After seeming to pull the plug on a show at the Cleveland Museum of Art meant to highlight Sicily's magnificent ancient past, Sicilian cultural officials have now suggested that the show in Cleveland might actually go on if an adequate price might be worked out between the parties. While this might have been somewhat more palatable had the issue been brought up well in advance, all this sounds a bit too much like an effort at extortion at this late date.
Perhaps in an era where cultural authorities are facing lean budgets, Sicilian cultural officials can and should ask top dollar to send treasures like the so-called Charioteer of Motya abroad. But if so, the US should also scrap its MOU with Italy. At bottom, that MOU is predicated on the idea of sacrificing the financial interests of American collectors, dealers and museums ---all in the name of cultural exchange unsullied by monetary considerations of the sort Sicily now evidently demands.
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A Web Log Championing the Longstanding Interests of Collectors in the Preservation, Study, Display and Enjoyment of Cultural Artifacts Against an "Archaeology Over All" Perspective
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About Me
- Cultural Property Observer
- Washington, DC, United States
- Peter Tompa has collected ancient coins for almost 50 years. He has written and lectured about cultural property issues for a decade. He is a contributor to a chapter on numismatics in K. Fitz Gibbon ed., "Who Owns the Past?" (Rutgers 2005). He has lobbied members of the U.S. Congress and the Executive Branch in an effort to ensure that the small businesses of the numismatic trade receive fair treatment from federal regulators. He currently serves as a board member of the Cultural Policy Research Institute and the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild. He also has been a co-chair of the American Bar Association's Art & Cultural Heritage Law Committee. His advocacy has received notice in the media, including the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Art Newspaper and the Voice of America. He hopes his views as a collector and lawyer will provide a counterpoint to the "archaeology over all" perspective found in most blogs about cultural property issues. This Web page is a public resource for general information and opinion about cultural property issues, and is not intended to be a source for legal advice. Opinions expressed here are the author's own.
6 comments:
"MOU is predicated on the idea of sacrificing the financial interests of American collectors, dealers and museums"
The MOU is implementing the CCPIA which in turn is implementing the UNESCO 1970 Convention - Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.
In your opinion, as a lobbyist working for the first two groups, do American collectors, dealers and museums really have any or even some financial interest in the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property?
They have a well founded financial interest in the licit import of artifacts from places like Germany and the UK that is being damaged based on over-broad interpretations of governing law at the behest of collector hating archaeologists and cultural bureaucrats from corrupt or authoritarian countries like China or overly bureaucratic ones like Italy, Greece and Cyprus.
Then if US collectors and dealers are ("only"?) interested in licit imports, why should measures instituted to cut down illicit ones be any problem for them? Why in fact do they not embrace the opportunity to show squeaky-clean application and support of such measures while they are in force, instead of trying to undermine them?
If it is the case that the trade only involves licitly-exported material (to the relatively minimal extent required by the CCPIA), why actually are you retained by the PNG and IAPN to lobby against US application of the CCPIA?
The problem of course is that the regulations as promulgated are difficult for coin dealers to comply with. Even if the provenance information required for a legal import was available (and it is not for most coins), it would be cost prohibitive for most as well. In this regard, the countries for which import restrictions have been granted, China, Cyprus, Italy and Greece don't have similar requirements for their own citizens.
"the countries for which import restrictions have been granted, China, Cyprus, Italy and Greece don't have similar requirements for their own citizens"
but America does. Courtesy of a a poorly-thought-out and imprecisely-worded 1984 law.
Can you tell me WHERE in the CCPIA you think there is any mention of the "provenance" of an imported object? I seem to remember we talked about this earlier. the CCPIA refers to the date of export, does it not? The rest of the collecting history is irrelevant (for the CCPIA).
The law is just fine. The problem is how it is interpreted by US DOS and US Customs. That was the point of the ACCG test case, but the courts did not want to get involved.
Importers do need to certify that coin in question was out of Cyprus as of 2007, which is difficult for a lot of coins, and even worse Customs has known to demand a picture in an old catalougue to prove it-- something not required by the statute at all and again which does not exist for the vast majority of coins in the marketplace.
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