June 12 - 14, 2003
CONTENTS:
- Thieves with a fine taste for art
- Swiss Senate approves art law
- Norway: Bold thieves steal national treasure
- Another issue of IFAR Journal is out
- India: Antique smuggling racket unearthed
- Illegally Imported Mayan Artifacts Being Returned to Guatemala
IRAQ
- Emergency Red List of Iraqi Antiquities at Risk
- From Tragedy to Farce; Anti-American journalists and the museum
looting that wasn't.
- Iraqis Return Priceless Vase to Baghdad Museum
- Worst Looting May Be In Remote Parts of Iraq
_____________________________________________________
- Canada: Stradivarius recovered before reported stolen
- Germany: Stolen Warhol found
- USA: Jail guards indicted
- Germany: Cloister Auction in Baden-Baden
- Japan: Ancient earthenware bowl stolen from museum
IRAQ
- BBC and Guardian cover up US role in Iraq looting
- We're Still Missing The Looting Picture
Thieves with a fine taste for art
DAN MCDOUGALL CRIME CORRESPONDENT
THERE is no doubt that the image of the suave and sophisticated
gentleman art thief has been enhanced down the years by a succession
of Hollywood icons, from Cary Grant in the Hitchcock classic To Catch
a Thief to Sir Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment.
But when it comes to the world of art heists - with beautiful
paintings, elegant locations and connotations of an exotic
millionaire lifestyle - the reality is closer to dangerous criminal
gangs operating on an international scale. On Tuesday night, in what
is believed to have been the latest in a long line of highly
organised "stolen to order" art heists, a gang of thieves escaped
with a haul of precious items worth hundreds of thousands of pounds
from Waddesdon Manor, home of the world-famous Rothschild Collection.
Thames Valley police confirmed that a gang of five men, disguised in
boiler suits and balaclavas, broke into the National Trust-owned
stately home near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and made off with more
than 100 gold boxes and a number of other valuable pieces including
several works of art. A police spokesman said the raid on the highly-
prized collection had been carried out by professional thieves who
knew exactly what they wanted and where it was located.
He added: "We are currently using tracker dogs and a force helicopter
to carry out an extensive search of the stately home grounds." But
the priceless Rothschild collection, which includes 18th century
French furniture, porcelain, English portraits and many pieces of
Renaissance art, is only the latest in a long line of targets.
Earlier this year, police in Ireland caught a gang believed to be
responsible for the theft of £30 million worth of paintings,
including two Reubens, taken during a raid on Russborough House in
Blessington, Co Wicklow. In Scotland, a number of similar raids have
also taken place over the years at Scone Palace, the home of the Earl
of Mansfield, near Perth, Abbotsford House, the ancestral home of Sir
Walter Scott, near Galashiels, and Floors Castle, at Kelso. According
to sources within Scotland Yard’s specialist crime unit, SO6, these
are just snapshots in the feverish business of art and antiques
larceny, an area of international crime that costs insurers more than
£500 million a year. The image of the dashing gentleman thief
couldn’t be further from the truth - the perpetrators of the thefts
are more likely to be armed criminal gangs. A Scotland Yard source
said the market for antiques and art was attracting gun-runners, drug
dealers and international crime syndicates. He added: "London is one
of the world’s premier art markets, so a lot of stolen paintings and
antiques come through Britain, whether it is stolen here or not. "On
average we recover about £20 million worth of art a year, which on
the scale of things probably doesn’t seem a lot. The trouble for the
police is art theft is an international affair, with 45 per cent of
recovered property found in a different country to that of its
disappearance.
"At the moment we are noting an increasing trend in serious criminal
gangs, especially criminals from the Balkans, becoming involved in
the stolen art business." Scotland Yard believes that stolen antiques
and paintings are gaining an increasing market value for career
gangsters and, in a number of recent cases, police have discovered
that works of art have been used in the criminal underworld in
exchange for drugs or guns, as using art avoids obvious sums of money
going through bank accounts. Charley Hill, a former detective in
Scotland Yard’s arts and antiques squad, and now a security adviser
to the Historic Houses Association, agrees. According to Mr Hill,
there are two common myths surrounding the art thief: that he is
aristocratic, and that he is stealing to order for a Dr No figure,
complete with secret hoard of priceless objets d’art. He said:
"They’re not Raffles-type climbers with a box of chocolates. They’re
social climbing crooks and very often hardened criminals. "They’re
commodities criminals, whether it’s drugs, securities or works of
art. "The public may often see it as the acceptable face of crime,
but it is a serious and dangerous business."
Stolen paintings worth millions
Some of the most significant masterpieces stolen recently:
ARTIST: Rembrandt
PAINTING: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.
STOLEN: From Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, US, 18 March,
1990.
VALUE: Around £30 million. There has been no news of this 1633 oil
painting since its theft.
ARTIST: Caravaggio
PAINTING: Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence.
STOLEN: Oratorio di San Lorenzo, Palermo, Sicily, 19 October, 1969.
VALUE: More than £20 million. Believed stolen by the Sicilian Mafia,
this work - dating from 1609 and one of the Renaissance master’s last
paintings - remains Italy’s most wanted piece of stolen art.
ARTIST: Oudry
PAINTING: The White Duck.
STOLEN: Houghton Hall, Norfolk, 30 September, 1992.
VALUE: £5 million. One of a number of important works stolen from the
Marquess of Cholmondeley’s stately home.
ARTIST: Klimt
PAINTING: Portrait of a Woman.
STOLEN: Ricchi Oddi Gallery, Piacenza, Italy, February 1997.
VALUE: £12 million. The thief is believed to have used a fishing rod-
style device to hoist the painting through a skylight, and it was
only some days later that the loss was discovered.
ARTIST: Cezanne .
PAINTING: Auvers sur Oise.
STOLEN: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, millennium night.
VALUE: £30 million. The painting was stolen in a high-tech burglary
worthy of a film plot. Thieves used the cover of millennium
celebration to target this French Impressionist treasure.
ARTIST: Vermeer.
PAINTING: The Concert.
STOLEN: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, US, 18 March, 1990.
VALUE: Around £50 million. One of 12 works, including a Goya and a
Monet, taken in the biggest art heist of the century when two
thieves, posing as police officers, gained access to the museum at
the height of the city’s famous St Patrick’s Day celebrations.
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/
Senate approves art law
The Swiss Senate has followed the House of Representatives in
approving a government proposal to ratify an international treaty
banning the trade in stolen art.
But it wants the statutory period of limitation for claims relating
to stolen works of art to be fixed at 30 years.
The House of Representatives had favoured a 15-year period.
The proposal will now go back to the House.
A 1970 convention by the United Nations cultural organisation
prohibits the import, export, transfer and ownership of stolen
cultural property.
http://www.swissinfo.org/
Bold thieves steal national treasure
It's being dubbed as one of the biggest art heists in Norway since
Edvard Munch's "Scream" was stolen in 1994: Brash thieves defied
security cameras and alarms to steal a classic landscape painting
from industrial concern Norsk Hydro.
The daring heist of JC Dahl's "Rjukanfoss" landscape from 1830
occurred during the long holiday weekend at the mansion Norsk Hydro
uses for formal affairs. The mansion, located at Vaekeroe, just west
of downtown Oslo, is undergoing renovation and the thieves scaled
scaffolding set up outside it. The scaffolding is under video
surveillance but that didn't scare them off. The two suspects caught
on video broke into the mansion through an attic door. Alarms sounded
immediately, and guards stormed into the mansion while the thieves
were still there. But the two suspects acted quickly, taking the Dahl
painting and another, less valuable one from the mansion's second
floor. They then managed to escape back down the scaffolding on the
opposite side of the mansion. The Dahl painting was valued at around
NOK 4 million and is insured, "but its value is hypothetical because
the painting never would have been put up for sale," said Peder
Andreas Lund, who's in charge of Hydro's art collection.
Lund told newspaper Aftenposten that the Dahl painting is "an icon of
the national romantic period," but he doubts it could be sold within
Norway because it's so well-known. The theft has been reported
internationally and police are studying video of the thieves in the
hopes of being able to identify them. Lund hopes they will deliver
the painting back at a neutral location, so it won't be damaged.
http://www.aftenposten.no/
Another issue of IFAR Journal is out.
IFAR Journal, (volume 5, no. 4), Articles include:
"Art Theft and Switch -- Matisse and Dali" (about a Matisse painting
stolen from a Caracas Museum and replaced with a fake. The original
is still missing);
"Frederick Schultz Appeals in Federal Court"
"Beware: Heliogravures Can Fool the Unwitting"
"The Anatomy of an Etruscan Tomb Forgery"
and, of course, the Stolen Art Alert, which is in every issue of the
IFAR Journal (we've published it since 1977)
The previous issue of IFAR Journal (vol. 5, no. 3) is also still
available. Among its articles, are:
"California Appeals Court Gives Green Light to Suit Against Austria"
"Egon Schiele Painting Pulled from Vienna Auction in WW2 Re0stitution
Case"
"Four Thefts in 20 Years: The Saga of the Beit Collection"
"U.S. Cultural Property Import Agreement with Canada Ends"
"Copyright or Copywrong? The Supreme Court, Copyright Term Extension
and the Arts"
"Holocaust-Era Looted Art: The Routes into the U.S."
"The Debate over Cleaning Paintings: How Much is too Much?"
IFAR EVENING: Also, MSN readers might be interested in the next IFAR
Evening on June 24th in New York City. Stuart Eizenstat,
Undersecretary of State in the Clinton administration, will speak on:
"Art, Gold, and Slave Labor: The U.S. Government's Efforts on Behalf
of Holocaust Victims."
For more information about this program and a registration form, as
well as information about the IFAR Journal, please see our Website:
www.ifar.org, or call IFAR at (212) 391-6234.
Sincerely, Sharon Flescher Executive Director International
Foundation for Art Research (IFAR)
Antique smuggling racket unearthed
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE JAIPUR, JUNE 12: A tip-off about an
international antique smuggling racket operating out of Jaipur and a
casual conversation with CBI officials in Delhi set SP Anand
Srivastav and DySP Satyender Singh on the trail of Vaman Narayan Ghia
and Vidhichand Rajput. For one year, the two policemen worked round
the clock with their team of 20 men to unearth the route from the
temples and monuments of Rajasthan to some of the world’s biggest
auction houses. ‘‘We got a whiff of things a year back. It didn’t
take us long to figure out that we were onto something big. After
that we just kept digging till we got to the truth,’’ says Srivastav,
flush with the success of ‘‘one of the biggest cases’’ of his seven-
year tenure.
Now, with Ghia and Rajput in the net, the policemen are suddenly
staring at a racket bigger in proportion than they ever imagined,
involving antiques worth crores being smuggled out of the state. The
breakthrough came when the SHO of Vidyadhar Nagar police station, Ram
Singh, received a phone call on June 6. The caller had specific
information regarding a deal that was going to be struck in a city
park. Four men were arrested that evening. Since, the special team
has arrested seven people, including suave businessman Ghia and idol
thief Rajput.
For the past 30-odd years, Ghia has struck deals while Rajput has
scouted the desert state and stolen idols from temples. Ghia is
accused of operating the antique smuggling racket from his handicraft
shop on the Amer road leading out of Jaipur to Delhi. During raids on
the premises, police found documents and catalogues indicating a link
with leading auction houses. ‘‘During interrogation, Ghia has
mentioned that he has done business with big auction houses like the
Christie’s and the Sotheby’s. We are looking into his claims,’’ says
Srivastav, adding that before they went for the kill his team scanned
art books, the internet and held detailed discussions with experts on
the issue. A list of over 300 FIRs regarding idol thefts lodged in
different parts of Rajasthan was compiled, teams were sent to
neighbouring states and hours spent surfing the Internet. In a recent
raid, police recovered 17 rare idols and sculptures belonging to the
10th and 11th centuries. A case will be registered with the help of
an ASI team which will help identify antiques that have illegally
reached auction houses abroad.
http://www.indianexpress.com/
Illegally Imported Mayan Artifacts Being Returned to Guatemala
(Artifacts undamaged from attacks on New York's World Trade Center)
(870)
By Eric Green
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- The U.S. government has announced that a collection of
illegally-imported Mayan artifacts -- items that survived the
September 2001 terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center in New
York -- will be returned to Guatemala.
U.S. officials announced that a settlement had been reached with the
two people who had brought the artifacts into the United States from
Guatemala in 1998. That same year, the U.S. Customs Service seized
the artifacts after determining they had been removed from Guatemala
illegally. The artifacts were then stored in a vault at Customs'
office inside the World Trade Center complex.
Still intact after the September 11 terrorist attack, the artifacts
from Guatemala's Peten lowlands and southern coast near the town of
La Democracia were later moved for safekeeping to a warehouse in
Miami, Florida. The collection of pottery and figurines, dating from
between 500 A.D. and 1200 A.D., had been found months after the
attack in New York by crews sifting through the rubble of the
destroyed 6 World Trade Center building.
The sparsely populated, tropical rain-forests of the Peten lowlands
were a center of Mayan civilization, and looters and smugglers make a
living out of illegally seizing artifacts from that region, said a
spokesman for the Guatemalan embassy in Washington. "It's very hard
to control the looting of all these Mayan sites," the spokesman said,
adding that the United States is the principal market for such
artifacts.
The 26 pre-Columbian stone and ceramic pieces had a value of
$165,000, U.S. officials said. The U.S. Customs Service said the two
people who took the collection from Guatemala -- Patrick McSween and
Judith Ganeles -- did not have official permission from the
Guatemalan government to do so. The Customs Service seized the
artifacts as the cultural patrimony (heritage) of Guatemala. The
Guatemalan government, which has a bilateral agreement with the
United States on import restrictions of pre-Columbian cultural
property, requested the return of the artifacts. Pre-Columbian refers
to the Americas before their discovery by Christopher Columbus in
1492. The Guatemalan embassy spokesman said his country values the
agreement in force with the United States to protect Guatemala's
cultural patrimony. The two countries extended that agreement in
September 2002.
"We're definitely glad to have these results and we're looking
forward to (settling) new cases because the (Peten) region has so
many artifacts to try to protect," he said. The trafficking of these
pieces occurs frequently, the spokesman indicated, "so we're
extremely happy that the U.S. Customs Service was able to seize these
pieces and artifacts." The Guatemalan government, he said, will
continue to work "side-by-side" with U.S. authorities on such
matters. A 1970 international convention allows the United States to
impose import restrictions on certain categories of archaeological or
ethnological material, the pillage of which "places a nation's
cultural patrimony in jeopardy."
The ultimate goal of this convention of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is to
reduce the incentive for pillage, "which causes an irretrievable loss
of information about our universal heritage." The United States was
the first major art-importing country to ratify this UNESCO
convention. Both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. State Department have
warned about the continuing global problem of illegal theft of
ancient cultural property. A 1982 Senate report found that the demand
for cultural artifacts has resulted in the "irremeable destruction of
archaeological sites and articles," depriving countries "of their
cultural patrimony and the world of important knowledge of its past."
The State Department said the expanding worldwide trade in objects of
archaeological and ethnological interest "has led to wholesale
depredations in some countries, resulting in the mutilation of
ceremonial centers and archaeological complexes of ancient
civilizations and the removal of stone sculpture and reliefs."
Governments around the world, said the Department, have been
disturbed at the "outflow of these objects to foreign lands, and the
appearance in the United States of objects has often given rise to
outcries and urgent requests for return by other countries."
The Department said the United States "considers on grounds of
principle, good foreign relations, and concern for the preservation
of the cultural heritage of mankind" that it "should render
assistance in these situations." Guatemala's former ambassador to the
United States, Ariel Rivera-Irias, said in 2002 that his country "has
been blessed with the rich legacy of the great Mayan culture and its
descendents." But he added that "a unique cultural treasure for the
world to enjoy is being lost by the activities of looters, traders,
and collectors." Rivera-Irias said continuation of U.S. import
restrictions on illegally-seized cultural treasures "sends an
exemplary message to other nations that allow their people to benefit
from illicit trade activities involving pre-Columbian artifacts from
Guatemala. The continuation of U.S. import restrictions will help
Guatemala to convince other countries of the seriousness of this
problem and will facilitate the existence of new agreements
protecting our cultural heritage."
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International
Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)
IRAQ
From: "V. Jullien" jullien@icom.museum
Subject: Emergency Red List of Iraqi Antiquities at Risk
ICOM PRESS RELEASE
11 June 2003
Emergency Red List of Iraqi Antiquities at Risk
http://icom.museum/redlist
The International Council of Museums (ICOM) announces the official
publication of its Emergency Red List of Iraqi Antiquities at Risk
describing types of object especially at risk or likely to have been
stolen from Iraq.
This Red List has been compiled in an extremely short space of time,
in the hope that it will help curb illicit trade in objects looted
from the Iraq Museum in Baghdad or from museums and archaeological
sites elsewhere in the country. It was drawn up by a group of
international experts during a meeting organised by ICOM at the
headquarters of Interpol in Lyons (France) on 7 May 2003.
The Emergency Red List of Iraqi Antiquities at Risk is designed to
help customs officials, police officers and art dealers identify
objects as coming from Iraq.
The Red List describes the types of object most sought-after on the
illegal antiquities market, so that they can be identified and
impounded. It makes no claim to be exhaustive. Because of the
extremely varied nature of Iraqi cultural heritage, any antiquities
from Iraq should be viewed with suspicion.
ICOM's aim in compiling this Red List was to launch a prompt
practical initiative which would have an immediate impact,
safeguarding Iraqi cultural heritage and preventing stolen Iraqi art
works from entering the international art market. The Emergency Red
List of Iraqi Antiquities at Risk is based on ICOM's Red List
concept, and follows on from previous work aimed at protecting
African heritage, and ongoing work on the Latin America Red List
scheduled for publication in September 2003.
ICOM expresses its gratitude to the US Department of State (Bureau of
Educational and Cultural Affairs), whose prompt offer of financial
support made this project possible.
The English version of the Emergency Red List of Iraqi Antiquities at
Risk can be consulted on the ICOM Web site (French and Arab versions
to follow very shortly). It will also be distributed as a leaflet to
customs officials and police officers all over the world via Interpol
and the World Customs Organisation (WCO).
In connection with this initiative, it should be noted that the
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483, which was passed on
22 May 2003, bans all international trade in Iraqi cultural property
exported illegally after 6 August 1990.
ICOM is an international organisation of museums and museum
professionals which is committed to the conservation, continuation
and communication to society of the world's natural and cultural
heritage, present and future, tangible and intangible.
With 18,000 members in 143 countries, ICOM provides an international
network of museum professionals across the spectrum of disciplines
and specialisations.
ICOM was founded in 1946. It is a non-governmental, not-for-profit
organisation which has formal links with UNESCO and consultative
status with the United Nations' Economic and Social Council
The fight against illicit traffic of cultural goods is one of ICOM's
core commitments. The Emergency Red List of Iraqi Antiquities at Risk
has been compiled to prevent cultural objects being sold illegally on
the art market, and thus to ensure the protection of Iraqi heritage.
It is based on ICOM's Red List concept, and follows on from previous
work on Africa and Latin-America.
Contact : Valérie Jullien
ICOM, Maison de l'UNESCO
1, rue Miollis
75732 Paris cedex 15 - France
Tel. +33 (0) 1 47.34.05.00
Fax + 33 (0) 1.43.06.48.62
Email jullien@icom.museum
http://icom.museum
From Tragedy to Farce
Anti-American journalists and the museum looting that wasn't.
BY ROGER KIMBALL
Thursday, June 12, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
It was horrible. An outrage. A tragedy. "Iraqi looting 'a loss to
mankind' " said the BBC. "U.S. Army ignored alert on museum looting
risk," ABC reported.
In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd skirled about coalition forces
"guarding the Iraqi Oil Ministry building while hundreds of Iraqis
ransacked and ran off with precious heirlooms and artifacts from a
7,000-year-old civilization." Oh dear. Everywhere one turned, the
major media had the same story: Thousands upon thousands of rare,
priceless, irreplaceable artifacts had been "taken or destroyed by
looters." One hundred thousand objects, according to some reports;
270,000, according to one story in the London Observer. The Iraqis
were looting themselves, but responsibility for the outrage was
placed squarely at the feet of the Americans. On April 13, the
Washington Post grimly informed readers that "it has become
increasingly clear that the looting that was sparked by the fall of
Saddam Hussein's government--largely unchecked by U.S. forces--has
wreaked more damage on Iraq's civilian infrastructure and economy
than three weeks of U.S. bombing." The Post went on to quote an Iraqi
museum official who keened: "Our heritage is finished. Why did they
do this? Why? Why?"
"Why" is exactly the question that needs to be asked. Not "Why did
they do this?" but "Why is the press so gullible?" A few weeks ago
the collective countenance of the fourth estate was, like Hamlet's
Denmark, contracted in one brow of woe. Oh, those savage Americans:
What they didn't bomb they stole, or allowed others to smash and
steal. But wait. That story plays brilliantly but, as the London
Guardian reported June 10, "it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made
up. It's bollocks." It wasn't the crazed Iraqi populace that denuded
the museums but careful Iraqi curators, who spirited the swag away
into vaults and secret storerooms before the war even began. Yes,
there have been a few important losses. But there weren't 270,000
items missing, or (the most frequently reported number) 170,000. One
museum official put the number at 47 items, but that was later
revised down to 33. Meanwhile, the museum that was supposed to have
been destroyed is scheduled to reopen next week. Stay tuned for
further reductions.
About face, folks: The tape with the self-righteous denunciations has
been taken off the reel while the new tape, full of self-righteous
media navel-gazing, is cued up. Instead of recriminations, we have a
bumper crop of explanations and self-exculpations. Variations on "the
fog of war" top the list: "So difficult here in the heat of battle
being shot at we hardly know which side is which as we bravely try to
get out the news to a panting public . . ."
Well, there has certainly been plenty of fog. But the fog has
primarily swirled around in great patches of anti-American sentiment.
Fifteen minutes ago, when recriminations about an unprecedented
historical loss were all the rage, it was all the fault of the Yanks
and in particular the administration of George W. Bush. Quoth Prof.
Zinab Bahrani from Columbia University: "Blame must be placed with
the Bush administration for a catastrophic destruction of culture
unparalleled in modern history." Where do you suppose Prof. Bahrani
is now? Busy writing an apology? Don't hold your breath. Columbia
University is the institution that also gave us Nicholas de Genova,
the prof who publicly said he hoped the Iraq war would result in "a
million Mogadishus"--i.e., a million American soldiers dead and
dragged naked through the streets.
But don't single out Columbia. That's what establishment academic
culture is like in America and Europe today. It's the received
opinion--not the only opinion, but the dominant one, the agenda-
setter. Go to virtually any college or university in America or
Western Europe: Anti-Americanism is a growth industry, so thriving
that it is simply taken for granted: It's the state of nature. And
these days the assumptions that inform university attitudes also
shape media culture. When NPR or the BBC or the New York Times goes
to war, it goes with the lectures of people like Prof. Bahrani
ringing in its ears and sentiments like those espoused by Prof. de
Genova stirring its heart. As one disabused reporter from the
Guardian put it: "You cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and
not be believed."
The story of nonlooting of the Iraqi museums gave us a glimpse into
that heart of darkness. That tragedy has collapsed into farce. Now
playing: the saga of weapons of mass destruction. Plenty of those, I
predict, will be found, and then we'll be treated to long analyses of
exactly why the media got that wrong, too. Stay tuned.
Mr. Kimball is managing editor of The New Criterion.
Iraqis Return Priceless Vase to Baghdad Museum
Thu June 12, 2003 11:57 AM ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Vase of Warka, one of the most treasured
antiquities looted from Baghdad's famed museum after the U.S.-led war
on Iraq, was safely returned on Thursday, officials said. The ruling
U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) said the vase, dating
from 3200 BC and a centerpiece of the Baghdad Museum, was brought
back by three Iraqis in a car and handed over to CPA security staff
at the museum along with other looted items.
Ambassador Pietro Cordone, the CPA's senior culture adviser, who was
at the museum at the time, met the Iraqi men and thanked them for
return of the vase that had been feared lost forever, the CPA said in
a statement. "This is one of the most important pieces from the
Baghdad Museum and I am delighted it has returned.... This is reason
for people all around the world to celebrate," Cordone said. The
sacred Vase of Warka dates back to the Sumerian rule in 3200 BC. It
was discovered by a team of German archaeologists in 1940 near Samawa
in southern Iraq. The vase was one of 47 items reported last week as
still missing from the museum's exhibition collection.
NUMBER OF MISSING TREASURES DROPS
Cordone said the number of items retrieved was increasing and
promised to continue efforts to secure the safe return of other
missing pieces. Officials said the museum will reopen next month
after many of the looted treasures had been retrieved. Among the
items on show would be the Treasure of Nimrud, a valuable set of gem-
studded gold Assyrian jewelry that has been displayed only once,
briefly, in the last 3,000 years. Besides the Nimrud artifacts, U.S.
investigators also recovered thousands of items from the museum's
main exhibition collection last week when employees led them to a
secret vault somewhere in Baghdad. The items had been taken there for
safekeeping ahead of the U.S.-led war on Iraq. The failure of U.S.
troops to protect the museum from looters who went on a rampage after
Baghdad fell on April 9 drew sharp worldwide criticism. The U.S.
military said its soldiers were too busy fighting in the streets
around the museum to stop the looting.
"Any object taken from the museum unlawfully is a theft from the
heritage of humanity," Cordone said.
Worst Looting May Be In Remote Parts of Iraq
Scientists Assess Damage to Ancient Sites
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 12, 2003; Page A28
While considerable attention has been focused on the looting and
damage to antiquities in Baghdad, the scale of damage may be far
greater in the rest of Iraq, home to some of the most ancient sites
of human civilization, according to the most comprehensive survey to
date.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi artifacts were looted after the war from
remote areas in Iraq, and many sites continue to be ransacked, a
group of American experts said yesterday after making a systematic
assessment of the damage to Iraq's archaeological heritage. "These
sites have been ripped from the ground in the same way as you tear
pages of history," said Henry T. Wright, an anthropologist at the
University of Michigan, who led the team of scientists. Asked whether
U.S. and British forces could have prevented the looting, he said,
"What could have been done -- it's hard to say in the fog of war. The
important thing is looting is still going on." Two teams of top
archaeologists fanned out across northern and southern Iraq last
month. Of 19 sites they visited, 13 showed serious evidence of recent
looting. A separate survey of 13 sites, which included some of the
same locations, found 10 with serious damage. The scale of
destruction means that archaeologists and historians studying ancient
Mesopotamia -- where the first human cities were started about 3500
B.C. -- may have permanently lost clues into the origins of the first
written words, complex agriculture, the first written laws, organized
religion and science, said a statement by the National Geographic
Society, which organized the survey.
Perhaps more damaging than the loss of museum antiquities is the loss
of artifacts from remote sites not yet catalogued and studied.
Cuneiform tablets -- ancient writing on clay -- were a unique feature
of ancient Mesopotamia, and many tablets may have been pillaged,
broken and discarded by looters unaware of their value, said
Elizabeth Stone, an anthropologist at the State University of New
York at Stony Brook. "We don't know what we're losing," she said. "We
just know we are losing an enormous amount." In the ancient city of
Nimrud in northern Iraq, entire slabs of palace walls have been
looted. "The panels set around the main chambers had been stolen,"
said Tony Wilkinson, an archaeologist at the Oriental Institute of
the University of Chicago. Guards had driven off the thieves after a
gunfight, he said, but "there were bullet holes in the cuneiform
inscriptions." The palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh was "in a sad
state," he added. Iraqis had built army encampments around the site,
and looters had dug up the floors of the palace looking for gold or
ivory. Wright said the little village of Qirmez-Dere had been damaged
by foxholes built before the war. At nearby Khorsabad and Tell-Billa,
unexploded bombs lay at ancient Assyrian sites. Damage in the south
was more extensive, because sites were in more remote places and less
likely to be guarded, the scientists said.
There has been serious looting at Dahaileh, a site that has never
been excavated, Stone said. At Girsu, a major archaeological center,
the scientists saw recent tire tracks, and a local guard said he had
been in a firefight with looters. At Larsa, another southern site,
the looters had dug holes in the foundations of ancient buildings. A
Marine spotted a copper or bronze harpoon, and the scientists
reburied it after pinpointing its location with Global Positioning
System instruments. "Some of the holes were very deep and very
extensive. We saw the greatest amount of damage here," Stone said.
The scientists said the museum at Babylon had been looted and the
library burned. A museum in Ctesiphon on the Tigris River also had
been looted.
Responding to the conflicting reports about damage to the National
Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad, McGuire Gibson, a University of
Chicago expert on ancient Mesopotamia, said damage far exceeded the
33 items recently reported. That number, he said, reflected the items
taken only from the main galleries. Three of five storerooms of the
museum also had been raided, he said, and officials had already
determined that more than 1,000 items were missing. At some sites,
the archaeologists spotted 200 to 300 looters working at once,
including at Adab and Umma. U.S. troops traveling with the scientists
drove off the looters, but the thieves were back as soon as the
troops prepared to depart. The archaeologists gave credit to
coalition forces for sparing ancient sites during the bombing phase
of the war, and they said their focus now is to strengthen the Iraqi
system that once protected the sites. Stone said the looting is
primarily driven by wealthy collectors in Europe, North America and
Japan who provide a market for the stolen goods.
"The fuel for this trade is coming from our own culture, and it is as
corrupt as the drug trade," she said.
Stradivarius recovered before reported stolen
Last Updated Fri, 13 Jun 2003 23:58:51
VANCOUVER - For the very first time in her life, Esther Boisvert left her Stradivarius violin in her car's trunk.
But what happened next meant the violin gods must have been smiling on her - and her $600,000 instrument. The man who stole the violin took it to a pawn shop in the heart of Vancouver's drug-blighted Downtown Eastside. Unfortunately for him, he took it to a pawn shop that had a police officer in it conducting a routine audit. The officer suspected the individual, who was known to police, probably didn't acquire the instrument by legitimate means. Twenty minutes later, a frantic Boisvert reported her rare instrument stolen. Police then checked the markings on the back and confirmed it was a Stradivarius. Such violins are named after their creator, Anton Stradivari. Boisvert's instrument was likely made in the mid-18th century.
Boisvert, a 52-year-old violin teacher at Mount Royal Conservatory in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, was given the instrument by her mother more than 30 years ago. She paid about $35,000 for it. Boisvert vowed never to leave her violin in the car ever again.
A 41-year-old man has been charged with theft over $5,000.
http://www.cbc.ca/
Stolen Warhol found
From correspondents in Berlin
June 14, 2003
POLICE in Cologne have recovered 27 stolen works of art by Emil Nolde, Oskar Kokoschka, Lyonel Feininger and Andy Warhol worth an estimated 1.8 million euros ($3.19 million) and arrested the thieves. The paintings were found, and four people arrested in a Cologne carpark yesterday in a police sting in which an officer posed as an art buyer, the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger reported today. The daily cited a police spokesman. The works of art were stolen in April from a lorry parked off a highway near Oldenbourg in the country's north.
http://www.news.com.au/
Jail guards indicted in surreal Dali theft
By RUSS BUETTNER DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Rikers Island guards who allegedly stole a Salvador Dali painting from a jail entrance have been indicted, the Daily News has learned. A Bronx grand jury handed down a sealed felony indictment within the last week, and the guards are scheduled to turn themselves in Tuesday, sources told The News.
The painting by Salvador Dali, the Spanish Surrealist, has not been recovered. Dali dashed off the painting in 1965, when a fever forced him to cancel a visit to Rikers. The portrayal of the crucifixion was once appraised at $175,000. The Dali caper was discovered March 1, when an alert correction officer guarding the entrance to the Eric M. Taylor Center on Rikers noticed something odd about the familiar painting.
Within hours, investigators discovered that the original had been replaced by a shoddy copy, and a rare fire drill the night before apparently staged to cover the theft became a focus of the probe. Investigators were told that four Correction Department employees at the Taylor Center were involved, sources said. It's not yet clear who among them have been indicted, or what the exact charges are. The drill was ordered by Benny Nuzzo, an assistant deputy warden with 24 years in the department, sources said. Nuzzo has proclaimed his innocence and told friends he called the drill because an alarm the night before was ignored. That drill, which investigators were told was a test run for the caper, was called by Mitchell Hochhauser, another assistant deputy warden, sources said. Investigators were told that two correction officers on the overnight shift also were involved: Timothy Pina and Greg Sokol.
Spokesmen for the Bronx district attorney and the city Investigation Department, which worked together on the probe, declined to comment.
http://www.nydailynews.com/
From: "Klaus Graf" klaus.graf@geschichte.uni-freiburg.de
Subject: Cloister Auction in Baden-Baden
To: securma@xs4all.nl
Date sent: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 16:00:43 +0200
The Kloster zum Heiligen Grab (Cloister of the Holy Sepulchre) at Baden-Baden (Germany) was a catholic convent which was founded in 1670. Tommorow (June, 14) the inventory of the monastery is sold by auction. The catalogue is online at http://www.kiefer.de
It is a sad loss not only for the region of Baden. Valuable paintings from the XVIIIth century, other worty objects and a part of the precious library (some 100 books) will be dispersed.
On the history of the canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre see some data on the website of the English community at New Hall at: http://www.newhall.org.uk/history3.html
Baden-Baden was the only German convent which continued after the secularisation 1802/03 this year remembered in Germany with many expositions and events.
Further information (only in German) in the Weblog Netbib: http://log.netbib.de/index.php?s=sepulch&submit=Suche
Dr. Klaus Graf
http://www.uni-freiburg.de/histsem/mertens/graf#kulturgut
Ancient earthenware bowl stolen from museum
SAITAMA -- A precious 5,000-year-old earthenware bowl has been stolen from a museum in Fujimi, Saitama Prefecture, it was learned Saturday.
Police believe the 20-centimeter tall bowl was swiped from the Fujimi Municipal Mizuko Kaizuka Museum by a visitor during opening hours, as there was no sign of a thief breaking into the facility. Officials of the museum said the stolen earthenware piece was displayed alongside 10 other Jomon period artefacts in an open-topped display case sometime after May 29. The thief rearranged the order of the 10 remaining earthenware pieces to make it harder for officials to realize that the bowl was missing. Officials noticed that the bowl was missing on June 10. The matter was reported to police on Friday.
The stolen earthenware was unearthed from a local dig in 1984. (Compiled from wire reports, Japan, June 14, 2003)
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/
IRAQ
BBC and Guardian cover up US role in Iraq looting
By Ann Talbot
14 June 2003
Looting of archaeological sites and regional museums is continuing in Iraq despite the responsibility under international law of the US as the occupying power to protect cultural sites.
The journal Archaeology is documenting the extent of looting. Journalist Roger Atwood, who specialises in the antiquities trade and is in Mosul, reports that 30 bronze panels that once hung on a gate leading into the Assyrian city of Balawat have been stolen from the museum there along with numerous cuneiform tablets and 20 valuable books. At Hatra, a first century B.C. world heritage site to the south of Mosul, looters have hacked out a carved face from the apex of a stone archway.
Meanwhile in Baghdad some of the artefacts stored offsite for safety have been recovered and some of the stolen items have been returned to the city museum. Among those returned is the famous Warka vase, a 5,000-year-old ceremonial vessel from the city of Ur. According to the British Museum, which has two members of staff working in the Baghdad Museum, at least 28 items from the exhibition halls remain missing along with numerous less spectacular objects that have an important research value.
The major pieces that have been recovered are some of the artefacts from the Assyrian city of Nimrud and some material from the royal burials at Ur, which were stored in the vaults of the Central Bank at the time of the first Gulf War. The presence of this material in the bank vaults is not a revelation. A visiting Unesco delegation was told about it in May, but it was inaccessible because the vaults were flooded. Moreover, the recovery of these artefacts does not minimise the damage that has been done and is still being done by organised looting.
Despite the devastating losses that have been suffered and the continued looting, however, certain journalists have made it their business to assert that the extent of the problem has been exaggerated and even to claim that Iraqi archaeologists are responsible for stealing whatever is missing. This campaign of denial and disinformation can only compound the damage already done to Iraq's cultural heritage. Not only will it distract from the task of tracking down the artefacts that are flooding onto the antiquities market, but it is also being used to discredit Iraqi archaeologists and to take control of the country's history out of their hands.
The BBC is leading the way in this scurrilous campaign. In a prime-time documentary screened June 9, art and architectural historian Dan Cruikshank made a number of unsubstantiated claims. He suggested that the Baghdad Museum was a legitimate military target, that the looting was "an inside job" and that the staff were unsuitable to be left in charge of Iraq's cultural heritage because they had been members of the Ba'ath Party.
Cruickshank's claims were immediately taken up by Guardian correspondent David Aaronovitch, who declared that the staff of the Baghdad Museum were "apparatchiks of a fascist regime". He poured scorn on the world's journalists and academics for believing the stories about looting.
In an April 15 column Aaronovitch had already asked, "Is this plundering really so bad?" "There is a lot of sentimentality attached to archaeology by outsiders," he went on. He belittled the importance of cultural history in giving the Iraqi people a sense of their identity when compared to the evidence of mass murder in Abu Ghurayb prison. It did not really matter if archaeological artefacts were looted and ended up in western museums which were already full of material from all over the world.
Aaronovitch was, therefore, understandably enthused by Cruickshank's documentary. In a June 10 article, he accused Dr. Dony George of Baghdad Museum and archaeologists internationally of deliberately creating a false picture of "100,000-plus priceless items looted either under the very noses of the Yanks, or by the Yanks themselves. And the only problem with it is that it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made up. It's bollocks."
It is, he claims, an "indictment of world journalism" that anyone believed this story. Only Dan Cruickshank's "remarkable programme" has exposed it as a lie.
Cruickshank's programme was indeed remarkable. But this was mainly for the contrast between what it showed and what it claimed. Cruikshank could not bring to bear a single fact to substantiate his allegations.
Some aspects of the programme might be dismissed as merely bad journalism and a pathological desire for self-dramatisation. Clad in a combat jacket and keffiyeh, Cruikshank insisted on being filmed camping out on the doorstep of the museum with his primus stove because it was too dangerous to move about the city. This impression of an intrepid reporter braving a threatening city was belied by the crowds of smiling Iraqis who cheerfully waved at the camera as he drove through Baghdad ostentatiously wearing a flak jacket the next day.
To watch Cruikshank you would believe that he was the only Westerner in Baghdad apart from the US Marines. He breathlessly entered the vaults of the Central Bank as though he alone had made this discovery. The presence of a team from the television series National Geographic Ultimate Explorer, who had paid to have the vault pumped out, was not mentioned. National Geographic magazine report that the vault had been flooded by bank staff in an attempt to protect the stored artefacts from looting.
Far from the world being ignorant about the fate of Iraqi archaeology until Cruikshank arrived, a number of international teams have been present in Baghdad and elsewhere advising on conservation, reporting on looting and attempting to itemise what has been lost. Few of them have been accorded the assistance that Cruikshank seems to have received from the US authorities. A team of international experts assembled by Unesco met with considerable obstruction in their mission to Baghdad. British Museum director Neil MacGregor told the Art Newspaper that negotiations with the US authorities were "tortuous" and that the size of the delegation had to be reduced.
That Cruikshank seems to have met with every assistance from the US authorities is hardly surprising since it was their story that he told.
He interviewed marines who told him that the museum had been fortified and a centre of Iraqi resistance. Had that really been the case it would have been reasonable to expect US forces to have occupied the museum and not left it unguarded as they did. The only evidence of fortification Cruikshank offered was a crude dugout roofed with corrugated iron and earth on the lines of a World War II Anderson shelter. This, Dr. Dony George told him, the museum staff had made for themselves to shelter in during the air raids. There was some evidence that Iraqi soldiers had used rooms in the museum, which in a city that had been the scene of a running battle for several days was hardly surprising.
Cruickshank's aim was to implicate the staff in the looting of the museum. He criticised them for not clearing up the looted galleries, ignoring the fact that international experts had advised them to leave the debris. The whole scene will have to be treated as an archaeological excavation so that broken material and scattered pieces can be retrieved scientifically and forensic evidence gathered for a future war crimes trial.
The fact that the staff were reluctant to talk to him and refused to open store rooms Cruikshank took as evidence that they were guilty of looting. He ignored the obvious explanation that they were unwilling to reveal the whereabouts of hidden artefacts with Baghdad under armed occupation by a hostile power. They were, he claimed, all members of the Ba'ath party as though this were damning evidence of guilt. In a one-party state, membership of the ruling party is almost inevitable for people who want to hold official posts in museums or universities. It does not implicate them in the crimes of the regime. Aaronovitch was quick to take up Cruickshank's allegations and to amplify them, going so far as to accuse Dr. Dony George of being a fascist. By throwing such emotive language about he is attempting to create the atmosphere of a witch-hunt against Iraqi intellectuals.
There is a serious agenda behind this vicious journalism. Wealthy collectors in the West are casting avaricious eyes on the museums of archaeologically rich countries like Iraq. The American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), which advised the US government in the run-up to the Iraq war, has led the way in calling for legislation restricting the export of art objects and archaeological artefacts to be ignored in the US courts.
The ACCP has evoked a storm of opposition in the US, where even the robber barons saw the wisdom of putting their money into public museums and libraries and the selfish acquisitiveness of the ACCP runs counter to a strong sense of the importance of such public institutions.
The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) has vociferously opposed the ACCP and is campaigning for legislation that will prevent plundered artefacts being brought into the country. So strong has opposition been that the Wall Street Journal-a paper that could be expected to warm to the ACCP's free market attitudes-has carried an article calling on them "to put their money into restitution and reconstruction within that country [Iraq]." It would, the article points out, be tax deductible.
For the obscenely wealthy and criminal clique that surrounds the Bush administration, however, the benefits of tax deductible charity are no longer enough. They may have been warned off in the US, but it is their attitude to the history of semi-colonial countries that finds an echo in Cruickshank's film and Aaronovitch's article.
A former student radical from the Euro-wing of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Aaronovitch has cultivated a particular brand of educated philistinism that mixes a passing acquaintance with culture and ugly right-wing rhetoric. It is to the credit of Guardian readers that they have found Aaronovitch's articles thoroughly repugnant. His defence of looting elicited a response from the Assistant Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, who criticised his flippancy in "sniggering over the genitalia of Greek gods". His latest article accusing the staff of the Baghdad Museum of being fascists produced a defence of these internationally respected scholars from chairman of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, Doctor Harriet Crawford; Doctor Eleanor Robson of All Souls College, Oxford; and Doctor Jane Moon of the Centre for the Study of Global Ethics.
Doctors Crawford and Robson write, "Our high opinion of the character of Dr. George and his colleagues has been formed over two decades of working with them throughout an era of extraordinarily difficult circumstances-from the Iran-Iraq war to the few months leading up to the most recent conflict. George deserves the world's praise, not its condemnation, for saving so many of Iraq's treasures, and strong practical support in restoring the museum to functionality."
Cruickshank and Aaronovitch's unfounded and ignorant comments lend themselves to a deliberate campaign of vilification against Iraqi intellectuals that aims to dismantle the entire system of laws and institutions that has been built up in Iraq to protect the country's archaeology and to further research into its history. This is looting on a grand scale. The intention is not merely to acquire this or that artefact, but with regime change to declare open season on the Middle East's great museums.
http://www.wsws.org/
We're Still Missing The Looting Picture
By John Malcolm Russell
Sunday, June 15, 2003; Page B05
The past week has produced surprising developments in the story of the looting of Baghdad's Iraq Museum. Only weeks after countless media reports described the sacking of that museum and others, the news now is that the fabulous treasures from Nimrud and Ur were not plundered, that they survived intact in a flooded vault of the Central Bank of Baghdad and that almost everything else from the museum's public galleries had been safely hidden in a secret storage facility before the war began in March. Now a lot of people are asking me, as an expert in Iraqi antiquities, how I feel about the dramatic reduction in the estimated losses from the looting of the museum, from initial reports of 170,000 objects -- the entire collection -- missing or damaged, to recent claims of only 33 objects lost.
This is wonderful news, I reply, which often elicits the response, "Yes, of course, but how do you feel about being so badly misled?" Most people I know share my relief that so much of the collection survived, yet many also feel that their noble instincts were manipulated not only to produce shock and grief at a loss of such unprecedented magnitude but also to provoke rage at the cultural callousness of the United States in failing to prevent this predictable tragedy. I can sympathize with those who feel conned. For two weeks after the looting I must have been known as the weeping archaeologist, regularly breaking into tears on air when asked to describe my favorite things lost in the looting, pieces I have come to cherish in more than two decades of visits to the museum. As it turns out, some of my favorite things are still missing.
So why did the museum staff apparently make such exaggerated claims? I don't know.
Recent news reports have suggested that perhaps the first reporters on the scene, confronted with an empty museum, inquired about the total number of registered objects and reported that figure as the loss, or that the museum's senior staff, outraged by the lack of protection, produced this figure in anger to embarrass the Americans. I may never know the answer. Or perhaps some day, over dinner or a cup of tea, one of the Iraqi curators, whom I trust completely, will explain what happened. All I can do now is try to put the Iraqis' initial claim into context.
It's now clear that before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the museum staff placed all the gold objects in a vault in the Central Bank and left them there even after the museum reopened in 2001. In the weeks before the recent war, the staff moved nearly everything from the public galleries into a secret vault. The only objects left in the galleries when the war started were those too large or too fragile to move and those that were permanently attached to theirdisplays.
By all accounts there was such fierce fighting around the museum on April 8 and 9 that the staff, concerned about its own safety, abandoned the building. By April 10, staff members returned to find the museum being plundered. This continued unchallenged for the next day or two, despite staff members' pleas for protection, made to American units stationed nearby. For two days, the staff was left to defend the museum on its own. This is when it was first reported that the museum had been completely cleaned out. It seems to me that under these extreme circumstances, this report (no matter what might be said about its veracity and its intent) had two beneficial effects.
First, it took advantage of the media presence to convey to looters that there was nothing left to steal and they might as well look elsewhere. The alternative -- to spread the word that much of the unprotected collection might still be intact -- would have been utter folly.
Second, it drew worldwide public attention to the threat to the museum, bringing pressure on the Americans finally to secure the building. Better late than never. The success of this strategy, if that is what it was, is most vividly illustrated by looking at the museum's neighbors. In the weeks following the fall of Baghdad, no other public building in Baghdad (except the Oil Ministry) was protected by U.S. troops, and every other public building in Baghdad (except the Oil Ministry) was repeatedly looted and torched.
So, am I angry with the museum staff for making me feel so bad right after the looting? No. It's difficult to be irritated with people who so effectively protected so many of my favorite things against such enormous odds. And besides, there's still plenty to mourn.
In mid-May I visited the museum as part of the first U.N. cultural mission to Iraq after the war. As I walked through the empty galleries with the museum's director, Nawala Mutawalli, I would point to familiar display cases and ask about favorite objects they once contained. Usually she would smile slightly and say, "It's safe." I wondered why we hadn't seen those pieces when we visited the storerooms, but I didn't pursue it. Because I trusted her, I believed they were safe. I later learned that those pieces were in the secret vault. But not everything is.
Among the "hardly anything" stolen from the public galleries is the beautiful and haunting marble face of a woman, a piece from Uruk, home of the legendary king Gilgamesh. Its classical perfection is unsurpassed. (If the Mona Lisa were stolen from the Louvre, would we heave a sigh of relief that hardly anything was stolen?) Another piece feared missing was my favorite Mesopotamian object, the cult vase from Uruk. Embedded in its complex imagery are the world's first representations of religious ritual, social hierarchy, the natural order and urban economy -- in other words, civilization. Miraculously, late last week the occupation authority reported that the vase had been recovered, which is wonderful news if true. Having been burned once by a false report of its recovery, I won't believe it is safe until I see evidence.
And besides the priceless objects stolen from the galleries, many other pieces are gone, a point which most news reports of the past week simply failed to mention. The Iraq museum is a national archaeological museum, which means everything excavated in Iraq goes there. Normally, a few of these objects were placed on public display, while the vast majority went into the museum's study collection, where they formed the physical archive of the Cradle of Civilization. Many of these objects, found in houses, temples, palaces, graves, farms, towns and cities, and left behind by people long dead who survive only in these traces, were of equal importance to those on display. That's because groups of objects tell the story of the people who left them there in a way that an individual object ripped from the ground and exhibited on its own simply cannot.
These objects were kept in the museum's five storerooms, three of which were subject to some looting. A preliminary inventory of a small part of one storeroom, under the supervision of occupation authority investigators, revealed that 2,100 objects were missing. Their estimate of objects stolen from the study collection now stands at only 3,000, which I think is wildly optimistic. It is pure guesswork. Conducting a complete inventory of the stores will take many months, and the final total could well be far higher. Just last week, Mutawalli, the museum director, estimated that 12,000 pieces were missing. That's why it's so critical to have an accurate count of what's truly lost.
Regardless of what happened at the museum, by far the greatest cultural disaster of the war happened in southern Iraq, where looters plundered major archaeological sites. As recently as May 21, Ambassador Pietro Cordone, whom the Americans have appointed senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, took a helicopter tour throughout the south that revealed the extent of the destruction. At site after site he observed dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of illegal diggers systematically turning the ground inside out, recovering objects favored by the export market, discarding everything else. In the process, everything of real value about these objects is destroyed, their stories lost forever. Not only are these the objects that should be rebuilding and enriching the collection of the Iraq Museum, theirs are the stories that could be enriching us as human beings.
I see last week's news reports, which in my opinion minimize the known losses from the museum, as a backlash against the early exaggerated figure. Instead of everything being lost, now it's almost nothing. This couldn't come at a worse time. The United States should be acting forcefully to prohibit the import and sale of the looted objects here. Instead I see half-measures. The recent U.S.-sponsored U.N. Security Council resolution ending sanctions against Iraq contains a strong prohibition against trafficking in looted Iraqi antiquities. This is an important statement, but it does not carry the weight of U.S. law. It's more like advice.
What would make it U.S. law is draft legislation that is being debated in the House as H.R. 2009. Its goal is to eliminate the trafficking of the looted Iraqi antiquities in this country. And yet organizations representing antiquities and coin dealers, which publicly support a trafficking ban, are reportedly lobbying privately against the legislation.
If we were outraged by what we thought was the looting of Iraqi heritage, we should still be, because it is happening still and on a phenomenal scale. We must not allow those who would profit from the backlash to capitalize on it by arguing that the smaller number of losses isn't that bad. It's bad enough.
John Malcolm Russell is professor of art history at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. He recently was a member of a UNESCO cultural mission to Iraq.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/