Cultural Heritage

U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan, who has been hounding the St. Louis Art Museum to return an Egyptian mask it purchased in 1998 for about a half million dollars, has told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that “his office only had “a lack of record showing a lawful transfer,” not proof the mask was stolen.” The Justice Department has therefore abandoned its effort to force SLAM to return the mask, letting yesterday’s deadline for taking legal pass without an additional filing. 

To recap, as the P-D wrote:

The mask was excavated in 1952 from a storage room near the step pyramid of Saqqara and was one of the items found with the mummified body of Ka-Nefer-Nefer, a noblewoman at the court of Ramses II.

The mask disappeared from storage in Egypt sometime between 1966 and 1973. The museum bought the mask in 1998 from a New York art dealer for $499,000.

When Egyptian authorities learned in 2006 that the museum had the mask, they began trying to get it back.

After negotiations failed, the federal government threatened to sue, but lawyers for the museum beat them to the courthouse, filing their own suit in January of 2011.

Then, in 2012, the government’s seizure case was dismissed on the grounds that government proved nothing. The U.S. Attorney’s office appealed, but in June the Court of Appeals agreed with the first ruling. And now:

“The evidence that we had showed that the mask was in the lawful possession of the Egyptian authorities for several years, and then there was a period with no activity,” [Callahan] said. After that, “the mask was not in the possession of the Egyptian authorities anymore and there was no paperwork to support the theory that it lawfully left.”

The museum has said that the mask was part of a private collection in the 1960s, and was purchased in Switzerland by a Croatian collector, Zuzi Jelinek. Jelinek sold the mask to Phoenix Ancient Art in New York in 1995, the museum said.

The museum has said that it researched the mask’s ownership history before buying it, reaching out to Interpol, the Art Loss Register and others.

As The Art Law Report noted, however, “This does not necessarily end all wrangling over the mask.  Egypt itself, which has steadfastly maintained that the mask was taken illicitly before being imported, could still take legal action in the U.S.  whether that would face timeliness or statute of limitations/laches issues would likely be the question Egypt first considers.”

But SLAM has the mask (above), for now, which is on view in Gallery 130.

 

Everyone has been very worried about the state of cultural heritage properties in Syria during this civil war. There have been irregular reports but they all suggest that Old Aleppo, the Krak des Chevaliers, many medieval Christian cemeteries and dozens of archaeological sites and museums have been damaged — or, as a new release from an organization trying to do something put it, “subjected to extensive raiding and looting.”

In late June, the Penn Museum’s Penn Cultural Heritage Center in Philadelphia and the Smithsonian Institution, along with the Syrian Interim Government’s newly formed Heritage Task Force, sponsored a three-day training program called “Emergency Care for Syrian Museum Collections,” for museum curators, heritage experts, and civilians working to protect cultural heritage inside Syria.

The release noted that “additional training programs are being planned, pending funding.”

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing about Syria (see here, here, here and here). In that last post, in April, I quoted a curator named Ammar Kannawi saying that Syria needed “technical support and expertise from Western experts who helped in previous conflicts.” Now perhaps they are starting to get it — but they need more expertise. The Penn Museum release quotes  Brian Daniels, Ph.D., Director of Research and Programs at its Penn Cultural Heritage Center, saying:

While it is very difficult for international heritage organizations to travel into Syria today, there are a number of Syrians who regularly risk their lives to protect their cultural heritage. This workshop and other efforts going forward are designed to support these individuals and their efforts.

But our experts, with luck, aren’t risking their lives. The training was held in an undisclosed location outside of Syria, and about 20 Syrians attended. The release continued:

The objectives of the workshop were three-fold: to offer information on how to secure museum collections safely during emergencies; to provide participants with basic supplies for packing and securing museum collections, and to begin a dialogue among Syrian participants about emergency responses. “This workshop fits the model of heritage preservation promoted by the Penn Cultural Heritage Center,” said Richard M. Leventhal, the Center’s Executive Director. “Local communities are best equipped to identify heritage in need of preservation and protection, and this is precisely what is happening in Syria. We are pleased to work alongside communities in Syria and other places around the world to support these efforts.”

Conditions at the Ma’arra Museum in Idlib province, famous for its collections of Byzantine mosaics, were a subject of much discussion and concern. The museum has received collateral damage in the fighting and come under direct attack by ISIS units. The workshop was able to offer some suggestions for stabilization in the current situation and provide emergency conservation supplies.

This, though, was a first step, as Penn said. The parties are planning a project that will “document current conditions and future preservation needs, tracking and reporting intentional damage and destruction to cultural heritage sites in Syria.” I hope it goes further than that — providing the technical expertise necessary.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Times of London

The Museum of Fine Arts says it is voluntarily sending eight objects from its African department — dating to the 18th century — to the National Commission of Museums and Monuments in Nigeria. The pieces were donated to the museum and purchased in “good faith” in the 1990s from dealers in both the U.S. and Europe. One piece, a bronze altar figure dated about 1914, was actually stolen from the Royal Palace in Benin City in 1976.

The purchaser was the late William E. Teel. Teel donated “more than 300 African and Oceanic works, along with several Ancient American and Native American pieces and a small group of European and American works on pape — many of which are now on view. From that group, these eight were problematic.

MFA explained the situation thusly:

The Museum began the process of researching the provenance (or history of ownership) of the objects after receiving notification of the bequest. Recognizing that these eight objects were probably illegally removed from Nigeria in recent years, and that their export would have been regulated by Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments Act (chapter 242) of 1990, the MFA contacted the NCMM to seek its authorization before proceeding with their acquisition. The NCMM swiftly responded that the export of these objects had not been approved; and, indeed, that several documents which purportedly authorized their sale and export were forged. Upon receipt of this information, the MFA began to arrange for the return of the objects to Nigeria, which were received by Nigerian authorities earlier this month.

Sub-Sahara Africa hasn’t gotten as much publicity for its looted goods in recent years, but it has perhaps an even bigger problem than Italy in that often the thefts are from museums or institutions, not the ground. On the other hand, that makes them easier to trace. The museum listed the eight pieces transferred to Nigeria as:

1. Head
   African, Edo peoples, Nigeria, Benin kingdom, about 1750
2. Memorial screen (duen fubara) [above left]
   African, Ijaw Kalabari peoples, Nigeria, late 19th century
3. Head
   African, Nok peoples, Nigeria, About 500 B.C.–A.D. 200
4. Head of an Oba
   Edo peoples, Benin Kingdom, Nigeria, 19th century
5. Male Figure
   African, Nok peoples. Nigeria, About 500 B.C.–A.D. 200
6. Portrait head
   African, Yoruba peoples, Ife Kingdom, Nigeria, 12th–14th century
7. Oron Ancestral Figure (Ekpu)
   Oron peoples, southeastern Nigeria
8. Altar figure [at right]
   Benin peoples, Nigeria

The Teels endowed a curatorial position for these objects (a gold star to them) and also provided access to their papers, according to the Boston Globe. That obviously speeded the MFA’s provenance investigation. The Globe has many more details and its article is worth a read. 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the MFA

Some cases never go away. Two years ago, The Saint Louis Art Museum won a court battle in its case to keep the 3,200-year-old mummy mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer, when a federal court judge ruled that it should remain in its collection — a ruling that “chastises the U.S. attorney’s office for trying to seize the ancient relic through civil forfeiture proceedings.” The quote is from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

U.S. District Court judge Henry Autrey

…said the government did not provide any proof that the mummy mask was “stolen, smuggled or clandestinely imported or introduced” as required under the forfeiture law – only that it went missing….

…[But] The museum’s research showed the mask was part of the Kaloterna private collection during the 1960s, before it was purchased in Switzerland by a Croatian collector, Zuzi Jelinek, who then sold the mask to Phoenix Ancient Art in 1995.”

Now, however, the Egyptian government has issued a statement saying (in part):

Minister of Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim said that he will resort to the private sector in the United States to practice pressures on St. Louis Art Museum according to the agreements signed in this regard. He stressed that Egypt will not abandon its right to “Ka-nefer-nefer” mask.

Hat tip to the Riverfront Times, St. Louis’s alternative weekly paper, which reported the development on a blog last Friday, and brought us up to date on developments since 2012:

…When the government tried to appeal in January 2014, however, it apparently missed a filing deadline, causing Judge James Loken to remark the government now had to “beg for a do-over.”

Last week, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to grant the government that do-over. Loken, who wrote the judgement, chastised the government lawyers who “knew many months prior to the order of dismissal of the possible need to amend its pleading.”

One judge, Diana Murphy, agreed with the ruling but nevertheless showed some sympathy with the other side, saying”

I concur in the court’s opinion but write separately to express my concern about what the record in this case reveals about the illicit trade in antiquities…The substantive issues underlying this litigation are of great significance, and not only to museums which responsibly seek to build their collections. The theft of cultural patrimony and its trade on the black market for stolen antiquities present concerns of international import. These issues affect governments and the international art and antiquities markets, as well as those who seek to safeguard global cultural heritage.

Egypt’s statement is dated today, not Friday, but then again it may have  been updated.

UPDATE: The Art Law Report has an excellent analysis and a crack at what may happen next here.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of SLAM 

This one was voluntary. Recently (but we don’t know how recently), the University of Sheffield discovered that a  Louis XIV tapestry, which it had owned for 50 years, had been looted from the Château de Versainville, in Normandy, during the Nazi occupation of France.

According to a press release:

The tapestry, which is dated to around 1720 and shows a scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, had been in the possession of the University since its purchase on the open market in London in 1959.

The University recently contacted the Chateau whereupon it was discovered that the tapestry had been looted from the Château by Nazi soldiers during the Second World War, at a time when Comte Bernard de la Rochefoucauld, and his wife were both imprisoned in concentration camps. Comte Bernard de la Rochefoucauld had been an active member of the French Resistance prior to his arrest in Paris in 1943. The Comte sadly died on 4 June 1944 as a result of his treatment at the Flossenburg concentration camp, though his wife survived the war.

Working through the Art Loss Register, Sheffield University is donating the piece to the Chateau, which has been undergoing a renovation “as Comte Jacques de la Rochefoucauld, the descendant of Comte Bernard’s brother, seeks to restore it to its former glory, and return the Château to its place in the cultural heritage of its region.”

More details are here. I wish I knew a bit more, and wish Sheffield had chosen to tell us where it bought the tapestry and how it came to make this discovery now. Two other, similar tapestries are apparently still missing from the Chateaux — maybe there are hints that would aid recovery.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Art Loss Register