On 11/7/05, Julia Moore <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Assume that "Jacob Brown" of England had a painting of one of his
> ancestors that was painted by Gainsborough.  If he were to sell the
> painting today to an American collector (not likely, but let's pretend),
> the English government would most likely not allow it to leave the
> country.

This somewhat irks me. I'm all for a country to hold onto its cultural
heritage, but on the other hand, private property is private property.
If my ancestors had legally bought a Gainsborough and it had been in
my family for generations, it should be my family's personal property
to do with as we see fit. After all, deciding what constitutes as
"cultural property" is really an arbitrary decision when you get right
down to it. Something might be completely overlooked today but then be
discovered to be pivital in a country's history or culture thus making
it "cultural property".  I would like to see cultural institutions
encourage people to donate or at least take care of their "cultural
property" but again, if it's private property, it's private property
and should be treated like any other private property. And who's to
say that selling it outside the country is necessarily bad? It might
end up as the prize piece in a private collection that is viewed by
thousands of people a year instead of being religated to a storage bin
in a national museum or on the back wall somewhere where it is
overlooked.

Heck, an American just bought Manchester United football team and if
that's not English cultural property in American hands, I don't know
what is.

> On the other hand, the Italian government, if they could show
> that an ancestor of "Jacob Brown" had most likely looted it from their
> country, or purchased it from someone who had looted it (perhaps from an
> unguarded country church--a clear case of theft in anyone's
> viewpoint--you can't get clear title if the object was stolen to begin
> with, no matter how many times it was sold) and smuggled it to England,
> might be able to intercept the painting and reclaim it, rendering the
> sale to the American collector or museum moot.

So again, wait a minute - if my drunk ancestor sacked a church and
lifted a painting 200+ years ago, that church or country of origin has
the right to come take it back? What if he took his neighbor's silver?
Do their ancestors have a right to claim it from me? Again, when does
the statue of limitations run out? I can't sue someone for hitting my
car after 2 years. Why should someone be allowed to take back stolen
property after 200 regardless of what that property is? And what if
its an organized army doing the sacking after winning a battle? Most
major European museums have collections based on sacking a loosing
country at one point or another. Should we start giving land back as
well? My Viking ancestors founded York (Jorvik) and I'd like it back
now please.

I'm all for giving artifacts back that were illegally taken within
modern times like the Nazis stealing Jewish collections or treasure
hunters looting Indian gravesites. But after 100 years or so, you've
got to let it go. Now I do think that countries of origin should have
first dibs on "cultural property" and paid fair market value for it
but not take them back outright. If you had an offer for $500,000 to
sell a painting but the country of origin took it back and didn't give
you anything for it, would you think that was fair? I doubt you could
even get a tax break on it. (Uh, could I have a receipt for that
please? Oh in US dollars too?) Countries would be laughed at if they
arbitrarily said, "Hey, you owe us $500,000!! Why? Because!" Why
should they have the right to say, "You owe us that $500,000 painting
because our citizen painted it." What's to stop countries from going
into any museum in the world and demanding back their stuff, no matter
how long its been there or how it was acquired? I could see this just
snowballing into some really nasty "cultural property" wars.

deb

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