Mar
11
Illicit Art and Antiquity Trade
March 11, 2008 | | 1 Comment
By Wanching (Week 5)
According to the Houston Journal of International Law, the income generated by illicit trade in art and antiquities was estimated to be as high as six billion US dollars per year. The loot comes mainly from private collectors, public museums, churches and archaeological sites. Only five to ten per cent of the looted objects are recovered, and based on the recovery data from the Art Loss Register , even when recovery succeeds, it takes an average of 13.4 years. Besides, the Journal’s study showed that news media often report that the scope of the criminal market for illicit art and antiquity dealers ranks fourth, after that of narcotics, smuggling, arms trafficking and money laundering.
The latest case that hit newspapers’ headline was US prosecutors’ decision to seize a 1982 painting that turned up in a Manhattan warehouse late last year, after being stolen from its last known owner in Brazil in 2005. The thing that shocked the world was that the US$8 million worth Hannibal had been smuggled into the US disguised as a US $100 ordinary painting.
In fact, the scale of illicit art and antiquity trade is so vast that governments around the world have been trying every means to suppress the trade, and to recover looted artwork and antiquities. This is no easy job though.
Global initiatives like the Hague Convention, the UNIDROIT Convention and the UNESCO Convention are in place to protect work and property with high artistic and historical value, and to recover them in case of theft. However, a consensus on the definition of “cultural property” has yet to be reached. Various signatories to the convention are still having a hard time balancing their national interest in controlling its cultural resources to foster its national identity, and the international community’s interests in globally displaying significant artwork.
In many cases of cross-border illicit art trade, the importing country had not been forthcoming in facilitating the artwork’s recovery. Just look at Britain’s refusal to return the Partheon Marbles to Greece on the ground that pollution in Athens would destroy the marbles, which are therefore best left in the British Museum. This also shows an intriguing dilemma that many countries importing smuggled artifacts actually benefit from an increased number of tourists attracted by the artifacts, wherever they came from.
In Europe where churches are the most usual place to house ancient artwork besides museums, religious considerations seem to weigh as much as security concerns. According to TIME’s February 18 issue, some churches are worried that erecting metal bars around religious treasures or putting them in glass cases would alienate their devout believers by distancing them from God. There is certainly a need to strike a delicate balance between security and sanctity, but it seems that most churches have so far relied merely on people’s fear of God rather than locks and sensors to protect their religious work of art.
Developing countries have their own share of problems too. In India, ancient artworks are so numerous in quantity that they can be possessed by almost anyone. In many of the traditional villages that remain despite the spate of development in recent years, the majority of precious ancient artwork is still kept by individual families and passed from one generation to the next. Most owners simply dismiss what they see daily in their home as just another piece of furniture or household decorations, and thus fail to report it to the authorities for proper record or immediate recovery once it is stolen by someone with the artistic or historical sense to spot treasure. As a result, the difficulties faced by the law enforcement agencies are accentuated by the lack of a proper registration system to keep track of precious artwork.
While huge amounts of resources have been devoted to eradicating art smuggling, it is interesting to note that not all art and antiquity traffickers are in it for the money. Pietro Casassantra , an Italian who had spent 50 years in the art smuggling business before he testified in court in 2007, insisted that he had been performing a valuable service to the human race. He did not steal his merchandise from museums, but dug it from the ground instead. He argued that what he did had help preserve the artwork that would have been otherwise destroyed to make way for new construction and development.
In fact, Pietro Casassantra’s preservation of the artwork or antiquities dug from underground was so superb that world-class museums were even attracted to buy his pilferings. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the Los Angeles Museum of Art were reported to be among those vying for ancient stolen Roman and Greek artifacts supplied by Pietro Casassantra. The museums had not commented on the rumours.
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Great story- an issue we know little about.