by ADA | Mar 13, 2026 | Uncategorized, Views |
Academic archaeologists do not have a monopoly on ethics and rights when it comes to investigating the past, whatever they may think
Only academics, archaeologists, museums, NGOs and governments should be allowed to make money from ancient objects. Everyone else can – and should – fund their work, but must not be allowed to benefit in any way financially from the sector.
How does that sound?
Whatever your viewpoint, this is effectively what interested parties outside the art and antiques industry are demanding from dealers, auction houses and collectors.
The latest example to hit the headlines involves the consignment to auction of an important partial hoard uncovered in the East of England over the past few years. Recorded properly under the stringent rules of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, it has been identified as the largest known hoard of Iron Age gold coins deposited during the reign of Dubnovellaunos, ruler of the Trinovantes tribe from 25BC-10AD.
The find sheds light on this age of pre-history, while the 16 coins consigned have been released for auction after being assessed by the authorities.
With every box ticked, then, what is the problem?
In short, the individual who made the find and has consigned the coins to auction is an academic archaeologist, Tom Licence, Professor of Medieval History and Literature at the University of East Anglia.
Gamekeeper turned poacher
As far as his academic contemporaries are concerned, this is a case of gamekeeper turned poacher, as an article in the latest copy of The Spectator sets out. Titled How a set of gold coins divided British archaeologists, it explains: “Licence did everything right, but the thought of an Antiquaries fellow selling antiquities has led to a debate about the whole system of collecting and reporting finds.”
It also explains that Tessa Machling, an archaeologist and specialist in gold, recently made a Freedom of Information request and learnt that paying for the whole process of assessment, including salaries for museum curators and liaison officers, costs £8.7 million.
“The metal detecting community pays nothing towards that sum,” the article argues. “They do, however, occasionally get rewarded, and can keep – or sell – their finds. Detectorists gain but contribute nothing, Machling says, who told me [the article’s author] that until recently she’s ‘been shouting into the void’ about this.”
So, one-way traffic on the benefits front, then. Wrong.
As Machling’s own arguments set out, the people who are paid from the largesse raised by the government are the academics, curators, liaison officers and others involved in deciding whether finds constitute Treasure or not. Museums hoping to acquire the best finds need funds to do so. As often as not, these come from private individuals – dealers and collectors a lot of the time. Even the article notes that philanthropists play a big role in this.
As for the idea that detectorists simply enjoy a free ride, this simply illustrates the blinkered attitude of their critics. Detecting is an expensive business – equipment, travel, administration, accommodation etc – usually with no reward. Where they make a find, it is very often after years of disappointment and, as in the case of Tom Licence, it can involve a great deal of work, compliance measures and care to ensure the most vital aspect of this business: the accurate recording of finds in context.
‘Underfunded, overworked and lacking legislation’
“Finds liaison officers, says Machling, are ‘underfunded, overworked and lacking legislation’. She would like metal detectors to be licensed, with a small fee and a commitment to follow agreed standards.”
This is simply wrong. We have The Treasure Act (1996, and amended in 2003) and The Portable Antiquities Scheme, policed by the British Museum, which also oversees the Code of Practice for Responsible Metal Detecting in England and Wales (2017). Together they work more effectively than any other scheme known worldwide, and the resulting discoveries have added an enormous weight of knowledge to the national history and identity.
The problem with a licensing scheme is twofold: the tendency of such schemes to over regulate and be burdensome and punitive; and the risk of people faced with these burdens instead cutting corners by not recording and reporting finds properly.
“Licensing the detectorists would bring another layer of bureaucracy,” writes one commentator under the Spectator article. “A quango set up to administer the licences and before you know it detectorists will need to be DBS checked, have public liability insurance, proof of competency and goodness knows what else. This sounds like public sector overreach for a hobby that benefits historical understanding.”
The bad blood between academic archaeologists and metal detectorists, as well as the wider art and antiques market and collectors, is long standing and has worsened in recent years with the over-politicisation of culture. Museums and their curators, who used to work well and closely with dealers and collectors, now treat them as little more than criminals because that is how so many of the public bodies and campaigners treat them in the quest for control of the sector. This is shortsighted because dealers and collectors tend to handle a great number of items, allowing them to augment their knowledge and expertise regularly – and are often generous donors to public collections. Curators tend to handle fixed collections with little scope for expanding theirs.
It all began with the self-funding amateur collector
Those who rail against the trade and collectors forget that the traditions of preservation, conservation and scholarship, began with the self-funding amateur collector, and that many of the world’s greatest museum collections had their origins in the private holdings of individuals.
Soon to be published in English is The Demonized Collector, a memoir by Dutch dealer Karl Stimm, who contrasts decades of often unpaid effort in helping bring the past to the surface in a responsible manner with the brickbats thrown at him and other dedicated enthusiasts by well-paid academics shouting from the sidelines.
From the comments under The Spectator article, it seems that the public is more enlightened than the world of academia and archaeology, and possesses a more developed sense of natural justice.
Many seem well aware of the time, effort and money put into detecting by the detectorists. One goes as far as to suggest defunding archaeologists and academics and instead using the funds to buy the finds. Not the most helpful suggestion, it does, however, show that those currently pointing the finger at detectorists and the market might find themselves the target of mass criticism if they push too far.
by ADA | Sep 18, 2025 | Uncategorized, Views |
In 2001, the Taliban took 25 days to blow up the extraordinary and important Bamiyan Buddhas – two ancient monumental cliff carvings in Afghanistan that were the largest standing statues of their type in the world.
It was as much a political as religious act of cultural vandalism by iconoclastic extremists who were demanding recognition and the acknowledgement of Islam’s pre-eminence in a country with a Buddhist tradition.
Who would have thought that less than a quarter of a century later, it would become official policy for the United States to repatriate Afghan cultural property to the Taliban, now the oppressive government of a people it subjects to innumerable human rights abuses on top of the cultural nihilism?
But that is exactly what is happening now in the name of U.S. citizens, and it is far from an isolated case.
This state of affairs is all part of a wider move by authorities in the U.S. and elsewhere to harness cultural heritage as a low-cost and highly useful soft power diplomacy tool. Help other countries recover artefacts that were either stolen or sold off legally before passing beyond their borders and it can assist power brokers such as the U.S. to boost their geopolitical influence in trouble spots where unwelcome rivals such as China and Russia may be gaining a foothold.
It may be a cheap and effective political tool, but where are the ethics and morals of such a policy, and who loses in the process?
A recent case involving the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit sheds light on this.
Chinese or Tibetan?
As reported in March 2025, the unit, under the command of Assistant D.A. Matthew Bogdanos, handed over 41 artefacts to China on March 3. The problem is that the artefacts were not Chinese but Tibetan.
“The transfer was conducted as part of an agreement between the two countries to protect cultural heritage and identity and prevent Chinese cultural relics from illegally entering the U.S.,” reported Radio Free Asia. “Since the pact was first agreed to on Jan. 14, 2009, the U.S. has sent 594 pieces or sets of cultural relics and artworks to China.”
Returning cultural property to the oppressors of those to whom they should actually belong rightly raises concerns: “…sending Tibetan artifacts to China has raised concern that Beijing will use them to justify its rule in Tibet, which the country annexed in 1950,” RFA argues.
This view was echoed by Vijay Kranti, director of the Center for Himalayan Asia Studies and Engagement, based in New Delhi, who told the RFA: “The Chinese government will certainly misuse these returned artifacts and will use them to further promote their false historical narrative that Tibet has always been a part of China.”
Kate Fitz Gibbon, executive director of the Committee for Cultural Policy, the U.S. think tank established in 2011 to strengthen the public dialogue on arts policy, was equally critical.
“It is an outrageous act to return Tibetan objects in the diaspora to the People’s Republic of China, which is deliberately destroying Tibetan cultural heritage,” she said.
“Since China occupied Tibet, U.S. authorities have accepted that Tibetan artifacts belong to the Tibetan people, not China’s government,” Fitz Gibbon said in an email. “The turnover by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit directly challenges that policy.”
It is certainly an odd move when the D.A.’s office and ADA Bogdanos spend so much time declaring their dedication to righting historic wrongs.
What Memoranda of Understanding mean
If the Manhattan D.A. uses New York State law relating to theft to pursue its seizures and returns, the U.S. State department and Customs service take advantage of an ever-expanding system of bilateral agreements, also known as Memoranda of Understanding.
These allow law enforcement to bypass international conventions and human rights laws and conventions, giving them the authority to seize almost anything historic that originated in the country of an MoU partner, before handing it over to them. No evidence of the item in question being illicit is required. This is hardly in the spirit or terms of the United States Constitution.
As an example, consider the MoU with Turkey, which is up for renewal. Article 1 of the MoU restricts the import to the U.S. of a comprehensive list of archaeological material ranging in date from 1.2 million years BC to 1770 AD, and a similarly extensive list of ethnological material ranging in date from the 1st century AD until 1923.
Essentially, anything that falls into either of these categories – pretty much everything – will be seized at the U.S. border as it is imported and returned to Turkey unless it already has a valid export license from Turkey or Turkey agrees to issue it with a licence saying that its original export from Turkey did not violate local laws.
Effectively, then, the U.S. has handed a veto to a third country over legally held property that allows for its confiscation without proof of wrongdoing. Under such circumstances, this interference with an individual’s right to enjoy their property can easily be assessed as arbitrary – and therefore a direct breach of Article 17.2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The problem is that the UDHR is not a binding treaty, but the United Nations does consider that its member states, which include the U.S., have a moral obligation to respect the fundamental human rights in the Declaration. However, as this issue shows, they don’t. Constitutional rights also appear to have been cast aside here.
Turkey or Armenia?
The MoU with Turkey is highly relevant now as the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC), which officially advises Congress, considers its renewal and update.
Objections to its standing terms have come from the Armenian Bar Association and the International Association of professional Numismatists (IAPN).
The Armenian Bar Association is concerned that without its proposed amendments to the MoU, Turkey may lay claim to Armenian cultural artefacts that predate the arrival of Turks in the Armenian homeland which is now part of modern Turkey. “Equally perverse, Turkey may argue that Armenian cultural property currently located in the United States, which originated on the land mass of current-day Turkey, belongs to Turkey as well and, therefore, must be repatriated,” it argues.
Likewise, the International Association of Professional Numismatists (IAPN) has raised objections to the renewal of MoUs with Afghanistan and Turkey. IAPN Executive Director Peter Tompa set out the association’s detailed objections in his Cultural Property Observer blog, arguing that for both countries, “renewals raise fundamental contradictions that cannot possibly be reconciled”.
In tune with the Armenian Bar Association, Tompa also objects to a renewal of the Turkey MoU on the grounds of Turkey laying claim to the cultural heritage of minority groups within its borders: “Erdogan’s aggressive repatriation efforts abroad must be contrasted with his government’s active promotion of ‘treasure hunting’ at former Jewish and Christian sites at home. This is just another provocation directed at minority religious groups like the conversion of Hagia Sophia and the Cathedral at Ani into mosques,” he writes.
Tompa had previously raised concerns about Jewish artefacts being returned to the Libyan government that had expelled the Jews.
Libya or the Jews?
“Jewish groups are outraged and say the MoU legitimizes the confiscation of Jewish property seized by Libya’s government when they were forced from the country,” Tompa wrote in 2018. “Others in the cultural policy world are wondering why the US government would put faith in Libya to act responsibly to safeguard the heritage of minority and exiled peoples.”
Add to all this the fact that many of those regimes with whom the U.S. establishes these bilateral agreements are not only lacking in democratic principle, but actively hostile to the U.S., and the injustice burns all the brighter.
Tompa has also written in-depth in Cultural Property News on how MoUs work and what they mean.
How aware are U.S. citizens that their own State department and Customs service are acting like this in their name or that they might find their own property subject to such confiscation? And how would they feel about it, particularly if their own legally held property was seized in this way? Will CPAC do the right thing in advising Congress?
Image caption: US Ambassador to Turkey David Satterfield and Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Ersoy sign an MOU on cultural heritage, effectively acknowledging Turkish government control of minority religious communities’ heritage. Photo Credit: US Embassy in Turkey
by ADA | Mar 31, 2025 | News, Uncategorized |
Despite myriad figures for illicit trade worth billions or even tens of billions of dollars, no one can point to any reliable source for claims
A survey of a dozen of the world’s top law enforcement agencies and government departments has revealed that none of them appears to have any accurate data regarding the value of cultural goods trafficking globally.
This is despite multiple claims going back years of an illicit trade worth tens of billions of dollars.
Indeed, in at least one case – Interpol – the only reference to the size of the problem comes in a ten-year-old video still prominent on its website, in which former Secretary General Jürgen Stock makes the claim that the black market in art is as lucrative as the illicit markets in drugs, weapons and counterfeit goods – a claim long since exposed as untrue.
Carried out on behalf of several art market trade associations, the survey sought responses from the European Commission, the EU Directorate for Culture, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), the US State Department, Interpol, Europol, the FBI, Homeland Security, the Financial Action Task Force, the UK’s National Crime Agency, the World Customs Organisation and UNESCO.
Care was made to approach the correct source for such information in each case, and follow-up requests were made when advised by the relevant authority of a different source.
The aim was to get a clear picture of trafficking levels
The aim of the survey was to establish a clear picture of global trafficking data for cultural property.
“It is important to establish credible data to defeat the extensive misinformation and disinformation surrounding this subject, which plays a significant part in hampering effective policy making,” the authorities were told.
Each was asked the following: “Do you have any independently verifiable figures relating to the value of trafficking of cultural property, especially any global figures for the annual value of this risk area?”
And each was asked to supply the data and its sources if it was available. Not one did. More than one admitted that it didn’t have the information or that it simply did not exist. These included organisations producing extensive reports claiming cultural goods trafficking is a huge problem.
Others either did not respond or directed the request to another source. In one case, the UK’s National Crime Agency, the request was met with refusal to respond on the grounds that it was not a public body.
No relevant data from Interpol or Europol
Despite mass data being made available for associated issues and other categories of risk via the World Customs Organisation annual Illicit Trade Reports, together with arrests and seizure data from Interpol and Europol via Operations such Pandora, not one authority was able to provide any credible data on the size of cultural goods trafficking.
Having previously stated on its website that it had no data showing the size of the problem and adding that it never expected to have any reliable data on global trafficking in cultural property, Interpol says it is a “lucrative black market” and introduces its Cultural Heritage Crime section as follows: “Trafficking in cultural property is a low-risk, high-profit business for criminals with links to organized crime. From stolen artwork to historical artefacts, this crime can affect all countries, either as origin, transit or destinations.”
Requests to both Europol and the World Customs Organisation have proved equally fruitless.
Europol directed the request to its website, which gives no such data. However, it had responded to an earlier request, stating: “We do not have these figures. Europol is not a statistical organisation – Europol’s priority is to support cross-border investigations and the information available is solely based on investigations supported by Europol.”
Europol has since confirmed that it does not have the relevant data.
When emailed in February, asking why it no longer included any relevant data in its annual Illicit Trade Report on Cultural Goods, The WCO explained that global data on illicit trade “does not exist”.
When emailed again in March, it did not respond.
No relevant data available from Eurostat
The European Commission’s information service directed the request to Eurostat, but that does not have any relevant data.
The Financial Action Task Force directed the request to its 2023 report: Money Laundering and terrorist Financing in the Art and Antiquities Market. However, much of that report is based on historically inaccurate data and provides no credible figures for global trafficking at all. It also acknowledges that it does not have the data, stating on page 28: “The lack of reliable statistics concerning looting activities, especially from conflict zones, makes it difficult to assess the scale of the phenomenon. However, taking into account the volume of looted archaeological goods seized in certain international or national police operations, it appears that this is a large-scale activity.” This view does not tally with the global data published by the World Customs Organisation.
The US State Department directed the request to the Office of Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, providing two phone numbers. One had a voicemail, so a request was left for an email address, with no result; the other number did not work. The weblink provided by the State department gave no information on the ‘Office’. Extensive web searching came up with no contact details. No further response came.
A March 12 response from the FBI referred the request to an online request form, which was filled in the same day. To date, no further response has arisen.
No relevant data from the European Anti-Fraud Office
A follow-up request elicited a response from the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF). It welcomed the attempt to gather credible data but said its work did not relate directly to doing so itself.
No responses came at all from the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC) (Cultural Heritage Unit); UNESCO’s Information Service (for all UNESCO data); or Homeland Security.
Readers will have their own views as to what this means, but the complete lack of any reliable data – or any data at all in most cases – raises the question as to what the unending slew of claims over global trafficking in cultural property are really based on.
A more detailed summary of individual responses is available.
- This article will be updated by any further responses of note.
by ADA | Sep 9, 2024 | Uncategorized, Views
If you want to get an idea of how enforcement might work under the European Union’s new import licensing regulation after June 28, 2025, here is a cautionary tale.
Earlier this year, a dealer in Paris bought two fairly inexpensive canopic jars from their California-based owner, whose great grandfather – a friend of the celebrated Egyptologist and finder of the tomb of Tutankhamun, Howard Carter – had had them in his possession for many years.
The jars were despatched to the dealer in Paris at the beginning of May. The dealer was soon notified of their arrival in Paris, but they never made it as far as the gallery.
It turned out that they had been held by Customs for inspection, and the dealer duly offered Customs all the paperwork they had for them. The Customs officials did not require the paperwork, wanting only proof of purchase, which was duly supplied. They continued their inspection and checks, which included contacting the Egyptian authorities to see whether the jars had been listed as stolen or illegally exported.
After two months, satisfied that jars had been legally sold and imported to France, Customs released them back to the courier service, but again they never arrived.
Having heard nothing, at the end of July the dealer contacted the courier service to find out what was going on, only to be told that they would soon be delivered but that delays were due to the shipping agent being on holiday.
Knowing that they were about to leave on holiday, the dealer advised the courier service that they should ensure the packages be delivered no later than August 4. Although reassured that this would happen, they did not arrive by the deadline.
Service proves ‘undeliverable’
When the dealer checked again with the courier service, they said that they had attempted to deliver them but the address was wrong. The dealer then confirmed the delivery address but asked for the packages to be held until their arrival back from holiday at the end of August, a request registered with the tracking service. Despite this, three further attempts were made to deliver the packages without any effort to try to contact the dealer, and the packages ended up back in storage. On August 20, the shipping company deemed the packages ‘undeliverable’ and decided to send them back to the USA.
By coincidence, a shipping agent at the airport in Paris who had been involved in the earlier Customs checks had spotted the packages being returned and stopped them, contacting the dealer by email on September 2 to let them know, and confirming that they would be returned to the courier service once more for delivery the following day.
Again, the dealer heard no more and the packages never arrived.
Contacting the courier service once more, they learned that the packages had been dispatched to the airport again for return to the USA.
This time the dealer emailed the same shipping agent, who said that they would try to get them off the plane, later confirming that they had managed to do so. Refusing to leave anything further to chance, the dealer then went to the airport to pick up the packages in person but found that one was missing. They were told it had probably already been sent back to the USA. On inspecting the other package, they found that Customs had not repacked it properly and its contents were broken.
So despite clearance from Customs after inspection and contact with the Egyptian authorities, one package has now been returned to the USA where, according to the US Memorandum of Understanding with Egypt, it risks being seized at Customs and sent back to Egypt, while the other has been mishandled and, far from being protected under the Customs process, has instead been destroyed.
This is just one example of the problems faced by art market professionals when importing to the European Union. What will it be like after June 28, 2025, when Customs will have to check a vast number of additional packages it has not had to deal with before?
by ADA | Jan 30, 2024 | Uncategorized, Views
Sources quoted by authorities to clamp down on the art market rarely stand up to scrutiny
How does false data come to influence policy and even law making on such a widespread basis when it comes to cultural property?
One reason is confirmation bias: if the results of your research match what you hope to find, you are less likely to check their validity – a point made by statistics guru Dr Tim Harford when discussing claims made about antiquities and crime.
Another can be the authority of the source. This is very common in the cultural heritage sphere.
This two-part article analyses two studies from what should be an impeccable single source, showing how false data can spread from one official report to another to gain traction, and ultimately become an unchallenged authority among those who should know better.
They also demonstrate that many apparently learned pieces of research published by acknowledged authorities simply can’t be trusted, because it is clear that these professionals are not checking their sources adequately.
Both reports were published by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
One was titled PRACTICAL ASSISTANCE TOOL to assist in the implementation of the International Guidelines for Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Responses with Respect to Trafficking in Cultural Property and Other Related Offences. It was published in 2016.
The two relevant claims it included were as follows:
• The Museums Association has estimated that profits from the illicit antiquities trade range for $225 million and $3 billion per year.
AND
• The Organized Crime Group of the United Kingdom Metropolitan Police and INTERPOL has calculated that profits from the illicit antiquities trade amounted to between $300 million and $6 billion per year.
Footnotes indicated the source for each of these statements.
For the first it was “See Neil Brodie, Jenny Doole and Peter Watson, Stealing History: The Illicit Trade in Cultural Material (Cambridge, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2000); and Simon Mackenzie, “Trafficking antiquities” in International Crime and Justice, Mangai Nataajan, ed. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011).”
For the second it was “United Kingdom, House of Commons, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Cultural Property: Return and Illicit Trade, seventh report, vols. 1, 2 and 3 (London, 2000).”
These were very precise references, if rather out of date for a 2016 report by the UNODC.
The problem is that whoever researched the UNODC report failed to check where its quoted sources got their data from. If they had, they would have found the following:
– The Brodie, Doole and Watson report from 2000 did not refer to the Museums Association $225 million and $3 billion per year claim at all. Instead, on page 23 in the introduction to section 1.9, The Financial value of the illicit trade, it stated: “Geraldine Norman has estimated that the illicit trade in antiquities, world-wide, may be as much as $2 billion a year.” The footnote for this statement identified the source as journalist Geraldine Norman’s November 24, 1990, Independent article Great sale of the century. However, apart from the fact that the article was actually titled Great sale of the centuries, it included no such claim or figure.
The Simon Mackenzie chapter on Trafficking Antiquities is not open source data, but is available on subscription to CUP.
– In fact, the Museums Association did give estimated figures as part of its evidence to the UK House of Commons, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Cultural Property: Return and Illicit Trade, seventh report, vols. 1, 2 and 3 (London, 2000) – the same source as the second claim quoted by the UNODC. In the Seventh Report, Chapter II The problem of illicit trade, The nature and scale of illicit trade, paragraph 9 reads: “The scale of the illicit trade taken is said to be very considerable. According to the Museums Association, as an underground, secretive activity, it is impossible to attach a firm financial value to the illicit trade in cultural material. Estimates of its worldwide extent vary from £150 million up to £2 billion per year.” The Museums Association gave as its source the Brodie, Doole and Watson 2000 report, quoted above, which in turn gave the Geraldine Norman article as the source, when, in fact, it provided no such figures.
So, the Museums Association’s actual claim was that “it is impossible to attach a firm financial value to the illicit trade in cultural material”, but that estimates worldwide [by others] varied greatly between £150 million and £2 billion.
This was rather different from the UNODC claim based on this source: “The Museums Association has estimated that profits from the illicit antiquities trade range for $225 million and $3 billion per year.”
To summarise, then, the £150 million to £2 billion claim ultimately came from nowhere. Its claimed primary source, the Geraldine Norman article from 1990, quoted no such figures. The secondary source which mistakenly quoted them was the Brodie, Doole & Watson report from ten years later in 2000, leading to the tertiary source of the Museums Association. In turn, this was quoted by the UNODC in 2016 – 26 years after the Norman article which gave no figures anyway. The UNODC report then became a new ‘primary’ source, with the figures quoted as UNODC estimates, which they weren’t at all.
See Part 2
by ADA | Oct 27, 2023 | Uncategorized, Views
Three developments in recent weeks have raised questions once again about the activities of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and its antiquities unit. Separately they are of concern; together they demand some clear answers.
The first involves the claim that 19 items returned to Italy as “illicit” were worth $19 million. The figures simply didn’t add up according to expert valuers from the Antiquities Dealers’ Association, who noted that the South Italian plate included was worth up to about $7,000 at auction, but “only if it were to have a good provenance”.
When asked by Antiques Trade Gazette how the unit had arrived at the valuation, the D.A.’s office replied: “We have experts assess the objects at the time of each repatriation based on the legal definition of value under the law.”
Who these experts are and how they arrived at such an overblown valuation remains a mystery.
This matters because:
- What appears to be a gross exaggeration of value feeds into the inaccurate narrative of a huge international illicit trade in artefacts.
- It also boosts the public standing of the antiquities unit, which in turn makes its unquestioned position all the more unassailable at a time when serious questions regarding its activities need to be asked.
- The unit’s activities are funded from the public purse, so the public is entitled to accurate reporting and transparency.
If the above is an accurate assessment of the situation, it raises a raft of new questions.
One of those questions involves the second development: the D.A.’s publishing of a media release that led to inaccurate reporting on the criminal status of individuals.
Having unequivocally labelled a number of named individuals as “major antiquities traffickers” in the opening paragraph, an unheralded footnote states: “The charges referenced within are merely allegations, and the individuals are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.”
The failure to annotate the body of the release with a reference to the footnote inevitably risks misreporting, especially by those who fail to read to the end of the release. An internet search has revealed at least two examples of this happening in this case. Why is this not of serious concern to the Manhattan D.A.?
Cleveland Museum of Arts sues the D.A. over statue seizure
One of the most significant developments has come at the hands of the Cleveland Museum of Arts, which is now suing the D.A.’s office over its seizure of a headless ancient bronze statue valued at $20 million.
The D.A.’s office argues that it is of Marcus Aurelius and was looted from Turkey. The museum, which acquired the statue in 1986, says that is not the case.
As the court papers reveal, Turkey made vague and unsubstantiated claims regarding the statue around 15 years ago but did not respond when asked for evidence to support its case and did not pursue the matter further until now.
As the statue had been widely exhibited and written about over the years, Turkey had had a long time to press its case but did not do so. This was also the case when Turkey failed in its claim over the Guennol Stargazer in the New York courts. Among other comments in 2021, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan noted that Turkey had known of the piece for years and had had ample opportunity to make a claim but had failed to do so in a timely manner.
The Cleveland Museum of Art’s court papers highlight the controversial approach of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in seizing objects and returning them to source countries: “For more than ten years, the New York County (Manhattan) District Attorney has conducted numerous investigations of antiquities allegedly stolen from foreign nations, returning many of them to those nations. Proof that these items are “stolen” typically is established using the laws of such nations (“patrimony laws”), which, among other things, declare that items of a certain age or type belong to the nation. If a covered object is then illegally exported after the effective date of the patrimony law, the argument is made that it is stolen property.
“Unlike typical criminal investigations, the New York District Attorney’s primary purpose appears to be to return antiquities to their countries of origin or modern discovery, assuming the office can verify the appropriate country.”
The court papers also note that when such returns are made, the media report the returns as involving “looted antiquities” – evidence of any such looting, if it exists, is rarely made clear.
As ADA chairman Joanna van der Lande wrote to ATG in the wake of the $19 million claim: “It’s time that the media challenged official bodies, from the Manhattan D.A.’s office to UNESCO, the European Commission, Europol and others, and subject them to the same level of scrutiny that they apply to the market rather than just accepting what they put out in statements. Let’s have the same transparency and due diligence when it comes to ‘facts’ that these bodies so readily demand of dealers and auction houses in relation to objects.”
Recent Comments