The Independent Movement for the Repatriation of Looted Greek Antiquities has produced a video: ‘I am Greek and I Want to go Home’
Photography, Concept and Artwork by Ares Kalogeropoulos
Original Music (“Rise”) by Ares Kalogeropoulos
It can be seen alongside this one, take a good look at this message to the British:
Help make them go viral.
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In the summertime, thousands of visitors flock to Bagh-e Babur, “Babur’s Garden”, an historic park in the heart of Kabul. Presiding over the garden is the entombed 16th-century Emperor Babur the Conqueror, founder of the Moghul Empire in India, for whom the garden is named. In the emperor’s memoir, the Baburnama, he praises the location for its scenery, gardens, orchards, and semi-arid climate. “Within a day’s ride it is possible to reach a place where snow never falls,” he observes. “But within two hours one can go where the snows never melt.”
Five centuries later, the public enjoys this same ambiance. Enclosed by perimeter walls, fertile rows of cypress, hawthorn, and cherry trees adorn the cascading terraces of the garden. Groups congregate on the pavilions. Couples stroll lazily along the water channels. Families picnic beneath the shade of the trees, eating kebabs, chatting, and resting in the dry heat.
Babur’s Garden did not always paint so splendid a picture. By the end of the Mujahideen civil war (1992-95) much of the garden was destroyed. It lingered in this state of disrepair through the Taliban regime (1996-2001). And it was not until 2003 that restoration work was begun by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), joined by Dr. Abdul Wasay Najimi, a conservation architect. Most of the work was completed by 2007 with facilities for cultural and recreational activities, including a caravanserai (inn with large courtyard and area for caravans), garden pavilion, swimming-pool, and Queen’s Palace complex.
It was at the garden that we filmed an interview with Dr. Najimi about his work as a conservation architect as part of the series, Untold Stories: the Oral Histories of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage. The interview can be watched in the short video, Who is the Conservation Architect?, which showcases Dr. Najimi’s work for AKTC, including conservation of the eighteenth-century Timur Shah Mausoleum. Today, Dr. Najimi is instructing in the history of the architecture of Afghanistan full-time at Kabul University, teaching a younger generation to appreciate their cultural heritage, so that in time, more of Afghanistan’s remarkable architecture may be preserved.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about your work experience with the Babur’s Garden project?
AWN: The first time I saw Babur’s Garden was in the Taliban’s time. It was in 2000. One of my former students was involved in the project. He had some funds from HABITAT to plant some trees that you can see at the lower part of Babur’s Garden. He also wanted to build a door for the garden.
Generally, the garden was completely destroyed. All its old trees were cut down. The place we are sitting at was destroyed. The structure was in place. The garden was ruined and there were no windows or doors or anything. All the surrounding houses were in ruins. I came with him to see what his plans were and what he was doing. For the second time, when I came in 2002, we started a deep survey and study of Babur’s Garden. Naturally, it was as I described before. Slowly we surveyed and developed a design and we implemented the plans. Now you see the results.
Q: When you were abroad (working towards your PhD), were you following the issues related to Afghanistan?
AWN: Since 1986, I have had direct working relations with Afghanistan. But not all my activities were related to historical sites and buildings. There were no such projects then, and also, there was no funding or budget for this kind of work. To earn a living, I worked with other organizations working in Afghanistan, organizations for development of cities and rural areas and such. But throughout this period, there were projects and missions once in a while from UNESCO or something organized by myself, where I traveled and studied historical sites closely, and wrote on them.
From 1991 or even 1990, I became more involved and I went to Bamiyan on behalf of UNESCO once or twice. Once, I went to Munar-e Jam. From ’93 onwards I was in Herat for two years with a Danish organization. We reconstructed some of the significant sites there. For a while after that, I was not very involved. But since 2002, after AKF (Aga Khan Foundation) opened an office in Kabul, we identified some sites/projects for reconstruction in Kabul. After 2005, I also got involved with Herat. Since then (2002), I have been directly involved in different projects.
Q: How many important projects did you work on at this time?
AWN: In Kabul, one of the most important projects was the revival and reconstruction of Bagh-e-Babur. Others were repairing, strengthening, and restoring the Timur Shah Mausoleum and garden, and reviving and repairing a residential area known as Ashiqan wa Arifan, in the old city of Kabul.
We further developed to include [restoring] a series of historical mosques, historical public baths, fixing roads and streams, and helping provide drinking water. Similarly in Herat, our important projects included reconstruction of an area in Herat, close to the center of the city; we reconstructed some of the houses as a sample.
Q: What role did Afghans have in reconstruction of the garden?
AWN: Generally, all we have done has been done through Afghans. To the extent possible, Afghans have also done the expert and technical work. AKF (Aga Khan Foundation) is an international organization and naturally wants to work with international standards. For this reason, we occasionally had international observers or experts whom we consulted with in case of need and asked for advice… Thus, it was both satisfactory and enjoyable. During these talks, my colleagues and I learned a lot academically and they (the international experts) also admired the restoration of old building material, the style, and the way of old work. They would see how to reuse the material that had been used before, again, and get a good result out of it.
Q: What are the plans for the future of Babur’s Garden?
AWN: Babur’s Garden, after its reconstruction was completed in 2006, I think towards the end of 2006, found a new administration. We tried to form a trust or administrative organization for the garden. It would be run by an executive board with help from the municipality, which used to run the garden, and the Ministry of Information and Culture, which is responsible for preservation of historical sites and buildings. The executive board members are representatives of AKF, the Kabul municipality, and the Ministry of Information and Culture. The day to day management of the garden is conducted by the trust or organization called “Organization for Protection and Preservation of Babur’s Garden”. The organization is registered with the Ministry of Economics and is run according to regulations of NGOs.
Q: And the idea is that the garden will be independent in future?
AWN: No. The idea is that in the past, many years ago, the garden was run by the municipality, and they sold tickets for entrance to the garden. Now, the garden is at the beginning of its reconstruction, and it has some expenses to be paid occasionally for its preservation and protection. The decision was made that the garden can have revenue from selling entrance tickets, from renting out for cultural events, and if there is a shortage of money/budget, it will ask for help from aid organizations so that it can manage its own expenses. According to government regulations, the municipality did the same thing. So it is permitted. The organization/trust is a non-profit. They need to manage all their expenses and income themselves. At the end of each year, their accounts are audited by auditors that have so far been international auditors and a report is made on their expenses.
Q: Was the team from Babur’s Garden involved in the restoration of Timur Shah Mausoleum as well?
AWN: Our team was really big. One team worked with Babur’s Garden. The other worked on Timur Shah Mausoleum and then on the walls and the gardens there. We had another team that was working in the old city. Some of the engineers, who gained work experience here, went and worked with other organizations, or made their own companies. Some of them went to Herat with me. We had the same program there regarding training of young people and such. For now, our work has decreased in Kabul, and we try to go and work in some other provinces where we didn’t have access before.
Q: How has the collaboration from local people been? How much do they know about historical sites?
AWN: Local people know about the value of historical sites and buildings… Unfortunately, during the war, there were many limitations. Poverty was increasing and roads were closed. Many people started to think that if they dig the historical sites, and find some historical or antique artifacts, and sell them, they can earn a living. Unfortunately, this led us to lose some of our important and historical artifacts.
When there is no specific responsible organization, the local people also slowly become careless, especially when it comes to buildings and such. In some places, historical buildings and locations have been misused, and that may have caused their destruction. In other places, lack of any preservation efforts and existence of snow and rain has led to destruction. Sometimes, it has been a case of military use or buildings being employed in some manner during the fighting. Or the government has used the structures for military purposes. The people have often used buildings as shelters. The important point is that there is little public knowledge about historical artifacts of our country. And the officials, even if they are responsible, they are not fully active and accountable on raising awareness. We still have the problem that on one front, we need to raise public awareness through radios and TVs and through schools and teaching, and on the other front we need to work to improve the organizations that are responsible for this job of preservation.
Q: What was the worst period for cultural heritage in Afghanistan?
AWN: It is now and it was in the past 30 years of war. The main reason is that it was hard to preserve historical sites, traveling was difficult, there were few professionals and experts of historical artifacts in the country, everyone was on the move, everyone was a migrant. But the problem still continues.
Q: What is the impact of security on preservation work?
AWN: Security impacts everything. If there is fear and worry somewhere, there is lack of certainty. Any work, from business to personal and governmental activities, will be harmed. Luckily, since we have so far worked in Kabul and Herat, and also, the way we worked, we had very close relations with the public. We also occasionally have consulted the government offices that were responsible for preservation. We have never had any (security) problems. If you are working in a place that is hard to access, and is not safe and secure, sending professional staff and required material and equipment would be difficult. I have to say this, that the history has proved that civilization will grow in a place where there is security. Where there is peace among a community or in an area, the civilization has grown, progress has happened and economy has grown. During the war, all decisions are quick decisions, and while taking quick decisions, one can’t make useful decisions for the future.
Q: How do you see the future in three or four years?
AWN: Well, God knows better about the future. We can’t predict. But, from a personal and professional commitment viewpoint, I can only say that for me, it has been proved that in implementing such projects, we need to educate the youth. So that, we can train architects that are interested in the profession, have an understanding of the profession, and can work for the future, so that we can offer these people to our society.
It is for this reason that since 2009 we have had a more serious collaboration with Kabul University. I have gone there regularly on behalf of AKF and have taught there in the section related to history of architecture for Afghanistan, specifically regarding conservation and preservation. Also, this year we will invite some people from abroad to hold short term, expert classes for students in Polytechnic University Kabul and Kabul University simultaneously to restore the motivation for professional work, the style of professional work.
This interview is part of a series, ‘Untold Stories: the Oral Histories of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage’, funded by a Hollings Center for International Dialogue Grant. The series will be available on video, made in collaboration with Kabul at Work, and available on their website at: http://www.kabulatwork.tv/
Joanie Meharry is currently completing an MA in International and Comparative Legal Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She is a 2012 John F. Richards Fellow for the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies and is directing the project, Untold Stories: the Oral History of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage, with a Hollings Center for International Dialogue Grant. She also holds an MSc in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Edinburgh.
Shaharzad Akbar is partner and senior consultant with QARA Consulting, Inc. in Kabul, Afghanistan. Shaharzad studied anthropology at Smith College and recently completed an MPhil in Development Studies at University of Oxford. Shaharzad has extensive media and development work experience in Afghanistan. In 2005, she was the journalism intern for the book Women of Courage. She has also worked as local reporter for BBC for Afghanistan, producer and host of a youth talk show on radio Killid and writer and editor for several Afghan magazines and newspapers.
The Egyptian uprising, which began in early 2011 and led to the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak and the establishment of a transitional government under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), has had a devastating effect on archaeological sites throughout the country. Since the beginning of the revolution, illegal digging and looting at Egyptian archaeological sites, as well as break-ins at artifact storehouses, have increased 100-fold. This increase can be attributed to a number of factors, including the breakdown of security and order across the country, political instability, economic necessity, backlash against the old regime and old-fashioned greed. El-Hibeh is one of these threatened archaeological sites.
Located approximately 200 miles from Cairo, the ancient city mound was founded during the Third Intermediate Period, and contains remains from the Pharaonic, Ptolemaic, Roman, Coptic, and early Islamic periods. Carol Redmount, an archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley, has been excavating there since 2001. As early as June 2011, her team began receiving reports and photographic confirmation of extensive looting occurring at the site. Egyptian officials claim marauding gangs of looters, many of who allegedly escaped from jail during the revolution, are now robbing Egypt of its precious cultural heritage.
In an interview with PRI’s The World, Redmount describes the site in May 2012:
[The] cemetery has been thoroughly looted, body parts are strewn everywhere, pieces of mummies have been left out in the open. Bones are everywhere. Now they’re are largely dis-articulated, sometimes you can see the packages of mummy cloths, jawbones, skulls, sometimes toes still with flesh attached. It’s horrific.
In response to the looting, Redmount launched the Facebook page “Save el-Hibeh Egypt.” The goal is to raise awareness not only about el-Hibeh but about the extensive looting occurring across Egypt—and the site appears to be doing just that. With over 1,700 members, the archaeology community and other interested parties are using the page as a forum for discussion, generating awareness via reports and photographs from the field, as well as sharing the latest news coming out of Egypt. Web-based social media like Facebook has the potential to play a pivotal role in raising awareness about threatened cultural heritage around the world. If these sites can ignite a multi-country revolution, why can’t they help prevent the looting and illicit trafficking of antiquities, as well? Lend your support and join “Save el-Hibeh Egypt” today!
Dr. Arnold-Peter Weiss, a prominent Rhode Island hand surgeon, a professor of orthopedics at Brown University School of Medicine, and a dealer in ancient coins, pleaded guilty on July 3, to attempted criminal possession of stolen property, a misdemeanor offense, for trying to sell what he thought were authentic ancient Greek coins that he believed had been looted from Sicily. But the coins are, in fact, forgeries. Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos told the court, the coins are “exquisite, extraordinary, but forgeries nonetheless.”
Dr. Weiss was arrested on January 3 during the 40th Annual New York International Numismatic Convention at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, in possession of a silver coin that purported to be an early 4th century BC Greek type known as a Katane Tetradrachm, which he valued at $300,000-350,000. According to the criminal complaint, Dr. Weiss told a confidential informant: “there’s no paperwork. I know this is a fresh coin, this was dug up a few years ago…. I know where this came from.”
Authorities seized the coin, having been informed by Captain Massimo Maresca, of the Italian Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale, that “Italian law, namely the Code of Cultural and Landscape Heritage, has vested absolute and true ownership of all antiquities found in Italy after 1909 in the Italian government, and that the Italian government never gave Dr. Weiss or anyone permission, consent or authority to remove said coin from the ground or removed it from Italy,” according to the criminal complaint.
Investigators soon discovered that Dr. Weiss was also trying to sell another coin, an Akragas Dekadrachm, purportedly dating from 409-406 BC, which Dr. Weiss valued at upwards of $2.5 million, and a third coin, which were soon to be auctioned by Nomos AG, which is co-owned by Dr. Weiss, as part of a collection dubbed “Selections from Cabinet W.” At the request of the NY District Attorney’s office, the three coins were examined by academic experts, who considered the coins to be genuine. To be certain, Assistant District Attorney Bogdanos had the coins analyzed using an scanning electron microscope, which revealed them to be modern forgeries.
News that the Weiss coins are forgeries — and so well made that even leading experts could not detect them — has the close-knit fraternity of high-end coin collectors abuzz. Surely coin collectors must be asking:
1. Where did these top-quality forgeries come from? How were they made (pressure molded or struck)? How many more examples by the same forger have circulated, and when did they first appear?
2. If experts who examined the coins at the request of the NYDA’s office were unable to determine the Weiss coins are forgeries, what hope do dealers, auctioneers, and collectors have when the next undocumented Greek or Roman coin with scant provenance and a six-figure price tag appears on the market? Will this case prompt coin dealers, auctioneers and collectors to agree that verifiable provenances and scientific testing are necessary for all coins above a certain price level.
Dr. Weiss was sentenced to 70 hours of community service (providing medical care to disadvantaged patients in Rhode Island), was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine for each of the three coins in the case, and forfeited another 20 ancient coins that were seized from him at the time of his arrest. The judge also ordered Dr. Weiss to write an article for publication in a coin collecting magazine or journal warning of the risks of dealing in coins of unknown or looted provenance. The awareness raising impact of that article should be significant.
Contrary to a report on the case published in the July 3 New York Post, no order has been issued by the Court for the forgeries to be destroyed.
Cultural heritage attorney Rick St. Hilaire provides a cogent legal analysis of the Weiss case here.
Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos is a 2006 SAFE Beacon Award recipient and the author of “The Thieves of Baghdad,” about the looting of the Iraq Museum and resulting exploding black market in its antiquities in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Read more about the case and Dr. Arnold-Peter Weiss here.
Here is an effective public-awareness video produced by the Association of Greek Archaeologists, which has recently appeared on Greek television news:
The campaign’s central message — “Monuments have no voice. They must have yours” — is a reaction to deep cultural budget cuts being made as part of the austerity measures imposed on Greece by the European economic establishment. It is a reminder that the world is full of no-questions-asked collectors willing to give culture criminals considerable sums of money to possess their own private piece of knocked-off “ancient art”. Such buyers are not only a threat to the heritage of today’s citizens but that of their children too. The hands in the video are those of the agents of the collectors and dealers of the international antiquities market.
SAFE has added Syria to the Global Concern section of our web site. Written by Bastien Varoutsikos, these pages describe the dangers to Syria’s cultural heritage as war, looting, and encroaching civilization threaten to erase a precious piece of our past.
Bastien Varoutsikos is a a PhD archaeology student from Harvard University, working in the Near East and the Caucasus on mesolithic/neolithic periods. He has spent most of the past 8 summers travelling, living, and working in different countries of the area, mostly Armenia, Turkey and Syria. He has been increasingly interested in finding ways to make his practice of archaeology more relevant to the public through outreach and education program with local communities.
We are thrilled to welcome Bastien to SAFE and we look forward to reading his future work.
Explosions abound and dirt flies in the opening credits of Spike TV’s “American Digger”, but explosions and dirt thrown from backhoes are typically not what you see in a properly executed scientific excavation. Amid numerous protests, this show continues to present “digging” as an exciting pass time that anyone can participate in. The dangers to our cultural heritage mount as viewers are encouraged to “dig, baby, dig”.
What can we do to stop it? First, sign the petition asking Spike to “stop looting our collective past”. Second, go to People against Spike TV’s “American Digger” on Facebook and email the form letter to at least one of the sponsors listed on the page. All of the contact information is there, the letter is already written, you just need to add your name and send it out. Also, you can use the contact information to call the sponsors, email them in your own words, or write them a letter. Join the thousands of voices asking Spike and its sponsors to end this show today.
Read these other SAFE blog posts for more information about the show.
What do fakes have to do with the problem of looting? Fakes and unprovenanced, authentic antiquities often turn up together in collections because neither was found through the transparent process of archaeological excavation. They flock together. Collectors might think their connoisseurship protects them from fakes, but they get hoodwinked all the time. This is not a sign of denseness or gullibility, necessarily; it just comes with the territory if you’re in the business of acquiring undocumented antiquities….
Has the collector gained a tax benefit for the donation of what are quite possibly, if the Walters’ analysis is correct, worthless fakes? Why is it even showing them?
Roger Atwood, author of Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World questions the integrity of Walters Art Museum’s Bourne Collection in a Chasing Aphrodite post. Atwood is also critical of the exhibit’s lack of information, presumably, because the objects were:
all purchased from the cast of looters, dealers and assorted hoodlums that make up the supply end of the Latin American antiquities market. Whatever information those sellers claim to have on the origin of the artifacts they sell is usually conjecture or lies.
The Baltimore museum’s web site states:
The Walters Art Museum preserves and develops in the public trust a distinguished collection of world art from antiquity to the 20th century….Since its opening, the Walters has been a national leader in scholarship, conservation, and education.
Mission Statement
The Walters Art Museum brings art and people together for enjoyment, discovery, and learning. We strive to create a place where people of every background can be touched by art. We are committed to exhibitions and programs that will strengthen and sustain our community.
How well does the Maryland museum serve its stated mission with the Bourne collection?
Indeed, the Walters is not alone in what amounts to a breach of public trust, as Atwood reveals in his 2004 Stealing History which “contributes more than any other publication in more than 30 years to an understanding of the devastation to cultural heritage caused by site looting and to the search for solutions.” Patty Gerstenblith writes in an American Journal of Archaeology review. Atwood was awarded a SAFE Beacon Award for Stealing History.
One of the easiest ways to think about the damaging effects of looting ancient sites is to consider what we stand to lose. Or simply put: what if?
In celebration of Howard Carter’s 138th birthday and his discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, a most important point should not be forgotten: what we now know about the young king would be impossible had tomb robbers found the coffin first.
In a 2005 Dig Magazine article, Adrienne J. Donovan of SAFE wrote:
In ancient times, robbers entered Tutankhamun’s tomb twice, but not his coffin. They took what was most valuable at the time, unguents and oils. After it was covered by rubble from the cutting of another tomb, Tut’s tomb was left untouched until Howard Carter began digging in 1922. It is the intactness of the finds and of Tut’s untouched mummy that have allowed the young king to be so well understood today.
Untouched by tomb raiders, the artifacts in King Tut’s intact tomb continue to stimulate public interest in ancient Egypt. Rather than “beautiful but dumb”*, the objects speak volumes about the ancient world in general. Among the many possibilities this wealth of information brings, technology can now even deduce what King Tut looked like, impossible to achieve had his tomb been plundered and its contents traded in the illicit antiquities trade
*Professor Clemency Coggins used the term to describe archaeological objects removed out of context. Professor Coggins of Boston University has worked on problems of Cultural Property preservation and law since 1968. She served on the US committee involved in drafting the 1970 UNESCO convention, and worked many years for the US ratification and implementation of the Convention.
Turkey’s latest repatriation request called for the return of a dozen Roman mosaics currently owned and displayed at the Wolfe Center for the Arts at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in Ohio. The university acquired the mosaics—which depict birds, human faces and other subjects in intricate detail—in 1965 from a New York dealer for $35,000. BGSU believed the mosaics had been discovered in a Princeton led excavation in Antioch during the 1930s. At the time of the excavation, Antioch was a Syrian province (the province was later annexed to Turkey in 1939), where the university was granted concessions by the Syrian government to excavate in the region. The archeological findings were then legally distributed according to the original agreement with the Syrian government.
New research, however, from Dr. Rebecca Molholt, assistant professor at Brown University, and Dr. Stephanie Langin-Hooper, assistant professor at BGSU, reveals the mosaics were most likely illegally looted from the ancient Roman garrison town of Zeugma in modern day Turkey in the 1960s and were not acquired from the Princeton campaigns in Antioch as originally believed. This change in provenance could dramatically affect the fate of the mosaics’ final resting place. If the mosaics were excavated from Zeugma as suspected, then they would belong to Turkey under the current Law on the Protection of Cultural and Natural Property of 1983. Turkey has one of the oldest patrimony laws in place (since the Ottoman Empire), vesting ownership of all moveable and immovable artifacts to the state.
Turkey’s General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism Abdullah Kocapinar praised BGSU for its responsiveness and candor, stating:
“The attitude of Bowling Green State University will set an example for other universities and art institutions in America which possess cultural properties illegally exported from our country.”
Kocapinar is no doubt alluding to Turkey’s recent requests for at least a dozen objects in U.S. and British collections, wherein the museums have been less than forthcoming about provenance details and acquisition records.
In an additional show of cooperation, a local reporter’s inquiry into the BGSU controversy helped promote dialogue between the two parties and will hopefully allow for a smooth transition between owners should research confirm the mosaics were indeed illegally looted and exported to the United States.
University President Mary Ellen Mazey affirms: “We will do the right thing.”
Click here to view the mosaic tiles.
According to KVAL.com article “Stolen Italian antiquities recovered from Oregon home” Phillip Pirages, the book dealer whose manuscript pages were forfeited by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “was very impressed with how serious the (Italian) government was about reclaiming these[.]”
Indeed, Italy is not alone in its determination to reclaim its cultural patrimony. In recent years, many culturally rich “source” countries are quite serious as well in their call for repatriation. While dealers, collectors, and other stakeholders— such as those who advocate for the unregulated acquisition and trade of cultural property— may question the validity of other countries’ cultural patrimony laws and criticize the effectiveness of their enforcement, no meaningful alternative to the 1970 UNESCO Convention, now ratified by some 120 countries around the world, has been proposed.
With the widely publicized repatriation of antiquities and a general increase in public awareness surrounding these issues, failure to respect national and international laws makes the acquisition of dubious artifacts a high-risk venture. This fact, plus the increasing willingness of source countries to sign long-term reciprocal loan agreements with foreign museums, are bringing decades of pushback to an end. Criticism of source countries as “retentionist”; legal actions to impede the implementation of the 1970 UNESCO Convention in the United States by CPAC; calls for fewer restraints on the importation of artifacts to benefit “hobbyist” collectors and “world museums” to stock their galleries with “artistic creations that transcend national boundaries” are being replaced by a new question in the cultural property debate. The question today is: how to reconcile the growing claims made by source countries in Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East, on cultural property in museum collections outside the countries of origin?
“Once we established that they were stolen, he voluntarily agreed to surrender them,” said ICE special agent Melissa Cooley. “He didn’t fight the forfeiture.”
Citing cooperation, the book dealer will not be charged. Perhaps Pirages has the right idea: doing the right thing is never wrong.
In a 30-minute conference held on the 21st floor of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in lower Manhattan today, Judge George B. Daniels ruled against the government’s request for “a warrant to arrest” the 10th century Khmer sandstone sculpture, known as a Dvarapala, which is the subject of the in rem civil forfeiture action known as United States of America v. A 10th Century Cambodian Sandstone Sculpture [case number: 12 Civ. 2600 (GBD)]. If granted the warrant, the Government would transfer the sculpture from Sotheby’s warehouse to federal custody at another New York City warehouse. (Read about the case in the earlier post by Damien Huffer’s “Sotheby’s “Off-Base” on Cambodian Antiquities Again”.)
[The statue remains at Sotheby's subject to a restraining order that requires Sotheby's not to move the Dvarapala from its warehouse and to make it available for viewing by the government.]
The outcome of the conference was clear at the outset, when Judge Daniels told Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Cohen Levin that he “hesitates” to grant the government’s request to remove the statue from Sotheby’s warehouse at this time, because after he received the Government’s verified complaint, the Judge received an April 4 fax from Sotheby’s legal counsel Peter G. Nieman that challenges some of the government’s allegations. The existence of Sotheby’s April 4 fax, Judge Daniels said, required him to determine whether sufficient probable cause exists to grant the government’s request to remove the Dvarapala from Sotheby’s warehouse at this time.
In response, Ms. Levin said that no rule exists allowing Sotheby’s to send the Judge its April 4 fax, because Sotheby’s is not a party to the case, merely a temporary custodian of the property. Therefore the fax should not be considered in the Judge’s decision.
Ms. Levin then repeated the contents of her own April 4 fax to the Judge, citing Rule G of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which states that in order to establish probable cause, the Government’s must: (a) file a verified complaint; and the verified complaint (b) must state the grounds for subject-matter jurisdiction, in rem jurisdiction over the defendant property, and venue; (c) must describe the property with reasonable particularity; (d) if the property is tangible, must state the location of the property when the action is filed; (e) must identify the statute under which the forfeiture action is brought; and (f) must state sufficiently detailed facts to support a reasonable belief that the government will be able to meet its burden of proof at trial — all of which the Government had done.
The Judge’s response: the Government’s verified complaint and two-page application for a warrant are “appropriate” but do not constitute probable cause for granting the Government’s request to remove Dvarapala from Sotheby’s warehouse.
Judge Daniels asked Ms. Levin whether there was any “urgency” in the Government’s request to remove the Dvarapala from Sotheby’s warehouse. Ms. Levin responded no. The Government does not expect Sotheby’s to violate the Judge’s restraining order (which requires the Cambodian statue be kept safe and secure in Sotheby’s warehouse and available for viewing by the Government).
Judge Daniels then questioned whether the Government of Cambodia had requested the US Attorney to request the warrant that would remove the Dvarapala from Sotheby’s warehouse. Ms. Levin said yes and agreed to send a copy of Cambodia’s request to Judge Daniels.
[The Government's complaint references the Khmer scholar Eric Bourdonneau, who located a temple known as Prasat Chen, located at a site known as Koh Ker, deep in the Cambodian jungle, and found the base (known as a Bima pedestal) on which the Sotheby's statue and its mate, a similar statue now at the Norton Simon Museum, once stood. The measurements that Bourdonneau made of the feet, which are still attached to the Bima pedestals at Prasat Chen, match the Sotheby's and Norton Simon statues, which are both footless.]
[The Government's complaint also quotes the Sotheby's expert as saying in an email to Sotheby's: "I have been doing a little catchup research on Koh Ker (the site from this the statue was reputedly stolen), and do not think you should sell the Dvarapala at public auction. The Cambodians in Pnom Penh now have clear evidence that it was definitely stolen from Prasat Chen at Koh Ker, as the feet are still in situ…Please do not give this report to anyone outside of Sotheby, as I often have access to such material, and don’t want to anger my sources. The two Dvarapalas must have stood close together and their feet remain, so it’s pretty clear where they came from. I think it would be hugely unwise to offer the Dvarapala publicly, and I would not really feel comfortable writing it up under the circumstances. It is also possible that the Cambodians might block the sale and ask for the piece back….I’m sorry as I had some exciting things to say about it, but I don’t think Sotheby wants this kind of potential problem.” Later, the same expert emailed Sotheby's again, telling them the opposite: that the Cambodians may not complain complain after all: "I think it best that you know all this," the expert writes, "but think that legally and ethically you can happily sell the piece." In a third email quoted in the Government's complaint, responding to Sotheby's request to show the sales description that the expert had written to Cambodian authorities, the expert refused, saying "There is NO WAY that I can send what I write to [the Minister of Culture]…. Sending the writeup specifically would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull.” Sotheby’s then notified the Cambodian Culture Minister of its intention to sell the Dvarapala in November 2010 but did not receive an immediate response.]
[The Goverment's complaint also references a January 20, 2011 Sotheby's internal email, which says in part: "You no doubt know that we will be selling a sculpture in our New York Asian sales that is known to have come from a specific site in Cambodia and or which we only have provenance from 1975... While questions may be raised about this, we feel we can defend our decision to sell it..." Finally, in a letter dated March 24, 2011, the day of the auction, Cambodian authorities demanded that the Dvarapala be removed from the sale, and that Sotheby's facilitate its return to Cambodia.]
Ms. Levin concluded her argument by asserting that Sotheby’s is neither an appropriate nor neutral third party in this case and should not be permitted to hold the Dvarapala, which it should have known was considered stolen under Cambodian law. She added that the Judge should reject Sotheby’s argument, that it had consulted the UNESCO art law database and found no cultural property laws for Cambodia dating back to 1900, as the Government complaint alleges, because the UNESCO database contains a disclaimer stating that users must perform their own due diligence.
[A simple Google search would have pointed Sotheby's to an article about Cambodia in Volume 17 of Cultural without Context, published by the MacDonald Institute at Cambridge University, references a 1925 Cambodian cultural property law that applies in this case, but does not appear in the UNESCO database].
Ms. Levin also noted the U.S. customs routinely cares for precious artifacts. [Seized million-dollar artworks and antiquities are stored at the heavily guarded ICE facility at The Fortress in Long Island City.]
While Ms. Levin was speaking, Judge Daniels thumbed through some papers and noted that Rule G(3)(b)(iii) states a warrant to remove the Dvarapala from Sotheby’s warehouse did not seem necessary, and is not required so long as a restraining order remains in place. So the Goverment’s request was denied. The next step, Judge Daniels said, is to proceed to a forfeiture hearing, which requires interested parties to file a claim no more than 30 days after the Government posts its final public notice. Therefore, the Court must wait until June 5 to determine whether there are any parties to the case other than Cambodia and Sotheby’s consignor.
“It makes sense for the parties to exchange discovery information in the meantime,” said Judge Daniels, and if more information and witnesses are needed, the parties should provide that no later than July 7.
The next conference in United States of America v. A 10th Century Cambodian Sandstone Sculpture is scheduled for Wednesday, June 20 at 10:30 AM.
Lee Rosenbaum has a disturbingly revealing Q and A with Timothy Potts on the new Getty Museum director’s views on antiquities collecting policy. I happen to agree with Potts that even with the 1970 rule now being adhered to by American museums, “there is still a huge amount of ongoing looting and this issue is not being addressed.” I also agree that
The only way to address it is on the ground in the source countries. We have to support better policing of the sites, better understanding by the local communities of the importance of the archaeological heritage, particularly to them. And it’s only through these programs that we’re really going to tackle the core problem, which is the illicit excavation that’s still going on and the huge urban projects, dam building, and so on.
But what would it mean to “support better policing of the sites”?
(For the full post, go to The Punching Bag.)
This short, but fascinating video is the first of a series produced by Kabul at Work and Untold Stories: the Oral Histories of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage funded by the Hollings Center for International Dialogue. In an interview with Omara Khan Massoudi we hear his first-hand account of the struggle to save Afghanistan’s cultural heritage throughout its tumultuous history. He talks about the famous Bactrian treasure and the future of the National Museum of Afghanistan. The video includes some wonderful old footage of the National Museum.
For more information on the situation in Afghanistan read Joanie Meharry’s story, “Looting Afghanistan’s cultural heritage: A conversation with Abdul Wasey Ferozi”.
According to eBay’s web site:
Listings for antiquities have to meet the following criteria:
· Items have to be authentic.
· Sellers have to include either a photo or a scanned image of an official document that clearly shows both the item’s country of origin and the legal details of the sale (it has to be approved for import or export).Authentic artifacts, fossils, and relics have to meet the following criteria:
· The item has to match the time-period category that it’s listed in.
· If the item has been reworked or modernized in any way, this information has to be called out and fully described in the listing.Reproduction of an artifact, fossil, or relic has to meet the following criteria:
· The listing title and description have to clearly state that the item is a reproduction.
· The item must be listed in the appropriate Reproduction or Fantasy category.The site also lists specific restrictions on Native American artifacts, stipulating what eBay considers not allowed:
Describing items in the following terms because they make it hard for buyers to find authentic versions:
· Alaska Native style
· American Indian style
· Native American style
· Other descriptions that may suggest the item was made by a Native American
Are these guidelines are being followed? We invite our readers to take a few minutes to peruse the eBay site and see for themselves.
In 2002, Christopher Chippindale & David Gill said: “eBay does not closely supervise what is offered” in their seminal study on the subject “On-line auctions: a new venue for the antiquities”. Nine years later, has anything changed?
It is high time for eBay (and its many counterparts) to put action behind its own policies and guidelines. Posting them on the web site alone simply does not suffice.
William Y. Brown, a nonresident Brookings Institution Senior Fellow who is former Science Advisor to the U.S. Interior Secretary and President of the Bishop Museum, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and Woods Hole Research Center,weighs in with a number of policy suggestions for how to make the best use of Libya’s heritage in the post-Ghaddafi era. Among other ideas, Brown urges Libya to follow the example set by developed nations and
earmark funding for museums and land preservation efforts with fees on income or activities. For example, the Land and Water Conservation Fund in the United States was established for acquisition of important public lands and is funded by companies engaged in offshore oil and gas activity. Libya might consider such a heritage fee levied on its own oil and gas production.
Given that oil and gas are where the money is,such a fee would make good sense, though it has to be pointed out that the economic logic taxing the users of land and water (the offshore oil and gas companies) to pay for conserving land and water does not translate to users of oil and gas resources paying for conserving heritage. The exploiters of heritage are those who would profit from heritage tourism, and those who profit from selling antiquities. Logic would dictate taxing both those markets,if it could be done. But the heritage tourism market is not yet developed, and while Brown is eager to see it developed because it has the potential to make a lot of money, he shows no interest in harnessing the economic power of that market to pay for heritage protection more generally. And the antiquities market, of course, is not located in Libya, so Libyans would have no way to tax it.
Speaking of the antiquities market: one of the striking features of Brown’s argument is that it almost completely ignores the biggest threat to Libya’s heritage going forward: market-driven looting of archaeological sites. Brown himself notes that the Benghazi and Apollonia Museums were looted during the uprising, but beyond calling vaguely for immediate action to provide physical security for movable objects and to recover items recently stolen, he sloughs off the issue: “Mostly, however, the problem is a lack of planning, funding and management that preceded and is unrelated to the Arab Spring.”
That is very myopic. Libya did not suffer from large-scale looting of its archaeological heritage before the revolution, but it is likely to come under attack by looters in the months and years ahead. As we know from a multitude of examples, any country possessing large stocks of unexcavated sites holding antiquities for which collectors are eager to pay millions is going to be attractive looters. Where the policing power of the state is strong, looters will be deterred, but when authoritarian or totalitarian regimes fall or even weaken, black markets will flourish. As Donald Rumsfeld put it, shrugging his shoulders at the looting that erupted in the wake of the toppling of Saddam, “freedom is untidy”. Public education campaigns — may do something to keep at least some citizens from turning to looting, but there is no substitute for a robust policing capacity.
It would be helpful if development specialists at Brookings and elsewhere paid at least some policy attention to how best to plan, fund and manage the physical security of archaeological sites, rather than ignoring the problem.
On June 20, 2007, much celebration accompanied the National Museums of Kenya’s (NMK) return of two stolen ancestral memorial statues (vigango, singular kigango, Kigiriama) to a Giriama family near Kaloleni, in the Kenyan coastal hinterland. Returned by two American museums, the two vigango were, according to the NMK Director General Dr. Idle Omar Farah, the first stolen artifacts ever returned to Kenya from the United States. The ceremony drew hundreds of local celebrants and included speeches, performances by local dance troupes, and feasting. The Minister of Tourism and Wildlife, the Honorable Morris Dzoro, delivered the keynote speech. Other dignitaries attending included the NMK Board Chairman, Mr. Issa Timamy, and Ambassador Husein Dado, Senior Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of State for National Heritage. The NMK’s Mombasa branch, under the direction of Mr. Philip Jimbi Katana, made elaborate preparations for the ceremony, including building a steel enclosure in the homestead to protect the returned vigango from further theft.
The ceremony concluded a long and concerted effort by ourselves and our Kenyan colleague, John Baya Mitsanze (a Giriama and senior curator with the NMK) to have the two statues repatriated and to heighten global awareness of the theft of vigango and other non-Western cultural property.
Vigango are carved and erected to incarnate the spirits of deceased members of Gohu, a male semi-secret society, and are considered sacred by the Giriama and other northern Mijikenda peoples.
The two returned vigango were stolen more than twenty years ago, in 1985. By sheer coincidence, Monica Udvardy had photographed them at the Giriama homestead of Kalume Mwakiru shortly before their theft while she was conducting research on Mijikenda gendered secret societies. We (Udvardy and Linda Giles) discovered the vigango fifteen years later in the African collections of the Illinois State University Museum (later transferred to the Illinois State Museum in Springfield) and the Hampton University Museum in Virginia.
In 2006, we located the Mwakiru family, and later delivered to the NMK’s Mombasa branch the family’s written appeal to have their stolen vigango returned. NMK Principal Curator of Coastal Sites and Monuments, Mr. Philip Jimbi Katana, then wrote the official request to the two American museums. The Illinois State Museum readily agreed to the request, and on September 13, 2006, an eight-person delegation, headed by Kenya’s Minister of State for National Heritage, Suleiman Shakombo, and the Kenyan Ambassador to the United States, Peter Ogego, traveled to Springfield to collect the kigango. At that time, Hampton University refused to return their kigango or even to meet the delegation. However, shortly after the Kenyan delegation left the United States, Hampton bowed to public pressure and shipped the kigango to Kenya.
The NMK’s actions concerning the Mwakiru vigango demonstrate a new focus on recovering Kenya’s cultural heritage not only for the NMK itself, but also on behalf of individuals, families, and ethnic groups. In another recent case, the NMK assisted in the return of regalia of Nandi resistance hero Koitalel arap Samoei from a British family to Nandi elders in 2006.
Most vigango are stolen by unemployed Mijikenda male youths and sold to shops and markets in the coastal cities and in the capital, Nairobi, which then sell them to Western dealers and collectors. Most of the vigango in the United States have been imported by a dealer based in southern California. This dealer has sold many of the vigango to private individuals, including several associated with the Hollywood film industry; these individuals often then donate them to museums. Records from the Illinois State University Museum show that the actor Powers Boothe donated one of the Mwakiru vigango and seven other vigango to the Museum in 1986. The other Mwakiru kigango was donated to Hampton University Museum by an undisclosed individual in the same year; Museum records indicate that it was one of ninety-four vigango collected by the American dealer among the ninety-nine total vigango acquired by the Museum between 1979 and 1987.
Our efforts to return these vigango have received widespread attention from the news media. In 2006, Mike Pflanz, the East African correspondent for the Daily Telegraph (London) and the Christian Science Monitor, visited the Mwakirus and published astory in both papers about their stolen vigango and our research on vigango in U.S. museum collections. NMK curator John Baya Mitsanze also took Pflanz and a photographer to the Giriama homestead of Karisa Disii Ngowa to photograph several recently erected vigango. After Pflanz’s articles appeared, we were deluged with requests for interviews by the news media.
Probably the most important coverage was by the New York Times. Marc Lacey, the New York Times East African Bureau chief at the time, researched the story and visited the Mwakiru and Ngowa families with Mitsanze and a photographer. At the Ngowa homestead, however, they discovered that the vigango had been stolen soon after Pflanz’s visit. Lacey’s article about vigango theft, which described the vigango loss of both Giriama families, was published on page 4 of the 2006 Easter Sunday edition. At the same time, Lacey launched a multimedia, interactive version of the story on the New York Times web site which ran for three months.
Other news media reporting the story include Kenya’s national daily newspapers, radio interviews, and discussion on the BBC andNPR. At least fifty special interest blogs and web sites have discussed the issue from the perspectives of art history, archaeology, African Studies, and cultural anthropology.
The media attention has raised general public awareness about the devastating impact on local communities due to the widespread global marketing of African cultural heritage.
It has also led to the voluntary return of nine more vigango from the private African art collection of American producers/screenwriters Lewis and Jay Allen, after Connecticut art dealer Kelly Gingras discovered the Mwakiru case on the Internet while preparing an exhibit at her Insiders/Outsiders Art Gallery. Gingras notified the daughter of the late couple, Brooke Allen, who agreed that the statues should be returned to Kenya. Allen and Gingras handed the statues over to the Kenyan Ambassador during a ceremony at the United Nations headquarters in New York City in June of 2007, an event that was also covered by the New York Times.
There are also indications that the media attention has affected other African art dealers. In October 2007, Linda Giles contacted several African art dealers in New York City about Kenyan artifacts for sale. None of the dealers mentioned having any vigango. An employee of the Pace Primitive Gallery volunteered the information that Kenyan “funerary statues” could no longer be sold. He noted that some of these statues had just recently been returned to Kenya and that it appeared that the statues should never have been collected in the first place.
In spite of these successes, there are still many vigango in museums and private collections in the United States, Europe, and Kenya. We have been able to verify the presence of more than 400 vigango in various American museums, but there is no information about the families from whom they were stolen. This demonstrates the need to photograph vigango still in situ.
Though Kenya’s passage and enactment of a national heritage bill protecting various aspects of natural and cultural heritage is an excellent step, its application is hindered by its lack of a list of specific artifacts covered. Hence, vigango do not currently receive special protection through inclusion in a red list. We are also unaware of any efforts to prevent the sale of vigango and other stolen or endangered cultural items in the many curio and art shops catering to tourists and collectors.
Pogrebin, Robin, 2007. 9 statues uprooted from Africa head home.New York Times, June 26, Arts section: B1.
Giles, Linda, Monica Udvardy, and John Mitsanze, 2004. Cultural property as global commodities: The case of Mijikenda memorial statues. Cultural Survival Quarterly, 27.4 (Winter): 78-82.
Pflanz, Mike, 2006. Kenyans welcome home sacred relics stolen by British. Telegraph, April 15, News section.
Lacey, Marc, 2006. The case of the stolen statues: Solving a Kenyan mystery. New York Times, April 16: 4.
Udvardy, Monica, Linda Giles, and John Mitsanze, 2003. The transatlantic trade in African ancestors: Mijikenda memorial statues (vigango) and the ethics of collecting and curating non-Western cultural property. American Anthropologist, 105.3: 566-80.
Pflanz, Mike, 2006. Theft of sacred vigango angers Kenyan villagers. Christian Science Monitor, March 2.
Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum is the story of how the J. P. Getty Museum has collected Greek and Roman antiquities since its inception in 1953, told from the inside out. The authors, Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino, both reporters from the Los Angeles Times (Frammolino has since moved on), have assembled an extraordinary array of sources with which they tell a story the Getty wants no one to know: how the museum knowingly purchased looted and fake antiquities, misled foreign governments in their attempts to reclaim stolen property, laundered stolen antiquities through an illegal tax scheme and adopted extraordinarily conservative acquisitions policies while at the same time actively buying from the illicit antiquities market. It is a story of the astounding mismanagement of opportunities, resources, human capital and global reputation. Put one way, it is confirmation of the worst many suspected about curatorial caprice and institutional duplicity. Put another way, if you’re interested in issues surrounding the illicit antiquities trade, collectors and the Classical world, you can’t put the book down.
First of all, it is the materials with which this story has been put together that are significant. In the Notes section at the end of the book, Felch and Frammolino describe these:
The backbone of this account is a trove of thousands of pages of confidential Getty records provided by half of dozen key sources at various levels of the institution. They include a confidential institutional history of the Getty as narrated by two generations of its leaders; a complete list of art purchased by the museum from 1954 to 2004, with the price paid for each piece; the private correspondence and contemporaneous handwritten notes of several top Getty officials; museum files on the contested antiquities and suspect dealers; and records detailing several internal investigations conducted over the years by various teams of Getty lawyers (319).
These were compiled, acquired and collected over the several years Felch and Frammolino worked the Getty Museum beat for the LA Times, for which they were finalists for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. Chasing Aphrodite thus is the conclusion of their efforts on the case and reflects the authors’ depth of knowledge and considerable analytical skill.
Felch and Frammolino begin at the beginning, with the foundation of the Getty and it is an unexpected story. The John Paul Getty Museum, unlike other major American collecting institutions which include a considerable amount of antiquities, was founded by one individual and with the sole purpose of affording this one man a tax write off. Its domestic peer institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, all begun in the decade of the 1870s, were founded directly in association with an educational institution or explicitly aimed at public consumption in the nineteenth century tradition of civic education. Unlike these quasi-academic institutions, the Getty, from its beginning, was run not by scholars of art, those with experience administering cultural institutions or people familiar with non-profit work. Rather, from its inception, the Getty was run by businessmen, mostly from Wall Street and the energy industries. Indeed, John Paul Getty himself ran the museum until his death in 1976, at which point it was overseen by a board he had stacked with his accountant, a Getty Oil executive, Harold Berg, Getty Oil’s outside attorney, his two sons Ronald and Gordon and his Italian art advisor, Frederico Zeri. To say that the culture of for-profit, big-game, arrogant corporate leadership pervaded the museum for it first decades would be an understatement. This management style, as the authors illustrate, fostered, among other things, extravagant acquisitions regardless of the liability of such and ineffectual curatorial oversight.
Indeed, the corporate and decidedly un-academic flavor of the Getty was heightened after the death of its founder through the reorganization of the Getty museum into the Getty Trust, an umbrella organization for the museum but also other arts-related institutions. Who was hand-picked for the development of this bold new vision? The just retired chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (not a body known for its work in the arts), Harold M. Williams. Under Williams, Jiri Frel served as the first curator of antiquities, hired away from the Greek and Roman department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Frel was academic enough, for sure, having studied at the Sorbonne and taught at Charles University in his native Czechoslovakia as well as Princeton University. But, as Felch and Frammolino describe, Frel’s knowledge of ancient art was far outweighed by his breathtaking corruption.
During Frel’s eleven year tenure at the Getty he instigated a massive tax fraud scheme which was hatched together with the antiquities dealer Bruce McNall, whose silent partner and supplier was Robert Hecht (currently under indictment in Italy for conspiracy to traffic stolen antiquities). The scheme would run like this: those on McNall’s rich and famous client list interested in tax deductions would “buy” an antiquity from McNall, supplied by Hecht. The buyer would then turn around and donate the piece to the Getty at a greatly inflated value, thanks to the appraisals of Frel’s friend Jerome Eisenberg, owner of Royal Athena Gallery. The Getty received a steady stream of smaller antiquities to “round out” the collection, pieces which the board would likely not have approved for purchase (as they were desirous of larger and more impressive acquisition) and the donors received a tax write off. The numbers on this scheme are staggering; for four years, over one hundred donors gave six thousand antiquities to the J. Paul Getty Museum, the wealthiest museum in the world, at a value of $14.7 million dollars (36).
A win/win; a victimless crime. No harm, no foul. No doubt this is how Frel figured it. But there is harm here, and plenty of it. Never mind good old-fashioned tax fraud, which bilks the US government and puts a greater tax burden on those who actually pay taxes. The harm here is in the source of these antiquities. Hecht, as illustrated in Peter Watson and Cecellia Todeschini’s The Medici Conspiracy and evidenced by his indictment, was supplied by tombaroli. Six thousand small pieces over four years are no doubt the yield of tens of thousands of plundered tombs and villas, illegally dug trenches and holes. What was lost to “fund” this tax scheme and the “rounding out” of the Getty’s collection? We will never know.
One wonders what Frel’s intentions really were with this scheme. The authors argue that Frel’s interest was scholarly, and to grow a study collection for the museum. Yet, when Frel is asked to leave in 1984 after the tax scheme and other equally radical improprieties are revealed to upper management, the authors report that some 800 objects were found with little or no documentation (55). As part of his scheme, Frel would regularly falsify the ownership histories of the “donated” objects, which corrupted the academic record. If Frel’s aims at the Getty were scholarly, how can this be accounted for? The authors attribute Frel’s behavior to his status as a political refugee from the Eastern block (26). This may or may not be true but certainly his dishonesty and vice found a unique level of tolerance (or willful ignorance) within the particularly corporate management environment of the Getty.
But, corporate style, poor oversight and shenanigans in the antiquities department didn’t end with Frel. Harold Williams’ retirement from the Getty Trust in 1998 brought in Barry Munitz as President and CEO. Indeed, Munitz has an academic background, a PhD in comparative literature from Princeton but, instead of teaching or research, he almost immediately began working in university administration, becoming chancellor of the University of Houston’s Main Campus at a sage 35 years old. He then left academia for real estate and forestry speculation as well as serving as chairman of the Texas Savings and Loan Association. The Texas Savings and Loan Association was seized by federal regulators in 1988, the fifth largest bank failure in American history at the time. From there Munitz had moved on to Chancellor of the California State University system, the largest higher education system in the country. In this position, Munitz was one of the most influential leaders in employing a for-profit model to higher education, viewing students as customers. When Munitz replaced Williams as the head of the Getty Trust, its valuation was $4.3 billion. Interestingly, not long after his appointment he settled his savings and loan suit and, stemming from the charges of enriching himself with improper and excessive compensation and irresponsible allocation of assets on junk bonds and loss real estate, he was barred from working at a bank or similar business for three years. As the Felch and Frammolino point out, curiously, this did not bar him from directing one of the largest public trusts in the world.
It was under Munitz that Marion True flourished as curator of antiquities and it was her exploits which occupy much of Chasing Aphrodite. True has left an indelible mark on the Getty Villa, the stand-alone collection of antiquities of the Getty Museum; three quarters of the materials on display were acquired under her era. Indeed, True emerges as a genuinely fascinating character in the book, from her working-class, grasping mid-western beginnings to her schizophrenic behavior at the Getty during which she simultaneously championed the rights of source countries to fight the illicit antiquities trade, crafting a uniquely conservative museum acquisitions policy while at the same time actively buying looted antiquities from notorious dealers like Hecht and Medici. There are at least a couple of ways to understand how this was tolerated. One is yet again an example of the sort of corporate hands-off, or just plain incompetent, management style that allowed a tax scheme such as Frel’s to thrive. The other is more nefarious, which is that this behavior was known and condoned.
As Felch and Frammolino describe, True was hired at the Getty by Frel as an assistant in the antiquities department, not yet having finished her Harvard PhD. Before the Getty, True had not only worked for a corrupt Newburyport art dealer Steven Straw, but engaged in an unsuccessful and badly ended business venture with Bruce and Ingrid McAlpine, two of London’s most prominent antiquities dealers. But, with Frel’s departure from the Getty in 1985, True’s star soon rose, being promoted to associate antiquities curator. It was at this point that the Getty experienced its first public scandal involving an antiquities purchase, that of an Archaic Greek Kouros statue.
The story of the Getty Kouros is well known but what Felch and Frammolino add is the inside dope. We learn how Federico Zeri vocally denounced the Kouros a fake and within the institution there was a vigorous debate about its purchase. As a part of this debate, the authors’ research reveals that the curators and managers at the Getty were well aware of the illicit nature of many antiquities on the market. It is made clear from internal documents that Arthur Houghton, associate antiquities curator, had warned Getty management about the questionable origins of the Kouros, a purchase Frel had initiated and for which he provided forged provenance documents.
Indeed, the documentation Chasing Aphrodite presents regarding just how much curators, general counsel, the museum director and CEO of the Getty trust knew about antiquities purchases is one of the most significant aspects of the book. For instance, the authors reveal that during the internal machinations over the purchase of the Kouros, CEO Williams complained to John Walsh, the director of the museum, that “much of the conversation [regarding the liability of purchasing the Kouros] is to the effect that 90% of the objects on the market are presumed to have recently come out of Italy or Greece.” (58) Moreover, Houghton, in conversation with Getty attorney Bruce Bevan (quoted in Houghton’s notes) stated “the reality is that 95% of the antiquities on the market have been found in the last three years.” (61) The Kouros was purchased in 1985 for $7million.
Another example of the knowledge insiders at the Getty had about the illicit antiquities market shown in the book is when, in 1985, Maurice Tempelsman, an art collector, sold eleven of his best pieces from his antiquities collection to the Getty for $16 million, including a spectacular marble group depicting two griffins ripping into a fallen doe, complete with ancient paint still visible. Because of the importance of this and two other pieces, the Getty commissioned Cornelius Vermeule of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to write a study of them to accompany their debut at the museum. In the piece Vermeule argued that the stylistic similarity of the three objects indicated that they were from the same workshop. Being the case that these objects were bought from the market and no information as to their archaeological provenience existed, this was an argument made purely on visual examination. Houghton contacted Medici, from whom Tempelsman originally bought the pieces, to ask what he knew about where they came from. What he gets back from Medici, which he documents in an internal Getty memo, in part refutes Vermeule’s professional opinion but, amazingly, documents the dirty story of the looting of the pieces. “Medici said that he had purchased all three from Italian looters in 1975 or 1976. Two of the objects had indeed been found in the same tomb (which add strength to a same-workshop theory), in some ruins just outside Taranto, a thriving center of art in ancient times. The griffins had been found in the ruins of a villa some 150 to 200 meters away.” (66)
And as another example, among the evidence sized in the Giacomo Medici trial, prosecutor Paolo Ferri finds a letter True had written to Medici asking for information about a group of Greek olpae the Getty had bought from him. Apparently an assistant curator was writing a PhD dissertation on the pieces and True wanted to know where they were from. Medici had written back with helpful details, informing True that the pieces had been found in Monte Abatone , a necropolis in Cerveteri, even describing the tomb itself and offered her other objects that had been found there (212).
These three examples illustrate that those at all levels at the Getty knew that the antiquities they were acquiring were looted. As the authors state in a footnote (331), “from as early as April 1984,….American museum officials were well aware that they were buying recently looted objects, a charge they vehemently deny to this day.”
The story above involving Marion True and her inquiry to Medici about the olpae is one of many which serve to show the duplicity of her character. What is compelling about True isn’t so much the sad story of an individual who knowingly did what she knew was illegal, immoral and harmful to her profession in order to further herself personally; indeed, this is an old story. What is compelling is that this duplicity, ironically, help forge some of the strictest acquisition policies of any US museum.
True and her care for the Getty’s antiquities collection policies began in 1986 when Robin Symes, notorious antiquities dealer, offered her a spectacular, slightly larger than life-sized, extremely rare, limestone and marble acrolith sculpture representing Aphrodite. A sculpture of such type, size and quality would have been known if had been discovered either in the distant past or more recently in legal excavation. It was still encrusted with soil and had fresh breaks which divided it into three equal parts, a classic smuggler’s trick. The sculpture was clearly looted but True was determined to have it despite the recent Kouros scandal. As the Getty’s acquisition policy stood, the purchase of suspect objects was prohibited; it obliged the museum to abide by US and international laws and required inquires with presumed source countries. The director of the Getty Museum, Walsh, who was bent on acquisitions regardless of the law or loss of knowledge, sought to adopt more liberal guidelines, especially those which would accommodate the purchase of the Aphrodite. A new policy, approved by the Getty board in 1987, crafted by Walsh, True and Getty counsel Bevan was trumpeted by True in internal documents as going “beyond what is demanded by the law….and abid[ing] by the highest possible ethical standards.”(91). It in fact made ignoring antiquities laws museum policy; it put the burden of proof on the dealers who offered the pieces for sale and made necessary inquiries to source countries only if there was evidence of looting of such object that the Getty wanted to buy. The first requirement was a joke, given how those at the Getty knew that the dealers from whom they bought antiquities were highly immoral and the second requirement was toothless as most source countries do not have the resources to prevent or even be fully informed about what pieces are being looted and taken across their borders. The Aphrodite would be purchased and the museum would effectively institutionalize its ability to acquire any antiquity it wanted.
Indeed, this would seem to support the notion that True was keen to collect and had little problem with depleting the cultural resources of source countries. However, Felch and Frammolino then describe a curious course of events. True and her associate curator, John Papadopolous, were contacted by an Italian archaeologist working at the site of Francavilla Maritima, who told them that several objects donated under Frel and his tax write-off scams had almost certainly been looted from an area of the site. Papadopolous, working in the archives, established that the pieces had been purchased by Frel with full knowledge that they had been looted from that exact site. The Italian authorities were notified and the Getty laboriously documented the pieces before they were returned. True’s efforts to make right the wrong of her predecessor Frel, won her glowing comments from the Italian Carabinieri and fame for her boldness and forward thinking. Where is True’s acquisitive nature here? How did she square this return with the purchase of the Aphrodite?
Not even ten years later, in 1995, True and Papadopoulos proposed a new and truly stringent acquisition policy for the Getty, far more stringent than any other American museum. No object could be acquired by the Getty, by purchase or donation, which lacked documented ownership prior to the year of the adoption of the policy. But, only the next year, in 1996, the Getty agreed to accept a gift of most of the impressive Fleischman collection of antiquities, many of which were of highly questionable origins. The Getty itself had published the collection (in hopeful anticipation of receiving it later) in 1994 and this was offered by True as sufficient to meet the requirements of the new acquisition policy. Despite this double-dealing, True continued to tout the Getty’s new policy widely. At a 1998 conference at Rutgers University on art, antiquity and the law, she signed a resolution calling for long-term loans of ancient art from source countries and declared she was looking forward to a new era of the “sharing of cultural properties rather than their exploitation as commodities.” Six months later, she appeared at a National Arts Journalism Program event at Columbia University, at which she expressed “serious reservations” about the curatorial activities of museums that kept buying “simply to put material in the basement.” (164)
With this all behind her, in March of 2002, True proposed the purchase of a half life-sized, 3rd century bronze figure of Poseidon. Although it appeared to meet the new 1995 strict Getty acquisition policy (it had been known of since the late 1970’s and its ownership history was clear since then), it was being offered for sale by Robin Symes. As Felch and Frammolino’s sources show, this fact sent up alarm bells in the deputy director’s office and with further investigation by Colby in the General Counsel’s office it was discovered that the import paperwork on the statue had been forged and that in the late 1970’s the piece had been the subject of a major controversy after the Carabinieri told the British media that the statue had been found in the Bay of Naples and smuggled out of Italy. That True could have trusted Symes is unbelievable and that she would have been ignorant of the questionable background of the piece is unbelievable as well. As Ludovic de Walden, an outside counsel hired by the Getty to vet the proposed purchase of the piece is quoted as saying, True would have had to be “insane” to propose buying the Poseidon (221) – that is to say insane given what she had been saying all over the place about how above-board the Getty’s acquisitions would now be.
But, the downfall of Marion True had already begun and was intimately connected to the Italian investigation into the Giacomo Medici illicit antiquities cordata explain?, best described in The Medici Conspiracy. To make a long story short, during the course of the investigation two spectacular pieces of evidence were uncovered. The first is a written organizational chart, an organogram, which illustrated the supply and demand structure of Medici’s market. At the top of the chart, chief among the demand-side players, was listed the J. Paul Getty Museum. The other spectacular piece of evidence was a stash of Polaroids of hundreds of objects freshly looted, several which ended up in American public and private collections, including the Getty. The Getty became a focal point of two separate prosecutions, not only against the museum per se, but against Marion True herself.
The inside perspective which Felch and Frammolino provide on the Italian case against True shows a few things. One is that, indeed, as True has alleged (most recently in LA Times in January, the Getty was more than willing to throw her under the bus despite her years of obsequious service. Already in January of 2001, an internal memo from Getty counsel Richard Martin advised Getty CEO Munitz that True might have to suffer as collateral damage in the fight with the Italians. Then in early 2002, Frieda Tchacos, a long-time antiquities dealer, was arrested on a warrant for her involvement in an Italian looting case. In Ferri’s interrogation of her, she confirmed suspicions that True had helped build the Fleischman collection with the intention of eventually receiving it at the Getty. This gave Ferri enough for conspiracy charges against True and would become central to the Italian case against her. In late 2002 the Frederick Schultz case ends in a conviction on one felony count of violating the National Stolen Property Act for trafficking in illicit Egyptian antiquities in the US. This sent out shock waves and Felch and Frammolino describe a confidential meeting among the directors of select American museums (the MMA, Cleveland, Chicago and the Getty) at which it was determined that the requests and legal actions from source countries were a genuine problem. The conclusions of the meeting were only made more urgent for the Getty as at the end of 2003, the Medici trial began, featuring much damning evidence involving the institution. In December of 2004 Medici was found guilty of trafficking stolen Italian antiquities (a decision which was upheld on appeal in 2009) and Marion True was next in the crosshairs of the Italian court.
Judge Guglielmo Muntoni, who had presided over the Medici trial, was assigned to the preliminary hearing of the True case. The authors’ interviews with Muntoni reveal that he had sympathy with True, believing that she wanted to change things in American museums but her job required her to acquire looted antiquities. Be that as it may, Muntoni saw his way clear in April of 2005 to hand down an indictment ordering True to stand trial.
Back Stateside, the investigations and secretly leaked documents upon which Chasing Aphrodite are based began to be revealed in a string of articles in the LA Times and, at the end of 2005, the most damning revelation about True hit the presses: she had accepted a personal loan from the antiquities dealer Christos Michaelides and repaid that with another personal loan, this from the Fleischmans, both people from whom the Getty has purchased antiquities. This was the final straw which led the Getty board to ask for True’s resignation. (266) The balance of Chasing Aphrodite follows the shuttle diplomacy between the Getty and Italy, instigated in January 2006 by the new CEO Michael Brand, which results in an agreement in August of 2007 for the return of forty objects, including the Aphrodite acrolith. The removal from the Getty Villa galleries of the materials returned to Italy marks the close of Chasing Aphrodite. As the authors briefly note, in November of 2010 the case against the former Getty antiquities curator was dropped due to the statue of limitations on the case having been reached. This was an expected outcome; it was understood that the indictment was enough, to send a message to American museums. As reported on a New York Times blog at the time, Ferri was quoted as saying that the trial had worked as a signal to museums; with the trial, he said, “Italy showed that it wanted to break with past practices.” True was collateral damage, indeed.
Felch and Frammolino, at the very end of their Epilogue, look back at the era of Marion True at the Getty and surmise that it is a thing of the past; that the fall of Marion True has forged “a peace between collectors and archaeologists, museums and source countries.” (312) This is a desirable sentiment and indeed a fine way to end a book the likes of which they have so aptly written. It is, unfortunately, not particularly true. One need merely browse through, for instance, the postings on David Gill’s blog Looting Matters to see the activities of institutions such as the Mougins Museum of Classical Art in France, the Miho Museum in Japan, the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, Spain, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, or the Princeton University Art Museum to ascertain that there is little peace. And, these examples include only works of art from the ancient Classical world. Indeed, there is also little peace between the museums and collectors all over the world who are quietly amassing collections of African, Southeast Asian, Far Eastern and South and Central American art and the pillaged and often indigent and politically unstable regions from which these objects come.
If only a peace could be forged without an end to the demand side of the illicit antiquities trade. But, it cannot; as long as there is a robust demand for antiquities they will be looted. As long as any archaeological site is violated, historical monument is compromised or museum is broken into in order to feed the demand for the purchase of antiquities regardless of the loss of knowledge, we all, as inheritors of the earth’s (not just the Classical world’s) cultural heritage, must strive to bring this filthy, dark, destructive market to public attention. Chasing Aphrodite is a work in this vein and this author is grateful for it.
A European art and antiquities collector recently opened a museum of his collection in France. His action to share the collection with the public is perhaps more admirable than hoarding it all in a private home. But it is the “compulsive collecting” in the first place that causes so many problems, and this article in particular glorifies his “philanthropy” while neglecting any realities about how these antiquities were brought to the market and acquired.
As sentencing awaits the three Utah residents recently found guilty of looting artifacts from federal and tribal lands, let’s take a moment to review the sentencing in the infamous 2009 case of the Redds. Receiving probation of three- and two- years and a fine of $2,000 and $300 respectively, Jeanne and Jericca Redd joined a number of other defendants who receive a mere slap on the wrist for their contribution to the destruction of cultural heritage and human remains.
In response, SAFE sent a letter (see full text below) to Judge Waddoups expressing our disappointment that the sentencing guidelines were not appropriately followed. Most importantly, that “the leniency shown to the Redds sends the message that such laws are unimportant or do not apply to the Four Corners region, and will encourage rather than deter looters.” We did not receive a response from the Judge.
The San Juan Record reported in July 2010, that “the trend is toward no jail time” with probation, “home confinement” and supervised release being the norm. A year later, has anything changed?
“Illegal or not, Americans still clutch after the Southwest’s past by combing its canyons for ruins.” Brandon Loomis writes in the excellent but sobering piece this January in The Salt Lake Tribune:
“Let this case serve notice to anyone who is considering breaking these laws and trampling our nation’s cultural heritage,” U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said after the Blanding raid, “that the [Bureau of Land Management], the Department of Justice and the federal government will track you down and bring you to justice.”
We hope that the sentencing judges will finally take heed.
Federal Agents Bust Ring of Antiquity Thieves Looting American Indian Sites for Priceless Treasures June 10, 2009
Photo: Federal Agents Bust Ring of Antiquity Thieves Looting American Indian Sites for Priceless Treasures June 10, 2009
The press conference was held at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Utah. Behind Secretary Salazar are left to right, U.S. Attorney in Utah, Brett Tolman, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs, Larry Echo Hawk and Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden. [Photo Credit: Tami A. Heilemann DOI]
______
October 20, 2009
Hon. Clark Waddoups
United States District Court, District of Utah
Frank E. Moss Federal Courthouse
350 South Main Street
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Re: United States of America vs. Jeanne H. Redd and James D. Redd [2:09-cr-00044]; and United States of America vs. Jericca Redd [2:09-cr-00467]
Your Honor:
We hereby ask your permission to forward this letter to the news media and to post it on the SAFE Web site by Monday, October 26. Kindly provide us with your permission at cho@savingantiquities.org as soon as possible.
We are writing with regard to the sentences you rendered in the above-mentioned federal cases, which resulted from long-term investigations into multiple violations of the 1979 Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA), 16 U.S.C. § 470; the 1990 Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, 25 U.S.C. § 3001; and related legislation in the Four Corners region.
Professional archaeologists follow specific procedures in consultation with descendant communities and use scientific methods to retrieve maximum information to enhance our knowledge of the past. In contrast, the looting and trafficking of looted artifacts destroys archaeological evidence and imperils cultural heritage.
Moreover, in the ancient cultures of the Southwest, cultural objects were often buried with individuals as funerary items. Unsanctioned removal and acquisition of funerary items is nothing less than theft. It is disrespectful. For these reasons, the United States has enacted legislation to protect its cultural resources.
According to § 2B1.5 of the 2008 Federal Sentencing Guidelines (USSG § 2B1.5), sentencing levels increase accordingly when the theft, damage, or destruction involves:
• An offense exceeding $2,000 in value;
• Human remains, funerary objects, cultural patrimony, or designated archaeological material;
• A crime committed for pecuniary gain; and
• Defendants engaging in a pattern of misconduct involving cultural heritage resources.
The defendants in these two cases, Jeanne Redd and daughter Jericca Redd, were indicted on multiple federal charges involving artifacts with a combined value estimated at $6,000. Jeanne Redd had been charged by the State of Utah for similar activities in 1996. More than 800 artifacts, and some human remains, were seized from their home.
The potential penalties for these crimes would include fines of up to $250,000 and up to 10 years in prison, according to the federal guidelines. The prosecution requested a sentence on the low end of the sentencing spectrum: 18–24 months imprisonment for Jeanne and Jericca Redd and a fine equal to the commercial value of all the artifacts, the archaeological costs for retrieving scientific information prior to the offense, and the cost for the restoration and repair of damages caused to cultural resources. Yet the court handed down an even more lenient sentence. Although the Redds entered a plea of guilty, they received no prison time and fines totaling $2,300. This is a slap on the wrist, considering the irreparable damage to heritage and history their crimes have caused.
We are disappointed that you did not follow the sentencing guidelines. The outcome shows disrespect for the federal agents and informants who put themselves at risk to make the case, and to the public, which paid for the prosecution. Most disturbingly, the leniency shown to the Redds sends the message that such laws are unimportant or do not apply to the Four Corners region, and will encourage rather than deter looters.
In addition, we believe that the dollar amount involved in an act of plunder should not be the sole, or even the primary, determinant of the seriousness of that act. In future sentencing, we urge you to also consider the cultural loss that the laws were designed to prevent, and recognize the importance of cultural heritage as something that goes beyond money.
We believe that the intentional violation of federal laws cannot be justified for certain communities or individuals. Even those who disagree with a particular aspect of the law must uphold it. If they do not, they should be held accountable for their actions. We respectfully request that the destructive activity of looting, trafficking, and collecting of cultural heritage property be addressed more appropriately and respectfully in future court decisions, particularly in cases resulting from this investigation.
Sincerely,
Cindy Ho
President, SAFE/Saving Antiquities For Everyone
SAFE/Saving Antiquities for Everyone is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving cultural heritage worldwide. Our mission is to raise public awareness about the irreversible damage that results from looting, smuggling and trading illicit antiquities. We promote respect for the laws and treaties that enable nations to protect their cultural property and preserve humanity’s most precious non-renewable resource: the intact evidence of our undiscovered past. Learn more at www.savingantiquities.org.
