's attention to the perceptive comments made by Dr Roger Bland of the British Museum.

Museums Matter

My review of James Cuno's Museums Matter: In praise of the encyclopaedic museum (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011), is now available in The Journal of Art Crime 7 (2012), 86-87. [Link to publisher]

Cuno is passionate about the contribution of the encyclopedic museum to the cultural landscape of our cosmopolitan world. The implicit statement of his title is a change from the earlier questions that he has raised: Whose Muse? (2004), Who Owns Antiquity? (2008), and Whose Culture? (2009) ... The four core chapters on the Enlightenment, the Discursive, the Cosmopolitan, and the Imperial Museums had their origins in the 2009 Campbell Lectures at Rice University. 

Cuno avoids turning his attention to the issue of antiquities. Yet they lurk on the periphery of his text.

Museums Matter

My copy of James Cuno's Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum (University of Chicago Press, 2011) has arrived. There are four main chapters covering the Enlightenment, Discursive, Cosmopolitan and Imperial Museums.

A browse suggests that Cuno has chosen to sidestep one of the most pressing issues for so-called encyclopedic museums in North America, Europe and Japan: the acquisition of newly surfaced antiquities. The "Medici Conspiracy" has brought about the return of some 130 antiquities to Italy from North American collections. How have these high profile encylopedic museums damaged the reputation of museums in general?

I look forward to reading Museums Matter and to reflect on this telling title.

Cuno: "the Getty has had complicated relationships with foreign governments"

James Cuno has reflected on his first working week at the Getty ("Getty Trust CEO James Cuno wraps up debut week", LA Times August 6, 2011). There seems to be a hint at a move towards a so-called licit market ("the benefits of a more open exchange of goods") in the way that the story is reported.

But Cuno stresses that he will support the Getty's current antiquities acquisition policy, designed to deter looting: "The policy is to only acquire objects that can be shown to have left their presumed country of origin before 1970."

"It's the right thing for the Getty, not only because the Getty has had complicated relationships with foreign governments in the past but because the Getty is more than a museum," he says. "The conservation work and foundation work that we do internationally can't be compromised."

The key issue is that collecting histories need to be demonstrated through authenticated documentation.

We look forward to reading his Rice University Campbell Lectures that will appear as Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum (Chicago UP) [website] this December. Previous titles have posed questions: Whose Muse?; Who Owns Antiquity?; Whose Culture? Is the new title a break with precedent and perhaps more than a little suggestive?

James Cuno at Harvard

Jason Felch, co-author of Chasing Aphrodite, has written a piece on James Cuno's appointment as CEO to the Getty Trust ("James Cuno says he accepts the Getty's antiquities acquisition policy", LA Times May 11, 2011). Felch looks back to Cuno's time at Harvard:

In one case, Cuno approved the purchase of more than 180 Greek vase fragments with unclear ownership histories. Cuno has said he inquired into their origins. With no clear evidence that they came from illicit excavations, Cuno said Tuesday, "we were satisfied these were appropriately acquired."

In an interview, David Mitten, the retired Harvard curator and professor who recommended the purchase, has a slightly different account. He said he and Cuno knew that two antiquities dealers known to traffic in looted antiquities — Robert Hecht and Frieda Tchacos — were the source of some of the fragments.

Felch contacted Cuno who is quoted: "At the time I didn't know the extent of his reputation". (I presume this meant Hecht.)

More at stake is the fact about what we now know about Hecht and Tchacos, and what was known to Cuno when he wrote Who Owns Antiquity? (2008). Cuno made his position on the acquiisition of the fragments quite clear (see here).

Felch also raises the issues about Shelby White's acquisition of the Icklingham bronzes that are apparently derived from a Roman site in Suffolk, England.

In 1996, Cuno oversaw an exhibit of bronze statues that included objects with murky ownership histories on loan from private collectors Leon Levy and Shelby White and Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman.

Irene Winter, the chair of Harvard's fine arts department, filed a complaint with the university's then-president, Neil Rudenstine, requesting that the loans be barred under the school's loans and acquisitions policy. Dozens of objects from the two private collections have since been returned to Italy or Greece.

Rudenstine today is a Getty Trustee and a member of the committee that selected Cuno. In an interview, he said he was satisfied that Cuno had conducted the proper due diligence.

Will Cuno be toning down his position as he takes up his new role?

James Cuno as President of the Getty Trust: Reactions

Source: Getty Trust

There have been some reactions to the appointment of James Cuno as president of the Getty Trust.

Jori Finkel has written up the announcement for the LA Times ("Getty Trust's new CEO: Art Institute of Chicago's James Cuno", May 10, 2011). Cuno is quoted:

Cuno says that his appointment does not signal a change in Getty's antiquities policies. "No, I'm certain they won't change. The decisions that the Getty made were absolutely right for the Getty," he says.

"In terms of my criticism of cultural property laws, I think reasonable people can disagree on these matters, and I very much look forward to engaging in conversations with colleagues around the world. I think we are all seeking the same thing: to preserve the objects of antiquity and broaden public and scholarly access to them."

Lord Renfrew was contacted for a comment:

Colin Renfrew, a leading archaeologist at Cambridge University, calls Cuno a "seemingly odd choice" to lead the Getty because of his position on this topic.

"But if he maintains the new acquisition policy, he may do no harm," Renfrew says. "If he persuades the trustees to renege on that policy he will make the Getty once again the black sheep of the Western world. We shall have to wait and see."

Benjamin Genocchio of Art+Auction is reported in the LA Times. His response, "Why the Getty's Choice of James Cuno as CEO Is Clueless", is blunt. Here is a flavour:

So why would the Getty board have chosen to replicate the same disastrous management structure — to hire another veteran museum director (from the same Chicago institution, no less) to be its president, who in turn will have to choose a museum director to work for him? This is not just déjà vu, it smacks of an institution that is incapable of even recognizing that there is a problem with its management structure. They have just set themselves up for the same old antagonisms to arise all over again.

The publication of Chasing Aphrodite later this month will only serve to highlight institutional problems within the Trust as well as the Museum.

Lee Rosenbaum has also written an excellent response ("Archaeologists’ Red Flag: James Cuno Named Getty Trust President", May 10, 2011). Here is a short section:

This intemperate rhetoric, presuming to tell other countries that they have no "right" to enact their own cultural-property laws and suggesting that they also have no right to derive a sense of national identity and self-esteem from the rich cultures that historically flourished in their lands, is waving a red flag in front of archaeologists and officials from the source countries for antiquities---the very people with whom the Getty has been conscientiously trying to reach a rapprochement.

What is my feeling? Cuno has made his position clear through Who Owns Antiquity? and Whose Culture? I have yet to see him expand on the fragments of pottery from the Robert Guy collection that were discussed in Whose Muse? though there are some issues that still need to be addressed. I have reviewed two of these volumes: one in the American Journal of Archaeology [link] [other reviews] and the other for the Journal of Art Crime [quote].

James Cuno as President of the Getty Trust

Source: Getty Trust

It has been announced that James Cuno is to be the next president of the Getty Trust [press release].

The Board of Trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust announced today that James Cuno, recognized both nationally and internationally as a noted museum leader and scholar and an accomplished leader in the field of the visual arts, has been named president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Dr. Cuno, who comes to the Getty after serving as president and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2004, will assume his position August 1.

Cuno's position on cultural property is well-known (see some of the reviews of his work).

This announcement coincides with the publication of Chasing Aphrodite that is raising issues about the J. Paul Getty Museum's acquisition policy.

"Ownership is a means of stewardship"

Patty Gerstenblith and James Cuno have been discussing the issues surrounding the return of antiquities ("The finder's keepers argument for antiquities", Minnesota Public Radio March 19, 2010). Much of the discussion was on objects that left their place of origin several centuries ago: the Parthenon marbles and the Rosetta stone. Cuno emphasised the role of the universal museum: "the world comes to London".

The discussion eventually got round to the contemporary issue of looting. The discussion of why so many major North American museums had returned objects to Italy and Greece was neatly side-stepped. Cuno made the point that few museums in North America would now buy antiquities that had surfaced on the market without appropriate documentation. ("if we can’t be confident … we don’t acquire it"). Gertsenblith made a comment about private collectors acquiring these same objects on the market and asked if museums were as rigorous over such donations.

IADAA makes its position clear

The International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art (IADAA) has updated its website. It now includes a section on "A critical eye towards the cultural property discussion" with a selection of "scolars' [sic.] opinions".

The majority of the quotations (Kwame Anthony Appiah; Sir John Boardman; James Cuno; Neil MacGregor; Philippe de Montebello; David I. Owen; James C. Y. Watt) come from James Cuno (ed.), Whose Culture? The promise of museums and the debate over antiquities (Princeton University Press, 2009). This volume is well known for its omission of several key contributions from the event. The web officer for the IADAA could, perhaps, add something from my review of the volume that appeared in the Fall number of the Journal of Art Crime (2009).

If the issue under debate is difficult and divisive, then one way to create order is to make it partial and partisan, inviting a range of contributors whose varied views all lie together on one side of the division. With the other side thereby silent, the debate can happily come to a reasonably strong consensus. This is that book. The other view of the central issue is absent, that the recent past of collecting antiquities in too many museums has been a story of looting, smuggling and unfair dealing.

The IADAA has helpfully indicated that it is deaf to those who do not hold the now untenable and flawed Cuno position.

George Washington University Seminars on Museums and Antiquities

I noticed that there are some interesting seminars at George Washington University Seminars in their "Museums and Antiquities" series.

Coming up:

• January 21, 2010. James Cuno: “Museums, Antiquities, and the Politics of Cultural Property"
• February 18, 2010. Patty Gerstenblith: "Museums and the Market: Preserving the Past by Regulating the Market in Antiquities”
• March 4, 2010. Malcolm Bell: "Archaeologists’ Views on Collecting Antiquities"

Bell and Gerstenblith were excluded from Cuno's edited volume Whose Culture? (see my comments). I reviewed Whose Culture? for the Journal of Art Crime.

For reviews of Cuno's Who Owns Antiquity?

Perhaps somebody attending the series could leave some comments.