The Metropolitan Museum of Art can fight back against antiquities trafficking by hiring a provenance curator and by fully disclosing the chain of custody of collection objects.
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| Nedjemankh's coffin, surrendered by the Metropolitan Museum of Art last week. |
The spectacular, human-shaped coffin, dating from the first century B.C. and glittering in gold, anchored the popular Nedjemankh and His Gilded Coffin exhibition, which began in July 2018 and was scheduled to close in April 2019. With the handover of the coffin, the show abruptly came to an end.
Max Hollein, who has not yet completed his first full year on the job as the The Met's new director, now faces a multi-million dollar loss that is likely not covered by insurance and reputational harm to his institution, as well as intense scrutiny of the museum's Collections Management Policy that is supposed to "ensure[] that ... its collections are protected ...."
The district attorney's investigation hopefully leads to the arrest and prosecution of those responsible for trafficking the looted archaeological object and for lying about its provenance. Meanwhile, the museum's loss presents a golden opportunity for one of the world's leading cultural institutions to fulfill Hollein's promise last week to mitigate similar risks in the future and, in the words of Met CEO Daniel Weiss, "to deter future offenses against cultural property."
In 2017, CHL wrote that institutions lacking solid protective measures to guard against acquiring illicit artifacts would face acute legal and reputational risks. CHL asked at that time whether museums effectively shield their collections from legal confiscation, posing the question soon after The Met lost a looted ancient vase to a seizure by search warrant. See Museum Loss Prevention: Apply Rigorous Due Diligence.
Now, in the wake of the relinquishment of the golden coffin, The Met's director announced, “Our museum must be a leader among our peers in the respect for cultural property and in the rigor and transparency of the policy and practices that we follow," adding, "We will learn from this event—specifically I will be leading a review of our acquisitions program—to understand what more can be done to prevent such events in the future."
One way to help reduce the risk of loss is to hire a provenance curator like the one Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has, a professional whose job is to investigate the collecting histories of archaeological artifacts, paintings, and other cultural objects. That person should be full-time and have the experience to navigate the complex art and antiquities trade, which can be tempting to the black market. It is a marketplace that "faces a higher risk of exposure to dubious trade practices ... due to the volume of illegal or legally questionable transactions," as the Basel Art Trade Guidelines accurately points out.
The museum, moreover, should revive its commitment to transparency of provenance information, championed recently by Hollein in The Met's Role in Protecting Cultural Heritage (November 2018) where he writes: "Transparency: ... Our goal is to publish the provenance (or known history of ownership) for all works as part of their entries in our online collection." Provenance should not be limited to "known history of ownership," of course, but must include the fullest description of an object's chain of custody.
