Museum director James Cuno, the author of Who Owns Antiquity?, has posted to the Princeton University Press on the subject of encyclopedic museums. His article illustrates a flaw in his understanding of cultural property issues. In a section on “imagined communities,” he explains:
There are many reasons to be critical of nationalism. But it is enough now to point out simply that national identity based on the presumption of inheritance from ancient cultures is a fiction.
It’s funny, because I actually think he’s got a great handle on cultural property law, but then as soon as we get to the local community (generally, indigenous peoples), his language turns imprecise.
It is imperative to realize that the local community (imagined, by his estimation) is a separate stakeholder from the nation in which the indigenous descendants of creator cultures currently reside. Sometimes their interests coincide, but at least just as often they conflict. Indigenous descendants of creator cultures might not have the political pull to assert their interests on the international level, but that does not mean any affection they experience toward the item is a fiction. Nationalism? Sure, I’ll give him that, but the indigenous people are another story.
It’s like saying that the United States can’t very well lay claim to Native American artifacts because the dominant culture isn’t remotely Native American. But to extrapolate that to conclude that Native Americans should not rely on their own history to form their identity is obviously absurd.
I agree with Cuno that there are problems with national cultural property laws, but not because they take artifacts away from Western museums. I have problems with them to the extent that they use indigenous identity platforms to repatriate artifacts and the indigenous people do not usually benefit in any tangible or direct way from the acquisition.
Also (and this is petty, I know) but Cuno states at the beginning of his article:
[The subject of this article is] “Where do the great treasures of ancient art belong? In Western museums or in countries where the civilizations that created them once flourished?” This question turns on two presumptions: [1] that antiquities are not where they belong, and [2] that civilizations create things and certain modern nation states have inalienable rights to them as heirs to those earlier civilizations.
Huh? That question does not presume either of those facts.
Anyway, I encourage Cuno to keep pounding away at Nationalism, but perhaps he could distinguish between indigenous descendants of creator cultures and the Nation in the process, because they are simply not the same thing.
Read Cuno’s “Where do the great treasures of ancient art belong?”
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February 10, 2009 at 9:34 am
Dear Kimberly;
Please forgive my divergence from your main point, but you wrote: “It’s like saying that the United States can’t very well lay claim to Native American artifacts because the dominant culture isn’t remotely Native American. But to extrapolate that to conclude that Native Americans should not rely on their own history to form their identity is obviously absurd.”
I find it ironic that the mainline views of Archaeology today are in concert with those of Cultural Property Nationalists. Yet, the Society for American Archaeology and others filed amici briefs in the case of Kennewick Man that apparently influenced the court’s decision against repatriation of the human remains to Native American claimants. Are coins and clay pots of greater significance to a “culture” than ancestral remains? I’m fairly confident that Kennewick Man did not have any coins in his “pocket”, but what if he had? Would the coins go one way and the cadaver another? What about the spear point that was extracted from his pelvis, where did that go? Sorry for all the rhetorical questions.
I continue to enjoy and appreciate your thoughtful blog.
Regards,
Wayne
February 10, 2009 at 11:16 am
Wayne,
Thank you for the note. Archaeology often allies itself with national interests, and Cuno has accused archaeologists of being motivated by permits to dig (almost a tithe via the alliance). In my working paper, I discuss how every cultural property stakeholder acts, in some capacity, as if they are sympathetic to indigenous descendants of creator cultures, but they are actually not. I use the Kennewick Man case as an example to illustrate the point that archaeology is a *competing interest* to indigenous interests. So I have noticed this oddity as well. Your comment is not entirely off topic, however, because if we recognize indigenous interests as discrete from national interests, then we can start to really deal with these issues. (Generally, and with all stakeholders; I don’t mean to pick on archaeologists in particular).
Thank you for your comment!
Kimberly
February 10, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Kimberly,
In your working paper, I find the phrase “indigenous descendants of creator cultures.” I did not, however, find the explanation of that term in a modern context (I admit that I did read rather quickly and may have missed it). I wonder if that means for example, Greeks who now live in Turkey and are descended from earlier Greek settlers? The earlier Greeks would, I assume, be “creator cultures” and their descendants would be indigenous. Or, does that include the descendants of those creator culture Greeks who left Turkey in 1921 and are now in Chicago? Does their ancestry make them indigenous to Turkey, or does their current geographical residence make them something else? I can’t imagine an Apache being anything other than an Apache regardless of where he or she might live. Does a Greek living in Turkey have, nationalist laws aside, a stronger claim to cultural patrimony of some cultural object than a Greek of similar cultural background now living elsewhere? You get the point, I’m sure. Coin collectors in America represent myriad creator cultures. Do they have a stake in the cultural property debate as it concerns coins of their ancestral lands? Or, do collectors of Greek ancestry have no stake in the debate because they do not live in the region where the creator culture lived? It’s a very confusing, but I think important, point that I have never seen addressed logically.
Regards,
Wayne
February 11, 2009 at 5:57 am
Wayne,
Thank you for the comment. Perhaps when I get my paper back for editing lack of clarify on that point will be a named complaint.
Indigenous descendants of creator cultures can be analogized to the local communities designated as an interest group by Bauer. Creator cultures are those that created an artifact, and their descendants are, well, their descendants. It is a way to distinguish those who have an ethical claim to artifacts as opposed to those that have a legal claim. I dealt with indigenous descendants, so the Greek living in Turkey would not be included. I do think relocated descendants have a weaker ethical claim (unless they were forcefully relocated). Of course, these are ethical issues not legal, so different people may feel different ways about them.
Kimberly
March 4, 2009 at 9:07 pm
I think that a big part of the problem we face when it comes to this “topic” is one of definition. The terms Cultural Heritage and Cultural Property are interchanged with ease. But are they really interchangable? I think the real terms should be “Cultural Heritage” and “POLITICAL property” or something along those lines.
March 4, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Alfredo,
Thank you for the comment. You are right that sometimes the two terms are used interchangeably, but they have slightly different meanings. In my mind, cultural property is simply tangible, usually movable cultural heritage subject with a property-type ownership status.
Kimberly
March 4, 2009 at 9:25 pm
I agree that there is a place for the term “cultural property”. But should the pyramids of Egypt be considered the cultural property of modern day Egypt, or “National Property”? Should the bronze heads be considered “cultural property” and if so, whose cultural property? China’s? Italy’s (the fountain was made by an Italian after all) or should it be classified as something else entirely? (In the case of the bronzes I think it is clearly a political move and has little to do with a desire to reclaim something of cultural significance, but that is my opinion)
My issue is with how the terms are being used to fuel a propaganda “war”. The term “cultural property” is used to imply that an object belongs to a specific culture and is most often used in a negative statement implying that someone has “stolen” someone’s “culture”, something which most would agree is “priceless”.
March 5, 2009 at 1:08 pm
The questions you are asking pertain to the legal status of cultural artifacts. Fact is, they are still just objects under the law. Sometimes there is an international agreement or domestic legislation with respect to cultural objects, but “property” is still a legally correct term. I do not believe that the term “cultural property” is used more or less by nationalists or internationalists.