In June this year G. Max Bernheimer, Christie's International Department Head of Antiquities, commented on the June 3 sale of antiquities that raised $3.4 million. He spoke positively about the sale:
“Today’s strong results show that wonderful objects with clear provenance continue to perform exceedingly well at auction.”It now appears that two of the lots have been seized by agents of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). [For initial story with pictures see here.] The Public Relations section of Christie's has confirmed the "identification" of "two stolen artifacts".
The seizures appear to point back to the Summa Gallery, the source for the Kyknos calyx-krater that is due to be handed back to Italy from a New York private collector.
The seizures additionally raise a major issue of what can be termed "clear provenance" (or in some circles "good provenance" and even occasionally "fully provenanced").
Provenance is a much misunderstood word. What I suspect is meant by the term is "collecting history".
So what gives an archaeological object a "clear" or "good" collecting history? One answer is that it can be traced back to the period before the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Sphere: Related Content
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Three things of note here:
1. Auction houses and dealers cannot be relied upon to self-police the provenance of the objects they sell, whether or not they fail to do so in good faith or bad. An independent organization accredited by archaeologists and run under government auspices is needed to do this job.
2. Since, according to the auction houses, provenancing accounts for the high prices antiquities continue to bring, the costs of doing provenancing research should be borne by those who profit from it. Auction houses and dealers should be paying for this service.
3. Seizing and returning illicitly exported antiquities does nothing to help countries of origin to stem the looting of archaeological sites. They need money to pay for guards, fences, equipment, etc. That money could come from either a surcharge on the provenancing service, or from a tax on the sale of authenticated artifacts.
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