THE Italian authorities are to declare an amnesty for private collectors who own illegally acquired antiquities, provided they open their homes for public viewings.
A decree signed by the Minister of Culture, Giuliano Urbani, and the Minister of Justice, Roberto Castelli, tightens the law on art theft, laying down a six-year prison term for those caught dealing in stolen or smuggled works of art. But it also offers an amnesty to those who have ancient objects or works of art in their homes and gardens, ranging from pottery storage jars to valuable statues and reliefs. The Italian press said there was a submerged cache of national treasures, which the new decree was intended to bring to light. Many of the objects were bought in good faith from dealers, but collectors often did not inquire too closely into their origin. An estimated 520,000 items have disappeared from archaeological digs and museums over the past 30 years. More than 350,000 have been recovered by police; 44,000 of them last year after an intensive campaign by the police's art theft squad. Head of the art theft squad, Colonel Ugo Zottin, said the amnesty was the only way to reach a true assessment of how many treasures were in private hands. However, Colonel Zottin warned that the amnesty was a last chance for owners of illegally acquired antiquities to come clean. Those who failed to do so and were subsequently caught would be prosecuted.
The centre-left opposition protested that the measure was a "shameful concession to tomb robbers, art smugglers and corrupt collectors".
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/
Stealing history
Monday April 21, 2003
State Reps. Rosalind Peychaud and Edwin Murray want the Legislature to come down hard on secondhand dealers who buy stolen chandeliers and mantelpieces, just as it did in 1999 on antiques dealers who buy angels and crucifixes stolen from graves. The new bill would require antique dealers to keep a ledger of the "used building components" they buy, keep the police informed of such transactions, then wait at least 30 days after receiving those items before they can put them up for sale. Those dealers already have to keep detailed records for cemetery artifacts because legislators realized that some unscrupulous dealers were sending thieves out to loot graveyards. This bill adds staircases, banisters and even doorknobs to the list of items dealers have to think twice about before buying. In all, the bill defines 75 specific items as "used building components." They are the components that help make New Orleans' homes as wonderful as they are. Rep. Peychaud has also introduced a bill that would elevate any theft of a "used building component" to the level of felony. Those found guilty of stealing such an item could be fined as much as $3,000 and sentenced to up to five years in jail, "regardless of its value or condition." Discouraging theft of architectural detailing is a good move, but erasing the line between a misdemeanor and a felony is not. A person who steals a doorknob should not be punished in the same way as one who steals a rare marble fountain, no matter how much sentimental value that doorknob holds. Lawmakers shouldn't expand the state's definition of felonies merely to prove they love Louisiana's historic houses.
The focus on the dealers and art collectors who were sending thieves into cemeteries is what brought the problem of cemetery theft under control, and there's every reason to think that a similar focus could decrease the stripping of empty houses. Officials in New Orleans have worked for years -- with varying degrees of effort and success -- to encourage homeownership in the city. Increasing the number of homeowners would almost certainly reduce the number of blighted properties. Rep. Peychaud points out correctly, however, that the wholesale looting of empty houses decreases the likelihood anyone will buy them. "The criminal element is coming onto the property and taking cornices and mantelpieces," she said. "They are taking anything of value . . . These people are going in there and pillaging our old houses." The Legislature should help stop the pillaging. Punishing thieves who steal the items is only proper, as long as some sense of perspective is maintained, but punishing the dealers who trade in the precious items is much more likely to bring the looting to an end.
http://www.nola.com/
Dominican Painter Helps to Unearth True Fakes
By DAVID GONZALEZ
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — After Alberto Ulloa's assistant made copies of hundreds of Mr. Ulloa's paintings and forged his own name on them, Mr. Ulloa now relies solely on his two brothers to stretch his canvases, buy paint and run errands.
"These people would die before they betray you," he said one evening, as his brothers Miguel and Manuel hovered nearby to bring over a book or refill a glass of wine. "Somebody else would stay with me only to learn my studio techniques, and then their hunger would awaken the devil in them. That's why I have people who love me. If they love me, they defend the work." He is an artist given to the grand gesture and bold stroke, and true to his credo of "love me, love my work," he is the fiercest defender of his name and oeuvre, found in collections and museums in both Europe and the Americas. Late last year, he became the first artist in the nation's history to demand and secure criminal convictions for two people who trafficked in crude fakes that were sold at very real prices. The increasing popularity of Latin American art has also raised the profile of leading Dominican artists like Mr. Ulloa, Gillo Pérez and Ramón Oviedo. But their newfound success has also brought one unwelcome distinction: a growing underground industry of forged copies of paintings sold to would-be collectors and unsuspecting tourists. Some of them have even been used to barter for furniture, wine and new cars. The fakes are part of a wider problem that includes counterfeits of everything from the usual knockoffs of sneakers and videotapes to more exotic appropriations like an amber-colored Chinese elixir that is hawked as Viagra.
The authorities, fearful of trade penalties by the United States, have begun to protect intellectual property more aggressively, bringing almost 600 cases under an ambitious law passed in 2000. Lawyers and art experts said a case involving Mr. Ulloa's paintings — the only one involving works of art — set a precedent they hoped would stem the flood of fakes. "His case is very important," said Mary Fernández, a copyright lawyer. "People did not think forgery was theft. But this is the theft of creation. Sometimes judges did not even see it as worthy of the same protection as the theft of a material object." Mr. Ulloa suspected that something was amiss in August 2000, after a friend inquired about buying a painting of a rooster, which in addition to lovers and round-faced portraits is a recurring theme in his work. The artist, who is called Maestro by nearly everyone, would learn just how common the theme had become after he asked the friend for $1,500. That price was already a bargain, he said, because some of his larger paintings had fetched as much as $40,000. "He said, `Maestro, I have a friend who bought it for half of that,' " Mr. Ulloa said. "So I said, `Let's go see it.' When we visited his friend, I found 37 paintings in his collection," all copies of his work. The shock of seeing bad reproductions of these familiar works was surpassed only by his revulsion at learning they had commanded prices as high as $4,000. Outraged, he began to hunt down other copies, going as far as to take out advertisements offering to visit people at their homes to verify his paintings.
In one elegant home, he visited a matron who kept 20 paintings in a vault. "They were so bad, you would not think they were yours, but they had my name," he said. "She got so nervous, her spoon and cup trembled." Another work indicated that it was painted in 1958, a feat that Mr. Ulloa, even with his healthy ego, deemed impossible. "I was 9 years old in 1958," he said. "I did not paint. But the painting itself was three months old. The paint still smelled fresh." His amateur gumshoe efforts led him to Franklin Polanco, a young mechanic who had briefly worked for him running errands around the studio in 1999, when he needed to prepare an order for a German customer. Mr. Ulloa, it seems, is not averse to churning out lesser work of his own to pay the bills. He once painted as many as 15 portraits a day to raise enough money to avoid losing a farm that is a beloved rural haven, and he was working on some of those paintings at that time.
Those works are hardly as accomplished as his cubist portraits or sculptures that have been bought for European and Latin American collections, and they were easy for his former assistant to forge. Describing one forgery he had seen, Mr. Ulloa said: "It was really just a face drawn with one circle. Badly, at that." Mr. Ulloa filed a complaint with the office of the special prosecutor for intellectual property rights, a new position that officials said they believed was unique in Latin America. It was the first case handled by Carmen Chevalier, the lead prosecutor of a three-member team. She said that although Mr. Polanco insisted that he did not even know how to paint — a sentiment shared by Mr. Ulloa, in a way — a handwriting analysis indicated that Mr. Polanco had forged the signatures on the canvases. Mr. Polanco and a gallery owner were convicted, resulting in a three-year sentence for Mr. Polanco and a two-year sentence for the other defendant. The sentences are under appeal. Ms. Chevalier brings a refined eye to her cases, because she and her husband collect paintings and sculptures by prominent Dominican artists. His law office is like a quiet gallery of high-quality art, complete with a backyard mural. Her office, on the other hand, looks like a truck full of fakes crashed into it. Really bad paintings hang on the wall, while a few equally awful canvases are propped up against a cabinet as she tries to persuade the artists whose work has been copied to file charges. "Some painters do not want to hear about it," she said. "They are worried their market will decrease and their work fall in value." She pulled out one canvas, a forgery of a portrait by Elsa Nuñez, a lyrical painter known for the portraits of the Mirabal sisters — three beautiful sisters killed on orders of the dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1960 — that grace a seaside obelisk. The painting in Ms. Chevalier's office is of laughable quality. It is also ripped. Ms. Chevalier said she had asked Mrs. Nuñez to come see it.
"She tore it apart right there, out of rage and impotence," Ms. Chevalier said. "She said now no one else can have that picture." Mr. Ulloa knows that feeling. He also is angered by lesser artists who sign their own names to paintings that imitate his distinctive style and then sell them through the packed gift shops in this colonial town. He wants to tackle them next, and while it is unclear whether the new law would protect him from these imitations, his anger may be his best protection. "People think I walk around armed," he said with a deep laugh. "They think I am crazy, that I am dangerous. At least, that is what they believe. I'll take on anybody."
http://www.nytimes.com/
Paying for Victory?
According to Mariinsky Theatre Artistic Director Valery Gergiev, Russians are currently 'the guests of Europe' and yet nobody can deny the depth and diversity of Russian culture. Moreover, Russia is ready and willing to share both its cultural heritage and its contemporary culture.
However, the Germans are quite happy on their own. 'Give us back those valuables that were taken out of the country during the Second World War and we will support your projects in the EU,' is basically what the Germans are saying at the moment on the issue of returning national art. This problem of restitution is currently one of the most controversial issues in Russian-German relations. It was only at the end of the 1980s, during the period of glasnost and democracy, that people began speaking about war trophies. A bilateral agreement on cooperation in all cultural affairs was signed in 1992, whereby Russia was supposed to give back all the German artwork it had taken in 1945, some 250 thousand pieces of art, according to modest German estimates, while Germany provided financial support for the Russian government in return. In this way Germany regained possession of the Dresden Gallery as well as 101 drawings from the Bremen Kunsthalle collection, including pieces by Durer and Manet, and also part of the Goethe Library, which was practically given as a gift to German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel. In 1997 however, the State Duma passed a new law concerning the works of art which had been brought to the Soviet Union during the Second World War, which essentially meant that all such foreign artwork was now the property of Russia. Once it had been passed, this law made it virtually impossible to return to Germany artwork which was now the legal property of the Russian government and it also made it very difficult for artwork held by private owners and the church to be returned. Rudolf Blaum, a Bremen expert on international law and also a long-time member of the joint commission on restitution, described this law as a 'foolish decision' and across Germany there was nationwide opposition to Russia with many denouncing Russia as 'non-European'. While Germany had had its own way in the restitution process until then, from then on art restitution became a contentious issue. In Russia meanwhile, cultural activists had divided into two camps: on one hand there were those who called for German art to be returned to Germany and on the other hand there were those who continually reminded the Germans of the 3,000 cities they had destroyed, the 427 museums they had robbed, the 1,670 churches they had damaged or destroyed and the 180 million books and 564,000 pieces of Russian art they had stolen.
Those in the first camp argued thus: 'Why do we need valuables which are not a part of Russian culture and which mean nothing to us?' while those in the second camp stressed that many rarities had been kept in good condition, insisting 'We are not plunderers!' Last year Germany returned seven paintings, copies of portraits of Russian tsars by unknown artists of the 18th century, to Pavlovsk. Russia immediately made a return gesture by returning 111 of the stained glass windows of the Marienkirche. This year, however, talk of returning the so-called Baldin Collection to Germany, which includes two original landscapes and 362 drawings by Rodin, Delacroix, Van Dyke and others, has caused a political scandal. We can not ignore the political importance of this restitution process, despite Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky's insistence that we must regard war trophies as art and not as money or politics. One must assume that Germany is sincere about paying for its Nazi past by offering grants to former Russian prisoners in the concentration camps and returning copies of Russian art in return for its own national artwork. Russia, however, which is unable to provide a dignified pension for its war veterans, may one day have to give up the Schliemann Gold, 259 pieces dating from 3000 BC, which were once on display in the Berlin Museum and are currently exhibited at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Germany claims that there are virtually no more pieces of Russian art on German territory, insisting that museum pieces stolen from the USSR by German soldiers during the war were then returned by Red Army soldiers from Soviet-occupied territory or by other allies. They estimate that about 500,000 pieces of art were returned in this way. Moreover, the restitution of Russian art is a private initiative, which is not in the hands of the government. 95% of German art located in Russia, however, is in fact in the hands of the government, although not all in one place. There is now increasing pressure on Russia to return German national art as German experts begin to make more and more demands and lobby the government. It has become a political process. Even though the initial agreement was based on complete 'reciprocity' it is difficult to see how this restitution process could be mutually acceptable. An article appeared in German newspaper Die Zeit in 1991 which read 'the Russians have been robbed twice: first by fascist Germany and then by their allies.' The Americans managed to take a lot with them when they left Berlin in 1945 and yet, for some reason, Germany is only interested in artwork currently located in Russia. Russia, by recognising its obligation to return foreign art, is basically putting itself in a position whereby the roles of the victor and the vanquished may be reversed. Without war trophies neither the Louvre nor the British Museum would even exist. The problem of restitution is worldwide but European culture, which is now united in a single political entity, is continuing to develop and is enriched by integration and joint projects. For those who are culturally aware, the issue of restitution is simply about working together to display unique collections of art in different European museums and galleries. It is of little significance for European culture whether the armour stolen by an American soldier from the Bavarian State Museum after the end of the war is exhibited in Philadelphia, as it was until 1977, in the Metropolitan Museum, which later bought the armour knowing that it was in the US, or in Bavaria, where it was eventually returned. The most important thing is that in all this time the armour remained a piece of art which could be seen by the public. It is impossible though to exhibit Russian war trophies in Europe as Russia is not a part of Europe and any joint projects are doomed to long talks and bureaucratic delays. Moreover, Russia can not become a part of Europe while it has this 'non-European' policy on foreign art. It is possible that a solution will be found to this problem, but several aspects of this restitution process prevent us from thinking of art the way that Mr Piotrovsky and others would have us think of it. Of course, we will always be grateful for the USD 3.5 million German company Ruhrgas has spent on restoring the Amber Room in Pushkin, but the fact is it will never replace the Amber Room which disappeared in 1944 somewhere in the vicinity of Konigsberg. Germany can also take pride in the fact that two original fragments of the tsar's palace have been returned and that a sponsor paid USD 250,000 for the mosaic Touch and Smell and German magazine Spiegel paid USD 200 for a Russian commode. Both these last pieces were delivered to Saint Petersburg immediately and formally handed over by German Culture Minister Michael Naumann to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Many will remember, however, how much Russia put into these pieces: USD 8 million, 10 tonnes of amber and more than 20 years work by Russian restorers.
Olga Osinovskaya, Rosbalt Translated by Nick Chesters
P.S. This comment was made after the Russian-German Petersburg Dialogue forum, which took place in Saint Petersburg on April 10-11. Plans were made at the forum to make 2004 the Year of Germany in Russia, just as 2003 is currently the Year of Russia in Germany. The efforts being made by both sides suggest that European culture will continue to spread into Russia and that Russian culture will inevitably be assimilated into that of Europe.
http://www.rosbaltnews.com/
In north Iraq, an ancient past falls victim to a modern war
Hundreds of key artifacts looted from Mosul Museum
By Douglas Birch Sun Foreign Staff Originally published April 18, 2003
MOSUL, Iraq - In the war against Saddam Hussein, Mosul's rich history was part of the collateral damage. As looters rampaged through the city last week, they broke into its archaeological museum and hauled away hundreds of one-of-a-kind artifacts, including reliefs and clay cuneiform tablets from the ancient Assyrian cities of Nineveh and Nimrud, the great centers of Mesopotamia, which were at their most powerful about 850 B.C. Some of the cuneiform tablets had not been deciphered. Although most Westerners probably never heard of Mosul before the war, the city is famous among archaeologists as the center of a region peppered with important digging sites. Successive human cultures have inhabited this region for 10,000 years. Mosul has some of the oldest churches in the world, and the museum was known for its artifacts from the time of Sennacherib, an Assyrian ruler from the seventh century B.C. Now, the work of generations of scholars may have vanished. Manhal Jabr, director of antiquities and heritage for the Nineveh Governate, said yesterday that when he walked into the ransacked Mosul Museum on Saturday, he was devastated. "I lost my heart," he said. "Really, I cried." He held out his hand and showed a visitor the only thing the looters contributed to the collection, the brass shell of a Kalashnikov bullet, found on the basement floor.
The scale of the loss, he said, simply can't be calculated. "I cannot tell," Jabr said, with a dazed smile. "Every piece, every shard was important to us." Before the war, scholars were terrified that bombs and trenches would destroy artifacts buried in upper Mesopotamia, the fertile fields between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. What no one seemed to anticipate was the epidemic of looting that would follow the collapse of Baath Party power. As the Iraqi army crumbled here last week, marauders twisted one of the gates protecting the museum entrance, smashed windows and slipped inside. Within 12 hours, they had taken almost everything of value, leaving behind piles of catalog cards, broken glass and ripped-up portraits of Hussein, Iraq's president. The only things they didn't steal were objects too big and heavy to lift. A 6,000-year-old pottery oven the size of a small car squats in the foyer. Eight lion-clawed stone altars dating to 680 B.C. are lined up in the courtyard. And a 30-ton winged Assyrian bull with a human head broods in a gallery. Some looters seemed to have little idea what treasures the museum contained. They pried safes open with crowbars or rifled desks, looking for cash. But others, Jabr said, understood what was valuable. "They knew what they wanted." In the galleries, thieves ignored imitation statuary made of gypsum and carted away those carved from marble. In the basement library, they helped themselves to only the rarest books, maps and manuscripts, tossing aside the less-valuable scholarly volumes that make up the bulk of the collection. The theft of the rare books seemed to particularly upset the scholarly staff. "This was the most important library in the humanities in Mosul," said a glum Abdullah Amin, an archaeologist who retired from the museum several years ago. Fearing American bombs, curators packed up their most delicate pieces two months ago and shipped them to the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad for safety. About half the collection, they say, wound up in Iraq's capital. "I didn't take the artifacts home," said Jabr, who has directed all archaeological digs in northern Iraq for the past 15 years. "I thought they would be safer at the office." Coalition bombs spared Iraq's museums. Looters did not. They got to the Baghdad museum as well. The staff of the Baghdad museum has said it put many valuable pieces in a secure storage site. Jabr said yesterday that he had not been able to reach his colleagues in Baghdad. But he hopes that at least some of the Mosul Museum's artifacts were saved. He said he and the 50 museum staff members can only try to look ahead now. "We will return to our work," Jabr said, though what that means isn't clear. Workers have precious little left to catalog, display and conserve. Their biggest concern is that the looters will return. With so many guns floating around this city of 1 million, the museum's unarmed guards can't provide much protection. "There is no government here in Mosul now to help us," Jabr said. The theft of artifacts is a familiar story here. Poachers began picking over archaeological sites about four years ago, Jabr said, when ordinary Iraqis found they could sell antiquities on the international black market. He had hoped to discourage pilfering by setting up small museums throughout the region, including in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Perhaps then, he said, potential poachers would learn to respect their history. But he never got the chance.
Yesterday, with dust on his gray jacket, he sat wearily in the shade outside one of the museum's broken doors. He apologized. He has back problems, he said, as well as diabetes and high blood pressure. He was not feeling well. He couldn't understand why people would ransack the museum, whether for greed, revenge against Hussein or anger at America. "I am not a politician," he said. "I am an archaeologist. I am working in the fields, and I am working in the desert."
http://www.sunspot.net/ From: "Dr. J. Weston" report@expo-net.org
Subject: Library Books, Letters and Priceless Documents Set Ablaze in Final Chapter
Date sent: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 12:28:51 -0700
Despite US administration saying they will do what ever they can to protect antiquities, destruction continues.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0415-07.htm
Published on Tuesday, April 15, 2003 by the lndependent/UK Library Books, Letters and Priceless Documents are Set Ablaze in Final Chapter of the Sacking of Baghdad by Robert Fisk
http://www.votetoimpeach.org
So yesterday was the burning of books. First came the looters, then the arsonists. It was the final chapter in the sacking of Baghdad. The National Library and Archives a priceless treasure of Ottoman historical documents, including the old royal archives of Iraq were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat. Then the library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment was set ablaze. I saw the looters. One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of Islamic law from a boy of no more than 10. Amid the ashes of Iraqi history, I found a file blowing in the wind outside: pages of handwritten letters between the court of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who started the Arab revolt against the Turks for Lawrence of Arabia, and the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad. And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all in delicate hand-written Arabic script. I was holding in my hands the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written history. But for Iraq, this is Year Zero; with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and then the Koranic library, the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased. Why? Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being destroyed?
When I caught sight of the Koranic library burning flames 100 feet high More: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0415-07.htm
http://www.votetoimpeach.org
Permitting museum looting reveals intentions of U.S.
By Phil Leckman Arizona Daily Wildcat Monday April 21, 2003
The land now called Iraq is no stranger to conquest. By some reckonings, the world’s first empires arose on these fertile lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and since then, dozens of conquerors — from the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Mongols to the Turks and, most recently, the British — have left their marks on Iraq’s long history.
Given this long list of foreign masters, it is easy to understand the skepticism many Iraqi people display when they hear the generals and politicians of the United States — their latest conquerors — claim their only goal is a quick transition to a better, freer Iraq. In a land whose legacy of tyrants and despots was already thousands of years old when the United States was just a gleam in Thomas Jefferson’s eye, actions speak much louder than words. And on that count, the United States has done little to reassure Iraqis of its motives.
For archaeologists like myself, few recent events display America’s disregard for Iraqi culture more glaringly than the looting of the Iraqi National Museum. The chief repository for all antiquities excavated in the country since 1920, the museum was stripped of most of its 170,000 artifacts, including many that dated back thousands of years.
In Iraq, as in many other countries, the past has become a key part of national ideology. Ancient artifacts are more than simply records of a nation’s past or its heritage; they are the stuff from which such a heritage is constructed. As such, they can become important social and political symbols. The looting of the museum is therefore more than an assault on an irreplaceable archaeological and historical resource. In many ways, it is an attack on Iraqi national identity itself. As art historian Zainab Bahrani wrote recently, the archaeology of Mesopotamia — a name often applied to ancient Iraq — has played a key role in the politics of the region from the time it began to be uncovered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Because of its importance, the Western archaeologists who excavated it took Iraq’s heritage and in effect tried to make it their own. “Protecting” the archaeology of Iraq became part of the argument used by the British to justify their colonial rule of the country. As a result, reclaiming title to the Mesopotamian past formed a major preoccupation for Iraq’s rulers after independence. Iraqi national identity became inextricably linked with its ancient civilizations. Images from ancient artifacts featured prominently in official propaganda and government art. Archaeological sites like Babylon were restored and became major tourist attractions. Ancient leaders like Nebuchadnezzar and Hammurabi were raised to the status of national heroes.
As evidence mounts that many artifacts in the museum were stolen at the request of international art dealers, many Iraqis will interpret the looting as little more than a repeat of colonialism’s worst abuses. Indeed, some in the Western press have even applauded the looting, repeating offensive imperialist arguments about “protecting” Iraqi archaeology almost word-for-word. The attack on the Iraqi museum could have been prevented — the Society for American Archaeology and many other international observers foresaw the looting and asked the military to protect the museum and other cultural resources before the war even began. As UA anthropology graduate student Marcy Rockman remarked to me in an e-mail discussion last week, protecting the museum could have been “a shining example,” proof that the Bush administration’s quarrel was with the Iraqi regime only — “not the people of Iraq or the identity of the country, not just a bid for its oil.” But U.S. leaders were apparently indifferent. And for many Iraqis, the results will only confirm their worst suspicions about American motives. Other UA anthropologists and archaeologists voiced similar opinions. Graduate student Laura Eichelberger noted that even before the war, many Arab intellectuals were already viewing the potential conflict as the latest chapter in a long European humiliation of the people of the Middle East — permitting the pillaging of Iraq’s cultural heritage certainly does little to change this view. Indeed, few recent events will reassure skeptics that U.S. intentions are any different than the colonizers and imperialists of the past. In the last few days, American troops have installed would-be Iraqi leader Ahmed Chalabi — an exile who hasn’t lived in the country in 50 years — in Baghdad, complete with a personal, U.S.-equipped army. Fat redevelopment contracts have been handed out to huge U.S. construction firms with close ties to the Bush government. And the U.S. military has announced its intention to maintain at least four bases in Iraq for years to come. These are the actions of conquerors, not liberators. Perhaps, then, the plundering of Iraq’s cultural riches is an appropriate symbol for “Operation Iraqi Freedom” — as anthropology graduate student Bruce Bachand remarked to me, “there is nothing new about pillaging, desecration, or the appropriation of old things.” Such events have always marked the expansion of empires.
http://wildcat.arizona.edu/
Iraq's Dead Teacup
By Jackson Kuhl 04/21/2003
Did war planners misjudge the value of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities, a resource that in future tourism dollars (or dinars) was probably worth an oil well in itself? Probably. Yet soldiers may have arrived too late in any event. At Thursday's UNESCO meeting to discuss the situation, McGuire Gibson, professor at Chicago University's Oriental Institute, went on record theorizing the first wave of looting may have been inside work, perhaps by organized gangs. A story in the Telegraph already noted some museum vaults and safes were unlocked and opened rather than forced. CNN has reported that glass cutters were found amongst the wreckage, suggesting some looters were more discerning in their selection. Regime members may have been picking at the museum for years, much as 20th-Dynasty Egyptian priests methodically robbed the Valley of Kings to fund military campaigns.
Then came the mob, not always stealing - sometimes just smashing. Statues beheaded, pottery crushed, tablets broken. Accounts vary as to the involvement of U.S. troops. Some say they stood by impassively; others that they stayed to police the museum only to have looting begin again once they left. A guard at the museum numbered the crowd in the thousands, and even if that number is high, he also said many of them were armed with AK-47s. He pleaded with them to stop and received a snoot full of gun muzzle for his trouble. Archaeology magazine posts that supposedly items are already for sale in Tehran and - where else? - Paris. According to the DoJ, FBI agents are on their way to Iraq to investigate.
Most bizarre, however, has been Neil MacGregor's call to "kill the market in looted antiquities with an international declaration along the lines of that by the Allied Powers in the Second World War about works of art sold in Nazi-occupied Europe." MacGregor is the director of the British Museum, which probably houses the largest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside of Iraq. He's also the same guy who back in February told the world that no way, no how, would the museum relinquish the Parthenon friezes known as the Elgin Marbles to Greece. Ever. Lord Elgin carted off the friezes to England while Greece was under Ottoman rule. Greece has been asking for their return ever since they won independence in 1830.
This follows on the heels of another statement, the Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums, issued in December by the directors of 19 museums worldwide, including the Met, the Guggenheim, MoMA, the Getty, the Louvre, the Prado, and the British Museum. The declaration stated that museum collections have become part of the patrimony of each museum's nation, regardless of their land of origin, and signaled any repatriation will be on a "case-by-case" basis (read: difficult, arbitrary, and long). The value of these collections lies in their presence outside the culture of their genesis, thereby exposing a greater audience to it. Modern mores of how they were acquired - through colonialism, spoils of war, smuggling - do not apply. Yet the declaration also condemns modern looting. One would think that with language like, "The international museum community shares the conviction that illegal traffic in archaeological, artistic, and ethnic objects must be firmly discouraged," at least one of the 19 directors would blush at the contradiction. All ten of the American signatories to the declaration are members of the Association of Art Museum Directors. In 1998 the AAMD issued a report on "the unlawful confiscation of art that constituted one of the many horrors of the Holocaust," and established a series of guidelines for returning art to their proper owners or heirs. Detail was paid to researching the provenance - that is, the paper trail of ownership - of works in member collections which were "created before 1946, transferred after 1932 and before 1946, and which were or could have been in continental Europe during that period." Priority is to be given to European paintings and Judaica. If a particular work is discovered to be looted, then the AAMD guidelines insist full disclosure be made public and legitimate claims to the work be reviewed and resolved "in an equitable, appropriate, and mutually agreeable manner."
Through the concourse of these statements, the museums are saying that looting is bad if it happened last week but good if it happened two-hundred years ago - and especially good if the results wound up in our collections. There is a point to be made in disseminating objects across the planet's museums, one illustrated by the Baghdad carnage. The directors are right in that the worth and utility of some pieces is precisely in the fact they are outside their homeland. My own love of Egyptology gestated not in Egypt but inside the British Museum. But the British Museum and the rest would come off a lot less imperialist if to maintain that virtue they were willing to buy, rent, or swap with nations of origin (though I imagine MacGregor would drop dead of an aneurysm at the thought of sending a portrait of Henry VIII or a dismantled Christopher Wren building to Nigeria in return for a few Benin Bronzes). In many cases looted artifacts and monumental art originate in countries that all too badly need the revenue such objects can generate through tourism.
Meanwhile MacGregor has suggested the British Museum may loan some of their Mesopotamian pieces to the new Iraq to help re-establish their collection. So the only way Greece may ever get the Elgin Marbles back is if the Greek people take to the streets and set fire to their own museums.
The mob ransack of the National Museum (and, for that matter, of the National Library and other repositories throughout Iraq) is a f*ck-up in an otherwise smoothly run war, a loss to archaeology, cultural consciousness, and most of all in tourism opportunities from foreign travelers. But nothing is forever. The media lather over it is reminiscent to that in March 2001 when the Taliban went culture wilding across Afghanistan, destroying among other things the 3rd- and 6th-century Bamiyan Buddhas. The Western press was full of hand wringing and condemnations - even though the bulk of the destruction was to Greek and Islamic antiquities (the Taliban were Wahhabi purists, remember), a fact that received little mention.
Mostly silent, of course, were Buddhists themselves. One of the foundations of Buddhism is the impermanence of things. Tibetan monks will spend weeks carefully creating a sand mandala only to dump it into a lake upon completion. The Bamiyan Buddhas were a modern retelling of the Zen koan wherein a student accidentally breaks his master's favorite antique teacup. When his master appears, the student asks him why people have to die. The elder replies that all things must die; everything only has so long to live. The student shows him the broken pieces and says, it was time for your teacup to die.
Jackson Kuhl writes about archeology, travel, and culture.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/
Iraq looting has cultural impact
Expert urges U.S., international community to take steps to recover priceless antiquities
Washington The looting of priceless antiquities from the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad is being mourned worldwide, but their cultural significance might be less widely understood. Gil J. Stein, a professor of archaeology and director of the University of Chicago Oriental Institute, which has sponsored archaeological research and excavations in Iraq since 1920, explains the cultural meaning of the losses.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL TREASURES
QUESTION: How significant are the losses from the Iraqi National Museum?
ANSWER: The museum was the world's main repository for the archaeological treasures of ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This region saw the development of the world's first cities, states and empires, the first evidence for the emergence of kingship, the first law codes and -- perhaps most important of all -- the earliest invention of writing, more than 5,000 years ago. The civilizations of Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia and Assyria that grew up there exercised an enormous influence on the world of the Bible and form the foundation of Western civilization. The artifacts, inscribed clay tablets and works of art that document the rise of the world's first civilization, are both figuratively and literally priceless.
WORSE THAN IN AFGHANISTAN
QUESTION: Have there been comparable losses, historically?
ANSWER: As a crime against world culture, this one is on a par with the Crusader sack of Constantinople. It is incomparably worse than the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban in Afghanistan -- an act of barbarism that shocked the world. The museum's looting amounts to the destruction of the cultural patrimony of an entire nation and of Western civilization.
HISTORY DEFINES IRAQI PEOPLE
QUESTION: What will the losses mean to the people of Iraq?
ANSWER: Iraqis are highly literate and have a deep understanding of their country's archaeological heritage. Their historical consciousness is one of the most important factors in defining a national identity that unites Iraq's religious and ethnic groups. This national identity based on a shared cultural tradition is one of the strongest counterweights to the twin dangers of religious fundamentalism and ethnic balkanization. Saddam Hussein understood these sentiments, which is why he tried to define himself in his political propaganda as a great ruler in the tradition of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar -- and gave his Republican Guard divisions these names.
LOOTING DAMAGES UNITY
QUESTION: Will the museum's looting make rebuilding Iraq harder?
ANSWER: Certainly. By allowing the National Museum to be looted and devastated, we have needlessly destroyed one of the most valuable emblems of Iraqi unity. We now run the very real risk that Iraqis will view this act as a calculated American attempt to undermine their nationhood.
A STEP-BY-STEP APPROACH
QUESTION: What can be done?
ANSWER: Several things:
• 1. Starting immediately, civil and military authorities should offer an amnesty and rewards or an actual buyback of the stolen treasures with no questions asked.
This would be in keeping with the Iraqi Antiquities department's long-standing policy of purchasing antiquities found by local farmers or others as a way to prevent the materials from being smuggled out of the country and sold on the international art market.
• 2. The military must seal the borders of Iraq and do everything possible to apprehend anyone attempting to smuggle antiquities out of the country.
American archaeologists already have begun providing the Pentagon with illustrated guides so that border guards or other coalition soldiers can recognize the different kinds of antiquities as smuggled contraband.
• 3. Photos of the looted antiquities should be posted on the Internet so they can be immediately identified if and when they surface in the international art market.
• 4. Archaeologists and conservators need to inventory the museum and determine what has been taken and what still remains. An international conservation effort must be mounted in order to repair the damaged material.
• 5. We must more vigorously enforce existing laws and agreements that prevent the importation of antiquities of undocumented provenance into the United States. We must also impose an immediate ban on the export of antiquities from Iraq.
• 6. The United States and the international community must provide the money for the buyback of stolen antiquities and the restoration of the museum and its holdings that survived in damaged form.
http://www.thestate.com/
Egypt museum displays Iraq items
Exhibition designed to show world the kinds of treasures stolen, destroyed by looting
By MAGGIE MICHAEL
The Associated Press
Cairo, Egypt -- Horrified at the looting of Iraqi antiquities in Baghdad, an Egyptian museum has assembled a special show to give the world an idea of the treasures that have been plundered in the chaos of postwar Iraq.
The exhibition at the Islamic Art Museum in old Cairo offers Iraqi antiquities ranging from a holy warrior's sword to a 14th century dinner table inlaid with silver. The aim is to "show the world" the glories of Iraqi civilization, museum director Raafat Abdel Azeem said at the show's opening last week. He and his staff speedily mounted the exhibition from the museum's standing display, other collections and items that had been in storage for decades. Many exhibits date to the Abbasid dynasty -- the Muslim caliphs who made Baghdad their capital and ruled the Islamic empire from A.D. 749 to 1258, when the Mongols sacked the city. The early years of Abbasid rule were especially brilliant, with art and commerce flourishing.
The exhibition displays antique gold and silver coins on which "Allah" or God is the only word that can still be read. The coins were minted in Mosul, Kufa and other Iraqi cities. A highlight of the show is a double-edged sword with a hilt made of horn. It was given to the museum many years ago by an Egyptian prince. The blade bears gilded inscriptions to Allah and the Prophet Muhammad. Another inscription reads: "No chivalrous person except Ali. No sword but Zuelfaker." This indicates the sword's owner was a Shiite Muslim because he is asking for the support of Ali bin Abi Talib, Imam of the Shiites. Zuelfaker was the name of Ali's sword. The same display case holds a steel helmet worn by a fighter who is going off to wage jihad, or holy war. It is decorated with geometrical designs, Quranic verses and the names of Prophet Muhammad's comrades. Abdel Azeem said the helmet was seized at Cairo airport in the 1980s when an American tried to smuggle it out of Egypt.
"Instead of punishing him, they asked him to hand over the helmet to the antiquity authorities and set him free," Abdel Azeem said.