Recent court events in America suggest that what鈥檚 good for the backstreet
dope fiend may also be useful advice for the aesthete. Sotheby鈥檚 ex-chairman A.
Alfred Taubman was convicted of a price-fixing conspiracy with rival auctioneers
Christie鈥檚, said to have cost clients $400 million. Meanwhile Fred
Schultz, a New York antiquities dealer backed by Christie鈥檚, argued that the US
could not prosecute him for allegedly breaking Egyptian law by handling
illegally exported artefacts. Anyway, said Schultz, how was he to know the
artefacts were of archaeological significance. Why else, said the US government,
would you ask $2.5 million for a stone head of Amenhotep III?
We should not be surprised if sales catalogues put a positive spin on their
goods. That鈥檚 an auctioneer鈥檚 job after all. It is also the buyer鈥檚 job to
beware. Nonetheless, archaeologists have long argued that concealing details of
ownership and provenance for sale items works against both buyers and the world
heritage. Who can now feel comfortable when large auction houses say it鈥檚 not in
their customers鈥� interests to publish such information?
It is in the interest of the seller to hint that a pair of old shoes was once
worn by No毛l Coward (the vendor acquired the slippers, read a recent
Christie鈥檚 catalogue entry, from a man who wrote a Coward biography, estimate
拢600 to 拢800). It is not in the seller鈥檚 interest to say an antique
bronze figure was illegally excavated, paid for with laundered cash and smuggled
out of the country that owned it inside a cello. Unrestrained market laws will
naturally, sometimes, defraud the buyer.
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Legislation can curb such immoral trade, but the real burden lies with us
all. The unwritten history of entire nations is being plundered, destroyed and
carved up into consumable bits for the delectation of persons in other
countries. The irony is that often the very people driving the trade see
themselves, and are flattered by others in this conceit, as playing a creative,
even curatorial part in promoting values of high culture.
This is the real hearts-and-minds arena. A rare antiquity in a private
collection has to be seen less as a mark of taste (and buying power) than of
ignorance (and buying power). Social acceptability must favour recent or new
art, a market in which the buyers鈥� money genuinely encourages research and
creativity, not deceit and destruction.
But, the private collector would howl, what about public collectors?
Quite. The British government has fulfilled an election promise by helping
national museums to drop entrance charges. It sounds good, but it鈥檚 not joined
up. Take the British Museum. It never charged anyway, but because of the way the
sums are done, it is now losing out and its finances are so parlous it has now
cancelled a critically important new study centre. Large parts of its
collections will now remain invisible to the public and inaccessible to the
researcher.
Some American museums have been severely criticised over their acquisition
policies. The argument between the British Museum and the Greek government about
who 鈥渙wns鈥� the Parthenon sculptures subverts heritage values, which rate
knowledge over acquisition. The looter鈥檚 spade keeps digging. It鈥檚 a mess.
We need a public debate. What are museums for? Is there a role for the
private collector? And, not least, does anyone know a dealer I can trust?