004
The great museums of the Western world—the Louvre, the Berlin Museum, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, to name only a few—are all children of the Enlightenment.
That movement, a kind of second Renaissance that blossomed in the 18th century, was dedicated to the idea that human beings could understand, through scientific investigation, the world in which they lived. The hubris of the Enlightenment lay in the fact that it meant the whole world, from natural laws and human nature to the rise and fall of nations. Chastened by our experience of the last two centuries, we today believe there are things we may never understand, but we are nonetheless descendants of the Enlightenment.
Our museums are testaments to this longing for knowledge and beauty—and to our desire to understand all of humanity, past and present. For James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, museums offer “pleasure, inspiration, even spiritual or emotional renewal. And, in their great variety … they can remind us that the world is a very large and great place of which we, our culture, are an important part.”
This universalist ideal, however, is currently under assault by the repatriation movement, which promotes the imperative that antiquities in museum collections be sent back to their country of origin. Greece demands the return of the Elgin Marbles, for example, and Egypt wants the Rosetta Stone. In recent years, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles returned three ancient works to Italy, Emory University returned a mummy to Egypt, and Italy returned an obelisk to Ethiopia. These acts of repatriation may be just, but they tend to confirm the notion that countries of origin not only own antiquities discovered within their borders but should keep them within their borders.
Last year the repatriation movement was given sharper legal teeth. In United States v. Schultz the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the McClain doctrine (originally decided in 1977 by the Fifth Circuit), which makes the knowing violation of a foreign patrimony law a crime under U.S. law.
A case now underway in Italy may put the McClain doctrine to the test. Marion True, curator for antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum, is being tried in Rome, in absentia, for violating Italy’s patrimony law. Italian prosecutors allege that True was involved in the purchase of some 40 illegal artifacts for the museum, including a fifth-century B.C. marble statue of Aphrodite valued at $20 million.
According to William Pearlstein, a New York antiquities lawyer who represents dealers, collectors and auction houses, a critical question is whether Marion True will be extradited to Italy if she is convicted by the Italian courts. “U.S. courts are traditionally reluctant to extradite Americans convicted by foreign courts under foreign law if to do so would be inconsistent with U.S. law and policy,” he said. “If a U.S. court were to adopt the Schultz court’s reasoning and find that U.S. criminal law is consistent with Italian law, one potential barrier to extradition would fall.”
As of this writing, the trial has not yet begun, and Marion True is only accused of buying illegal antiquities. But if she is convicted and extradited, Pearlstein warns, “the implications for U.S. museum directors and curators would be ominous.
The great museums of the Western world—the Louvre, the Berlin Museum, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, to name only a few—are all children of the Enlightenment.
