Title: Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
Author: Sharon Waxman
Genre: archaeology, museums, history, non-fiction
**This review has been adapted from a book review I wrote for my Anthropology and Pop Culture class**
The phrase “All that glitters isn’t gold” could be applied
to the museum world. Museum goers only see the “finished product” carefully
displayed in a well-lit, climate-controlled setting. The public rarely finds
out about the dark underbelly of museums: the looting and illegal sales of
antiquities. In Loot, Waxman examines
the histories and procurement processes of four of the world’s most prestigious
museums: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), The Getty Museum
(Malibu, California), The Louvre (Paris, France), and the British Museum
(London, England). As a journalist, Waxman also interviewed people involved in
multiple aspects of the antiquities debate: repatriation activists, lawyers,
curators, museum directors and staff, archaeologists, smugglers, and legitimate
antiquities dealers. Everyone that Waxman interviewed had passionate (and
biased) positions regarding the sale and restitution of antiquities. Her
numerous interviews revealed that imperialist attitudes are still rampant in
the antiquities trade, restitution/repatriation of cultural objects is a
controversial subject in the art and archaeology communities, and provenance of
objects is related to nationalism and the national identity of source
countries.
Egypt, Turkey, and Greece were conquered by various
Western empires in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and these empires’
“urge to possess” (Waxman 2008:225) ranged from land and resources to a
conquered nation’s art and other cultural objects. The armies and agents of these empires experienced
no qualms about removing artifacts and shipping them off to England, France, or
Germany: “After conquering foreign cultures, Europe brought back home the
trophies that it desired along with slaves, spices, treasure, and raw
materials” (Waxman 2008:4). These spoils of war were carried off to Europe and
filled up the new museums created in Western nations, whose purpose was to
glorify the might of empires: “This nationalistic competition by European
powers was about getting the biggest, most noticeable stuff” (Waxman 2008:25).
Looted art from ancient civilizations was also a status symbol among the
European elites; the artifacts not sold to museums were sold to wealthy,
private collectors to grace their domiciles (Waxman 2008). The locals were not
involved in the excavation and partage processes; for example, “The antiquities
authority in Egypt was headed by a Frenchman… The reason for this was simple:
Egypt produced no archaeologists of its own. There was a reason for this, too:
Egyptians were not allowed to study Egyptology” since the French considered the
Egyptians a primitive people incapable of studying and understanding a past
civilization (Waxman 2008:57).
Unfortunately, imperialist attitudes are alive and well
in the modern museum community. Phillipe de Montebello, director of the Met stated
that “people should not so ‘blithely’ accept the idea that cultural objects
belong in the countries where they happen to have been dug up” (Waxman
2008:176). And Aggy Lerolle, press attaché for the Louvre told Waxman, “Who
would be interested in Greek sculpture if it were all in Greece? These pieces
are great because they are in the Louvre” (Waxman 2008:65). [This is just my
personal opinion, but if a sculpture was deemed “great enough” to be shipped
halfway across a continent to reside a museum, it’s great enough to be placed
anywhere. A true art fan can appreciate and respect art from various sources
and geographic locations.]
These snobby and elitist quotes are indicative of the
Western mindset in the art and antiquities world to restitution demands from
source countries such as Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and Italy. These countries want
their cultural patrimony returned home to their original environments.
Repatriation, or the return of artifacts to their source country, “is usually
connected to the idea that a country’s modern cultural identity is tied to
objects of its ancient history, that these objects are the tangible symbols of
the link between a nation’s past and its present” (Waxman 2008:142).
Repatriation activists claim that looted objects are tied to national identity:
“As once-colonized nations seek to stand on their own, the countries once
denuded of their past seek to assert their independent identities throughout
the objects that tie them to it” (Waxman 2008:4). The countries mentioned above
have also criticized the use of wealthy donors in the West to supplement museum
collections and Western museums’ unwritten procurement philosophy of “don’t
ask, don’t tell,” which repatriation activists believe encourages the cycle of
looting and illegal selling of antiquities (Waxman 283).
Waxman found during her research, that while repatriation
activists have the best intentions regarding their country’s heritage, the
reality is far different. Many people in these countries (especially Egypt and
Turkey) have low literacy rates with lives that are a daily struggle. For
generations, there has been little emphasis or value placed on these “national
treasures” which has resulted in extremely low museum attendance numbers,
abysmal government funding, staff shortages, outdated or broken security, and
limited storage space. “If Egypt has taken too long to claim ownership of its
past, and to expend political and financial capital to preserve it, it is
partly because Egyptians were actively excluded from the process of discovery
and knowledge” (Waxman 2008:58). Western museums criticize Greece, Egypt, and
Turkey for focusing on the return of objects looted centuries ago while modern
looting remains unchecked, and express concerns about the safety of antiquities
in countries that have a history of political and economic instability and
horrible environmental pollution.
In contrast, the West has high literacy rates and high
value is placed on cultural objects; yearly attendance can number in the
millions for well-known, high-traffic museums. Western museums also benefit
from access to multiple funding sources (especially from wealthy donors)
state-of-the art security systems, organized storage, and paid, knowledgeable
staff members. While Western museums are full of treasures from the ancient
world, most of these objects lack clear provenance which means they were
probably illegally excavated, illegally exported from their source country, and
illegally sold to museums. Most Western museums are unconcerned about provenance
issues until legal action forces them to revise their procurement and display
policies. Western museums also like to highlight the fact that their museums
and artifacts are in economically and politically stable regions of the world
which brings “an element of safety in dividing the sculptures should something
catastrophic happen in one place or another” (Waxman 2008:269 and “saves the
monuments from extinction” (Waxman 2008:70).
Italy has experienced both sides of the repatriation
debate: “Italy does not fit the postcolonial paradigm of Egypt and Greece.
Italy itself was a colonizer, not a country that was colonized” (Waxman 2008:
285). Italy looted its own colonies in the past and is now one of many source
countries demanding restitution of cultural objects, believed to be critical to
Italian identity, “and yet when plundered countries have asked Italy for
objects to be returned to them, Italian officials have been slow to respond,
much in the manner of other Western institutions” (Waxman 2008:286). Italy also
suffers from funding and preservation issues similar to Greece and Turkey
alongside a reputation for rampant corruption within the government.
So, what is the solution to the looting and repatriation
in the museum world? Everyone that Waxman interviewed had opinions on fixing
the antiquities world as well. While the smugglers, antiquities dealers, and
most major museum directors thought nothing wrong of the status quo, Anne
Distel, a Frenchwoman that handles the repatriation requests sent to the French
national museum system, “envisions a different system where museums would no
longer buy works but would exchange them with source countries, under
agreements worked out in advance” (Waxman 2008:122). Özgen Acar, a Turkish
investigative journalist believes that, “the rich Western countries must help
the poorer nations. It is the only way…to protect what is the cultural
patrimony of the world” (Waxman 2008:171). Michael Govan, the director of the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, states that the values and mindset of museums
themselves need to change; instead of cultural hierarchy, “every culture has
its place” and museums need to build around the future of an object instead of
its past (Waxman 2008:372).
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