Looting Matters

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 pu…

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".

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 wh…

The AAMD written testimony to the CPAC review of Article II of the MOU with Italy is now available [pdf]. The submission by Kaywin Feldman, Director and President of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, is one of the pieces made available (dated, November 13, 2009). Feldman took a critical position against the Italian authorities. (Members of the AAMD need to remember that several of their institutions had been happily buying, no doubt in "good faith", recently surfaced antiquities ripped from archaeological contexts in Italy.)

Feldman appears to misunderstand archaeological material when she wrote:
The spirit of support and cooperation emphasized in the MOU would be much better served if American museums could acquire redundant antiquities and borrow objects for long-term loan from Italian museums. AAMD believes that the United States government should encourage developed countries, such as Italy, to make redundant antiquities available to the legitimate market as a way to cur…

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 …

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 …

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…

Earlier this week I posted on the attempts by Italian authorities to pursue 350 or so antiquities from a Zurich-based dealer and conservator who has been linked with several of the objects returned from North American collections. Peter Tompa, the Washington lobbyist, posted a comment and then grumbled elsewhere that I had "posted but did not directly answer" his question.

I responded with a request for him to disclose the identity of the anonymous but knowledgeable collector of Greek pots. Tompa has failed to respond with either a comment or a separate posting --- and that is surprising.

Tompa is the legal officer for the Cultural Property Research Institute (CPRI). William Pearlstein, who is cited by Tompa in his comment, is a Director. The CPRI has a number of "projects" on the go. I have commented on the first and its inadequacies.

The second project relates to "Developing different models for a registry that can be applied to privately-owned objects"…

On Friday last week the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) met to review Article II of the MOU with Italy. This agreement relates to "the Imposition of Import Restrictions on Archaeological Material Representing the Pre-Classical, Classical and Imperial Roman Periods of Italy". The background to the MOU, which dates back to 2001, was the perceived problem of archaeological sites being pillaged to provide material for the antiquities market. The import restrictions were intended, in part, to check that archaeological material that was brought into North America had not surfaced recently (i.e. after the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property).

Police raids in the Geneva Freeport had drawn attention to the organised looting and redistribution of the antiquities from Italy (and elsewhere) . The evidence gathered from the raids led to the "Medici Conspiracy". On…

In August I commented on the impact that the AAMD decision on handling recently surfaced antiquities was having on private collectors. The Cultural Property Research Institute (CPRI) published their first research study, "Project on Unprovenanced Ancient Objects in Private US Hands", earlier this week (November 10, 2009).

The CPRI "project" raises several questions:
a. Who is the author / are the authors of this "project"?
b. Data. The stated aim of the "project" was to "provid[e] the factual basis for policy-making and consideration". Where can we find the data for this study?
c. Sources of information. "This study is the product of a team approach". Who was consulted? Which private collectors? Which museum curators? Which scholars? Which "members of the trade"? How many people? It is not enought to state: "To preserve the confidentiality of the sources of information, specific individuals or institutions are …

I note that the Cultural Property Research Institute has highlighted a number of projects ("issues") for 2009.

Here is the summary:
1. Determining the number of artistically and academically significant, privately-owned objects in the United States that are currently excluded from acquisition by US museums.

2. Developing different models for a registry that can be applied to privately-owned objects.

3. Exploring ways to harmonize US laws and regulations that apply to transfer and ownership of antiquities.

4. Exploring the effect of source country policies on damage to archaeological sites and objects.
The website gives a list of directors for CPRI:
President: Arthur A. Houghton
Vice-President: Kate Fitz Gibbon
Legal Officer: Peter K. Tompa
Secretary: Anne Metcalf
Member, Board of Directors: William Pearlstein