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Historical Archaeology
A different twist on collecting and antiquities.
Imogene Lim
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Collector Joins Watchdog Panel on Antiquities
August 15, 2000
By WILLIAM H. HONAN
The White House has touched off a furor in the rarified world of
archaeology by announcing the appointment of Shelby White, a
wealthy New York collector of antiquities, to a seat on a
government committee formed to help combat illicit international
trade in such objects.
Ms. White, who was named to the panel last week, is known to many
archaeologists as the wife of the financier Leon Levy, who shares
her passion for antiquities and is an avid collector himself.
The couple, owners of one of world's finest private collections
of classical artifacts, have a reputation for generosity in
sponsoring archaeological fieldwork, research and publication. But
as collectors they have frequently stirred anger among
archaeologists. While most collectors are chiefly interested in
owning objects, archaeologists generally focus on the preservation
of archaeological sites.
Collectors and archaeologists are also often at odds over the
issue of theft. Archaeologists generally take the position that
collectors encourage illegal traffic by creating a market for
antiquities. But reputable collectors insist that they take pains
to check the provenance of objects they acquire.
Among those who wrote to President Clinton on Ms. White's
behalf were Katherine Lee Reid, president of the Association of
Art Museum Directors and director of the Cleveland Museum of Art,
who called her "uniquely qualified"; and Glen W. Bowersock, an
internationally respected professor of ancient history at the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, who said she would make
"an admirable representative of the nonprofessional community of
collectors."
But such sentiments are far from unanimous. "It's like putting a
fox in charge of the chicken coop," Nancy Wilkie, president of the
11,500-member Archaeological Institute of America, said of the
appointment. "Shelby White is known to everyone in the archaeology
community as a voracious collector who seems to show no concern
for protecting our heritage."
"We lobbied against her appointment last June, and we thought it
was dead," Ms. Wilkie said.
Malcolm Bell, a professor of art history and archaeology at the
University of Virginia who has studied the records of the
collection of Ms. White and Mr. Levy, asked, "How can she serve
on this committee when she is opposed to the idea that caused the
committee to be formed?"
Ms. White, who adamantly insists that her critics have not been
able to prove that she owns looted art, said that her unsalaried
appointment was consistent with the legislation that created the
committee.
"The original idea was to have a representative body of people --
scholars, collectors, dealers and lay people -- to reach balanced
decisions that would better aid the president and the secretary
of state as to what can be brought into the country and what
can't," she said, adding that such decisions should not be left
only to professionals.
Tony Bullock, chief of staff for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
the New York Democrat who is Ms. White's sponsor for the job, said
that the lobbying effort against her by the Archaeological
Institute had backfired.
"It prompted 20 to 30 carefully reasoned letters saying that
Shelby White is exactly the sort of person who belongs on the
committee," Mr. Bullock said. "The original legislation, which was
drafted by Senator Moynihan, wasn't aimed at creating a panel of
people who agreed about everything. It envisioned passionate
disagreements. That is its strength."
One of the letter writers supporting Ms. White's appointment,
James Cuno, director of the Harvard Art Museums, acknowledged
that her collecting practices had drawn criticism. But he said
that he regarded Ms. White and Mr. Levy as "public collectors who
make every effort to share their collections with the public."
Speaking for herself, Ms. White said she was eager to serve on
the panel, officially known as the Cultural Property Advisory
Committee, "to be a voice for the collecting community."
"I've had broad experience as a collector and archaeologist," she
said. "I'm aware of the various archaeological sites. I go on digs
every summer. I'm involved in publication in the field. I serve
on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I want to be
helpful."
On occasion Ms. White and Mr. Levy have been hard pressed to
defend their acquisitions. About seven years ago, for example,
they bought a dazzling second-century bronze and silver miniature
model of a leopard, one in a collection of 16 such objects that
they own that are suspected of having been surreptitiously
removed from Roman ruins in Icklingham, England.
After claimants to the property threatened to sue for the
recovery of the items, which were considered to be among the most
important archaeological discoveries in the last 50 years, a
settlement was reached in which Ms. White and Mr. Levy bequeathed
all 16 objects to the British Museum.
The 11-member government committee was established in 1983, in
response to widespread concern about the looting of archaeological
sites in poor countries like Guatamala and Peru. Composed of
scholars, dealers, collectors and representatives of the public,
its mandate is to provide the president with recommendations on
archaeological and ethnographic materials that, if pillaged,
would jeopardize a country's cultural patrimony.
If the president (or in practice, the State Department) is
convinced that such a danger exists, importation of cultural
articles from that country may be restricted.
Establishment of the committee -- part of United States adherence
to a 1970 Unesco convention -- was stalled in Congress for more
than a decade because of pressure from the Art Dealers
Association and other groups and from legislators like Senator
Moynihan, who argued that the Cultural Property Advisory
Committee, as set up in the 1983 implementing bill, was too
narrowly based to be workable.
Senator Moynihan broke the deadlock with compromise legislation
that included the broadening of the committee's membership,
although many advocates for a more powerful committee maintained
that his solution was unnecessarily weak.
Nevertheless, the committee has in recent years successfully
urged the establishment of import restrictions on antiquities from
El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Mali and Canada, and on cultural
property from Cyprus and Cambodia.
The criticism of the appointment of Ms. White seems unlikely to
fade away soon. Claire Lyons, a former vice president of the
Archaeological Institute of America who specialized in
professional responsibility and ethics, said: "I'm deeply
concerned about this intended appointment. People who buy art
from countries where there is a serious threat of looting get
caught in a conflict of interest that undermines the faith of the
public in the committee."
Ms. Wilkie pointed to another example of controversial art in Ms.
Shelby's collection. "She bought the top half of a Heracles
statue, the bottom half of which is in the Anatalya Museum," on
the southern coast of Turkey, Ms. Wilkie said. "Everybody knows
the two pieces fit together, and that her half was looted, but she
says there is no proof of that and at the same time has never
allowed plaster casts to be made which would settle the matter."
Ms. White said that she and Mr. Levy had long ago given the
piece to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and that she had
offered to have plaster casts of the statue made but that no one
was interested.
She added that discovering pieces of antiquities that appear to
have been broken apart and that wound up in separate collections
was quite common. "But that's no reason to return a piece," she
added.
She said she viewed the criticism of her appointment as part of a
bigger dispute. "I don't think this is a personal attack because
none of these people have ever met me," she said. "I serve on a
lot of boards like the Met Museum. I think it's a attack on
them."
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