Q&A: AIC director James Cuno on his new book

Last month I talked with Art Institute of Chicago director James Cuno about his new book, Who Owns Antiquity?, an attempt to reposition the antiquities debate in light of the arrangements museums such as the Getty, the Met and the MFA Boston have made with the Italian government.

Time's Richard Lacayo and Cuno recently talked about the nuts-and-bolts of Cuno's take on antiquities, which is simultaneously contrarian and traditional. (And, to many museum directors, out-on-a-limb. A source tells me that Cuno is not involved in drafting the Association of Art Museum Directors' revised position on antiquities.) I started my chat with Cuno explaining that as a Washingtonian, I wanted to talk less about his argument, and more about how each museum director is effectively acting as an ambassador from his museum.

MAN: Who do you hope is the audience for this book? Museum trustees? Your colleagues in the directors chairs of art museums? United Nations or government leaders and politicians both here and abroad? Or future generations?

James Cuno: I certainly wrote it for people who are interested in this issue, and these people include some or everyone you mentioned and some of the archeology community. And for the press, of course. That's sort of a narrowish band and I suppose I wrote it for people at universities and faculty and students there. I have no way of knowing this will be the case, but I hope that people in government will read it. I doubt that any foreign government will read it unless they want to feel slighted by what I say. I would hope that people in our government would read it because I think they have a role to play in all this.

MAN: You mention government officials. I've heard from several US museum directors that this whole situation would be easier if the US government was more involved. Do you wish that we had a more European-style cultural set-up at the highest levels of our government?

Cuno: As far as I know culture isn't dealt with the same way in all of Europe, of course. What is similar among all of them is that they have a minister of culture and we don't have that here. We have a terrifically decent system which works to our advantage most of the time, I think, but which works against our advantage when we have to talk to politicians because there's no one with whom to talk policy. There's no one who takes a leadership position within govt in these matters: Not in Congress, just the State Department.

It would be nice if [museums] did have someone who was designated as the person with whom we would speak [on antiquities issues], but I don't think even the NEA or NEH chairs for that matter have taken this position. It's a little hard without someone with whom to speak.

MAN: If there were to be a point person on these issues, who would it be? Where would it be?

Cuno: I think it has to be at State. These decisions [on antiquities] that are made have to be made in the context of diplomatic relations that, for the most part, happen at the State Department. Sometimes they're tinged with military relations or economic relations, but they're certainly about the relations between countries. There just ought to be someone with whom [museums] could speak... Congress drafted legislation in 1983 that was signed by the president that created the system that we have, so maybe an oversight committee in Congress should be involved.