Sharon Waxman on Transparency

Sharon Waxman was written a short piece in the New York Times ("How Did That Vase Wind Up in the Metropolitan?", December 1, 2008; see also "NYT Op-ed: Thoughts for Tom Campbell at the Met", December 1, 2008). Some of the examples are derived from her new book, Loot!

Waxman comments on the importance of the 1970 UNESCO Convention and relates it to the recent returns of antiquities from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:

The Association of Art Museum Directors has already readied a path for Mr. Campbell [the incoming director of the MMA]. This past summer, the association finally issued new guidelines, which recognize that buying unprovenanced antiquities encourages their illicit trade and recommend that its members purchase only antiquities that can be proven to have been legally exported after 1970, or else removed from their country of origin before that date. (It was in 1970 that Unesco adopted an international convention barring the illegal export and transfer of cultural property.)

Waxman also calls for more transparency from the Met.

Mr. Campbell could also undertake a project more fundamental, and more profound. The Metropolitan needs to come clean about its past of appropriation of ancient art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And it needs to tell a much fuller story about its more recent role in purchasing looted and smuggled antiquities.

The Met’s galleries and Web site are mysteriously devoid of recent facts about the provenance of many artifacts. Most visitors have no idea how the treasures on display in the Greek and Roman rooms, the Egyptian antiquities department, or the Byzantine, African, Asian and Oceanic collections came to be housed in the museum.

The full collecting histories of the items returned to Italy have yet to emerge. However things are changing as seen in the details histories provided for items in the Philippe de Montebello exhibition.

Some histories are complex such as the capital from Sardis acquired in 1922 in the aftermath of the Smyrna tragedy. (For a similar history see the pieces in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.)

Waxman concludes with a call for transparency to counter claims for repatriation:

This state of affairs must not continue. Mr. Campbell can inaugurate a new era of transparency for all museums, and to recalibrate the Met’s relations with countries that feel aggrieved.

By publicly acknowledging the controversial or otherwise dubious histories of some artifacts and by making the recent past as much a part of the artifacts’ stories as the ancient past, Mr. Campbell can set an example for all museums and build new bridges of respect and cooperation.

Transparency may not end every demand for repatriation. But it will disarm those critics in source countries who know — but rarely acknowledge — that regardless of past transgressions, their treasures may be safer, better preserved and more widely adored in the world’s great museums like the Met.

Will transparency disarm calls for repatriation? Or will it allow a more meaningful dialogue to take place so that our cosmopolitan heritage can be preserved?

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NYT.

Antiquities Wars: a Conversation

This Wednesday (November 19, 2008) the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU will be hosting an event: "Antiquities Wars: A Conversation About Loot and Legitimacy".

The "conversation" will be between:

• Sharon Waxman, former New York Times correspondent, author of the newly released Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World.
• James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago and author of Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage.
• Kwame Anthony Appiah, Princeton Philosophy Professor, author Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers.
• Daniel Shapiro, an attorney specializing in art law and the president emeritus of the International Cultural Property Society.
  

Here are some relevant links to my comments on three of these speakers:

• Sharon Waxman on Loot!
• James Cuno
• Kwame Anthony Appiah

For more on the "Antiquities Wars":

• Towards a Ceasefire in the Antiquities Wars
  
• Antiquities Wars

There are still outstanding issues from the claims made by Italy and Greece:

• Cleveland Museum of Art
• The Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University
  

Karl Meyer on Loot!

Karl E. Meyer has written a review of Sharon Waxman's Loot! (truthdig, October 24, 2008). It gives balance to the unnecessary snippets of sleaze that have emerged in recent days (see sensible comments on CultureGrrl).

Meyer starts his review:

A seasoned reporter with an Oxford degree in Middle East studies, Sharon Waxman has updated and surpassed my explorations, in part because the outcry over the illicit traffic has reached fever pitch, provoking voluble, angry and indiscreet utterances from curators, collectors, dealers and a new breed of watchdogs, viz.: “You end up thinking we’re all a bunch of looters, thieves, exploiters, that we’re some kind of criminals … but who would be interested in Greek sculpture if it were all in Greece? These pieces are great because they’re in the Louvre.” So protests Aggy Leroule, the Louvre’s press attaché ...

He continues:

The first merit of Waxman’s book, the best on its subject, is her verbatim account of conversations with everybody who matters in the antiquities trade. This is especially true of her candid exchanges with the staffs and their overlords at the Louvre, the Met, the British Museum and the mega-endowed (circa $6 billion) J. Paul Getty Museum.

Sharon Waxman on Looted Antiquities

Sharon Waxman's Loot: The Battle Over The Stolen Treasures Of The Ancient World (New York: Times Books, 2008) is about to be published. For further details see the book's website along with preliminary reactions. [WorldCat]