Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Cultural Heritage

AAMD On El Salvador: Let’s Try Licit Antiquities Market

Temple at Cihuatan ParkFull of frustration that a 27- year-old U.S.-El Salvador Memorandum of Understanding to stop looting of antiquities isn’t working, the Association of Art Museum Directors recommended against renewal recently. Instead, the Association advocated the formation of a “licit” market in antiquities there. It would be taxed, and the proceeds would be “used to protect cultural sites and to encourage related employment by the local populations and the scientific exploration, storage and conservation of objects from those sites.”

That’s the gist of an article I wrote earlier this week, which was published on the website Art-Antiques-Design: MUSEUM DIRECTORS:  LICIT MARKET MAY SAVE EL SALVADORAN ANTIQUITIES. 

The statement, which is worth reading in full–there’s a link at the bottom of my article above–was filed with the U.S. State Department’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee, which met October 7 through 9 to consider the renewal.

AAMD criticized the El Salvador government harshly.

There’s no word on when the Committee will decide, but the five-year pact was last renewed Mar. 8, 2010.

That’s a temple at the Cihuatan Park in El Salvador above.

 

Metropolitan Museum Rescues Egyptian Antiquities

TreasureHeregehLast week, as Bonhams in London was preparing to auction a lot of second millennium B.C. Egyptian antiquities consigned by the St. Louis Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, the Metropolitan Museum of Art* stepped in. Bonhams withdrew the lot, estimated at £80,000 – 120,000 (US$ 130,000 – 190,000), and the Met purchased the Treasure of Harageh items (one pictured at left).

There’s no word on what the Met paid.

I tell the whole tale, tipped off by an item by the Associated Press, in an item on Art-Antiques-Design. That’s a website based in the U.K. for which I began writing twice-monthly items back in July.

Among the topics covered on that site, in addition to the Met rescue, are dealer opportunities at the Crystal Bridges State of the Art exhibition, a new auction site called Bidquare and deaccessioning ethics for dealers.

I don’t plan to call your attention to everything I write for AAD, though, so I hope you will go there on your own from time to time.

Meanwhile, the site Looting Matters has published an item on another item withdrawn from Bonhams Oct. 2 sale–a Roman marble herm whose collecting history seems amiss.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Bonhams

*I consult to a Foundation that supports the Met.

Another Corcoran Outrage: The Archives

If you thought everything about the future of the Corcoran Art Gallery was parsed and settled, much to the dismay of its students, faculty, curators and various formers in all three categories, think again. There’s another outrage.

Grieving Canova lion by David MordiniThe Corcoran’s archives, which relate its entire 145-year history, are slated to be broken up.

Any archivist will tell you that, more important than the possibly wonderful individual items, it’s the whole of an archive that matters most to the historical record.

Indeed, the Corcoran archives contain “all institutional records, meeting notes, photographs, exhibition files, gallery publications and catalogues, architectural records, press clippings and scrapbooks, the journal of the gallery’s first curator William MacLeod, 1876-1886, records of the Washington Gallery of Modern Art 1962-1968, and records for art works,” according to Linda Crocker Simmons, curator emerita of the Corcoran. She established these archives in 1980 with the assistance of grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Though the issue of the archives was discussed during the breakup of the Corcoran, it hasn’t had much, if any, public exposure until I raised it yesterday with Carolyn Campbell, a former PR and Events Director of the Corcoran. “Excellent question,” she wrote me back, and told me of the breakup plan.

Known as “art related materials” in the agreement, the pact says that any papers related to art works would go with those works as they are distributed. to the National Gallery of Art or beyond, to other museums. The remainder of the items, it said, would be the turned over to an executive group of some of the new, non-profit Corcoran’s board and trustees of the NGA.

Here is the court pact.

Simmons and Campbell add, rightly:

Taken as a whole the records provide a unique picture of how private museums have operated from the 19th century to modern times. Because of the growing interest in American art history and cultural history, the Corcoran Archives was begun as a service to humanities scholars and other interested parties. Ironically, a filmmaker making a documentary on the history of Washington, DC’s art scene recently asked on the “In Memory of the Corcoran” Facebook page where they could find some documentation – since there are no more Archives, she and others like her no longer have it as a resource.

I heard another rumor, unsubstantiated at the moment, that the archives were being weeded out. By whom? Don’t know. Still, in probable good news, Marisa Bourgoin, who was the last Corcoran Archivist and now works at the Archives of American Art, is consulting on the division and distribution of records.

Simmons and Campbell believe that at the very least be digitally copied before being broken up. That could  be expensive. Perhaps they should stay together, given to the Archives of American Art, with the papers related to individual works of art copied for the new owners. (Or, Campbell suggests, to the George Washington University Gelman Library).

Photo Credit: A grieving Canova lion, outside the Corcoran, by David Mordini 

Good News From The Middle East

I’m still catching up with news that occurred while I was away on vacation, and since this qualifies and it happened in the hapless Middle East, I thought I’d report it: in mid-August, it seems, the Iraqi National Museum reopened two renovated halls that display ancient sculptures. Mainly life-sized ones, according to a report by the Associated Press.

IraqMuseumIt said that the new galleries “feature more than 500 artifacts that mainly date back to the Hellenistic period (312-139 B.C.), some of which were retrieved and renovated after the looting of the museum following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion,” and cited Qais Rashid, head the state-run Museum Department, as the source.

Unfortunately, the article continued:

The museum chronicles some 7,000 years of Mesopotamian civilization, including the ancient Babylonians, Sumerians and Assyrians, but remains closed to the general public out of security fears.

Iraq is grappling with a re-invigorated Sunni insurgency that has seized large swaths of the country’s north and west since June. The Islamic militants leading the insurgency have destroyed a number of historical and religious monuments they view as un-Islamic or idolatrous.

But the museum inauguration in Baghdad was packed with visitors eager to glimpse relics from happier times.

The rest of the report was not so great. The current band of rebels, breakaways from Al-Qaida, that is taking over huge swaths of Iraq — ISIS or ISIL — is imposing laws that do not allow depictions of the human form. Therefore, according to the story, which sourced the comment to Tourism Minister Liwa Smaysin, “hundreds of Iraq’s archaeological sites located in militant-held areas are under threat of being demolished, including a number of old mosques and shrines,” though “Iraq was working with UNESCO to try to protect them.”

How thrilling, as the photo shows, that Iraqis are coming out to the museum, no matter the prohibition by ISIS.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the AP

 

Name The Best Four Hudson River School Paintings — To Go On Stamps

On Monday, the Nelson-Atkins Museum announced that its wonderful Grand Canyon painting by Thomas Moran, from 1912, would grace a Forever stamp as part of an homage to the Hudson River School of artists — it’s one of four tributes.

What are the other three paintings? (I got no other press notices.) Were the other three museums, as the Post Office would choose only from works held in the public domain, mum on the honor? Guess so. But I looked it up.

As you can well imagine, the other three artists in this series are Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand and Frederic Church. Who’s got the best of their works? According to the Post Office:

  • For Cole, the choice was chose Distant View of Niagara Falls, from 1830, which is in the collection of  The Art Institute of Chicago.
  • For Durand, it was the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Summer Afternoon, from 1865.
  • For Church, the Post Office selected Sunset, from 1856, from the collection of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, NY.

Here’s what they’ll look like:

689504-01-main-600x600

They all go on sale on Aug. 21, as part of the American Treasures series. You can order them here.

You can read much more about the Moran painting in the Nelson-Atkins press release.