CPRI Shows its Hand

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The grandly-named Cultural Policy Research Institute (CPRI) in the US has shown its hand. Far from being the "research institute" it poses as, it has made a Freedom of Information demand, much like the numismatic trade associations have done over the US' Cyprus and China bilateral cultural agreements (Peter Tompa: "CPRI Files FOIA Request on Purported Egyptian Done Deal"). That is not really what bona fide research institutes do is it? That's the sort of thing an antiquity dealers' advocacy group would do. This is just another indicator that this "institute" is not at all what it purports to be. It looks like its an attempt to revive the defunct American Council for Cultural Policy from pre-Iraq yesteryear.

It seems to me that this "research Institute" is placing rather too much weight on to the precise wording of a statement made in English on a blog by Egyptian Zahi Hawass.

Dr. Hawass’ description of their discussion strongly suggests that the statutory requirements of the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CCPIA) have been completely ignored and the decision-making role of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee to the President (CPAC) has been superseded.

But that is just Zahi Hawass isn't it? How much can this wording be trusted? This is just one reading of that short piece of gossip. Has the CPRI thought to contact anyone from the Capitol Archaeological Institute of George Washington University, the Archaeological Institute of America, the American School of Oriental Research at Boston University, or the National Geographic Society before submitting an FOI request to the State Department? As a "research institute" it would seem normal to contact colleagues in other bone fide research institutes, wouldn't it? Is that not actually the whole essence of being a research institute, keeping up with what other research institutes are doing in a given field?

Suppose what Hawass (or his blog ghost-writer) meant to say was that the "International Coalition to Support Protection of Egyptian Antiquities" would help draft a REQUEST for a bilateral agreement - much the same way as CPRI patron Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's "heritage workshops" coach interested organizations in how to fill out grant applications? How would that make the CPRI's kneejerk response look?

Peter Tompa alarms that the Coalition ("private group"):

has apparently guaranteed that the U.S government would sign an agreement with the Government of Egypt limiting access by all Americans to art from a founding civilization of the ancient world.

well, I do not think there was a guarantee, it's not "art" but portable antiquities and any eventual agreement would only limit them in response to the reports of ongoing looting to the extent of allowing import of only those legally exported.

UPDATE 14/6/11
This is so ridiculous. Tompa reveals that the reason for the CPRIA submitting an FOI request was that

As noted in my blog, the AIA initially had something about an agreement being negotiated by these groups on its website. Then, it took it down.

What that statement said was:

Zahi Hawass, Egypt's Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, said, "The Coalition will be drafting a formal agreement between the US and Egyptian governments, and, as soon as it is signed, all of these important projects will be implemented."

If however one turns to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs webpage, there is a fairly full account of what was discussed and what agreement had to be drafted and why:

The Framework Agreement reflects partnership between the government sector (the Egyptian Foreign Ministry) and the Private Sector (the American Coalition) which would commit the American side to provide financial resources.[...] Ambassador Iman El Farr, Deputy Assistant Minister for Cultural Protocols and Agreements highlighted the cultural importance of perfect preparation reaching the final wording of the agreement to be signed so as to start implementing what agreed upon and facilitate the process of providing the necessary financial resources.

No mention is made there of any kind of US import restrictions. This seems therefore to be confirmed to be wishful thinking on behalf of Zahi Hawass (or his ghost blog-writer) who put it on his blog, and thus now forces the US taxpayer to support yet another two FOI requests from the antiquity dealing lobby. You have to laugh. As I said, a proper research institute would check out the facts at source before engaging in such an action - its as simple as telephoning the people concerned in the US, or doing a simple Google search to find the Egyptian MFA webpage.

Vignette: CPR on the ACCP

Collectors' Rights and Ancient Art

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"First she crushes the glass with a meat axe. Then she penetrates the canvas with a sharp object. First a short slash, then long slashes placed with extreme precision. This new artistic strategy is a settlement of accounts with the tradition that has dominated painting since the Renaissance, in which illusion or trompe l'oeil is used to create spatiality. Mary Richardson does not wish to paint the illusion of space but to create real spaces. By shattering its framework she has given painting a third dimension".

Further to my comments on Ai Weiwei's "artistic" vandalism of ancient artefacts, Peter Tompa disapproves my expression of my opinion ("Archaeoblogger Paul Barford has now become an art critic"). Tompa seems to see this vandalism of ancient artefacts as part of "a long artistic tradition of transforming the old into the new", and apparently disapproves that "Barford will have no part of it".

How oddly this sits with the coiney mantras that if they did not buy dugup coins no-questions-asked, they'd all be melted down into tourist trinkets. Is that not "transforming the old into new"? How about heavily tooled coins, collectors are very disapproving of this, but again, its "transforming the old into new". Perhaps we could see some 'hobo-denarii' moder coin-toolers carving imperial portraits into amusing caricatures - "transforming the old into new" (like putting a fez-like hat on an emperor on a contextless coin). Then there is the wearable ancient coin jewellery ( "transforming the old into new" - there is an ACCG board member who has a family business doing just that). What about an Authentic Third Intermediate Period Mummy cases turned into drink cabinets for a Beverly Hills mansion ("transforming the old into new"), or the lopped off foot of a mummified human cadaver from an Egyptian tomb transformed into scary something to frighten the neighbour's kids with?

Then there's transforming a Roman cameo glass vase into a pile of glass sherds, but the British Museum did not see this as an artistic act and reconstructed the Portland Vase. Michaelangelo's Pieta has its nose back after an artist hammered it off, those Papal stiffs at the Vatican simply do not respect artistic expression. The Rokeby Venus has had the transformative slashing repaired - obscuring the artistic expression of suffragette Mary Richardson . More recently Rembrandt's "Night Watch" has had traces of attempts to artistically "transform old into new", once by slashing with a bread knife, a second time by spraying with acid, removed. Then there was the simultaneous slashing and acid attack on another Rembrandt, his Danae, a foiled attempt at transforming the "old into a new". Or if we are talking of 'ready mades', we could dwell on what happened to Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, which perhaps Tompa would prefer to remain as seen in Nimes in 1993 after an act of expression involving the item's original function? Tompa thinks this sort of thing is not vandalism but "art". Most museum curators tend to disagree with this "collectors' rights" advocate on that point, as do I.

I thought collectors prided themselves with being mere custodians, looking after the past, stewards? That by collecting them they are "protecting" the objects? Is that not what they say? And yet "collector's rights" activist Tompa considers the smashing and defacing of artefacts merely as part of "a long artistic tradition of transforming the old into the new".

Tompa asks (I think he means it to be rhetorical):

isn't Ai Weiwei's transformation of the old artifacts in some ways better than letting such common artifacts gradually turn to dust in some forgotten storage facility?

He asserts that pottery "in the supposed care of the archaeological community" in excavation archives and museum storerooms "turns to dust" anyway, so better let Ai Weiwei have it to create "art" with. Tompa seems unaware that thermally fused silicate material such as ceramic is extraordinarily stable in normal (and even abnormal) storage conditions. Not only is it not turning into dust, but very little material in the care of the museum community will be getting dunked in brightly coloured enamel paint, or ground up into dust packed into IKEA jars just for the shock value of it. But of course we can assume that Ai Weiwei did not obtain these pots on loan from a state museum, instead we assume he'd have bought them on the antiquities market and presumably therefore they come from the looting of archaeological sites (the complete pots coming probably from cemeteries and tombs). It is notable that US antiquity collector Tompa has absolutely no qualms about this "property" from the antiquities market being treated by its "owner" in this way, after all, he says these are "such common artifacts" which presumably means that it simply does not matter.

So not only do I find myself in disagreement with dugup collectors about what is "ancient art" but now what is "art" generally in a modern context (or is this Tompaism more related to the post-modernist excesses we see expressed in other areas of coineydom?) .

Photo: The Rokeby Venus' back "transformed into something new". I am not as sophisticated an art critic as Peter Tompa and his Washington socialite buddies, it is true, but to me this is not the right way to treat a precious survival from the past.

New York Senator Gillibrand and Cultural Policy

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Readers may remember that on March 21st the Cultural Policy Research Institute (a thinly disguised reformation of the American Council for Cultural Policy ACCP) organized under the patronage of New York senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand a "seminar" in Washington attacking the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act. About two months ago I wrote to the Senator asking for clarification of her views on the international trade in illegally exported dugup archaeological artefacts.

I noted at the time that in the list of topics in the Senator's contact form to choose from, there was no mention of culture or cultural property theft, suggesting this was not a matter about which Senator Gillibrand was expecting to get correspondence from citizens. Although I did not receive an answer to my letter, I note that the Senator has since that time engaged in activities suggesting she is taking an interest in promoting culture and the arts after all. On March 23rd at the Brooklyn Museum there was a workshop sponsored by the Office of Senator Gillibrand "Promoting the Arts, Cultural Institutions and Historic Sites: An Economic Development and Grants Writing Workshop". On April 27th a related programme was offered at the Albright-Knox Gallery Auditorium, Buffalo, New York there was a session on “Promoting the Arts, Cultural Institutions and Historic Sites: A Strategy for Economic Growth and Job Creation". On 17th May, a similar event ("Promoting the Arts, Cultural Institutions and Historic Sites: A Strategy for Economic Growth and Job Creation") was held at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (Daniel Aloi, 'Panelists promote culture, tourism benefits to regional economy development', May 26, 2011).

Based on the promotional material to these events I imagine that has Senator Gillybrand done me the courtesy of replying, the Senator's office would have sent a reply to my letter that looked something like this:

Dear Mr Barford,
Thank you for your interest in the work of this office. Senator Gillibrand considers culture is very important, and was pleased to be involved in the organization of a discussion in Washington of the Cultural Property Research Institute on the efficiency of the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act.

The Senator of course supports the State Department’s initiatives on cultural protection and is certain that Secretary Clinton and the staff for which she is responsible fulfil their duty with integrity and the best interests of America's international standing as their highest priority.

Senator Gillibrand is definitely a champion for the arts and takes great interest in what is going to happen in this regard in the next legislative session, it is important that we work with lawmakers to pursue aggressively and creatively the promise of partnerships between industry and the world of culture. She embraces the view that there are economic reason for creating efficient policies concerning culture and the arts in our country. Culture is a mighty tool for economic development which is a No. 1 priority for the senator.

To this end, the Senator’s office willingly assists arts organizations as well as small businesses, with letters of support and other services.

I hope this answers your questions. Thank you for your expression of interest in the work of this Office, /.../ bla bla

well, of course its pretty obvious that its the use of historic sites and what is in them for promoting economic growth and job creation in the United States that is at the basis of the cultural policy represented by the Gillybrand workshops. Promoting the preservation of foreign sites as a resource for economic development in the wider world seems not to be her concern. But helping US "small businesses" is of importance to her - like the US coin trade (V-Coins today 151 Dug-up Ancient Coin Dealers advertising 110,412 Items with a total value of $24,348,909). That is probably why she went along with their lobbyists' proposal to organize a meeting in Washington examining the concept of restriction of imports of dugup antiquities into the US market to those with documentation of legal export.

Here is the Senator being interviewed at the Turkish Cultural Centre's Annual Friendship Dinner, March 24, 2011:



Here she again links cultural heritage with economy: "...economic development, economic opportunity, cultural exchange, the cultures of both countries can enhance everything that we have to offer here in America". Well, cultural exchange is not very fruitful when one nation's citizens are busy making money from the sale of cultural property plundered in the other and illegally exported. Is she really of the opinion that the Turkish cultural heritage is only of value when it is being used to "enhance everything that we have to offer here in America"?

It is a great shame that the Senator refused to clarify her involvement and explain why she would allow her name to become associated with the criticism from the antiquity dealers' lobby of the efforts of the United States to curb the trade in illicit antiquities.

April Fool from CPRI

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It seems to me that the Santa Fe-based "Cultural Property Research Institute" (an antiquity dealers' advocacy group masquerading as an inefficient "research institute") has got its dates wrong. A text they have released (State Department in Contravention of the Law?) can only be seen as an April Fool joke accidentally published two days early. Still, I suppose that's better than all those promised pieces of "research" which are months overdue.

Among the gems of deadpan humour contained in this obviously satirical text, the reader will spot the following:

- "has disregarded the criteria established by the law that created it", the enquiring reader will ask what might they be, and in what way do they benefit the world's cultural heritage?

- "the Act was intended not just to save objects, but to save context and heritage". Where does it say that? Where? It actually says nothing of the kind in the CCPIA (which in general it has to be admitted is a badly-written text, but that is no excuse for the CPRI making things up).

- "limitations placed by the Act on the ability of the US Government to enter into agreements with other countries to impose import restrictions", eh? This is in an act intended to IMPLEMENT the 1970 UNESCO Convention on what? Oh yes, "on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property", so why did the US government issue an "implementing" act limiting its own ability to actually "implement" the actual measures of the Convention? Why would the US government fail to enter into an agreement with another country who requests it to actually implement the measures implicit in becoming a state party to the Convention? That's just plain daft, but then all of this US pretence to be implementing the Convention is plain double daft. Let the US just end the farce and withdraw from the Convention they have for nearly three decades obviously had no intention of fully honouring. Let the existing Wild West ethos of much of the US antiquity market show itself for what it is.

- "a provision requiring U.S. restrictions to be part of a "concerted international response" had been violated" eh? So where actually is this mythical "provision"? Where? How can you "violate" a provision that is not there?

- "in a manner that discriminated against Americans and that moved the trade abroad". Like keeping Chinese artefacts from being illegally exported FROM China? Isn't that what the 1970 Convention "on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property" supposed to do? What did the Americans think it was supposed to do when they became a state party? And how funny, an American law which affects Americans in America and not foreigners living outside America.

"Seminar summary at http://www.cprinst.org/Home/issues. Full transcript available soon". Can they manage it by April 1st?

The comedy is continued by that master of black humour, D.C. lawyer Peter Tompa, who asks "A related question is whether the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is listening or whether Assistant Secretary Anne Stock and her staff remain tone deaf as ever". Listen to what? The inventive rantings of the lunatic fringe of the US no-questions-asked market in dugup antiquities? That is a real joke.

What on earth is New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand thinking of aligning herself with these people with their all-too-transparent antisocial aims? Maybe readers in the States might like to write to her office and ask her http://gillibrand.senate.gov/contact/.

Vignette: Hilary and lookalike Kirsten (left) show their appreciation of the 2011 CPIA April Fool joke at the expense of the skeletal US International Cultural Property Protection program, such as it is.

Santa Fe Cultural Policy Research Institute Seminars and Projects

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The list of proposed Santa Fe Cultural Policy Research Institute Seminars and Projects on its homepage makes interesting reading. When it opened two years ago, it promised it would do four things. The first it sort-of achieved (though the actual sources of the information it utilised have never been revealed): Research Study #1: Project on Unprovenanced Ancient Objects in Private US Hands ("Determining the number of artistically and academically significant, privately-owned objects in the United States that are currently excluded from acquisition by US museums") published in November 10, 2009.

It seems the other three proposed research programmes were never brought beyond the planning stage:
2) Developing different models for a registry that can be applied to privately-owned objects.("A draft report will be published on the CPRI website by the end of 2009")

3) Exploring ways to harmonize US laws and regulations that apply to transfer and ownership of antiquities. ("CPRI will gather, cite, and republish these materials on the CPRI website and provide summaries and analyses useful to museums, educational institutions and the general public" - no date cited: where are these?).

4) Exploring the effect of source country policies on damage to archaeological sites and objects.("This will be an ongoing research project with milestones and publication outcomes to be determined before the end of 2009" - no such definitions appear to have been created).

Vignette: Santa Fe has of course its own local cultural heritage issues, will the CPRI be addressing them too?

Does the panel Think....?

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In the discussion of the 2010 Kirsten Gillibrand Anti-Convention-on-Cultural-Property-Implementation-Act Seminar held the other day about whether the Act is "working" or not, there is a lot of talk about something the panellists called the “concerted international response requirement”. This might lead some readers to believe that this is a requirement of the Act.

The wording of course nowhere appears in it, a United States law cannot of course dictate what other sovereign nations should or should not do on their own territory. What the CCPIA says is that the President may decide that if putting import controls on illegally exported items from source countries, "if applied in concert with similar restrictions implemented, or to be implemented within a reasonable period of time, by those nations (whether or not State Parties) individually having a significant import trade in such material, would be of substantial benefit" in deterring the illicit trade in the artefacts concerned (duh), he may do that. He may do that because to do so "is consistent with the general interest of the international community in the interchange of cultural property among nations for scientific, cultural, and educational purposes".

Note the Act nowhere says that if the United States, arguably currently the world's greatest and greediest importer of all types of dugup cultural property, would be the only nation applying "similar restrictions", these restrictions cannot be agreed upon.

In any case other nations do apply similar restrictions, Nobody in the UK can legally buy illegally obtained artefacts from other countries, like Japan and a whole host of other countries. Their legislation implementing the 1970 UNESCO Convention has a blanket ban on such tainted artefacts - not a selective one (agreed individually by the CPAC) as in the USA. It is the USA which is lagging behind the rest of the civilised world here, not the other way around. The USA is not implementing the Convention at all, it is flouting its accession to it. Shame on you all.

Note that the Cultural Policy Research Institute was discussing how the US with its outdated and ineffective 1983 act should be sliding further out of her obligations to protect the world's cultural heritage under the Convention. There seems not to have been a single word spoken about how US cultural policy can help stop the looting and illicit exports, which of course is pretty typical of the milieu. It is a shame the antiquity dealers' friend Mrs Gillibrand could not see her way to facilitating a seminar on that topic in the Russell Senate Office Building .

Photo: Kirsten (left) and Hilary enjoying a good laugh, perhaps about the American Cultural Policy Research Institute's amateurish attempts to mislead the voters.

The Cultural Property Implementation Act: Is it Working?

The Cultural Policy Research Institute, transparently a dealers' lobbyist group masquerading as a rather ineffective research institution based in Santa Fe, is hosting a meeting today: The Cultural Property Implementation Act: Is it Working? at the Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. I suppose the answer depends on whether you regard it as a cop-out law (in which case its working very well) or something which was actually intended to implement the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (in which case it most certainly is not). Is the CCPIA in any way able to effectively stop the import of illegally obtained artefacts from the looting of the Cairo Museum and archaeological sites in Egypt this very moment? (No, the Egyptians would have to ask nicely, make a number of promises, wait for the CPAC to meet a couple of times beforte this could even be "implemented", by which time who knows what could have passed onto the US market?).

The usual culprits are speaking at the seminar alongside a few token assorted others, but they each seem to get ten minutes (within antiquity collectors' attention span I presume), so I guess it will not be a very intellectually challenging meeting. No doubt we will be getting a blow-by-blow account from the observing Mr Tompa in due course. Hooray. If US dealers and collectors had any decency they'd be recommending that the US stop pretending to implement the Convention and withdraw from it and rename the CCPIA the 'United States Antiquities Market Protection Act'. But then if the majority had any real decency, the global antiquities market would not look like it does today anyway and America would not need a Reagan-era cop-out act.