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.

Whose Culture? and the returns to Italy

I have already made a preliminary comment on James Cuno's minimalist views (in his 2009 edited volume, Whose Culture?) on the return of antiquities from North American museums to Italy. I have begun to read the book and have been looking (in vain) for a response from Cuno and his like-minded contributors to these returns.

Kwame Anthony Appiah in his (reprinted) essay merely makes the outdated statement, "Italian authorities are negotiating about the status of other other objects from both the Getty and the Metropolitan Museum" (p. 71). Elsewhere he notes that the Metropolitan had at one point been "close to a deal" over the Sarpedon (Euphronios) krater (p. 76) - yet this Athenian krater has been returned to Italy (January 2008) and has even been on exhibition in Athens.

Philippe de Montebello does address the return of the Sarpedon krater (p. 61). He protests at the Italian description of the pot as a cosa morta, but concedes "it would have been clearly preferable to know the totality of the krater's original, found context" (p. 65).

Sir John Boardman also notes the return (p. 121). There is a strange discussion about the krater moving from Athens ("a pagan (in our terms) society whose cultural heritage is nevertheless claimed by a Christian orthodox country") to Etruria (in Italy) ("another pagan society now in a Christian Orthodox (of different persuasion) country"), then being pillaged by "Christian (no doubt) excavators" (sic.) (pp. 121-22). However he does concede, "it would be good to know the details of the krater find and cofinds and we mourn their loss" (p. 122).

The Geddes Collection at Bonham's: Publicity

John Boardman has written in the Bonhams Magazine (Autumn 2008), "Urning Respect" (pp. 40-43) [online], in support of the sale of the South Italian pottery from the Graham Geddes collection. Boardman notes the friendship between Dale Trendall and Graham Geddes. He comments that "most [of the South Italian pottery] has been found in tombs, and it is suspected that this was their intended fate". While it is likely that most of these near complete pots have come from tombs, very few have in fact been excavated in a scientific manner; Ricardo Elia has estimated that some 94.5% of all Apulian pots have been deprived of their archaeological context. (Consider the profile of South Italian pottery --- Apulian, Paestan, Lucanian --- in the "Nostoi" exhibitions.) So in one sense "suspect" or guess is all that we can do when it comes to this category of material because so much has been looted. There are over 50 lots (out of 180 [though some have now been withdrawn]) of South Italian pots in this auction.

Chantelle Rountree also writes about the formation of the Geddes collection. She notes the friendship with Trendall, Alexander Cambitoglou and Ian McPhee, and even the creation (by Trendall) of the "Geddes painter". Geddes apparently bought in London and New York from the 1970s onwards (i.e. after the 1970 UNESCO Convention). How many pieces were purchased at Sotheby's in London? Rountree comments on the range of objects in the sale including mosaics (some "Eastern Mediterranean" and mostly from an anonymous European private collection) that "once adorned the floors of Roman villas". But where were those villas located? Or were they bath-houses (e.g. lot 114?), churches (e.g. lot 122?) or other structures? Or has that information been lost?

Now the immediate publicity for the sale is over, it should be possible to take a serious look at the collecting histories of the individual pieces.

"There is good self-regulation in most countries"

Sir John Boardman (in Who Owns Objects?) has posed the question,

"Should we not simply admit the impossibility of controlling the antiques trade, and indeed the undesirability of so doing except where proven stolen goods are involved, as in any other trade?"

I have discussed elsewhere the issue of what is "demonstrably stolen". My view is in keeping with the position of the UK Museums Association:

"In general many parts of the trade seems to prefer to assume items are all licit, "innocent until proven guilty". It would be safer—and more realistic—to regard certain categories of material as likely to be illicit unless proven otherwise. Objects without a known recent history should not normally be traded or collected."

But I digress.

Boardman continues, "By now there is good self-regulation in most countries" and cites two bodies:
a. The Antiquities Dealers Association
b. An (sic.?) Art Loss Register

Ashton Hawkins and Judith Church have written about "A tale of two innocents: the rights of former owners and good-faith purchasers of stolen art" (in Kate Fitz Gibbon (ed.),Who Owns the Past? (2005), 62-63). They draw attention to the replacement of the International Foundation for Art Research, Inc. (IFAR) by "a British not-for-profit corporation formed by IFAR, Sotheby's, Christie's, London-based insurance brokers, and other British and American companies called the International Art and Antique Loss Register, Ltd. (ALR)".

They expand, "This registry [sc. ALR] has emerged as the leading international clearinghouse for information on stolen art".

One could be led to believe that the looting of antiquities is minor. Kate Fitz Gibbon, editor of Who Owns the Past?, drew on "information published by the Art Loss Register" to comment, "thefts of antiquities represent only 3 percent of total art thefts" ("Editor's note: The Illicit Trade - Fact or Fiction?", 179).

Perhaps this deserves a few words.

There is a difference between the theft of a Roman portrait head from a stately home or London apartment, and the deliberate digging up of an archaeological context to remove an Etruscan bronze mirror. Note that the Art Loss Register observes, "the majority of the items registered are objects stolen from private homes".

Take my first example. The Roman portrait head will have been inherited or purchased at a gallery, there will be documentation, and the circumstances of the theft will have been recorded by the police.

But take the second. The Etruscan tomb was opened secretly at night away from public gaze. The last person to see the bronze mirror was a member of the grieving family some 2400 years earlier. The tomb was unknown to archaeology. Its contents were unrecorded. There was nothing to go on the register.

So imagine a sale. The dealer checks with a register.

The Roman head pops up in the database: stolen from Slappleby Hall, Northamptonshire on November 12, 2002. (This is an imaginary theft before you scrabble for your computers. Even Google does not list such a residence ...)

The Etruscan mirror is clear: there is nothing in the database. Indeed a potential buyer can be told that a register has been checked.

Does the lack of presence on a register mean that the mirror has not been ripped from its archaeological context? No.

So should you be reassured, as Boardman would have us believe, when you buy from a member of the Association of Antiquities Dealers?

Their "Code of Conduct" states:

"It is a condition of membership that all goods acquired at the purchase price of £2,000 or more be checked with the Art Loss Register, or any other comparable stolen art database, unless they have already been so checked."

Indeed to help sellers, "Full members receive a number of free searches at the Art Loss Register."

The Code for the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art says much the same:

"All members undertake to check objects with a purchase value of Euro 3000 or over (or local currency equivalent) with the Art Loss Register unless the item has already been checked."

Do I feel reassured by all this? Not really.

But perhaps I should take comfort from a memorandum (dated October 2003) submitted by the Art Loss Register to the House of Commons (Committee for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport):

"Many stolen antiquities have been identified by the ALR and recently the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art (IADAA) maintains a protocol whereby all potential purchases by their members above a value of £10,000 must be checked against the database. An audit trial of all checks of the database is maintained. The ALR has been involved in advising parties in relation to major archaeological losses. In one case involving a dispute in excess of £20 million the company developed the concept of an international trust financed by a major museum, which would have the items on display. The terms of the trust would require the items to be exhibited in those countries which had a reasonable claim and eventually repatriated to the country should complete proof be obtained of their original excavation. The ALR has assisted in the recovery of items from Iraq and Iran which have resulted in arrests."

Are the "many stolen antiquities" from private residences, museums or previously unrecorded archaeological sites? The memorandum did not make it clear.

And am I saying anything new? Let me finish with some words from the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre in Cambridge published in 2000:

"In any event, at the risk of boring our more informed readers, the Art Loss Register cannot (and does not claim to) contain details of antiquities which have been excavated without record and smuggled without trace. Data bases are invaluable in the fight against art theft, but as a defence against the circulation of illicit antiquities they are of only limited use — a necessary but not sufficient check."

How can the Art Loss Register be strengthened to reduce the number of newly surfaced antiquities appearing on the market?

"Demonstrably stolen": where does the burden of proof lie?

Sir John Boardman (in Eleanor Robson et al. [eds.], Who Owns Objects [2006]) recently suggested that current legislation over the protection of cultural property has created:

"The denial of the right of persons or museums to acquire antiquities which are not demonstrably stolen or the result of plunder, since most are only so deemed, not proved."

What does he mean? Does somebody have to be present at the time the archaeological site is raided?

Nigel Spivey has pointed out the problem with that course of action by quoting Professor Mauro Cristofani.

"And what will you do ... when staring down the barrel of a sub-machine gun?"

Is it enough to have photographs or Polaroids of, say, Athenian red-figured pots that are still covered in dirt? Does that imply that the objects were fresh out of the ground? And, if they were not excavated by archaeologists, can they be considered to have been "demonstrably stolen"?

Or what about a site where the bases of statues survive in situ but the bronze sculptures have been removed - and form part of museum and private collections? Have they been "demonstrably stolen"?

So if an archaeological object appears in an auction house, gallery, museum or private collection without any previous history we can be suspicious. Research by Chippindale and Gill pointed out this phenomenon for two private North American collections: Shelby White and Leon Levy; Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman.

The fact that the Italian government has been been able to make the case for the return of some of the Fleischman material (now in the Getty) underlines the point. And the Italian government is reported to have made approaches to Shelby White.

Were the Fleischmans and White/Levy wise to acquire antiquities which could not be shown to have been in circulation before the 1970 UNESCO Convention? Perhaps the question to ask is this: were they badly advised?

This debate is not about denying rights. It is about protecting cultural property.

Animal rights and archaeologists: a strange comparison?

There is clearly a link being made between animal rights and the discussion over the looting of archaeological sites.

In July 1990 the 'Cycladic and Classical Antiquities from the Erlenmeyer Collection: the Property of The Erlenmeyer Stiftung (A Foundation for Animal Welfare)' were auctioned at Sotheby's in London. The sale catalogue gave details of the projects assisted by the Foundation. They included helping to 'finance the "Save the Elephant" campaign of WWF'. It is perhaps ironic that money raised from antiquities looted from archaeological sites in the Greek islands, including the infamous Keros haul, should help to preserve African elephants from being blasted away by poachers seeking to provide the market with ivory tusks.

Talking of shotguns, take a thought for the wildlife of Texas. Carlos Pícon (now of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) recently described his relationship with the collector Gilbert Denman during his time at the San Antonio Museum of Art. The New Yorker reported, 'Pícon learned to shoot, in order to participate in weekend house parties dedicated to boar-hunting, a pastime that is to Texas billionaries what golf is to those in the Northeast'.

Pícon was asked to comment on the 'suggestion that the collecting of antiquities will eventually earn the same degree of opprobrium that the wearing of fur has acquired in some quarters'. He 'lifted a derisive brow. "I don't have a fur coat, but I would like to have one".'

Protecting endangered animals and supporting animal rights can, perhaps, be similar to protecting an endangered archaeological resource or supporting the rights of national governments to reclaim and protect their cultural property. The suggestion that the naming of a museum gallery in honour of collectors could be compared with the renaming of an African game reserve to celebrate with poacher with the largest 'bag' is not lightly made. (See K. Taylor, "Shelby White in Center Court at the Met." The New York Sun May 1, 2007.)

But the language is getting stronger. The Oxford-based academic Sir John Boardman spoke out on the issue in a 2006 interview for Apollo. (The text of the interview, 'A Classical Warrior', can be located conveniently on the website of Phoenix Ancient Art.)

'Now I find I need to speak out against a highly politicised lobby of archaeologists who are, I think, responsible for what amounts to a witch-hunt of those who disagree with them, especially collectors, but with severe implications also for museums. They put one in mind sometimes of the more fanatical animal-rights activists'.

Do we accuse those who wish to put an end to the slaughter of elephants as fanatics? Do we dismiss then as activists?

Of course not.

'Illicit antiquities': what are the issues?

Sir John Boardman makes a useful point when he notes, 'objects cannot be "tainted" or "illicit", and could only be so described by scholars who do not understand them, or legislators' (in Who Owns Objects? [2006], 44 [for details of review]). I would insert 'genuine' before 'objects' as forgeries can corrupt the corpus of knowledge.

Objects are removed from their archaeological contexts by scientific means (excavation), chance, erosion or illicit means. Some involved in the debate tend to place all antiquities emerging on the market in the same group. Our research has stressed the date of surfacing. Has the object been known since excavation? When is the first recorded mention or (even better) publication? These are not irrelevant issues. The Getty return has shown that 'histories' were being assigned to objects which appear to be fresh out of the ground.

So what are the contentious groups of archaeological objects?

1. High profile objects that were removed from their countries some time ago
Should high profile objects which were removed from their findspots before (say) 1850 remain in their (usually western) museums? Should the Parthenon marbles be displayed in London or in a purpose-built museum within sight of the Athenian akropolis? Should the Rosetta stone, a key text for Egyptology, be in London or Cairo?

These are complex issues as the three volume UK House of Commons select committee report demonstrated. [For commentary.]

I suspect these issues will not be resolved by legal arguments but by common sense and goodwill.

These historic cases are different to modern instances of looting from archaeological sites. Take the Parthenon marbles. We know where the sculptures were displayed. We know the order in which they were displayed. And thanks to the surviving accounts we can almost date their work to the year.

Contrast recently surfaced objects. Do even known the country in which they were found?

2. Notorious acts of looting prior to the 1970 UNESCO convention
This has been a major issue in recent weeks. Should the Fano athlete at present in the J. Paul Getty Museum return to Italy? It appears to have been known well before the 1970 Convention. Is there a case for it to return? The debate looks set to continue over the next few months and years.

What about the Keros haul - rather than 'hoard' - from the Greek Cycladic islands? [For recent discussion.] Hundreds of fragments of Early Cycladic marble figures appear to have been removed from the site. What was their purpose? Were the fragments broken on site in the Early Bronze Age? What was going on? Several pieces from the 'haul' were exhibited in the Katonah Museum of Art exhibition Ancient Art of the Cyclades (October 1 - December 31, 2006). Should these fragments now residing in North American collections be returned to Greece?

3. Surfacings after 1970
Thousands of antiquities surface each year on the market. Few are provided with histories. Are we really expected to accept that they have been lurking in the attic? (Though we can all probably think of one or two cases where this has happened.)

But we have read The Medici Conspiracy, we have seen recently opened tombs ... and we can draw our own conclusions.

Perhaps it is important to note that objects looted from archaeological sites will not be on The Art Loss Register.

4. Objects stolen from museums and archaeological stores
From time to time archaeological material is stolen from museums and stores. Hopefully these have been photographed and recorded and their loss can be registered with bodies like The Art Loss Register.

The theft from the Corinth Museum was perhaps revealing in the way that some of the objects from that heist reappeared in 'respectable' auction houses and galleries even though photographs of the items had been widely circulated.

5. Objects illustrated in the Geneva Polaroids
Thousands of objects are illustrated in the Geneva Polaroids (linked to Giacomo Medici). It will take years to research this photographic archive and locate the objects. There is, of course, movement and we are seeing the results in the return of antiquities from North American museums to the Italian Government. Other objects have already been identified and I understand negotiations are on-going.