by Jon Lackman | 18 February 2008 | Crime, Museums
From the Boston Globe:
… as one museum after another negotiates deals [to repatriate art], and prosecutors all over the world target the commercial trade in ancient objects, some prominent scholars are drawing a line in the sand, saying that objects belong where they are – that the movement is based on a false reading of history, and, if allowed to progress, could do serious damage to the world’s cultural inheritance.
“What’s at stake,” says James Cuno, the director of the Art Institute of Chicago, “is the world’s right to broad and general access to its ancient heritage.” Cuno, the former head of Harvard’s art museums and someone often mentioned as a possible successor to Philippe de Montebello, the retiring director of the Metropolitan Museum, is this spring publishing a book-length argument against returning cultural artifacts, “Who Owns Antiquity?” [blurbed, by the way, by Montebello]. Cuno, who is among the most vocal and prominent voices in the debate, argues that laws meant to keep antiquities in the countries where they’re found are wrongheaded and counterproductive. They limit the number of people who can see the objects, he says, while putting artworks at risk and driving collectors and dealers into the black market. They also present an existential threat to great “encyclopedic” museums like the MFA or Metropolitan Museum, places that provide a unique opportunity to see the full breadth and diversity of the world’s cultural history in one place.
Such arguments have triggered fierce responses, not only from source country governments, but from archeologists who see in the recent repatriations and prosecutions the best chance for protecting the fragile sites from which antiquities are too often looted. Ricardo Elia, chair of the archeology department at Boston University and an expert on the problem of looting, describes Cuno as an “aesthetic fundamentalist” willing to ignore ethical and archeological values to get his hands on pretty objects. Cuno’s argument, many of his critics charge, is simply an endorsement of plunder.
