[MSN] Book review in November/December Minerva

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

 From Minerva, the International Review of Ancient Art & Archaeology, 
vol. XVII, no. 6, November/December 2006:

COLLECTING ANTIQUITIES - THE ETHICS AND POLITICS

A review by Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D., of 'Who Owns Objects? The 
Ethics and
Politics of Collecting Cultural Artefacts'

    This publication was the outcome of the proceedings of the first St 
Cross-All Souls
Seminar Series and Workshop, organized by Oxford University.  The 
seminar was
conducted in October and November 2004 at St Cross College and was 
followed by a
workshop in December at All Souls College.  The first of nine chapters, 
‘Smoke and Mirrors’, by Neil Brodie of the Illicit Antiquities Research 
Centre at the McDonald Institute at Cambridge, was devoted primarily to 
ascertaining the size of the antiquities trade and its sources.  He 
claims that antiquities dealers are ‘biased reporters whose testimony 
cannot be trusted to be objective’.  He strangely insists that ‘the 
source of unprovenanced antiquities be made available’, as if the 
origin of most of them past the last owner can just be pulled out of a 
hat.

George Ortiz, a noted and passionate collector, believes that 
‘artefacts and art are the universal heritage of mankind; that 
collecting is both ethical and fundamental to saving the past…  An 
ancient work of art is a very complex entity.  It is very important to 
realize that although it can reveal historical data it must also be 
looked at aesthetically – it is no crime to love beauty.  Exclusive 
emphasis on context may lead to overlooking the essential – to knowing 
too much and feeling too little…’  He disapproves of the UNESCO 
Convention in that it holds ‘that each nation is the best repository of 
objects originating in its territory’ even though there has been
‘vast destruction by nations of their own patrimony’ and that ‘the 
patronage and preservation of our worldwide cultural inheritance have 
been made historically possible by collectors rather than by states’.  
He states that the activity of collecting has been a victim of 
overwhelming disinformation.  ‘To reject the efforts of collectors is 
to reject a key partner in the preservation and appreciation of past 
cultures…’

He discusses iconoclasm and the resultant destruction of works of art, 
and then governmental, economic, and technical changes which result in 
chance finds, much of which are the product of major public works.  He 
is disturbed by the indifference of archaeologists to prompt 
publication, storage of material, and poor conservation and 
restoration.  As for chance finds, he states that the UNESCO Convention 
‘fails to acknowledge their ubiquity, yet they represent the great 
majority of what is found’.  Since there is no incentive for 
developers, for example, to report their finds, being unwilling to 
delay or shut down their project, they most often destroy the objects 
or sell them on the black market.  He then suggests some of the 
often-proposed solutions to these problems.

Sir John Boardman is concerned about the recent legislation for the 
control of antiquities, ‘not à propos of deliberately plundered 
antiquities, but of the safety of all antiquities per se, of 
accessibility to scholarship, as well as of ordinary justice, all of 
which seem threatened by well-meaning but unrealistic legislation which 
is harming more than it helps.  This addresses issues ignored in the 
anti-collecting propaganda which has been so influential, but should be 
the concern of any serious scholar and of the museum-going public.  
Part of the problem proves to be the fact that the archaeologists 
loudest in their protests are untypical, and indifferent to many of the 
already apparent results of their campaign, now sanctioned by law, 
while the public is fed biased propaganda of the politically correct 
character familiar in the general political scene of today’.

He then attacks the archaeologists in judging that over the past fifty 
years ‘far less than 25 per
cent of material and results of professional archaeological excavations 
have been published, and the rest will never get beyond preliminary 
reports, if that.  Many excavators still release for view little more 
than prestige objects which enhance their personal or departmental 
reputation; the rest is squirreled away for their eyes only, if at all, 
with the odds against eventual publication.’  ‘So it seems that more 
destruction of information about human heritage has been done, and is 
being done, by archaeologists than the collectors, with no sanctions 
applied to their misbehaviour.  By contrast, collectors and museums are 
generally anxious to have their holdings admired.  The collectors are 
more focused even than many museum staff…and this shows in the range 
and quality of their collections, notably the specialist ones; and 
many, like Ortiz, are scholars.  He has eloquently explained his 
motivation which was spiritual as well as academic.’

‘It might seem far more appropriate for an institute in Cambridge [Ed: 
The Illicit Antiquities Research Centre], largely dependent on public 
money, to spend its time investigating misdemeanors committed in the 
name of scholarship, than to conduct a witch-hunt of collectors and to 
bully museums in what seems an almost paranoid attack on people and 
objects.’  He points out that to focus on the wealthy collectors 
appears to simply be ‘old-fashioned envy’.  In most cases ‘museums and 
collections have done and continue to do more for scholarly 
understanding of humanity’s past than much excavation.  Their role is 
now decried, and it has been seriously diminished by politicians and 
archaeologists who seem indifferent to the real needs of museums, 
scholars and the public.’

Sir John argues that ‘museums are full of objects that speak for 
themselves, to the public and to scholars, without knowledge of their 
exact provenance.  To hold that an object without context is worthless 
is pure nonsense.’  He then suggests, for example, that a famous vase 
in New York (the Euphronius krater) has only perhaps a two per cent 
loss of knowledge in our not knowing in which Etruscan grave it was 
found.  He decries the restrictions that are placed upon the 
publication and conservation of objects without provenance.  Lectures 
at Cambridge by distinguished scholars have been cancelled because some 
of the material to be discussed lacked provenance.

He ends his chapter by asking a few basic questions which include:  Are 
we over-valuing the record of antiquity?  Can we condone the censorship 
of scholarship?  ‘What can be made of a law that regards objects with 
no apparent pedigree, or rather those who handle and study them, to be 
guilty until proven innocent?’  Should we admit the impossibility of 
controlling the antiquity trade?  Should one think twice about buying 
for a museum an object worthy of scholarship or for public enjoyment?  
And finally, why restrict collecting to such an arbitrary cut-off point 
as bearing a provenance before 1970?  It’s a good list for those who 
are so vehemently opposed to collecting to ponder.

Paul Roberts of the British Museum then discusses museums and their 
acquisitions in the light of new legal and voluntary codes including 
the restrictions on acquisitions, procedural considerations such as due 
diligence, museums of last resort for items originating in the UK, and 
proper documentation.  Ursula Kampmann, a well-known numismatist, 
brings out the change in the good relations which had previously 
existed between coin dealers and the scholarly world which ‘seem to 
have become poisoned by an atmosphere of mutual distrust.  The pure joy 
in the historical and artistic value of an object has receded into the 
background, while the question of whether dealing in objects is lawful 
or not dominates a dealer’s existence.’

Some scholars believe that the solution to stopping the illegal trade 
in stolen objects would be
to eliminate all legitimate dealers.  She notes that Prof. Ricardo Elia 
of Boston University recently wrote that ‘To archaeologists ‘reputable 
dealer’ is an oxymoron’.  ‘Elia condemns dealers in general without any 
regard to the individual… Dealers who have always acted within the 
limits of the law are now being criminalized.  People like Elia are not 
looking for a solution that would enable us to rescue as much 
information for scholarship as possible but rather to abolish dealers, 
the art trade, and collectors and collecting in general.’  Dr Kampmann 
states that current legislation that does not distinguish between 
historically or artistically significant objects and just ‘mass ware’ 
is counterproductive.  ‘No one group has any monopoly over the 
ownership of the past, and no one group has the right to deprive others 
of the pleasure and knowledge that comes from an intimate relationship 
with the everyday and luxury objects made thousands of years ago by our 
common ancestors.’

James Ede, a well-respected English antiquities dealer, reviews the 
long and distinguished history of collecting antiquities.  He 
emphasizes that there are millions of legally acquired antiquities on 
the market, mostly minor, which have no demonstrable provenance and 
that, as is the case with most antiques, provenance can rarely be 
traced beyond the last owner.  Hundreds of thousands of antiquities are 
uncovered every year through farming and economic development.  
Archaeologists are not able to cope with this abundance of material.  
He applauds the sensible open but controlled market in the UK and 
condemns the ‘siege mentality’ of countries such as Italy which 
guarantees that the state receives all finds without any compensation 
and bans the export of privately held and legitimately acquired 
antiquities.  Again it is emphasized that finders often destroy objects 
for fear that their building projects would be halted or their farming 
interrupted.

Nicholas Mayhew of the Ashmolean Museum discusses the Code of Ethics 
adopted by the UK Museums Association in 2002 which requires a much 
more rigorous standard in the acquisition of objects than that defined 
by the UNESCO Convention and UK law in that the burden of proof in 
establishing a legitimate provenance falls upon the acquirer rather 
than on the prosecutor in proving illegality.  It is retrospective and 
beyond the law ‘because it starts from an assumption of guilt rather 
than innocence.   The aim is to bring an end to the market, in order to 
halt the looting.’  Any attempt to stop the antiquities market would 
lead to a loss of knowledge and other regrettable consequences. ‘It 
does seem to me likely that under the present rules our museums will 
almost cease to collect foreign material, and the established UK 
collections of the great ancient civilizations will cease to be 
powerhouses of knowledge and research within the next thirty years.’  
He notes that private collectors in the UK are ‘fully entitled to 
collect unprovenanced pieces, so long as they are not known to be 
stolen, illegally excavated or exported’.

  David Gaimster of the Society of Antiquaries examines the new 
regulatory measures in the UK taken to restrict the international 
illicit trade in cultural objects following the adoption of the UNESCO 
Convention and the 2003 UK law dealing with the dishonest dealing in 
unlawfully removed cultural objects.  Finally Mark O’Neill of the 
Glasgow Museums concludes the book with a discussion of the 
repatriation of a particular museum object from a UK museum to a North 
American Indian tribe.

  The first three lectures of the seminar series were not included in 
this volume, but they
were summarized by the editors.  The initial lecture of the series was 
presented by
Professor Sir Colin Renfrew who titled his presentation ‘Collecting and 
looting the
past: the effects of self-indulgence’.  He believes that collecting 
antiquities is essentially
immoral and that ‘the ethics of collecting can only be improved if 
museums lived up to
their responsibilities by declining to accept or acquire unprovenanced 
antiquities’.  As is
pointed out in the introduction to the book, this is ‘the so-called 
radical archaeologists’
stance’.  Prof. Renfrew is well known for his founding of the Illicit 
Antiquities Research
Centre (see the writer’s editorial ‘Enough is Enough, Lord Renfrew: A 
Commentary on the Ancient Art Market’ in Minerva, September/October 
1997, p. 20).

The next lecture, presented by Dr Lamia Al-Gailani Werr, a 
British-based Iraqi
archaeologist, summarized the smuggling by gangs tied in with the 
former regime, the
damages caused by the recent conflict, and the continued looting of 
archaeological sites
in southern Iraq.  Dr Konstantinos Politis, well known for his 
excavations at the
Byzantine monastery of St Lot in southern Jordan and the nearby town of 
Zoara, then
discussed ‘The political and economic realities of looting ancient 
sites’.

The editors of 'Who Owns Objects' point out that archaeologists such as 
Renfrew, Al-Gailani
Werr, and Politis see objects primarily as social products ‘which 
encompass everything from
  kitchen-floor sweepings to monumental buildings’, while collectors 
such as George Ortiz
(see above) describe them ‘in relation to a universal aesthetic, in 
which objects are artistic products, to be valued in the same terms as 
a Monet or a Rodin’.  Unfortunately they neglect to also mention the 
historic values that so often are linked to an object and make its 
ownership so important.  They end their introduction by stating that 
‘The global market in antiquities and more recent objects is huge and 
voracious and it would be naïve in the extreme to believe that it can 
be stopped or curtailed.’  But it is obvious to the writer that the 
views of the participants continue to be strongly divided into what 
seem to be two non-negotiable camps and it would be futile to believe 
that a rapprochement could be achieved at any time in the foreseeable 
future.
At least this seminar and workshop is to be lauded for giving the 
collector a fair platform.

Addendum:
Gorge Ortiz has kindly informed the writer that a bibliographical 
reference appearing in the text of his contribution to Who Owns 
Objects? reading: “Vincent, S. (2002b) Interview with George Ortiz., 
Art & Auction (March), 63-9” should read “Vincent, S. (2002b) The 
Secret War of Maria Kouroupas. Art & Auction (March), 62-69.”  He 
points out that this article ‘is perhaps the most important single 
article against Renfrew’s position.  It shows up how the ideology of 
archaeologists and their likes has penetrated government, 
administrative and bureaucratic bodies.’

'Who Owns Objects?  The Ethics and Politics of Collecting Cultural 
Artefacts'
Edited by Eleanor Robson, Luke Treadwell, and Chris Gosden
Oxbow Books, London 2006.  152 pp.  Paperback.





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