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The importance of international collaboration for the protection of national cultural properties – Wolf Dieter Heilmeyer

Olympia Sept. 2015

What I want to bring to your attention today are two different international problems: they seem to be far from another. The first is the ongoing destruction of cultural values worldwide and the second are the political limitations against direct collaboration of national museums and conservation institutes. In my opinion they belong together, and I will propose in the end of my paper a resolution, we could discuss and accept today, to help archaeological institutions at an international level in their efforts in collaboration and against illegal excavations and illegal export of non documented objects from their country of origin.

I

We all know: in regard to the thousands and thousands of cultural identification-places in the history of mankind, this place here, Olympia – a very well excavated, very well documented, very well protected site - is a rare exception. Our news every day are full of destroyed and plundered monuments and sites and of objects, that have torn out of context, robbed of their provenance and looted from devastated pits. These facts, strengthened by the last reports from Iraq and Syria, will be the first part of my lecture.

At an international conference at Berlin some 12 years ago under the title “Illegal Archaeology?” we dealt with the problems of plundering sites in European countries from Great Britain to Greece and Ukraine, but from Pakistan, Syria, Nigeria and Mexico, too. I quote from the introduction: “We are not referring to the occasional stray find made while ploughing fields or other agricultural activities. Rather, it is the find that the person with a metal-detector digs up, the fragments of an isolated vase that the clandestini (an old Italian expression for secret diggers) turn over to the art dealer, the nationwide bands who arrange for pieces of works in relief from temples to be hauled away. These finds are like single pages that are torn out of a history-book and its whole discourse. Such a wilful act of decontextualisation as well as the deprival of all documentation that the isolated archaeological object will have in the future inflict direct damage upon the cultural heritage of all mankind: the single object and the context out of which it was torn.

This is our text of 2003. But times seem even worse today, as we hear of practices of violating antiquities in countries under war or war-danger. And we have to add now, what terrorists are doing with their disastrous will of destruction.

We passed by majority the “Berlin resolution 2003” recommending the ratification by all states of the Hague Convention for the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict (1954), the UNESCO-Convention on the means of prohibiting and preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property (1970/72) and the UNIDROIT-Convention on stolen or illegally exported cultural objects (1995). We demanded that all objects offered on the antiquities market should carry a pedigree or passport designating the place and date of the objects excavation and the officially authorised permit to export the object from the country of origin. And I quote from the “Berlin resolution”: “All museums and each cultural heritage institution and professional should constantly inform the public about the destruction of cultural heritage caused by illicit excavation and raise public awareness of the need to protect such heritage to the same degree of public awareness reached for the protection of endangered species of animals and plants.”

There are different fields to develop ethical responsibility for the traces of history in our hands and under our feet. First and most important is to strengthen all local authorities and local amateurs. Teachers should show their pupils and students how to get proud of their “little village” where they have been born or live – what the Geek call τό χοριό μού – and this pride is the core of our identity in a bigger community. Local museums in this field may get a leading position for the protection of all what is fundamental in our common cultural heritage and there are good examples of long lasting success.

What we have mentioned until now may be seen as the result of a long lasting process in modern understanding of culture. If old collections and museums since the 18th century took care of single objects these were regarded as pieces of art and examples of high quality production. Pieces of such interest were taken out of their context and collected as a treasure. Since the 19th century with scientific excavations and care of monuments a new understanding of history was developed: inside museums it got important to show archaeological contexts, sanctuaries, architecture. At the outside ancient monuments were set free from later additions to show their original standing. At the same time laws were made to protect sites from non professional excavations and to understand all objects of cultural value as possession of the state. As individual search for single treasures went on, non-declared digging under these laws got illegal. Nowadays all over the world men with metal-detectors look for single objects to put them on the antiquities market or sell them in internet, for sure without any remark on provenance and historical contexts.. Some hope may arise by the first attempts of local authorities to work together with nearby detector-users to awaken their interests in the history of their “little villages”.

But much more dramatic is the situation of war in Near East and North Africa, regions full of documents from millenniums in the history of mankind. We still do not know which objects and locations of world’s cultural heritage have been destroyed in Iraq or Libya, nor now in Syria. But thousands of unprovenanced antiquities appear on the markets of the Gulf States, China, Russia, and in Germany, too. In 2006 you could see in The Benaki Museum at Athens the exiting exhibition “History Lost – Η Κλοπή της Ιστορίας”, an initiative of Neil Brodie from Cambridge University, Mc Donald Institute, and two authors, Andreas Apostolidis and Peter Watson. I quote: “History Lost reveals the extent of the looting of archaeological sites around the world… It explains the importance of provenance to a wide audience; why objects illicitly dug loose their historical value. The exhibition takes place at a time when the ethics of Western museums are being intensively debated, together with the measures necessary for the preservation of the world’s cultural heritage”.

This emphasizes the discussions during the last years about “repatriation” of some museum-highlights acquired without provenance from an international market, mainly in the US. In a certain sense it seams not important where an archaeological object is stored, if it is in sure and well protected conditions together with a detailed documentation of its provenance. Restitutions are matter of course with all illegally transferred objects of art and culture, even those taken as booty of war against the Convention of Den Haag 1954. But it seems to be exaggerated to use terms like “repatriation, επαναπατρισμό” in connection with recently organized restitutions of unprovenanced antiquities between certain museums in the US and Italy or Greece: will Italy really be a fatherland, “η πατρίδα”, for a Greek vase from an Etruscan tomb, illegally brought to USA? What hurts us, is, that it was illegally taken out from the tomb and brought out of Italy without documentation. Ownership of cultural goods today means not so much keeping them as national treasures, but taking responsibility for all worlds cultural heritage. Objects taken out from countries in war, for example, could be stored under international control in so called “safer havens”, i.e. certain museums of last resort, until peace will permit to transfer them again into their countries of origin.

II

I come to the second part of my lecture: Since more than 25 years museums of different European countries, both rich and poor in antiquities, have begun to construct a network of direct collaborationsi. Central to an analogous agreement of 2002 between Italian and German museums is the exchange of well-documented antiquities as res extra commercium, as long-term loans for restoration, exhibition, scientific investigation and publication. This helps museums to show from time to time new objects attracting a wider public without obeying a dubious market, eventually with illegal backgrounds.

We began such collaboration during the 80th of the 20th century in a very special situation. In 1982 we acquired the front side of a very attractive roman sarcophagus for the Berlin Antiquities Collection, representing the myth of Achilles and Hector at Troy. We did this “bona fide” with the affirmation of the dealer and the former owner that it had been for two generations in Switzerland. After our publication of the Berlin fragments it turned out that they came quite sure from an illegal excavation some 6 years earlier at Ostia Antica near Rome, where secret diggers had left the bigger part of the same sarcophagus on site. But in a legal sense neither Rome nor Berlin could definitely prove the illicit export of the important fragments, which therefore remained – legally paid – a Berlin property. So we convinced our administration to give the Berlin fragments as an unlimited loan to the Ostia museum to put them together with the Ostia fragments. The Ostia administration on the other side convinced the Ministry of Culture at Rome to give us objects from the magazines of the rich local Ostia museum as counter-loans for respectively four or five years. We selected for the first time some wall paintings which you never would get on the antiquities market; they had to be restored on our cost, but we could publish them in a strict collaboration. With this experience in mind we could open the same collaboration with the National Archaeological Museum at Rome. And it helped again to formulate in 2002 the “Declaration for the new policy of collaboration between archaeological museums from Italy and Germany”, signed by 6 Italian and 4 German museums, concerning “the guarantee of long-term loans between the museums part of the initiative”.

And this has given us an example for the revival of the more than 100 years old collaboration between the Berlin Antiquities Collection and the Archaeological Department (Ephoria) of Olympia in Greece, i.e. the Ministry of Culture at Athens, to which the Ephoria belongs. Some architectural elements of the so called Philippeion – a classical round building you can see in the Altis near the entrance – could be put in their original place, when the restoration of the building was begun some years ago. The small fragments had been legally given as a present by the Greek State to Berlin after the first German excavations at Olympia during the 19th century to show classical architecture as an example in the far north. Now they will remain again at the Philippeion as – legally spoken – long-term loans from the Berlin museum (where they belong) to the Olympia museum (where they have a better chance to be studied, being part of the whole building). As counter-loans, changing from time to time, the Berlin Antiquities Collection gets some objects from the magazines at Olympia, being full of recently excavated findings from the German excavations in the sanctuary or the Greek excavations in the surroundings. First such loans were pieces from the workshop of the classic sculptor Pheidias, found at Olympia in 1956.

In a practical sense this kind of loan-exchange is able – as it seems to me – to strengthen our scientific collaboration. It is based on the confidence between colleagues interested in scientific and cultural progress. The agreements may treat mutual help in restoration, scientific analysis and documentation, maybe even excavation. This in mind we will overcome the old idea of art and culture as “treasure” and “possession” to develop the modern one, that keeping culture in museums means careful maintenance and responsibility towards our common society. The contracts, necessary for such cooperation, first in a bilateral status, for instance between a certain local museum and an important central museum, could create soon a network of other institutions interested, helpful for their visitors and for archaeology in a more general sense, but they could set at the same time a firm position against illegal archaeology: within this network pieces without provenance will have no chance anymore.

But this seems more easily to be done than it is in reality. The loan contract in the mentioned Berlin-Olympia case was closed very soon by the Greek Central Archaeological Council (KAS), as it had to be announced during a formal visit of the Greek Prime Minister Kostas Simitis at Berlin in 2001. Difficulties arose by the restrictions of very short time for objects in state possession leaving Greece as a loan. And all following discussions had again to pass the long way from the Ephoria at Olympia through Athens bureaucratic stations, through the KAS and the Ministry. Indeed the counter-loans for the Berlin Achilles sarcophagus at Ostia Antica could leave Italy for more than two years only as objects for study and restoration, not for exhibition. With this experience the “Declaration of Rome” 2002, quoted above, had the aim to open an unbureaucratic way of collaboration for loans, restorations and publications, when it was announced during the visit of the Italian President Carlo Ciampi at Berlin. But soon after the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared not to be involved, as the declaration was only bilateral not international.

It got clear that the management of any loan-exchange passing national frontiers has at least three different levels: the first and lowest is the cooperation of museum colleagues when the loan-materials are selected. The highest and most helpful level is the support of political representatives in favourable circumstances, even for the press. But in between is the long-winded and complicated way to organise the exchange of cultural goods, legally validated for a longer period. It seems necessary to ask public authorities for definitions of administrative conditions to fulfil the wish for long-term loans and counter-loans in international relations. I think this fits very well with the “Olympic idea”, you want to stress and strengthen these days.

Let us propose to use the existing international associations like the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) ─ both provided with international conventions against illicit cultural properties, compatible with international issues of ethics ─ for the development of practical conditions for loan-exchanges and restoration-supportsii. The due diligence of the museum staff to get scientific collaboration with museum employees in other nations and full access to their collections should give them a new and positive accent to their due diligence demanded in recognizing and reporting antiquities without provenance in private hands or on the market. The cultural administrations should look to avoid unnecessary obstacles to agreements for museum collaborations perhaps including the due-diligence-demand as a pre-condition. Politicians should take into their programs of dialogue between cultures and nations the task to bring together people of the same interests and activities like those responsible in their museums. Here the easiest way is to help them to organize loans for short-term exhibitions and long-term studies including restoration and publication.

III

My proposal will be given to you as a handout. It will ask you first of all to express your consternation over the plunder of ancient sites and museums as well as the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in connection with armed conflicts. We notified the worldwide ongoing illegal excavations, robbing archaeological objects from their contexts and surrendering them illegally to a “transnational” market. I presented to you the legal difficulties in direct collaboration of partner museums to avoid such illicit market and handle the exchange of long-term loans and counter-loans, their restoration, exhibition, scientific investigation and publication.

Please agree to ask the responsible curators of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)iii in accordance with their conventions on museums ethics and against illicit cultural properties, with the UNESCO Convention of 1970/72 and the UNIDROIT Convention of 1995 to accept the responsibility of demanding from national politics and administrations worldwide to develop direct museum collaborations on loan-exchange. Further to enhance national laws, especially in the source States, limiting the loan-periods in a restrictive way: four or five years under international controlled museum-conditions should count as a norm. They should draft model contracts about long-term loans for studies in teamwork to be nominated in the contract, for possible restorations according to the regulations of the lending museum, for exhibitions in adequate climatic situations and security. They should encourage museums to build up networks of institutions interested in loan-exchanges under these conditions, call on the museum-administrations to formulate and then to make publicly known their acquisition policy in relation to antiquities, with equal force for the acceptance of objects on loan or conservation: this policy includes the strong observance not to handle objects without a “pedigree” about its provenance. And lastly ICOM and ICOMOS should ask all museums and institutions interested in cultural exchanges to inform constantly the public about destruction of cultural heritage caused by illicit excavation or terrorism.

 

Olympia Resolution 2015 on international museum collaboration and protection of cultural heritage

Participants of the International Symposium “The need of a Constructive dialogue between peoples and cultures”, Ancient Olympia, 1-7 September 2015

agree to ask the responsible curators of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)

1. to accept the responsibility of demanding from national politics and

administrations worldwide to develop direct museum collaborations on

loan exchanges;

  1. to enhance national laws, especially in the source States, limiting the loan-

periods in a restrictive way: four or five years under international

controlled museum-conditions should count as a norm;

  1. to draft model contracts about long-term loans for studies in teamwork to be nominated in the contract, for possible restorations according to the regulations of the lending museum, for exhibitions in adequate climatic situations and security;

  2. to encourage museums to build up networks of institutions interested in loan-exchange under these conditions;

  3. to call on the museum-administrations to formulate and then to make publicly known their acquisition policy in relation to antiquities, with equal force for the acceptance of objects on loan or conservation: this policy includes the strong observance not to handle objects without a “pedigree” about its provenance;

  4. to ask all museums and institutions interested in cultural exchanges to inform constantly the public about destruction of cultural heritage caused by illicit excavation or terrorism.

 

Footnotes:

i For example: Susanne Petterson (ed.), Encouraging collections mobility – A way forward for Museums in Europe, Helsinki (2010)

ii And I would like to add ICCROM (International Centre fort he study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property)

iii See note 2

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