[MSN] HOLDERS OF ILLEGAL CULTURAL OBJECTS ALARMED BY GROWING DEMANDS FOR RESTITUTION.,,, It is simply amazing how Eurocentric and selfish many of the arguments of the defenders of plunder and stealing of other people's cultural property are. The opponents

[MSN]

From: kwame opoku [mailto:k.opoku at sil.at] 
Sent: dinsdag 12 februari 2008 19:41
To: msn-list at te.verweg.com

Subject: HOLDERS OF ILLEGAL CULTURAL OBJECTS ALARMED BY GROWING DEMANDS FOR
RESTITUTION.,,, It is simply amazing how Eurocentric and selfish many of the
arguments of the defenders of plunder and stealing of other people’s
cultural property are. 

   It is simply amazing how Eurocentric and selfish many of the arguments of
the defenders of plunder and stealing of other people’s cultural property
are. The opponents of restitution seem completely oblivious of the interests
of countries trying to secure the return of their cultural objects that have
been taken away by force or through dubious means. At the risk of repeating
some of the points I have already made elsewhere, I shall comment on a few
points mentioned in the article in the Boston Globe, February 10, 2008 by
Derek Bennett.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/02/10/finders_keepers/
. It is often not easy to tell whether Bennett is presenting his own view
point or simply reporting the views of others.

    When the museums were receiving the various items now under their
control, nobody ever set limits to their greed by saying “enough” but now
that the owners of the artefacts are claiming them back, the museums cry out
loudly “enough”. But how much has really been returned? In reality, apart
from a few items from the US museums and universities, not much has been
returned. The British Museum, the Louvre, Musée du Quai Branly, the
Ethnology Museum, Berlin, Pergamon Museum, Berlin, the Ethnology Museum,
Vienna and a whole lot of museums in Europe and the United States have not
indicated the slightest intention to return any of the thousands of stolen
objects in their museums and their depots. So where is the ground at all for
saying enough?  Not a single African art object has been recently returned
by any major museum. Italy, the lonely exception returned the obelisk stolen
by Mussolini from Axum.

    “Cuno, who is among the most vocal and prominent voices in the debate,
argues that laws meant to keep antiquities in the countries where they're
found are wrongheaded and counterproductive. They limit the number of people
who can see the objects, he says, while putting artworks at risk and driving
collectors and dealers into the black market.”  Is this statement to be
taken seriously? Is it really being suggested that countries that enact laws
and regulations to control and reduce plunder and stealing of cultural
objects are mistaken and that these measures are “wrongheaded” and
“counterproductive”? Who else can determine what is useful for protecting
Italian cultural objects if not the Italian Parliament?  Should they leave
this to some museum directors across the Atlantic who can estimate what is
productive? Art collectors being driven by laws “into the black market?”
Other illegal activities could as well be said to be driven “into the black
market” by the laws and therefore the relevant laws should also be
abolished.

      The regulatory laws on plunder and illegal sales are said to
constitute “existential threat to great "encyclopaedic" museums like the MFA
or Metropolitan Museum, places that provide a unique opportunity to see the
full breadth and diversity of the world's cultural history in one place.”
We now hear of “encyclopaedic museums”. This sounds less imperialistic than
the infamous “universal museums” but as the article shows they are the same
type of museums with same kind of ambitions and characteristics. There is
here only a semantic change which sounds less frightening and voracious.
When the museums in New York, London, Paris and Berlin pretend to provide an
opportunity for all to see the world’s culture at one place, they are
thinking of westerners mainly. They are not thinking of Africans or others
who have the greatest difficulties in obtaining visas to visit western
countries. Are we not part of this world?  A man living in Lagos, Bamako,
Benin City and Yaounde surely will not agree that he can see at one place
“the full breadth and diversity of the world's cultural history in one
place”.  He definitely cannot go to the European embassies in his country
requesting visa because he wants to see the African artefacts in Europe. The
embassies will throw him out.


To cast the debate on restitution and control of plunder as “a battle
between two very different philosophies, one that sees antiquities primarily
as art, the other casting their value in terms of the historical information
they provide” is to narrow unnecessarily the greater debate between those
who believe one can hold on to the stolen arts of others, irrespective of
their provenance and those who argue that stolen cultural objects should be
returned to the  places and peoples for whom they were originally intended.
It is this larger discussion which has brought movement into the question of
possession of stolen cultural artefacts and which will continue to unsettle
many European and US American museum directors for a number of years. 



 Bennett states that “some prominent scholars are drawing a line in the
sand, saying that objects belong where they are - that the movement is based
on a false reading of history, and, if allowed to progress, could do serious
damage to the world's cultural inheritance.”  I do not know exactly what
history is being referred to here but it sounds strange to my ears that when
a country claims what belongs to it, that country or its people are said to
have false reading of history. It is possible that in some specific
situations it may not be possible to determine precisely which people made
which cultural artefacts but as far as African countries and indeed, most
countries outside Europe, are concerned there have not been many doubts
about the history of the stolen artefacts. No one ever doubted that the
Benin bronzes were made by persons of Benin origin or that the Asante gold
objects were made by Asantes for Asantes.
The history concerning the forcible seizures in colonial days is well-known.
So where is the “false reading of history?” 

   What is this unspecified “damage to the world’s culture” which will occur
if the movement for restitution gains strength? Who appointed the museums of
New York, London, Paris and Berlin as guardians of the “world’s culture”
with the right to keep the cultures of others? When these objects were being
removed nobody saw any danger to the cultures of those countries. Now that
they demand the return of their cultural objects, western museum directors
see danger to the “world’s culture”. Are those countries not part of the
“world’s culture”? Why should the repossession of their own cultural goods
be a damage to “world’s culture” when the initial, often violent, removal
was not? Would any museum director dare to tell the people of Ethiopia or
Benin such a story?
   
"What's at stake," says James Cuno, the director of the Art Institute of
Chicago, "is the world's right to broad and general access to its ancient
heritage.”  Which world is the director of the Art Institute of Chicago
writing about? It seems he is thinking of only the western world. I do not
think he has the man from Kwadaso or Zaria in view. A claim is made for the
worldto have a right to its ancient heritage but those living in the
countries where these objects are found do not, it seems, in the eyes of the
museum director, have any such rights. He should go and announce this to
UNESCO and the United Nations General Assembly which have been passing
resolution upon resolution urging the return of cultural objects to the
countries of their origin.
 
“In many cases the nations asserting rights to artefacts have little in
common, culturally, religiously, artistically, or even ethnically, with the
civilizations buried beneath them. Modern Peru, for example, was built in
the vacuum left by the systematic destruction of the Inca civilization,
whose legacy the country now claims. "It is a stretch of the imagination,"
says Cuno, "to link modern Egypt to ancient Egypt, modern Greece to ancient
Greece, modern Rome to ancient Rome, communist China to ancient China.
Nonetheless, countries like Italy, Greece, Turkey, China, and many others
have laws that make any antiquity found on their soil automatically the
property of the state”.

   What does one say in the face of such a blatant general statement? Can
one seriously argue that “communist China” has nothing in common with
“ancient China”? So where did Mao Tse Tung and Chou En Lai and the
leadership of the Communist Party spring from? Do they not have anything in
common with the history of China?  Do they not share language, culture,
ethnicity and art with ancient China? Can one understand modern China
without the history of China? 
Are the holding museums and their governments better related to these
ancient civilizations? Do they have better connections with them than the
modern governments of the claiming countries? Can the holding museums more
legitimately represent the ancient civilizations? Those fighting to retain
stolen or illegal objects in their museums can say whatever they like but I
think there must be some limits.
  
“They limit the number of people who can see the objects
”  The argument
that by returning artefacts to their place of origin one limits the number
of persons who can see them is often repeated but it is not solid. First of
all, it is often assumed that because London or New York has a greater
population than an African village more people will see an object in the
western city than in an African village. But does this apply to an African
city like Lagos with its millions? It is also assumed that the great number
of visitors in western towns all go to museums. This is not true.  If
numbers were the decisive factor, we should send all cultural artefacts to
China and India who have large populations that are actively involved in
festival and other cultural activities.  A more important point is that most
of the time many of these museums have more objects than they can adequately
display and most of the stolen items are often in cellars, quite often in
the original packing, not yet opened! So how do many persons see these
objects?

“In a 2006 essay in the New York Review of Books, the philosopher and
Princeton professor Kwame Anthony Appiah argued that such laws have even
destroyed antiquities. Soon after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996,
Appiah pointed out, it was a UNESCO treaty prohibiting the removal of
antiquities from their country of origin that prevented concerned scholars
from rescuing pre-Islamic artifacts before the Taliban, branding them
idolatrous objects, destroyed them.”   This is one of those statements that
leave one breathless and really shattered, wondering if such pronouncements
should be taken seriously at all. We are used to hearing that the UNESCO or
the United Nations are not very efficient in specific circumstances where we
would have liked them to intervene energetically to prevent an impending
disaster. Those bodies work on the basis of principles which have largely
been elaborated by western countries and adopted by the international
organizations. When things do not go the way certain States want, they are
blamed. But did anyone ever allege that a UNECSO Convention prevented any
group of scholars from a course of action? Is it realized by all that a
UNESCO Convention does not belong to UNESCO as such but is a tool for the
signatory States of the Convention which are also responsible for its
implementation and, in the final analysis, for its interpretation?

“The problem with these seemingly laudable efforts, according to Cuno, is
that they're not really about the artifacts, but about politics. The young
governments of Greece and Turkey, he points out, used their antiquities, and
the laws restricting their export, as a way of forging a national political
identity. The Greek government's dogged campaign to recover the Elgin
Marbles is one example„ 

  This is a very remarkable argument. When artefacts were removed under
colonial or imperialist rule, nobody remarked it was political but now that
independent governments are reclaiming these artefacts, those demands are
considered to be political. It is said they are wanted for forging national
identity. If there is any substance in this allegation at all, I would argue
that it is the persistent and arrogant refusal of the holding countries that
make some of the claimed objects appropriate as national causes. Often the
refusal to return these cultural objects involves a direct or implied insult
from the holding museum or country to the claiming country. How often have
we heard that these objects are better looked after in the holding country
than in the claiming country? Inefficiency and corruption are often imputed
to the claimants. It is therefore not at all surprising that these claims
become   national causes for all, even for those who really do not care much
about cultural objects. Are the nationalists only in the claiming countries
and not in the holding countries? Are the Greek claimants for the Parthenon
marbles more nationalistic than the British holders of the Elgin Marbles?
   I hope, for the sake of those opposing restitution, that they will in
future present better arguments than those presented so far and, in any
case, better than those reported in the article in the Boston Globe.



                                                                   Kwame
Opoku. 12 February, 2008.