Martin Gayford

Bones of contention

All over the world, scholarly folk look to Neil MacGregor — who writes opposite — to hold the line.

All over the world, scholarly folk look to Neil MacGregor — who writes opposite — to hold the line.

All over the world, scholarly folk look to Neil MacGregor — who writes opposite — to hold the line. If the British Museum gave in and sent the Elgin Marbles air freight to Athens, a massive wave of demands for restitution would descend on the museums of the Western world.

The sad fact is that very large numbers of antiquities reached our cultural institutions by means that were highly dubious. In recent decades, many have been illegally excavated and smuggled on to the art market. An ex-antiquities curator at the Getty is currently on trial in Italy on charges arising from that trade. Last February, the Metropolitan Museum agreed to return 21 prized antiquities to Italy, including a celebrated vase signed by the painter Euphronios. It is unlikely to be the last such surrender.

There are some who argue that only objects with a provenance — that is, a history of legal ownership — should be either collected or published. In an interview in the latest issue of Apollo, the distinguished historian of classical art Professor Sir John Boardman — while condemning illegal activity — attacks that notion as reminiscent of ‘fanatical animal rights activists’. The Euphronios vase, he suggests, did much more cultural good in New York — however it got there — than it did buried in an ancient tomb.

Perhaps, but then the removal of antiquities from their sites can and could be a destructive business — and has led to lasting resentment. In his excellent book Salonica, Mark Mazower tells an instructive story about the golden age of museum collecting. In 1864, an itinerant French savant named Emmanuel Miller was combing what is now north-eastern Greece for items suitable for the museums of Paris.

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