Possession order
The looting of archaeological sites, the illegal trade in antiquities and a rise in demands for the return of art stolen during the Nazi era have all made provenance a hot topic for museums. Tom Flynn reports
Over the past six months, provenance has become one of the most critical topics on the international museum agenda.
This seemingly benign term, denoting an object's origins and ownership history, is at the heart of a number of cultural controversies, from the widespread desecration and looting of Iraqi archaeological sites and the dispersal of objects onto the open market, to Italy's demands for the restitution of illegally exported antiquities now held in American museums.
Provenance research is also driving the continuing efforts by Jewish families to recover works of art stolen by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.
Full provenance can be very difficult to establish, even when an object has been in the same family for generations. Few objects on the open market are accompanied by exhaustive documentary evidence of their ownership history and even purchases made in good faith can turn out to be problematic.
This makes provenance a potential minefield for museums and has led to the tightening up of professional guidelines on the acquisition of antiquities and spoliated art.
Spoliation came into sharp focus in 1998 when the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets recommended that each nation draw up its own plans to undertake provenance research on its museum collections. Earlier that year the UK's National Museum Directors' Conference established a working group to oversee research into Holocaust-era art held by UK institutions.
As a result, Britain became one of the first countries to publish details of works acquired between 1933-45. Researching the provenance of collections, which is costly and time-consuming, is ongoing, with spoliation lists under continuous revision.
The National Gallery in London was one of the first UK museums to begin systematically researching the 1933-45 provenance of its paintings. Humphrey Wine, the curator of European paintings at the gallery, says he and his colleagues are now more aware of provenance issues:
'It is common at an early stage of the potential acquisition process to discuss the provenance of a painting, particularly with relation to 1933-45. When considering a potential acquisition it is not a pre-condition that we have a complete 1933-45 provenance, but if there isn't a complete provenance we make inquiries to try and establish it as far as we can.'
The implications for a museum discovering Holocaust-era art in its collection are profound, particularly with the art market at its present height. In January, an arbitration court in Austria ruled that five Gustav Klimt paintings in the Austrian national collection had to be returned to their rightful owners, the heirs to the estate of the art collectors Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer.
The paintings, which were on display in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere (Austrian National Gallery), are estimated to be worth as much as £170m. The Austrian federal government decided in February that it could not afford to buy them.
The question of provenance extends beyond Holocaust assets, for more and more nations are seeking to recover items looted or smuggled in years gone by.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, after negotiating with Italian cultural authorities, announced in February that it is to return a number of artefacts, including the Euphronios krater, a 2,500-year-old painted bowl acquired by the Metropolitan in controversial circumstances during the early 1970s.
Meanwhile, Marion True, a former curator at the Getty Museum in Malibu, is on trial in Italy for allegedly trafficking in looted antiquities. True had previously been responsible for drawing up the Getty's due diligence guidelines.
The case against True shows the need for museums to undertake more rigorous due diligence in the acquisition of cultural objects. US Marine Colonel Matthew Bogdanos was responsible for recovering objects looted from the Iraq Museum and recently published a book about his experiences called the Thieves of Baghdad.
In a recent interview in the New York Times, Bogdanos, who now heads a special antiquities task-force in New York, said: 'The patina of gentility we associate with the world of antiquities has always rested atop a solid core of criminal activity,' and hit out at 'the cozy cabal of academics, dealers and collectors who turn a blind eye to the illicit side of the trade'.
This is a sensitive issue and in February the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) in the US moved to downplay the role America plays in the buying of antiquities with the publication of research into the worldwide trade. Its survey of its 169 members in the US, Canada and Mexico found that 'American art museum purchases of antiquities and archaeological material represents less than 10 per cent of the global annual trade in antiquities'.
'The question of unprovenanced antiquities has rightly been the subject of heated debate in recent months,' says Mary Sue Sweeney Price, the president of the AAMD and the director of the Newark Museum. 'While gaps in provenance information do not necessarily mean an object has been looted or stolen, museums must continue to do everything in our power to prevent illicitly traded objects from entering our collections.'
The controversy over provenance led the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's (DCMS) cultural property unit to develop guidelines for UK museums, libraries and archives on collecting and borrowing. The guidelines, which were published in October 2005, stipulate that museums 'should avoid giving tacit support to the market in unprovenanced material'.
The guidelines operate alongside the 2003 Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act, pushed through parliament by the former Liberal Democrat MP Richard Allan. One of the aims is to minimise the likelihood of a 'Gettygate' controversy occurring in a UK museum.
Caitlin Griffiths, the adviser on professional issues at the Museums Association, who sat on the DCMS advisory panel that produced the guidelines, says it is important to have the issues on provenance 'down in black and white'. And she says things are improving:
'There is a real desire among UK museums to see an end to illicit trade. Documentation procedures and approaches to provenance are getting tighter and museums do decline items whose provenance seems incomplete. The real point is to get everyone to realise the benefits of due diligence and the damage that illicit trade does.'
The controversies unfolding across the US show that museums are always implicated in the art market, especially when wealthy collectors act as trustees. Hence the need to improve best practice. But aren't museum guidelines pointless without similar safeguards being introduced for the trade and private collectors, particularly with widespread looting occurring in Iraq?
A spokeswoman for the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council has confirmed that it is developing a cultural property website in partnership with the DCMS to provide information to the trade on the purchase of art and antiquities. The aim is to give 'the user access to information to allow them to assess the likelihood that the cultural object he or she wishes to purchase is legally on the open market'.
Scheduled for launch this summer, the website will provide advice and guidance on a range of cultural property matters, including restitution, repatriation, spoliation, human remains, and action in the event of war or natural disaster.
London antiquities dealer James Ede, a former chairman of the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art, monitors the London trade closely. He says that Iraqi cultural heritage is not entering the London market and insists there has been 'a huge change' in trade attitudes towards provenance.
'There will always be crooks in any market,' says Ede, 'but people are now bothering to attach provenance to objects. On the whole, members of our association are working pretty hard at these issues. That's borne out by the fact that London is no longer a player in illicit antiquities.'
Recent developments in America have driven a wedge between academics and the trade, souring a relationship that used to help establish provenance, Ede says. 'There are so many objects around and sometimes things go through so many hands that nobody really knows where it came from and people are inadequate in the amount of information they put out.
'On those very rare occasions when I have acquired something that turned out to be stolen, I have generally found out about it when researching with academic friends and if they hadn't been prepared to speak to me, that information would not necessarily have come out.'
John Curtis, the keeper of the department of the ancient near east at the British Museum, is encouraged by the cooperation shown by the UK trade towards Iraqi antiquities.
'It seems the new legislation is being rigorously adhered to,' says Curtis, 'and I'm not aware of any infringements of the recent Dealing in Cultural Objects law. That is a significant advance. Most responsible museums in the UK have signed up to the guidelines of not acquiring objects that don't have a pre-1970 provenance, although it's true that those guidelines are not always being rigorously adhered to elsewhere.'
Another issue for museums in these days of globalised communications is the adverse publicity that can result when professional standards are ignored. This was made clear in late January when Seattle's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture was revealed to have ignored professional guidelines in excavating many of its paleontological specimens.
An independent inquiry said: 'Many specimens in the Burke Museum are beautifully preserved and skillfully prepared, but their significance to modern palaeontology may have been drastically and perhaps irretrievably reduced.' Some of the museum's items may now have to be deaccessioned; certainly its collecting guidelines will need to be more strictly enforced.
Many people are pressing for a more joined-up approach to provenance. Anne Webber is the co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, and sits on the government's Spoliation Advisory Committee. She is encouraged by the recent DCMS document, but believes the guidelines could be applied more widely.
'These guidelines are excellent and are putting everyone on notice that provenance affects us all, collectors too, and not just towards antiquities,' Webber says. 'Everybody needs to be operating in the same way and the trade should also be adopting these rules. The ethical issues in dealing with cultural objects and Holocaust objects are the same.'
Webber believes a more open culture is essential for a more honest trade but that too many private businesses and public institutions use confidentiality clauses to avoid giving information.
Neil Brodie, the research director at the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge, agrees. 'We are arguing for a more transparent trade,' says Brodie. 'Many museums, particularly in America, still seem quite happy to acquire unprovenanced antiquities, and they're also not prepared to release provenance details of acquisitions.
'I've even had to apply under the Freedom of Information Act, of all things, to the British Library for information on one of its acquisitions, but these are the lengths one has to go to. Even then it was unsatisfactory because names were blacked out all over the place. So it's very hard to find out what's going on in the trade, even in museums, which are often publicly funded institutions.'
The British Library was recently found to be in possession of the Beneventan Missal, a 12th-century manuscript looted from the Metropolitan Chapter of the Cathedral City Benevento, Italy, between 1943 and 1944 and acquired by the British Museum in 1947.
Following a ruling by the Spoliation Advisory Panel in March 2005, the British Library is in negotiations with the Benevento Chapter Library to transfer the missal 'on long term loan' to Italy.
In the UK, existing legislation prevents national museums from removing items from their collections. The DCMS has confirmed that ministers are considering whether to introduce legislation that will enable national museums to return works of art that were looted during the Nazi era. This will be another step forward in sorting out the complicated issue of provenance.
Tom Flynn is a writer and journalist
This seemingly benign term, denoting an object's origins and ownership history, is at the heart of a number of cultural controversies, from the widespread desecration and looting of Iraqi archaeological sites and the dispersal of objects onto the open market, to Italy's demands for the restitution of illegally exported antiquities now held in American museums.
Provenance research is also driving the continuing efforts by Jewish families to recover works of art stolen by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.
Full provenance can be very difficult to establish, even when an object has been in the same family for generations. Few objects on the open market are accompanied by exhaustive documentary evidence of their ownership history and even purchases made in good faith can turn out to be problematic.
This makes provenance a potential minefield for museums and has led to the tightening up of professional guidelines on the acquisition of antiquities and spoliated art.
Spoliation came into sharp focus in 1998 when the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets recommended that each nation draw up its own plans to undertake provenance research on its museum collections. Earlier that year the UK's National Museum Directors' Conference established a working group to oversee research into Holocaust-era art held by UK institutions.
As a result, Britain became one of the first countries to publish details of works acquired between 1933-45. Researching the provenance of collections, which is costly and time-consuming, is ongoing, with spoliation lists under continuous revision.
The National Gallery in London was one of the first UK museums to begin systematically researching the 1933-45 provenance of its paintings. Humphrey Wine, the curator of European paintings at the gallery, says he and his colleagues are now more aware of provenance issues:
'It is common at an early stage of the potential acquisition process to discuss the provenance of a painting, particularly with relation to 1933-45. When considering a potential acquisition it is not a pre-condition that we have a complete 1933-45 provenance, but if there isn't a complete provenance we make inquiries to try and establish it as far as we can.'
The implications for a museum discovering Holocaust-era art in its collection are profound, particularly with the art market at its present height. In January, an arbitration court in Austria ruled that five Gustav Klimt paintings in the Austrian national collection had to be returned to their rightful owners, the heirs to the estate of the art collectors Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer.
The paintings, which were on display in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere (Austrian National Gallery), are estimated to be worth as much as £170m. The Austrian federal government decided in February that it could not afford to buy them.
The question of provenance extends beyond Holocaust assets, for more and more nations are seeking to recover items looted or smuggled in years gone by.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, after negotiating with Italian cultural authorities, announced in February that it is to return a number of artefacts, including the Euphronios krater, a 2,500-year-old painted bowl acquired by the Metropolitan in controversial circumstances during the early 1970s.
Meanwhile, Marion True, a former curator at the Getty Museum in Malibu, is on trial in Italy for allegedly trafficking in looted antiquities. True had previously been responsible for drawing up the Getty's due diligence guidelines.
The case against True shows the need for museums to undertake more rigorous due diligence in the acquisition of cultural objects. US Marine Colonel Matthew Bogdanos was responsible for recovering objects looted from the Iraq Museum and recently published a book about his experiences called the Thieves of Baghdad.
In a recent interview in the New York Times, Bogdanos, who now heads a special antiquities task-force in New York, said: 'The patina of gentility we associate with the world of antiquities has always rested atop a solid core of criminal activity,' and hit out at 'the cozy cabal of academics, dealers and collectors who turn a blind eye to the illicit side of the trade'.
This is a sensitive issue and in February the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) in the US moved to downplay the role America plays in the buying of antiquities with the publication of research into the worldwide trade. Its survey of its 169 members in the US, Canada and Mexico found that 'American art museum purchases of antiquities and archaeological material represents less than 10 per cent of the global annual trade in antiquities'.
'The question of unprovenanced antiquities has rightly been the subject of heated debate in recent months,' says Mary Sue Sweeney Price, the president of the AAMD and the director of the Newark Museum. 'While gaps in provenance information do not necessarily mean an object has been looted or stolen, museums must continue to do everything in our power to prevent illicitly traded objects from entering our collections.'
The controversy over provenance led the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's (DCMS) cultural property unit to develop guidelines for UK museums, libraries and archives on collecting and borrowing. The guidelines, which were published in October 2005, stipulate that museums 'should avoid giving tacit support to the market in unprovenanced material'.
The guidelines operate alongside the 2003 Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act, pushed through parliament by the former Liberal Democrat MP Richard Allan. One of the aims is to minimise the likelihood of a 'Gettygate' controversy occurring in a UK museum.
Caitlin Griffiths, the adviser on professional issues at the Museums Association, who sat on the DCMS advisory panel that produced the guidelines, says it is important to have the issues on provenance 'down in black and white'. And she says things are improving:
'There is a real desire among UK museums to see an end to illicit trade. Documentation procedures and approaches to provenance are getting tighter and museums do decline items whose provenance seems incomplete. The real point is to get everyone to realise the benefits of due diligence and the damage that illicit trade does.'
The controversies unfolding across the US show that museums are always implicated in the art market, especially when wealthy collectors act as trustees. Hence the need to improve best practice. But aren't museum guidelines pointless without similar safeguards being introduced for the trade and private collectors, particularly with widespread looting occurring in Iraq?
A spokeswoman for the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council has confirmed that it is developing a cultural property website in partnership with the DCMS to provide information to the trade on the purchase of art and antiquities. The aim is to give 'the user access to information to allow them to assess the likelihood that the cultural object he or she wishes to purchase is legally on the open market'.
Scheduled for launch this summer, the website will provide advice and guidance on a range of cultural property matters, including restitution, repatriation, spoliation, human remains, and action in the event of war or natural disaster.
London antiquities dealer James Ede, a former chairman of the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art, monitors the London trade closely. He says that Iraqi cultural heritage is not entering the London market and insists there has been 'a huge change' in trade attitudes towards provenance.
'There will always be crooks in any market,' says Ede, 'but people are now bothering to attach provenance to objects. On the whole, members of our association are working pretty hard at these issues. That's borne out by the fact that London is no longer a player in illicit antiquities.'
Recent developments in America have driven a wedge between academics and the trade, souring a relationship that used to help establish provenance, Ede says. 'There are so many objects around and sometimes things go through so many hands that nobody really knows where it came from and people are inadequate in the amount of information they put out.
'On those very rare occasions when I have acquired something that turned out to be stolen, I have generally found out about it when researching with academic friends and if they hadn't been prepared to speak to me, that information would not necessarily have come out.'
John Curtis, the keeper of the department of the ancient near east at the British Museum, is encouraged by the cooperation shown by the UK trade towards Iraqi antiquities.
'It seems the new legislation is being rigorously adhered to,' says Curtis, 'and I'm not aware of any infringements of the recent Dealing in Cultural Objects law. That is a significant advance. Most responsible museums in the UK have signed up to the guidelines of not acquiring objects that don't have a pre-1970 provenance, although it's true that those guidelines are not always being rigorously adhered to elsewhere.'
Another issue for museums in these days of globalised communications is the adverse publicity that can result when professional standards are ignored. This was made clear in late January when Seattle's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture was revealed to have ignored professional guidelines in excavating many of its paleontological specimens.
An independent inquiry said: 'Many specimens in the Burke Museum are beautifully preserved and skillfully prepared, but their significance to modern palaeontology may have been drastically and perhaps irretrievably reduced.' Some of the museum's items may now have to be deaccessioned; certainly its collecting guidelines will need to be more strictly enforced.
Many people are pressing for a more joined-up approach to provenance. Anne Webber is the co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, and sits on the government's Spoliation Advisory Committee. She is encouraged by the recent DCMS document, but believes the guidelines could be applied more widely.
'These guidelines are excellent and are putting everyone on notice that provenance affects us all, collectors too, and not just towards antiquities,' Webber says. 'Everybody needs to be operating in the same way and the trade should also be adopting these rules. The ethical issues in dealing with cultural objects and Holocaust objects are the same.'
Webber believes a more open culture is essential for a more honest trade but that too many private businesses and public institutions use confidentiality clauses to avoid giving information.
Neil Brodie, the research director at the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge, agrees. 'We are arguing for a more transparent trade,' says Brodie. 'Many museums, particularly in America, still seem quite happy to acquire unprovenanced antiquities, and they're also not prepared to release provenance details of acquisitions.
'I've even had to apply under the Freedom of Information Act, of all things, to the British Library for information on one of its acquisitions, but these are the lengths one has to go to. Even then it was unsatisfactory because names were blacked out all over the place. So it's very hard to find out what's going on in the trade, even in museums, which are often publicly funded institutions.'
The British Library was recently found to be in possession of the Beneventan Missal, a 12th-century manuscript looted from the Metropolitan Chapter of the Cathedral City Benevento, Italy, between 1943 and 1944 and acquired by the British Museum in 1947.
Following a ruling by the Spoliation Advisory Panel in March 2005, the British Library is in negotiations with the Benevento Chapter Library to transfer the missal 'on long term loan' to Italy.
In the UK, existing legislation prevents national museums from removing items from their collections. The DCMS has confirmed that ministers are considering whether to introduce legislation that will enable national museums to return works of art that were looted during the Nazi era. This will be another step forward in sorting out the complicated issue of provenance.
Tom Flynn is a writer and journalist