[MSN] Thai antiquities in U.S. may be stolen. 5-year investigation has implications for many museums. (Jori Finkel, New York Times)

[MSN]

Thai antiquities in U.S. may be stolen
5-year investigation has implications for many museums

Jori Finkel, New York Times

Sunday, February 24, 2008

It just might rank as one of the biggest accidental discoveries in
archaeology. In the summer of 1966, a Harvard student named Steve Young was
living in a village in the northeast reaches of Thailand, going door to door
canvassing political opinion for his senior thesis, when he tripped over the
root of a kapok tree. As he hit the ground, he found himself face to face
with some buried pots, their rims exposed by recent monsoons. Intrigued by
the look and feel of the unglazed shards, he knew enough to bring them back
to government officials in Bangkok.

What he had stumbled upon is now viewed as one of the most important
prehistoric settlements in the world. Initially dated as early as 4000 B.C.
- a date since revised amid much controversy to 2000 B.C. or even later -
the so-called Ban Chiang culture is the earliest known Bronze Age site in
Southeast Asia, documenting the early arrival of culture, agriculture and
technology to the region.

Now Ban Chiang is in the news again as a result of a five-year undercover
investigation by three federal agencies. Their examination centers on two
Los Angeles antiquities dealers, Cari and Jonathan Markell, and a
wholesaler, Bob Olson, who, federal agents say, donated Ban Chiang artifacts
to museums at inflated values in a tax fraud scam. Last month, four
California museums - the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Bowers Museum
of Art in Santa Ana, the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena and the Mingei
International Museum in San Diego - were raided as part of the inquiry.

The investigation could also have broad implications for other museums
across the country. In the affidavits filed to obtain search warrants, the
agents laid the groundwork for a legal argument that virtually all Ban
Chiang material in the United States is stolen property.

In essence, the paperwork states, antiquities that left Thailand after 1961,
when the country enacted its antiquities law, could be considered stolen
under American law. And since Ban Chiang material was not excavated until
well after that date, practically all Ban Chiang material in the United
States could qualify.

Among the many American museums with Ban Chiang artifacts are the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Freer and Sackler Galleries in
Washington; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Cleveland Museum of Art;
the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; and the Asian Art Museum in San
Francisco. And that roster includes only institutions that have published
highlights of their collections online.

"I believe that virtually every big American art museum that collects Asian
art has some Ban Chiang material," said Forrest McGill, chief curator at the
Asian Art Museum. His museum owns 77 Ban Chiang objects, from painted
earthenware bowls to bronze bracelets and stone ax heads. After learning of
the federal investigation, he said, he reviewed these acquisitions - almost
all made before he arrived at the museum in 1997 - for links to the
Markells. He found none.

"We are nervous about everything - been nervous, getting nervous," McGill
said. "It's not as easy as you would think to be up to date and conversant
with different countries' laws and to know which foreign laws the U.S. is
committed to enforcing and which not."

The Freer and Sackler have 56 works, mostly ceramic vessels. The Met has 33
pieces in its holdings, among them vessels, bronze bracelets, bells and
ladles. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has 17, including gray stoneware
pots and beakers and assorted clay rollers. The Cleveland Museum has eight
artifacts, mainly jars. The Minneapolis Institute owns two ceramic jars and
three glass ear ornaments. None of the acquisition records posted online
mention the Markells or Olson. And for sheer volume of material, none of
these museums approaches the Bowers, which has roughly 1,000 artifacts.

But the very specter of "looted goods" can prove a public relations
nightmare for museums, which helps to explain why few curators contacted at
those museums were willing to be interviewed about Ban Chiang artifacts.

Beyond public relations problems are the potential legal difficulties. In
the most extreme example, Marion True, a former antiquities curator at the
J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, was indicted in Italy on charges of
conspiring to acquire stolen objects for her museum. More generally, U.S.
case law on cultural patrimony is fast evolving, reflecting a growing
awareness that collecting certain objects can encourage looting of
archaeological sites. American museums have thus seen foreign laws that were
long overlooked at home suddenly taken seriously.

In the affidavits supporting the search warrants in the federal
investigation, for example, agents invoke a 1961 Thai law, the Act on
Ancient Monuments, Antiques, Objects of Art and National Museums, stating
that "buried, concealed, or abandoned" objects are "state property" and
cannot legally be removed from Thailand without an official license.

They quote a Thai government official as saying that as far as he knew,
Thailand's Department of Fine Arts "had never given a license to anyone to
take antiquities out of Thailand for private sale."

Then, because a foreign country's law is not necessarily recognized in the
United States, the affidavits cite two federal laws that could give the Thai
statute some teeth, the National Stolen Property Act of 1948 and the
Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979.

Of course it's ultimately up to the courts, not federal agents, to determine
what constitutes a violation of American law. And no indictments have been
filed.But Patty Gerstenblith, a DePaul University law professor, said the
affidavits signaled a serious federal interest in Ban Chiang as well as tax
fraud.

"I can't say it's going to be a slam dunk for the government if this reaches
court, but I will say the information in those affidavits is impressive,"
she said. "It was, after all, a five-year investigation. We can as outside
observers draw the conclusion that there is a fairly substantial likelihood
that this Ban Chiang material could be considered stolen property under U.S.
law."

The first major excavations of Ban Chiang began in 1974, led by the
University of Pennsylvania in partnership with a Thai group. Joyce White, a
scientist who now oversees the Ban Chiang project at the university's museum
and is assisting the federal government with the current investigation, was
a graduate student at the time.

She remembers seeing crates of excavated material arriving at the university
on loan from the Thai government. "There were what archaeologists call small
finds - bronze bracelets, clay rollers and so on," she said. "And then there
were bags and bags and bags of broken pottery." (Some research material
remains at the museum on long-term loan.)

By the 1980s, Ban Chiang material was flooding the international market.
"I'm told that some 40,000 pots have come out of Ban Chiang, excavated from
the site," said Young, the former Harvard student, in a telephone interview
in which he confirmed the details of his discovery, down to the bruises from
his fall. The son of a former American ambassador to Thailand, he said he
never collected the work himself out of concern for his family's reputation
and now owns only one pot, a gift from a Thai princess.

Other collectors did amass the material, however, especially in the 1980s
and '90s. The objects were abundant and, by comparison with other
antiquities, cheap - typically under $1,000. It was mainly during this time
that leading American museums secured donations and, to a lesser extent,
made acquisitions to help fill gaps in their Southeast Asian collections.

Museums have in the past argued that they were safeguarding objects already
on the open market. But many archaeologists find the collecting of such
artifacts distressing because it removes objects from their original,
information-rich context. "It destroys the archaeological record," White
said. "It's shameful really, a destruction of knowledge."

Increasingly sensitized to those concerns, many museum curators now say they
wouldn't touch the stuff even if offered by their most prestigious donors.

"We would turn it down," said Robert Jacobsen, chairman of the Asian art
department at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, "and not just because of
the investigation in California, but because times have changed. There's a
moral basis here."

Asked whether his museum would consider repatriation, Jacobsen said: "When
we acquired or were given these works, and I think I speak for all museums
here, we did not think of them as illegal. But if it comes to pass that
legislation declares this material illegal, we would simply return it."

McGill in San Francisco also said he would take any claims "very seriously,"
while noting that the Thai government has never contacted him for the
museum's Ban Chiang artifacts, despite a history of collaboration. "We did a
big exhibition borrowed from Thailand two years ago," he noted, "and the
director of the National Museum in Bangkok was at our museum several times."

Still, he said, he is watching closely to see how the federal investigation
unfolds.

So are legal experts in cultural patrimony. Gerstenblith said the inquiry
could lead to criminal trials or civil forfeiture proceedings. In the
meantime, she is urging all museums, "for ethical if not legal" reasons, to
review their Ban Chiang objects. "When they accepted those donations, what
kind of documentation did they ask for? Where did the pieces come from?"

Stephen K. Urice, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, said
the legal issues are far from cut and dried.

He pointed out that the National Stolen Property Act of 1948 applies only to
property valued above $5,000 and that federal courts had not yet upheld the
application of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act to foreign
antiquities. He also cited a precedent established by a 2003 federal
appellate court decision against the antiquities dealer Frederick Schultz,
which puts a burden on the foreign government to show that it enforces its
own property statute.

Imagine "you have this vast body of archaeological material over which
another government has waved its wand and said it's ours," Urice said, "but
they have not done anything more than that to protect it. Under those
circumstances, there is an open question as to whether the U.S. would treat
it as stolen."

As for the next steps in the federal investigation, Urice is not placing any
bets.

"The whole thing could be dropped altogether because of insufficient
evidence or because they are feeling weak about their legal theories," he
said, "or this could move forward into an important, precedent-setting
case."

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