NY Times Antiquities Op-Ed: Waxman Waxes Indignantly Over Museum "Sins of Omission"

The Euphronios krater in its last days at the Met
 
Yesterday was apparently Tom Campbell's day to be bombarded with advice neither solicited nor desired. It wasn't just my Ten Suggestions, presumptuously instructing the Met's director-elect on how he should run the show. It was also Sharon Waxman's NY Times piece on yesterday's Op-Ed page---How Did That Vase Wind Up in the Metropolitan?, telling him how to address antiquities controversies:

Mr. Campbell is young [a mere lad of 46, from the wizened perspective of Sharon and me], British [they don't have restitution issues, do they?] and gloriously new to all this. Unconnected to the traumas of past restitution battles [hasn't he had some previous connection to the Met?], he may be able to move the museum world forward without also emptying the Met's halls of Greek amphorae, Egyptian sarcophagi or Etruscan chariots. [That chariot ain't goin' nowhere.]

Exactly how he should go about this task, Sharon doesn't say.

As I observed in my mostly admiring appraisal of Waxman's recently published book, Loot, her strong suit is reportage, not analysis. But the Op-Ed game requires some pointed opining, so she goes with what she's got---a strong conviction that the Met must "come clean about its past of appropriation of ancient art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries" by "publicly acknowledging the controversial or otherwise dubious histories of some artifacts and by making the recent past as much a part of the artifacts' stories as the ancient past."

She wants museums' "lies of omission" (which she calls "shameful") to be rectified not only on the museum's website (where they belong), but also right there on the gallery labels, next to the objects themselves. She deplores the fact that the Euphronios krater, until the Met relinquished it last January to Italy, "gave visitors no sign of its disputed status, no indication of the pitched battle that raged around its possession."

When I view ancient objects at museums, I don't want to be constantly reminded of present-day skirmishes. I mostly want to admire them for what they are and to think about the cultures that they came from. I believe that most of us go to museums for what they can tell us about the objects, not for what the objects can tell us about the museums. A litany of mea culpas might satisfy some moral imperative but would interpose constant static on the connection between visitor and object.