Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
KPCC radio reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez yesterday revisited the Ban Chiang antiquities investigation, which came to the public’s attention a little more than a year ago, with high-profile raids by federal investigators of four California museums.
You can listen to the KPCC report and read the transcript, here. He includes a brief comment from me on the broader significance of the raids and the aftermath.
What have the feds come up with, and why has there been no reported progress, let alone resolution, in these cases? The short answer: We don’t know.
Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum told Guzman-Lopez: “These things take a long time to be resolved. The government is very meticulous”…or slow, or stymied, or…we can only wait and wonder.
The “scam” I referred to in the sentence of mine that made it on the air was the attempt to evade IRS detection of donated works’ allegedly inflated appraisals, by valuing those objects at just under $5,000. That’s the threshold triggering the requirement for donors to file IRS Form 8283, containing a “qualified appraisal” by a “qualified [independent] appraiser.” The raid put museums on notice that due diligence is required for acquisition of works that might previously have been passed under-the-radar because of relatively insignificant market value.
The action of the museum directors’ association that I referred to (which wasn’t primarily motivated by the controversy over the Thai objects) was the Association of Art Museum Directors’ revised guidelines, issued last June, for acquisition of archaeological materials and ancient art.