From Who Owns The Past: Cultural Policy, Cultural Property, and the Law, edited by Kate Fitz Gibbon (Rutgers University Press, 2005)
“There are now black holes in history.”—Michael Barry, on the destruction of the national museum collections in Kabul.
Where to place art is one of the most problematic issues in the art world today. The UNESCO policy is that cultural patrimony should stay in its country of origin, and that such material if already exported should be returned to the land in which it was produced—sometimes decades or even centuries after its removal. Museums, prejudiced toward display of portable material away from sites of excavation, have found themselves in conflict with a lobby of archaeologists, whose licenses depend on the good will of foreign governments and whose prejudice is toward sites. The museums and other internationalists believe that work should be distributed around the world, so that people everywhere can see the material culture of other countries. There are excesses associated with this idea; restraints must be placed on an open market that encourages the rape of, for example, historic sites where sculptural elements are chiseled off great buildings so that they can be transferred to private hands. The idea of art without frontiers is dangerous. But the idea of repatriation is more dangerous. In an era of multiculturalism, the notion that any cultural group owns all of its production has a faddish appeal, and repatriation has taken on the trappings of political correctness. The nationalist supporters of this view say that all the Egyptian work should be in Egypt, all the British art in Britain, all the Benin masks in Benin. This rage to return things is considered “enlightened” by many American intellectuals. But it is in fact provincial. To show art only to the peoples whose antecedents made it is to deprive the world of its variety and its collective history. The history of culture is catholic and international, and our policies on collecting should reflect that.
The policy that important art should never be removed from its country of origin has been upheld with ludicrous literalism in recent years, to sometimes disastrous effect. The most dramatic recent example is Afghanistan. The art treasures in the Afghan National Museum, in Kabul, were destroyed not by irresponsible American bombing, but by irresponsible Western non-interventionism. In early 2001, the museum’s director, Omar Khan Masoodi, got in touch with UNESCO and warned that the Taliban was likely to destroy the collections. He asked UNESCO to take the work out of the country and find a safe repository for it. UNESCO replied that it was against their policy to remove from any country art that might be described as part of that country’s cultural heritage. Mr. Masoodi protested that the work was going to be destroyed, but UNESCO stood by its position. And indeed the art was destroyed six months later—perhaps the most important Central Asian work in the world.
To show art only to the peoples whose antecedents made it is to deprive the world of its variety and its collective history. The history of culture is catholic and international, and our policies on collecting should reflect that.
The collection in Kabul should and could have been saved. “I wept when I ran up against this `policy,”’ Mr. Masoodi said, weeping again when we met in Kabul. “I saw my collection smashed to pieces by brutal thugs with angry hammers because `policy’ dictated that what had lasted a thousand years not be saved for the next thousand.” Visiting the National Museum is a heartbreaking experience. In an unheated back room, archaeologists are sorting the rubble that the Taliban left behind. Large trays are heaped with pebble-sized fragments of the life-size statue of Kanishka, the 2nd century king, that once stood inside the Museum’s entrance, or of the long Buddhist panels that were among the collection’s highlights. “I saw them do this,” says Masoodi. “It was like watching the slaughter of my children.” It is difficult even to catalogue what was destroyed by the Taliban because they also burned the Museum’s archives. Throughout the museum, Masoodi has posted black-and-white photographs of what once stood in each place above the broken plinths and shattered remains. Almost all of Afghanistan’s artistic record has been lost. It is a tragedy of indescribable proportion.
Archeology followed an unusual pattern of development in Afghanistan. The country was never colonized, and few foreigners ventured outside Kabul to look for evidence of Afghanistan’s past. Local interest in archeology began only in the early 20th century, and always rested on essentially nationalist concerns. Early in his reign, King Amanullah signed a protocol with France creating the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan. For the next fifty years, France remained the primary partner in excavation in Afghanistan, and French excavations were the source of many of the materials in the National Museum. The field expanded after World War II, and Japanese, British, Italian, American and Soviet archeologists conducted excavations at sites spanning Afghanistan’s 4000 year historical record. The first Afghan-directed archeological mission was at Hadda in 1965. Virtually all excavated objects from archeological missions were deposited with the government of Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s first national museum was inaugurated by Amanullah in 1924, and in 1931 it was permanently established in Darulaman, on the outskirts of Kabul. The museum collections contained materials from the Bronze Age through the Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Mauryan, Kushan, Sasanian, Samanid, Ghorid, Seljuk, Timurid and Safavid periods. Although its galleries were sparsely attended and sometimes poorly lit, with masterpieces displayed in relatively humble settings, the quality of the collections made the Kabul Museum one of the great art repositories in the world.
All quiet ended with the Soviet invasion of 1979. Various materials disappeared and their location was unknown. It was thought that the twenty thousand pieces of worked gold excavated at Tillya Tepe by the Soviet archeologist Victor Sarianidi had been taken by the military to Russia, but this proved untrue. The hoard was shown to diplomats in 1991 before being packed in boxes and placed in a vault beneath the palace. Today, its fate is once more uncertain. The museum’s position outside Kabul left it periodically on the front lines, and in the wake of the Soviet departure in 1989, the museum staff began to crate the collections to be removed to the museum’s storerooms.
The mujahideen groups that formed the first post-Soviet coalition governments in Kabul quickly fell into internecene battles. The Hezbe Wahdat, a Hazara-based ethnic alliance, challenged the Rabbani government. The area they seized included the museum, which thereafter suffered chronic damage from military confrontations and looting during periods of unrest. All parties in the fighting agreed that the collections were at serious risk, and attempted to find solutions. The leader of Hezbe Wahdat, Ustad Ali Mazari agreed to provide security in order to repair serious rocket damage to the building in 1992 and 1993; the ground floors were bricked up and steel doors installed. However, the territory of the museum continued to change hands. At times, government soldiers guarded the museum, at others, fighters from Hezbe Wahdat secured the building. As Afghanistan slid into chaos, there were periodic episodes of looting.
Large portions of the packed collections were moved from the museum into the Kabul Hotel in 1996. Almost immediately afterward, the Rabbani government collapsed and the Taliban moved into Kabul. Although the Taliban initially expressed strong concern for the preservation of Afghanistan’s art, declarations from the top were not always heeded in the countryside, where some local leaders profited from smuggling antiquities, and others, strongly influenced by Arab Wahabists from Al Qaeda, destroyed pre-Islamic monuments and sites.
Already, efforts had been made to secure Afghanistan’s art treasures outside of the country. According to Paul Bucherer, the Director of the Afghanistan Institute and Museum in Switzerland, “The museum was started at the request of all the parties of the Afghan civil war: the Northern Alliance as well as the Taliban. Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani [former Afghan president and Northern Alliance leader] himself came to Switzerland to discuss this as did Abdullah Jamal, the Taliban minister of culture and information, who discussed this matter in his official capacity. It was really at the request of the Afghan people that this began… The original idea of the Afghans was to bring to Switzerland all the holdings of the Kabul Museum and so to create primarily an archaeological museum.” By 2000, the Afghanistan Museum in Exile was ready to receive the packed collections, and had received urgent requests from many Taliban officials and members of the Northern Alliance to take the materials out of Afghanistan. Dr. Bucherer made several trips to Afghanistan to prepare their journey for safekeeping in Switzerland until Afghanistan was at peace – but the Swiss government insisted that it have international sanction to receive the materials, and UNESCO still refused to grant permission for their removal from their country of origin.
Although its galleries were sparsely attended and sometimes poorly lit, with masterpieces displayed in relatively humble settings, the quality of the collections made the Kabul Museum one of the great art repositories in the world.
In March 2001, the great Buddhas of Bamiyan were blown to bits with high explosives by Al Qaeda and Taliban members brought from outside the valley after local Taliban refused to destroy them. Soon after, members of the Taliban entered the museum and Culture Ministry rooms where many of Central Asia’s greatest artworks lay packed in shipping crates, still stalled by the U.N. bureaucracy. They broke them open and began to pulverize the objects.
At a British Museum conference in November 2002, Dr. Bucherer displayed the letter in which UNESCO finally gave permission for the removal of Afghanistan’s art to safekeeping. It was dated four months after the Bamiyan Buddhas had been destroyed, and the treasures of the Kabul museum smashed into fragments with sledgehammers. The Central Asian scholar Michael Barry said. “To me, to have been able to move these things under UNESCO auspices could have saved these pieces and ultimately allowed for their return to a civilized Afghanistan again. Now what is destroyed is destroyed, irrevocably. Whatever survives of Afghanistan’s artistic heritage survives in foreign collections.”
The story of Afghanistan vividly illustrates the danger of insisting that work stay in its country of origin. The second and equally urgent danger is the repatriation movement, which, if enforced, could have put all Afghanistan’s cultural treasures back in the Taliban-era Kabul Museum to be destroyed. The validity of the internationalist museum cannot be overstated. Newer countries such as the United States stand only to lose in the repatriation sweepstakes, since we make no claims on art abroad and have never restricted export of cultural property from the U.S., but possess much work, in museum and private collections, that other countries might want to reclaim. The vogue of repatriation is spreading dangerously far in America, and has already threatened to denude our museums. There are multiple pending claims and attempts to remove work from the Getty back to its countries of origins; there is one at the Metropolitan Museum for the “return” of the Morgantina silver to Sicily; at the Virginia Museum of Art for the “return” of an Egyptian relief purchase by the museum in the 1940s; and one at the St. Louis Museum of Art for the “return” of a Roman helmet purchased in the 1950s. Meanwhile, the most public repatriation battle in the world is being fought between those who campaign tirelessly for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece and those who believe they should stay in the British Museum, where they have been for many years.
In December 2002, the directors of some twenty major American and European museums—including the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, the Louvre in Paris, the Prado in Madrid and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg—were signatories to a joint statement that said in part: “Museums, too, provide a valid and valuable context for objects that were long ago displaced from their original source. The universal admiration for ancient civilizations would not be so deeply established today were it not for the influence exercised by the artifacts of these cultures, widely available to an international public in major museums. We should acknowledge that museums serve not just the citizens of one nation, but the people of every nation. Museums are agents in the development of culture [and] each object contributes to that process. To narrow the focus of museums whose collections are diverse and multifaceted would therefore be a disservice to all.”
The question of repatriation—whether, when, and how—roils on. Reflecting this ambivalence, American law has swung back and forth on the question of what can be obtained legally and how. It is now a quagmire. Because the State Department works in secrecy to develop bilateral agreements, and old laws are constantly being revisited by the courts, one never knows what will be illegal next week or was just made illegal last week through some little-publicized memorandum of understanding. A befuddled customs authority often does not know what rules to enforce or how to recognize material that is covered by regulations. Trade in work that is deemed “stolen” by its country of origin may be treated as trade in stolen property in the U.S., even if the purchaser acquired the art from an individual in a source country or some other country who had legal title.
In 1972, the United States Senate ratified the UNESCO Convention on International Movement of Art subject to the implementation of legislation enacted by the U.S. Congress. After an eleven-year debate, Congress passed a bill in 1983 to establish a Cultural Property Advisory Committee, to be appointed for four-year terms by the president, consisting of representatives from the museum world, the art trade, archaeology, and the general public. Initially, the committee responded to foreign nations requesting embargoes on cultural property being looted or in imminent danger of looting. The committee has since addressed an increasing number of issues outside its original purview, adopting a proactive rather than responsive role, actively seeking to block American trade in art by initiating discussions with foreign governments on restrictive embargoes on art.
A particularly flagrant example of bowing to this aggressive position occurred when President Clinton, just two days before he left office, signed off on an Italian request for an embargo on Italian material produced between 800 B.C. and 400 A.D. The Italians listed hundreds of items to be included in this embargo, many of which were not works of great cultural significance and were not being looted: oil lamps and trinkets. It apparently seems to some State Department officials that this kind of pact is an easy way to cozy up to foreign governments such as Italy at little cost. But encouraging Italy to restrict and even criminalize free trade in minor objects—to serve some State Department quid pro quo—is another example of American cultural policy gone awry.
The vogue of repatriation is spreading dangerously far in America, and has already threatened to denude our museums.
A major issue is American recognition of highly restrictive foreign patrimony laws by which we have not traditionally been bound and for which we have demanded no reciprocity. The courts have not made it clear which laws of which foreign countries will be enforced under what circumstances within the United States. In general, our legal system sees as repugnant the enforcement of foreign law—especially foreign criminal law—that is not congruent with American law. Why should this be different in the field of cultural property? A rational cultural policy is one in which laws, court decisions, congressional acts, and customs rules match up, so that people know, as exactly as possible, what is legal and what isn’t. Procedure in this area should be determined by an informed legislature that understands the ramifications of its acts and that recognizes that the interests of American museums and collectors, public and private, are essential freedoms that warrant protection.
So we find ourselves lost for a coherent, consistent policy, buffeted by political and intellectual currents, profoundly unresolved about what belongs where. We should continue to respect and assist foreign countries—Iraq and Afghanistan, for example—in their legitimate efforts to protect and preserve their cultural treasures. But at the same time we should resist the increasingly militant demands from foreign nations—such as Italy—to give back cultural property that has been in museum collections in the U.S. and elsewhere for decades. U. S. cultural policy and the laws that govern in this area should be consistent in seeking to protect the destruction of cultural artifacts from war, neglect, theft and industrial and infrastructure construction and development, while supporting the international museum system which continues to do by far the most to protect and preserve the world’s cultural heritage.
