sometimes time has its own ways of creating a story: only today i found an article on the cultural pages of the german daily Die Welt about one of my most beloved collection of sculptures, the elgin marbles, 2000 years old and of unsurpassed beauty: the news? they have been „irreparably damaged“. and – time wills it – the discussion on their provenance is on with a vengeance. so let us have some words on antiques. and robbers.

about four years ago i spent a holiday-reporting-journey in luxor, egypt, where a friend of mine was approached by the director of antiquities whether he would be interested in buying some artifacts directly from the archeological sites in the valley of the kings. we accepted a dinner-invitation and over desserts were offered a bust of ramesses II and a mummy only recently discovered in one of the tombs on the nile. we declined gracefully, since it is a capital crime to even be in contact with tomb raiders in egypt.

i am a bit surprised to learn that the board of the getty museum now finds itself in the arkward position of having acquired some 42 objects of greek, etruscan and early roman provenance, pieces that must have seen daylight only recently, unheard of in antique circles and surely spectacular – and probably stolen.

it is interesting to note that most artefacts on display in museums all over europe have been – let´s put it bluntly – stolen. the greek government is for some decades asking for the return of the famous elgin marbles,
the elgin marbles

whilst turkey asks via court ruling for the friezes of the mausoleum of halikarnassos, incidentially being not only in the possession of the british museum too, but also IN THE VERY SAME ROOM!!! the room is the renown duveen wing,
the duveen wing in the british museum

being built for the marbles that the british ambassador lord elgin „acquired“ after the near destruction of the parthenon by turkish forces during a siege of athens – or was it the british bombarding the turks? all we know is the fact that someone used the erechtheion as an ammuntion storage and that the hitherto unscathed akropolis was hit by a cannonball and exploded. we should not forget that frederick the great had no problem, artlover or not, to bombard beautiful baroque dresden some two hundred years before the allied forces nearly wiped it out. war and art have a somewhat strange and unhappy relation.

i am informed that joachim von ribbentrop himself as the führer´s ambassador to the united kingdom made, when invited to stately homes in britain, a meticulous list of all the objets d´art he saw, evidently in the firm belief that he would acquire them by force, once the third reich would have won the battle against britain. well, apparently he failed.

göring was greedier – and more successful. karinhall, the somewhat megalomaniac residence of his was stuffed with beutekunst,
karinhall – the gallery

sculptures, paintings and art-treasures scavenged from all over europe.

and even the romans and greeks fared not better. any war they waged ended not only in all-pervading bloodbaths – the soldiers and their generals looted everything they could carry. alexander the great had most of the things he took a liking to back to macedon. emperor hadrian had his summer palace in tivoli
tivoli at night

studded with his war souvenirs taken from all over the then known world. thieves of art are in good company…

i shudder at the thought of how many pieces of art once found instantly found their way through dark and criminal channels into the collections of the aristocracy and the leading classes – and i am sure that most artifacts at one time or the other have a difficult time in proving their provenance at all, should one really look into their history.

it is, under these circumstances and well-known facts, somewhat funny to see how museum curators all over the world (and the press) react to the new findings of stolen art in the case of the getty foundation. surely everyone must have known that a greek vase painted by euphronios (or any other artist) can not appear suddenly out of the blue?
surely no one ever has had a problem with this? what about the rubens paintings conquered by the holy roman german emperors during endless wars, all of them now in vienna?

art seems to exist to be stolen, i declare. and who denies this is either a fool or an idealist – or both. and perhaps the two are the same.

so if you visit a museum the next time consider yourself happy to see something that pops out like a piece of cork out of the dark stream of time, only for a second or two, to be admired by an unsuspecting public. and do not ask too many questions. like: who is the rightful owner? chance could have it, for once and for the time being – that the owner, maybe only for this split second – is none other than you!

you, the rightful owner – at least for the moment

Sunday, November 13, 2005, 19:18