Candice Jarman, the supporter of UK artefact hunters against what he terms the "lies and distortions of the radical archaeologists", is adamant that the international antiquities trade is "largely licit" ("and laws to punish illicit trafficking exist already") [where have we heard all this before?]. Having stressed earlier that collectors buying from this trade are mainly interested in acquiring licit, well-provenanced antiquities, it is therefore odd to see him now attacking US antiquity dealer Dave Welsh's ideas about how the market can be supplied with more licit, well-provenanced antiquities. Candice is of the opinion that this type of scheme "has no place in a free society".
Mr Jarman's profile announces he is interested in "freedom" (capitalised). It is interesting to note the kind of freedom he promotes. After commenting on the "decline of the West" with "the balance of power and wealth now moving eastwards", Candice seeks symptoms of that in:
the treatment of Marion True, Getty Curator, and the continual repatriation of objects to Italy (whose museums and store-rooms must be over-flowing with stuff already!). Would a confident and assertive country act like this? If I was in the White House - I would have told Italy where to go - Italy needs America far more than America needs Italy surely.(Besides the fact that I am sorely puzzled by what logic someone in the UK sees Italy as somehow "the East")... Marion True was being tried for her alleged involvement in the purchase of illicit antiquities (the antiquities were illicitly obtained, what was in question in her trial was her personal involvement and knowledge of that). The objects recently returned to Italy from US museums were not licitly exported, not a single valid export licence was produced for any of them. What Italy is now asking is for the USA to put import restrictions on (and ONLY on) antiquities illegally exported from Italy in the period covered by the CCPIA. I really cannot see why the USA (voluntarily a state party to the 1970 UNESCO Convention after all) should exert its "confidence and assertiveness" by "telling Italy where to go". What kind of talk is that from a self-proclaimed responsible collector? That's pirate talk.
More pirate talk - if the people labelled (falsely) "anti-collecting" succeed in curbing the no-questions-asked trade in illicit antiquities:
The anti's true legacy will be our cultural decline and impoverishment.As if building collections of stolen and smuggled artefacts was in some way a symbol of cultural superiority and richness for this apostrophe-abusing British artefact collector. Candice reveals himself by this to be a collector no less the crypto-imperialist and neocolonialist than his US "Cultural Internationalist" counterparts.
So if
Italy asked Britain for some freshly surfaced (from underground) recently stolen artefacts to be investigated and returned, antiquity collector Candice would expect Her Majesty's Government to exert its "confidence and assertiveness" by "telling Italy where to go"?.
Vignette: is antiquity collector Candice Jarman a British bulldog lover?