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New MFA link seen to looted artifacts
Scholars cite works acquired since 1984
By Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff, 12/27/98

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.




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