[MSN] Art Loss Register

[MSN]

To my knowledge the ALR certificate does say something like 'absence of
objects in the database of stolen objects does not guarantee that these
objects have not been stolen / looted'. The wording most likely will be
different from mine but the message is the same.

Ton Cremers


From: Gill D.W.J. [mailto:D.W.J.Gill at swansea.ac.uk] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 8:15 PM
To: msn-list at te.verweg.com
Subject: Art Loss Register

Tom Flynn raises important issues about the Due Diligence process. Here are
some comments about the Art Loss Register from my posting (April 1, 2008).

The Art Loss: Readers' Views

How do readers of Looting Matters perceive the Art Loss Register?

I felt that it was a question worth asking as there appears to be a little
bit of confusion among museum curators and dealers.

The Director of the St Louis Art Museum (SLAM) felt he could buy an Egyptian
mask with confidence because it did not appear in the ALR database.

Hicham Aboutaam was quoted in 2005 as saying that the ALR was "a registry
for stolen and looted artifacts".

Due Diligence is now a key issue - but does the ALR solve the problem of
recently surfaced antiquities? What does an ALR Certificate say about an
object passing through the antiquities market?

So I posed the question:

    What does it mean when a certificate from The Art Loss Register (ALR)
accompanies an antiquity that is for sale?

70 people cast a vote (and they could choose more than one option).

The different options were:

    * The object does not appear in the ALR database [60 votes]
    * The object comes from a documented old collection [4 votes]
    * The object does not come from an illicit excavation [2 votes]
    * The object has not been stolen from a museum [7 votes]
    * The object has not been stolen from a private collection [5 votes]
    * No country will have a legal claim on the object [4 votes]

Most people got the right answer. The ALR Certificate means that that the
object does not appear in the ALR database. No more; no less.

Hopefully if the piece had been stolen from a museum, there would be a
record and the authorities would be alerted. But this is not always the
case. And what about stores of archaeological material? How frequently are
they audited for thefts?

Are all pieces in private collections registered with the ALR?

And can a piece that has been buried for (say) 2500 years appear on the ALR
database? No! So it will not be on the database if it has come onto the
market as a result of recent looting. And if it can be shown to have been
looted, it is likely that a country will have a legal claim on it. And
suddenly the ALR Certificate is not the complete answer to the due diligence
process.

Does the ALR need to start ensuring that its certificates are issued with a
reminder that they provide no guarantee that the object has not appeared on
the market as the result of recent looting?

http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/2008/04/art-loss-register-readers-views.h
tml 

-----------------------------------------------------
Dr David W.J. Gill
Centre for Egyptology and Mediterranean Archaeology (CEMA)
School of Humanities
Swansea University
Swansea SA2 8PP
Wales - UK
d.w.j.gill at swansea.ac.uk
www.swansea.ac.uk/classics