From: w_robinson@globe.com
Date sent: Sun, 27 Dec 1998 10:32:24 -0500
Subject: Boston Museum of Fine Arts
These articles can be found at www.boston.com/globe
It was just a year ago that the Boston Museum of Fine Arts turned
aside a public demand from the government of Guatemala to return
scores of pre-Columbian artifacts that had been looted from ancient
Mayan grave sites in that country. In its defense, the museum argued
that the artifacts entered the United States legally between 1974
and 1981 - before the MFA committed itself in 1983 to international
standards designed to curb the widespread plundering of antiquities.
Yet since 1984, the MFA has acquired scores of Greek and Roman
antiquities that have no record of prior ownership, according to a
Globe inquiry. That is a dead giveaway, scholars say, that most of
the objects were illegally excavated and smuggled, mainly from
Italy, in the 14 years since the museum says it has abandoned
dealings in the illicit market.
Among the artifacts are three valuable
Greek vases, commonly found in 2,300-year-old grave sites in the
Apulian section of southeastern Italy. In a telltale admission, the
museum described the three vases as among a ''host'' of newly
discovered artifacts in a 1993 book it published on the MFA's ancient
Greek vases. With assistance from several classical scholars, the
Globe focused on the origin of 71 classical artifacts that were
donated or sold to the MFA by outsiders from mid-1984 to mid-1987.
Only 10 of the 71 items have any recorded ownership history, or
provenance. The remaining 61 objects, including the three valuable
vases cited in the MFA volume, have no pedigree at all, strong
circumstantial evidence that most of them had been recently unearthed
by grave robbers, according to archeologists.
For the MFA, the
findings underscore the institution's continuing challenge - how to
reconcile the august image it projects with persistent questions
about the integrity of its collecting practices. Like several other
major museums, scholars say, the MFA cannot argue that it was unaware
that it was acquiring valuable objects that were most likely removed
recently from the ground. Even one of the MFA's major benefactors
told the Globe the museum often turned a blind eye to evidence the
artifacts had dubious origins. And two of its dealers said they
cannot vouch for the origin of some of the objects they sold the MFA.
Indeed, Alan Shestack, who was the MFA's director from 1987 to 1994,
acknowledged last week that during his tenure the museum took
insufficient steps to ensure that its acquisitions had not been
looted.
''We were not as rigorous as we might have been in those
days,'' Shestack said in an interview. At the time, Shestack said,
questions were seldom raised about the origin of undocumented
artifacts the MFA was acquiring. That leaves Shestack at odds with
the current MFA director, Malcolm Rogers. Rogers has said he has no
misgivings about the classical antiquities the museum obtained that
came with no ownership history. Unlike Shestack, Rogers has
repeatedly refused to discuss the MFA's collecting ethics. For the
museum, which Rogers recently described as New England's preeminent
cultural institution, the Guatemalan and classical acquisitions are
bookends on a troublesome year. To the MFA's critics, the two cases
underscore the extent to which the MFA, and some of its peer
institutions, are ethically tone deaf and oblivious to rapidly
shifting international standards. With increasing frequency,
countries like Turkey, Italy, and poverty-stricken Guatemala are
pressing legal claims against major museums - sometimes with help
from the US government. At the same time, officials in countries that
sit atop ancient cultures have ratcheted up accusatory rhetoric that
''Western elites'' are guilty of cultural imperialism, colonialism,
and racism for preying on grave sites in their countries.
As for the
MFA, even some of the dealers the museum has purchased artifacts from
acknowledged that the antiquities market is far from pristine. For
example, two of New York's best-known dealers who have sold classical
artifacts to the MFA, Torkom Demirjian and Jerome M. Eisenberg,
admitted that they sometimes have no way of knowing whether the
objects they sell to collectors and museums were recently plundered.
''There is no tag on any piece saying, `I am legally excavated and
legally exported,''' Eisenberg said in an interview. Asked, for
instance, about a dozen undocumented artifacts that came to the MFA
after being sold by Sotheby's and Christie's, the two major auction
houses, Eisenberg said: ''If you buy it at auction without a
provenance, it was probably illegally excavated.'' Demirjian, who was
the dealer in one celebrated case involving looted artifacts and is a
passionate critic of laws that inhibit the antiquities trade, said he
does not believe that artifacts he has sold or donated to the MFA had
been recently looted. But, he added, ''It wouldn't matter to me if
they were illegally excavated.'' Rogers, who has been the MFA
director since 1994, turned down repeated requests for an interview
- a posture he adopted after the Globe reported last December that
the MFA acquired the pre-Columbian artifacts even though its attorney
knew they had been illegally removed from Guatemala. Rogers would
respond only to inquiries in writing. But his responses often
sidestepped the questions posed by the Globe.
To many scholars, the
evidence is compelling. ''There is no doubt that there is a pattern
by the MFA of acquiring looted material that was illegally excavated
in Italy,'' said Boston University archeologist Murray C. McClellan.
''They have not lived up to their own standards, and they have to be
called to account for that.'' Unlike Rogers, others who have dealt
with the MFA were more willing to discuss its acquisitions. One MFA
benefactor, who has had extensive dealings with its classical
department over the years, said the MFA has taken artifacts from him
knowing they had been looted. When the department ''sees a piece they
really want, the provenance doesn't become as important as it should
be,'' said the benefactor, who discussed the issue on condition that
his name not be used.
The benefactor, though he said he does not deal
directly with smugglers, said the dealers he buys from do. But over
the years, he said, the museum's classical department cared little
where the piece originated - unless the acquisition was ''likely to
create a fuss.'' On some pieces, he added, the MFA was complicit in
helping to alter provenance information to make the objects appear to
be clean. But McClellan, who is hopeful the museum can be persuaded
to change course and abide by its ethical code and international
conventions, described the allegedly illicit acquisitions as
''willful ignorance, not a conscious conspiracy.'' McClellan and other
classical archeologists who looked over the Boston museum's
acquisitions expressed chagrin about many of the pieces, saying the
evidence, though circumstantial, strongly suggests the artifacts
were looted in recent years from sites in the Mediterranean, most of
them in Italy. Among the objects with no provenance are numerous
vessels from Apulia, marble busts, and a Greek vase that originated
in Tuscany. Another piece with no pedigree is a rare Mycenaean
terracotta idol from about 1,300 B.C. that McClellan called ''one of
the most important pieces of religious art of the Second
Millennium.'' ''If it had not been looted, and we knew where it came
from, it would be world-famous for its historical significance. As it
is, it's merely a curiosity in a corner of the museum,'' McClellan
said. Public attention to the MFA's acquisition of antiquities comes
amid growing international focus on cultural property issues, tougher
laws in source countries, and UN-led international conventions
intended to curb the widespread plunder for profit that has decimated
ancient sites. Hardest hit have been countries like Guatemala, Italy,
Greece, Turkey, and poor nations in Africa, such as Mali. Also
vulnerable have been war-torn nations like Iraq, Cambodia,
Afghanistan, and Bosnia. But the outcry, led by archeologists, has
been countered, often in heated debate, by some museums, dealers, and
collectors who insist that laws against the antiquities trade are
unreasonably harsh, leading to a thriving black market that prompts
some museums to mask the origin of their acquisitions. What's more,
countries such as Italy and Greece, lacking evidence pointing to the
precise site where an object was looted, seldom press claims. And US
legislation in 1983 that implemented the UN agreement contains
loopholes that protect collectors and museums from forfeiture laws.
Some judges, though, have begun to pay greater deference to the
notion that objects looted abroad can be classified as stolen
property in American courts, a trend that has unsettled the museum
world. Most museums, including the MFA, have adopted guidelines since
1970 that recognize the legal right of countries like Italy and
Turkey to protect ancient grave sites, an obligation that Shestack
advocated in a speech in 1986, the year before he took the MFA's
helm.
Shestack argued then that museums, by continuing to acquire
problematic antiquities, ''would not only be risking our reputation,
but would be encouraging or at least seeming to be encouraging, or
winking at, illicit activity in the international art market.'' But
it was on Shestack's watch, from 1987 to 1994, that the MFA acquired
many of the classical antiquities that archeologists say were
probably taken from grave sites in Italy. Others have been acquired
since Rogers took his place. They include some 7th century B.C. cups
from burial grounds near Rome that raised suspicions at the MFA, but
were nonetheless accepted in 1996 - a gift from a longtime overseer.
At the center of the storm over the museum's ethics is Cornelius C.
Vermeule III, the MFA's longtime curator of classical antiquities
who retired in 1996.
A scholar world-renowned for his
connoisseurship, and a beloved figure at the MFA and in the local art
world, Vermeule developed a swashbuckling reputation for his
acquisition habits. Even in retirement, Vermeule's decisions still
preoccupy lawyers. It was Vermeule who arranged the MFA's
questionable acquisition of the top half of a Heraclean figure the
Turkish government wants reunited with the bottom half that sits in a
Turkish museum. In another case involving the alleged theft of
precious Athenian coins from Turkey, it was Vermeule who had the MFA
authenticate them for the owners, despite evidence they might be
''hot.'' And like many curators of his generation, who scoured the
world for prized pieces long before the plundering of ancient grave
sites was officially proscribed, Vermeule continued to buy artifacts
as if the rules had never changed, according to McClellan, the BU
archeologist.
By many accounts, Vermeule had virtual autonomy within
the MFA. In 1993, with the help of a $30,000 grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts, Vermeule's department published a book
signaling that it was still playing by old rules. The 1993 book,
''Vase Painting in Italy,'' matter-of-factly suggests that three of
the Apulian vases it prizes most highly were newly discovered. Two of
the vases, attributed to the Darius Painter, a name given by scholars
to one of the finest artisans in the Greek civilization that
flourished in Apulia about 2,300 years ago, have been hailed in one
MFA annual report as ''two of the greatest South Italian vases in
America.'' In the museum's book, the MFA's curators wrote: ''Recent
years have seen a host of new vases by the Darius Painter with rare
or unique mythological subjects ...'' The MFA vases, acquired in
1987, 1989, and 1991, ''are among the most splendid of the new
mythological works,'' according to the book. The vase acquired in 1991
is jointly owned by the MFA and by Leon Levy and Shelby White, New
York collectors whose collecting habits have long been
controversial. To archeologists, the language in the book is an
unwitting admission that the MFA knew the prized vases were probably
stolen from grave sites. In his written response to the Globe's
questions, Rogers acknowledged that none of the three vases had any
known owners before the museum acquired them. ''Museums like the MFA
should know better,'' said David W. J. Gill, an archeologist at the
University of Wales at Swansea and an international authority on
antiquities looting. Plainly, Gill said, the reference in the book
''means the objects were newly surfaced, and since they had no
declared history, any museum curator should have been highly
suspicious of them.'' Gill and a colleague, Christopher Chippindale,
have done pioneering research on undocumented antiquities. For
example, after the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited Levy
and White's classical collection in 1990, a study by the two men
disclosed that of the 230 objects in the show, 217 had no known
history before the collecting couple acquired them. Vermeule and White
did not respond to requests for interviews. The MFA said it would not
permit Vermeule's successor, John Herrmann, to be interviewed. White,
in a recent article in the International Journal of Cultural
Property, wrote that she and her husband do not buy artifacts that
are stolen from museums or unearthed from ''known'' archeological
excavations. In the wheat-growing region in Apulia, virtually all of
the loot comes from thousands of ''unknown'' grave sites, sealed
tombs of the Greeks' ancient dead that often contain painted vases
of the type favored by Levy and White and the MFA. ''It's difficult
for the Italian government to prove the vases were stolen since there
is no documentation to prove they were in the ground,'' lamented
Marina Mazzei, the Italian archeologist in charge of government
efforts to slow the looting in Apulia. ''So just like so many vases,
they magically appear on the market, as if they came from nowhere.''
Mazzei, during a visit last spring to the pockmarked wheatfields
with a Globe reporter, said the tombaroli, or tomb robbers, have
taken tens of thousands of vases over the last 15 years, so brazenly
that they often employ mechanical excavators. The dramatic rise in
looting in the early 1980s, Mazzei said, coincided with the growing
popularity of the vases with American and European collectors and
museums. But with few resources, and vast territory to police, she
said, Italian authorities are almost powerless to stop the looters.
Besides, she said, with unemployment so high in southern Italy,
''there is a high level of crime directed at the living.
So to many
laymen, stealing from tombs is not considered criminal, because the
tombaroli disturb the dead, and not the living.'' Organized rings of
thieves smuggle much of the plunder into Switzerland, with its lax
statutes and reputation as an international fencing crossroads.
There, the plunder is sold to collectors and dealers. Just across the
Italian-Swiss border, in scenic vacation towns like Lugano and
Ascona, antiquities shops are ubiquitous, and some dealers openly
admit that their wares have been recently excavated. In one shop last
spring, a score of Apulian vases, some of museum quality and bearing
prices as high as $40,000, were displayed in glass cases. Lying on
the floor in a corner was a piece of Roman armor identified by the
shop owner as from the 1st century A.D. It was still caked in mud.
''It's from a 100-year-old Italian collection,'' the dealer said
with a smile and a wink. The inexorable link between generous Italian
supply and insatiable collector demand has long raised questions
about what the principals know, or choose to know, about the origin
of the objects they acquire. Eisenberg, a major figure in the
antiquities trade, said he would not ''knowingly buy a piece that's
been smuggled.'' In fact, he argued in an interview that the vast
majority of antiquities are of no use to archeologists and ought to
be traded freely like modern artworks. ''Ninety-eight percent of
items that are excavated offer no new or useful information for
archeologists. So collectors and museums should be able to acquire
these objects,'' said Eisenberg, whose views anger many
archeologists. Strict laws against export, he added, force the art
market to hide information and, sometimes, prompt museums to doctor
provenance information. As for ''minor pieces'' that most collectors
buy, Eisenberg said, ''We know they come out illegally. But no one
bothers about them.'' Of the major pieces he has sold, to the MFA and
other clients, he acknowledged: ''There is a likelihood that some
material may have been smuggled. No one knows ultimately where these
things come from.'' The MFA, though it made some of its acquisition
records available to the Globe, refused to disclose the identities of
dealers who have sold classical antiquities to the museum. But dealers
seeking tax deductions often donate artifacts to curators they sell
objects to. The MFA's list of donor-dealers amounts to a ''who's
who'' of dealers, and some collectors, who have been involved in
controversy over the origin of some of their acquisitions. They
include London dealer Robin Symes, Demirjian, White and Levy, and
the late Lawrence Fleischman, a major purchaser of undocumented
antiquities whose collection was acquired in 1995 by the J. Paul
Getty Museum. Two major collectors who face claims by foreign
governments seeking the recovery of artifacts are also among MFA
donors: Maurice Tempelsman, the New York financier and companion to
the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; and Jonathan H. Kagan, one of
the defendants in Turkey's lawsuit demanding the return of the
Athenian coins. Kagan has donated numerous undocumented antiquities to
the MFA, including nine ceramic cups from the 7th century B.C. that
McClellan says were probably unearthed from the same tomb complex, in
Latium, the site of an ancient culture near Rome that predated the
Greek colonization of Italy. Through his lawyer, D. Lloyd Macdonald,
Kagan declined a request for an interview. Also among the dealers who
have sold classical artifacts to the museum is Robert E. Hecht Jr.,
a Paris-based antiquities specialist who was once declared persona
non grata by the Italian and Turkish governments for his alleged
role in selling plundered antiquities.
Hecht, the Globe reported in
April, played a central role in a $1.8 million sale to New York's
Metropolitan Museum of Art of a 3d century B.C. silver trove. Italian
authorities have an affidavit from the professional grave robber who
helped unearth the objects from Morgantina, a Greek city-state in
Sicily. During an April telephone interview, Hecht defended the trade
in looted antiquities and ridiculed laws, like Italy's, that seek to
prevent the plundering of grave sites. The MFA refused to divulge its
relationship with Hecht, or even acknowledge that they had done
business with him. But the voluble Hecht boasted in the interview
that in mid-1997 he sold the MFA a rare silver cup, called a skyphos,
at a price reported to exceed $400,000. Asked where the silver
artifact originated, Hecht replied: ''What does it matter?'' Unlike
most of the MFA's classical acquisitions examined by the Globe, the
skyphos has a listed provenance. The MFA said Hecht told them the
piece was once in an American collection and provided the museum
with a letter from a third party attesting to the fact that Hecht
has had the skyphos since the 1950s.
The museum refused to make the letter public. If there is no public
evidence the MFA has changed its habits, other institutions have.
Shestack, who is now the deputy director of the National Gallery of
Art in Washington, said that because of the increased international
and public focus on grave robbing, "Museums are much more aware of
the consequences of this kind of collecting. They are much more
fastidious." But during the seven years he ran the MFA, Shestack
conceded, the museum relied on its dealers for written assurance that
the artifacts the MFA bought were clean. "The legal counsel, then, was
not as sensitive to these issues. The dealers often didn't want to
tell us anything about the prior ownership," Shestack said. "The
lawyers almost always said that if a dealer signed a guarantee the
work was clean, then everything was OK. "No one ever said, 'We're not
going to buy it if it doesn't have a clear provenance,"" he added.
Ironically, Shestack said, the museum did demand a thorough legal
review of the pre-Columbian collection offered to the MFA by Landon
T. Clay, one of its trustees. The review, at an estimated cost of
$30,000, concluded that there was no reason for the MFA not to take
it. Last December, the lawyer who did the review admitted in an
interview that he knew in 1987 that Guatemalan law forbade export of
the artifacts. In his 1986 speech calling for higher ethical
standards, Shestack recalled, "I cried out for stringent laws that
would give museum directors a reason for not doing the evil thing. So
then when the directors encourage you to acquire certain things, you
can say, 'No, I can't. I'll go to jail."" He added: "But if there's a
gray area in the law, you don't have an out." The gray area, he
noted, remains. Oddly, Shestack's candid recollection contradicts
Rogers, who in both the Guatemala and classical areas has insisted
there has been nothing amiss in the museum's behavior. Partly, there
are legal reasons for that: The Guatemalan government has just hired
New York attorneys Lawrence M. Kaye and Howard Spiegler, two
aggressive litigators who handle Turkey's claims, to seek restitution
of the pre-Columbian artifacts. Even with the legal threat, some
lawyers and art historians say Rogers has a responsibility to assure
its public that the museum's behavior sets a moral standard for the
community it serves. "The MFA needs to make an unambiguous statement
that it will no longer acquire undocumented antiquities," said
McClellan, the BU archeologist. "This is one more opportunity for the
MFA to say, 'Our eyes have been opened. We take responsibility for
what's happened. We've done wrong in the past, but we'll now do
better.' But they seem unwilling to say that publicly." Other
museums, most notably the once avaricious Getty, no longer acquire
undocumented antiquities. And the Getty has done so unambiguously.
Marion True, the Getty's curator of ancient art, who now devotes much
of her time to helping countries in the Mediterranean rim devise
strategies to stop looting, told a conference at Rutgers University
last month that the Getty ceased buying undocumented antiquities
because it was not possible to be certain they were clean. "This is
because of the all-too-common practices among so-called reputable
dealers of forging provenance documents and signing false statements
on warranties," she said. The Getty, True added, chooses to spend
money on other projects, "rather than continue to struggle through
the mire of deception that pervades the market." This story ran on
page A01 of the Boston Globe on 12/27/98.
