pretty shocking to see a household name like Sothebys involved. you would think they would want to distance themselves from trafficking so that their customers can buy with confidence. a good brand reputation is extremely hard to build and very easily lost.
Some customers might see it as a positive attribute if anything. Viewing it as signaling they might be able to acquire items that would otherwise be impossible to obtain.
This is far from the first time someone has pointed out that Sothebys is selling looted antiquities with bogus provenance. It's no secret that virtually the entire antiquities market is guilty of these kinds of things. If you listen to experts in this material outside the institutions that participate in this market, the unanimous message is: don't buy antiquities. The buyers who continue to participate in it are either willfully ignorant or they just don't care.
Pretty much. The lawful flow of antiquities almost entirely ceased when the UNESCO 1970 Convention came into effect in 1972. Even stuff that was lawfully excavated and exported prior to then often has sketchy documentation showing provenance or no documentation at all. Thus, the standards for provenance documentation are low and easily taken advantage of by people peddling looted antiquities with fabricated documentation.
Yes, sometimes institutions will deaccession antiquities with impeccable provenance going back to when it was taken from the ground, verifiable through catalogs and other records held by third parties. That's not most of the market.
I'm no expert in art or antiquities. The only reason I even know the name "Sotheby's" is because it was mentioned in a John Oliver piece about stolen antiquities.
So as a layman I can tell you: The only reason I know Sotheby's is in the context of this.
> Fashioning himself as a cultural preservationist rather than an opportunistic pilferer, Latchford knowingly purchased looted statues and stones from ancient sites of worship
Honestly, I think buying and selling looted artifacts from the Khmer Rouge regime seems at least morally neutral.
> Year Zero (Khmer: ឆ្នាំសូន្យ, Chhnăm Sony [cʰnam soːn]) is an idea put into practice by Pol Pot in Democratic Kampuchea that all culture and traditions within a society must be completely destroyed or discarded and that a new revolutionary culture must replace it starting from scratch
The article really doesn't give a good explanation of why Latchford's actions are bad in context.
Agreed. Maoists (which the Khmer were) would bulldoze two thousand year old cultural sites. They were simple minded communists and could care less...Some of the most complex and distributed forms of government in the history of human kind existed in ancient china and these maoist boneheads wiped a lot of that history out of existence.
1. who gets to decide whether the owners of something get to destroy it or not?
2. the west has zero claim to any of it regardless of the circumstances. even if you think its justifiable to take it for preservation, what right do you have to keep it if it can be safely returned?
Possession is 9 tenths of the law. What right do you have to all the metal, diamonds, gold, oil etc that you're using right now if it can be safely returned?
The same issue arises over and over. Like the destruction of antiquities by religious radicals in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's good to round up antiquities at risk and export them, but with the right provenance and to suitable institutions to hold with a public display of that provenance, so that when an appropriate time comes, they can be returned. I.e. treat it as "borrowing" or "safe-keeping".
Not just take it and sell it to unscrupulous buyers who will keep it.
How would you like it if someone swooped down on your house in advance of a hurricane and said "hey, your house is going to get destroyed anyway; why don't I take your appliances and electronics and sell them to other interested parties for my profit? After all, you won't be able to use them while you don't have a home, so what's the harm?"
Holding artifacts for safe-keeping is a nice idea in theory, but in practice has been used as a way to justify retaining colonial-era thefts long after any reasonable concerns have subsided.
This has been cited for the Elgin marbles for example, and US museums for indigenous cultural artifacts, and even by the Germans in WW2 to justify keeping things like the Ishtar gate as they were being bombed.
say Latchford now goes to occupied parts of Ukraine and buys up all their atifacts from the Russian regime and sells them around in order to preserve them
not only would he symbolically support the Russian regime by uprooting Ukrainian cultural heritage from the area, but he'd also support it financially by buying the stuff in the first place
There is a great deep dive podcast on the Latchford story how he became successful through being used by others to further their own careers in academia and at the Met by his most famous fellow traveler semi accomplice.
It seems to me that the difference between "cultural preservationist" and "opportunistic pilferer" is largely about the motivation of the would be preservationist or pilferer. Do many question that these antiquities were need of preservation?
No, those are vastly different things unless you're a looter looking to gain a veneer of ethical legitimacy. Let me explain as an archaeologist:
1. Consent is key in any excavations or artifact collection. Sometimes this will be through broad government-granted powers to specific organizations to rescue sites in immediate danger of destruction (i.e. rescue archaeology), but more commonly it's through permits to conduct research. You have a duty to find the stakeholders and ask permission.
2. You need to document provenance and minimize damage both to the site and collected artifacts. In many cases, leaving things in situ is the best way to preserve them. Most sites don't need to be excavated.
3. Artifacts need to be collected in accordance with ethical norms. That means things like no public photos of the deceased.
4. You don't ever sell anything you've collected. You're rescuing it or collecting it for scientific purposes. You don't own it.
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[ 0.85 ms ] story [ 61.8 ms ] threadYes, sometimes institutions will deaccession antiquities with impeccable provenance going back to when it was taken from the ground, verifiable through catalogs and other records held by third parties. That's not most of the market.
So as a layman I can tell you: The only reason I know Sotheby's is in the context of this.
Honestly, I think buying and selling looted artifacts from the Khmer Rouge regime seems at least morally neutral.
> Year Zero (Khmer: ឆ្នាំសូន្យ, Chhnăm Sony [cʰnam soːn]) is an idea put into practice by Pol Pot in Democratic Kampuchea that all culture and traditions within a society must be completely destroyed or discarded and that a new revolutionary culture must replace it starting from scratch
The article really doesn't give a good explanation of why Latchford's actions are bad in context.
2. the west has zero claim to any of it regardless of the circumstances. even if you think its justifiable to take it for preservation, what right do you have to keep it if it can be safely returned?
It's good to round up antiquities at risk and export them, but with the right provenance and to suitable institutions to hold with a public display of that provenance, so that when an appropriate time comes, they can be returned. I.e. treat it as "borrowing" or "safe-keeping".
Not just take it and sell it to unscrupulous buyers who will keep it.
How would you like it if someone swooped down on your house in advance of a hurricane and said "hey, your house is going to get destroyed anyway; why don't I take your appliances and electronics and sell them to other interested parties for my profit? After all, you won't be able to use them while you don't have a home, so what's the harm?"
This has been cited for the Elgin marbles for example, and US museums for indigenous cultural artifacts, and even by the Germans in WW2 to justify keeping things like the Ishtar gate as they were being bombed.
not only would he symbolically support the Russian regime by uprooting Ukrainian cultural heritage from the area, but he'd also support it financially by buying the stuff in the first place
https://dynamitedoug.com/
1. Consent is key in any excavations or artifact collection. Sometimes this will be through broad government-granted powers to specific organizations to rescue sites in immediate danger of destruction (i.e. rescue archaeology), but more commonly it's through permits to conduct research. You have a duty to find the stakeholders and ask permission.
2. You need to document provenance and minimize damage both to the site and collected artifacts. In many cases, leaving things in situ is the best way to preserve them. Most sites don't need to be excavated.
3. Artifacts need to be collected in accordance with ethical norms. That means things like no public photos of the deceased.
4. You don't ever sell anything you've collected. You're rescuing it or collecting it for scientific purposes. You don't own it.