Art of the Steal

Loot is an ugly word. Derived from Hindi and Sanskrit, it emerged in British India, where it no doubt proved useful in describing some of the more sordid transactions of empire. In the 20th century, it was applied to Jewish art collections systematically plundered by Hitler and, later, to electronics pilfered from shop windows during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Most recently — and perhaps most provocatively — it has been wielded against well-to-do American museums whose pristine specimens of ancient civilizations have with shocking frequency turned out to be contraband.

It is this latest application of the term that interests Sharon Waxman in “Loot,” a broad survey of what she calls “the battle over the stolen treasures of the ancient world.” Over the past few years, numerous museums have been confronted with claims that antiquities they have been acquiring were plundered by tomb robbers. Now the countries from which these objects came want them back. And as Waxman observes, they are resorting to increasingly rough tactics — “lawsuits and criminal prosecution, public embarrassment and bare-knuckled threats.” Top-drawer dealers in ancient art have been sentenced to jail, while a prominent American curator has been indicted in Rome. And cowed by sensational accounts of dirty dealings (the Italian trial, now in its third year, features almost pornographic Polaroids of soon-to-be museum objects caked in fresh mud), four leading institutions — the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Princeton University Art Museum — have decided to fork over dozens of antiquities to Italy.

How did museums become looters? To Waxman, a former culture reporter for The Washington Post and The New York Times, the problem is part of a larger battle about history, in which “once-colonized nations” are seeking to reclaim the “tangible symbols” of national identity from the “great cultural shrines of the West.” To explore this conflict, she sets out on a Grand Tour of two American and two European museums, and of several Mediterranean countries from whose monuments and tombs their collections have been formed.

In Cairo she is moonstruck by Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s flamboyant antiquities czar, who issues off-color threats to museums that refuse to give back trophies like the Rosetta stone. (“I thought I should dance with them first, before I kiss them,” Hawass says of the British Museum, in one of his milder statements.) At the Louvre, Waxman wonders why there is no information about how all those Pharaonic monuments got there. In Turkey, she ?visits a tiny provincial museum that has managed to lose track of a Lydian treasure reclaimed (with great effort) from the Met. In Athens, she tours the New Acropolis Museum, wishfully designed to house the Elgin marbles, while in Britain she locates an elderly descendant of Lord Elgin who, not surprisingly, is disinclined to see them returned. At the Getty, she is distracted by old “tales of sex among the curators and researchers,” arguing, dubiously, that they provide a general “backdrop of personal drama and tensions” that helps explain the problems over stolen antiquities.

Along the way, Waxman rehearses some of the more ruthless European campaigns of archaeological dismemberment in the 18th and 19th centuries, and she is surely right to lament the failure of the Louvre and the British Museum to inform the public about the darker episodes in their pasts. Unfortunately, the recent troubles have little to do with that era, and her argument falters when her itinerary brings her to Rome. After all — as she concedes in passing — Italy was a colonizer not a colony, and the American museums that have been its primary target are not, for the most part, burdened by imperial misdeeds. Here, the essential background is the emergence of an almost completely unregulated international antiquities market after World War II, and of a growing web of cultural property laws and enforcement mechanisms (including America’s own courts and customs officials) that are now being used to shut that market down.

With so much ground to cover, Waxman doesn’t have much time to investigate this complicated legal history, and her account of the Rome trial of the former Getty curator Marion True, in particular, betrays a faulty grasp of the facts. Waxman makes able use of earlier press accounts (including my own), and she is correct to conclude that while the evidence is disturbing, the idea of a conspiracy centered around True raises many questions. But she seems to think, among other misunderstandings, that Maurizio Fiorilli, a lawyer for the Culture Ministry who is her main Italian source, is “the authority who decided whether prosecution was warranted,” when in fact the case is prosecuted by the judiciary, not the ministry.

Citing an unnamed Getty source, Waxman writes that the museum is paying for True’s defense as part of an elaborate “nondisclosure” deal that prevents True from implicating her former employers. But according to lawyers for both sides, the legal fees are governed by a standard agreement that does not restrict True’s ability to testify. They point out that if there were such a nondisclosure requirement, which they deny, it would amount to illegal suppression of evidence. And the museum’s decision to return a rare statue of Aphrodite was not, as Waxman claims, a result of evidence presented by the Italian government, but of separate information turned up by the museum’s own investigators.

The larger problem is Waxman’s portrayal of the antiquities crisis as mainly a “tug of war” over coveted museum pieces. In fact, the more important battle concerns unprotected archaeological sites, and it is far less a matter of repatriating objects than of figuring out how to stop latter-day looters from destroying our collective past. That vital challenge remains unsolved.

Aphrodite n. 爱与美之女神
backdrop n. 背景幕,背景
bare-knuckle adj. 不戴拳击手套的, 严厉而丝毫不懈的 adv. 严厉而丝毫不懈地
disinclined
be distracted by 被...搞得心烦意乱被 ...搞得要发狂
Cairo n. 开罗
cake n. 蛋糕,块,饼 vt. 使块结,加块状物于 vi. 块结
colonizer n. 殖民地开拓者,殖民者,移入选民
concede vt. 承认,退让 vi. 让步
conspiracy n. 同谋,阴谋,反叛
contraband n. 违禁品,走私 a. 禁运的,非法买卖的
coveted a. 渴望得到的;梦寐以求的
curator n. 馆长;监护人;评议员
czar n. 皇帝,沙皇
disclosure n. 发觉,败露,败露的事情
dismemberment n. 断手足;分割
dubious a. 可疑的,不确定的
falter vt. 支吾地说,迟疑 vi. 支吾,蹒跚地走 n. 颤抖,支吾,踌躇
flamboyant a. 辉耀的,华丽的,火焰似的
fork over (不情愿地)交出, 交付, 放弃
grasp n. 把握,抓紧,抓,柄,控制,理解 vt. 抓住,紧握,领会 vi. 抓
Hindi a. 北印度的 n. 北印度语
implicate vt. 含意,暗示,牵连 n. 包含的东西
indict vt. 起诉,控告,指控
itinerary n. 旅程,旅行指南,游记 a. 巡回的,游历的,旅程的
judiciary a. 司法的,法院的,法官的 n. 司法部,司法制度,法官
lament n. 悲叹,悔恨,恸哭,挽歌,悼词 vt. 哀悼 vi. 悔恨,悲叹
latter-day a. 近代的,现代的
law enforcement 法律的实施
lawsuit n. 诉讼,控诉
loot n. 洗劫,抢夺 vt. vi. 洗劫,抢夺
lose track of 失去…的线索,找不着,数不清,忘记
moonstruck a. 发狂的,月光照到的
off-color adj. 颜色不佳的, 脸色不好的
pilfer vt. vi. 盗,偷,窃
plunder n. 抢夺,掠夺品,战利品 vt. vi. 掠夺,抢劫,抢夺
polaroid n. 人造偏光板
pornographic a. 春宫画的,黄色文学的
pristine a. 原来的,古时的,原始的
prosecute vt. 进行,实行,从事,告发,起诉 vi. 告发,起诉,作检察官
prosecution n. 实行,经营,起诉
provocative a. 气人的,挑拨的,刺激的 n. 刺激物,挑拨物,兴奋剂
repatriate vt. 遣返 vi. 回国 n. 被遣返回国者
resort to 诉诸于…,求助于,使用…
ruthless a. 无情的,残忍的,毫不留情的
Sanskrit n. 梵语 a. 梵语的
sensational a. 使人感动的,非常好的 爆炸性的,耸人听闻的.
shrine n. 圣地,神龛,庙 vt. 将…置于神龛内
sordid a. 肮脏的,不干净的,卑鄙的,恶劣的,可怜的,暗淡的
specimen n. 样品,标本,试料
tactics n. 用兵学,战术,兵法
tangible n. 有形资产 a. 实体的,明白的,有形的,明确的
tomb n. 坟墓,死亡 vt. 埋葬
top-drawer a. 最高级的,最重要的
transaction n. 交易,办理,执行,报告书,学报,和解,事务
trophy n. 战利品,奖品 vt. 用战利品装饰
tug of war n. 拔河, 两派间的激烈竞争
warrant n. 正当理由,根据,证明,批准,凭证,许可证,委任状 vt. 保证,辩解,担保,批准