With 2012 now upon us, SAFE looks forward to the coming year with anticipation, and offers a few predictions.
As discussion and publicity surrounding the repatriation of antiquities continues and public awareness and media focus on the actions of source countries (Italy, Greece, Peru, Turkey, Egypt, Bulgaria, etc.) increase, the return of cultural patrimony will accelerate during 2012 and the years that follow. The question is no longer whether such artifacts will be returned. In most cases, the only question is when.
Repatriation by U.S. museums and collectors in recent years (some
130 artifacts have already returned to Italy; the Boston Museum of Fine Art's return to the upper half of the
Weary Herakles to Turkey occurred this past year;
Yale University's transfer of Macchu Picchu artifacts back to Peru began in 2011 and will be completed by December 2012) provide incentive for source countries to continue their investigation to identify and seek the return of their cultural patrimony from museums around the world … with particular focus on objects shown among the thousands of photographs discovered by Italian police (the
Giacomo Medici Archive seized at the Geneva Freeport in
1995), by Swiss authorities and Greek investigators. This
vast trove of photos now in the hands of researchers, law enforcement and prosecutors and cultural attaches in several countries will continue to serve as source material during the coming year for the return of objects acquired by various museums (e.g., the
National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, the
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, the
Miho Museum in Japan, the
Toledo Museum of Art, and others.
Meanwhile, continuing issues at U.S. museums will be resolved (or very nearly so), such as the case that pits the St. Louis Art Museum against the
U.S. government over ownership of a 3,200-year-old mask of
Ka-Nefer-Nefer, which disappeared from the inventory of the Cairo Museum in the late 1950s and was sold to SLAM for $500,000 in 1998. We predict the matter will be decided during the coming year. And in southern Utah, we expect another shoe to drop in the ongoing
Four Corners antiquities trafficking case with more
hand-wringing over FBI methods and the
DOJ's duty to enforce laws that prohibit illegal digging and theft of artifacts on federal or Indian lands.
Finally, in response to the
aggressive and well-organized destruction of archaeological sites in China a crackdown on antiquities theft in Shanxi, Henan and other effected provinces will continue as
Chinese authorities seek to preserve the estimated five percent of all archaeological sites on the mainland that have not yet been plundered. As for a different kind of plunder, will the
much publicized Chinese mission to track down and document objects that have been taken from Yuanmingyuan (Beijing’s “Old Summer Palace”) result in a request for their return?
All told, 2012 promises to be an interesting and eventful year. Best wishes to all.
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