Insider: Guardians of Antiquity?

Archaeology ^ | July/August 2008 | review by Roger Atwood

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James Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, posits in his new book Who Owns Antiquity? (Princeton University Press, $24.95) that the UNESCO treaty and laws enacted around the world aimed at applying its principles have done nothing to stop looting and have succeeded only in inhibiting the global movement of art. UNESCO, he argues, has impoverished our understanding of one another and contributed to a stale, narrowly nationalistic view of culture. More specifically, these laws have prevented museums like his from acquiring antiquities as they have in the past. He calls them "nationalist retentionist cultural property laws," and views them as one outcome of what he sees as the chauvinistic nationalism that has infected governments and led to the suppression of minorities and even ethnic cleansing... Government elites decide what the national culture is and pass laws barring the export of art that reflects that culture; everything else is junk... governments that illegitimately "claim ownership of the world's ancient heritage" and practice what he calls identity control -- the use of cultural property ownership laws to create and enforce a national identity based on what Cuno feels are spurious connections to the ancient past. "And archaeology and national museums are used as a means of enforcing that control," he writes. As for UNESCO itself, Cuno is clear. The United States should renounce the convention.

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ARCHAEOLOGY contributing editor Roger Atwood is author of Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World.

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Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage by James Cuno

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Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust Philippe de Montebello, Glenn D. Lowry, Neil MacGregor, John Walsh, Jr., James N. Wood, edited by James Cuno

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