ATADA News, Winter, 2006
From the President
“In Association" with ATADA
Vetting has been under discussion for many years, as most of you know. It was felt that the time had come for ATADA to take this step.
The ATADA board was approached by Barry Cohen to be "In Association" with his 2006 Santa Fe Tribal and Indian Show in the following manner: the show will be promoted as being "In Association with ATADA," we will provide a vetting committee to the show, and we will not be officially "associated" with any other show during the 2006 year.
Barry's proposal was discussed by the board and it was decided that we would accept. It was felt by the majority of the board that by doing so, we would be elevating the show and, therefore, our members as participants, to the level of the most recognized shows in the country. Vetting has been under discussion for many years, as most of you know. It was felt that the time had come for ATADA to take this step. We will be discussing a vetting committee at the board meeting in Marin. We would appreciate any and all input or recommendations from the membership.
I also want to welcome Mike McKissick to ATADA's board as membership secretary.
Thanks, Mike!
Merrill Domas, ATADA President
Editor's Notebook
Our New Look
Obviously, some of the changes ATADA's board has been talking about have become a reality with the publication of this Newsletter. I personally want to thank Chad Tanner for his years of graphic and all kinds of other service to ATADA. And I'd like to welcome Joy Grayson, our new graphic designer. Some of the changes she has in mind start with this issue - look for more in the future.
For Joy's participation and for the new look of our Directories, we all thank Brant Mackley, whose leadership and follow-through are much appreciated.
Alice Kaufman, ATADA Executive Diector
Kennewick Man Update, Nov. 14, 2005
We catch up with forensic anthropologist Doug Owsley to discuss his latest information about Kennewick Man.
The story, "Scientist drilling Kennewick Man for clues," has been posted to our site at:
http://www.kennewick-man.com/kman/news/story/7205635p-7117175c.html
Museum Members
A Settlement has been reached by the Museum of Northern Arizona in their lawsuit against Steve Diamant. From MNA's press release:
A Santa Fe art dealer who was sued for breach of fiduciary duty and fraud by the Museum of Northern Arizona has agreed to settle the Museum's lawsuit in Federal Court in Phoenix. The claim against Steve Diamant arose out the Museum's deaccession of 21 paintings and textiles in 2002.
Following a shake up in the Museum's management and the hiring of a new director, MNA brought suit against Diamant and his company earlier this year. The settlement agreement provides that details of the settlement will not be disclosed. Both parties said the case was resolved to their mutual satisfaction.
MNA Director Robert Breunig said yesterday, "Museums supported by the public must always be ready to fight to protect their collections, if necessary. The current board and administration of MNA are committed to protecting its collections, now and in the future. In addition to their mission to educate the public about our history and culture, institutions such as ours must set an example of commitment, integrity, and responsibility for the larger community."
The Museum of Northern Arizona was represented by Richard Kasper of the law firm of Ryan Rapp and Underwood of Phoenix, Arizona and Whitney North Seymour Jr. of New York, who donated his legal services to the Museum.
Illegal Internet and Other Tribal Art Sales
by Roger Fry and Will Fry
The following is not particularly "up beat." It reflects a side of the business that impacts all legitimate dealers and collectors who are doing their best to avoid inadvertently violating the law. Although these examples represent flagrant violations, there clearly have been people who made illegal purchases without any idea that those purchases represent violations of multiple federal and international laws. It is important that we know these things are occurring so as to better enable us to have no part in such transactions and to contribute, in whatever way we can, to stopping illegal trade. Nothing is more damaging to dealers and collectors of tribal art.
ATADA dealers, members and collectors need to be acutely aware of the fact that illegal tribal objects are being offered on eBay and otherwise being illegally imported into this country for resale. The United States Fish & Wildlife Service is monitoring and investigating these Internet transactions and buyers and sellers are being prosecuted. In a report from Alaska in 2005, a person from the town of North Pole pled guilty to the illegal sale of nine walrus ivory tusks. The tusks were advertised on eBay and sold to buyers in California, Rhode Island, Alaska, Arkansas, Missouri and Hawaii. In another incident, two people who were irreverently nicknamed "The Brazil Nuts" were sentenced under the Endangered Species Act for unlawfully importing and selling tribal objects containing parts of endangered fish and wildlife from Brazil. The Fish & Wildlife Service has concluded that "the most judicious manner in resolving these investigations is to issue both the buyer and seller a violation notice." In another instance, after a fourteen month undercover investigation, a United States citizen who operated a carving business in Bali, Indonesia, was arrested for selling carvings claimed to be of mammoth ivory from the Alaskan Arctic but were, in fact, from endangered or threatened Asian or African elephants. This particular person also sold or offered to sell undercover agents a carved narwahl tusk. In addition, he illegally removed large quantities of mammoth ivory from federal lands in Alaska, which he had carved in Bali into native-like images, and then sold the objects in Alaska, Washington and Texas, undoubtedly as "genuine" native carvings.
Buyers and sellers alike who are engaged in these illegal transactions are being charged under the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Eagle Protection Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Archeological Resource & Protection Act, the Antiquities Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the African Elephant Conservation Act and the Lacey Act, just to name several. Entrapment is a very weak defense that simply doesn't work, as people who have fallen prey to that could attest.
In a recently reported case, a Honolulu man was charged with violating federal and international laws barring trade in endangered species. He operated his business, Tribal Artifacts, from his home, importing and selling artifacts represented as tribal, made from animals protected by CITES, including horn bill ivory, tiger penises, tiger teeth, carved orangutan skulls and sun bear skulls from Asia. His unbelievable emails to undercover agents were just some of his problems. In one instance he wrote "They are not [fooling] around with endangered species anymore... they are cracking down heavily, believe me... they are really looking for dealers- AHEM!" Another email to the Defendant's brother also surfaced. In this one, the Defendant talked about artificially aging artifacts using a bath of Liquid Smoke to disguise the smell: "the reason that I need that liquid smoke is that I engage in, let's say, ahh, certain restorative techniques on numbers of tribal objects that I bring into the country... Trouble is, the 'secret materials and techniques' that I use often leave a, umm, 'modern' sort of smell. And, often as not, that wood smoke... 'REALLY AND TRULY GENUINE PRIMITIVE' smell will make the sale, after the correct 'look' has captivated the collector." In another email to his contact in Malaysia, the Defendant stated, "I still want to take the chance on the horn bill but only if you can do the following- stain everything with the purple juice... I know it will look enough like wood carving to pass almost any inspection."
Thankfully, this person's tribal art sales on eBay and elsewhere came to an abrupt end. This conduct, as all will agree, is outrageous. We should all be on the lookout for such fakes and flagrant violations of wildlife laws. It makes one wonder who the "collectors" are who would buy such stuff! In one little-publicized event from a few years ago, an Illinois homemaker and mother of two, was charged with the violation of the Eagle Protection Act and the Lacey Act for giving Hillary Clinton a Native American-style dream catcher, made with feathers she collected at the local zoo. This person must have spent a fair amount of time on her hands and knees in the "bird house" since the feathers included those from the bald eagle, goshawk, barred owl and snowy owl. Mrs. Clinton, appropriately, relinquished the zoo feathered dream catcher to the federal investigators who called on her after hearing of the gift. The homemaker pled guilty to a violation of the Lacey and the Eagle Protection Acts, and was sentenced to two years probation and given a $1,200 fine. Five years later, when Mr. Clinton left office, the donor was one of the lucky 140 convicted persons granted a last-minute presidential pardon. The message being sent by the Fish & Wildlife Service is clear. Unless you do not mind a federal conviction, fine and adverse publicity, and, in addition, think you might be granted a presidential pardon, just back away from questionable transactions.
U.S. Attorney Frances Hulin had this to say about the case: "This case represents the resolve of this office to continue to enforce and uphold the purpose and intent of national wildlife preservation laws - to preserve and protect wildlife from commercial exploitation. The wildlife preservation laws were enacted in response to the widening commercial use of animal and bird parts - with resulting damage and endangerment to native species - during the early part of this century... It is not the intent of this office to prosecute the casual possessor of a feather found in a natural setting, or individuals who innocently acquire objects containing such feathers. However, federal law enforcement officials have an obligation, which was exercised in this case, to prevent the willful misuse of protected animal and bird parts when they are used for commercial gain." Back to eBay for a moment. Notwithstanding eBay's effort to curb it, and Fish & Wildlife's monitoring, illegal objects are still being offered for sale. Feathered objects from the Amazon are one good example. Fish hooks utilizing tortoise shell being offered from outside the United States are yet another. The collector should note that many objects can be lawfully imported, with appropriate CITES and related permits. Regardless, one must be extremely cautious of tribal objects that incorporate animal parts being offered in foreign countries. Import laws do impact antique tribal art and are being enforced. So long as they remain on the books in their present form, they represent the law, and should be expected to be enforced. This applies, in many instances, to legitimate antique tribal art.
As stated at the outset, the above is not particularly encouraging; however, all of us who care about tribal art need to elevate our awareness of these laws and the violations of them and encourage compliance. Illegal objects and transactions hurt all of us, and the industry, and need to be stopped. And further, who could conceivably want an "Eskimo" object carved in Bali or a "Liquid Smoked" anything? We need to educate ourselves and other collectors and we must continue to seek changes in the laws which unnecessarily impact legitimate antique tribal art objects which in truth do not adversely impact worldwide conservation efforts, the importance of which we all recognize and support. Finally, illegal transactions serve only to enforce the belief that wildlife laws such as the Eagle Protection Act should not be changed from their current form to exclude pre-Act tribal pieces. Anyone with observations or questions regarding these issues may email us at any time. Have a great New Year!
Roger Fry is co-chair on ATADA's Law Committee. His son, Will, works with him on tribal matters.
Media File
Excerpts from recent newspaper, magazine and Internet articles of interest to the Membership. All opinions are those of the writers of the articles and of the people quoted, not of ATADA. Members are encouraged to submit press clippings or email links for publication in the next Newsletter.
"Embattled Getty Curator Steps Down" was the headline of The New York Times October 4, 2005, story on the latest problems of Getty curator Marion True.
Hugh Eakin's story began: "Less than four months before the grand opening of a villa housing its antiquities collection, the embattled J. Paul Getty Museum said yesterday that its antiquities curator had resigned over improprieties involving a real estate deal.
"The curator, Marion True, is already under indictment in Italy on charges of conspiring to acquire dozens of looted antiquities for the museum, and the Getty has vigorously defended her in that case. It declined yesterday to say whether it would continue to do so or make any other comment until it completed an internal investigation. Getty trustees did not return phone calls yesterday.
"In a statement, the Getty said that Ms. True stepped down over the weekend after the museum reviewed information about her purchase of a vacation home on the Greek island of Paros in 1996.
" 'The Getty has determined through its own investigation that Marion True failed to report certain aspects of her Greek house purchase transaction in violation of Getty policy,' it said. 'In the course of discussions with Ms. True, she chose voluntarily to retire.'
"The Los Angeles Times, reporting the resignation yesterday, said the violation involved Ms. True's use of a lawyer recommended by the London antiquities dealer Christo Michailidis to arrange a real estate loan for the house in 1995.
"According to Getty policy, this was a conflict of interest, because Mr. Michailidis was also an associate of Robin Symes, a London antiquities dealer with whom the Getty regularly did business. Getty officials were initially informed of Ms. True's property in 2002, The Los Angeles Times said, citing documents, but no action was taken by the museum.
"From the 1970's through the 90's, Mr. Symes was considered one of the most fashionable dealers in the antiquities business, with ties to top collectors and many American museums.
"The Getty declined yesterday to comment further on its announcement, beyond saying that despite Ms. True's departure, it still plans to reopen its renovated villa in Malibu, Calif. - the new home of its collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities - in late January.
"The curator's departure adds to the pall cast over the reopening as the Getty Museum contends with the Italian indictment and other blows to its image.
"For 10 months, it was rudderless after Deborah Gribbon resigned as director after clashes with Barry Munitz, the president of the Getty Trust. (In August, the trust named Michael Brand, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, as the new director of the museum.)
"Mr. Munitz has also come under fire after a series of articles in The Los Angeles Times detailing his lavish spending, and the California attorney general's office is investigating whether the trust's spending violated its federal and state tax exemptions as a nonprofit institution.
"Ms. True goes on trial in Rome in November on charges of conspiring to receive illegally exported artworks. Reached by telephone, Maurizio Fiorilli, a lawyer for the Italian Culture Ministry, said that the departure of Ms. True might provide an occasion for the Getty to reopen negotiations with Italy. "It could be the basis for a gesture of good will on the part of the Getty to discuss with the Italian government the objects that it has," Mr. Fiorilli said.
"Later this month, Mr. Fiorilli, the Italian lawyer, will be traveling to Los Angeles to retrieve three objects that the museum has offered to restore to Italy, independent of the outcome of the case against Ms. True. That offer was made earlier this year.
"Among the three objects is a bronze Etruscan candelabrum that is mentioned in the indictment, Italian officials said.
"The Getty acquired the candelabrum in 1990 from Atlantis Antiquities, a New York gallery, for $60,000, according to evidence in the indictment. But Italian police have traced the object, along with another Getty acquisition named in the indictment, to a private collection in Florence, from which it was stolen. The other object, a bronze tripod, was returned by the Getty to Italy in 1997.
"Italian prosecutors say that in both cases the objects were smuggled by Giacomo Medici, an Italian dealer based in Geneva, and passed on, via a third party, to Robert Hecht, the owner of Atlantis Antiquities.
"Both Mr. Medici and Mr. Hecht are codefendants in the indictment against Ms. True. In a separate decision last fall Mr. Medici was convicted of trafficking looted antiquities, and is free pending an appeal."
"Maya Monument May Connect Little-Known Ruins With Mystery Site" was the headline for John Noble Wilford's October 4, 2005 story in The New York Times.
"Forty years ago," the story began, "the antiquities market in Europe and the United States was flooded with looted artifacts from the Petén rain forest of Guatemala. Their artistic style and inscriptions suggested to scholars that the monumental stones came from an abandoned seventh-century Maya city at some unidentified remote place, which became known as Site Q.
"Now, archaeologists think the mystery has been solved in the little-known ruins of a place called La Corona. Last week they reported finding a well-preserved stone monument in two sections carved with more than 140 hieroglyphs that bear dates and tell stories of two kings mentioned prominently in the Site Q texts.
"The discovery was made in April by Marcello A. Canuto, a Yale archaeologist who was exploring La Corona. The site is inside the Laguna del Tigre National Park in northwestern Guatemala, less than 20 miles from the temple ruins of Waka, called El Perú today by local people.
"An analysis of the inscriptions was conducted by Stanley Guenter, a graduate student and specialist in Mayan writing at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He noted the similarities between the style, chronology and texts of the La Corona monument and those of the looted material.
" 'This discovery concludes one of the longest and widest hunts for a Maya city in the history of the discipline,' Dr. Canuto said in an announcement of a recent lecture at Yale in which he described the findings.
"Dr. David Freidel, a Maya archaeologist at S.M.U. who is a leader of the nearby Waka excavations, supported the interpretation in an interview. 'This is substantial evidence that this is Site Q,' he said, adding with admiration, 'Marcello was touched by the gods.'
"The discovery was not entirely surprising. In 1997, Ian Graham, an expert in Mayan hieroglyphs at Harvard, and a colleague, David Stuart, visited La Corona and came upon stones that made them suspect this was the long-sought Site Q.
"Dr. Graham said in an interview that Dr. Stuart had read one of the inscriptions, which mentioned the name of a king who also figured in Site Q texts, and 'was pretty much certain' that La Corona was the source of the looted material. An analysis of the stones suggested that they came from the same quarry as the Site Q artifacts.
"Dr. Graham, who was not involved in the new research, called it an exciting discovery and "gratifying confirmation" of their earlier findings, though he conceded that at the time he had some reservations because of the site's modest size. Its crumbling ruins cover about two-thirds of a mile square.
"Dr. Stuart, now an archaeology professor at the University of Texas, noted that at an international conference in 2001 he presented evidence that he said already established the Site Q-La Corona connection.
"Dr. Canuto cautioned that further research might prove that Site Q - shorthand for the Spanish 'qué,' meaning 'which?' - was not a single place. Perhaps the looted material will be traced to several sources with related histories and traditions.
"Archaeologists deplore the practice of plundering ancient ruins, particularly widespread in poorly policed jungles, because they cannot tell exactly where looted artifacts came from, the all-important context.
"Even so, Dr. Canuto said the newfound limestone monument was the same type of fine-grained stone used in the looted artwork. This, he said, 'goes a long way to allowing us to demonstrate that many, if not most, Site Q monuments were looted from La Corona.'
"Archaeologists said that more intensive excavations there were likely to uncover other information to establish this as Site Q. A prize would be to find evidence that the two kings mentioned in the inscriptions, Chak Naahb' Kaan and his son, K'inich Yook, actually lived and ruled in this city in the last half of the seventh century.
"Mr. Guenter said the panel's hieroglyphs gave a date, the equivalent of Oct. 25, 677, for the dedication of a shrine temple in which the monument was found. The temple was dedicated to a god named K'uhul Winik Ub'.
"K'inich Yook, one of the most important kings of his dynasty, was responsible for the temple. A journey he made to the powerful kingdom of Calakmul, in present-day Mexico, is described in the text, with an illustration showing the visiting king performing a ceremony at Calakmul.
"The text also refers to a similar temple dedication carried out by his father, the previous king, in 658. Scholars said these dates filled gaps in their knowledge of Maya politics in this jungle region.
"Dr. Canuto, Mr. Guenter and other researchers from Southern Methodist spent a week exploring La Corona supported in part by the National Geographic Society, the El Perú-Waka Archaeological Project and the Wildlife Conservation Society. They made their discovery on the last full day.
"While the others were mapping the ruins, Dr. Canuto said, "I looked into a trench where looters had obviously dug through to the interior" of a temple. They had stripped the open trench bare, its former contents presumably becoming some of the goods of illicit trade.
"But stepping into the temple interior, the archaeologist came upon the two stones of the monument, which measured about 40 by 14 inches. He saw immediately that lines and marks were etched into the gray limestone. He called for Mr. Guenter to take a look.
"The two archaeologists cleaned the surface, exposing a single, long hieroglyphic text on one stone and a brief text accompanying the etched illustration on the other. It was not long before they felt sure of the connection with Site Q.
" 'The panel exactly mirrors the style, size, subject matter and historical chronology of the Site Q texts,' Dr. Canuto said.
"On their last morning, the team excavated and removed the inscribed stones and sent them to a laboratory in Guatemala City for safekeeping and more study. Another expedition is planned for a return to La Corona and a closer examination of other ruins from a time its kings left words in stone to mark their passage through the classic period of the Maya civilization."
"Behold the new de Young. Now take a look inside. What should a 21st century museum look like? No one knows," was the intriguing headline and lead-in to the San Francisco Chronicle's art critic, Kenneth Baker's, October 6 look at the museum, and at more than its tribal art collections.
"But people who have seen the new de Young Museum only from the outside and who complain that it looks like an aircraft carrier have picked up on something: The reborn institution, once they enter it, will transport them," Baker began.
"The lobby area, admission-free like the cafe and the two-story museum shop, barely hints at the range of moods and contents the ticketed visitor encounters.
"A giant, abstract-looking photo mural, commissioned from German artist Gerhard Richter, looms over the central space. But four bright, highly stylized Sacramento Valley landscapes by Wayne Thiebaud, on loan from friends of the de Young, chime better with the elevated feeling that the high ceiling and soft daylight of the atrium produce.
"The Thiebauds also introduce the undeclared stance of the new de Young better than the Richter does. We learn to appreciate the strangeness of Thiebaud's late work by looking at other paintings, and not only his. Certain problems thread through the whole history of painting, now surfacing, now submerging, never finally solved. For example: how to shape our response to things we seem to see - likenesses of people or objects - but know are not really before us. Or how to communicate meaning without images or words, as much abstract art and much in the decorative arts try to do.
"The new de Young deploys its resources to encourage our recognition that the meanings of art, even of the decorative arts, lie neither wholly within the art object nor wholly outside it.
"To this end each of the galleries of 19th century painting and sculpture on the second floor deliberately includes something anomalous, a single work from outside the room's chronological frame.
"The gallery devoted to 19th century American still life and trompe-l'oeil painting, one of the de Young's unique areas of depth, contains a famous multiple by Jasper Johns, 'Bread' (1969): a thin lead sheet that appears to hold a slice of ever-fresh white bread. (Visitors can get a sense of Johns as a puzzle lover from the inaugural exhibition downstairs, 'Jasper Johns: 45 Years of Master Prints.')
"European artists favored white paint made from lead for centuries, until it was banned as toxic in 1994 - artists might ingest sickening quantities while using it. Johns' lead bread connects Pop art's interest in household realities with that of 19th century Americans such as William Harnett and William J. McCloskey, painters who explored the limits of pictorial illusion in a different key of irony and surprise.
"Only an out-of-towner on a tight schedule should even think of trying to take in the whole de Young on a single day.
"Designed by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the new museum occupies a footprint smaller than that of the demolished old building. But it feels bigger and grander in every way, especially inside. Long interior sightlines, slightly angled at points, making them seem endless, give the interior a sense of limitless, beckoning adventure.
"But a building cannot remake an institution. Although enriched - fabulously, in the area of Oceanic art - through gifts and other new acquisitions, the new de Young inherits the strengths and limits of the old.
"The 1960s Rockefeller gifts of American painting remain the anchor of the de Young's painting collections, though substantial additions have lately been made in late 20th century art. The room in which Richard Diebenkorn's 'Ocean Park 116' (1979), Willem de Kooning's 'Untitled XX' (1977) and Sam Francis' 'Helio' (1986) share a wall makes a startling snapshot of late 20th century pluralism within painting, the more so for its inclusion of a minimalist diptych by Jo Baer and an idiosyncratic figurative epic by Irving Petlin. Speaking of snapshots, a gallery devoted to photography contains, besides Catherine Wagner's clever riffs on the museum's holdings, a highly thought-provoking selection.
"The new Merriam Gallery devoted to Mayan art is small, but it instantly ranks as one of the glories of the Northern California cultural landscape. It carries a psychological weight nearly equal to the great Olmec stone head on view (and on loan for one year from Mexico) in the adjacent larger room.
"The core galleries on the second floor devoted to the Jolika Collection of New Guinea art, given by Marcia and John Friede of New York, also attain immediate landmark status.
"Outfitted with ceilings, floors and casework of a warm eucalyptus wood known as 'Sydney blue,' these galleries make a staggering aesthetic impression as they argue that the arts of New Guinea repeatedly have touched the summits of sculptural invention in a global context.
"The implicit global reach of its collections makes a new conundrum for the de Young in an era struggling to think in planetary terms. As a museum focused on American art, the de Young inevitably tracked American art into the 21st century, where it has already begun to seem much less central to world culture than it did between 1950 and 2000.
"Not even the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, whose brief roots its collections (photography aside) in the early 20th century, can keep its synopsis of art-history-in-progress as broad as it would like. So the de Young's acquisitions of recent art inevitably look scattershot and rudderless by comparison.
"In a single devoted gallery, the de Young tries to pin thematic tails on recently acquired contemporary works by artists such as Bruce Nauman, Mildred Howard, Masami Teraoka and Doris Salcedo. No one should lament any of these additions to the de Young's holdings, whether the tails stick or not. Better we have these works nearby to study than not.
"But a visitor should anticipate feeling that they deepen the de Young's contemporaneity dilemma rather than alleviate it."
The new de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park will be open 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday and until 8:45 p.m. Friday. Admission is $6-$10, free for children under 13 and for all on the first Tuesday of each month. Free entry to the museum courtyard, cafe, store, sculpture garden and tower.
(415) 863-3330, www.thinker.org.
"An Odyssey in Antiquities Ends in Questions at the Getty Museum," by Hugh Eakin, is another New York Times story on Marion True, this time a major story starting on the front page on October 15.
"It was a major coup for the museum," the story began, "and the crowning glory of a curator's career. After years of courting a wealthy New York couple, the J. Paul Getty Museum had outmaneuvered the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other top institutions to capture one of the world's finest private collections of ancient art.
"That 1996 acquisition, encompassing more than 300 masterworks of Greek, Roman and Etruscan art collected by Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman, was envisioned as the anchor of a lavish new center for classical art and archaeology planned at the Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif. As Marion True, the antiquities curator, later described it, the collection was the center's 'greatest opportunity.'
"Today, just three months before the villa's grand reopening, that collection seems less like a coup than a disaster, a symbol of cultural plunder and back-door trafficking that has tarnished the reputation of the world's richest museum.
"Ms. True, who resigned from the Getty this month over a separate ethics issue, faces trial in Rome on Nov. 16 on criminal charges of conspiring with two art dealers to acquire millions of dollars' worth of looted antiquities. Among those identified in the indictment are 12 objects from the Fleischman collection, including several prominently displayed in the new Malibu galleries.
"Italian investigators argue that the Fleischman gift gave Ms. True the means to acquire looted antiquities through a reputable owner, exploiting a loophole in museum ethics guidelines that she had helped draft.
"Rather than basking in their moment of glory, the museum and its parent, the nonprofit J. Paul Getty Trust, now face an exodus of high-level staff members and a barrage of questions about their ethics policies and management.
"Adding to the pressure, The Los Angeles Times, in articles citing hundreds of pages of leaked Getty documents, has reported that top Getty officials had strong indications by the mid-1980's that the museum was acquiring dubious antiquities; has detailed the outsize expense account of the Getty Trust's powerful president, Barry Munitz; and has investigated the sale of Getty property to one of his friends.
"For the Italians, the indictment of Ms. True signals a readiness to use their judiciary's full artillery to pursue grievances against American museums. 'We have to do what we can,' said Maurizio Fiorilli, a lawyer representing the Italian Culture Ministry. 'We're dealing with people who have stolen pieces that belong to Italy's cultural heritage - and they paid a lot of money to get them.'
"It is an ominous precedent for big museums with recent acquisitions of Greek and Roman art, especially those that bought objects from the dealers implicated in the indictment. Many are watching the case nervously.
" 'It would certainly be troubling,' said Mary Sue Sweeney Price, president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, 'if the notion of bringing Americans to trial in various foreign countries becomes a way of adjudicating cultural property disagreements.'
"In recent years, the Italian government has tried to reclaim works from other museums, including the Met, but has so far not taken formal legal action against them. Harold Holzer, a spokesman for the Met, said the museum had "had discussions" with Italy about a group of 15 silver objects dating from the third century B.C. that the Italian government said were looted from Morgantina, a site in Sicily, but he declined to provide details.
"Through her lawyer, Ms. True declined to be interviewed for this article, citing the legal case. The Getty has refused to comment on the specific charges beyond expressing confidence that she would be exonerated.
"To support the charges, the Italians say, they have obtained documents linking Ms. True to an Italian dealer convicted of antiquities trafficking last year, and a trove of photographs of freshly plundered artworks, some still encrusted with dirt, that later ended up in the museum. In addition to the 12 Fleischman works, the art in the indictment includes dozens of objects and vase fragments that the Getty acquired or considered acquiring from 1977 to 1996. The bulk of those were obtained by Ms. True after her arrival at the Getty in 1982.
"Many of these were acquired directly from dealers in New York, London an d Switzerland. Others, like the Fleischman works, were acquired from private collectors.
"At the center of the case is the reckless youth of the Getty, which opened in the villa in 1974 to fulfill the oil baron J. Paul Getty's twin obsessions with art collecting and imperial Rome. But the case also presents a paradox, for Ms. True had gone to considerable lengths to acknowledge the Getty's past excesses and to cast the museum as a model citizen of the museum and archaeological worlds.
"Those public efforts have left archaeologists and even some Italian officials divided over whether criminal prosecution is the best approach to dealing with these issues, and whether Ms. True is the right target.
"A Harvard-educated museum scholar who had been favorably regarded even by critics of the antiquities trade, the curator, 56, was until recently best known for skillful cultural diplomacy in archaeological source countries like Greece and Italy. At her urging, for example, the Getty returned some pieces to Italy during the 1990's - including several mentioned in the indictment. And she has long been a fixture at conferences dealing with the issue of smuggled antiquities.
" 'She was the one prepared to face the music, of all the museum curators in the United States,' said John Pedley, a professor emeritus of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan.
"But the indictment centers on Ms. True's earlier years of aggressive buying for the Getty - and what she knew about the history of those objects then.
An Appetite for Antiquities
"When Marion True arrived as an assistant curator at the Getty in 1982, the museum was already known for its appetite for antiquities, and the freewheeling ways it acquired them. By then occupying the Getty Villa, a fanciful classical structure based on a 2,000-year-old Pompeian house, the museum had inherited the oil magnate's love of ancient Rome. (Getty likened himself to Caesar.) The year Ms. True arrived, the Getty Trust also inherited his immense wealth. With a mandate to collect, the museum quickly became one of the most active players in the antiquities market.
"According to evidence in the indictment and two former senior museum staff members, many of the acquisition practices had already been well established by Jiri Frel, the Getty's first curator of antiquities, hired by Getty in 1973.
"Mr. Frel cultivated two dealers who would later be named in the indictment: Giacomo Medici, an Italian dealer who kept a warehouse full of top-drawer antiquities in the duty-free port area of Geneva; and Robert Hecht, an American dealer based in Europe with connections to top museums. Investigators have traced dozens of objects to Mr. Medici, according to the Italian evidence record, which was obtained by The New York Times.
"According to purchase records cited in the evidence, 10 objects in the case were acquired under Mr. Frel and his successor, Arthur Houghton. Mr. Frel left the Getty in 1984 in a scandal over fakes and inflated insurance values for donated works, and his whereabouts are unknown; Mr. Houghton, who was acting curator from 1984 to 1986 and faces no charges, declined to comment on the case.
"According to evidence collected by the Italians, Ms. True was in direct contact with both Mr. Medici and Mr. Hecht in the 1980's and 90's and visited Mr. Medici in Rome.
"When she became curator in 1986, the Getty had a distinguished but still moderate collection of Greek and Roman art; Ms. True was soon put in charge of a long-term project to turn the Malibu villa into a stand-alone antiquities museum while the rest of the collection moved to a hilltop site in Los Angeles. The board wanted a top-quality collection for the villa, and it was up to her to obtain the best works available, using the Getty's deep pockets.
" 'Collecting was at its most productive between the mid-1980's and mid-1990's,' said John Walsh, who was the museum's director from 1983 to 2000. 'It was about 10 years of absolutely tremendous acquisitions.'
"With her elegance, erudition and diplomatic charm, Ms. True found it easy to develop contacts as she shuttled from Rome to London to Paris. In 1993, she acquired a stone torso of an archaic Greek kore, or woman, that the museum has called 'the finest statue of its kind in America.' According to museum records cited in the evidence, the Getty bought the object from Robin Symes, a London dealer whose clients included most of the top American museums and collectors.
"The Italian police later recovered, from Mr. Medici's warehouse, a picture of the kore still caked with fresh dirt and showing cracks apparently made during the excavation. Mr. Symes, who is not a defendant in the indictment, declined through a lawyer to comment on any transactions he made as a dealer.
"By its nature, the antiquities trade is an opaque business. As part of a long tradition of client secrecy, the dealers - unlike, say, sellers of old master paintings - rarely disclose the previous owners of an object. In fact, it was common through the 1980's and 90's for museums to buy ancient art that had no known provenance, curators say. Because of export restrictions in archaeological-source countries, it has been typical for dealers to be based in free-market countries like Switzerland an d Britain, and for objects to pass through several intermediaries before reaching an American buyer.
"The onus was on dealers to provide documents showing that a work could be legitimately exported, and dealers were required to compensate museums in the case of an eventual repatriation claim.
"Getty officials, including Ms. True, have acknowledged in recent years that by the mid-1980's, the museum knew that the antiquities dealers with whom it negotiated were not always trustworthy. Still, Mr. Walsh, who as the museum's director oversaw all acquisitions, denies that Ms. True or other museum officials had explicit knowledge of illegal activity at the time of any purchase. " 'We have never bought an object that we knew or strongly suspected came from an illicit source,' he said.
"Italian officials, however, say that Ms. True knew she was buying works from Mr. Medici and, like her predecessors, avoided using him as vendor of record. Citing evidence linking Mr. Hecht and Mr. Medici, they argue that Mr. Hecht and other European dealers were fences for Mr. Medici. They also argue that the Getty sometimes bought art from galleries and front companies based in Switzerland or New York yet closely affiliated with Mr. Medici and Mr. Hecht.
"In 1987, for example, Ms. True was offered two Etruscan objects - a tripod and a candelabrum - from Mat Securitas, a Swiss company acting on behalf of Burki & Sohn, a Swiss seller. But several days later, in a letter sent to Mr. Medici in care of Mat Securitas, Ms. True indicated that she knew the two works had really come from Mr. Medici, and reassured him that she would buy the works in the coming year, according to a summary of the letter in the evidence.
"In 1992, Ms. True informed Mr. Medici in Geneva that she would send the most recent volume of the Getty's catalog of Greek vases. She added, 'I think you will find many pieces included that you will recognize.' In the same letter, which is included in the evidence, she mentions future visits to Rome and her hope that 'we will be able to get together and have some further discussions about future acquisitions.' Making the Rules
"Yet while Ms. True was expanding her contacts with Mr. Medici, she was also establishing in-house acquisition rules to protect the Getty against restitution claims. In 1983, Congress enacted a law mandating enforcement of an international treaty prohibiting imports of archaeological objects that are part of another country's patrimony and in danger of pillage. "Archaeologists and countries rich in artifacts, from Italy to Mexico, were already giving American museums closer scrutiny. In 1986, the same year Ms. True was appointed to head the antiquities department, she helped draft a Getty acquisitions policy for ancient art, the first of its kind for any large collecting museum in the United States.
" 'The single most important element in this policy,' she later wrote, 'was the refusal to rely on documents of provenance provided by dealers in ancient art and artifacts. Experience had amply demonstrated that they could be, and often were, manufactured to assist the sale.'
"Yet the policy, adopted by the Getty a year later, did not deter the museum from buying suspect material. In a 1999 letter to the chairman of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee of the State Department, Ms. True wrote: 'We were still able to acquire a number of works of art without established provenance. A number of these most certainly have come from Italy.'
"The policy also did little to appease a growing number of critics. By the early 1990's, the museum's thirst for acquisitions was beginning to have a negative effect on the Getty Trust's conservation and research arms. 'It was making things difficult for the Conservation Institute, which has major collaborative projects in archaeological countries,' Mr. Walsh said. 'It was making matters difficult for scholarship, when foreign scholars were invited but didn't feel perhaps like they could come.'
"Ms. True began to move on several fronts to clean up the museum's image. She opened a dialogue with Italian cultural officials about a number of disputed works in the collection. She organized, with the Getty Conservation Institute, a big conference about archaeology in the Mediterranean attended by archaeologists and cultural officials from 19 countries. In November 1995, the Getty board ratified a strict new acquisitions policy for antiquities, based in part on the charter of the Archaeological Institute of America, usually an opponent of big collecting museums. The Getty seemed to be announcing that it would no longer purchase unknown, unprovenanced material.
"But many in the archaeological community argued that the new policy was not as rigorous as it appeared. It specified that new acquisitions had to be "published" before they were acquired but did not rule out the possibility that the museum itself could publish them. In effect, the board had given the museum a loophole to allow it to continue buying.
" 'The museum hierarchy didn't like what we were doing in archaeology, and there was pressure to collect,' said a former member of the antiquities department, who spoke on condition of anonymity and eventually left the Getty over this issue. Part of that pressure arose from gaps in the collection destined for the renovated Getty Villa. To fill those gaps, Ms. True was actively courting the Fleischmans, whose much-admired collection had been given comprehensive shows at the Getty and at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1994 and 1995. Shortly after its exhibition, the Getty began formal negotiations to acquire the collection.
"The deal was closed in 1996, only months after the new acquisitions policy took effect, to the consternation of many in the archaeological community. Technically, the objects had been published, since the Getty had prepared a major catalog of the collection for the 1994 show.
" 'If they had a decent ethical policy at the time they acquired the Fleischman collection, they would not have been compelled to acquire dubious pieces,' said Colin Renfrew, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge in England.
"Paradoxically, the Fleischmans had spent much of the 1980's competing with Ms. True for the same top antiquities on the market. And as with many of the works at the Getty, the collection consisted overwhelmingly of unprovenanced, recently surfaced material.
"For Italian investigators today, the Fleischman collection is the strongest indication that Ms. True was harnessing private collectors to acquire looted antiquities for the Getty. To support this theory, they charge that she had ties to the couple well before the collection was actually acquired.
Assembling the Fragments
"In 1992, for example, Ms. True acquired from the Fleischmans a major red-figure cup, signed by the Greek painter Syriskos, and eight other works, with a total value of $5.5 million, according to evidence. The Fleischmans had bought the cup, which had been reconstituted from a number of fragments, from Mr. Symes, the London dealer, in 1988. The Italian police have recovered multiple photographs belonging to Mr. Medici that show the cup in early and later stages of restoration. The Getty, meanwhile, had also acquired a separate fragment of the cup in 1988 from Fritz Burki, a Swiss restorer, according to the evidence.
"In a telephone interview, Barbara Fleischman, who became a trustee of the Getty in 2000, said that her husband, who died in 1997, had been chiefly responsible for the collecting and that neither of them had any knowledge that any objects came from illicit sources. She said she and Mr. Fleischman, well-known museum benefactors, were drawn to the Getty because of the 1994 show and because of Ms. True's long-term plans for the Getty Villa. 'It's not a museum alone,' she said. 'We loved the scholarly things she was planning.'
"In defense of Ms. True, several people in the art world close to the Fleischmans and the Getty point out that in the 1980's, when the couple was buying most aggressively, they were much closer to other large museums, including the Met and the British Museum. Those associates say that it was not evident before the 1994 show that the collection would end up at the Getty.
'Doors Would Open for Her'
"Despite the Fleischman acquisition, Ms. True's and the Getty's relations with Italy strengthened in the late 1990's. On repeated occasions, the curator's public candor about restitution issues and the need for tougher acquisition standards won her supporters in Italy's cultural establishment. In 1997, she was able to obtain a 13-month antiquities loan from Italy for an inaugural show at the new Getty Center in Los Angeles.
" 'All the doors would open for her in the Roman bureaucracy when she came,' said a Getty colleague who traveled with her in the mid- and late-1990's but insisted on anonymity because of the criminal case. In 1999, Ms. True bolstered her reputation in Italy by giving vocal support to a sweeping American import ban on Italian antiquities, a measure that dealers and other museum curators opposed. 'She was considered anti-market,' said William Pearlstein, a lawyer who represents several antiquities dealers.
"In July 2001, Ms. True presided over the return to Italy of some 3,000 terra cottas and small bronze artifacts that had been acquired, without known provenance, in the 1970's. But all the while, Paolo Ferri, an Italian prosecutor working with the country's formidable art police, had quietly been preparing the case against the Getty. Drawing on an archive of some 5,000 photographs seized from Mr. Medici's Geneva warehouse in 1995, Mr. Ferri had pieced together a paper trail that he charges leads from Italian tombs to Switzerland to Malibu.
"In 2000, Italy notified the Getty that the prosecutor was investigating Ms. True. The Getty, under Deborah Gribbon, then the director, said it would cooperate and expressed the desire to negotiate some kind of settlement, Italian officials said. By 2002, however, efforts by Ms. Gribbon to reach an agreement had failed and Ms. True was indicted. In 2004, the Italian Culture Ministry joined in the case after it became apparent that Mr. Ferri had assembled strong evidence to support his accusations, said Mr. Fiorilli, the ministry lawyer. Her Resignation
"On Oct. 1 - fully three years after the Italian indictment was handed down - Ms. True resigned from the Getty. The museum said that her resignation was related to improprieties involving her purchase of a vacation home on a Greek island in 1996. A loan for the purchase was arranged by a lawyer recommended by an antiquities dealer associated with Mr. Symes; according to Getty policy, this was a conflict of interest. "But The Los Angeles Times has reported that the museum was familiar with the circumstances of her purchase as far back as 2002 and took no action.
"Both the Getty and Ms. True's lawyer, Harry Stang, declined to comment on whether they would continue to collaborate on her defense. But with so many of the disputed objects in its possession, including some acquired before Ms. True's tenure, it seems highly unlikely that the Getty will or can distance itself from the case. Under Italian law, the trial can proceed without her being present, and lawyers interviewed about her case cast doubt on the prospect that the United States would accede to an extradition request on charges of this nature.
"One of the biggest paradoxes of the case is that other American museums, including the Met and the Cleveland Museum of Art, pursued the Fleischman collection and, along with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and other institutions, have continued to buy antiquities. They have remained "under the radar," said Malcolm Bell III, an archaeologist who has helped the Italian government identify looted sites in Sicily.
"Mr. Holzer, the Met spokesman, acknowledged that the museum had bought many pieces from Mr. Hecht over the years, but said the museum 'follows the law strictly and adheres to the highest ethical guidelines' in its acquisitions. He declined to comment on the True case. Spokesmen from the Cleveland and Boston museums also declined to comment on the accusations against her.
"Italian officials say that the evidence they have assembled reaches far beyond the Getty. Whether more prosecutions are planned or such warnings are simply intended to force the return of art and deter illicit purchases remains unclear.
" 'It's not about getting the pieces back,' Mr. Ferri, the prosecutor, said. 'It's about the destruction, by museums, of history that can never be recovered. That destruction has to be stopped.' "
Elisabetta Povoledo
contributed reporting from
Rome for this article.
"In Cherokee Country, Reviving a Tree's Deep Roots" by Lori Valigr appeared in National Geographic News, November 7, 2005
The story began: "Davy Arch can't remember a time when he didn't have a pocketknife for carving a bowl from butternut tree wood or for splitting river cane for baskets.
"Nowadays, however, the 48-year-old Arch and other artists in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians are facing shortages of these native Appalachian trees and plants for their traditional crafts.
"The fungus Sirococcus clavigignenti-juglandacearum has ravaged butternut, or white walnut trees. The fungus causes canker sores and ultimately can kill the trees.
"Probably borne by imported plants, Sirococcus is thought to have spread quickly once it entered the United States. Over 70 years ago, it is believed to have infiltrated the U.S. South.
"Sunshine Brosi is a graduate research assistant in natural resources at the University of Tennessee's Tree Improvement Program. She said that about 80 percent of the butternut trees have been killed in North Carolina.
"As for river cane, which looks like bamboo, it has been overused or pulled out by farmers or land developers who consider its growth too aggressive.
"Arch, a master artist and member of the board of the North Carolina Arts Council, says 95 percent of the large butternut trees are dead near his home in Cherokee, in the Qualla Boundary area of western North Carolina, which is home to 13,000 Cherokee Indians. He adds that river cane occupies only about 2 percent of its original territory.
"In addition to basketry, river cane is also used to make blowguns for some traditional hunters-who still use the weapons to kill small game, like squirrels-and for tourists, who buy them as souvenirs.
" 'High-quality material is getting harder and harder to come by,' Arch said.
"The demise of the butternut tree came to the public eye when Eastern Band Cherokee activists purchased about 300 acres (120 hectares) in North Carolina. The real estate included the sacred "mother town" of their tribe, Kituhwa (pronounced gah-DOO-ah), located about three miles (five kilometers) from the Qualla Boundary area.
"Since the 1700s Kituhwa had been burned by British and U.S. soldiers many times and was eventually abandoned. When the Eastern Band purchased it in 1995, Kituhwa was known as Ferguson Fields and had served over the years as a dairy and an airstrip. Today only three large butternut trees remain in Kituhwa.
"Now the tribe, the University of Tennessee Tree Improvement Program in Knoxville, and other parties are trying to restore the butternut to Kituhwa. Earlier this year about 500 seedlings were planted in the area, and they have grown quickly. Efforts are also underway to allow river cane to grow again in the area.
"Sarah McClellan-Welch, an agriculture extension agent with the North Carolina State University Cooperative Extension program in Cherokee, sees the river cane and butternut as 'sister' plants.
"The butternut tree's roots contain juglone, a natural chemical that acts as a poison to keep many other plants from growing near it. River cane, however, grows quite well near butternuts-and is already growing with some of the butternut seedlings planted in Kituhwa as part of a collaboration with the University of Tennessee.
"McClellan-Welch says she works with the tribe in the interest of growing traditional materials for the artisans and crafters. But she also sees a broader theme to the regrowth efforts.
" 'This also is in the interest of wildlife, soil conservation, and erosion control,' she said. Grafts From Resistant Trees
"Brosi, the university of Tennessee research assistant, is studying the genetics of some butternut trees that appear to be resistant to the fungus cankers. The goal at the university is to scan seedlings for resistance and develop breeding orchards to increase the natural resistance found in wild populations. Some trees have fewer cankers than others, and some can heal over the cankers.
" 'We're planting butternut seedlings to look for genetic resistance and determine factors important in their establishment and growth,' Brosi said.
"So far, the butternut tree grafts are growing under controlled conditions in nurseries and at the university's experimental farm.
"As for the seedlings, Brosi hopes another 300 will be planted next spring. She said the seedlings will develop the fungus, but it is not clear which will survive due to their natural resistance.
Cultural Roots
"The effort to reestablish butternut trees and river cane is as much cultural as agricultural. Interest in the plants surged after local Cherokee began hearing stories of how the butternut was integral to their culture as a food and a medicine, and how river cane was used historically to build houses.
"The Eastern Band Cherokee traditionally used the juglone in the tree roots to kill tooth pain, to rid humans and animals of tapeworms, and as an antibiotic tea.
"The butternuts that give the tree its name are also good for cooking and eating, Arch, the Cherokee artist, says. The nut husks and tree bark are used to make a black dye for river cane baskets unique to the area.
"The interest in the traditional plants represents 'a renaissance in a lot of ways because, with modern conveniences and lifestyles, people had not been doing things the traditional way,' Arch said.
"Like many of his contemporaries, the artist learned native crafts growing up. 'Every family in our community had an artist, either a traditional beadworker or someone who did basketry or carving,' he said.
"But now, after the arrival of modern conveniences, such as television, and jobs in the tourism industry and casinos, only about 10 percent of young people are developing the skills for traditional arts and crafts.
"It's a tide that many Cherokee hope can be stemmed, and the regrowth of the butternut and river cane may be one way to do it."
John Noble Wilford's November 17 story in The New York Times had the intriguing headline, "A 1,200-Year-Old Murder Mystery in Guatemala."
"Archaeologists and forensic experts in Guatemala have made a grisly discovery among the ruins of an ancient Maya city, Cancuén," Wilford began.
"In explorations during the summer, they found as many as 50 skeletons in a sacred pool and other places, victims of murder and dismemberment in a war that destroyed the city and, it seems, served as a beginning of the collapse of the classic period of the Maya civilization. The precipitous decline of the Maya is one of the enduring mysteries of American archaeology.
"As the scale of the massacre became apparent, the archaeologists called on Guatemalan forensic investigators for their experience with mass burials of modern war. The team, established in 1996 to excavate the mass graves from Guatemala's civil war, has also analyzed sites in Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda.
"Arthur A. Demarest, an archaeologist at Vanderbilt University who directed the excavations, described the discovery yesterday in an announcement by the National Geographic Society and in an interview by telephone from Guatemala City.
" 'This is probably the most important thing I've ever discovered,' said Dr. Demarest, who has explored Maya ruins since the 1980's.
"In a gruesome departure from what had been normal Maya warfare, he said, the conquerors - not yet identified - did not spare the city to rule it as a vassal state.
"Around A.D. 800, they methodically destroyed the palace and monuments and rounded up the king and queen of Cancuén and members of the court, men, women and children. They killed them en masse, mostly by lance thrusts and ax blows to the neck or head. Most of their mutilated bodies were dumped into the palace pool or buried in shallow graves.
" 'After this tragic and violent event, unlike any yet discovered at a classic Maya site,' Dr. Demarest said, 'the city of Cancuén was completely abandoned, as were many other cities downstream' on the Pasión River.
"The river was a major trade route through the jungle and the source of Cancuén's wealth in the eighth century. Within 10 years of Cancuén's fall, the other river cities were abandoned, with the exception of Seibal. The displacement of people, Dr. Demarest said, had repercussions throughout the Maya lands, eventually contributing to the end of the classic period, which extended from 300 to about 900.
"David A. Freidel, a specialist in Maya archaeology at Southern Methodist University who was not involved in the research, agreed that the extermination of a vanquished royal family and nobility was a sharp departure in Maya warfare in the classic period. A defeated ruler might be executed, he added, but not the entire palace court.
" 'This is the kind of extreme violence that is characteristic of Maya civilization in the collapse period,' Dr. Freidel said.
"The initial discovery of the jumble of thousands of bones was made by two Guatemalan archaeologists, Sylvia Alvarado of the University of San Carlos and Tomás Barrientos, co-director of the Cancuén project, who is also affiliated with Vanderbilt.
"A special grant from the National Geographic Society has enabled the project to continue the forensic studies. The research will include DNA tests of the remains to determine if, as the archaeologists suspect, most of the victims were members of the extended royal family.
"The investigators have concluded that the bones uncovered so far in the mud at the pool belonged to at least 31 individuals. The king and queen were found in shallow graves 80 yards away. More than a dozen other skeletons, some also dismembered, were dug up north of the palace.
"The spring-fed pool, lined with masonry and covering 90 square yards, was part of a network of channels in the sprawling palace complex. They were presumably sacred bodies of circulating water.
"By murdering the elite and placing their broken bodies in the ceremonial waters, Dr. Demarest speculated, the conquerors were 'killing the city ritually.'
"Another peculiarity, he noted, was the respect the victors seemed to have shown for their victims. They took the trouble to bury them with their finest robes and adornments, an abundance of jades, necklaces of jaguar fangs and rare shells.
"The king, Kan Maax, was buried in full regalia and a necklace bearing his name and title. He was the son of Cancuén's greatest ruler, Taj Chan Ahk, who had died in 795.
" 'What we have here is a shift in studies of the Maya collapse,' Dr. Demarest said. 'Broad theories are being replaced by specifics turned up by archaeology.' "
"Museums Under Fire on Ancient Artifacts" is yet another article from The New York Times (November 17) by Hugh Eakin on the ambiguities of collecting, importing and exporting ancient artifacts.
Eakin's story: "Three years ago, directors of some of the world's top museums, meeting in Munich, commiserated over a major annoyance: the growing demands from countries like Greece and Italy that they return ancient artifacts.
"What emerged from the meeting was a defiant statement defending their collecting practices. Signed by the directors of 18 museums - from the Louvre to the Hermitage in Russia to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles - the document argued that encyclopedic museums have a special mission as treasure houses of world culture, and that today's ethical standards cannot be applied to yesterday's acquisitions.
"That philosophy is now under siege as never before. In Rome, a former Getty curator sat tensely and quietly yesterday as her trial began on criminal charges of conspiring to import illegally excavated antiquities for the museum. (Page B8.) On Tuesday, Philippe de Montebello, the longtime director of the Met, is to meet in Rome with a lawyer for the Italian Culture Ministry to discuss works in the museum's collection that the Italians say were looted. Italy is insisting that several other American museums account for dozens of ancient artworks that made their way into their collections.
" 'The ground is shifting radically under the pressure of newly documented claims,' said Maxwell Anderson, a museum consultant and the former director of the Association of Art Museum Directors. 'While there may not be a single clear solution for every claim, institutions will need to be forthright in explaining future acquisitions.'
"Behind this shift, museum directors, curators and lawyers say, are broad changes in the way source countries are pursuing and enforcing cultural property claims - and the public's perception of those claims. Caught in the cross hairs, museums face pressure to clean up their act and embrace rigorous standards for future acquisitions - and to return prized works acquired in past decades.
" 'In the eyes of the public,' said James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, there is a sense that 'the museum is a greedy hoarder of ill-gotten goods, in opposition to the legitimate claims of the powerless.'
"Rather than capitulate, though, many American museums continue to resist adopting standards that would rule out the continued acquisition of antiquities.
"Last year, for example, the American directors association adopted new guidelines on the issue for its members. But archaeologists fault the guidelines on the ground that they suggest museums should use their own discretion about acquiring treasures that may not have a verifiable provenance.
" 'There is this big loophole,' said Jenifer Neils, a professor of classical art at Case Western Reserve University. 'If something is big enough and important enough, then they should acquire it and put it on display, no matter where it came from, or how it reached the market.'
"Mimi Gaudieri, executive director of the museum association, said that there was no mechanism to ensure that any of the group's 177 member museums adhered to the guidelines, and that she could not assess to what degree any of the members were following them. 'We just go on their word that they adhere to the guidelines,' Ms. Gaudieri said.
"She added that since the standards were published last year, several museums had adopted rules that mirror the group's. But she declined to name the museums or specify how many had adopted such new rules.
"Archaeologists argue that museums in other countries have established far more rigorous policies on antiquities. Both the British Museum and the Berlin State Museums have recently adopted comprehensive standards for such acquisitions, based on a 1970 Unesco convention prohibiting the circulation of illicit antiquities.
" 'The question becomes, how should museums position themselves in relation to what is clearly an organized international illegal market?' said Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, which has long faced demands from Greece that it return the Elgin Marbles, which have been in its collection since 1816.
"In the United States, only a few museums, including the University of Pennsylvania Museum, have adopted a standard by which unprovenanced antiquities that surfaced after 1970 should not be purchased. A few other museums, including the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University, have adopted 1983, the year the United States joined the Unesco convention, as a cutoff date. Rather than setting such a date, the museum directors association recommends that museums buy only objects that can be demonstrated to have been outside their countries of origin for at least 10 years.
"Most of the large collecting museums have not formally specified a date. Ironically, one of the few that has a specific written policy for antiquities acquisitions is the Getty Museum, which is at the center of the current prosecution in Italy.
"There is also little overall agreement about how to proceed. At a Los Angeles meeting several weeks ago of the same group of international museum directors whose members issued the Munich declaration in 2002, the issue of how to respond to claims became a major point of discussion. But there was no unanimity, several participants said.
"The issue is highly sensitive because of increasing concerns about the legal exposure of American museums to claims for the return of stolen art.
"In recent years, archaeologically rich countries like Italy, Greece and China have relied on tightening international laws and growing public interest to open well-organized campaigns to repatriate artifacts and crack down on the antiquities trade. At the same time, the United States government has become more and more willing to help, through sweeping bilateral treaties, legal assistance and recognition of foreign laws in American courts.
"In a landmark 2003 decision, a federal appeals court in New York upheld the conviction of the art dealer Frederick Schultz for conspiring to buy looted antiquities, on the ground that he had acquired objects in violation of Egyptian law.
" 'It confirmed that a U.S. court will use those ownership laws of foreign countries as a basis for a stolen property claim," said Howard N. Spiegler, a cultural property lawyer who has represented numerous foreign governments in the United States.
"To many in the art world, that decision, together with Ms. True's trial in Rome, suggests that museums - and their directors and trustees, who hold fiduciary responsibilities over the institutions - can be held legally accountable for their acquisitions.
"Still, for many directors, the controversy is viewed more as a public relations problem.
"Mr. Cuno of the Art Institute of Chicago, a staunch defender of a liberal market for antiquities, argues that the interests of 'source' countries have gained the upper hand because museums have not adequately defended their values and mission to the public. 'We've got to take a position,' he said. 'We can't just lie low and let it blow over.'
"Drawing on the arguments in the 2002 Munich declaration, Mr. Cuno and others point out that the basic mission of museums is to bring works from foreign cultures to a broad international audience.
"They say that this aim is ill served by an overzealous application of laws designed to keep objects from ancient civilizations within the boundaries of the modern-day states where they are found today.
" 'One of the key questions is the internationalist versus the nationalist perspective,' said Mr. MacGregor of the British Museum. 'There is a very real tension between the belief that great culture is a shared inheritance of everybody and the view that it is the particular inheritance of one modern political entity.'
"Defenders of the so-called internationalist view like to point out that the law governing Italy's current claims against American museums was passed in 1939, during Italy's Fascist era. Mr. MacGregor argues that while upholding the rigorous national ownership laws established by source countries, the Unesco convention has failed to address the issue of illegal excavations at the source, within the claimant countries themselves.
"Privately, museum curators and directors also note that during the years when most of the objects now in dispute were being acquired - the 1970's, the 1980's and even into the 1990's - the Italian government largely turned its back on the flourishing trade in antiquities within its borders. Others point out that Italy has not yet established a legal market for dealing with the material that does surface and that cannot be adequately cared for or displayed in overflowing Italian museums.
" 'The basement of the Villa Giulia has better stuff than the Met, Boston and the Getty put together' said Jasper Gaunt, curator of Greek and Roman art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum. 'It hasn't been studied, it needs research, it needs conservation, it needs all sorts of things. They simply don't have the resources.'
"But many museums are reluctant to speak out on such issues, because they face what one museum official, who declined to be identified, described as 'a free fall of anxiety about liability, for themselves, their curators and their boards.'
" 'The big question is from what date should we take account of these new practices,' said Henri Loyrette, director of the Louvre. 'It is true that up to World War II and for some time after, people worked in a very different way than today. There are certainly some objects that were removed illegally. From what date should there be a prohibition? I don't know.' "
Alan Riding contributed reporting from Paris for this article,
Elisabetta Povoledo from
Rome,
and Randy Kennedy from New York.
Again from the Times, the Marion True story approaches the denouement: "Former Curator in Courtroom as Her Trial Begins in Rome," was the headline for the November 17 story by Elisabetta Povoldo
Datelined Rome, the story began, "Ending a bit of suspense, Marion True, the former antiquities curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, showed up Wednesday for the opening of her trial here on charges of conspiring to import illegally excavated antiquities for the museum.
"Looking tense, Ms. True, 57, who is jointly charged with Robert E. Hecht, an American dealer, sat quietly while her lawyers and the prosecution skirmished for nearly four hours over procedural questions. Both defendants deny the charges.
"Wearing a knee-length black suede dress, her face drawn and pale, Ms. True sat ramrod straight before the panel of three judges. She whispered occasionally with her lawyers, who include Franco Coppi, the renowned criminal lawyer who helped clear the former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti of Mafia-related charges.
"Mr. Hecht, 86, was not present. His lawyer, Alessandro Vannucci, said he had advised his client not to attend the hearing, the second in the trial, which is expected to last many months.
"Mr. Vannucci asked that the trial be postponed until the spring, when a judge is expected to rule on a request for the indictment of another art dealer, one of several people investigated by Italian prosecutors looking into the international trafficking of illegally excavated artifacts and the collecting policies of major museums around the world. Judge Gustavo Barbarinaldo rejected the motion.
"Mobbed by reporters as she was leaving the courtroom, Ms. True did not respond to questions."
Holland Cotter's November 25 New York Times review, "Visions of a Continent That Is Rich With Life," focuses on exhibits of African art in the Northeast.
Cotter wrote: "Bakassi, Chelsea. Ecomog. Dark Sailor. Mac Lord. Nixson. King Solomon. Top Squad. What sounds like an international hip-hop roll call is a list of brand-name liquors found in Nsukka, a city in Nigeria. The same names appear, over and over, in a series of fantastic new sculptures by El Anatsui, who lives in Nsukka.
"The sculptures, on view in two Manhattan galleries, are made from thousands of crushed aluminum bottle caps and seals stitched together with copper wire. The results are supple, fabriclike hangings that look like a cross between kente cloth, abstract paintings and magic carpets.
"Symbolically, there is a lot of Africa in them. There is a past imbedded, like DNA, in traditional patterns and forms. A cosmopolitan present, modern and postmodern, unlike any other present. And an adamantly idealistic vision of the future, even in the face of recurrent catastrophe, of which artists like Mr. Anatsui are all too well aware.
"And thanks to art historians, dealers and curators, we are becoming aware of these artists, and of the Africa they are helping to shape. Western museum collections of African material are proliferating. The under-known art of East and South Africa is being studied. 'Classical' African art is keeping company with contemporary work, and the links acknowledged.
"Recently, I made a sweep through several African art exhibitions, large and small, in New York, or within a day-trip's distance from it. The shows share no theme. The work is too diverse for that, the ideas too complex and volatile. There are too many Africas to allow any easy synthesis. This has always been so, but it's getting clearer now. Newark Museum
"My survey began with a visit to 'Power Dressing: Men's Fashion and Prestige in Africa' at the Newark Museum, a lucky choice. As conceived by the museum's young curator of African art, Christa Clarke, it is what a show should be: coherent, stylish and surprising. And it gets moving in just the right way: with a couple of showstoppers.
"One is a Hausa 'robe of honor' from Nigeria, made of white cotton damask with Islamic symbols embroidered in spinach-green. The other is a marvelous Yoruba chief's robe that follows the Hausa model, but adds optical bounce and different ethnic, religious and political meanings.
"Most of the work in the show deals with politics: the politics of appearance, of looking good, whatever that might mean. The loose, roomy Nigerian robes make bulk chic. They give their wearers a visual heft that spells macho to many cultures - though not to the Dinka herdsmen of southern Sudan. Dinka men dress light, in sheer, tight beaded corsets and little else, precisely to show off their lithe figures.
"And while material muchness can be an indicator of high status and wealth, the show's single most spectacular piece, a South African rickshaw driver's costume, comes from the lower end of the social spectrum. With its towering, mirrored superstructure, this is fashion as look-at-me advertising, yet it encodes references to Zulu history, and its elaborate beadwork speaks of a woman's skilled hand. Axis Gallery
"The power of female creativity courses through a small show of South African garments at the Axis Gallery in Manhattan. All but one piece was made by and for women of the Mfengu cultural group. Of several monochromatic skirts, some are white or beige-gray, and one is dyed a dusky ochre, a color associated with the earth, fertility and menstrual blood. In every case, the surfaces are ornamented with lines of beadwork, as fine and taut as compass needles. The minimalist painter Agnes Martin would have adored the elegant probity of this work, and its message of strength in restraint. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
"Self-assertion, by contrast, is the dynamic in 'West African Gold: Akan Regalia From the Glassell Collection' at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gold work from Ghana was renowned in Europe in the 15th century and is still the source of an opulent court art. Ashanti kings wear gold-ornamented sandals and starburst finger rings the size of sea anemones. Royal officials carry gilded staffs crowned with carved human and animal figures.
"The carvings illustrate moral proverbs. In some cases, the meaning is transparent: a tableau of a man giving another man a boost up a tree extols the virtue of cooperation. Other images are harder to parse, and some feel distinctly unbenign. Repeated images of gilded rifles, swords and cartridge belts, for example, suggest a militaristic concept of kingship.
"If so, the Ashanti are hardly unique. Stroll through the European galleries at the Met, or check out statues in Washington and you get the same message. It's good to be alert to such messages; awareness retrains and sharpens the eye. The fact is, art's potency intensifies rather than diminishes once you leave unquestioning reliance on the pleasure principle behind, get beyond gold's sight-impairing glow.
African Art Museum
"Alertness of a somewhat different kind is the subtext of 'The Discerning Eye: African Art From the Collection of Carl and Wilma Zabel' at the African Art Museum of the S. M. A. Fathers in Tenafly, N.J. The 'eye' here is the shared vision of two collectors who chose to lavish their attention on a type of art often overlooked or dismissed, namely East African sculpture. Roughly half the show is made up of carvings from Kenya and Tanzania. Some depart audaciously from preconceived standards of sculptural beauty. In doing do, they automatically extend the way beauty can be defined and experienced.
World Financial Center
"Speaking of preconceptions, I came to 'Lasting Foundations: The Art of Architecture in Africa,' organized by the Museum for African Art at the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan, with misgivings about how it would come off in the complex's awkwardly configured Courtyard Gallery. My doubts were needless. As organized by Enid Schildkrout, the museum's chief curator, the show looks great.
"Like most architectural exhibitions, it uses lots of photographs and texts. But more than many, it also incorporates objects: Dogon door locks from Mali, carved Igbo doors from Nigeria, Swahili window frames rich with Indian and Islamic motifs from Kenya. As an inspired bonus, Ms. Schildkrout includes photographs by contemporary African artists who work with architectural imagery.
"The most evocative element of all, though, is an excerpt from Susan Vogel's film 'Living Memory: Six Sketches of Mali Today.' The clip documents the annual replastering of the great Mosque of Djenne, the largest adobe building in the world. Thousands of people show up for this event. At a signal, male devotees dash forward and scale the walls, slapping on plaster and smoothing it down, sometimes with caresslike care. It's the story of an architectural monument as love object.
National Museum of African Art
"Love is, I assume, a motivation behind the collecting efforts of Jean Pigozzi, a Swiss-based entrepreneur who, with the help of the French curator André Magnin, has amassed large holdings in contemporary African work.
"Mr. Magnin was part of the team responsible for 'Magicians of the Earth' in Paris in the late 1980's, an exhibition faulted for perpetuating a primitivistic stereotype of African artists as exotic shamans rather than as full participants in international culture. The same complaint has been leveled at the Pigozzi collection, a chunk of which has traveled to Washington from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
"Mr. Pigozzi insists that he is only interested in 'authentic' new African art, which he defines as art made by self-taught artists who rarely, if ever, leave home. The notion is silly at best, racist at worst. Still, he has supported some wonderful artists, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Seydou Keita, Bodys Isek Kingelez and Chéri Samba among them. Mr. Samba was one of the first African artists to gain international success in the 1980's; and his witty, socially engaged, highly photogenic work - essentially an extended history-painting project - looks fresh in any context.
"The show itself, though, feels shopworn. I wish the museum had put together something of its own; say, a miniversion of 'Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent,' seen in London last spring. Alternatively, it might have used the presence of the Pigozzi material to dig critically into the issues the collection raises, about how African art is defined, and who has the power to control the definitions. Yes, this is an old conversation. It's also a conversation that has barely begun.
"Instead, a wan collection showcase has been dutifully installed and left to sit there. Somebody should give this maddeningly sleepy institution a shake. It calls itself America's only museum dedicated to the collection, conservation and exhibition of traditional and contemporary African art. As such, it has a potent role to play in a nation that has a vital African-American population. At present, the museum is not fulfilling its role, at least with sufficient force.
Skoto Gallery and Contemporary African Art Gallery
"El Anatsui is not in the Washington show, but he makes a terrific impression in his joint New York appearance at the Skoto Gallery in Chelsea and at the Contemporary African Art Gallery on the Upper West Side. Each space has fine examples of his familiar carved wood wall sculptures; those uptown are especially good. But the wire-stitched aluminum pieces are the big news. (More in the series are on view in a full-scale show at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville, Fla., through Dec. 4.)
"Draped and bunched against the wall, each is as buoyant and pliant as cloth. Indeed, Mr. Anatsui brought both shows to New York in suitcases. And he has commented on some of the ideas behind the series. It is a gesture, ambivalent in its motivation, of giving back to the West some of the things - intoxicants, languages, recycled junk - that the West gave to Africa.
"But it is also about Africa itself, conceived, like kente cloth, as a pieced-together but continuous fabric. In African tradition, kente is a record of histories and the cloth of kings. To many African-Americans it is a badge of unity in identity. In Mr. Anatsui's hands, it is a shining, new kind of cloth, permeable but indestructible. It is a universal repository of names of infinite extension. Glinting and shimmering, it reflects an African essence of three interchangeable parts always in motion: memory, reality, determination."
In the first of several stories on this subject, here is the Honolulu Star-Bulletin December 13 story headlined "Appeals court upholds ruling against Hui Malama; The organization is given 16 days to return native Hawaiian artifacts to Bishop Museum." The story was written by Sally Apgar.
"The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has told a native Hawaiian group to return 83 priceless artifacts to Bishop Museum so other claimants may get an opportunity to help decide their final resting place," the story began.
"In a unanimous vote yesterday, the three-judge panel in San Francisco upheld the Sept. 7 ruling by U.S. District Judge David Ezra, who ordered Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei to return the objects, which were buried at Kawaihae, or 'Forbes,' cave five years ago.
"Hui Malama was founded in 1989 to repatriate native Hawaiian bones and artifacts from museums and construction sites, but its practices have come under criticism by other groups.
"Ezra ordered the artifacts be secured in a climate-safe environment, away from public view, at the Bishop Museum until the competing claimants resolve their differences.
"The appeals court, which heard oral arguments to overturn Ezra's order Dec. 6, gave Hui Malama 16 days to honor the order. However, the order did not specify when the 16-day timetable begins.
" 'The interests of justice and the public would best be served by bringing the items to a secure location at the Bishop Museum during the pendency of this matter,' the ruling said.
"It continued: 'These findings are supported by the record and are not clearly erroneous. Because the District Court neither applied an incorrect legal standard, misapprehended the law nor relied on clearly erroneous findings of fact, it did not abuse its discretion in ordering the return of the items.'
"Hui Malama representatives criticized the decision. 'The judges got it wrong,' said Alan Murakami, an attorney with the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., which represents Hui Malama. 'Hui Malama has been forced to deal with this Western legal system for satisfaction of Hawaiian cultural issues,' Murakami said, adding that the judges 'weren't impressed that the First Amendment rights (to freedom of religion) of Hui Malama would be violated.'
"Murakami was considering strategies to appeal the opinion.
"Hui Malama had argued that opening the cave would be a desecration that violates their religion. They also argued that if anyone attempted to open the cave - reinforced with concrete and steel rebar - it would collapse. The 9th Circuit threw out the safety issue on the technicality that it had not been argued before Ezra.
"Sherry Broder, an attorney representing two native Hawaiian organizations that sued Hui Malama in August demanding return of the items, said yesterday, 'It's amazing that we got a decision as fast as we did. I think the panel recognized the importance of implementing Judge Ezra's order as soon as possible to protect these priceless artifacts before they are stolen or degraded by the elements or insects. The panel really reaffirmed Ezra's order and did not change one word of his previous order,' Broder said.
"Broder represents Na Lei Alii Kawananakoa and the Royal Academy of Traditional Arts, which are federally recognized - along with Hui Malama and 11 other organizations - as claimants by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
"NAGPRA is a federal law enacted in 1991 to govern the repatriation of native Hawaiian and American Indian remains and artifacts from museums back to indigenous people. NAGPRA allows federal courts to intervene if competing claimants cannot resolve issues among themselves.
"In September, Ezra ordered Hui Malama to retrieve the items, saying the artifacts faced 'irreparable harm' from possible theft, environmental conditions and insects. He instructed them to bring the items to the Bishop Museum.
"Ezra's order said that Hui Malama was required to give the exact location of the artifacts. The location has been an issue, and as of late yesterday, Hui Malama had not released its location to Broder.
"During oral arguments last week, one appellate judge, Stephen Trott, summed up the legal situation, saying 'there are numerous, legitimate contenders' for the cave items, and 'Judge Ezra was simply trying to preserve the subject of the controversy against the possibility of irreparable harm.'
"According to court documents, Hui Malama signed a 'one-year loan' for the items in February 2000. That loan has widely been debated, partly because Hui Malama repeatedly said publicly that it did not intend to return the items because the loan 'was a vehicle for repatriation.'
"Broder said that the 9th Circuit panel 'agreed with Judge Ezra that a loan is a loan.'
"Murakami told the court that the items were looted from the cave in 1905 by three grave diggers and that the museum knew it was taking stolen goods.
" 'How can you loan something that was (originally) stolen?' said Murakami, who maintains the museum has no control over stolen items.
"But Broder said Hui Malama's treatment of the loan 'sabotaged' the repatriation process.
"Near the end of last week's hearing, Judge Trott seemed to agree, telling Murakami, 'The case to me has every appearance of your side trying to hijack a process' designed to 'allow everyone, who has a right, to come to the table.' Murakami said yesterday that the "judges also got it wrong with words like 'hijacking the process.'"
"Murakami said of one legal opponent, 'Kawananakoa sat on her rights (to repatriation) for nine years before asserting herself, long after repatriation was completed.'
"So far, the courts have sided with NAGPRA, which found against Hui Malama and said the repatriation process needs to be redone.
"Murakami said the court 'doesn't know that the majority of claimants want the items left in place (in the cave). But they will be hearing about that over the next few days.' "
Following up in the Honolulu Advertiser, "Hui Malama leader vows to defy judge; Agency criticized for its silence" was the headline for Gordon Y.K. Pang's December 21 story.
The story: "A defiant leader of Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawai'i Nei said yesterday that he will not disclose the exact location of 83 priceless cultural items buried in two caves on the Big Island, despite a court order.
"U.S. District Judge David Ezra yesterday ordered Hui Malama to disclose by 4 p.m. today specifically where each of the artifacts is buried.
"Edward Halealoha Ayau, Hui Malama executive director, said his organization will submit more information to the court today but did not intend to give specifics. He noted that the items were placed alongside the iwi kupuna, or remains, of Native Hawaiians.
" 'Our responsibility is not to Judge Ezra, it's to the kupuna,' Ayau said.
"Asked if the group's response will include the precise location of the items, Ayau said: 'Hypothetically, do I know where it is? Yes. Am I realistically going to do it? No.' Ayau added: 'He is directing us to be an accomplice to a theft and we will not do it.'
"Yesterday's order is the latest in a series of disagreements between Ezra and Hui Malama arising from a lawsuit by two Native Hawaiian groups seeking to force the return of the objects. The groups, Na Lei Alii Kawananakoa and the Royal Hawaiian Academy of Traditional Arts, are seeking the return of the artifacts to Bishop Museum, which in 2000 loaned them to Hui Malama.
"Last week, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a ruling from Ezra ordering Hui Malama to return the artifacts, and sent the matter back to Ezra's courtroom.
"In issuing his order yesterday, Ezra denied Hui Malama's request to reconsider his original order to return the objects, stating he did not believe new information had been presented to change his mind.
" 'I will not have your client ignoring a valid and subsistent order,' Ezra told Alan Murakami of the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., which represents Hui Malama.
"The judge said he was prepared to find Hui Malama officials in contempt, which could lead to fines and, in extreme cases, jail time. 'Make no mistake about it, I am not kidding,' he said.
"During yesterday's hourlong hearing, Ezra repeatedly expressed irritation and frustration with Murakami and Hui Malama for previous responses he viewed as evasive and vague.
" 'What I want is a lot less talk and a lot more action,' he said.
" 'I have a great deal of sympathy to the views of your clients,' he said at another point. 'I also have sympathy to the views of others.' He then added: "But there will be no more delays, there will be no more maybe here, maybe there; one cave, two caves, maybe three.'
"Ezra's last reference was to information disclosed by Hui Malama in court documents filed in preparation for yesterday's hearing showing that the artifacts were buried in two caves, not one as originally stated. The same documents also explained that some of the objects may have originally come from a third cave, but that Hui Malama had not been able to locate it.
" 'Nobody mentioned to me another cave,' Ezra said. 'This is a court of law, this is not a cat-and-mouse game.'
"Murakami said his understanding was that Hui Malama had turned over what information it has, including the Global Positioning System coordinates of the items. But Ezra said what he had seen to date was inadequate.
"Ezra made two concessions to the organization. He agreed to Hui Malama's request that its members not be ordered to actively participate in the removal of the artifacts. The group must, however, pay for half the costs of their removal. The other half will be paid by Bishop Museum.
"The judge also granted the group's request to keep the exact location under a court seal.
"Ezra gave no immediate time line for the return of the items. He ordered each of the parties by next Wednesday to submit a list of three engineers who could survey the structural integrity of the caves and offer a risk assessment.
"Hui Malama officials fiercely believe the artifacts should stay where they are, pointing out that they were stolen from caves in Kawaihae in 1905 by Western archaeologists. Removal of the artifacts from the caves would be culturally insulting and be dangerous to those involved, they said.
"The artifacts have been in dispute for some time. More than a dozen Native Hawaiian organizations, including Hui Malama, are claimants to the artifacts that have been engaged in discussions over their final resting place.
"A key point of discussion is whether the objects are funerary, or placed with the remains of humans at the time of burial. Hui Malama insists the objects are funerary while its opponents say that has never been established."
Pang's next Honolulu Advertiser story, "Group defies artifacts order," published on December 28, got more dramatic with the addition of handcuffs and a trip to jail.
"The leader of a Native Hawaiian organization yesterday was ordered jailed by U.S. District Judge David Ezra until the precise whereabouts of 83 priceless cultural artifacts are disclosed or the items are recovered," Pang began.
"Edward Halealoha Ayau, executive director of Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawai'i Nei and other Hui Malama officials have said the items are buried in caves in Honokahua Gulch on the Kohala side of the Big Island. They maintain that providing specifics would violate their Native Hawaiian religious beliefs.
"In a packed and emotionally charged courtroom, Ayau was found by Ezra to be in contempt of court and ordered incarcerated at the Federal Detention Center near Honolulu International Airport until he discloses the objects' locations, someone else discloses the locations or the objects are located and taken back to Bishop Museum.
"Hui Malama borrowed the objects from the museum in 2000 and never returned them. The group said the items, known as the Forbes Cave collection, have been placed in the vicinity of where they were taken by Westerners in 1905.
"Two other Native Hawaiian organizations, Na Lei Alii Kawananakoa and the Royal Hawaiian Academy of Traditional Arts, sued the museum and Hui Malama to force their return. Hui Malama officials have refused and said it would be sacrilegious to return them or participate in their removal.
"William Aila, a Hui Malama board member, predicted that Ayau's imprisonment will spur supporters to express their unhappiness with the action and thereby prove that they represent the views of a majority of Native Hawaiians.
" 'What you will see in the upcoming days is more Hawaiian groups coming out in support of Hui Malama and the cultural position that you're not supposed to disturb iwi kupuna (bones) and their moepu (burial artifacts),' Aila said.
"Aila is one of three Hui Malama board members Ezra said also are in contempt. The judge said he would deal with their cases later, noting that it was Ayau who was Hui Malama's leader and clearly had the most knowledge about the objects' whereabouts. The others are Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele and Antoinette Freitas.
"Kahu Charles Kauluwehi Maxwell Sr., president of the organization, also had been ordered to appear yesterday but was in the hospital with a heart ailment and unable to attend the proceeding.
"Aila noted that more than 200 Hui Malama supporters, led by the 'Ilio'ulaokalani Coalition and faculty from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa's Center for Hawaiian Studies, gathered at the steps of the Federal Building yesterday and packed Ezra's courtroom.
" 'The judge, in his decision, is going to cause Hawaiians to come to grips with their cultural responsibilities,' Aila said.
"Hui Malama leaders are talking about possible vigils and demonstrations but definitive plans have not been set, he said.
"Maxwell, from his bed at Maui Hospital, called yesterday 'a black day for the Native Hawaiian people.'
"Sherry Broder, an attorney for Hui Malama opponents, said she was disappointed that Ayau and his group did not do as the judge had asked. 'We're quite worried,' she said, noting that recent admissions by Hui Malama about the artifacts going into two caves, rather than one as originally believed, and the possibility that one of the caves was not sealed securely, troubles her clients.
"Ezra said yesterday - and during a hearing last week - that he was trying to be sensitive to Hui Malama's religious convictions and stated he was a longtime student of Hawaiian culture.
"Maxwell called Ezra's claims 'ridiculous.' " 'How can a haole judge who has not worked with us, who does not know the spiritual and cultural things, throw a comment like that,' he said. 'That is totally uncalled for.'
"But Cy Kamuela Harris, a member of the Kekumano 'Ohana which is also a claimant to the objects, said Hui Malama officials are wrong in proclaiming their views are right while dismissing those of others.
" 'Not all knowledge comes from one school,' Harris said. "Harris, a follower of the Temple of Lono, said his cultural and religious teachers have taught him that the objects are artifacts that should be displayed publicly and not sealed in a cave. "Harris said it was Hui Malama's leaders who came up with the notion of repatriation of artifacts. 'They're making it all up as they go along,' he said.
"Harris' views echoed those of Ezra's, who said at one point that Hui Malama 'does not have a corner on the Native Hawaiian religion.' "The emotions in Ezra's courtroom were so charged that at one point, Kanahele stood up from where she sat in the audience, said to those nearby, "I'm not going to sit and listen to this crap," and began to walk out of the gallery.
"When others began to follow her, Ezra said he was almost finished and asked that the audience wait until he was done. When about 50 people continued toward the exit, he told the approximately 20 federal marshals and state sheriffs to clear the courtroom of all present except members of the media and parties to the lawsuit.
"A man from the audience then shouted something in Hawaiian and Ezra immediately asked that he be detained and held in contempt. The man, identified by Hui Malama supporters as Kihei Nahale'a of the Big Island, was later sentenced by Ezra to five days in jail.
"Ayau, in a black dress shirt, black pants and black shoes, repeatedly turned his chair sideways and looked away from Ezra as he spoke. He did, however, look at the judge when spoken to directly.
"Asked by Ezra if he was ready to go to jail, Ayau said: "I would be honored."
"Ezra repeatedly said that he empathized with the views of Hui Malama's members but that their lack of cooperation with what now amounted to the wishes of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left him no choice.
" 'Your clients are deserving of their religious beliefs but no more so than the religious beliefs of others,' Ezra told Alan Murakami, an attorney for the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., which is representing Hui Malama.
"Ezra said he is ordering U.S. Magistrate Kevin Chang to assist him as a designated court master, although it was unclear at the end of yesterday exactly what his duties will be.
"Ayau was escorted out of the courtroom without handcuffs.
"Outside the courtroom, Hui Malama supporters continued to chant and pray.
"But at least one person in the crowd was opposed to Hui Malama's views and believes there are many others like her.
"Nanette Napoleon of Kailua said it is 'just plain silly' for Hui Malama supporters to suggest there is only one interpretation of what constitutes the Native Hawaiian religion.
" 'They set these rigid, unyielding, dogmatic rules that they expect everybody else in the Hawaiian community to follow,' she said. 'And they have absolutely no tolerance for any other point of view and to me that is so un-Hawaiian and so un-pono it makes my heart break.' "
