Let’s wrap up that conversation with Jim Cuno, the director of the Art Institute of Chicago, who’s forthcoming book is Who Owns Antiquities? In the part I posted yesterday Cuno explained that he’d like to see a return to the system of partage, which was once the rule for archeological digs. Under that system, source nations — meaning nations where the digs occur, which could be Turkey, Egypt, Mexico, etc. — compensate the universities and museums that finance and provide most of the archeologists — and these are typically North American and European institutions — by sharing with those institutions what’s found at the digs. Presently the source nations usually keep everything.
LACAYO: The governments of source countries have been very aggressive lately in pursuing their claims to antiquities. Italy is the obvious example but it’s just one. Is there more that the U.S. government could be doing to advance the interests of U.S. museums, for instance by encouraging source nations to consider a return to partage? The feeling among a lot of museum people is that because the State Department wants the cooperation of source nations on high priority concerns like drug trafficking, terrorism, copyright protection, etc, it routinely grants their requests for the U.S. to impose import bans on antiquities from their territories.
CUNO: We know that these decisions are politically driven. The response of the U.S. to requests from Italy is actually made at the level of the White House, not at the level of the cultural bureaucracy but the level of the State Department. Our relationship with Italy has been important going back to the Second World War, with access to the Mediterranean, to the Middle East. They were even more precious during the Cold War and the current war with Iraq under Berlusconi. Of course we’re going to respond to all this.
But I can imagine the government saying: “Look, it’s in the interests of the citizens of the United States and it’s our job as the government of the United States to protect the rights [of American museums and universties] to have access to that material. So we’re not going to renew your request for [an import ban] for the third time [Lacayo: Italy has such a request pending] unless you make these materials available. And not just to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston or the Getty museum where you have a quid pro quo. [Lacayo: What Cuno means is that as part of their agreement to return disputed antiquities, Italy promised these particular museums the long term loan of other objects.] But also to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, the Johnson in Omaha Nebraska, the Seattle Art Museum, to Detroit — all throughout this nation. The government holds that card, which is the authority they have to agree to the requests to impose import bans.
LACAYO: Could the universities that sponsor the digs do more?
CUNO: What if the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania said [to source countries] we are not going to assist with excavations unless you restore this system, by which we both benefited, of partage. The irony is that many of the curators at these university museums are among the most vocal in their support of these cultural property laws. But they could not now teach at, say, the University of Chicago, if there had not once been a system of partage, because they are teaching with materials that were excavated and brought over when there was partage.
LACAYO: What about the free market in antiquities? Many archeologists argue that any market in antiquities encourages looting, because the looters can sell their stolen goods to unscrupulous middle men, and the middle men know they can re-sell them to dealers and museums. Can there be a market in antiquities? Should there be one?
CUNO: More is lost to national disaster, economic development and war than is lost to the art market. Museums are a small part of this problem. if it’s going to be stopped it can’t be stopped by museums not acquiring.
Looting is a not a casual past time. It’s desperate people in desperate circumstances who loot. They risk their lives. Museums recognize that there is a relationship between the marketplace and looting, and we want to distance ourselves from it as much as we can and still preserve these things that will otherwise be lost. How do you behave responsibly in this realm? There has to be a package of responses. One part of the package is partage. And another part has to do with allowing museums to reasonably acquire.
In related news, The Art Newspaper has this about the big trial about to begin in Italy of 70 accused “tomb raiders”.