03-05-2016, 07:01 PM
But he says he it is legal and has an acceptable provenance based upon the UNESCO 1970 convention. As we did not give him the benefit of the doubt we will never know what he seems to have. He was totally new here and we did a poor job of educating him.
If we use the post-1970 standards of today, the correct standards as far as I'm concerned, and impose them on every pre-1970 artifact that's ended up outside the modern nation states that claim the lands they were found in we'd be giving back just about everything in Western museums. Some folks think that's a good idea. Having personally seen the destruction wrought on non-Islamic sites and artifacts in Afghanistan by radicals I feel the UNESCO 1970 convention does far more good that harm.
"If I had my way, any objects that were acquired illegally would be destroyed." Really??? The looter is already paid.
The biggest problem I have encountered are the thousands of artifacts held by the families of former US servicemen who fought in Italy in WW2 and exchanged food, medicine and cigarettes for "souvenirs" with a destitute Italian population that just threw off the shackles of Fascism. I've advised dozens of these families and their biggest concern is that "grand pop the war hero" is not labeled a "criminal" for accepting a probably looted object when he was 19 years old and fresh off the farm. Rather than bringing these artifacts to light and be accused of a crime, they may take the easy and anonymous road of just destroying them.
My advice is always to contact the embassy of the country involved and arrange for a quiet return of the object "no-questions-asked."
If we use the post-1970 standards of today, the correct standards as far as I'm concerned, and impose them on every pre-1970 artifact that's ended up outside the modern nation states that claim the lands they were found in we'd be giving back just about everything in Western museums. Some folks think that's a good idea. Having personally seen the destruction wrought on non-Islamic sites and artifacts in Afghanistan by radicals I feel the UNESCO 1970 convention does far more good that harm.
"If I had my way, any objects that were acquired illegally would be destroyed." Really??? The looter is already paid.
The biggest problem I have encountered are the thousands of artifacts held by the families of former US servicemen who fought in Italy in WW2 and exchanged food, medicine and cigarettes for "souvenirs" with a destitute Italian population that just threw off the shackles of Fascism. I've advised dozens of these families and their biggest concern is that "grand pop the war hero" is not labeled a "criminal" for accepting a probably looted object when he was 19 years old and fresh off the farm. Rather than bringing these artifacts to light and be accused of a crime, they may take the easy and anonymous road of just destroying them.
My advice is always to contact the embassy of the country involved and arrange for a quiet return of the object "no-questions-asked."
