[CPProt.net] RE: Greek documentary THE NETWORK (The Ring)

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

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-----Original Message-----
From: ancientart at aol.com [mailto:ancientart at aol.com] 
Sent: 23 December 2005 21:34
To: museum-security at museum-security.org
Subject: Re: Reply to your e-mail of 23 December

Dear Mr. Cremers:

I greatly appreciate your quick and prominent posting of my response to your
review.  I am greatly surprised that James Ede was apparently quoted in the
Greek documentary as saying 'provenanced antiquities are very rare'.  There
is certainly no shortage whatsovever of provenanced objects.  I probably
have at least 2000 'provenanced' antiquities for sale in the inventory of
Royal-Athena and some 1400 in my personal collection.  But then there is the
continued misinterpretation of 'provenance', as it is commonly used today.
A dictionary definition for 'provenance' is 'the place of origin or earliest
known history of something', or, in art and antique circles, either the
original source of the object or merely 'a record of ownership'.  Thus this
definition is a very loose one, and, as one dictionary applies it, could
refer to "an orange rug of Iranian provenance".  Thus the term, as applied
to objects, is a meaningless one.  The 'earliest known history' or 'record
of ownership' could be, for example, an acquisition made from a dealer in
the 1990s.  To my knowledge, no chronological criteria have ever been
proposed.  To add to the confusion, 'provenience' is a term often used by
scholars to describe the specific place where an object is found, or the
original context, such as the 'Royal Cache of Deir el Bahari, Egypt'.

Since there is no cut-and-dry definition for the term at present, and since
the actual need to use it, for example for museum acquisition, would vary
greatly as to each country and their export laws (for example, Egypt
pre-1983), I would hope that the several vocal anti-trade scholars would be
a little more objective in their labeling anything without a 'provenance' as
illicit.  As I have repeatedly stated in Minerva, there are several reasons
why objects in galleries or at auction are without 'provenance', among which
are the following:  
They might have been sold as part of a divorce settlement, or the owner
might have fallen into financial difficulties, or perhaps the owner was
upgrading his collection, or he wished to avoid public notice that might
alert art thieves to the rest of the collection, or they were owned by a
dealer who intends to  buy more pieces from the same collection and wishes
to keep the owner's name confidential, or simply that the owner, perhaps a
prominent individual, just wishes to keep his name out of public scrutiny.

However,  Prof. Renfrew, in his book 'Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership' 
(2000), has decided that "unprovenanced antiquities are likely to be looted
antiquities" and that if an object is sold by a dealer or appears in auction
without the name of the owner it is because 'the object in question has been
illicitly obtained or unless there is a motive of tax evasion".  Prof.
Renfrew brands the antiquities trade as an inherently immoral profession and
condemns the entire trade because of a very few dealers in major looted or
stolen objects (plus the several small dealers who knowingly or unknowingly
sometimes sell minor illicitly-obtained objects, especially through E-Bay).
He refuses to recognize that most of the full-time dealers in ancient art,
especially members of the International Association of Dealers in Ancient
Art, have a strict (and published) code of ethics.  For further on this
subject see my 2-page review of Prof. Renfrew's book in Minerva,
January/February 2001, pp. 49-50.

Cordially,

Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D.

ancientart at aol.com
www.royalathena.com
www.minervamagazine.com