Loot

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).