by ADA | Jul 30, 2021 | News, Uncategorized
In what is arguably the most significant article on cultural heritage in the past month, Peter Tompa’s Art Newspaper comment on July 22 explains what is wrong with US policy and how to begin to put it right.
Tompa, a cultural heritage lawyer and the executive director of the Global Heritage Alliance, analyses the United States’ approach to cultural policy and how that affects attitudes and the market.
At the heart of his argument is the need to deal with the in-built bias against the market among the advisory and decision-making bodies that help formulate policy in the US. He targets, in particular, Memoranda of Understanding that ramp up import restrictions come up against Constitutional rights.
“These restrictions deeply concern collectors and the trade because they do not focus only on artefacts proven to be illicitly exported, but also embargo any items of a similar type that enter the US from legitimate markets, particularly those in Europe,” Tompa writes.
While this can affect legitimate market activity, dealers and collectors are not the only interested parties here: “…recent MOUs with some Middle Eastern and North African governments, such as Turkey and Egypt, have riled the representatives of displaced minority religious and ethnic groups, whose personal and community property has been seized by those same authoritarian governments.”
Tompa acknowledges that the US rightly has a significant duty to take a leading role in fighting the looting of cultural objects, especially as part of its recognition of ethnic and religious minorities. But he argues that this can be done in a more effective way that is also less damaging to legitimate market interests.
His advice?
Firstly to broaden the representation on Washington’s influential Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC). Currently, it has no market professional on it. “The sole representative of the trade is a collector, and no dealers have been appointed to the committee for years,” he explains.
Import embargoes are also too broad and bloated rather than targeted at where the potential problem lies, and they do not help protect vulnerable sites. The incoming US Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Lee Satterfield, who will oversee this sector “should refocus current import restrictions back to narrow ranges of culturally significant items that have proven to be illicitly exported,” argues Tompa.
His third priority is for the US government to give at least as much consideration in policy formation to ethnic minorities and exiles living abroad as it does to foreign state interests.
“The assumption that nations are great protectors of cultural property is all too often misplaced,” he writes. “In countries where minorities have been driven into exile by authoritarian governments, it makes no sense to recognise the rights of those governments to the material culture of displaced communities.”
How far Tompa’s concerns will be listened to is not clear. What is clear, however, is that cultural property protection is not a standalone issue; it is clearly tied up with international economic and political interests that can dictate policy in what is an area of soft-power diplomacy. Because of this, the valid public interests within the cultural sphere continue to be at risk.
by ADA | May 20, 2021 | News, Uncategorized
Following her involvement in the February conference to mark 25 years of the UNIDROIT Convention, ADA chairman Joanna van der Lande was invited to contribute a major article on the history of the antiquities trade, including the issues that have dogged it over the years and how attitudes have developed along the way.
To be published by UNIDROIT later in the year, it has been previewed in three parts by Cultural Property News.
by ADA | May 20, 2021 | Views
Reflections on cultural goods with no provenance – A review by IADAA chairman Vincent Geerling
On February 4 and 5, the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, the University of Geneva and UNIDROIT hosted an international conference on the theme of Orphan Works.
The idea was to begin a free dialogue – unconstrained by the usual taboos – between the various protagonists involved in attempts to shape the future of the art market: collectors, gallery owners, lawyers, historians and archaeologists, curators, judiciary, customs and police. The objective is to find a reasonable long-term solution that balances the interests of preservation, conservation and bona fide property ownership.
Orphan Works are archaeological and ethnographic objects – and more broadly works of art – which are present in private and museum collections, but for which there are neither archives nor material proof of their collecting history. What to do with these works, and what to do with them if the owner wishes to move, sell or lend them?
This conference was one of the rare occasions where art dealers had been invited to join the debate – in contrast to most of the numerous institutional meetings about trafficking and illicit cultural property.
The 26 presentations stretched across the full two days of the conference illustrated clearly just how complex this subject is. Five presentations focused on historical aspect, the first by Marc-André Haldiman (Université de Berne). Among other points, he considered a collection of 3,746 Roman glasses in the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Geneva, of which the provenance of only one glass could be established. ‘Provenance’ here was defined under the ICOM’s Code of ethics for museums Art. 2.3: “Due diligence in this regard should establish the full history of the item since discovery or production.” Ideal though this might be, it is obviously an impossible task for most Roman glasses and other objects from antiquity. Originally this ICOM rule was designed to establish the authenticity of paintings from more recent times. Today in the art trade, the meaning of ‘Provenance’ is the collecting history rather than the history of an object from the point of its creation. So one thing the Orphan Works debate needs to settle on is a clear definition of Provenance.
Six presentations looked at the issue of “works without pedigree”. Four of them focused on the challenges for museums. Marcel Marée (British Museum, Ancient Egypt and Sudan Department) spoke on The Circulating Artefacts platform (CircArt) as a tool for provenance research, and from this we learned that 85% of the objects assessed by the sophisticated software involved were found not to have been demonstrably looted. Those identified as probably recently looted could all be pinpointed to just a handful of sites in Egypt. This raises a serious question about how effectively these sites are being protected. Article 5 of the UNESCO 1970 Convention obliges Egypt to protect its vulnerable sites against looting and trafficking. The vulnerability of the sites involved is worrying, but the fact that all of the apparently looted material came from so few sites also raises the exciting possibility that properly targeted action now could have an extremely effective impact.
Provenance in German museum collections
Markus Hilgert (CEO of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States) gave a presentation entitled Provenance Research on Orphan Objects in German Museum’s Collections. This also underlined the complexity of the subject, but gave no indication of the results of his research so far. With a €10 million budget, one would expect something in return at this stage.
Six further presentations concentrated on Trade and provenances. Three of them were given by art dealers. Anna Zielinski (Galerie Sycomore, Genève) explained in her talk, A good provenance, how persistent a dealer has to be to get information about previous owners and that on rare occasions this leads to the discovery of important information, enhancing the value and interest of the object concerned. This illustrates that it has always been in the interest of a dealer to find out as much as possible about an object, but that in most cases they are thwarted by the absence of information because of the passage of time. Anthony Meyer (Galerie Meyer Oceanic Art, Paris) gave a splendid presentation, illustrated with old photographs on which objects could be identified, under the title Provenance has to start somewhere. This shed clear light on the dealer experience, and he vividly talked about some rare but lucky moments of discovery of additional provenance information. Jean-Christophe Argilet (Galerie Fürstenberg, Paris) told a story about one object “Un adopté américain devenu orphelin européen“ for which he finally discovered a very good provenance.
Next came Tracks for solutions?, a series of four presentations, including one from Apolline Sans, a legal expert in cultural heritage, who revealed that a definition for “orphan works” already exists in French copyright law (Article L. 113-10 §1 of the intellectual property code): “The orphan work is a protected and disclosed work, of which the holder of the rights cannot be identified or found, despite diligent, proven and serious research.”
What the presentations had in common was the high value of the objects researched; the orphans problem, however, largely concerns lower value items. I estimate that at least 95% of objects in circulation for decades or longer that have no documented collecting history are of a low value. These presentations set this dichotomy in context, showing how time-consuming detailed provenance research is, and therefore how impractical it is from an economic standpoint in the case of low value objects where the chances of success are minimal. We have to keep in mind that these are the sort of objects that attract collectors, thereby helping to maintain a live interest in helping to preserve the vast numbers of legitimate cultural objects in circulation. This is important because, understandably, no museum is interested, willing or able to spend time, space and money to preserve these thousands of less important works.
Collector’s proposal for database
At the end of the conference, one of its sponsors, Jean Claude Gandur, made an interesting proposal: the creation of a database for Orphan Works, to be maintained by a neutral institution. Once an object has been in that database for some years, without being claimed by a possible country of origin, he argued, it could be “legitimised” and traded without hindrance from then on. Possible claims for restitution by source countries should be dealt with by the courts, based on existing laws and international conventions, he added.
This fits with provisions for fair and just compensation for the innocent owner under both UNESCO 1970 and UNIDROIT. It would also protect collectors, innocent owners who bought objects in good faith, thereby avoiding long and costly court cases. If a practical solution for the vast number of orphans could be found, it would be a major step in the fight against the illicit trade!
Opposing sides in this debate will continue to champion their own causes, but this event is a positive step in the right direction and a credit to the Fondation Gandur, UNIDROIT and the University of Geneva. Whatever else, it acknowledged that the issue of Orphan Works is not a simple matter of right and wrong, but a complex challenge that needs to be debated seriously.
Marina Schneider, Principal Legal Officer of UNIDROIT and a major contributor to seeking a solution, has informed us that there will be a follow-up event. Before we embark on that, it would be sensible to agree on definitions for the following: ‘Orphan Work’, ‘Provenance’, ‘Provenience’, ‘Due Diligence’, ‘Cultural property that is of importance for art history etc.’ (UNESCO 1970 Art 1).
Agreeing on precise definitions for these terms would save a great deal of time and misunderstandings, and accelerate the search for practical solutions. In this way, we can all secure the future of all these innocent objects that have lost their history in the course of time.
by ADA | Mar 5, 2021 | News
CINOA, the global trade federation for dealers in the international art market, with 5,000-plus members, has published a wide-ranging new report that exposes the causes and sources of bogus information used to damage the market.
From the deliberate dissemination of false evidence, as seen in the October 2020 UNESCO advertising campaign, The Real price of art, to the misreporting of facts, the report shows how many bodies of international standing, from NGOs to law enforcement and even governments, perpetuate falsehoods about the art and antiques market.
It also demonstrates how the bogus evidence – as well as its constant reinforcement via the media and other sources – has directly influenced policy, including new laws that damage the market.
One of the most shocking aspects of all this has been the clear failure of highly influential bodies such as the European Commission and the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime to properly check the sources of the information that they publish; the repercussions for legitimate interests have echoed down the years.
Another shameful feature is just how much of the false information now being relied on can be traced back to media articles and other reports that are decades old and either do not carry the information claimed at all or whose evidence has been completely misreported as it has been filtered through other sources over time.
Frequently cited claims that prove to have no foundation in fact whatsoever include:
- Trafficking in cultural property is third only to that in drugs and weapons
- 80-90% of sales of antiquities involve goods with illicit origins
- Cultural property trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry
However, bearing in mind the time, resources and legislation already dedicated to this subject in recent years, perhaps the most startling fact CINOA publishes is that it cannot find a single instance anywhere in the world of an arrest or seizure of artworks leading to confirmation that the items in question have been used to fund terrorism. Considering how keen the authorities are to demonstrate the link between the art market and terrorist financing, it is hard to believe that they would not engage in a major media campaign to publicise such a case if it ever arose.
Quite apart from the unwarranted damage this lack of probity has inflicted on the innocent, it has also led to a wider failure of policy, with real problems that need dealing with under international conventions and other agreements being ignored in favour of the pursuit of propaganda-fuelled ideology. While the report focuses on the repercussions for the art market, the institutional failures resulting from this misguided policy have claimed other victims, notably vulnerable cultural heritage sites and the vulnerable people living near them, who should enjoy better support as they are asked to help in the protection of their heritage.
Much of this inappropriate policy development is funded by public money, yet acts against the public interest. Even when its failures are drawn to the attention of the authorities responsible, as those involving UNESCO and the European Commission have been, they ignore or dismiss them and carry on as before. It is hard to think of any other walk of life where such scandalous behaviour would go unpunished, let alone continue to be encouraged and even celebrated.
Unlike many of the bodies it takes to task, the report provides properly checked primary sources, including weblinks, for all the data it publishes, so that they can readily be verified independently.
by ADA | Feb 26, 2021 | News, Uncategorized |
Iraq is having a problem encouraging young Iraqis to train as archaeologists, according to the country’s internal media. The cause? Those who train cannot find work.
This is an astonishing state of affairs bearing mind the crying need for new domestic talent and expertise, a long-term plan for conservation and preservation, in keeping with the country’s Article 5 obligations under the UNESCO 1970 Convention and the vital importance of cultural heritage tourism to the future of the county’s economy.
“Many of Iraq’s world heritage sites lie in ruins three years after the collapse of the Islamic State and thousands of mounds conceal remnants of ancient cities,” says Al-Fanar Media. “The sites are under threat of looting and need teams of experts to unveil their treasures. But fewer young people want to study archaeology in what is regarded as the cradle of civilization, and jobs are scarce for those who do.”
Meanwhile field excavations continue, led by teams from the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Italy, Germany and the Czech Republic.
The experiences of one candidate explains their discouragement: “The graduates’ situation is painful,” Al-Obaidi said. “There are no public or private jobs for us. It has become a joke for an archaeologist to apply for jobs.”
The extent of the problem is illustrated by the University of Mosul intake: “only 28 students out of 17,000 students joined the College of Archaeology this year, according to its president, Kossay Al-Ahmady.”
“Usama Adnan, an assistant professor of history at Al-Mustansiriyah University, says the admission of only a handful of students in some of Iraq’s archaeology schools stems from “a lack of archaeological awareness.”
Al-Ahmady believes that poor pay is one of the reasons that put potential archaeologists off. Others experts give their reasons too.
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