Here are a couple of real-world examples. One of the best-known pieces in the Louvre is the Winged Victory of Samothrace, found in what was at the time part of the Ottoman Empire by the French consul. Recently there has been a campaign from the island of Samothrace for the statue’s return, so it can be displayed in its original location. But millions of people are able to see it in Paris, while only a tiny fraction will ever make the trip to Samothrace. I think it’s better off in Paris.
Another really outstanding piece is the Euphronios Krater, looted from a tomb in Italy less than fifty years ago and then bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. About ten years ago, the Metropolitan Museum agreed to return it and some other pieces to Italy in exchange for loans of other pieces. The Italians placed it in a museum in Cerveteri, near where it was found. Honestly, more people would have seen it in New York than will ever see it in Cerveteri, but it was returned as part of a cooperative agreement. That sort of negotiation is probably the best way of repatriating artworks.
You’re damn right I’m glossing over what a ‘reasonable price’ is! It’s super-complicated! The notion of swapping a handful of ‘good stuff’ for one ‘great’ piece like Dewey points out seems like a creative solution. Fundamentally, a museum that holds an important cultural artifact from another country knows that it doesn’t really belong to them. They argue that they are exposing that culture to lots of people. They argue that it was legally purchased. They argue that it is the ‘spoils of war’, but everyone knows that it doesn’t really belong to them. At that point, it becomes an exercise in face-saving. How can they return it in a ‘fair’ manner? If they’ve investing millions or even hundreds of millions in it, they shouldn’t just give it back for free, but there should be a way to return it because it’s the moral thing to do.
Now, less ‘important’ things are another matter. What’s one average sword in the big picture? All the same, I think most people know that they should return things that were stolen.
Again, why not return the original but they allow a replica?
Heck this can be even better than the original. For example 60 years ago a man name Dick Proronneke built a cabin in a remote area of Alaska which is now a national historic site. They made a movie and book about it called Alone in the Wilderness. The cabin is still there in Alaska and people can visit but because of its remoteness I doubt more than a few thousand people with the money can travel all the way to see it.
However inIllinois they built a replica and had some artifacts from the cabin (ex. his visitor log which has signatures of people like John Denver) which in some ways is better than visiting the original. Now millions can see it including people who cannot afford an expensive trip to Alaska.
Sure, but it doesn’t have to be super complicated for society. Society can
Wait a minute, wait a minute. You’re confusing the issue. I fully agree that there should be different standards for stuff that was spoils of war or otherwise less-than-legally obtained.
But the thing that you said that I objected to was that even something that was legally purchased should be revokable by national origin.
There are plenty of valuable cultural artifacts that were legally purchased, not stolen during war, and have ended up in the hands of private individuals or museums legally. Why should anyone be able to force those things to be given back?
My wife and I regularly buy paintings from local artists when we travel. If one of those artists becomes a national treasure, should our descendants or whoever they sell the paintings to be forced to lose them? Why?
Consider the example of the Faberge imperial Easter eggs. They were sold BY THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT (or at least the group running the place at the time); why should anybody suppose the buyers “stole” what the sellers were offering, or that the buyers have some inherent moral obligation to return what was purchased in open public sales?
In the late 1920s, Princess Olga Paley sued in British courts to prevent the sale of items looted from her St. Petersburg palace by the Bolsheviks; her suit failed, with the British courts concluding that the seizure was legal under Russian/Soviet law, the British recognized the Soviet government, and she had no grounds under Soviet or British law to stop the sale. While the Russians have over the past 20 years attempted to repurchase cultural patrimony sold abroad, even Vladimir Putin has rejected attempts to compel restitution, as it gets into really murky issues about who exactly is entitled.
Then there is the case of the Cranach paintings of Adam and Eve now in the Norton Simon Museum in California. They were allegedly seized by the Bolsheviks and sold; they ended up in the collections of a Dutch Jewish art dealer and were seized again, this time by the Nazis, in 1940. After the war, they were returned to the Dutch government, who turned them over to a Russian descendant of the pre-Bolshevik owner, who then sold them to the Californians. Meanwhile, the heirs of the Dutch art dealer sued (in the Netherlands and then in the US) for their return; just this year, the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case, so they’ll stay in California, at least for now.
Why? Because the art has become FUNDAMENTAL to the country of origin and it’s just a nice painting to your grandkids (or whatever). Again, your descendants just receive something in return for your good taste, but if they have, in the course of time, become representative in some way of the culture it came from, then it should be repatriated. I’m not say that every painting ever painted in the US has to stay there, I’m saying the few hundred important pieces should find their way home.
I don’t think we’re far apart. You think that you should not be compelled to give up a legally purchased painting ever. I think that you should be compelled to give up one of the handful of important pieces in the world for something fair. And the fairness will be adjudicated by some agreeable party.
I think we’re pretty far apart, because I don’t think that restricting this to just a subset of things actually makes a fundamental difference. In fact, those are probably the only works where such an extra-property-rights resolution would have to occur. Because anything else is for sale if the price is high enough.
You want to buy a Picasso? There are lots of them. But Guernica is not for sale. You can buy paintings by Da Vinci. But not the Mona Lisa.
I’m not sure I buy the idea that a painting that people are unwilling to part with for any price counts as “just a nice painting”. Revealed preferences indicate that it is incredibly important to them.
Also, more handwaving: please describe the process by which a party that doesn’t want to sell something for any price and a party that thinks they have a right to have it will mutually agree on a third party to adjudicate that dispute.
I expect that what would really happen under such a scheme is that paintings that the owners want more money than countries are willing to pay would be forced to sell for less than the painting is really worth, because whatever process is used to produce a “fair” value will be gamed.
There’s a much better solution that doesn’t require trampling on property rights: just wait for an inheritor who doesn’t care that much. It doesn’t usually take very many generations to find someone who’d rather have a few $hundred million than a painting that they have no particular connection to.
Let me be perfectly honest, I don’t have the intellectual chops to answer your very reasonable questions. I think that you’re fundamentally correct, people who own historically important works will be forced to part with them for a price they think is too low. My solution would be to put together a group of people with the intellectual chops to decide what a defensible ‘reasonable’ price would be.
I don’t agree that the solution is just to wait decades or centuries for a person who is willing to part with the work for a ‘reasonable’ price. These works are part of the
fundamental fabric of a country’s culture and belong within that culture so they can be experienced within the proper context. They can be periodically loaned or copied, but the originals belong in the culture that created them.
I think the Mona Lisa and Faberge eggs are great examples. They were legally purchased, but through the years, they have been recognized as works of genius that reflect the culture in which they were created. In my opinion, they belong back where they were created and should be repatriated. Now, I concede that they are enormously valuable and that their ‘true’ value cannot be recouped by their current owners. And so we have a conundrum. Again, in my opinion, the end result should be them returning to their ‘homes’. How that happens is very challenging and you raise excellent objections, but intelligent minds could come to a solution, I’m sure.
It could be cash, but it could also be an exchange of ‘lesser’ works, ‘shared custody’ where the works spend some of their life in one place and some time in another, rights to have copy created, digital rights could be exchanged and on and on. This is not intractable for focused minds.
This is part of my sticking point. I just don’t understand why this should have moral weight.
I can see an “It belongs in a museum!” argument. That we should have some kind of public access to great works of art, and if necessary, states should relieve private owners of great works to ensure that everyone has a chance to experience them. Eminent Cultural domain, if you will. But many Faberge eggs and the Mona Lisa are already publicly available in museums. Just the wrong ones I guess.
But why should people who happen to be born physically near where a work was created, hundreds of years later, have more moral claim to something than people born near where the work has actually existed and been admired and acclaimed all its life? Or, is it people born near where the artist was born? If Da Vinci had painted the Mona Lisa while living in France would that give the French people more moral right to keep it? Would it matter if he was just there for a summer, or if, like many artists, he had spent much of his productive life in France?
Faberge is an even better case for how muddled this gets. Faberge was Russian, but he inherited the jewelry shop from his father, who was French/German/Estonian. Which country deserves those eggs?
And, not for nothing, we’d probably have more Faberge eggs for the world to enjoy if it weren’t for… the nationalization of his jewelry shop by the Bolsheviks, a group which also didn’t think property rights were very important.
I disagree that you can resolve this kind of thing by getting enough smart people together. Whatever process you use to untangle the above mess, I don’t think it’s primarily intelligence-bound.
Weapons and military equipment belong to the victor: the victorious state, or in case of lack of interest, the individual combatant seizing the arms/ equipment. This has been the case for millennia, and I don’t see a good reason to change this. The same for symbols, flags, insignia of a defeated party.
Personal effects are trickier. I think morally, they should be returned if relatively easy - especially photos etc.
anything purchased from a legitimate owner stays put. “Legitimate owner” gets complicated: I can see the Soviet government as legitimate, but cannot see the Nazi-German government as being a legitimate seller. I can conceive of valid arguments why the former is not, but will not accept the latter as being legitimate no matter what.
Anything else is too complicated for me to figure out. I am suspicious of any “rules” which would make such determination simple.
Quite frankly property rights exist… or they don’t. You can’t have it both ways and say “we stole it fair and square; our rights now; I licked it; etc.”
Looted artifacts (triple for colonial loot) must be returned as provenance shows that it is stolen loot… or property rights don’t exist. Choose one.
I’m pretty sure his point is “property rights are a complicated full of grey-area concept, not an absolute.”
I also almost responded pointing out that adverse possession is a thing, as is eminent domain, and both can coexist with a fairly strong concept of property rights, but not an absolute one.
The point is that sometimes property rights conflict with other important principles and something has to give. And when the thing that gives is the absoluteness of property rights, they still exist.
