This from the schedule of upcoming programs on KCRW:
I’d like to listen to the show before saying too much, but this just knocks me over. Are the archaeologically rich countries going to strip us bare? Will the British Museum have to give back the Elgin Marbles? Should the only antiquities I have access to be those of the Gabrieno and Fernandeno Indians, since they were the aboriginal people of my region? Or should museums be encyclopedic repositories of world culture, so that people who live in California but can’t afford to travel to Rome or Athens can still enjoy and admire the art of ancient Mediterranean cultures?
I first started paying attention to this issue when the Getty Museum was being mentioned in the news; a former curator is currently on trial in Italy for having purchased smuggled Italian antiquities from a Swiss dealer. Well and good; if something was acquired in violation of agreements and treaties that govern, then it should be returned, but if you go by the quote above the source countries are ramping up the issue considerably. One’s now hearing the Metropolitan Museum implicated, and the source countries are being accused of applying the current reasonable rules to acquisitions that are decades old (perhaps as much as a century, in the case of the Met).
As an American of European descent (though not specifically Mediterranean), I sincerely feel that antiquities from the roots of Western culture are my heritage too, even though my ancestors came here from Europe.
I think that antiquities that are actually elements of a major set, monument or site should be returned to the country of origin, regardless of the way they have been obtained. That would typically be the case of the Elgin marbles, or say, statues taken from Angkor Wat. It just doesn’t make sense to keep the marbles in London.
Conceivably almost everything acquired during the 18th and 19th centuries, which were pretty much a “wildcat” era with regard to the acquisition of antiquities, could be demanded back, if your way of thinking were carried to extremes. There has to be some room for compromise.
Would you send back the obelisk in Place Concorde? (I wonder if the Egyptians even want that!).
I think antiquities should not be taken as part of war booty, and that antiquities taken as war booty should be returned. I think that careful negotiation is called for in cases where the provenance of a piece is questionable. I don’t think the antique trade is wrong, but I certainly think it is within a countries rights to regulate it at they see fit. A country deserves the right to protect it’s national treasures. If someone came in and bought the liberty bell from the homeless guy sleeping next to it, I’d expect America to take steps towards getting it back.
I think there are plenty of clean antiquties to fill the museums. We also have amazing reproductive technology. While nothing beats marveling at something a few thousand years old, I don’t see why we can’t marvel at the common stuff and look at reproductions of the national-treasure type stuff.
I’m pretty sure the vast majority of people aren’t going to disagree that war booty in general is a bad thing but I’m not sure why items looted from past conflicts should be given back.
We’re talking about items that were, in some cases, many centuries ago. Do modern Egyptians really have a sense of national pride and historical perspective, aside from tourism, when it comes to the ancient Kemetians? Does it matter one way or the other and if so, why?
Not that this has anything to do with whether it is right or wrong to keep artifacts, but I don’t want to make a big effort to see reproductions. If they don’t have the real thing then I might as well look at it over the internet or in a picture book.
I think there’s a fundamental conflict between property rights and the modern ethics of not looting historical treasures. While I agree that we shouldn’t loot I don’t think we need to give back what was taken. The Bust of Nefretiti will remain in Berlin, the Elgin marbles will remain in London, and Italy isn’t going to get the Mona Lisa unless someone steals it again (though perhaps that was acquired in a legitimate fashion). Is there a statute of limitations where we say, “hey, this was taken so long ago there’s no reason to give it back.”
One positive, which also has nothing to do with whether it’s right or wrong to keep the items, is that should a disaster ever befall Greece or Egypt there will always be artifacts that survive.
Whoever most recently conquered the land they happen to occupy? By that standard, the Native Americans can just suck it, which hardly seems fair – but there’s just no other basis to (for example) assign Mesopotomian artifacts to modern-day Iraq.
If Americans are willing to give some of their important stuff to other countries “so that people who live in Greece but can’t afford to travel to the US, can still enjoy and admire the art of the native Americans and the Pilgrims”,
and if the British are willing to give some of their important stuff to other countries so that those countries can have museums that are “encyclopedic repositories of world culture”
then it’s OK for the stuff to remain in Britain and the US.
So, since Prussia no longer exists, anything created in Prussia belongs to the world, and every country in the world can lay equal claim to those artifacts?
Same issue with the Soviet Union and with any other state that no longer exists in the present day. Do artifacts made under those states have no default home?
Because all the antiquities acquired during the 18th and 19th century were elements of a major, set, monument or site? Or did you not read what I wrote?
As far as I know, they never asked it back. But if I’m not mistaken, the obelisk has a “twin” at the temple of Louxor. So, yes, it would belong to this category.
I’m pretty sure most Londoners couldn’t give a toss, and many would agree strongly with the principle that they should be returned. It’s hardly like you’d find anyone saying “You know, London’s just not been the same since they gave back the Elgin Marbles”.
But who’d be making that determination? I’m sure there are many sets of artefacts that have been scattered among several museums around the world. Would the fact of their scattering immunize their owners from having to return them?
How do you know we haven’t been doing that? There was in the latter 19th century a great deal of interest in the American westward movement, and I’m sure some Native American artefacts must have made their way over. In any case you couldn’t designate an arbitrary tit-for-tat “exchange rate” of American aboriginal artefacts vs. Mediterranean ones.
It isn’t politically fashionable to say so, but, even though I live in America, I consider myself to be of European heritage, and consider the antiquities of Europe to be, in part, my patrimony just as they are of those who still live in Europe.
I think this supports my position indirectly. The only sense in which “Prussia” or the “Soviet Union” can be said to exist is that “Prussians (or Germans)” and “Russians” still live in those geographic areas, which sort of places the emphasis on national heritage and ancestry. If the “right” to have artefacts close at hand is based on cultural heritage and ancestry, then I contend that the hundreds of millions of “Europeans” who live in America have the right to possess at least a portion the patrimony of Western civilization within their borders.
Or another way of putting it is to ask whether the “default home” is based on currently extant political entities, historic homelands, or on cultural heritage?
No, this “right” is based on geography. Iraq has a claim on Mesopotamian artifacts because they control the land that those artifacts come from and are widely considered a government of the people of that area (perhaps not a great one, but the people running it are certainly Iraqis- not Chinese people or something). The artifacts came out of some farmer’s field, some sacked palace, or some old state museum. They were, by and large, taken by force from what were rightful owners. A lot of the details are lost to history. And there are a lot of wrongs that can’t be righted. But that still doesn’t mean it doesn’t make a lot more sense for these things to belong to the people of Iraq as opposed to the people of, say, Chicago.
Too many of our own biases are making their way in to these arguments. In a humanistic and scientifically based society like America, it’s easy to think that items ought to be distributed in the way they are now. But a lot of these items come from grave robbing, which much of the world considers to be one of the most disgusting crimes possible. I can’t imagine how much revulsion I’d feel if I saw the corpse of Abe Lincoln displayed like some sideshow at a museum in Egypt- even if Egypt felt a historical connection to Abe for ending the slave trade or something. I can’t imagine any British person would be cool with India displaying the corpses of dead British colonialist. It’s not an extreme view that graves in your own soil ought to remain intact and certainly shouldn’t be paraded around a bunch of foreigners as a curiosity.
We must also remember that a lot of this stuff is still sacred. I don’t know what connection the Iraqis feel to ancient Mesopotamia, but I know for sure that the indigenous people of Guatemala certainly are a direct connection to the ancient Maya. Ruins and ancient sacred places are still used in a religious context and a Mayan alter in a museum is just as sacred to a huge portion of the population as it was in it’s heyday- and chances are they find it very offensive to have their religious objects taken out of context, lumped in with a bunch of grave-loot, and gawked at by people with no respect for their religion who most likely do not have the proper religious credentials to even get near this stuff. This goes for any object from a religion still being practiced. Imagine how people would feel if they opened up a museum in Saudi Arabia of consecrated hosts, Mormon underwear and preserved saint body parts removed from their reliquaries.
I don’t advocate grave robbing, and it isn’t necessary for an American museum to have grave artefacts in order to have a comprehensive collection. I’m only questioning the idea that antiquities acquired long ago should have to be returned regardless of whether they came from a grave or not.
Not Mediterranean antiquities, presumably. As for some of the other countries you mention, which are probably more relevant to the situation of immigration today, do those of you who advocate returning all or most artefacts say that immigrants to the U.S. from Iraq, Iran, or China, some of whom may have been forced, leave their rights to heritage at the border?
While I must state for the record that I am neither Catholic nor Mormon, I don’t see the problem here. I’d think the Mormon underwear or reliquary would be akin to a Koran bookstand…each is an item used within the religion for a specific reason that. To my way of thinking there’s nothing wrong with giving people in the other culture the chance to learn about these things first hand.
I don’t know. I was in London this summer, and the British Museum was one of the most amazing places I have ever been. While I feel that to some degree the cultural gains housed there were ill-gotten, it’s also impossible to deny the unique and spectacular cultural resource made possible and available to all by British imperialism.
Perhaps a case where small wrongs were done but an enormous right was created in their wake.