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Culture Without Context
Issue 3,
Autumn 1998
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It is a sign of the times that lawyers in the
United States are now able to make quite a good living from the antiquities trade as the
court cases continue.
- In Boston, William Koch and his associates (Jonathan Kagan and Jeffrey Spier) prepare to
defend themselves against a Turkish accusation that the hoard of coins they purchased in
1984 for about $3.2 million is in fact the so-called Elmali hoard of
Classical Greek coins, smuggled out of southern Turkey earlier the same year.
- In the New York Federal Appeals Court in October Michael Steinhardt contested the
Italian government's claim to his gold phiale, allegedly discovered in
Sicily but bout for Mr Steinhardt in Switzerland.
- During the 1980s the phiale was in the possession of Vincenzo Cammarata who was arrested
by Italian police in December and together with five of his associates was charged with
conspiracy and handling stolen goods. The police recovered some 10,000 antiquities
worth about $40 million from the homes of the accused, who include two professors at
Catania University - Giacomo Manganaro and Salvo Di Bella - and Gianfranco Casolari, a
coin dealer from Rimini.
- A relief from the seventh-century palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh has
surfaced in the collection of Sholom Moussaieff, who bough it in good faith in Geneva in
late 1994. The relief was identified after Mr Moussaieff sent a photograph to the
Bible Lands museum in Israel. The Iraqi government is now taking legal action to
recover the piece; it has also ordered a survey of damaged sites.
- UNESCO reports that Chinese Customs seized more than 11,200 smuggled
antiquities in 1997 and about 6,000 in the first half of 1998. Cargoes leaving China
are being closely monitored and a new 'anti-smuggling' police force is to be set up.
In Henan province, police are currently recovering looted artefacts at an average
rate of one per day and markets and auctions in several major cities have been raided.
The haemorrhage seems set to continue as report filter through from Sichuan that
thousands of Han and Ming period tombs have been blasted away in construction projects and
their contents looted in the aftermath.
- Chinese antiquities generally continue to command high prices. A
bronze flagon, for instance, dating to 206 BC, and allegedly still with its original
contents, surfaced recently in Hong Kong and was offered for sale by Michael Goedhuis for
£65,000. The New York Asian Art Fair in March, where many of the
objects on display were reported to be new finds or items which had recently surfaced from
unknown private collections, was financially a great success. The dealer Giuseppe
Eskenazi was quoted in the November issue of The Art Newspaper as saying "The
Chinese simply do not care what is leaving the country. They have so much."
And indeed, in August Gordon Reece was able to put on display for sale 90 pieces of
Chinese pottery, many of which had been excavated since 1985, some as recently as 1986.
- But times are changing as the Chinese authorities have now adopted a much tougher stance
and such displays will be a thing of the past. UNESCO hosted its
first training seminar in Beijing and Chinese officials are looking towards international
co-operations to staunch the flow. One result of the new policy was the return to
China in 1998 of 3,000 antiquities discovered by British Customs in
1994. The material had been brought to Britain via Hong Kong and the Chinese
government fought for its return through both civil and criminal courts. They
ultimately reached an agreement out of court whereby the consignors returned the artefacts
but did not admit to any misdemeanour. the shipment had originally contained 3494
objects, but Chinese official believed 494 of them to be fakes of modern handicrafts.
It would be useful for these objects to be publicised and their true status
investigated; it will also be interesting to see in what guise they eventually
re-surface.
- In Mexico, 50 miles northeast of Acapulco, a lorry driven by Bustos Reyes was found by
police to contain 2,700 artefacts dating back to 1,000 BC.
- Mexican authorities have also seized 400 artefacts from the collector Ignacio
Ortiz which they believe to have been removed illegally from burial sites.
- In October 1998, 208 Peruvian antiquities were returned home.
They were seized three years ago by United States Customs in Miami, found in a crate
marked 'Peruvian Handicrafts' and destined for Switzerland. Peruvian authorities
have issued a warrant for the arrest of the man who despatched the crate, Ronaldo Rivas
Rivadeneyra, but the identity of the putative Swiss recipient is not known. The
episode shows again how pre-Columbian antiquities are now finding their way onto the
European market since the United States imposed import restrictions following the
bilateral agreements reached under the terms of the UNESCO Convention. this confirms
the effectiveness of the Convention in obstructing the flow of smuggled antiquities but
also sadly highlights how American initiatives are undermined by the continuing failure of
European government to ratify.
- At the European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) autumn fair in Basel, five
of the twenty new exhibitors were specialists in ethnographic and pre-Columbian art and
further growth in pre-Columbian art was predicted. "We are talking high
profits, low risk" said Carol DiBattiste, Deputy US Attorney for south Florida, in
the November issue of The Art Newspaper.
- Also in October a newly discovered Neolithic tomb near the village of Mourèze
in southern France was looted. The local major was moved to express his
disgust with the human race but hopefully his mood lightened when the contents of the tomb
were returned within 24 hours. There is some honour amongst (some) thieves after
all, although the damage had already been done by removing the objects.
First posted March 1999; Page
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