Marble bull's head from the temple of Eshmun

Excavations at the temple of Eshmun in Lebanon recovered a marble bull's head. It is now suggested that it was this head, apparently first published in 1967, that was placed on loan to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (Tom Mashberg, "Met Museum Turns Over Another Relic With Disputed Past to Prosecutors", New York Times August 1, 2017 ). The head is reported to have been handed over to the Manhattan district attorney after a request was received from the Lebanese authorities.

It is suggested that the head may have been looted from an archaeological storage area at Byblos in the 1980s during the Lebanese civil war. Mashberg has rehearsed the recent collecting history:

The owners of the bull’s head, Lynda and William Beierwaltes of Colorado, say they have clear title to the item and have sued Manhattan prosecutors for its return. 

The Beierwaltes bought the head from a dealer in London in 1996 for more than $1 million and then sold it to another collector, Michael H. Steinhardt, in 2010. Mr. Steinhardt lent the relic to the Met that year, but after learning that Lebanon was disputing its provenance, he asked the Beierwaltes to take it back and compensate him.

The London based dealer has not been named although other legal papers identify one of their sources (discussed by Christos Tsirogiannis, "Mapping the supply: usual suspects and identified antiquities in ‘reputable’ auction-houses in 2013." Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología 25 [2015] 107-44 [esp. p. 135] ).

William G. Pearlstein, who is acting for Beierwaltes is reported to have said:

“We believe the district attorney’s position is ill-founded, ... The Beierwaltes are bona fide purchasers with clean hands. By contrast, for more than 50 years, Lebanon has failed take any action domestically or internationally to report any theft of the bull’s head.”

As a point of correction, if the head was published 50 years ago, and the civil war was taking place in the 1980s, then the possible removal from the storage facility was only 30 years ago.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is quoted:

“Upon a Met curator’s discovery that this item on loan may have been stolen from government storage during the Lebanese civil war, the museum took immediate action. We contacted the Lebanese government and the lender, we took the item off display, and we have been working with federal and state authorities, which recently involved delivering the head of the bull to the Manhattan D.A. upon its request.”

I am sure that Beierwaltes will disclose the name of the London-based dealer who supplied the bull's head. From there it should be possible to identify the source of the head.

The Pearlstein perspective on the Khmer statue

In December 2013 it was announced that Sotheby's would be returning a Khmer statue to Cambodia. I have been reading William G. Pearlstein's "Buying and selling antiquities in today's market" (Spencer’s Art Law Journal, 3, 1, spring 2012). There is a section on the case and Pearlstein predicted:

Sotheby’s compliance director (a former U.S. prosecutor who worked with Zawi Hawass on the Schultz trial) was quoted to say, correctly, that the statue could have been exported at any point in time before or after Cambodian national ownership laws were in effect. A dispassionate analysis under McClain, Schultz and SLAM suggests that the Government should lose, given its failure to allege the date of export. [Emphasis mine]

Pearlstein correctly anticipated "The owner/consignor is at risk of losing its purchase price in the statue".

Orphans and antiquities

Ralph Blumenthal and Tom Mashberg have written on the issue of objects that do not have full collecting histories ("The curse of the outcast artifact", New York Times July 12, 2012). Collectors are finding that they are unable to donate their objects to public museums. Among them is Alan M. Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at the Harvard School of Law. Dershowitz wishes to sell an Egyptian sarcophagus purchased from Sotheby's in the 1990s (a period explored in Peter Watson's Sotheby's: Inside Story) but he "can't get proof of when it came out of Egypt".

Interestingly the NYT cites the seriously flawed study by the Cultural Property Research Institute (CPRI).

Among those interviewed is William G. Pearlstein who asserts that the lack of a collecting history is not necessarily significant. However, the Medici Conspiracy has taught us a great deal about how such objects entered the market.

It is perhaps significant that Christie's are reported to have made the claim that they do not sell Egyptian antiquities "unless it was absolutely documented that it left Egypt before 1970". This seems to contrast with Christie's attitudes over antiquities that can be traced to the Medici Dossier.

Egyptian antiquities: "a smoke screen"?

Vernon Silver has published a reflective piece on the recent looting of antiquities and the debate about cultural property ("Looting in Egypt Arms Critics of Sending Antiquities Back Home", Bloomberg.com March 9, 2011). Has the looting of the Cairo Museum during the recent political upheavals changed the nature of the debate?

Silver has interviewed William Pearlstein who is seen as opposing claims by Egypt: "My clients will have an easier time against retention laws”. Silver also quotes Ursula Kampmann, the press officer for the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art (IADAA): “The incidents during the Egyptian revolution could be taken as basis for a change of discussion ... It comes to the question, what is the best way to protect our world’s cultural heritage?”

Hawass also makes the point:

“Arguments against repatriation because of the current situation in Egypt are completely wrong ... If the police left the streets of New York City, London, or Tokyo, the criminals of those cities would smash the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, or any other museums in those cities.”

Thomas Campbell, director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, has wisely stated that the museum will return the objects relating to Tutankhamun once the political situation has stablised.

I was interviewed for the piece. Instead of rejecting claims on cultural property, museums and those involved in the antiquities market need to be conducting more thorough due diligence checks. Will members of the IADAA ensure that they have full collecting histories of all Egyptian material that they handle? Will the Barcelona Galerista return the material from Saqqara? Will the St Louis Art Museum (SLAM) produce the full authenticated documention relating to the mummy mask that it acquired?

Why does this matter? If we believe in Cosmopolitanism, like Kwame Anthony Appiah and James Cuno, these objects belong to world culture. They are our shared heritage.

Christie's, the Medici Dossier and William G. Pearlstein

Kimberly Alderman ("Is Italy “Asking For It” By Refusing to Release the Medici Photographs? Three items at Christie’s raise questions", The Cultural Property and Archaeology Law Blog June 6, 2010) wanted to have a different view on the story carried in the Wall Street Journal last week [see here with quotes from original article]. She contacted New York attorney William G. Pearlstein who "represents collectors, dealers and auction houses in transactions, disputes and regulatory matters involving fine art and antiquities, including purchases and sales of fine art and antiquities, regulatory issues relating to the antiquities market; attribution, authenticity and provenance". He is also the Director of the Cultural Property Research Institute (CPRI) and spoke at the review of the MOU with Italy. Pearlstein appears to have views on "quasi-socialists" and, if a Washington lobbyist is to be believed, an acquired taste in music.

Pearlstein has called for the publication of the Medici Dossier. Yet he does not mention the view of a Christie's spokesperson (commenting on what Christie's described as "stolen artifacts") that the publication of images from a public auction allow for transparency and give opportunity for concerns to be raised. It is still not clear why Christie's left out a key piece of collecting history for lot 139 - a key piece of collecting history known to Christie's. (And is "diligence" really a verb? "so that US market participants could ... diligence their purchases" [emphasis mine].)

Pearlstein confuses two separate issues in his emailed comments to Alderman. He cites the case of "an Egyptian duck that was stolen from a government warehouse, never reported (perhaps never inventoried) and then seized when it came up on at auction 25 years later–after being consigned by a foreign purchase who took good title under local law". In this case the duck appears to have been removed from the store at Saqqara in Egypt; its excavation location is known. In the case of material featured in Polaroids from the Medici Dossier the detail relating to the archaeological contexts is not known. There is a difference between material removed from an archaeological store and objects ripped from archaeological contexts.

Does an incident in Egypt have a bearing on material from Italy? And what does it mean for "American purchasers" of archaeological material to act "in good faith"? Collectors, museums and cultural property lawyers have been aware of the ethical issues relating to archaeological material since the 1970 UNESCO Convention. And North American collectors, museums and cultural property lawyers are unlikely to have missed the 1973 AIA declaration. [For some of the issues see here.]

Pearlstein has strong views:

What the Italians are doing is outrageous. They are deliberately withholding the Medici files from the public, allowing hot pieces to remain in circulation and then playing up every seizure for maximum publicity value. They continue to play the role of victim when actually they have became cynical predators on American institutions that want nothing more than to do the right thing.

What is "the right thing"? Why have North American museums recently adopted 1970 as a benchmark for acquiring archaeological material? Why have some 130 objects been returned to Italy from North American public and private collections in recent years? Is it "outrageous" for officials of a country to be outraged by the deliberate destruction of thousands of archaeological contexts to supply objects for the antiquities market?

Pearlstein calls for "market participants to police the integrity of their collections and [be] held accountable for their failure to do so". One of the key indicators for concern is a collecting history (or "provenance") that points to a certain auction-house in London in the 1980s and early 1990s (see a selection of pieces here). "Market participants" need to conduct rigorous due diligence searches if the collecting history includes those sales. And when that collecting history is "overlooked", questions need to be asked about the reason why.

"Always a background of quasi-socialist sentiment"

The coverage of recent rumours of impending US restrictions on antiquities provides some insights into the thinking behind some of those who appear to support or defend the unrestricted collecting of cultural objects (Jeremy Kahn, "Is the U.S. Protecting Foreign Artifacts? Don't Ask", New York Times, April 8, 2007).

One of the more colourful comments was from William G. Pearlstein who describes himself as counsel at Golenbock Eiseman Assor Bell and Peskoe LLP. He is listed as representing "Private dealers and collectors of fine art and antiquities" as well as the "National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art, Inc."

Pearlstein came up with this wonderful statement (if we accept the veracity of NYT):

In a lot of anti-collecting bashing or museum bashing that goes on there is always a background of quasi-socialist sentiment.

And what is the evidence for this sweeping statement? Does "always" mean "always"? And what is "quasi-socialist sentiment"? And does speaking out against the looting of archaeological sites equate to "anti-collecting bashing or museum bashing"? In fact such a comment suggests that Pearlstein has rather run out of rational lines of defence.

If Pearlstein took a moment to think about his sound bite he would have been struck by the oddity of describing Lord Renfrew, for example, as a quasi-socialist.

But what made me amused was the next comment:

You always hear archaeologists hissing about money.

Is legal work conducted for dealers pro bono?