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ece then is best understood as part of a broader effort to convince the public that claims involving looted antiquities are baseless and those who cave in to them cowards the reforms have not only failed to stop looting a scourge often given lip service by museums but never more they have spurred a raft of extravagant new claims against museums backed by menacing legal threats unless american museums grow a backbone and fight these foreign claims to the death in court eakin suggests someday soon they will be empty of ancient art as he has done in the past eakin relies on a mosaic of selective facts and careful omissions to cobble together his argument many of its most serious flaws have already been rebutted lee rosenbaum who herself is often skeptical of repatriation claims denounced it as a distorted often mistaken opinion piece and concluded eakin was an extremist on the anti giveback side archaeologist paul barford was less kind saying the piece illustrates quite clearly the robber baron attitude of entitlement hypocrisy xenophobia and supremecism when it comes to appropriating for their own uses other peoples cultural property that internationally is losing america friends cultural property lawyer rick st hilaire noted that eakin s argument overlooks the general principle that stolen property cannot be owned lawfully or that contraband antiquities smuggled antiquities are somehow legitimate speaking in eakin s favor i could only find three voices peter tompa the lobbyist for collecting interests blogger judith dobrzynski who calls the piece pitch perfect but acknowledged a conflict of interest in the subject and la times art critic christopher knight who celebrated the piece s nuance in a tweet let me focus on something i think eakin gets almost right his summary of recent events see below for his major omission other archaeologically rich nations have been inspired by italy s success in bringing their own claims many have been less disciplined than italy which supported its demands with evidence much of it photographic gathered during a decade long criminal investigation but here eakin misses an opportunity to articulate the key flaw of some recent repatriation requests the conflation of historical gripes with the modern criminal behavior of looting smuggling and fencing for example most of the objects turkey is demanding from american museums were acquired since the 1960s and have no documented ownership history before that suggesting they are likely the product of illicit excavations whether turkey has evidence to support those claims remains to be seen unlike italy the turks are making their case to museums before sharing it with the public but turkey has also asked several european museums to return objects that were removed nearly a century ago sometimes by archaeologists operating with government permission and to increase their leverage turkey has denied digging permits to foreign archaeologists who played no role in the alleged wrongdoing all of this coupled with turkey s own history of plunder has led to a skeptical reception of claims against american museums that may or may not be backed by clear evidence and with good reason likewise greece and egypt have frequently included colonial era claims with requests for the return of recently looted antiquities some of those historical claims may carry ethical weight such as the reunification of the parthenon marbles but more often they blur the moral and legal clarity of claims involving modern looting the same can be said for occasional statements that all things made in country x should be returned to county x which discredit the nations that make them so there is legitimate reason for skepticism of repatriation claims but these are not the arguments eakin chose to make instead he invents a picture of terrified museums being cowed by powerful foreign governments into giving back america s innocently acquired art this description of the situation makes for an almost laughable reversal of reality american museums have long had the power when it comes to claims of restitution the power to ignore claims to withhold information and to create or defend false ownership histories for decades they have wielded this power freely dismissing polite requests from foreign countries while continuing to buy looted art with impunity for years the getty blew off italian objections to their acquisitions of obviously looted art by simply refusing to respond to inquiries from senior government officials the met refused to allow scholars to look at its collection of looted greek silver turkey has requested the return of the sion treasure from harvard since the 1960s to no avail while the university published a book about the treasure that detailed its illegal excavation and included a photo of the looter s hole from which it was taken yet eakin laments that today 40 years later turkey has decided to begin withholding loans from harvard until it responds these are what he calls blatantly extortionary demands what motivates repatriation claims from source countries is not a desire for a few more pieces of ancient art the basements of their museums overflow with the stuff what they want is respect let s consider eakin s innocent acquisitions if there has been a lesson from the last decade of controversy and if there is one point made clearly in chasing aphrodite it is that american museum officials were far from innocents in case after case where internal museum records have come to light via lawsuits or leaks to reporters there is clear evidence that museums officials were aware they were buying recently looted antiquities met officials knew the lydian hoarde was looted and sought to hide it as turkey learned during its six year legal battle for their return dietrich von bothmer kept a map of the precise tomb in cerveteri from which the euphronios krater had been looted as we learned from marion true s sworn deposition the boston mfa s longtime antiquities curator cornelius vermeule was close personal friends with robert hecht and acquired hundreds of looted objects from him as the italian investigation and hecht s own journal revealed giacomo medici during a visit to the getty museum the getty case our most revealing window into a museum s antiquities acquisition process is startlingly clear we know it s stolen harold williams said in a confidential 1987 meeting about the acquisition of suspect antiquities are we willing to buy stolen property for some higher aim marion true discussed the contents of looted tombs in correspondence with giacamo medici and declared the golden funerary wreath too dangerous before greed got the better of her her predecessor arthur houghton visited medici s swiss warehouse and sought his help tracing the getty s griffins to tombs in southern italy houghton s predecessor jiri frel ran a provenance forgery workshop out of the antiquities department and acquired thousands of looted objects through a tax fraud scheme whose scope is just now becoming apparent in other words the evidence amassed to date makes abundantly clear that many of our highly educated antiquities curators and museum directors were not total dupes when it came to their role in the illicit antiquities trade they knew this is eakin s most glaring omission and the reason why repatriation is at times a reasonable response to foreign claims they are the pound of flesh that must be paid for our collective cultural sins what standard how much evidence is needed to establish that an object is the product of the illicit antiquities trade and should be returned to the country from which it was stolen for all the debate about acquisition policies there has been nearly no debate or policy papers on this question which is far more pressing concern facing museums today eakin reminds us repeatedly that museums have returned contested antiquities under no legal order and often with no knowledge of their precise findspots such statements remind me of a phone conversation i had in 2006 with the met s de montebello he told me that the met was prepared to give up its beloved euphronios krater if italy could present irrefutable proof of the precise spot from which it had been looted soon after the met s general counsel informed him that there was no such legal standard not even in cases of capital murder montebello left it to a spokesman to call back and sheepishly clarify that under the law the vase could be seized by us law enforcement based upon probable cause that is the legal standard for civil forfeitures apparently eakin did not get the memo the cases that eakin suggests are spurious are still being negotiated and we don t yet have access to the full array of evidence but what has come to light suggests they are far from fickle in the case of cambodia s claim on the khmer statue in the norton simon the precise find spot is well known and not disputed the statue s feet remain in placed today at the temple complex from which it was looted in the two cases where claims from turkey have been resolved dallas and penn there was compelling evidence penn acquired the trojan gold in 1966 from hecht whose ties to turkish looters are well documented and scientific tests later found it was consistent with samples found in turkey in the case of the orpheus mosaic investigators found polaroids of the mosaic in situ when it arrested the alleged looters eakin s call to legal arms betrays both his ignorance of the law and of museums dilemma there is a very good reason why museums have voluntarily given back nearly 1 billion in looted antiquities with no legal fight it was in their self interest as cultural property attorney rick st hilaire notes taking these cases to court is fraught with danger museums hoping to fight in court had better make sure they have no damaging internal records detailing their acquisition of looted antiquities for those are likely to come out in discovery as sotheby s recent learned they had better also be sure that no other objects in their collections have dubious origins because their legal fight will inspire a thorough examination of their entire collection this was the lesson learned by the getty which as eakin notes chose to fight rather than accept the voluntary return of six clearly looted antiquities several years and millions of dollars in legal fees later they ended up returning more than 40 eakin laments the cost to museums of dealing with repatriation claims the cost of litigation is far far higher this is not to mention the public relations consequences which concern museums far more than a few pieces of ancient art the true and lasting damage to american institutions over this past decade has not been legal fees or lost antiquities it has been the growing public perception that they are engaged in an illegal activity that at its heart is a deep betrayal of their public mission if they follow eakin s advice they will double down on that betrayal the enlightened solution that eakin seeks is the one being taken by the institutions he targets rebuilding trust with the public and foreign governments by taking claims seriously engaging in proactive research of their collections and sober evaluation of the evidence and when appropriate returning a token of the stolen property in their collections in exchange for a collaborative relationship with a potential adversary as eakin well knows this approach is not making great art ever less available it is providing museum visitors with remarkable rotating exhibits of the world s great treasures while moving both source countries and museums toward a future where questions of ownership recede and the focus becomes cooperation and education share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin share on reddit opens in new window reddit email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print like loading 8 comments posted in ideas tagged aamd arthur houghton association of art museum directors cleveland museum cornelius vermeule dietrich von bothmer giacamo medici harold williams hugh eakin j paul getty museum jim cuno jiri frel john walsh looted antiquities philippe de montebello repatriation robert hecht the great giveback virginia museum of fine art douglas latchford s footprints suspect khmer antiquities at the denver art museum posted on december 19 2012 49 comments who is douglas a j latchford that is the question many are asking since the bangkok based british collector who describes himself as an adventurer scholar emerged at the center of the legal fight over an allegedly looted 10th century khmer warrior now at sotheby s federal prosecutors have said in recent court filings that latchford knowingly purchased the sotheby s statue and its companion at the norton simon museum in pasadena from an organized looting network that stole the objects from the ruins of the koh ker temple complex deep in cambodia s northern jungles latchford allegedly conspired with the london auction house spink to obtain false export permits for the statues which were transported it to london in the early 1970s the filings claim our previous coverage of the sotheby s case can be found here as the new york times reported in june latchford is also listed as the donor of record for two prominent khmer pieces at the metropolitan museum of art that cambodia wants back all four of the statues are believed to have been looted from the ancient temple complex of prasat chen and smuggled out of cambodia sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s latchford denies the allegations in an interview this month he told the new york times that prosecutors were weaving together suppositions this is somebody s imagination working overtime he said in an interview at his bangkok home with reporter tom mashberg he claims that the london auction house spink at times used his name for purchases of objects he never owned spink claims it has no longer has records from those years at the same time latchford suggested he had a transcendental claim to khmer art buddhist priests once told him he was khmer in a previous life and that what i collect had once belonged to me he told the times asked about his early collecting mr latchford spins tales of bumping his jeep along makeshift roads in the jungles of thailand and cambodia exploring vine entangled temples and the shattered outposts from a 1 000 year old fallen empire he and other well known collectors he said would buy and trade what became available without fretting over the provenance details that govern modern antiquities transactions they were rescuers not plunderers he said pointing out that he and others have restored protected cataloged and donated artifacts that might have been broken into pieces or lost or neglected the feet of two ancient sandstone statues were left behind by looters at a temple in koh ker c...
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