Yale and Peru Finalize Agreement

On Friday, Yale University signed an agreement with Peru over the disposition of objects removed from Machu Picchu nearly a century ago. The agreement, which will avoid continued litigation will create a joint Center for the Study of Inca Culture in Cusco, Peru. The center will preserve the artifacts, make the objects available for study and display, and promote research. This looks to be a beneficial agreement for all the parties involved. There will be a new joint research center in Cusco, pairing Yale University with the University of San Antonio Abad del Cusco. And though the objects will no longer be in Connecticut, the objects will be available for future study, and will still be cared for. And finally, Peru's suit against Yale is no longer necessary to resolve the dispute. A memorandum of understanding was created in November, but Peru had backed out of agreements in the past with Yale. This time though, the dispute looks to be resolved for good.

As always, the best place for coverage of the dispute is the Yale University paper, and reporter Sarah Nutman is writing a series on the returns:

Since Yale and Peruvian officials signed a Memorandum of Understanding outlining the return of the objects last November, both sides have been eager to underscore the goodwill between the two parties. The document, they say, allows Peru and Yale to move beyond the mistrust that has often characterized their interactions over the century-long struggle — it has eliminated any underlying disagreement. 

For the most part, the two sides agree. Peru will repatriate thousands of pieces. Some will arrive in time for the centennial this July; the rest will be in Peru by December 2012. But there remain aspects about which Yale and Peru tell very different stories. For instance, how the pieces came to stay in New Haven for so long, and why, after nearly a decade of bickering, Yale simply offered to cede them to Peru.

1. Sarah Nutman, Yale and University of Cusco sign collaboration agreement, Yale Daily News, February 11, 2011, http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/feb/11/yale-and-university-cusco-sign-collaboration-agree/ (last visited Feb 14, 2011).
2. Sarah Nutman, Returning to Machu Picchu, Yale Daily News, February 14, 2011, http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/feb/14/returning-to-machu-picchu/ (last visited Feb 14, 2011).

Protesting Zahi Hawass

Antiquities Graduates Demand Employment (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Demonstrators in front of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt are demanding Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass resign:

The demonstration in a leafy enclave of Cairo was one of many protests and strikes that have sprung up in Egypt as people voice their grievances for the first time after Mubarak's heavyhanded reign over the last three decades.

The archaeologists' protest was also deeply personal, with protesters saying Hawass was a "showman" and publicity hound with little regard for thousands of archaeology students who have been unable to find work in their field.

"He doesn't care about us," said 22-year-old Gamal el-Hanafy, who graduated from Cairo University in 2009 and carried his school certificates in a folder. "He just cares about propaganda."

Hawass has maintained that his first love is Egypt's heritage, not himself, and that courting publicity raises the national profile.

The rally was raucous but peaceful. Several soldiers blocked protesters from entering the Supreme Council of Antiquities building in the Zamalek district on an island in the Nile that was largely spared the chaos that gripped Cairo. An armored personnel carrier parked in the street, a helmeted soldier poking out of a hatch.

The minister did not appear, and a roar of disapproval swept the crowd when someone said he had slipped out the back door. Then there was a rumor, unconfirmed but no less damaging to his image, that his car had clipped a pedestrian. The protesters dispersed at dusk, and promised to return.

The graduates said the antiquities ministry had offered them three-month contracts at 450 Egyptian pounds ($75) a month, hardly enough to survive. They noted that Egypt's tourism industry is a major foreign currency earner, and yet it was unclear how exactly the government was spending the income.

A foreign tourist spends up to 160 Egyptian pounds ($27) to visit the pyramids of Giza and descend into a tomb there, said 25-year-old Said Hamid. Multiply that, he said, by the thousands who used to visit daily until upheaval drove away foreign visitors and plunged the lucrative industry into crisis. . . . 

 These protests come after Zahi Hawass has revealed that 18 objects had been removed from the museum, though some may have been returned.

Hawass is a showman. He has garnered a great deal of attention, and also raised the profile for Egypt's heritage, and its calls for repatriation. But in the new Egypt, will that approach still be suitable? I can understand the frustration of recent graduates, angry that they are paid very little. How will this shape the relationships Egypt has with foreign archaeologists?

1. The Associated Press: Protesters target Egypt's antiquities chief, February 14, 2011, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gNv6IKRhurEYPmjAzVk86a0tsX8g?docId=d818e386afeb449d988b51bc767e96d7 (last visited Feb 14, 2011).

Shame on Sam Brownback

"Tragic Prelude", John Steuart Curry, in the Kansas Statehouse

States which are not always able to lure arts organizations and touring companies to stop need to work harder to encourage support for the arts. Bottom line, the arts creates jobs, fosters community, and makes it better to live in Kansas. That's why I was so disheartened to read that in my home state, the arts are being cut drastically:

Gov. Sam Brownback signed an executive order Monday abolishing the Kansas Arts Commission and replacing it with a private, nonprofit organization.

The move will save the cash-strapped state nearly $600,000 a year, but it has upset some arts advocates who worry about eroding support for the arts and art education.

“Our state faces a nearly $500 million budget shortfall,” Brownback, a Republican, said before signing the order. “Let’s do all we can to protect the core functions of government.”

The Arts Commission funnels state and federal arts grants to local organizations, artists and art education programs. Starting July 1, the nonprofit Arts Foundation will seek private funds.

Brownback wants Kansas to spend $200,000 next year to assist the foundation, and he said additional funding in future years is a possibility. He appointed nine Kansans to lead the foundation.

The executive order takes effect July 1 unless lawmakers vote to overturn it within 60 days.

Other states are considering similar moves. But the worst is that by eliminating the state arts commission, Brownback will cost the state at least $635,000:

Gov. Brownback states that closing the arts commission will save the state $600,000. What he fails to realize is the state will lose $800,000 from the NEA, and around $435,000 in indirect grants from the Mid-America Arts Alliance that is used to provide jobs and spur economic activity. Also, with no arts grants being awarded to the field, the state will lose tax revenues from lost performances and other events from organizations who have to scale back or cancel performances all together.

Either the Governor is too cynical to think anyone will notice, or too incompetent to understand matching contributions. Either way I feel like John Brown.  

Arts Commission is eliminated in Kansas - KansasCity.com

Footnotes

The Reception of the French Ambassador Jacques-Vincent Languet, Comte de Gergy, at the Doge's Palace, by Canaletto

• Loans from Russia are at risk because of another dispute over a Federal District Court ruling over the Schneerson Library, a collection of books and religious texts which the Chabad movement wants removed from Russia and located in its headquarters in Brooklyn
• Noah Charney offers cost-effective security advice.
• Catherine Sezgin continues her interviews and summaries of contributors to the Journal of Art crime with David Gill, Ton Cremers, and Jennifer Ann Minton. 
• Utahns overwhelmingly supported the 2009 artifact looting investigations, despite the state's politics.
• A stolen work surfaces in Canada.
• High praise for a frank discussion of deaccessioning.
• Google takes us to museums now.
• Google also reveals archaeological sites in the desert.
• Guy Wildenstein, a member of President Sarkozy's "First Circle" is under investigation after allegations that 30 works in his collection may have been stolen.
• An interview with Mark Durney.

Firsthand Report of Looting in Saqqara

The step pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara

There are a number of conflicting reports emerging from Egypt, and as evacuated members of foreign archaeological missions arrive home, we are learning more about what took place in the chaos last weekend. Zahi Hawass is reporting on his website that sites are being protected and that reports of rumors of looting at places like Saqqara are not true. Yet Lee Rosenbaum has been forwarded a firsthand account from a French archaeologists that describes looting last weekend:

The French Archaeological Mission at Saqqara has just left Egypt yesterday and arrived safe today. As most of you are in lack of direct information concerning what happened there, I will try to tell you in brief what I saw. 

On Saturday, the taftish [on-site officer from Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities] asked us to stop the work, because the police were not in the capacity of protecting us anymore. In the afternoon, we could see that the police at the police station at the entrance of the resthouses was gone and had left us alone. That is when it all began: Robbers from Saqqara and Abusir became aware of this and they began to spread in the gebel [mountainous desert].

The first afternoon and night, they mainly attacked places which were secured with locks. They broke them and went inside. Most of the time, they destroyed what they saw and not robbed anything, trying to find "treasures." These are not well organised robbers but, mainly, young people from 10 to 20, very probably looking for gold. That is why, when they saw blocks of stone, they most of the time left them, or destroyed them in order to find what was underneath.

I could see them with my eyes the day after, when we made a tour in the gebel with the army. Around 5 p.m., when the sun was still not down, at the muslim cemetery of Abusir, I counted more than 200 young men, excavating in front of us, ready to flee if the army would come down. A tank of the army was there, but they kept on digging. The soldiers were not numerous enough to do anything else than showing they were here. And when we went back, they probably came back in the highs. They were laughing and throwing stones at us. 

. . .

After three days, more and more soldiers arrived in Saqqara and secured more and more of the area. The worse days were Saturday and Sunday. It looks like the army is now securing most of the area, and they made clear that anyone taken would be taken to jail. Hope it works.

Getty Secures Export License for "Modern Rome—Campo Vaccino"

JMW Turner "Modern Rome—Campo Vaccino", soon on display at the Getty

This landscape by JMW Turner has been granted an export license from the UK Culture Ministry. The painting had been on display for the last thirty years at the National Galleries in Scotland, on loan from the Primrose family. For me, the work fit well in Edinburgh, echoing nicely that city's neoclassical architecture. It was always one of my favorites, a reason to stop in to Scotland's national gallery. Turner's depictions of classical ruins and renaissance buildings echoed Edinburgh's own neoclassical features. Now the work is on its way to Los Angeles.

Calton Hill, Edinburgh

The UK has a limited export restriction scheme, which temporarily halts the export of a work if it falls under one of the three Waverley Criteria:

1. Is it so closely connected with our history and national life that its departure would be a misfortune?
2. Is it of outstanding aesthetic importance?
3. Is it of outstanding significance for the study of some particular branch of art, learning or history?

If a work can fall under any one of these three categories, export will be temporarily restricted by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) so a UK buyer can raise enough money to keep the work in the UK. This work was purchased for $44.9 million at an auction in Sotheby's last year. Will there be calls to amend the limited export regime as more works of art leave? In the past the UK had been more willing to continue to delay export, and even to offer more funding to help domestic buyers match foreign prices and ensure works of art remain in the. But austerity may be changing that. As Mike Boehm speculates

But “Modern Rome” is coming, perhaps a sign that at a time of austerity in Great Britain, a domestic arts economy that's far more reliant on government funding than in the United States could not muster the wherewithal to take the painting away from the privately and lavishly endowed Getty. In 2004, according to a BBC report, the British government anted up more than half the money to match the Getty's bid for "Madonna of the Pinks," tapping a fund from lottery receipts that's earmarked for cultural purposes.

1. Mike Boehm, Getty Museum's $44.9-million purchase of J.M.W. Turner masterpiece is final as sale clears U.K. export hurdle, LA Times Culture Monster, February 3, 2011, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/02/getty-jmw-turner-masterpiece.html (last visited Feb 4, 2011).

Unrest Near Egyptian Museum

If you are following the live feed on al-jazeera, you'll see that there is still a great deal of unrest near the Egyptian museum:

Petrol bombs were thrown in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Wednesday, a Reuters witness said. An Egyptologist said some had landed in the gardens of a museum housing the world's greatest collection of Pharaonic treasures.

The Egyptian museum itself however was unscathed.

The Egyptologist, who had been in contact with Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said it seemed the petrol bombs were being thrown by protesters demonstrating in favour of President Hosni Mubarak.

"So far the museum is safe, but we don't know what's going to happen, because the Mubarak supporters are out of control," the Egyptologist, who declined to be identified, added.

. . .

The army moved to extinguish the flames, a source from the Ministry of Defence told Reuters. Army fire engines were called to the scene to ensure that fire did no damage to "army property", the source said.

Petrol bombs thrown at protest near Egypt Museum | Reuters