October 12, 1999
CONTENTS:
- Policing Plunder, Italy Requests U.S. Help in Stemming Loss of Its Antiquities
- Library sprinkler systems
- Fraud Collection
Policing Plunder, Italy Requests U.S. Help in Stemming Loss of Its Antiquities
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 11, 1999; Page A03
In a drastic effort to stop wholesale looting of its national treasures, Italy this week will formally ask the United States to impose unprecedented restrictions on imports of artifacts from its fabled classical civilizations.
The petition has provoked turmoil among U.S. art dealers worried that the curbs could cripple trade in some of the world's most coveted collectibles, among them Etruscan and Attic pottery, Apulian vases, Greek-style terra cotta figurines and ancient Sicilian coins. Dealers estimate perhaps $50 million in Mediterranean antiquities are bought and sold annually in the United States. New York Sens. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D) and Charles E. Schumer (D) have proposed legislation that would complicate procedures for imposing the restrictions, in what preservationists charge is an attempt to sabotage the petition on behalf of the antiquities market. All sides agree, however, that the petition has brought unparalleled intensity to a decades-old conflict among governments, archaeologists, dealers and collectors over who has the right to exploit the world's cultural legacy.
"It will be the first request of this kind from a Mediterranean country for classical antiquities, and it's not just a specific region or cultural area," Boston University archaeologist Ricardo Elia said. "The Italian request is big and broad." The showdown will occur Tuesday, when the State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) will convene to consider the Italian request. For two hours Tuesday afternoon, interested parties--archaeologists, museums, dealers and others--will be heard in public session. But CPAC will then deliberate in secret, and quite likely will not announce results immediately. Past decisions have taken anywhere from a few months to several years, and the committee may broaden or narrow the original petition as it wishes. CPAC makes a recommendation to the president, who is then authorized to take action. The committee has said only that the petition covers "categories of archaeological material in stone, metal, ceramic, bone and glass and wall paintings from the fifth millennium B.C. to the fifth century A.D."--in effect covering all of Italian antiquity. This is as much as anyone will know publicly about the proposal until CPAC announces its decision. But several sources confirmed that Italy's list of specifics runs to five pages and embraces virtually every category of high-value artifact produced or found in ancient Italy.
Thus, while the petition covers Apulian vases and other categories of South Italian pottery, it also covers Attic pottery made in Greece and either looted by Romans or purchased by them and buried in their tombs.
"Ancient art always traveled," said Jerome M. Eisenberg, owner of New York's Royal-Athena Galleries and publisher of the antiquities magazine Minerva. "We're all concerned with art theft, but [the scope of the Italian request] is absurd." Despite an official Italian silence on the petition, Italian diplomatic sources seemed to confirm dealers' worst fears: "We would like to cover the whole area, and the whole historical period, and fill in the agreement after negotiations," said one source. "Once the principle is accepted, we can see which areas we would concentrate on."
Archaeologists hope the committee will send a powerful message to the rest of the world. "Italy is the symbol of an art-rich nation that is just being plundered to death," Elia said. "It shows that no nation can overcome pressures from the market." The Italian petition is the ninth submitted to CPAC since the United States in 1983 implemented a UNESCO Convention on Cultural Property, designed to protect antiquities-rich countries from systematic pillage by robbers supplying a greedy world market. In every case, dealers and collectors have criticized the committee's activities, in part because so much of the process "takes place behind closed doors," said Arthur A. Houghton III, a former committee member and current president of the American Numismatic Society. The Italian petition, he added, "is worth an open discussion." Moynihan last week introduced an amendment to the 1983 implementation act that would require CPAC to publicly air more of its activities, file more reports and enlist more international help to ensure "meaningful public participation." Archaeologists suspect Moynihan and co-sponsor Schumer are trying to muck up the committee at the behest of the New York-based antiquities trade. "I find the timing suspect," said DePaul University law professor Patty Gerstenblith, editor of the International Journal of Cultural Property. "The fact that there is legislation pending puts the committee's actions in some doubt."
While no one can estimate the volume of the world trade in illegal antiquities, Interpol asserts that it is surpassed only by narcotics and illegal weapons trafficking. Illegal gun-running is worth about $3 billion annually, according to many estimates. Few dispute that Italy has a problem. Art connoisseurs, private museums and even public institutions have been buying plundered Italian artifacts for centuries and have continued despite a 1939 Italian law that forbids anyone to export an antiquity without a license.
In 1993-97, Italian state police recovered 122,940 stolen artifacts, estimated to be just a fraction of the total acquired illegally. Since 1997, the Italian art theft squad has seized 32,000 antiquities from three warehouses alone. And the loot is valuable. In 1992, U.S. Customs seized 230 Etruscan and Apulian vases from a Los Angeles antiquities dealer, some of which still had dirt clinging to them. Even if all the items were lowest quality, the value of the hoard would be at least $500,000 and could be several times that much. One Italian source estimated that one-third of illegal artifacts entering the United States are from Italy, but the provenance of many items can be difficult, if not impossible, to determine. Coins, for instance, are rarely accompanied by a written pedigree. Italy expects "to prove that stolen objects are coming into the market, and that demand is fueling the looting," said New York gallery owner Fred Schultz, president of the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art. "I don't think Italy can do it."
Archaeologists think differently. Elia said 4,300 of 13,000 Apulian vases sold in the last 300 years appeared on the market after 1980. Malcolm Bell, co-director of American excavations near the Sicilian town of Morgantina, said 54 percent of the Apulian pieces gathered for a 1982-83 traveling exhibit were purchased after 1971 and had no earlier history.
Both statistics are tip-offs that there are plenty of illegal artifacts being sold, archaeologists say. But while Eisenberg estimated that $50 million in Mediterranean antiquities are sold annually in the United States, it can be virtually impossible to prove that an item was looted. "How can you do that?" Eisenberg asked. "You can find Attic pottery all over the Mediterranean." The Italian petition, he said, "is oversimplified."
c Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
(Exlibris)
From: Christopher G Mullin mullin@selway.umt.edu
Subject: Library sprinkler systems
We will be installing a sprinkler system (or other fire suppression system) in a 30-year-old, 5-story, 200,000 square foot academic library. Can anyone on the list with recent experience in a comparable project suggest possible pitfalls, or let me know how satisfied you are with your present system? In the last Montana legislative session, a $640,000 line item among the other allocations to The University of Montana read, simply,
"Sprinkle library." Apparently someone in the Governor's office noted that our current fire suppression system consists of fire extinguishers, and was concerned about the cost of replacing the building and collections. Based on the reading I've done, a mist system would seem to be state-of-the-art, but I'd appreciate any input from anyone else who's installed any kind of fire suppression system in a large library recently (since halon was realized to be a hazard to the ozone layer). We've had several contractors visit us, but as far as I know, none has had any experience with sprinkler installations, or other fire suppression technology, in a large library-- nobody in Montana has that kind of experience. They've just worked in warehouses, etc. Naturally, we will not be contracting a job like this out of state! One contractor has suggested using Inergen for Archives, Special Collections, and possibly Documents. The others seemed to be thinking mostly about ordinary wet-pipe systems,at least when they walked through.
I may be the only library representative on the committee that decides exactly what kind of system we will install. Any experiences of others that I can cite might help influence that choice. I'm especially concerned about broken pipes-- Missoula is in an earthquake zone. Broken water pipes would be a particular problem for Special Collections, Archives, and Federal Documents, because we're on the lowest level, two floors underground. I'm aware that the failure rate on sprinkler heads is very low, but of course any kind of leak can destroy dozens or hundreds of items. Please let me know your thoughts. I suspect this is probably of enough general interest to be worth posting your responses to the entire list. If anyone disagrees, I'll summarize your responses here
--Chris
Christopher G. Mullin mullin@selway.umt.edu | I buy good
Special Collections Librarian 406-243-4036 (voice mail) | regular-8mm
University of Montana 406-243-2060 (fax) | movie stuff
Missoula, MT 59812 Who else has *these* opinions--not UM!
From: Clifford Scheiner cjscheiner@pol.net
Subject: Fraud Collection
A private collector wishes to sell en bloc, preferably to an institutional collection, his 2000 volume library on literary and artistic hoaxes, frauds and piracies. If your institution would be interested in more information, or if you could suggest existing collections in this area, please contact me off list at:
cjscheiner@pol.net.
Thank you. C.J. Scheiner
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