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Who Owns Antiquity?In a controversial new book, Art Institute president James Cuno argues that museums should trump nations.
By Deanna Isaacs June 5, 2008
W hen I was a kid, the public library in my hometown of Minneapolis had a pair of real Egyptian mummies. They were displayed in glass cases and one was partially unwrapped, his head exposed. He was small (about my ten-year-old size) and shriveled, with gaping sockets where his eyes had been. A card said he’d been a priest who lived more than 2,500 years ago, and explained that during the mummification process his brains had been pulled out through his nose. I was mesmerized. Out of time and place, his eternal rest horribly violated (even by my gaze), he seemed to me to be an emissary from an amazing and previously unimaginable culture.
Those mummies, now on loan to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, came to mind as I was reading James Cuno’s controversial new book, Who Owns Antiquity?, in which he rails against cultural property laws that have made it nearly impossible to legally export not only mummies but almost any relics from the countries in which they’re found. Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, contends that these laws, though regularly rationalized as a means to protect archeological sites, are actually about something else.
The real argument over the acquisition of “unprovenanced” antiquities “is not what it appears to be,” he writes. “It is not really between art museums and archeologists, about the protection of the archeological record from looting and illicit trafficking. . . . It is between museums and modern nation-states and their nationalist claims on that heritage.”
According to Cuno, any current state’s claim to ownership of ancient cultural objects is false. Antiquity belongs to humanity, he says, and cultural artifacts belong in big, “encyclopedic” museums—even if that means moving them from poorer to richer countries. Though he makes this argument from his vested-interest vantage point atop one of the world’s richest cultural treasure troves, he locates its origins in his first encounter with a museum—the Louvre, no less—where, at age 19, he was amazed to find “the world under one roof.”
Published last week, Cuno’s book traces the history of cultural property rights over the last half century, from a conference in the 1950s to UNESCO’s 1970 convention prohibiting “illicit” antiquities exports. The U.S. didn’t sign onto that convention until 1983, he notes, and only gave it teeth in 2001, by applying the Stolen Property Act to antiquities prosecutions. But Cuno wants to move away from the question of whether a particular import—say the British Museum’s Elgin Marbles, excised from the Parthenon 200 years ago—is legal and toward the deeper one of whether any nation should be able to lay claim to any cultural object.
Culture predates nationalism (which only really got going in the 18th century) and runs counter to it, Cuno argues. Nations may use cultural objects to build national identity and loyalty, but culture, by nature, is polyglot. Nationalism divides us and leads to violence; culture can unite us in our common human heritage.
This is a lovely vision, but it might take an invasion from outer space to motivate people to make it work. And it’s led Cuno into some weird territory. He suggests, for instance, that modern Egyptians have no more in common with the pharaonic past than the fact that they occupy the same stretch of land, and that Qing dynasty artifacts don’t work as national cultural symbols because they have little meaning for the less than 10 percent of China’s population that belongs to minorities.
Archaeologists, in fact, do have their underwear in a knot over the market-driven looting of third world archeological sites, and many are active supporters of national cultural property rights. But Cuno calls on them to reexamine a position that makes culture subservient to political agendas and leaves artifacts at risk in unstable environments. He says strict “retentionist” laws have not reduced looting and prescribes instead a return to a partage system, in which scientists from developed countries are allowed to excavate sites in less-developed areas if they leave behind a portion of the treasure. He says ownership of cultural property should not be based on national borders, but on three simple goals he ascribes to legal scholar John Merryman: preservation, knowledge, and access.
Taken to its logical conclusion, says Jane Waldbaum, University of Wisconsin professor emerita and past president of the Archaeological Institute of America, Cuno’s argument would make it permissible to “sell off the Constitution and the Liberty Bell—let the Louvre have them if they can pay enough.” According to Waldbaum, “Mr. Cuno would like to have a free-for-all antiquities market. The underlying motive is, ‘I would like to fill my museum with beautiful things and not have anybody stop me’—while the main thing archaeologists are interested in is finding as much information as we can about those things,” an effort that requires context. As for partage: “If you can convince modern governments to do it, fine. But if you can’t, the solution is not to ignore their law. That just encourages looting by setting high prices and a no-questions-asked mentality. The tide is turning against that.”
In the last couple weeks Cuno’s landed a major profile and a positive review in the New York Times (which wondered if he’d been talking to the Metropolitan Museum about its soon-to-be-available top spot). A reviewer for the Wall Street Journal pointed out “surprising errors” in the book’s account of Islamic history, but nevertheless pronounced it “excellent.” Cuno got a drubbing, however, from Arts Journal blogger Lee Rosenbaum, who noted that “source countries” view “partage as a polite word for pillage” and characterized the book as “an intemperate screed” that should eliminate Cuno from consideration at the Met. Blogging under the headline “James Cuno’s Illogic,” Larry Rothfield, faculty director of the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago, charged that Cuno mistakenly blames retentionist policy for the destruction of artifacts in the Kabul and Iraqi museums. “The lesson here is not that retentionism is a better policy than internationalism,” Rothfield wrote. “It is, rather, that the fate of cultural heritage depends less on a country’s legal framework . . . than on its power to enforce whatever laws it has and its will to protect . . . its cultural policy.”
The way things work now, Rothfield says, “very wealthy collectors go into the market seeking very expensive artifacts which, after a period of time, they donate to museums for a tax deduction. The money that they spend on those artifacts drives thousands of looters to dig wherever they can. If the objective is to protect cultural heritage, one would think that Cuno and other museum executives should be trying to develop ways to protect archeological sites.” Rothfield advises a tax on antiquities sales, with the proceeds to be earmarked for things like “helping the Iraq Antiquities Board to hire more police.”
Cuno says he expected negative response to the book, and suggests that “some people have responded without reading it.” He says he wrote it because he felt the museum view hadn’t been sufficiently presented. “I hold those views sincerely,” he states. “I hope that the book contributes to the discussion of the larger issues. We all have a stake in it, all of us who care about the ancient remains of humankind.”
Regarding speculation about the job in New York, he notes that if you’re of a certain age and the director of a museum of a certain size, you fit a profile that outsiders are looking at, and says, “I have no reason to believe that insiders [at the Met] are looking at the same profile.” Send a letter to the editor.
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DR.KWAME OPOKU at 1:47 PM on 6/5/2008
WILL CUNO AND CO EVER LEARN?
Cuno is a defender of the so-called "universal museums", now called "encyclopedic museums" and perhaps more correctly, imperialistic or totalitarian museums. The museum that never has enough of anything and seeks a total control of all cultural objects by all means, including the use of force by the army of the country where the museum is situated-Louvre, British Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. These museums now lament the end of the imperialistic and colonial period in which they amassed most of their stock. This was the period when the Europeans could take virtually from any country what ever cultural object they desired. That period is, mercifully, at an end and Cuno and co are agitating for the return to that system, so-called partage system which enabled the Europeans to take away massive archaeological objects from countries like Egypt. Cuno labels those who seek the return of the stolen cultural objects as nationalists but what about those who fight to keep the objects in the museums of the West, are they internationalists or what?
This new book does not advance in anyway the debate about the restitution of cultural objects. On the contrary it will only help to solidify the known positions. That leading museum directors do not understand the desire of Africans and Asians to recover their stolen cultural objects, is a sad commentary on the cultural landscape of the world. The perspective would have appeared better without the addition of this book which will only serve as additional object for heated controversies and it comes from a museum director of one of the leading museums of the Western world.
Kwame Opoku. 22 May,2008.
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Jean SmilingCoyote at 12:12 PM on 6/6/2008
Jane Waldbaum's allegation that "Cuno's argument would make it permissible to 'sell off the Constitution and the Liberty Bell ...'" is incorrect. These items are the products not merely of a "culture," but a nation which has had a continuous existence since they were created. What she calls "logical conclusion" is just a label to try to intimidate the rest of us to believe that garbage. Don't!
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DR.KWAME OPOKU at 1:17 PM on 8/8/2008
THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO DISTANCES ITSELF FROM THE CONTROVERSIAL BOOK OF ITS DIRECTOR, JAMES CUNO, WHO OWNS ANTIQUITY?
Finally, the Art Institute of Chicago has reached the conclusion which others have been reached long time ago, that the position and the views Cuno and his followers have been propagating over a long period, are not conducive to good and friendly relations. The view that the strong can take the artefacts of the weak and keep them has never been morally acceptable, no matter what James Cuno, Director, Art, Institute of Chicago, Neil Macgregor, Director British Museum, Phillipe de Montebello, Director, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, may say to the contrary. That there has been so far no strong resistance to the activities of the Western museums should not be taken as evidence that they are on the right path.
If the various museums in Chicago have finally seen the light of the day, we would expect them to act soon and swiftly. They should rest assured that they have the support of most of the intellectuals in the West, they can rely on the moral support and approval of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania in their efforts to clean up their museums and return cultural artefacts to their countries of origin as, the UNESCO and the United Nations have been asking over the last thirty decades.
The museums in Chicago should know that by showing respect to the African peoples and their artefacts, they are also showing respect to their African American population who can never feel completely free when they know that the cultural and religious symbols of their ancestors have been detained in museums across the USA. They cannot feel at ease in a country which insists on treating the valuable and cherished religious and cultural symbols of their ancestors as mere museums pieces which can be forcibly take away from their societies of origin and placed in other societies which treat them as war trophy.
The US museums are not responsible for the atrocities of the British in 1897 but they should not condone criminal and illegal acts by remaining silent and
Dealing with stolen objects as if they had been legitimately acquired. The ignoble acts of the 19th and 20th century need not be perpetuated by conferring on them any semblance of legality.
Should the Chicago museums remain steadfast and sweep their museums clean of any vestiges of colonialism and imperialism, they would make an inestimable contribution to improving relations to peoples on both sides of the Atlantic.
We congratulate the Board of Governors of the Art Institute of Chicago on their first step in the right direction. They can count on our unfailing support in this endeavour.
Those interested in following the arguments and controversies surrounding the views of Cuno, may wish to consult
"DO PRESENT-DAY EGYPTIANS EAT THE SAME FOOD AS TUTHANKHAMUN? REVIEW OF JAMES CUNO’S WHO OWNS ANTIQUITY?" http://www.afrikanet
"BENIN TO CHICAGO: IN THE UNIVERSAL MUSEUM"http://www.museum-security
"NEFERTITI, IDIA AND OTHER AFRICAN ICONS IN EUROPEAN MUSEUMS: THE
THIN EDGE OF EUROPEAN MORALITY"http://www.modernghana.com
Kwame Opoku. August 08, 2008
Chicago museums weigh African artifacts controversy
BY ROBERT O'CONNOR
August 07, 2008 | 4:00 PM
The Art Institute's recently opened exhibit "Benin-Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria" has thrust Chicago into an international debate over the rightful ownership of African art held in western museums.
The Art Institute does not own any of the 220 objects on display as part of the exhibit, but does own 20 objects from Benin that a spokesman says it would consider returning to Nigeria if asked to do so.
The controversy has hovered in the background of the exhibit since its July 8 opening, attended by several dignitaries from Nigeria and the Kingdom of Benin, including Princess Theresa Erediauwa, daughter of the Oba - or king - of Benin, now part of Nigeria.
Although the objects in the exhibit are on loan from the Oba and Nigeria's Commission for Museums and Monuments, the subject has cast light on AIC director James Cuno's controversial assertions in his book "Who Owns Antiquity?"
Cuno defends such African art holdings, suggesting that antiquities are not national symbols but part of a global inheritance best displayed in "museums of ideas, not ideologies."
Cuno could not be reached for comment for this story.
AIC spokeswoman Erin Hogan says the book does not represent the Institute's position.
"Cuno's book is just that, his book," she says. "It represents his personal views. The Art Institute has always followed the recommendations set forth by the Association of Art Museum Directors."
The controversy has not been confined to the Art Institute.
Chicago's Field Museum owns 400 objects from Benin, most of which were taken in the "punitive expedition," a brutal 1897 attack by the British in which the ancient city was burned and looted of its artwork.
Most of the Field Museum's collection was donated by ethnologist A.W.F. Fuller and his wife in 1961, according to the museum.
Restitution advocates say the brutality of the expedition and the destruction of Benin is enough to question the legality of Western museums holding the objects.
Greg Borzo, the media manager for scientific affairs at the Field Museum and the Art Institute, said that if the Nigerian government or the Oba of Benin asked for the return of the antiquities, they would take the request seriously.
Restitution advocates like the British-based Africa Reparations Movement argue that such museums glorify plunder and celebrate imperialism's legacy of exploitation.
"The Benin artworks belong to a living culture that has deep historical and social value which goes far beyond the aesthetic and monetary value they hold in exile," the organization says on its website.
ARM draws parallels between its efforts to return to Nigeria objects taken during the punitive expedition to efforts by Greece and Egypt to have their antiquities returned.
Joel Okafor, a professor at Chicago's Roosevelt University and a fellow of the St. Clair Drake Center for African and African-American Studies at Roosevelt, said the exhibit shows the "ugly and lasting aftertaste of the impact of colonial rule and its enduring cultural legacies."
Okafor says the debate over the return of African antiquities to their native countries has produced limited results, but he is optimistic. "The world is finally demanding that human beings own up to the excesses of the past."
Among other recent examples, Okafor cited Italy's decision in 2005 to return an Ethiopian obelisk taken by the colonial government of Mussolini in 1937 and a recent apology issued by the U.S. Congress to the victims of slavery.
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