Return of cultural treasures requires climate of cooperation
By Wanda A. Adams
Assistant Features Editor
At some point in the past, someone took note of a pair of Cambodian stone sculptures on display at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. The two carved heads, one of the Hindu god Shiva and one of the demon Asura, looked familiar. They looked, in fact, exactly like sculptures pictured in a list of stolen objects, "Looting in Angkor," published by the International Council of Museums in 1997.
This person — apparently no one at the academy knows who it was — reported the similarity to the the museum council, setting in motion a chain of events that led to return of the two stone heads this month, and the beginning of what academy director George Ellis hopes will be a cordial and mutually beneficial relationship with the keepers of Cambodia's art treasures.
The incident is a local example of a global problem, one that does not often see so amicable a solution.
Full circle
The academy acquired the heads in good faith, as gifts from Honolulu art lovers well known to them: the late artist John Young and collectors Christian and Sally Aall of Diamond Head. Neither Young nor the Aalls knew the pieces had been looted from a warehouse in Siem Reap, Cambodia, near Angkor Wat, during the 1970s or '80s, a time of unrest in that country.
When it was clear that the statues did, in fact, match photographs of the ones stolen, Ellis said, the decision to return them was "a no-brainer. It was just the ethical and moral thing to do."
A Hawai'i delegation escorted the sculptures back to Cambodia and returned them in a touching ceremony. "My father would have approved," said John Young's daughter, Debra. "He was able to find this piece and bring it back and live with it for a while and then donate it to the academy where it could be shared and seen and appreciated, and now it's come full circle and gone back home."
Preserving history
But this was the rare straightforward case: a well-documented theft. Not all situations are so transparent. "There's a big gray area out there," said William F. Brown, president of the Bishop Museum.
"Looting in Angkor" is one of a series of publications that the international museum group has produced to assist in the retrieval of artworks that have been illegally spirited out of their countries of origin. This and other efforts have grown out of various accords over the past 20 years through the United National Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law, as well as the international museum group. The United States is a party to these, but not all nations are.
These accords amount to an agreement between participating countries that they will recognize each other's laws with regard to illicit trade and enforce the return of objects on request. Member countries can further delineate specific categories of objects that cannot legally be exported. Such objects, too, would be subject to the restitution clauses.
For example, Ellis said, Bolivia has requested protection for a particular type of 18th- and 19th-century textile. "They were losing all of them," Ellis said. "The (pieces) weren't even being stolen — they were being sold. But by our refusing to allow them in, they have some level of protection."
The accords, Ellis said, "are an attempt to preserve history" that would otherwise be lost to illegal archeological digging and the appetites of collectors.
In addition, federal law requires the return of bones and funerary objects to indigenous peoples in the United States under the auspices of the North American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. But a gray area within this act is the provision for the return of "objects of cultural patrimony," meaning those that are, or once were, perceived as inextricably associated with the culture, something so sacred or special that is simply cannot be owned by anyone, Brown said. These are much more difficult to define and prove, and have been the source of controversy and debate.
Archaeologist and consultant Roger Rose of Honolulu said museums are under considerable pressure to release objects that are requested under the "cultural patrimony" heading from both international and domestic sources. He said some of these requests are made for "political purposes," and worries that the items may end up uncared for, warehoused or back on the black market. "I don't approve of bowing to pressure. You have to look at the record of the country or group to see how they have handled the preservation of antiquities in the past," he said.
Case-by-case repatriation
Beyond human remains, funerary objects, stolen artworks or those pieces that are one-of-a-kind cultural treasures, the ground grows thorny for museums.
What should a museum do about requests for the return of pieces that fall into none of these categories? Should all artifacts be restricted to their country of origin or the cultural circles where they originated?
These concerns go to the place of art and antiquities in history, culture and international relations.
Rose takes the long view: "If things had not left Mexico and Guatemala in the last century or before, we wouldn't know much about Mayan culture today, because the material wouldn't have reached museums and universities where it sparked the interest of someone who wanted to study the culture and went on to lead archeological expeditions in those countries," he said. "In many cases, the material would have been destroyed or lost" to natural disasters, looting or other forces.
Rose said the repatriation issue has to be considered on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the rarity of the object, whether it is still the subject of study, who is making the request and what laws apply. Ellis further points out that many objects are duplicates — "How many Tang horses can you use?" — and no country would be deprived by allowing such pieces to be owned and displayed elsewhere.
Brown, too, sees a need for careful consideration and open discussions. When a request for repatriation is made, he said, "you need to be careful and be sure you have a sense of whose interests are being served."
He said museums have a responsibility to their donors and the community they serve to preserve their assets. Instead of merely handing objects over, he would seek to partner with groups, to loan objects or to establish some kind of cooperative relationship that assures the safety of the objects.
Rose and Brown said New Zealand offers a model of cultural cooperation and sensitivity. There, the government museums and the indigenous Maori have forged a special relationship that allows the museums to house certain items; the tribes are involved in all decisions about how cultural items are stored, studied, displayed.
Ellis said he hopes that the process of collecting will remain open, with appropriate protections in place.
"Art is a way of providing bridges between people of the world and creating greater understanding," he said. "You certainly don't want to Balkanize art collections. It would be awful if Mexico had all the Mexican art in the world and didn't have art from anywhere else. These kinds of bridges are going to be ever so necessary in an increasingly acrimonious world."
Rose agrees: "If every nation were to horde its treasures and keep them locked up, we would be a nation of parochial entities at war with one another with no understanding of one another. The circulation of antiquities has led to a lot of appreciation of other cultures."
