[MSN] In a move that has cheered museum directors and art dealers and dismayed archaeologists, the State Department has agreed to delay a decision on a controversial request from China that the United States strictly limit imports of Chinese art and antiquities

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

October 18, 2006
U.S. Delays Rule on Limits to Chinese Art Imports 
By JEREMY KAHN

In a move that has cheered museum directors and art dealers and dismayed
archaeologists, the State Department has agreed to delay a decision on a
controversial request from China that the United States strictly limit
imports of Chinese art and antiquities. 

In May 2004 China asked the United States to impose import restrictions on a
wide range of art and decorative objects from the prehistoric period to the
early 20th century, arguing that the American market for antiquities was
spurring the looting of important sites in China. 

Shawna Stribling, a spokeswoman for Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican
of Missouri, who had questioned the scope of the Chinese request, said this
week that the State Department recently informed the senator's office that
it would delay making a decision until at least early next year. 

The State Department had been expected to issue a decision on the Chinese
request this fall. Over the spring and summer, Senator Bond, along with
Senators Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Arlen Specter,
Republican of Pennsylvania, relayed concerns to the State Department about
the transparency of its decision-making process and challenged the legal
underpinnings of China's request. Members of the senators' staffs and art
market representatives also voiced those concerns in a meeting in
mid-September with C. Miller Crouch, principal deputy assistant secretary in
the State Department's bureau of educational and cultural affairs.

Senator Schumer said, "We are not out of the woods yet, but news of a delay
means they are listening and understand our concerns." 

Archaeologists and other advocates for the protection of cultural artifacts
accuse the State Department of yielding to political pressure. 

"The fact that one small constituency has been able, because of
disproportionate financial resources, to pressure the State Department to
delay it is an insult to China," said Patty Gerstenblith, a law professor at
DePaul University and president of the Lawyers' Committee for Cultural
Heritage Preservation. 

Nicole Deaner, a spokeswoman for the State Department's Bureau of
Educational and Cultural Affairs, refused to comment on the status of
China's request other than to say that no decision had been made. The
Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to repeated requests for
comment on the postponement.

Currently, any object suspected of being stolen or looted can be seized by
United States Customs officials, but in practice few artifacts are stopped
at the border. The restrictions sought by China, which would have to be
negotiated in a bilateral treaty, would probably prevent any artifact from
entering the United States unless it was specifically approved for export by
the Chinese government. 

China's request has pitted American archaeologists, who generally support
the restrictions, against auction houses, dealers in Asian art and curators
at many of the nation's top museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. They worry that the limits
would devastate the Chinese art market in the United States and make it hard
for museums to make new acquisitions.

For them the delay is at least a temporary victory: they had feared the
State Department was leaning toward granting the Chinese request. "The
museum regards it as a healthy development that the whole issue is being
re-examined," said Harold Holzer, spokesman for the Metropolitan Museum. 

Wayne Sales, executive director of the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild, a
Missouri-based organization that opposed the import restrictions, agreed.
"Since we anticipated bad news, a delay is a good thing," he said.

The State Department has never refused outright any request like China's,
which was submitted under a 1983 law that was drafted to bring the United
States into line with a 1970 United Nations convention on cultural property
and to help countries struggling to control looting of their culturally
important sites. In recent years the State Department has negotiated
treaties with 11 nations to restrict imports of some artifacts, including
Italy, Mali, Cambodia, Cyprus and seven countries in Central and South
America. Aside from the Chinese request, the State Department has never
taken longer than two years to reach a decision.

Robert E. Murowchick, a specialist in East Asian archaeology at Boston
University, said the State Department's delay was troubling, given the
urgent need to combat the looting of ancient burial sites in China. "The
time factor is critical because every month or year that goes by with
looting getting worse, the more sites are being destroyed," he said. 

But art dealers and museum directors counter that China has not met the
standards required by United States law for such import restrictions. That
would include proving that it has taken significant steps to police the
market for antiquities within its own borders, showing that other nations
are also making efforts to limit the Chinese art trade, and offering
evidence that restrictions on the American market would have a significant
impact on rescuing antiquities from pillage. 

They also contend that China's request is overly broad, covering art and
coins that are not archaeologically significant and including objects less
than 250 years old, which are not covered by the 1983 law on cultural
property.

According to some estimates, as many as 400,000 tombs in China have been
looted in the last 25 years, although it is unclear how many artifacts have
been stolen, and experts disagree on whether the pillaging has accelerated.
In one particularly high-profile case in 2000, customs agents seized a
10th-century marble relief panel that had been chiseled out of a tomb in
northeast China and was headed for sale at Christie's in New York.

Anne Underhill and Deborah Bekken, both archaeologists with the Field Museum
in Chicago who have participated in excavations in China, said they planned
to mount their own lobbying effort to persuade the State Department to honor
the Chinese request in a timely manner. 

"I'm not sure why we can't respect the right of the Chinese government to
respect their cultural property," Ms. Underhill said. She added that "it
would set a good example for other countries" if the United States honored
China's request.

The debate between archaeologists and museums over the best way to preserve
and study ancient artifacts has grown more and more contentious in recent
years. Museum directors have accused the archaeologists of dogmatically
opposing private ownership of art and insisting that only they are equipped
to study ancient cultures and antiquities properly. The archaeologists, for
their part, have accused the museums of being driven solely by the desire
for acquisitions and for implicitly subsidizing the trade in looted objects.


"I think the museums press a little too hard their claims to be educational
institutions," said Robert W. Bagley, a professor of art and archaeology at
Princeton University. He argued that museums could organize exhibitions with
objects on loan for a fraction of what they often spend to purchase a single
piece. 

Archaeologists also say that in previous cases, when a country has made a
request for a broad import ban, the State Department has simply approved
narrower categories of objects. They also contend that China has recently
taken steps to police its own internal market in ancient artifacts, creating
a new task force of special agents to hunt for looted antiquities and
sending archaeologists to do "rescue digs" at sites that are in danger of
being destroyed through development or looting. 

For their part, the curators, auction houses and dealers have raised
concerns about the openness of the State Department's deliberations. They
note that only one public hearing, in February 2005, was held on the Chinese
request and that participants were limited to five minutes each for remarks.


Since then, they complain, the State Department has released no information
as to how it may decide.

http://www.nytimes.com/