U.S. Govt.Approach to Collectors Drives History Underground

An article about the notorious "gottcha" anti-collector campaigner Christos Tsirogiannis( Tasos Kokkinidis, "Meet the Greek Archaeologist Chasing Looted Antiquities but Shunned by Greece" Greek Reporter Aug 4, 2017)....

Christos Tsirogiannis, a Greek forensic archaeologist who had discovered and reported numerous cases of looted ancient artefacts in Greece and abroad, speaks of his disappointment that his beloved country has “zero cooperation” with him. In an exclusive interview with the Greek Reporter, Tsirogiannis says that he has been sending information to the Greek authorities regarding looted ancient art works, asking nothing in return, but gets no reply, or acknowledgment.

James McAndrew‏ @ArtTradeSolution comments: "Tsirogiannis can rescue 500 antiquities in collections. Meanwhile 1 million more go underground. Short sighted!" he says our State Dept. Should insist that Italy make public the Medici and Becchina archives to stop thse "gottcha" attacks on the trade. By not insisting on this, the State Dept. fails to protect the U.S. Market. This is wrong! By its failure to protect U.S. Antiquity collectors, the U.S. Govt. failure to  drives history underground.

see also: Melanie Gerlis, 'Calls to open looted-art archives grow louder Museums and the trade want to put an end to the Catch-22 situation with Medici and Becchina ' Art newspaper 2 June 2015.

Draining the Stinking Anti-Collector Swamp

There is some great news coming out of Washington as the Trump administration begins to make its mark on the cultural landscape (Peter Tompa, " Congressional Appropriators Hold State Department, CPAC and Source Countries Accountable" July 31 2017).

The House of Representatives has used the appropriations process to highlight the need for the State Department and the Cultural Property Advisory Committee to hold countries with MOUs with the United States accountable for spending adequate sums to protect their own cultural patrimony as a precondition for receiving continued US assistance. For more, see here. It's long past time for such a message to be sent. If source countries are poor stewards for what they already have, why repatriate more objects under the misapprehension they will be properly studied, preserved and displayed?

As John Howland UK Collector remarks, let us all hope this is the first bore hole in the drilling into the layers of lies and deceit to expose the rampant corruption in some source countries. As he says, much of this dishonesty must surely have already been identified by some of the major players cossetted in higher echelons of archaeology. It is sure that someone, somewhere has gotten very rich thanks to unsuspecting US taxpayers. We can only hope that when they identify those individuals the State Department will name those involved and take the appropriate action.

Tug of war over disputed relic from Lebanon

A tug of war has broken out over an ancient relic from Lebanon that Manhattan prosecutors have impounded ("U.S. tug of war over disputed relic from Lebanon" Daily Star August 04, 2017 )

Lynda and William Beierwaltes initially purchased the head in 1996 from a London dealer, who had bought it from an art dealer in Switzerland. According to the New York Times, they paid $1 million for the work. In 2010, the couple sold the head to a private collector in the United States, who loaned it to the Met, which put it on public display. After a curator discovered it may have been stolen from government storage during Lebanon’s Civil War, the museum said it took “immediate action” and handed over the head to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. [...] When Lebanon demanded restitution, the Beierwaltes, who rescinded the 2010 sale, filed a 20-page lawsuit in a U.S. federal court against Lebanon’s directorate of antiquities and the New York district attorney’s office. “The Beierwaltes are bona fide purchasers with clean hands,” their lawyer William Pearlstein said. “By contrast, for more than 50 years, Lebanon has failed take any action domestically or internationally to report any theft of the bull’s head.” Pearlstein says there were no grounds under federal law for state prosecutors to seize the relic and that even if the head had been stolen, the statue of limitations under Lebanese law has expired.

People walk through galleries at New York's Metropolitan
Museum of Art, May 31, 2013. Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP

Museums in the U.S. should be ashamed. Defend and protect against frivolous claims for antiquities lawfully acquired. Seealso: Peter Tompa, "Collectors Contest Lawless Seizure" August 2, 2017.

Police ignored as Chinese treasure hunters dig up 500kg of Coins

Liu Zhen, "Police ignored as Chinese treasure hunters dig up 500kg of Qing dynasty coins" South China Morning Post Thursday, 05 January, 2017

Hundreds of Chinese treasure hunters – including pensioners and children – ignored outnumbered police as they dug up more than 500kg of ancient coins during an unauthorised mass dig near a river, mainland media reported. Local police had to bring in 20 reinforcements the next day before they were able to cordon off the area and stop villagers digging for artefacts in a 30 square metre area of riverbank beside the Gan River in Xingan county, Jiangxi province, last week, the provincial news portal Jxcn.cn reported. The county authorities are now trying to recover the antique coins, believed to date from the Qing (1644-1911) dynasty, which were uncovered without permission. The private excavation of antiques is illegal as Chinese law stipulates that all such discoveries belong to the government, a local official said. Inscriptions on the coins suggested they date from the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) during the Qing dynasty, the official said. The head of county’s cultural heritage bureau said local authorities were working with villagers to recover the coins, which were thought to have been part of a Qing courtier’s fortune, which was lost when a ship sank as he was travelling home to Jiangxi after his retirement. The authorities plan to carry out a further archaeological dig at the site, the report said.

Peter Tompa says "Maybe China needs its own PAS, the local people probably wonder why Big Brother wants to take away their valuable coins.

A question for Archeologists

Archeologists, does hiring local indigenous people at dig sites develop the next generation of looters?

The Argonauts Sail Again

Spectacular reconstruction of the penteconter, the Argo, immortalized by Apollonius of Rhodes in his poem of Jason and the Argonauts

Repatriation Interruptus

This article by Kate Fitz Gibbon exposes the looted archives issue for the misleading nonsense it is: 'Repatriation Interruptus: Met’s Good Faith Attempt to Work with Italy Stymied By Seizure' CCP blog July 31, 2017. Antiquities hunter and zealous prosecutors spin a looted art story.

Today’s announcement of the seizure of an ancient Greek vase from the Metropolitan Museum in New York is an example of how prosecutors and a self-styled artifacts hunter can make hay with claims that were already being dealt with in good faith between a museum and a source country government. The real story is that a major museum bought an artwork in 1989, exhibited it for decades, was denied access to information about it for more than 25 years, and is now attacked for holding “loot.”