I tried to post this before, but it appears to have gotten lost in
cyberspace.  Here goes attempt #2.  What is the general opinion
concerning the exhibit suggestion below?
 
 
> Reposted from Aegeanet
>
> Reply to D. Gill
> Is the Loan Project of the Michael Carlos Museum, directed by Maxwell
> Anderson, something of which we should approve?
> 21% of the items displayed were unprovenienced, among them many coins.
> Why are coins so often thought to be permissible for trade and display?
> See the revealing article in Vanity Fair, April 1994 by Bryan Burrough
> entitled "Raider of the Lost Art", which is a profoundly disturbing
> portrait of Bruce McNall and Robert Hecht.
> Jewellery also often seems to fall into this category, too.  Certainly
> Michael Ward seemed to think that small baubles could be put on the market
> without attracting much attention.  Instead they have caused a huge
> problem.  Now that they have been given to the Society for the Preservaton
> of the Greek Heritage, a group that has no experience in curating and
> displaying artifacts, the society is finding it difficult to meet its
> obligations to display the jewelry.  It does not even have a clear idea of
> what kind of message it should send about the jewelry, since it is only
> alleged to have been stolen.  I would like to see the society display the
> items in an exhibit that was entirely focused on the antiquities trade and
> the problems it creates, from loss of knowledge to loss of patrimony, but
> that may be difficult to effect since museums are not eager to take on this
> tainted material and, apparently, to make bold statements about the
> problems of collecting.
> Which brings me back to the Emory museum.  Reading the latest issue of the
> magazine, Antiques (September, 1994) I find an article on page 308 by
> Maxwell Anderson, "The antiquities collection of Lawrence A. and Barbara
> Fleischman, which is P.R. for the exhibition "A Passion for Antiquities:
> Ancient Art from the Collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman" on
> view now at the Getty Museum and then moving to the Cleveland Museum.
> Here's a quote of Anderson's prose that I think well reflects his attitude:
>
> "[the Fleischmans] have assembled what is universally acknowledged to be
> one of the world's foremost private collections of classical art.  Its
> unselfconscious arrangement in their spectacular residence allows for
> frequent repositioning.  Indeed, Lawrence Fleischman admits to occasional
> nocturnal tuning of the displays when sleep eludes him.  The result of this
> informality is extremely inviting for visitors and communicates the
> Fleischman's genuine love of collecting for its own sake.
>     "When the Fleischmans began collecting classical antiquities in earnest
> they sought the advice of specialists.  However, their skills as
> connoiseurs were quickly honed, and within a few months they startled
> curators here and abroad with the acuity of their taste."
>
>    Ironically Anderson recently chaired a session in Seattle on the draft
> UNIDROIT Convention on the Return of Stolen and Illegally Exported Cultural
> Property.  The draft would create a unified private law code whereby
> claimants in countries that are party to the convention could sue in the
> courts of a signatory nation for the return of stolen, illegally exported,
> or unlawfully excavated cultural objects.  But, so far as I understand the
> UNIDROIT draft, it still does not address the issue of how a claimant can
> establish that an artifact was illegally excavated and illegally exported
> if its presence had not in some way been documented prior to its removal.
> That is the loophole that permits dealers to bring in and sell items that
> in fact have been stolen.  And small objects are easiest to loot for this
> purpose.
>     I would propose that we lobby museums here and abroad to mount displays
> that use objects of unknown provenance and from private collections to
> illustrate how collecting contributes to the loss of knowledge, the rape of
> cultural patrimony and the enslavement of cultural symbols.  If you have
> recently visited the Archaeological Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in
> Ankara, you can see on display the silver recently returned by the
> Metropolitan Museum, but unfortunately there is NOT A SINGLE WORD that
> informs the viewer of the history of those objects and the long journey
> they took before they came home.  It is an opportunity lost.  Jim Wright
> james c. wright                    [log in to unmask]
> professor and chairman             office  610-526-5340
> department of classical and        fax  610-526-7475
> near eastern archaeology
> bryn mawr college,101 north merion avenue, bryn mawr, pa 19010-2899
>
>
>
> Patricia Kirkland
University of Nebraska
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