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.

The 2011 SAFE Beacon Award Winners are busy traveling the East Coast this fall discussing their book, Chasing Aphrodite. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to meet Jason Felch this October in New York City.

Lecture and Book Signing
October 24, 6 pm
Silver Center Room 300
Washington Square East
New York University

“Jason Felch will give a presentation about his non-fiction book Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum, which details how the J. Paul Getty Museum became the epicenter of an unprecedented scandal over the acquisition of looted Greek and Roman antiquities by their Los Angeles Times coverage of the controversy, including stories revealing how the Getty, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and other leading institutions patronized a black market awash in illicit objects. The revelations forced American museums to return more than 100 of their finest antiquities-valued at nearly a billion dollars-to Italy and Greece. Their new book lays bare the roots of the scandal with fly-on-the-wall accounts gleaned from hundreds of additional interviews and internal Getty documents spanning four decades. Their presentation-which includes slides of the key characters and looted objects-will touch on the origins of the scandal, the efforts of senior Getty officials to continue buying looted artifacts while appearing ethical, and the tragic consequences the strategy brought to the museum’s collection and its highly regarded antiquities curator, Marion True. The presentation will also address how the scandal has ushered in a new era of cooperation between Italy and American museums through cultural loans.”

For information about the Fall Book Tour visit the Chasing Aphrodite website.

At last, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts has returned the top half of the “Weary Herakles” to Turkey, as previously suggested here. The agreement to transfer ownership of the statue was signed on September 23, between the Museum and the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage and Museums of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey.

According to the Museum’s press release, the “agreement acknowledged that the MFA acquired the object in good faith and without knowledge of any ownership or title issues[italics added]. It also provided for the transfer of the object, which took place after the signing.”

The return of the Weary Herakles to Turkey, preceded by the repatriation of antiquities from Italy by the Metropolitan Museum (shortly before the publication of the 2006 book The Medici Conspiracy by SAFE Beacon Award recipients Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini) and the return of antiquities to Greece and Italy by the Getty Museum (as discussed in the book Chasing Aphrodite by 2011 SAFE Beacon Award recipients Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino), confirms the long-held belief at SAFE that ownership “without knowledge of any ownership or title issues” is not a position that a principled institution or collector can maintain or defend. See our Statement of Principles. Let’s hope the practice of acquiring unprovenanced artifacts without asking questions is truly coming to an end.

2011: Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino - SAFE honors investigative journalists and co-authors of Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum (read Professor Senta German’s review here) for assembling “an extraordinary array of sources with which they tell a story the Getty wants no one to know” and for educating the public about how museum practices affect the preservation of cultural heritage.

2012: David Gill – Professor Gill has worked tirelessly for decades to shed light on the multiple threats to cultural heritage through teaching, research, publication and the trailblazing Looting Matters. An archaeologist and scholar of ancient history and the classics, Professor Gill is also a SAFECORNER Contributor.

Established in 2006, SAFE Beacon Awards recognize individuals who enlighten the public about the devastating effects of looting and the illicit antiquities trade. Awards have been presented to authors, professors, law enforcement professionals, and archaeologists. We look forward to honoring others who lead the way in the fight to protect cultural heritage.

Previous winners include:

2004 – Roger Atwood

2005 – Matthew Bogdanos

2006 – Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini

2008 – Neil Brodie and Donny George

2009 – Colin Renfrew

2010 – Robert Goldman, David Hall, James McAndrew, and Robert Wittman

To learn more about the SAFE Beacon Awards and to stay up to date with the latest awards news, visit and “like” our SAFE Beacon Awards facebook page.

All those concerned about preserving our ancient past felt a chill down the spine upon hearing the news of Donny George’s sudden passing. Whether or not they knew him in person, a sense of loss was palpable within the community. On March 11, 2011, we lost a colleague and a friend. We also lost an eloquent advocate and a powerful—if gentle—warrior in the fight against the destruction of cultural heritage.

I met Donny for the first time at the 2005 AIA Annual Meeting in Boston. (Six years later this past January, Donny emailed from this year’s Meeting in San Antonio to tell me he was disappointed that there was no SAFE booth there.) In between attending sessions, Donny found respite at the SAFE booth. There, we chatted about how best to accomplish our mission. At our first major event at the booth, Donny offered his encouragement: “The work that SAFE is doing is critical, not only for Iraq’s cultural heritage, but also for the heritage of all mankind. All those who enjoy the benefits of democracy have a duty to stand up and support those actions that will stop the destruction of history.” These words will stay with me forever.

Months later, SAFE was invited to spend a day in New York City with Donny and two of his colleagues from the Iraq Museum. We visited the New York Public Library and looked at some of their Ancient Near Eastern holdings, and shared an intimate dinner at one of our members’ apartment. At the end of the evening, Donny spoke about the dangers he faced, just to go to work. Every day, he said, his car had to take a different route to the Museum. As he expressed a sad uncertainty about the future, he invited us to visit Iraq one day. Donny had become a part of SAFE.

It was with great relief and joy that we welcomed Donny and his wife Najat to the US.,in a gathering of friends in 2007. That same day, Donny and Najat heard that his children, who were still in Damascus, would be joining them soon. The family had been separated in exile.

Donny’s interest in SAFE was not only in theory; he embraced our ideas with his time and action, and became a true partner. It was in this collaborative spirit that the Global Candlelight Vigil for the Iraq Museum was born. Since 2007, individuals and organizations around the world listened when Donny called on us to light a candle to memorialize the looting of the Iraq Museum: “Let’s gather together and see what we can do, so people will not forget what happened.” Donny also personally led vigils in New York and Chicago, and invited the staff of the Iraq Museum to join the campaign in 2007 and 2008.

Donny also participated in SAFE’s programs with a podcast interview, and two very special SAFE Tours in the halls of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. Donny moved audiences at the Bancroft School and the Trinity Lutheran Church in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 2008, we were fortunate to have honored Donny with a SAFE Beacon Award.

He was genuinely interested in our work. One of the most special moments, was when Donny took a train from Stony Brook to attend a SAFE meeting in New York City, and sat with us—academics, professionals and students alike—chatting, and plotting our next strategies and programs. No matter how mundane the topic being discussed was, Donny was engaged and offered to help. He was one of the earliest members on our Facebook group, and served as an Advisor.

Donny was concerned about Iraq’s cultural heritage, he also advocated publicly for the cultural heritage of other nations. On behalf of Cyprus, he wrote a letter in support of the inclusion of coins in the US/Cyprus bilateral agreement in 2007. Two years later, he added his name to a Statement of Concern and Appeal for International Cooperation to Save Ancient Kashgar.

One of Donny’s greatest concerns was to prevent what happened to the Iraq Museum from happening to any other museums, anywhere else. Just this February, Donny spoke to me about the Cairo Museum: “Yes it was so painful, renewing every moment of those days in Iraq Museum. I sent an e-mail to Dr Zahi Hawass, showing my solidarity, and offering any help they need through his blog.”

We will miss working with Donny, but we are thankful that the work that we did together and his message will always stay with us. We heard you.

Cindy Ho
President
SAFE/Saving Antiquities for Everyone

The following citation was originally published in January, 2008 in the SAFE Beacon Award Souvenir Journal when we honored Dr. George:

“I am simply doing my duty. I believe that if the time comes, I am ready to sacrifice my life to save any item of Cultural Property anywhere in the world. But what I am sure of is that I am not alone in this.”

Born in Habbania, al-Anbar Province, on October 23, 1950, Dr. Donny George developed a relationship with the landscape of Iraq as a youth that inspired a lifetime of study of ancient cultures as both a scholar and archaeologist that has motivated colleagues around the world for more than three decades.

While pursuing his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Baghdad, where he received his M.A. in Archaeology in 1986, Dr. George began his career at the Iraq Museum in 1976, where he held various positions. These include Director of the Documentation Center in 1980 and Field Director for the Babylon Restoration Project from 1986 through 1987. He conducted archaeological investigations in the eastern wall at Nineveh in 1988 and 1989 and served as Scientific Supervisor for the Bekhmeh Dam Archaeological Rescue Project (northern Iraq) in 1989. He was appointed Assistant Director General of Antiquities for the Scientific Affairs department in 1995, the same year he received his Ph.D. in Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Baghdad. During 1999 and 2000, Dr. George directed the excavation team at Um al-Agarib (southern Iraq) and served as head of the Technical Committee at the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (which analyzes artifacts brought to the Iraq Museum voluntarily by the Iraqi citizens).

From 2000 to 2003 Dr. George served as Director General of the Department of Research and Studies at the Iraq Museum. He witnessed the fall of Baghdad, endured the subsequent looting of the Iraq Museum in April 2003, and played a central role in the restoration of the Museum and the recovery of nearly half of the estimated 15,000 artifacts stolen from the Museum and archaeological sites.

In recognition of his service, Dr. George was appointed Director-General of the Iraqi Museums in November 2003 and became a member of the Iraqi National Committee for Education, Science, and Culture in January 2004. In 2005, he left his position at the Iraqi Museums when he was appointed President of the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, a position he held until he was forced to flee Iraq in August of 2006. He simultaneously held two academic positions as Lecturer Professor for Computer and Archaeology, Documentation, Anthropology, and Prehistory in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Baghdad, and Lecturer Professor at the College of Babylon for Theology and Philosophy.

His unique skills, knowledge of ancient Mesopotamian cultures, extensive field experience, and unflappable personality allowed Dr. George to rise above the tragic events that occurred in Iraq after the 1991 war and the events since 2003. The looting of the Baghdad Museum has attracted considerable media attention to the destruction of cultural heritage and the illicit antiquities trade worldwide, and has given Dr. George the audience that a lifetime of training and experience has equipped him to address. He is now a major force in bringing the world’s attention to the ruination of Iraq’s archaeological landscape, through his participation in conferences organized by Interpol, ICOM, AIA and UNESCO. He has given presentations on the conditions of archaeological sites and museums in Iraq at conferences and symposia at the British Museum and at UNESCO in Paris, Vienna, Essen and Mainz. He has also spoken at the “Archaeology in Times of War” conference in Bonn (2003), at meetings of the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in London (2003), for the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies at the Royal Ontario Museum, and at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. He also maintains an active schedule of public speeches across the U.S. and has conducted interviews with various publications as well as PBS’s “Charlie Rose” program.

Dr. George is also a prolific author, having written Tell Es-Sawwan: Architecture of the Sixth Millennium B.C. (London, 1996) and The Stone Industries in Tell Es-Sawwan (London, 2005), as well as contributing to The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia (New York, 2005) and the forthcoming Antiquities Under Siege: Cultural Heritage Protection after the Iraq War (New York, 2008). He remains an active member of Interpol’s International Regional Committee, the German Archaeological Institute, the Society for American Archaeology, and is an Honorary Member of the Archaeological Institute of America. He currently holds the position of Visiting Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Professor Colin Renfrew, 2009 SAFE Beacon Award Winner voiced his concerns that the problems of ongoing looting of archaeological sites around the world were not addressed in the lecture Looted art and its restitution: moral and cultural dilemmas for the twenty-first century, given by Professor Richard J Evans on Monday 7 June 2010 at Wolfson College, Cambridge. Professor Renfrew also spoke about the fact that although repatriation of looted antiquities from Iraq were mentioned, no reference was made about “the Metropolitan Museum’s being constrained to return antiquities to Italy, which had been illegally removed… in recent times.” (View video clip here. © Wolfson College, Cambridge)

Professor Evans focused on historical looting giving examples dating back to Jason and the Argonauts, and issues related to repatriation and restitution of Nazi art loot. Also brought up was contentious topic of the Parthenon sculptures, more commonly (but some believe, misguidedly) known as the “Elgin marbles” and whether they should be returned was the first question from the audience. Professor Evans will become Wolfson College’s fifth president in October, 2010.

In anticipation of our Beacon Awards event, SAFE has launched a new batch of Who is…? campaigns, which profile individuals making tangible contributions towards our mission: protecting and raising awareness about our shared cultural heritage.

But we realize that our “Who is…?” begs another question: Why?

The easy answer is that superheroes like our SAFE Beacon Award winners deserve recognition for their incredible work.

The more complicated answer is that our award winners, well, are not superheroes. SAFE is not handing out awards to the likes of Lara Croft or Indiana Jones for making us endlessly answer to their portrayals of archaeologists (or archaeology’s worst nightmares?). Instead we are honoring unsung heroes with real lives, families, careers, principles, and motivations behind them.

Certainly, fictional heroes can lend a welcome cloak of sexiness to a sometimes-unsexy field. And they can be inspiring. Christopher Heaney, a former SAFE volunteer, devoted the first few pages of his excellent debut book, Cradle of Gold, to Indy and the iconic big screen moments that first sparked his interest in archaeology.

He made major contributions to the growing field of Latin American studies and worked his way through the Peruvian Andes to rediscover the most famous lost city of the Incas — Machu Picchu. Bingham’s questionable archaeological practices, however, fueled the emotional debate over Yale’s collection of Pre-Columbian artifacts.

So how many more “Real-Life Indiana Jonses” do we need today? Some of our Beacon Award winners have found themselves working undercover with smugglers in Peru, and all have taken enormous risks, at times, putting their careers and lives on the line. But their boulder chases and snake pits sometimes look more like pesky bureaucrats and thousands of pages of federal code.

We congratulate Robert K. Wittman, Robert E. Goldman, James E. McAndrew, and David Hall — our 2010 SAFE Beacon Award Winners. We hope you’ll keep checking our website to find out who they really are, and that you’ll join us at our awards ceremony on October 29th!

Roger Atwood has been writing on art, archaeology and museums since the late 1990s in books and articles. His new Web site collects much of that writing along with photos, a bio, and excerpts of reviews of his SAFE Beacon Award winning book Stealing History. The book was the inspiration for SAFE Tours, which Roger has given since 2004.

SAFECORNR congratulates Roger on this user-friendly and well organized resource. Check it out at www.rogeratwood.com.

Photo: Werner Romero

Following his rousing lecture in Philadelphia at the 2009 SAFE Beacon Award Lecture & Reception Professor Colin Renfrew will be speaking tomorrow at a lecture in New York City entitled “Combating the Illicit Antiquities Trade: a Time for Clarity” at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, located conveniently at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. Prof. Renfrew will argue that a point of crisis has been reached in the destruction of the world’s archaeological heritage, and that this can be met only by a general agreement not to acquire unprovenanced antiquities.

We invite all those who have questions for Prof. Renfrew about his position on these matters to take advantage of this rare opportunity and attend this lecture, which is free and open to the public. (Photo: Collin O’Brien)

On Looting Matters today, David Gill wrote:

“The AAMD needs to resolve the issue of long-term loans of archaeological material. And AAMD members should be more transparent about acquisitions and learn to respond to requests for information.”

Professor Colin Renfrew’s Jan 10 Beacon Award Lecture in Philadelphia and Jan 15 in New York will touch upon these issues.

SAFECORNER wishes all a very Happy New Year.

“…so long as it doesn’t involve objects recently taken from the ground. In my opinion all too many collections are scandalous for this very reason. I don’t mind so much people buying antiquities looted a century ago, but not if the items in question entered the market post-1970 when the convention on the illegal trade in antiquities was signed.” Professor Renfrew said in Sarah Jan Checkland’s article in the Financial Times My favourite things in which he was described as “archaeologist and campaigner against the trade in illicit antiquities.”

This coming January, Prof. Renfrew will receive the 2009 SAFE Beacon Award in a rare visit to the United States. He will give a lecture “Combating the Illicit Antiquities Trade: the 1970 Rule as a Turning Point (or How the Metropolitan Museum lags behind the Getty)” and also discuss the ethics of excavating and collecting, and the merits of the once popular but now rare “partage” system in the SAFE Tour “Collecting the Right Way” at the University of Pennsylvania Museum.

Photo: Ben Stansall