[MSN] Conservation of Antiquities. The Conservation and Deaccessioning of The Ancient World (Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D.)

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Minerva Editorial, May/June 2006

The Conservation and Deaccessioning of The Ancient World

As Minerva goes to press, Laura Novak of The New York Times (29 March) has
highlighted the Getty Conservation Institute at the Getty Villa in Malibu
and its great strides worldwide in training conservators to conform to
international standards. According to Timothy P. Whalen, the director of the
Institute, the Getty spent $35 million in 2004 in its global conservation
programmes, much more than any other American organisation. As terrifically
responsible as this investment clearly is in trying to preserve surviving
ancient heritage, either on archaeological sites or in museums, there is no
escaping the reality that the modern predicament is akin to fighting forest
fires. The quantity of sites being excavated each year, and the hundreds of
thousands of artefacts unearthed annually, are mind-boggling. There is no
conceivable way that all of these sites can be properly conserved and
protected or their finds recorded and safely stored in proper facilities for
future generations.

In a 2005 report partly financed by the Getty Foundation, the conservation
group Heritage Preservation estimated that some 4.8 billion artefacts are on
display or stored in American institutions. Of these, the report accentuated
that about 190 million items are in need of 'specific preservation
attention'. But of the 31,000 institutions that participated in the survey,
only 20% employed full-time conservators. No simple solution to this
Sisyphean task exists, yet meanwhile millions of objects in museum stores
worldwide are suffering neglect, with countless numbers slowly
disintegrating (see Minerva, July/August 2004, p. 2).

Several courses of action could alleviate this problem of over abundance.
First, the object-rich museums, especially in source countries, should loan
a significant number of objects to the thousands of museums and teaching
institutions across the world that lack representation of the aesthetic
manifestations of ancient civilisations. Second, they could be sold to the
patrons and benefactors of institutions, who could later donate them and in
the process receive tax benefits. Finally, they could be auctioned so that
collectors and dealers could acquire objects with good provenance, a
requirement that has become increasingly important in recent years,
especially for several museums (see pp. 45-47).

This deaccessioning of cultural material would greatly benefit museums,
freeing up substantial funding for conservation, cataloguing, photography,
and publication, and especially for safeguarding sites. 
Once excavated objects are photographed and recorded, duplicate pieces, or
lesser objects with no or minimal historical or artistic value, could be
sold to generate revenue for sorely needed projects.

The problem of protecting sites is serious, especially in a country like
Iraq where about 10,000 sites only have a few hundred individuals to guard
them. The problem of site protection in Italy, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, and other countries has reached an unmanageable level. Only
Egypt appears to have stemmed this problem in recent years under the active
administration of Dr Zahi Hawass, who has extracted increasingly larger
amounts of money from the government for this purpose. He has also been able
to convince them to build smaller provincial and local museums and thus
bring many fine objects out from storage. Unfortunately, this is not the
case in several Mediterranean countries, which are often lax in the
protection of their ancient heritage and, indeed, have often cut down the
funds available for cultural activities.

Most archaeologists guard their finds zealously and will not allow others to
study or publish them. Thus they languish, often rotting away, in the
basements of museums, sometimes for generations. When they are finally
published, very few ever see the light of day. As an example, the senior
registrar at the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology has confirmed that only 1% of the estimated 750,000 to one
million objects are exhibited at any one time, with huge numbers unrecorded,
boxed up, and unavailable for research. Their databases now hold some
360,000 individually catalogued items. Of what use are most of them to
scholars now?

The writer apologises if this sounds repetitious to our readers, but these
problems are of great concern to him. Evidence not only his many articles
and editorials on the subject in Minerva, but also his several addresses
over the past 14 years pertaining to the antiquity trade, ethics of
collecting, conservation, and site protection to such distinguished
organisations as UNIDROIT, the International Congress of Classical
Archaeology, and the UK Institute for Conservation. He hopes that it has not
all fallen on deaf ears.

Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D.
Editor-in-Chief
Minerva
The International Review of Ancient Art & Archaeology
www.minervamagazine.com