[MSN] Illinois museum surrenders artifact: good news of repatriation spoiled by official statement Saint Louis Art Museum disputing rightfull claim by Egyptian officials.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Illinois museum surrenders artifact 
By Kevin McDermott 
POST-DISPATCH SPRINGFIELD BUREAU
Wednesday, Sep. 13 2006 

SPRINGFIELD, ILL.


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"Officials at the St. Louis Art Museum aren't rushing to follow suit. An 
official there said Wednesday that the museum has no plans to return a 
3,200-year-old mask that Egypt claims was stolen. The museum disputes that 
claim."

Moderator comment:

The Saint louis Art Museum most maliciously disputes the claim to return the
Egyptian Ka Nefer Nefer mask, notwithstanding the fact that this claim is as
justified as can be:

1: the mask was bought by the museum from the infamous Aboutaam brothers of
the Phoenix Art Gallery. In the documentary The Network, Thomas Hoving - not
without tarnish himself - states that anything offered by the Aboutaams
should be considered with great suspicion (both brothers were convicted last
year for illicit trade in antiquities);
2: the mask was excavated in the early fifties by an Egyptian archaeologist,
and civil servant Zacharia Goneim, and became part of the national
collection;
3: there is no proof whatsoever that the mask was either sold or donated to
anybody inside or outside Egypt (the Egyptian state would never sell or
donate a mask of this importance. It is exactly the importance of the mask
that seduced the SLAM to achieve this mask without asking too many
questions);
4: there is no doubt whatsoever that this mask left Egypt in an illicit way;
5: ALL provenance information the museum consulted before buying the Ka
Nefer Nefer mask was provided by the convicted Aboutaam criminals!;
6: yet (May 12, 2006), Brent Benjamin (director of the Saint louis Art
Museum) tells the Egyptian authorities to: "Either provide us with
documentation, or end the attacks on the museum... ". 

What documentation does Mr Benjamin want? That the mask is Egyptian?, when
it was excavated?, whether it was stolen? There is no other possibility than
that the mask left Egypt illicitly. It shows bad faith to insist on
additional information such as the exact date when, and how the mask left
Egypt. It was not Mr Benjamin himself who bought the mask, but the refusal
to return an obviously stolen object makes him very guilty.

The past few months several staff members of the Saint Louis Art Museum
requested to be subscribed to the Museum Security Network mailing list. All
of these requests have been rejected, because I do not allow anybody on this
list working for an institution buying looted objects.

More about Mr. Brent Benjamin at the Museum Security Network index page:
http://www.museum-security.org/, and at:
http://www.michelvanrijn.nl/artnews/st-louis.htm

Ton Cremers
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A 4-foot wooden tribute to the dead is on its way back to Kenya, after a
theft 
and global trip that ultimately landed it in the vault of the Illinois State

Museum.

Kenyan government officials hope the return of the artifact - the first
gesture 
of its kind by a Western museum - will spur others to stop viewing objects
from 
Kenya's native customs as mere pieces of interesting art.

"You may call it a piece of wood," but families that lose the items often
blame 
that loss for crop failures and even family deaths, said Suleiman Shakombo, 
Kenya's minister of state for national heritage. He was part of a Kenyan 
delegation that received the wooden post in Springfield on Wednesday.

Officials in the Kenyan delegation, which included its ambassador to the
U.S., 
said it was the first time any Kenyan artifact has ever been formally
returned 
from an overseas museum.

One delegation member, Idle Farah, director general of the National Museums
of 
Kenya, called for "an appeal to institutions" that hold native art to
consider 
returning it to its place of origin. "The Illinois State Museum has shown
the 
way," he said.

Officials at the St. Louis Art Museum aren't rushing to follow suit. An 
official there said Wednesday that the museum has no plans to return a 
3,200-year-old mask that Egypt claims was stolen. The museum disputes that 
claim.

In the case of the Kenyan "kigango," an unusual set of coincidences led 
Illinois State Museum officials to conclude that the work they had was, in 
fact, stolen.

The flat, decorative post is a uniquely Kenyan item, traditionally carved by

families to honor recently deceased relatives. The kigango in question was 
carved in the 1960s and photographed in 1985 by anthropologist Monica
Udvardy 
of the University of Kentucky. Her photo, showing two of the posts standing 
next to their Kenyan owner, was taken shortly before both were stolen.

Officials have since determined that one of the posts was sold by a Kenyan 
antiques dealer and ended up in the anthropological collection of Illinois 
State University, which transferred it to the Illinois State Museum in 2001.

While the item was at ISU, it was viewed by another anthropologist, Linda 
Giles, who later saw Udvardy's 1985 photo and recognized the same item in
it. 
Giles and Udvardy worked together to bring the issue to officials'
attention.

Illinois State Museum director Bonnie Styles, faced with the evidence that
the 
kigango was stolen, said, "The decision for us was clear-cut and simple."

The decision hasn't been so simple for the current owners of the other
kigango 
in the photograph, which the two anthropologists traced to Hampton
University 
in Virginia. "They keep on telling us they legally acquired it," said
Shakombo.

A phone message left at Hampton University's museum Wednesday afternoon
wasn't 
immediately returned.

Professional standards in museums generally mandate the return of items that

can be shown to have been stolen. But proving theft is often difficult, as 
Egyptian officials have discovered in their attempt to get the Egyptian mask

back from the St. Louis Art Museum.

"The museum has said it would not keep in our collection any item that was 
proven to be stolen," said Jennifer Stoffel, museum marketing director. The 
museum maintains that its provenance, or ownership history, of the mask
shows 
no theft, and that Egyptian authorities haven't proven otherwise.

Egyptian officials have claimed that the mask was stolen in the early 1990s 
from a storage facility near the site of its excavation. Both sides in the 
dispute are still talking, Stoffel said.

Meanwhile, the kigango that made its way to Springfield will be returned to
the 
Kenyan owners in a ceremony in Kenya, officials said.

http://www.stltoday.com/