Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Cultural Heritage

Turkey Admits Theft, Fakes At Its Ankara State Museum

No sooner had I written about the looting and destruction of cultural heritage troubles in Syria  this week than the last lines of the article to which I referred, Syria’s ancient treasures pulverised by Robert Fisk, came to mind:

This is why it is so important to have an inventory of the treasures of national museums and ancient cities. Emma Cunliffe, a PhD researcher at Durham University, published the first detailed account of the state of Syrian archeological sites in her Damage to the Soul of Syria: Syria’s Cultural Heritage in Conflict, listing the causes of destruction, the use of sites as military positions and what can only be called merciless looting. Much of her work has informed the studies of archaeologists like Farchakh.

Then I read about a situation in Turkey, where the Hurriet Daily News published an article on Aug. 8 headlined, Ministry Admits Grand Theft from Art Museum. That article began:

Over 200 works of art are presently missing from Ankara’s State Art and Sculpture Museum, according to a report from the Culture and Tourism Ministry, which has pinned the blame for the losses on Turkey’s 1980 coup d’etat.

A recent report by the ministry, which was later shelved away from public view to avoid a possible backlash, claims that 46 pieces from the museum’s catalog were stolen and replaced with fake replicas, daily Milliyet reported. The authenticity of 30 more art works is also “highly suspicious,” according to the report.

Some 202 art works, now “missing,” are priceless works of art belonging to Turkish artists such as Şevket Dağ, Şefik Bursalu, Hikmet Onat and Zühtü Müridoğlu, among many others.

To which the minister replied:

The Ankara State Art and Sculpture Museum was founded in April 1980 and left significantly unattended and managed inadequately as a result of the Sept. 12 [1980] coup. During this time, the museum records were not kept, healthy inventory work was not done and necessary minimum precautions were not taken.

I’m with Fisk on this. The fact is, museums around the world, don’t have or don’t use good inventory systems and many lack the money to record what they own. I don’t know who has the money to support this, but it would be nice if some rich collector decided to begin to tackle the job, perhaps through the World Monuments Fund. I know, it’s difficult and some countries don’t want help. But others do.

Even in the U.S, some museums lack complete inventories. We’ve seen several recent cases where museums suddenly “find” things they barely know they have: for example here (where Yale found a Velazquez in storage) and here, where the Cincinnati Art Museum rediscovered its collection of musical instruments.

 Photo Credit: Ankara museum, courtesy of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism

 

Syria’s Cultural Heritage Under Threat: Sadly, No Surprise

We knew this was coming: Political troubles in Syria are causing damage to the country’s ancient treasures.

As the inimitable foreign correspondent Robert Fisk, now working for The Independent but with experience at British newspapers including The Times and the Sunday Express, wrote in Sunday’s paper:

The priceless treasures of Syria’s history – of Crusader castles, ancient mosques and churches, Roman mosaics, the renowned “Dead Cities” of the north and museums stuffed with antiquities – have fallen prey to looters and destruction by armed rebels and government militias as fighting envelops the country. While the monuments and museums of the two great cities of Damascus and Aleppo have so far largely been spared, reports from across Syria tell of irreparable damage to heritage sites that have no equal in the Middle East.

Even the magnificent castle of Krak des Chevaliers – described by Lawrence of Arabia as “perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world” and which Saladin could not capture – has been shelled by the Syrian army, damaging the Crusader chapel inside.

Fisk’s article, headlined Syria’s Ancient Treasures Pulverised, goes on to detail some damage and the reasons why — e.g., armed rebel hiding behind ancient wall, thinking that the Syrian Army would not blast them, wrongly. They did.

He quotes Joanne Farchakh, “a Lebanese archaeologist who also investigated the destruction and plundering of Iraq’s historical treasures after 2003, and helped the Baghdad museum to reclaim some of its stolen artifacts,” calling the losses “catastrophic.” Then, she adds:

One of the problems is that for 10 years before the war, the Syrian regime established 25 cultural museums all over the country to encourage tourism and to keep valuable objects on these sites – many placed stone monuments in outside gardens, partly to prove that the regime was strong enough to protect them. Now the Homs museum has been looted – by rebels and by government militias, who knows? – and antique dealers are telling me that the markets of Jordan and Turkey are flooded with artifacts from Syria.

Fisk, who has lived in the Middle East for more than 30 years, primarily in Beirut, places these battles in a historical context, noting that it has all happened before so many times. He concludes by saying we need inventories of what’s in national museums and on ancient sites. A mild remedy, I’d say.

Interpol issued an alert about Syria in May, calling for “vigilance of its 190 member countries as to the risk of illicit trafficking in cultural goods from Syria and neighbouring countries.” On July 27, the Director-General of UNESCO called for the protection of Aleppo, where fighting has been fierce.  Last month, the Association of Art Museum Directors issued a statement deploring the destruction of ancient sites in Northern Mali, a few days after articles in The New York Times about the situation there.

Nothing about Syria as of this moment (guess they are waiting for confirmation of the damage by the Times), though AAMD did speak up when Iraqi and Egyptian heritage was under threat. Nothing on the site of the American Institute of Archaeologists either…or the World Monuments Fund.

Not that I believe that such statements — other than Interpol’s warning — have much effect. But they do focus attention on the issue, and that is usually good.

Photo Credits: Roman Theater in Borsa, courtesy of The Independent (top); Wikipedia (bottom)