Good article.  Thanks.  Dawn

-----Original Message-----
From: Dustin B [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2003 11:12 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Ancient Art at Met Raises Old Ethical
Questions


I found this interesting article about museum ethics and I thought I should
pass it on. Interesting reading.

Dustin

Ancient Art at Met Raises Old Ethical Questions

August 2, 2003
 By MARTIN GOTTLIEB and BARRY MEIER

Almost lost in the sumptuous display of Mesopotamian
antiquities in the "Art of the First Cities" exhibition now
at the Metropolitan Museum is a small limestone fragment,
triangular in shape and delicately carved.

The piece shows Naram-Sin, a king of the ancient Akkadian
empire, seated beside Ishtar, goddess of love, fertility
and war. In the show's catalog it is described as an
"extraordinary" example of the era's art.

It also has another distinction. In terms of its
archaeological pedigree, it might as well have fallen out
of the sky.

Until about four years ago, when a scholar spotted it in
the Upper East Side home of a prominent collector, the
Naram-Sin limestone was essentially unknown. No record of
its excavation or history of ownership has emerged. In
antiquities circles, that empty space amounts to a warning
label: this piece may be the fruit of plunder.

The "First Cities" show opened in May, on the heels of the
ransacking of the Iraq Museum and as pretty much everyone
in the archaeological community was vowing to stanch the
trade in stolen antiquities. But as the story of the
Naram-Sin limestone shows, the everyday world of buying,
selling and exhibiting is often a lot more ambiguous than
that. The marketplace is full of objects with mysterious
pasts - a lot of them indeed looted - and it's often
anything but clear which ones are legitimate and which are
not.

How to handle such orphan objects - is it ethical to buy
them, to show them, even to write scholarly articles about
them? - is one of the central, and most divisive, issues in
the hothouse world of museums, collectors and
archaeologists. But the debate has become increasingly
public and pointed with the recent events in Iraq.

In the "First Cities" show, the Naram-Sin fragment is one
of at least eight objects in that murky zone without a
clear record of excavation and chain of ownership, known in
the art world as provenance.

The Metropolitan's director, Philippe de Montebello, said
the decision to include these artifacts in the "First
Cities" show was neither unusual nor untoward. While a lack
of provenance can indicate that an object has been
illegally excavated, he said objects without a known
provenance also come from legitimate sources, like
longstanding private collections. Shunting aside artifacts
for lack of documentation, he added, is a disservice to the
public and scholars.

"We are an art museum," Mr. de Montebello said. "We have an
obligation to knowledge. We have an obligation to the
object." He pointed out, too, that the Met had more
rigorous rules for acquisitions.

But many experts argue that by including such objects in
exhibitions, museums abet an illicit trade that destroys
archaeological sites and erodes historical knowledge.

"There is an ethical issue," said Jeremy Sabloff, director
of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology, the most prolific lender to "First Cities."
"I personally feel strongly and my staff strongly believes
that accepting objects of no or dubious provenance furthers
and creates an environment for additional looting, and that
destroys the cultural heritage."

These experts raise another point: ripped from their
resting places, bereft of their context, these objects are
themselves as mysterious as their recent pasts.

The scholar who spotted the Naram-Sin fragment thinks it
may have been part of a mold used to emboss shields carried
by the king's warriors. Then again, no one can really be
sure.

"Without archaeological provenance," the museum display
card reads, "both the function and significance of this
object remain unknown."

The Collector

How the Naram-Sin fragment found its way into the "First
Cities" exhibition is a story of three art-world
colleagues, each of whom illuminates some central issues in
the antiquities debate - Jonathan P. Rosen, one of the
world's most important private collectors of Mesopotamian
art; Donald P. Hansen, a New York University archaeologist;
and Joan Aruz, the Met curator who organized the show, a
glittering sampling of art from the cultures that developed
between the Mediterranean and the Indus in the third
millennium B.C.

Mr. Rosen - a 59-year-old lawyer and chairman of First
Republic Corporation of America, a holding company active
in real estate - has been an avid collector since college.
These days, his collection is especially rich in
Mesopotamian cylinder seals - engraved stones used to make
distinctive wax impressions. He and his wife, Jeannette,
are major contributors to the Met, and have underwritten
costly purchases of antiquities for its collection.

Mr. Rosen declined to be interviewed or respond to written
questions. His lawyer, Harold M. Grunfeld, said Mr. Rosen
never spoke publicly about his collection. But in a
statement, he said his client had acquired the Naram-Sin
limestone and two other objects of unknown provenance he
lent the Met for the show "through well-regarded and highly
reputable dealers in Europe." He added, "We, as attorneys,
are satisfied with their provenance, and the origin and
legality of our client's purchases." He did not respond to
questions about the dates of the purchases or the previous
owners.

Mr. Rosen has never been accused of wrongdoing, and there
is no evidence that he acquired the objects improperly. The
limestone fragment may have languished in an old collection
before coming on the market. Still, it is clear that in
building his collection, Mr. Rosen, like any private
collector, has had to negotiate the ambiguities attached to
objects with uncertain pasts.

In the search for pieces with pedigree, collectors are
necessarily at a disadvantage. Since host governments
control artifacts excavated in sanctioned digs, collectors
must buy primarily from galleries, dealers and at auction.
And while this marketplace contains many legitimate objects
- principally items excavated decades ago, before the
proliferation of national laws and international barriers
to the illicit trade - it is also teeming with plunder.

The raw material for this market is clandestinely excavated
from the sites of the world's ancient civilizations, from
Cambodia to Mali to Guatemala. The Italian authorities say
they lose the equivalent of a museum a year to the
so-called tombaroli, who pillage ancient Etruscan and Roman
burial sites. And after the Persian Gulf war of 1991,
thieves are believed to have looted thousands of artifacts
from Iraq, which had curbed antiquities exports since the
1930's.

Indeed, archaeologists and some dealers say many
Mesopotamian pieces come to the marketplace with little
information about where they were found. Much of this art,
they say, was likely looted.

Given such uncertainties, every transaction implies a
decision: how much documentation should the collector
demand? Does one assume a piece is looted unless there is
clear evidence to the contrary?

Mr. Rosen is no stranger to the pitfalls of the market. In
the early 90's, Turkey sought the return of a statue for
sale in a New York gallery operated by Mr. Rosen and Robert
Hecht, a dealer who has been involved in the past in
disputed sales of objects to the Met. Mr. Rosen arranged
for the piece's return; both men have said they were
unaware it had been exported illegally.

Over the last decade, Mr. Rosen has donated many
Mesopotamian objects of unknown origin - mainly cylinder
seals and cuneiform tablets - to institutions like Cornell
University. David I. Owen, a professor of Near Eastern
studies at Cornell, said the university had accepted the
pieces based on Mr. Rosen's assurances they were legally
acquired.

The scholarly interest of collectors is welcomed by
archaeologists, even those who have campaigned against the
trade in artifacts whose provenance is not known. But what
alarms those active against illegal trade in artifacts is
what they see as the insatiable appetite of some collectors
for fresh material.

"Collectors who buy unprovenanced pieces form themselves as
part of the looting process," said Lord Colin Renfrew, an
archaeology professor at Cambridge University in England.

Collectors, and some scholars, reject this
characterization. John Henry Merryman, an art law expert
and professor emeritus at Stanford University Law School,
said that while preserving objects in their archaeological
setting was "an important interest which most good people
support," some archaeologists had been too "bullying" in
pressing their case. There is "no sense of proportion
between what archaeologists want and what other other
people engaged in meritorious activities want," he said.

Museums and collectors, he added, play a vital role by
preserving art that, while it may lack provenance, has been
shielded from war, vandalism or neglect.

"I think the art trade is essential to what museums and
collectors do," he said.

The Scholar

Mr. Hansen, the N.Y.U. archaeologist, had visited Mr.
Rosen's town house before. But as he toured the collection
once more, he fixed on an object he had never seen, or
heard of - the jagged, triangular piece of limestone, 10
inches at its widest, depicting Naram-Sin.

What struck him, Mr. Hansen later wrote, was the way the
horned-crowned Naram-Sin was portrayed as a deity alongside
Ishtar. Four prisoners, in humiliating restraints, attested
to the military prowess that made Naram-Sin the dominant
ruler of his day. The piece, he wrote, appeared to be one
of the few of royal Akkadian patronage to survive.

Mr. Hansen set to work on a scholarly article that, while
intended for a small readership of experts, could have a
profound effect on the piece's standing and monetary worth.


"If a reputable scholar publishes an article about an
artifact, they're giving it the imprimatur of authenticity
based on their scholarship and expertise," said Jane C.
Waldbaum, president of the Archaeological Institute of
America, the nation's largest archaeological association.

For that reason, archaeologists are sharply divided about
the ethics of publishing articles about artifacts whose
provenance is not established. In the 1970's, the institute
barred members from making initial presentations about such
artifacts in its journals or at its annual meeting.

In a recent interview, Mr. Hansen acknowledged that some
colleagues would not have written about the fragment. But
he said its imagery was so unusual that it merited a place
in the scholarly literature.

`'It is a great piece of art historically, and I thought it
should be known," he explained.

His 15-page article, "Through the Love of Ishtar," was
published last year in England in what is known as a
"Festschrift," a collection of articles celebrating a
scholar's career. (This one honored David Oates, known for
his work in Syria and Iraq.)

The issue of the fragment's origins was addressed in a
footnote: "Regrettably," he wrote, "there is no known
provenance."

The Curator

It fell to Joan Aruz, the curator, to decide whether to
include pieces like the Naram-Sin fragment in the "First
Cities" show.

Met officials declined to make Ms. Aruz available for an
interview. But in response to written questions, she said
she had become aware of the piece through Mr. Hansen's
article and had been impressed by the way its imagery
mirrored themes in the show, including Mesopotamia's
domination over neighboring lands.

Like archaeologists, museums disagree about how to treat
pieces like the fragment, and again the debate gets back to
the question of burden of proof. The clearest dividing line
is between institutions that have mainly acquired objects
though excavations and those that rely heavily on donations
from collectors, like the Met.

Since the 1970's, archaeologically oriented institutions
like the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the Field
Museum in Chicago have held artifacts against the harshest
light, requiring proof that they were not looted in recent
decades. In the 1990's, the British Museum, one of the
world's leading museums, took a similar stand.

"Donors want to give you things," said Bennet Bronson, the
Field's curator of Asian archaeology and ethnology. `'And
sometimes, not to put too fine a point on it, those things
are stolen."

Institutions like the Met say they also require rigorous
evidence for acquisitions. But they impose a looser
standard to objects loaned for temporary exhibitions. In
such cases, Mr. de Montebello said, the museum relies on
information from lenders or published articles.

Given the many legitimate reasons for a lack of provenance,
he added, it serves no interest to bar such pieces without
clear evidence of looting. Exhibiting them, he said, can
have another benefit: "If there should be a claimant, that
claimant can first of all express gratitude that he can
lodge his claim because the object was found in the
catalog."

John Malcolm Russell, an archaeology professor at the
Massachusetts College of Art, said that, on the issue of
provenance, "First Cities" was "pretty typical" for shows
in which museums borrow artifacts from private collections.


The Met opened its doors to the Naram-Sin fragment and at
least seven other items with cloudy pasts. Most of them
probably came out of Afghanistan, metal pieces from a
civilization called Bactria-Margiana that spanned what is
now northern Afghanistan and former Soviet republics. In
the 1970's and 80's, plundered objects frequently turned up
for sale in street markets in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

One Afghan object in the show is a silver box decorated
with lions, bulls and wolves that was lent to the Met in
1999 by Shelby White, a collector and a museum board
member. In a 1998 article, she recalled how a dealer showed
her and her husband the box in 1990. It was badly damaged
and corroded, she said. That could suggest recent
excavation.

"Just imagine what would have happened if all finds from
this country had remained in local museums," wrote Ms.
White, whose collection has drawn scrutiny in the debate
over items of unknown provenance. "Many objects in the
Kabul museum are thought to be destroyed, victims of the
relentless war that has been waged there. Our silver box
may, in fact, have been sold by insurgents who needed money
to fight the invading Russians."

Ms. Aruz, the curator, said that to keep pieces without
provenance out of the show "would seriously damage the work
of the scholar." For example, in representing the Bactrian
culture, she said the dearth of documented pieces left her
little choice but to use the silver box and other artifacts
of unknown origin. As for the Naram-Sin fragment, she said
she chose it and the other Rosen contributions - a cylinder
seal and an incised jar seal impression - based largely on
the recommendation of Mr. Hansen, who wrote the short
descriptive essays for the show's catalog.

Mr. de Montebello says he is happy to have pieces like the
Naram-Sin limestone in the show, which runs through Aug.
17.

"I'm not sitting here defensively," he said. "On the
contrary, I have to tell you it is my obligation to put
these objects forward."

Others are less sure.

"Why would you have an object of this importance and know
nothing about where it came from?" said Mr. Bronson of the
Field Museum. "Objects just don't appear."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/02/international/middleeast/02ANTI.html?ex=10
60823619
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/02/international/middleeast/02ANTI.html?ex=1
060823619&ei=1&en=fe47d03137a013be> &ei=1&en=fe47d03137a013be



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