Penn Professor-for-a-Day: My Ceasefire Proposals for the Cultural-Property Wars–Part I

The topic that I chose to address in my two talks at the University of Pennsylvania on Thursday was Towards a Ceasefire in the Cultural Property Wars, in which I discussed the recent repatriation agreements between American museums and source countries, and made some proposals about where things should go from here. I think it’s safe to say that my ideas are not squarely in either camp—the source countries and archaeological community on the one side; museum officials, dealers and collectors on the other.
The bringing of criminal charges by Italy against the Getty Museum’s Marion True got the attention of every American museum with an antiquities collection. The result has been a sea change U.S. institutions’ handling of this issue, as evidenced by a growing list of repatriation agreements: three between Italy and the Metropolitan Museum, the Getty Museum and the Princeton University Art Museum, as well as those between Greece and the Getty (here and here), and Peru and Yale University.
These accords have certain common features, using as prototype the February 2006 deal between the Met and Italy. But they also differ somewhat in their terms and especially in the amount of public disclosure about the details of the agreement and the objects involved. Based on the developing case history, I suggested to my Penn listeners what provisions such pacts should contain.
I am particularly concerned that there be full disclosure, to the extent possible, of how the objects to be repatriated got into the American museum’s collection in the first place (i.e., through which dealers or collectors) and why the museum has now decided to relinquish pieces that it once acquired and held in trust for its public (i.e., some description of the evidence that led to the conclusion that the works had to go). The Boston Museum of Fine Arts did a particularly good job of posting every piece on its website, with images and complete provenance. I believe that the public has a right to know why objects that were formerly part of this country’s cultural patrimony are now leaving.
There also needs to be full disclosure of museums’ current antiquities acquisition policies, many of which have recently been revised. Some museums already do disclose their policies; some don’t.
COMING NEXT: Part II—Moving Beyond Case-By-Case Chaos