De Montebello’s Latest Scholarly Diatribe on Collecting Antiquities

Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum, is going on an all-out public rampage against archaeologists who believe that museums should not collect unprovenanced or incompletely provenanced antiquities. He did it last May, at the Association of Art Museum Directors’ symposium on antiquities collecting, and he did it, even more persuasively and exhaustively, last night in his own auditorium, where hoards of would be attendees had to be turned away.
He began by scolding journalists who don’t get his point that the public and scholars should not be deprived of viewing and studying important objects with dicey histories. I do—as I’ve already said in a previous post, but I also think he goes too far in his attacks on source countries. He expressed nothing but respect and praise, though, for “our Italian colleagues,” for forging an agreement with the Met to give loans in return for the return of Met-owned objects. No mention last night of the Getty’s Italian woes.
Let’s hope that the Met schedules another antiquities lecture, delivered by a new arrival to these shores—Donny George. The expatriate and highly respected former director of the National Museum in Baghdad has just signed on (scroll down to second item) to be a visiting professor next semester at Stony Brook University on Long Island, where he will give courses on Mesopotamian archaeology and on Iraq’s sadly endangered cultural heritage.
More to come on Philippe’s presentation and my reactions.