Thieves of Baghdad and of the Upper East Side

1/24/2022

If you liked Ariel Saabar’s Veritas, or want a glimpse into the illegal antiquities trade, read Sabar’s article in the December Atlantic Monthly
Of course stolen or looted art should be returned to its rightful owners, but if you are sufficiently woke, you may want to insist on a further step, requiring every art object that originated in what is now a developing country to be returned to the state that now controls that territory. Anything less would be “colonialism.”
The result of such a policy, however, would be, I fear, reinforced nationalism, as every nation state’s art is locked up in its own silo.
Instead, or in the meantime, why not liberate art from the silos into which museums and others have confined it?. That will require imagination and some creative juxtapositions. as the Met is learning to d in its current African Origins show with a striking juxtaposition if African and classical art in its classical gallery:

2 Comments

Calixtus

1/24/2022 12:07:02 pm

I'm struck by this thought:

"Of course stolen or looted art should be returned to its rightful owners, but if you are sufficiently woke, you may want to insist on a further step, requiring every art object that originated in what is now a developing country to be returned to the state that now controls that territory. Anything less would be “colonialism.” The result of such a policy, however, would be, I fear, reinforced nationalism."

I've never seen the issue framed so starkly before, and it's clarifying. Turkey would seem to be a good test case here. A great many Greek antiquities originate in the land now called Turkey, all of them dating to before 1453. Should they be repatriated there? What would or could "repatriation" actually mean in this case?

Jim

1/26/2022 08:36:30 am

I remember Sabar's Atlantic piece in the July/August 2016 issue. What a story. Spectacular result from contact between well-meaning professor and long con. As someone who has known some flimflam artists in my time, I have a lot of sympathy for Karen King. And as someone who titled his dissertation "Roman Deceit," I feel that I understand better than some how it happened.

(True story: in my twenties, I got a call from a person at a bank in Charlotte, telling me that the bank was going to have me arrested. Long story short, a con man whom my father — "Sr." to my "Jr." and a state court judge in rural Georgia — had once sentenced to jail time, thought it would be amusing to take the judge's name as his alias after he paroled and resumed his criminal occupation. Apparently he was a pretty good swindler, because the bank — I forget how it was involved — had become completely fed up.)

With respect to antiquities, I admit to ambivalence. Would it be helpful at all to ponder what analogous situations exist? I'm thinking of, say, land in coastal South Carolina and Georgia that passed from Gullah-Geechee families (without clear title) to the ownership — with the legal documentation to prove it — of golf course developers. The status quo seems intolerable, but what to do? As you say, creative solutions are in need.

Thieves of Baghdad and of the Upper East Side

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