Archaeologist David Gill Celebrates Italy's Latest "Trophy Art" Exhibit

Archaeologist and SAFE associated blogger David Gill "celebrates" Italy's latest display of "trophy art" repatriated from North American collections in his latest PRNewswire release. See Looting Matters: Italy continues to celebrate the return of antiquities

But doesn't all this just divert attention from the real problems-- Italy's inablity to reform its cultural bureaucracy, unwillingness to fund its cultural establishment adequately, and to adopt more rational laws-- like the Portable Antiquities Scheme and the Treasure Act --that would ensure that the State only keeps what it can reasonably be expected to take care of?

Gill certainly ignores the politics behind the exhibit. The latest display, celebrating 40 years of the Comando Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale, continues the theme of a far more prominent "trophy art" exhibit, entitled "Nostoi," that opened before the last Italian election. Efforts of then Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli, "the Great Repatriator," to use the exhibit to drum up nationalist sentiment and votes before the last election failed miserably. See http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2008/04/arrivederci-rutelli-time-for-rational.html

Rutelli's Center Left Coalition was defeated resoundingly by a Center Right Coalition headed by current Prime Minister Berlusconi. Since then, the Berulsconi Government has taken a less confrontational approach to repatriations and has instead focused its attentions on trying to reform -- with limited success-- Italy's entrenched cultural bureaucracy. See http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2009/01/mario-resca-to-rescue.html In revenge, Italian cultural bureaucrats have helped hype tape-recorded revelations that the Prime Minister failed to report Punic tombs under his Sardinian estate in a sex scandal that the Center Left hopes will undercut Berlusconi's popularity. See http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2009/07/archaeologists-demand-investigation-as.html

The fact that these exhibits are so mixed up with Italian politics should raise questions for "cultural property observers" unencumbered by the "archaeology over all" perspective of Gill and his associates at SAFE. One suspects Italian cultural bureaucrats hope the new exhibit will encourage the government to return to a more aggressive stance on repatriations, and forget about real reforms of the system that could undercut their own power.

But one need look no further than the condition of the Castel Sant' Angelo, where the latest "trophy art" exhibit is being held, to conclude that true reforms are desperately needed. According to a 2005 article, the cultural landmark is badly in need of repair and is in danger of collapse. See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hadrians-neglected-mausoleum-close-to-collapse-503950.html

The same can be said of Italy's cultural heritage establishment despite efforts to divert attention away from its problems through "trophy art" exhibits like that publicized in Gill's latest press release.

Arrivederci Culture Minister Rutelli-- Is It Now Finally Time for a Rational Cultural Property Policy in Italy?

The electoral defeat of Italian Culture Minister Rutelli's Center Left Coalition by flamboyant billionaire politician Silvio Berlusconi's Center Right Coalition demonstrates that efforts to divert the public's attention from political and economic problems with nationalistic exhibits of repatriated "trophy art" like the "Nostoi" exhibit simply do not work in the long run.

If so, Italy may have also in a sense come full circle on the issue. Indeed, it has been suggested that the investigation that culminated in the Nostoi exhibit was at least in part a politically motivated effort to embarrass the last Berlusconi government, which, after all, had taken some steps to change Italy's outdated and ineffective cultural property laws in favor of ones that recognized the obvious-- that many otherwise law abiding Italians hold unregistered antiquities. If nothing else, this theory may help explain why an obscure Italian Magistrate decided to press his investigation decades after the antiquities were illicitly excavated and some ten years after after poloroids picturing antiquities in several American Museums were discovered along with other illicit antiquities in a warehouse in Switzerland.

In any event, the Italian electorate will now rightly expect the new Berlusconi Government to tackle Italy's immense economic problems, but after that, perhaps the new Government will again consider reforms to Italy's outdated and unrealistic cultural property laws. Hopefully in doing so, Italy will recognize that the State and the Archaeological community are simply incapable of being good stewards to everything and anything "old" and that collectors deserve to be recognized as the best custodians for at least some types of "cultural property."