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Culture Without Culture Without The Newsletter of the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre Issue 20 , Spring 2007 _ .. 0 ~ The Illicit Antiquities Research Centre is a project of the Mc Donald Institute for Archaeological Research. Editorial announcement stated UCL's intention to publish th e report's conclusions, but thi s has not hap­ pened. Furthermore, UCL has recently informed have been asked several times recentl y about several people (myself included) that the report I the genesis o f the government's Illicit Trade is a confidential document and that UCL is not Advisory Panel, whose report in December 2000 able to enter into di scussions about its subject is genera ll y considered responsible for the United matter. No ex planation has been offered as to Kingdom's accession to the 1970 UN ESCO Con­ why UCL appears to have changed its mind over vention. For once, it is a question I can answer pub Iication . with some degree of authority. In April 2000, the On 9 March 2007 th e Schoyen Coll ection IARC was working with Mauri ce Da vies of the announced th at it was to commence legal pro­ Museums Association towa rds a fina l draft of ceedings against UCL for the return of the bowls. Stealing HistDlY, a report commissioned by the These legal proceedings have now concluded. On Museums Association and ICOM-UK to recom­ 26 June 2007 the Schoyen Coll ection and UCL mend guidelines for museums poli cy toward s issued ajoint press rel ease announcing that 'UCL the trade in cultural and natural materi als. At a has no basis for concluding that title is vested reception, Maurice met Madelei ne Ho lt, who other than in the Schoyen Collecti on', and that was at the time arts correspondent on the BBC2 UC L has now returned the bowls and ' agreed to television current affairs programme Newsnight. pay a sum in respect of its possession of them'. Madeleine was in terested in covering our work Presumably payment was part of the settlement, on Newsni ght, and the three of us met to di scuss although it is not specifically stated. Pe rhaps a possible piece. It was screened on 12 April. non-publication of the report was another part? First there was a short documentary report on the It seems strange th ough. I f there is noth ing in illi cit trade, including interviews with Mauri ce the report to incriminate Martin Schoyen, and and myself, and hi ghlighting what were likely presumably there isn't or UC L would not have to be the recommendations of Stealing HistDlY. returned the bowls, th ere should be no problem Then there was a debate chaired by Jeremy Pax­ with its publication man, with Colin Renn·ew in the studio and the It is also strange that UCL has agreed to 'pay then Minister for Arts Alan Howarth on a li ve a sum ' to Schoyen in respect of possession when television link. After a few minutes discussion, Schoyen himself had deposited them at UCL fo r Alan Howarth announced hi s intention to set up study. Schoyen stands to make quite a profit from an expert advisory panel to consider the problems academic collaboration. Incantation bowls with involved and invited Colin Renn·ew to be a mem­ translated texts are offered for sale w ith prices ber. Colin Renfrew accepted and ITAP was born. anything up to ten-times those asked fo r bowls It was formall y convened on 24 May 2000 under without translations. The study and translation the chairmanship o f Norman Palmer. ofSchoyen's bowls at UCL will ha ve in creased their monetary value quite substantiall y. And then '-' The saga of the Schoyen incantation bowls UCL paid more on top. N ice business. ~ continues. I reported in the last issue that in 2004 University College London (UCL) con­ 9 This is the last issue of CIII/lIre Withollt vened a committee of enquiry to investi gate the ~ Con/ext. A fter 10 successful years, the provenance of 654 Aramaic in cantation bowls McDonald In stitute has decided that it will not belonging to Martin Schoyen that had been support the Illi cit Antiquities Research Centre deposited at UCL for study. The committee past 30 September 2007, and so the Centre will submitted its report in 2006. The ori gin al UCL close on that date. 2 Artefacts in the closet: tion named simply 'Trafficking'. The exhibition deals mainl y with the trafficking of people for displaying cultural objects cheap labour or sexual exploitation, but there is that are victims of illicit also a secti on that deals with the trafficking of cultural obj ects and the museum 's own part in it. trafficking The objects di splayed in this section are as stated in its introductory text: classic examples of the P ONTUS F ORSLUND ambiguous relationships between museum ethics, collectin g, and la ws for the protection of cu ltural he region of Sipi'm is kn own to museum objects. All the objects in th e exhibiti on have T workers worldWIde as th e provenance of their provenance in Latin Ameri ca, whi ch is the the in famous Moche objects th at were looted and museum 's trad itional area of interest. This section illegall y traded in the late eighties. Some artefacts of the Trafficking exhibition has a vivid sense of have been returned to Peru, but there are many ideological urgency about it. The museum has more still to be found in private coll ections and in inherited some ethical and legal baggage from the western museums. Although the looting of Sip an old Gothenburg Ethnographic, and this exhibition escalated in the late eighties, it had been endemic has provided an ideal opportun ity to tackle some fo r many years before that, so that th e majority of of the issues that such a legacy brings. these artefacts have lost their hi storical context. So, fo r exampl e, probably like many other This tradition of plullderin g and ill egal trade has exhibitions on hi stori c Peru , it displays an artefact distributed the Sipan objects all over the world. from the Sipan region dating back to the Chimu One is on display at the Museum of World Culture period (Fig. I). The artefact mi ght be a piece of in Gothenburg, Sweden. chai n ma il , but then aga in it mi ght not be, and the The Museum o f World Culture is a fai rl y new accompany in g label doesn't say anyth ing about museum, a product of the Social-Democratic its ori g in al purpose. The label does say, however, government's active cultural policies, that opened that it was smuggled out of Peru in 1972 and its doors to the public in December 2004. The sold to the museum. The sell er/donor has been museum owes its foundation to Gothenburg's kept anonymous and the protection of hi s or her Ethnographic Museum, a traditional museum of identity is probably due to fact that the export its time and once a part of Gothenburg Museum, of cultural objects was illegal in Peru, which whic h possessed rich co ll ections of objects could jeopardize the dealer's acti vities in the mainl y from South America. The instituti on was country, although the acqui sition was perfectly firml y establi shed as a leader in its geographical legal in Sweden. The questionable acquisition fie ld during the earl y decades of the twentieth of the object (it had been bought by the donor century by the museum director, th e professor in Peru from tomb robbers) has resulted in a and Baron Erl and Nord ensk i6ld . By the earl y weak informational context that raises questions 1990s, however, the museum was suffering and about its authenti city and cul tural meaning. The in need of reform to meet the standards required the n director of th e museum tried franticall y of a modern museum with a global perspective and retrospectively to gather information about and a mi ssion to encourage social incl usion and the artefact, but without any real success. It was dialogue. So, the Museum of Wo rl d Culture was exhibited in 1973, and now again in 2006, but in established and Gothenburg's Ethnographic Mu­ a context totall y different to that intended by the selllll ceased to exist, with th e ownership of the seller and the museum curator responsible for its collecti ons of the Ethnographic Museum being acqui sition transferred from the municipality of Gothenburg A not her g lass case features some classic to the state of Sweden. Nazca 11/Iaco vessels, with charming ani mal aes­ Ex hibitions at the Museum of World Culture thetics, purchased by the museum in 1932 from seek to contradict popular im ages of th e exotic a Swedish diplomat. Again the country o f ori gin and create awareness of current, pressi ng g lobal is Peru, but in this case more can be said of its issues like HIV/AIDS and trafficking. The latter acqui siti on and the dubious ethics of Gothenburg. issue is the theme of the newly opened exhibi- Maybe this fact is not obvious from the labels in 3 interesting to fi nd it inscribed with gold letters on a marble pl aq ue listing donors at th e former home of the Ethnographi c Museum, now the Gothenburg City Museum.
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