Etruscan bronze harnesses, ca. 600-625 BC, among the disputed antiquities held by the Ny Carlsburg Glyptotek.
The “charming demon” is back in the news this week.
The Italian prosecution of American dealer Robert Hecht has illuminated ill-gotten artifacts in many international collections, but the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek continues to resist restitution of objects allegedly acquired from Hecht, The New York Times reports. Discussions about this issue between the Italian government and the museum began as early as 2002. As of December 2008, Italy formally demanded the return of some 100 objects, including those from a 7th century Etruscan tomb at Colle de Forno, allegedly purchased from Hecht. Moreover, Daniela Rizzo, an archaeologist who testified for the prosecution in Hecht’s trial, stated unequivocally that the Etruscan group from Colle de Forno had been looted. “They were visibly the result of a traumatic action,” she said. “It would have been impossible not to know that it had been illegally excavated.”
According to Jette Christiansen of the Glyptotek’s ancient art department, Hecht was a personal friend of Mogens Gjødesen, the director of the Glyptotek until 1978. Christiansen claims that since 1978, however, the museum has not made new acquisitions in the international art market (via the Glyptotek 2008 Annual Report, available as a PDF in Danish. Her comment is helpfully translated by Troels Myrup. Iconoclasm has closely followed the connections between the trials of Hecht and Giacomo Medici and the Danish museum.)
Portrait of a princess from Amarna, ÆIN 1814, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, acquired 2005.
Yet as Myrup points out, avoiding “the international art market” does not preclude acquisitions from private collections, such as a portrait of a princess from Amarna, acquired by the Glyptotek in 2005 from an undisclosed German private collection. There is absolutely no guarantee that private collectors are always more scrupulous in their willingness to buy and sell antiquities without substantially documented provenance than dealers like Hecht and Medici, especially as private collectors are much less vulnerable to public pressure. (Obviously, important exceptions include high-profile philanthropists like Shelby White.) Forging a responsible acquisitions policy to withstand the brave new world of zealous international prosecution and the PR pitfalls of resignations and restitutions cannot reasonably be done by avoiding the art market altogether. Nor is every private collection a “contaminated” resource.
The fate of the objects, and the staff that organized their purchase, remains unclear. Correspondence between Hecht and former officials at the Glyptotek dating from the early 1970′s was presented at Hecht’s trial. Is such evidence enough to implicate the museum’s former staff? From the Times:
Paolo Giorgio Ferri, the prosecutor at Mr. Hecht’s trial, said he hoped to build a separate case against former officials at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, though the statute of limitations has expired. Mr. Ferri also said he could ask that some of the objects be confiscated as material evidence should Mr. Hecht be convicted.
The testimony of Ms. Rizzo suggests the Italian government’s next contention may well be that, no matter who sold the Etruscan Colle de Forno group to the museum, if the evidence of their looting was so overwhelmingly clear, wrongdoing extends further to the purchasers themselves, in violation of the 1970 Unesco convention.
At a cultural moment when those with a stake in the ownership of antiquities are variously labeling objects “cultural property,” “art,” etc., “material evidence” is a somewhat unwelcome, but increasingly unsurprising addition.
