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Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
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A journey across four continents to the heart of the conflict over who should own the great works of ancient art
Why are the Elgin Marbles in London and not on the Acropolis? Why do there seem to be as many mummies in France as there are in Egypt? Why are so many Etruscan masterworks in America? For the past two centuries, the West has been plundering the treasures of the ancient world to fill its great museums, but in recent years, the countries where ancient civilizations originated have begun to push back, taking museums to court, prosecuting curators, and threatening to force the return of these priceless objects.
Where do these treasures rightly belong? Sharon Waxman, a former culture reporter for The New York Times and a longtime foreign correspondent, brings us inside this high-stakes conflict, examining the implications for the preservation of the objects themselves and for how we understand our shared cultural heritage. Her journey takes readers from the great cities of Europe and America to Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Italy, as these countries face down the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. She also introduces a cast of determined and implacable characters whose battles may strip these museums of some of their most cherished treasures.
For readers who are fascinated by antiquity, who love to frequent museums, and who believe in the value of cultural exchange, Loot opens a new window on an enduring conflict.
Azioni libro
Inizia a leggereInformazioni sul libro
Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
Descrizione
A journey across four continents to the heart of the conflict over who should own the great works of ancient art
Why are the Elgin Marbles in London and not on the Acropolis? Why do there seem to be as many mummies in France as there are in Egypt? Why are so many Etruscan masterworks in America? For the past two centuries, the West has been plundering the treasures of the ancient world to fill its great museums, but in recent years, the countries where ancient civilizations originated have begun to push back, taking museums to court, prosecuting curators, and threatening to force the return of these priceless objects.
Where do these treasures rightly belong? Sharon Waxman, a former culture reporter for The New York Times and a longtime foreign correspondent, brings us inside this high-stakes conflict, examining the implications for the preservation of the objects themselves and for how we understand our shared cultural heritage. Her journey takes readers from the great cities of Europe and America to Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Italy, as these countries face down the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. She also introduces a cast of determined and implacable characters whose battles may strip these museums of some of their most cherished treasures.
For readers who are fascinated by antiquity, who love to frequent museums, and who believe in the value of cultural exchange, Loot opens a new window on an enduring conflict.
Informazioni sull'autore
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Recensioni
In "Loot" Sharon Waxman attempts to explain the story of how many of the great museums of the West acquired their artifacts, and how they expand upon their collections today. Unfortunately, the author eventually succumbs to a shallow flashiness that leaves the reader without a full understanding of how the antiquity trade operates on a global scale.
Waxman examines her story primarily through a series of high-profile interviews with prominent operators such as Zahi Hawas, then secretary-general of Egypt's Council of Antiquities (and all-purpose thorn-in-the-side to the curators and collectors of the great museums outside of his country), Neil MacGregor, director of the BM, Philippe de Montebello, director of the Met, and Henri Loyrette, director of the Louvre. Much of the pre-twentieth century collections of these institutions were acquired (though acquired seems far too mild a word for works such as the zodiac ceiling of the Temple of Denderah and half of the statues of the Parthenon, both literally ripped from their masonry) under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire, which was indifferent if not outright hostile to the treasures of other cultures within its boundaries, or during, in the case of Egypt, a corrupt system of partage that existed until the 1920's. She dutifully recounts the early history of archeology since its beginnings in the mid eighteenth century, relying heavily (and I am putting this mildly) on such well-known works such as "Gods, Graves, and Scholars" and especially "The Rape of the Nile" to recount the horrifying antiquities-grab that occured during previous centuries. Waxman goes on to describe how buying objects with questionable--or often entirely unknown provenance--was considered acceptable untl the late 1960's. It was only then than the cultural branch of the UN put into place a series of strictures designed to prevent the looting or smuggling of artifacts.
It is to the author's credit that she remains objective and tries to examine both sides to this difficult problem. Should an institution be responsible for returning items obtained centuries ago under conditions that would now be considered illegal? Does an object belong to the world or to a particular people-especially when the cultural heirs of that culture have vanished? Is is better to keep a unique object in the holdings of an museum that can display it for more people to wonder over? In the case of an institution that doesn't have the financial ability to keep something safe (the tragic story of the golden hippocampus of the Lydian Horde, returned to the brief custodianship of a tiny provincial museum by a reluctant Met, and now gone, perhaps forever, is described in detail), should an item be returned at all? Does insistence of strict provenance for trading antiquities really help, or does it merely drive the trade underground?
At this point, I might have given the book four stars. I kept waiting, however, for something more. Waxman makes many digs at the patronizing or even culturally imperialistic stances of Europe and the United States, yet she herself is guilty of this myopic attitude. Of the huge problems of looting and smuggling that exist in Latin America and Asia she breathes not a word.( Only the sack of the statues of Benin are mentioned.) Of the industry of manufactured fakes? Nothing. Does she go out into the field except in Egypt--even to Ceveteri, the great Etruscan site just north of Rome, and the scene of so much looting? No, she does not. Does she make a foray to Geneva, a prominent conduit for so many antiquities due to its status as a free port and talk to a few Swiss paper-pushers and ask them to explain themselves? Nope. This latter omission is simply inexcusable as Switzerland is cited again and again as a problem in the antiquities trade. Indeed, Waxman pretty much confines her investigations to talks with the famous, their overworked curators, and a few rumpled and driven journalists for old time's sake. She scarcely talks to field archeologists, giving only a cursory nod to Jack Davis, head of the consortium of the US universities operating archeology programs in Greece--a person who should have had much more time devoted to his position, which is that most everything should remain in situ to begin with. Indeed, except for Usak, the little museum in Turkey, Waxman confines herself to exploring the cushy and the well-known.
This could be excused, of course, as perhaps acceptable gaps in an overview that can't do everything. Yet Waxman spends a huge amount of time and space dealing with the case of Marion True, the former antiquities curator for the Getty, who was tried by the Italian government for illegal antiquities trading. This last part of the book, frankly, is an embarrassment. She spends far too much time on the bed-hopping activities of the staff, making the feeble excuse for her own salacious interest that who is sleeping with whom somehow has something to do with greater problems at the Getty. She jets off to Paros, where Ms True bought a house with a questionable mortgage from donors, for a little look-see of the Greek Isles--entirely irrelevant to the greater story. She interviews Giacomo Medici, the source of many of the Getty's gains via Ms True, though she doesn't speak Italian and he doesn't speak English. Would it have killed her to use an interpreter for such an important part of the story? Indeed, her entire understanding of the Italian judicial system seems muddled and confused.
In the end, Marion True's career is over and the Getty was forced to return many of the highlights of their collection. The author makes a few weak recommendations that museums should do a better job of labeling their works and citing in greater detail where they come from. And there the book ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper.Even the author's last set-piece of the book, as she lingers outside a dealer's showroom window in the fabulously wealthy town of St. Moritz and ponders the treasures within, is more of a reminder that she perhaps cares more for an ego-boosting glamour-trot amongst the great and the good than to really demonstrate the true global ramifications of the international illegal antiquities trade, and the sacking of the world's patrimony.
Rating: 3Waxman examines her story primarily through a series of high-profile interviews with prominent operators such as Zahi Hawas, then secretary-general of Egypt's Council of Antiquities (and all-purpose thorn-in-the-side to the curators and collectors of the great museums outside of his country), Neil MacGregor, director of the BM, Philippe de Montebello, director of the Met, and Henri Loyrette, director of the Louvre. Much of the pre-twentieth century collections of these institutions were acquired (though acquired seems far too mild a word for works such as the zodiac ceiling of the Temple of Denderah and half of the statues of the Parthenon, both literally ripped from their masonry) under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire, which was indifferent if not outright hostile to the treasures of other cultures within its boundaries, or during, in the case of Egypt, a corrupt system of partage that existed until the 1920's. She dutifully recounts the early history of archeology since its beginnings in the mid eighteenth century, relying heavily (and I am putting this mildly) on such well-known works such as "Gods, Graves, and Scholars" and especially "The Rape of the Nile" to recount the horrifying antiquities-grab that occured during previous centuries. Waxman goes on to describe how buying objects with questionable--or often entirely unknown provenance--was considered acceptable untl the late 1960's. It was only then than the cultural branch of the UN put into place a series of strictures designed to prevent the looting or smuggling of artifacts.
It is to the author's credit that she remains objective and tries to examine both sides to this difficult problem. Should an institution be responsible for returning items obtained centuries ago under conditions that would now be considered illegal? Does an object belong to the world or to a particular people-especially when the cultural heirs of that culture have vanished? Is is better to keep a unique object in the holdings of an museum that can display it for more people to wonder over? In the case of an institution that doesn't have the financial ability to keep something safe (the tragic story of the golden hippocampus of the Lydian Horde, returned to the brief custodianship of a tiny provincial museum by a reluctant Met, and now gone, perhaps forever, is described in detail), should an item be returned at all? Does insistence of strict provenance for trading antiquities really help, or does it merely drive the trade underground?
At this point, I might have given the book four stars. I kept waiting, however, for something more. Waxman makes many digs at the patronizing or even culturally imperialistic stances of Europe and the United States, yet she herself is guilty of this myopic attitude. Of the huge problems of looting and smuggling that exist in Latin America and Asia she breathes not a word.( Only the sack of the statues of Benin are mentioned.) Of the industry of manufactured fakes? Nothing. Does she go out into the field except in Egypt--even to Ceveteri, the great Etruscan site just north of Rome, and the scene of so much looting? No, she does not. Does she make a foray to Geneva, a prominent conduit for so many antiquities due to its status as a free port and talk to a few Swiss paper-pushers and ask them to explain themselves? Nope. This latter omission is simply inexcusable as Switzerland is cited again and again as a problem in the antiquities trade. Indeed, Waxman pretty much confines her investigations to talks with the famous, their overworked curators, and a few rumpled and driven journalists for old time's sake. She scarcely talks to field archeologists, giving only a cursory nod to Jack Davis, head of the consortium of the US universities operating archeology programs in Greece--a person who should have had much more time devoted to his position, which is that most everything should remain in situ to begin with. Indeed, except for Usak, the little museum in Turkey, Waxman confines herself to exploring the cushy and the well-known.
This could be excused, of course, as perhaps acceptable gaps in an overview that can't do everything. Yet Waxman spends a huge amount of time and space dealing with the case of Marion True, the former antiquities curator for the Getty, who was tried by the Italian government for illegal antiquities trading. This last part of the book, frankly, is an embarrassment. She spends far too much time on the bed-hopping activities of the staff, making the feeble excuse for her own salacious interest that who is sleeping with whom somehow has something to do with greater problems at the Getty. She jets off to Paros, where Ms True bought a house with a questionable mortgage from donors, for a little look-see of the Greek Isles--entirely irrelevant to the greater story. She interviews Giacomo Medici, the source of many of the Getty's gains via Ms True, though she doesn't speak Italian and he doesn't speak English. Would it have killed her to use an interpreter for such an important part of the story? Indeed, her entire understanding of the Italian judicial system seems muddled and confused.
In the end, Marion True's career is over and the Getty was forced to return many of the highlights of their collection. The author makes a few weak recommendations that museums should do a better job of labeling their works and citing in greater detail where they come from. And there the book ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper.Even the author's last set-piece of the book, as she lingers outside a dealer's showroom window in the fabulously wealthy town of St. Moritz and ponders the treasures within, is more of a reminder that she perhaps cares more for an ego-boosting glamour-trot amongst the great and the good than to really demonstrate the true global ramifications of the international illegal antiquities trade, and the sacking of the world's patrimony.
This is a though-provoking look at large encyclopedic museums, their practices in the past and present in dealing with antiquities from across the globe. As the author states, the book raises more questions than answers about cultural patrimony, looting, restitution, who should keep antiquities, and whether the 1970 UNESCO laws really discourage looting or whether they actually foster black market selling of antiquities to individuals which will never be seen by anyone else. I read this book for a book club, and probably would not have picked it up otherwise. However, it was a surprisingly easy read, and very interesting.
Rating: 4Another great analysis of the issues of stolen art. This is a vast conspiracy of steal our heritage from public view. Waxman has done an excellent job explaining the complex issues along with the many"public" crooks in the the theft of a country's art.
Rating: 5This is one of those books that you have to read if you're into Museum Ethics. Some of the well-known cases of cultural property contention are highlighted and they are each unique situations. Cultural property ownership will never be solved and museums will continually evolve to new schools of thought.
Rating: 4Reads like a thriller, in my view, and provides deep context on the anything but black and white issues of who owns antiquities. Waxman tells a story like nobody's business, and this ability raises more questions than answers about a controversy we'll likely never move past.
Rating: 5An eye-opening series of accounts of the secret history of your favorite museum installations. In addition to tracing the path that antiquities take from their countries of origin to the national institutions that house them, Waxman continually raises and reraises the ethical question of the organizations and governments that acquire these antiquities in order to preserve them in perpetuity, and the practical desire of returning them to their home regions, where political and social situations may be less than ideal.Basically, the book boils down to this: who does ancient art belong to, the world, or the specific country of origin? Would it deprive the world of something precious to take the Elgin Marbles out of the British Museum, where millions of people who otherwise wouldn't be able to see them, and return them to Greece, where there are serious doubts about the country's ability to continue to preserve them? And what right does one country have over another to say such a thing?
Rating: 4A bust of Nefertiti graces the cover of my copy of "Loot" by Sharon Waxman. Some people (not me) have been lucky to see this bust in real life, but most have seen this iconic Nefertiti only in pictures. Where is this bust? Not in Egypt, as you might think. It’s actually in a museum in Berlin. Waxman uses the bust of Nefertiti as one of many, many examples in which ancient treasures end up in other countries. The debate is whether they should be returned to their home countries or not. To sum it up, it depends on a lot of different issues, of which Waxman tries to provide a balanced account.When I read “Loot”, I learned a lot about the circumstances of how some ancient treasures were removed. For example, there is very little left of what used to grace the Acropolis in Greece. It isn’t due to the elements. Many of the marbles were removed and eventually ended up in museums, mainly the British museum. Waxman points out that at the time that they were removed in the early 1800s, the Acropolis had been used as a military garrison by Turks, and sculptures were being used as fortification. Still, pieces of the Parthenon were removed and taken away by the British, and this dismantling was very noticeable, even by the standards of the time. These marbles were also known as the Elgin marbles, because of Lord Elgin financing the removal of them. What I also found sad about these marbles is that eventually, in the 1930s, the British museum botched a cleaning of them — by removing traces of colors that had originally been painted on, and the patina that had grown over time. The marbles were a darker color; the color that the Parthenon is currently; but the museum used harsh chemicals and metal tools to make the marbles an unnatural white color. Currently, there is much dispute between Greece and the British Museum over how these marbles were treated. “Loot” gives much food for thought. It’s not easy to decide to simply return a treasure, such as the bust of Nefertiti, to its home country. There is documentation in this book on how poorly equipped some museums in some countries are to receive and care for these treasures. “Loot” also covers the often-illegal acquistions of ancient treasures that have continued to the recent day; the last part of this book devotes considerable time to the legal issues that the Getty Museum are facing to this day because of the sometimes underhanded way that these pieces were acquired by that museum. I am not sure, however, that so much detail (such as who slept with who) needed to go into the Getty Museum section.Since I appreciate both history and art (ancient and present), I feel that this book is worth reading. Resitution should be considered in a case-by-case manner; that is for sure. However, I learned a lot about the circumstances of these pieces that I wasn’t aware of before.
Rating: 4