ATADA News, Fall, 2005
From the President
I would first like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for all their kind e-mails and calls concerning our personal losses in Hurricane Katrina. It meant a great deal to me to know that so many people thought of us. We are hopeful that there will be a full and speedy recovery in the future for this beautiful and historic part of our country.
I hope everyone had a successful show week in Santa Fe and that you have all returned energized and excited about the future of our business. I felt that things went very well on the whole, particularly considering it was the first year for one of our promoters. I encourage everyone to stay involved with the process as many new ideas are being discussed such as vetting, early entry, booth size and layout, etc.
The overwhelming majority of you who attended our general meeting in Santa Fe expressed a desire to either limit or eliminate early entry all together and to request that auction houses not be present in the show. Ramona Morris is ATADA's liaison to Marcia Berridge to discuss the early entry issue. I propose that the board draft a letter to Ms. Berridge about the auction houses, and to indicate that the ATADA members who participate in this show have so voted. If you were not present at the meeting and have a different opinion, feel free to contact the promoter as an individual. The vote at the ATADA meeting, however, will continue to be the vote representing ATADA.
There are exciting new changes in the works for both the Newsletter and the Directory. I hope you will all be pleased with the results. Merrill Domas
When many of us were working at Barry's Cohen's show in August 2004, immediately after a hurricane hit Florida, Merrill Domas was the first to start collecting· money from ATADA members at the show for hurricane relief.
So it seems appropriate that after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast this year (and destroyed Merrill and Paul's home in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi), for ATADA to send a donation to hurricane relief. Merrill decided to give the money to the National Trust for Historic Preservation; read about their mission below.
As Merrill said in her President's letter, changes are being considered for both the Directory and the Newsletter, the result of an ATADA board decision to give our members "added value." Stay tuned.
Alice Kaufman
The ATADA Foundation has donated $1000 to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Trust's mission at this time is to help preserve historic Gulf Coast buildings, neighborhoods and communities damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The nonprofit organization, which hopes to raise $1 million for a recovery fund, plans to send experts in architecture, construction and historic preservation to the region to survey the area, design solutions for sensitive reconstruction and provide technical assistance to needy communities.
Our letter accompanying the donation read:
This check for $1000 is to help efforts to preserve historic Gulf Coast buildings; neighborhoods and communities damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Our president: Merrill Domas, lost her house in Bay St. Louis in the hurricane, so your cause is especially meaningful to her.
Even a sudden rain shower couldn't dampen the sprits of the guests and the band at ATADA's annual fundraising party.
ATADA took in $2593 and, after expenses for the food and drinks, netted $1313. Thanks to everyone who attended (and some who did not) for their generosity, and most especially to Roger Fry, who co-hosted the party and paid for the band.
Once again, Roger and Pat Fry and Susan and Clint Nagy invited ATADA to hold their fund raising party at their La Fonda penthouse and terrace. The Sons of the Rio Grande played Western music, moving inside with the rest of the party when the rains came. Their versions of "Cool Water," "Red River Valley," "Ponies," "Orange Blossom Special," and many more set the mood for a high-spirited evening.
On the 14th of August, I attended one of the finest outpourings of love and generosity I have ever seen. A Bar-B-Que and Auction to benefit Jay Evetts was held in "The Alley" behind the shop of The Rainbow Man, Bob and Marianne Kapoun's business on Palace in Santa Fe.
As I am sure all of you know by now, Jay suffered a severe stroke in July and is recovering, remarkably well I might add, at a facility in Albuquerque.
Bobby Smrkousky and family cooked one of the finest Bar-B-Que meals that I have ever tasted. Ron Munn with Ronnie and Mark worked extra hard to get every nickel out of those auction items, all of which were donated out of the kindness of everyone's hearts. Richard Corrow walked who knows how many miles selling tickets to the party, and to everyone who has helped Jay in this time of need goes our heartfelt thanks and gratitude: Bob Vandenberg and Bob Gallegos for their tireless help with Jay's therapy, Cindra Kline, Liz Wallace, Bob Ashton, Terry
Schurmeier, and Bob and Marianne Kapoun.
I am sure I am leaving someone out, but to all of you who have helped and who love Jay - THANKS.
My latest information, and this may have changed since the actual party [see
above] is that the Bar-B-Que raised $24,000 and the auction $27,000 (no doubt people buying and re-donating the same item several times just to be sold again helped). My Dad used to say that if you have enough real friends to count on one hand you are lucky - what a double handful Jay has.
Further donations for Jay can be sent directly to Harold J. Evetts c/o Bob Vandenberg at Antique Brokers, P.O. Box 10112, Santa Fe, NM 87504. Please, keep 'em coming.
There is an old Egyptian saying - "God be between you and harm in all the empty places you walk." Swift recovery Jay, and SOON.
Mike McKissick
"Corrales has bid farewell to business owner and philanthropist Andrew Nagen, whose Old Navajo Rugs has been a prominent business in the village since 1976.
"Nagen died Friday and was buried Sunday. He was 54. Nagen sold and appraised Navajo rugs and blankets dating from 1840-1940. He was a featured lecturer and author, both nationally and internationally, on Southwestern textiles. He also was featured on public television and radio programs, and in national magazines. Nagen's clients included museums, corporations, institutions and private collectors.
" 'I knew him very well,' Mayor Gary Kanin said Tuesday. 'He called on me and I called on him - often. He never shied away from giving advice whether I wanted it or not. And 99 percent of the time, it was good advice. He encouraged me in all of my personal and political pursuits. He was a great contributor to the village of Corrales,' Kanin said. 'He was very good and kind to me and my wife, Donna, over the years. He will be missed. '
"Nagen is survived by his sister, Joanne Nagen, of Gainsville, FL., and, locally, by his cousin, Jennie Negin.
" 'Andrew was a remarkable person in heart and spirit,' Negin said Tuesday. 'He was loved very much. People often measure a man by his physical accomplishments, but it was what he did intellectually, spiritually, and from the heart that makes a difference. Andrew was remarkable.'
"Nagen was well-known for his philanthropy. He founded the Los Colores Museum, and Friends, an organization that awards grants to people facing debilitating illnesses in recognition of their strength and courage.
"In 1988, Nagen was diagnosed with a form of muscular dystrophy. Consequently, he said he became more sensitive to the struggles of similarly situated people. Friends was founded to recognize those individuals.
"Nagen was a generous supporter
of the Jewish Community Chaplaincy Program, which provides pastoral care to Jewish people who are not affiliated with a specific congregation. Rabbi Min Kantrowitz said Nagen had a profound impact on her life and on the lives of those he touched.
" 'He was the epitome of someone who
spoke the truth and a fearless investigator of spiritual reality,' she said. "He epitomized the ability of helping others anonymously. The things he loved, he loved so completely that he was a real role model to me.'
"Family and friends are planning a memorial service for Nagen at his home on Sunday morning."
Andrew Nagen was a weaver: his warp was intellect and spirituality, his weft was metaphor, art, love, pain and complication. How could there be so many Andrews? So full of contradictions, yet so predictable? Years ago, my husband Don and I asked him to write an article for the Collector's Guide - about Navajo weavings of course. What he wrote was not a scholarly or merchant's essay about textiles, it was a prose poem dedicated to the profound
beauty and intelligence of Navajo weavers who see "Inside Out." It was also a song about how HE saw living - already from his wheelchair.
The drawings, spontaneous and fearless, began appearing on Andrew's refrigerator. What do you think? Do you think its good? Really? Would anyone show them? I'm not an artist. He couldn't stop those drawings ... "deep thoughts that have no thinker." They joined his sculptures as an art form uniquely Andrew. The first twisted wire figures were fashioned from the wire that held tags on Navajo rugs. He began to buy spools of wire and then entrusted his designs to Jim Crane at Adobe Forge & Foundry to render them flawlessly in monumental forged steel. One evening as Don sat with Andrew, the yellow pad came out, a poem was born. And another. Beautiful, reckless, careful words. Words from a scholar, a gardener, a savorer, a lover, a friend, a sufferer, a searcher. Words of a poet.
These three aspects of Andrew, the artist, came together to form the first-ever Andrew Nagen solo exhibition. Don and I had built an art space in our new offices -with a great hanging system that would allow for any configuration of any number of paintings. Andrew, do you want a show? Of course he did not. Of course he did. We chose 100. In June, one hundred drawings and 6 poems were hung in our gallery as a mass: a vertical sea of images and words from Andrew's heart and mind; a visual statement about how glorious and painful it is to be an exuberant, living person; an embrace for anyone entering that space. And in the corner, with twig arms raised in blessing and exaltation,stood the seven feet tall bronze named "Oy / Joy" which began as a tiny twig picked up by those artist's fingers, a twig seen as a human aspect of God by those existential eyes and then made into art by the hands of a man. We called the exhibition "Inside Out."
''I'm not an artist," he said.
Andrew, you'll have to
take that to a higher court.
Pamela P. Michaelis
Present:
After discussing the agenda for the upcoming general meeting, webmaster Arch Thiessen suggested that all changes for the Directory and the website go to Chad Tanner, resulting in a single database for the printed Directory and the website. Various methods of checking/ proofing the Directory entries were discussed.
The subject of vetting came up for another go-round this year. Tom Murray said that shows must be vetted, that ATADA should form a group to vet the shows before the August 2006 shows. Tom suggested looking closely at the Caskey-Lees model, where vetters are a mix of exhibiting and non-exhibiting experts. He also pointed out that Barry Cohen's Santa Fe show and the Whitehawk Indian show were "the last two major shows not vetted in the country." Bob Gallegos proposed that a committee be formed to work with the show promoters, and the motion was passed.
Brant Mackley is costing out the project of making new ATADA receipt/guarantees that would be personalized for each Full member / dealer. Len Weakley and Roger Fry will check the legality of the receipts.
Roger Fry asked about membership in ATADA for Cowan's Auction House in Cincinnati. He guarantees the authenticity of his material, Roger said, so would qualify in that way. But Tom Murray pointed out that auction houses are competition for ATADA's member/dealers and allowing them to join ATADA would be "contrary to our interest."
Another hot topic, early admission during dealer set-up was also discussed. Several board member~ agreed that it is the dealers' interest to have two to three hours of set-up time before any member of the public on allowed into the show.
To start the meeting, President Merrill Domas gave special mention to Arch Thiessen, Roger Fry, Len Weakley and Bob Gallegos for their above-and-beyond work for ATADA. She also recognized ATADA members Marti Struever, Terry Schurmeier, Jan Duggan and Cindra Kline for the museum shows they curated.
Merrill then spoke to the membership about the new guarantees/invoices.
Bob Gallegos gave his Treasurer's report: He said that we paid for extra ads, but that we do have the money to do that. At the time of the meeting, there was $22,000 in the checking account, $13,500 in CDs and $8400 in the Foundation account. "We are being more favorably received by the museum world," Bob said, and added that some members had not yet paid their 2005 dues. Membership is up to 250. "The bigger we are, the more powerful and generous we can be," he told the members at the meeting.
Bob Bauver asked members to suggest organizations and individuals to receive scholarships, endowments and grants.
Webmaster Arch Thiessen mentioned that the ATADA Theft Alert had been instrumental in three major recoveries of stolen property. He advised members to keep current with new legal issues on the Legislative Alert page.
Merrill Domas asked for a volunteer Membership chair to join the board.
A guest speaker, Bruce Bernstein, Assistant Director of Research and Collections at the National Museum of the American Indian, said that he had heard criticism of the new museum, and that he and his colleagues on the museum staff were "open to discussion." He reminded ATADA members that the museum had to appeal to a broad audience, and then gave a brief biography of uber-collector George Heye, calling him "a comprehensive collector," and a brief history of NMAI. "You can learn a lot just by seeing and touching 2,000 pairs of moccasins," he pointed out.
During Q&A session, Mike Kokin said that he was disappointed that there was not enough emphasis on historic objects. Bernstein replied, "We are a cultural and an art museum. Native people are concerned with emotional value as well as knowledge."
Terry Schurmeier predicted that the museum "will grow on people."
Mike McKissick remarked that dealers need to find out as soon as possible what the venues will be for the 2006 shows [Editor's note: Barry Cohen's show will be back at the College of Santa Fe, and Marcia Berridge will know by sometime in October where her show will move, as the Sweeney Center will be demolished by the end of 2005.]
Mike Kokin suggested a poll be taken about the suitability of auction houses exhibiting at the August shows. Marcy Burns said she felt "everything on the floor should be for sale that day. I'm not against auctions,"
she said, ''but this is our place of business."
Mike McKissick spoke about the issue of early entry: "We should have two or three hours to set up and get first choice of the other material," he said. Elaine Tucker said she had talked to Marcia and that Marcia was open to discussing the issue. Deborah Begner said that early entry was especially difficult for people with one-man booths.
Marcy Burns pointed out that no other shows allow non-exhibitors to enter during set-up. "The promoters' loyalty should be to their vendors," she said, adding, "We want to set up and shop. That's why we pay for a booth. Early entry gives an unfair advantage to dealers who don't exhibit."
Mike McKissick announced that at that time [August 17], $51,000 was raised at the benefit BBQ and auction for Jay Evetts. [The mid-September total is more than $80,000.] Mike thanked everyone who gave, and especially mentioned Richard Corrow. "There were no auctioneers at that party," Ted Trotta pointed out. [Ron Munn excepted.]
After discussions with Marcia Berridge, Ramona Morris reports:
Marcia decided to give the dealers a two- hour window before allowing any other early buyers into set-up. Dealers can now have two hours to set up their booths in peace, and also have first chance to see each other's offerings. Marcia is also looking into opening the show earlier for dealer set-up, depending on logistics. She is committed to working with the dealers to keep this a top-tier show. She is presently looking into vetting by non-exhibiting experts, so there would be no conflict of interest.
From Norman's press release:
Indians and non-Indians have been exchanging gifts to mark friendly encounters since first contact. In a recent gesture of friendship, art dealer Norman Hurst, owner of Hurst Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his wife, Katherine B. Jones, Assistant Dean for Information Technology and Media Services at Harvard Divinity School, have given a Dine (Navajo) medicine man a sacred, antique, ceremonial healer's fan from their private collection.
Norris Nez, the Hataali (medicine man; singer) who identified the fan, informed Hurst and Jones that it would be most welcome, because his own, similar fan had become quite worn and fragile from many years of use in healing ceremonies and religious rituals. He said that this fan was used in the Beautyway; Blessingway Ceremony, a central rite of Dine culture.
Hurst and Jones are honoring the Dine belief that such sacred objects should not be sold or even displayed outside of their cultural, religious context. They are delighted, not only that the fan is being returned to the people who created it; but, more importantly, that in the future it will play an important role in the ongoing religious and healing practices for which it was created. As a token of their appreciation, Norris's wife, Lena Nez, a noted Dine weaver, has made a reciprocal gift of one of her prized weavings. Although the fan may not be shown, owing to its sacred nature, there is a photo of Norris and Lena. The weaving hangs in the photo of Norman and Katherine.
Although Hurst and Jones and Norris and Lena Nez have not met directly, their relationship and the identification of the fan and its cultural significance was fostered by Carol Halberstadt, cofounder and coordinator of Black Mesa Weavers for Life and Land, a Special Project of Cultural Survival, Inc. The nonprofit weavers' organization was created in 1998 to help restore economic and social self-sufficiency to the Dine of the Black Mesa region of northeastern Arizona by maintaining traditional, sustainable life ways based on sheepherding and the fair-trade marketing of wool and weavings. In addition to receiving fair prices for their products, the Black Mesa Weavers have been awarded grants to develop solar-powered windmills as a source of renewable energy, and to establish a handspun yarn enterprise using the unique fleece from their rare Navajo-Churro sheep.
The Hurst Gallery is at 53 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA, www.hurstgallery.com.
First, the Updates:
July 7, 2005
July 6, 2005
July 11, 2005
July 18, 2005
July 29, 2005
Datelined Seattle, Egan's story began, "The bones, more than 350 pieces, were laid out on a bed of sand, a human jigsaw with ancient resonance. Head to toe, one of the oldest and best-preserved sets of remains ever discovered in North America was ready to give up its secrets.
"After waiting 9 years to get a close look at Kennewick Man, the 9,OOO-year-old skeleton that was found on the banks of the Columbia River in 1996 and quickly became a fossil celebrity, a team of scientists spent 10 days this month examining it.
"They looked at teeth, bones and plaque to determine how he lived, what he ate and how he died. They studied soil sedimentation and bone calcium for clues to whether he was ritually buried, or died in the place where he was found. They measured the skull, and produced a new model that looks vastly different from an earlier version.
"And while they were cautious about announcing any sweeping conclusions regarding a set of remains that has already prompted much new thinking on the origins of the first Americans, the team members said the skeleton was proving to be even more of a scientific find than they had expected.
" 'I have looked at thousands of skeletons and this is one of the most intact, most fascinating, most important I have ever seen,' said Douglas W. Owsley, a forensic anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. " 'It's the type of skeleton that comes along once in a lifetime.'
"He said the initial job of the team was to 'listen to the bones,' and the atmosphere, judging from the excitement of the scientists as they discussed their work, was electric.
"Dr. Owsley said answers to the big questions about Kennewick Man - where he fits in the migratory patterns of early Americans, his age at the time of death, what type of culture he belonged to - will.come in time, after future examinations.
" 'But based on what we've seen so far, this has exceeded my expectations,' said Dr. Owsley, leader of the 11-member team and one of the scientists who sued the government for access to the bones. 'This will continue to change and enhance our view of early Americans.'
"In preparation for the initial examination, the hip and skull were flown to Chicago, where they went through high-resolution CT scans, much more detailed than hospital scans. Those three-dimensional pictures were used to produce casts and replicas of the bones.
"For now, the team has finished what amounts to a sort of autopsy, with added value. To that end the examination, which took place under extraordinary circumstances at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington, was aided by a forensic anthropologist,
Hugh Berryman of Nashville, who often assists in criminal investigations.
" 'This is real old C.S.I.,' said Dr. Berryman, referring to the crime scene investigations that inspired the hit television shows. "The skeleton caused a furor from the time of discovery, making waves far beyond the academic realm, after an examining anthropologist said it appeared to have 'Caucasoid' features. One reconstruction made Kennewick Man look like Patrick Stewart, the actor who played Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation.'
" American Indian tribes in the desert of the Columbia River Basin claimed the man as one of their own, calling him the Ancient One. The tribes planned to close off further examination and to bury the remains, in accordance with a federal law that says the government must turn over Indian remains to native groups that can claim affiliation with them.
"A group of scientists sued, setting off a legal battle, while the bones remained in the custody of the Army Corps of Engineers.
"In 2002, a federal magistrate, John Jelderks of Portland, Ore., ruled that there was little evidence to support the idea that Kennewick 'is related to any identifiable group or culture, and the culture to which he belonged may have died out thousands of years ago.'
"The ruling, backed by a federal appeals court last year, cleared the way for the scientists to begin their study.
"After being dragged into the culture wars, Kennewick Man remains a delicate subject - something that was clear in how the examining scientists parsed their descriptions of the skull at the end of 10 days of study. David Hunt, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian who was instrumental in remodeling the skull, said he was sure there would be criticism of his reproduction, but he said it was based on the latest and most precise measurements of the head. He said it was accurate to within less than a hundredth of an inch.
" Standing by the translucent model inside the Burke, Dr. Hunt said, 'I see features that are similar to other Paleo Indians,' referring to remains older than 7,000 years that have been found in North America.
"But his colleague at the Smithsonian Dr. Owsley said that term was imprecise. 'It should be Paleo-American,' Dr. Owsley said. 'These bones are very different from what you see in Native American skeletons.'
"Earlier, other anthropologists said that Kennewick Man most resembled the Ainu, aboriginal people from northern Japan. The scientists who examined Kennewick Man this month did not dispute that designation, but they said fresh DNA testing, carbon dating and further examinations would give them more accurate information. Earlier DNA testing, done during the court cases, failed to turn up matches with contemporary cultures.
One key to Kennewick Man's life and times will be the stone spear point that was found embedded in his hip bone. Dr. Owsley said it was clear that the man did not die of the projectile, which had been snapped off. 'This was a healed-over wound,' he said. But the spear point, which was made of basalt, will be the guiding clue as anthropologists seek a match to other cultures.
"Kennewick Man's discovery brought fresh vigor to the discussion over how the Americas were inhabited. Earlier theories held that people crossed a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska. But Kennewick Man, along with a few other findings, suggested that there were waves of migration by different people, some possibly by boat.
"The scientists who examined the skeleton, and their supporters, still fear that a political move could cut off future study. On behalf of several tribes, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and chairman of the committee that controls Indians affairs, has introduced an amendment to the law the governs custody of ancient remains.
"His proposed change would broaden the definition of Native American remains, expanding it to well into the past. Indians say such a change is needed to protect ancient ancestors, while others say it will make it nearly impossible to study ancient remains, even if they have little or no connection to present tribes.
"But as the scientists finished their 10-day study of Kennewick Man, with plans to report the results in October, the politics for once seemed to take a back seat to the giddiness of discovery.
" 'This is like an extraordinary rare book,' Dr. Berryman said, 'and we're reading it one page at a time.
"As you read this," Vincent began, "criminals somewhere in the world are destroying portions of mankind's past. With backhoe and shovel, chainsaw and crowbar, they are wrenching priceless objects from sites in the mountains of Peru, the coasts of Sicily, and the deserts of Iraq. Brutal and uncaring, these robbers leave behind a wake of decapitated statues, mutilated temples, and pillaged trenches where archaeologists were seeking clues to little-understood civilizations. The results of this looting include disfigured architectural monuments, vanished aesthetic objects, and an incalculable loss of information about the past. And it shows no signs of diminishing.
"As you continue to read, other people across the globe are purchasing some of mankind's oldest and most exquisite
creations. Contemplating ancient statues, vases, and stelae, many of these purchasers experience antiquities' near-mystical power to connect them to the past or to transcend time through beauty. Proud of their efforts, these private collectors, commercial dealers, and museum curators view themselves as temporary caretakers of timeless treasures. Their love for these artifacts often resembles the passion one associates with religious fervor. It, too, shows no signs of diminishing.
"At first glance, the connection between those who loot antiquities and those who collect, trade, and preserve them seems the stuff of academic seminars and journals. Yet such is the allure of ancient treasures that, since the 1970s, this relationship has spawned global treaties, inflamed Third World nationalism, created a secretive Washington bureaucracy, and triggered federal prosecutions. To some, this international cooperation reflects the ability of the world's nations to unite to protect an endangered world resource. To others, it demonstrates the hazards resulting when 'feel-good' multinationalism collides not only with the sovereignty of the United States but with the basic human desire to surround oneself with objects of beauty.
" 'We have a situation in this country today where American citizens pursue their legal rights under the shadow of prosecution by foreign laws, and private and public collections of antiquities are at risk to the demands of cultural ministers in other countries,' says New York lawyer William Pearlstein. 'The antiquities situation is a mess,' echoes Kate Fitz Gibbon, a Santa Fe dealer in Central Asian artifacts. 'We're heading for a major crisis in the near future.'
Artifactual Dispute
"It's been a decade since I first wrote about 'cultural patrimony,' the question of who has the right to own and exhibit mankind's aesthetic and archaeological treasures. At the time, stories were proliferating about looters plundering the temples of Cambodia's Angkor Wat and the tombs of Mali's Niger River delta. Archaeologists were still buzzing about the Metropolitan Museum's 1993 repatriation to Istanbul of the so-called 'Lydian Horde' of gold objects, which smugglers had illegally excavated from Turkey and sold to the museum. I found the topic abstruse, filled with mind-numbing legal documents and visually stunning artifacts. All I knew for sure was that collector demand for these objects created incentives for looters to pillage archaeological sites in Third World countries. End the international antiquity trade, I thought, and the looting in those 'source' nations would stop.
"In the late 1990s, though, my investigations brought me to an urbane but down-to-earth antiquities dealer named Frederick Schultz. In his 57th Street gallery, filled with vitrines displaying relics of Chinese, Etruscan, and other ancient civilizations, the boyish Schultz explained the viewpoint championed by the 'trade.' Looting is indeed a problem, he conceded, but critics of dealers were wrong. The international antiquities market-together with the private and public collections it supplies-preserves ancient treasures and disseminates their beauty and influence across the globe. 'A strong market assures a free flow of antiquities and acts in the best interests of everyone--archaeologists, collectors, and the people in source and market nations,' Schultz argued.
"He was persuasive. But then, as the head of the New York-based National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental, and
Primitive Art, he had to be; he was a high profile defender of the trade and an adviser to the Clinton administration on issues involving antiquities.
"Cultural patrimony was the focus of a complex, three-sided debate. On one side, there are the 'internationalists': academics, dealers, and collectors who advocate a vigorous but regulated market as the best way to protect antiquities and promote global understanding and universal values. 'The moment the Soviet Union fell, the world plunged into ethnocentricity,' says George Ortiz, a celebrated collector of classical and Middle Eastern antiquities. 'Instead of each group claiming its own heritage, we need to create a common culture by allowing art and antiquities to circulate around the world.'
"Opposed to this view is a second group comprised of source nation officials and Western academics who believe cultural patrimony is linked to a people's identity and sense of self-determination. As Claude Daniel Ardouin, then director of Senegal's West African Museum Program, once told me, 'Our cultural heritage tells us who we are. I find it unacceptable that big dealers are sitting around in their shops in Paris and New York thinking about the pretty objects they are going to take from my country.' These 'nationalists' generally call for a trade that is limited, heavily regulated, and open to public scrutiny.
"The third party is the most extreme.
It consists of archaeologists who castigate the trade for removing cultural artifacts from their indigenous context, rendering them useless for scientific study. Unlike the nationalists, many archaeologists oppose the export of cultural property to insure its preservation and accessibility. 'One cares about the people and the area in which we work, but our primary interest is to understand the history of the country,' says Colin Renfrew, a member of the British House of Lords and director of the Cambridge University-based McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Many in this group would like to see the antiquities trade shut down altogether. According to Boston University archaeologist Ricardo Elia, 'Collectors and dealers are dinosaurs. They think it's still the 18th century, when you could rip things out of the ground and put them on your mantle.'
The Long Arm of Mexican Law
"The nationalists' and archaeologists' illiberal amalgam of Third World nationalism, anti-capitalist sentiment, and distrust of aesthetic connoisseurship dates back to the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. The first major international agreement to protect cultural property from thieves and smugglers, the convention created a legal framework allowing signatory governments to negotiate for the return of looted items. Over the years, UNESCO followed with further "recommendations" that clarified international rules for protecting and exchanging cultural property. These pronouncements reflected an increasingly anti-market bias. In 2001, for example, UNESCO declared that 'underwater cultural heritage shall not be commercially exploited.'
"The U.S. signed the convention in 1972, and in ] 983 Congress passed the Cultural Properties Implementation Act (CPIA), which established a process by which source nations could request U.S. import bans on archaeological material originating within their borders. Legislators hoped restricting
entry into the American market would help reduce looting. Mindful of UNESCO's antimarket bias, however, they included in the CPIA measures to protect dealers, collectors, and museums. 'We felt we were in the business of encouraging the legitimate circulation of cultural objects,' says Meredith Palmer, who as a State Department official in the 1970s helped develop the legal and intellectual framework for the CPIA. 'We took pains to ensure that any law based on the convention reflected the interests of the American people.'
"Be that as it may, the result was a classic example of what happens when the state decides to limit or prevent people from doing what they feel is their natural right, in this case purchasing antiquities. Under the CPIA, a nation seeking U.s. import restrictions on cultural objects must submit a petition giving its reasons for the request, documenting, among other topics, the severity of the looting problem and the country's own efforts to curtail it. Further, it must identify categories of endangered objects and specific sites jeopardized by robbers. An advisory committee reviews the request, then passes its recommendations to an anonymous State Department official empowered to approve the petition, generally for a period of five years.
"The law does not require this official to declare reasons for the restrictions. Nor must the State Department provide the public with any documentation to support the decision. Even the advisory committee is not privy to all information. 'The process is frustrating and shrouded in secrecy,' says Santa Fe dealer Fitz Gibbon, who served on the committee from 2001 to 2003.
"Worse, the CPIA proved ineffective in protecting the interests of American citizens. In November 1995, U.S. Customs agents entered the New York home of collector Michael Steinhardt and confiscated a third-to-fourth-century Sicilian gold bowl or 'phiale' that Steinhardt acquired from a New York dealer for $1.2 million. In February 1995, Italian authorities had requested the U.S. government's help in retrieving the phiale, which they claimed was part of Italy's cultural patrimony. (Italian law claims state ownership of all antiquities located in Italy, except for those privately owned before 1902.) Using the guidelines of the National Stolen Property Act (NSPA), U.S. officials agreed the phiale was stolen property. But as Steinhardt's defenders noted, Italy had not requested import restrictions under the CPIA. So what right did customs agents have in accusing Steinhardt of possessing stolen property and invading his home to confiscate it?
"Enter McClain v. the United States, the most controversial aspect of the cultural patrimony issue in this country and a source of continuing acrimony and contention. When federal agents entered Steinhardt's home to confiscate the 'stolen' phiale, they based their action on the 1977 case of an appraiser, Patty McClain, whom American authorities had arrested for carrying pre-Columbian antiquities across the Mexican border into the U.S. In that judgment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans, using Mexican law to define stolen archaeological property, upheld McClain's conviction. To put it another way, an American citizen was arrested, convicted, and jailed in the U.s. based on the cultural property laws of a foreign nation. 'In my opinion' says Stanford University law professor John H. Merryman, a staunch supporter of regulated international antiquities trade, "McClain was poorly decided."
"In Steinhardt's case, that 25-year-old ruling permitted Italy to assert its state ownership laws in American courts, thus turning the phiale into stolen property under U.S. law. Steinhardt unsuccessfully appealed in 1997, and the phiale was returned to Italy. The shock waves from the case are still being felt. Says Ashton Hawkins, former counsel to the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum:
"The government made a lot of people apprehensive by seeming able to seize anything on the basis of a complaint from a foreign government. When the U.S. begins to enforce foreign laws against private citizens without due process, this is trouble."
The Antique Dealer in the Flak Jacket
"Emboldened by the Steinhardt case, anti-market forces, particularly archaeologists, intensified their attacks. They began portraying dealers and collectors as greedy plunderers running what one archaeologist called a 'vast international network' to loot countries in Central America, Europe, Egypt and the Middle East. Ricardo Elia once declared to me that he wanted to make collecting as 'socially distasteful as smoking cigarettes, wearing fur, or eating an endangered species.' Lord Renfrew has accused major American museums of 'stimulating much of the looting in the world. One Park Avenue collector told me he felt like donning a 'flak jacket in public, like I was an abortion doctor.' A new clamor arose concerning the world's most notorious case of 'cultural plunder': the Elgin Marbles, sculptures from the Parthenon that Britain's Lord Elgin purchased in the early 19th century and shipped back to England. The British Museum has them on display, ignoring Greece's repeated requests for their return.
"Whenever I dropped by Schultz's gallery, I found the director writing letters, articles, and legal briefs defending the trade. 'This is ridiculous!' he griped one afternoon. I read that archaeologists liken our profession to international drug dealers. They're saying we rake in $5 billion a year in dirty profits! Do you know what we estimate the entire international antiquities trade amounts to? Around $200 million a year! Where do they get the nerve?'
"As the archaeologists stepped up their assault, the trade sharpened its arguments and continues to assert them today. 'We have to,' says New York dealer Jerry Eisenberg. 'The charge that we're somehow responsible for the "rape of the land" makes a greater impact on the public than our arguments about the benefits of trade.' Stanford's Merryman frequently criticizes source country laws that define antiquities as state property. Egypt and Turkey, for example, assert ownership of certain privately held objects within their borders, including some owned for generations. Merryman argues that such laws ensure that the supply of material remains short, thereby creating a lucrative black market. Others, such as collector Ortiz, note that source countries maintain warehouses and storerooms filled with thousands of uncatalogued antiquities, many of which are just 'rotting away.'
"Critics also observe that source countries are often unable or unwilling to pay their citizens for the antiquities they discover. Dealers maintain that many items are tomb objects uncovered by accident, for instance by farmers tilling their fields. If the farmers cannot sell what they discover in a legitimate market, and if their government will not buy such artifacts from them, they have two choices (aside from simply letting the state appropriate the finds): destroy the objects or sell them illegally.
"There is also a problem of terminology, trade supporters argue. Many source country export laws blur the distinction between 'looted,' 'illegally exported,' 'stolen,' and 'unprovenanced' objects, thereby making it appear as if dealers operate some vast criminal enterprise, when there are subtle but significant differences between those terms. For example, critics of the trade, including many journalists, unjustifiably assume that any antiquity without a solid early provenance probably has been looted.
'The burden of proof is on us, and that's unfair,' Schultz frequently argued. 'For hundreds of years, people have been buying and selling objects without keeping or publishing proper records. Many collections were built decades ago; contrary to what the archaeology Hezbollah maintains, there are bona fide old collections.'
Teachings of Buddhas
"In the winter of 2001, an event occurred that bolstered arguments in favor of an international antiquities market: Afghanistan's Taliban regime destroyed two colossal third-century sandstone sculptures of Buddha at Bamiyan. Although the statues, each standing more than 100 feet tall, were too large for purchase, their fate posed uncomfortable questions for source country nationalists and archaeologists. What happens when a country's government decides to eliminate rather than retain its cultural heritage? In such a case, wouldn't leaving objects in their archaeological sites threaten their existence? International trade, by contrast, would bring artifacts to safe harbor in private collections and museums.
" 'The market gives objects value,' contends noted New York collector Shelby White. 'Like we saw at Bamiyan, source countries often destroy temples for political or religious reasons. Other times, they simply use ancient columns and pillars for new construction. Then you have cases where common people who find antiquities often melt them down for the gold, or simply throw them away. They don't care about the craftsmanship or beauty of the object.'
"These problems are not confined to rogue nations. For example, China's Three Gorges Dam project, when completed, will submerge countless undiscovered antiquities beneath a 400-mile reservoir. 'A stronger market system could have created incentives for Chinese officials to excavate and preserve the objects and sell them,' notes Jim Fitzpatrick, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who lobbies Congress on behalf of the trade. 'When they permanently flood untold numbers of irreplaceable artifacts, how much does China really care about their antiquities?'
"But if market supporters felt the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas and the Three Gorges Dam had finally given the trade the moral high ground, their victory was short-lived. In July 2001 federal prosecutors accused a prominent antiquities dealer of handling objects that a confederate had smuggled from Egypt. For the trade, this was a catastrophe. Because the government based the indictment largely on McClain, a conviction in the case risked confirmation of that notorious ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which has jurisdiction over the New York art market. Not only that, but the indicted dealer was none other than Frederick Schultz.
"Schultz's trial, held in February 2002, was a veritable how-to guide for smuggling ancient artifacts. The star witness against the
dealer was the former British cavalry officer and master antiquities restorer Jonathan Tokeley-Parry. According to Tokeley-Parry's testimony, from 1990 to 1994 he purchased numerous items, including statuary, from Egyptian 'farmers and builders,' used his restoration skills to disguise them as tourist tchotchkes, and spirited them out of the country.
"His actions violated Egyptian Law 117, which states that any antiquities found within the country's borders are state-owned and thus cannot be exported or sold. Tokeley-Parry (who evidently turned against Schultz in order to shorten a prison sentence in England involving other smuggled Egyptian antiquities) testified that Schultz sold these and other illegally acquired objects to Western collectors, claiming they originated from the fictitious' Allcock Collection,' supposedly begun in the 1920s.
Buy an Antique, Hire a Lawyer
"In response, Schultz portrayed himself as an innocent associate of Tokeley-Parry, hounded by overzealous prosecutors. Egypt itself had made no claim for the objects the Englishman had taken out of the country, the dealer argued. Furthermore, Egypt had never requested import restrictions as required by the CPIA. The only justification the U.S. government had in declaring Tokeley-Parry's objects as 'stolen property' was Law 117. And the only reason it could use foreign law to accuse Schultz of a crime was the McClain ruling. 'If the court agrees that Congress intended the CPIA to set our country's policies toward antiquities, then Fred has a good chance of acquittal,' a lawyer supporting Schultz told me at the time. "If the court decides to apply McClain, he could be in trouble.'
"U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff applied McClain. Ruling that the CPIA and McClain were not mutually exclusive, he upheld the government's contention that under U.s. law Tokeley-Parry stole objects from Egypt; prosecutors then worked to prove that Schultz knowingly handled these pilfered artifacts. After a brief deliberation, the jury found the dealer guilty of a single charge of conspiring to handle stolen property. In June 2002 Rakoff sentenced him to 33 months in prison and a $50,000 fine.
"For the anti-trade camp, this was Wellington at Waterloo. A highly respected dealer had been convicted for his involvement in a smuggling operation, proving beyond a doubt the link between the antiquities trade and looting. Moreover, Schultz's conviction affirmed McClain in the 2nd Circuit, the heart of the antiquities trade. 'McClain is now established in the 5th, 2nd, and 9th circuits,' notes Patty Gerstenblith, a DePaul University law professor and former president of the Archaeological Institute of America. 'I don't think market people recognize what an important legal development this is. They're in denia1.'
"Not all of them. 'The fact that the 2nd Circuit upheld McClain is huge, no doubt about it,' agrees Fitzpatrick, the Washington lawyer. "But how far will prosecutors take it? Does this mean that anyone who purchases an antiquity in the U.S. has to hire. a lawyer first, to make sure the purchase doesn't violate a foreign country's patrimony laws? What's the state of these laws around the world? Which ones apply, which ones don't?' Fitz Gibbon, the Santa Fe dealer, says, 'I fear the government is gearing up for more prosecutions, using McClain and the NSPA. Where will it end? This will only be settled by some huge court case involving a museum collection, I'm afraid.'
"Schultz's conviction did not bring a truce to the cultural patrimony wars. The bitterness continues, with archaeologists and the trade each rallying around a new cause celebre. For the archaeologists, it is the purchase last fall by the Cleveland Museum of a bronze statue of Apollo, between 1,700 and 2,400 years old. The object's documentation dates back to an East German lawyer who claims to have discovered it on his family estate in the 1990s. 'This is just simply not a convincing provenance,' contends Malcolm Belt a professor of art history at the University of Virginia and a vice president of the Archaeological Institute of America.
"Worse, the museum purchased the work from Phoenix Ancient Art, a business headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, owned by brothers Ali and Hicham Aboutaam. Last year an Egyptian court sentenced Ali in absentia to 15 years in prison for smuggling; last June, Hicham pleaded guilty in New York to a federal charge of falsified documents pertaining to an ancient silver vessel that the Phoenix Gallery sold for $950,000. 'How, in this day and age, can a respectable museum do this?' demands Lord Renfrew. 'Doesn't the American taxpayer realize they are subsidizing the purchase of items like these through government support of museums? I find it curious there is not more outrage.'
"As for the trade, its members are currently preparing to do battle over a CPIA request submitted last May by the People's Republic of China asking for restrictions on an array of objects, including non archaeological works like calligraphy and paintings dating from as recently as 1912. Says the New York-based Asian dealer James Lally, 'I fear that these import restrictions are so broad they may inhibit the legitimate trade in Chinese material and chill the honorable practice of collecting.'
"In the past, dealers note, the Chinese government did not want to shame itself by seeking U.S. help to curb its looting problem, relying instead on Chinese collection to buy back the nation's cultural patrimony. So why make a request now?
"One theory posits that a new and more nationalistic director of the State Bureau of Cultural Relics has pushed for these restrictions. Others believe it's part of a quid pro quo: China cracks down on pirated CDs, and we close off our shores to Chinese material, helping to boost China's domestic market for antiquities. Or perhaps, as the dean of Chinese dealers, Robert Elsworth, suggests, 'Instead of letting construction projects like the Three Gorges Dam destroy objects, China may simply let looters take them out of the country, then use U.S. Customs officials to intercept and return them back to China.' In keeping with the secrecy surrounding these petitions, a State Department spokesman says officials are reviewing China's request and have yet to schedule private or public meetings on the issue.
Hidden Objects
"No resolution to this conflict is in sight. Changes have certainly occurred, though. Take Iraq. So far, few objects looted from the war-torn country have appeared on the market. 'Five years ago, you would have seen Iraqi objects up and down Madison Avenue,' comments DePaul's Gerstenblith. 'Our efforts have proven successful in that area.' (Others argue that thieves simply have filled up warehouses with pilfered Iraqi antiquities, waiting for the statute of limitations to expire.)
"Has the rate of worldwide looting actually diminished? 'I don't think so,' says collector White. 'Objects are going elsewhere-to Japan and Europe and the Middle East. All we've done is make public and private collections more vulnerable to claims from foreign countries. At the same time, we've made it harder for Americans to see the glories of the past."
Datelined, Rome, the story began, "The trial of Marion True, a curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles charged with conspiring to import illegally excavated antiquities, was postponed here Monday after a brief hearing in criminal court.
"The trial, which is being closely watched in the art world because of its potential repercussions for other museums with recently acquired antiquities, is now set to open on Nov. 16. The court said it was deferring it because the defendants had not received notice of the charges translated into
English.
"Neither Ms. True nor her co-defendant, Emanuel Robert Hecht, 86, an American art dealer based in Paris, attended the hearing in a drab, low-ceilinged courtroom near the Vatican. Both have denied the charges through their lawyers.
"As the Getty's antiquities curator, Ms. True, 56, oversees a vast collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan' objects that began with purchases by J. Paul Getty in the
1950's. During her two decades at the Getty, it has expanded to 50,000 objects through ambitious purchases and gifts from donors. "Italy has adopted tough new policies to thwart the trade in looted and illegally exported antiquities, which often eventually find their way to museums and private collectors in other countries.
" 'This case is a signal to those who have despoiled Italy's underground patrimony,' said Maurizio Fiorilli, a lawyer for Italy's Culture Ministry. 'It's telling them we've noticed.'
"The case involving Ms. True is linked to a 1995 raid on four warehouses in Geneva that brought to light thousands of artifacts. Italian investigators contend that some of them had been illegally excavated from sites in Italy and other Mediterranean countries. Investigators also found thousands of photographs of antiquities in the warehouses, some of which they say depict artifacts now in museums, including the Getty ...
"The warehouses were later traced to Giacomo Medici, a Rome resident described by Italy's police squad for art thefts as an orchestrator of much of the world's illegal traffic in archaeological artifacts.'
"Mr. Medici was originally indicted with Ms. True and Mr. Hecht but opted for 'fast-track prosecution,' a procedure that reduces any sentence that results from a conviction. In December Mr. Medici was handed a 10-year prison term and fined more than 10 million euros. The conviction is being appealed, and he has not been jailed.
"Mr. Medici, who attended Monday's hearing, scornfully dismissed the prosecution's case against him, which he said was based mostly on the Polaroid photos found in the Geneva warehouse. He asserted that some of the photos were planted there by investigators and in any case did not constitute enough evidence to prosecute.
" 'By condemning me based on the photos, they want to strike American museums,' he said. 'They' want to empty out American museums.' '
"Alessandro Vannucci, the lawyer representing Mr. Hecht, said that Mr. Medici's conviction 'Unfortunately could have an influence' on the case against Ms. True and Mr. Hecht, noting that Guglielmo Muntoni, the judge who ordered the two defendants to stand trial, is the same judge who found Mr. Medici guilty.
"But a lawyer for Ms. True, Franco Coppi, one of Italy's most prominent defense attorneys, argued that Mr. Medici's conviction would have no bearing on this current Case.
" 'Each trial is its own story,' he said. 'Someone can be guilty, someone else innocent.' "
Datelined Sitka, Alaska, the story began, " A smile crinkled Steve Johnson's face as he opened the express-mail package on his desk. The box was big enough to hold a new computer, but it was lined with insulation-and what Johnson extracted, frozen solid in separate plastic bags, were the body, talons, wings and head of a bald eagle. A separate bag held several long white tail feathers.
" 'Have you ever held a dead eagle?' he asked an astonished co-worker.
" Steve Johnson is a Tlingit Indian of the Sitka tribe of Alaska, and his extraordinary package was part of a striking environmental success story -- the rescue of the American bald eagle from the edge of extinction.
"Thirty years ago, as a result of pesticides, water pollution, hunting and other factors, bald eagles had vanished from all but the remotest comers of the nation that had made them a national symbol. Today, they can be found in every state except Hawaii, and are even making their home in a New York City park.
"But the eagles' comeback, still fragile at best, is threatened by an unusual confluence of factors. And, paradoxical as it may seem, Steve Johnson's package is linked to the policies and institutions that made the resurgence possible as well as to the new dangers that threaten it.
"What enabled eagles to return to areas they had vanished from was a nationwide effort to control pesticides and water pollution, plus the strictest wildlife protection law on the federal books. The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act says that anyone who so much as collects a fallen eagle feather off a forest floor could face as much as a year in jail and a $5,000 fine.
"The sole significant exemption from the ban is for American Indians, who have long venerated eagles in their religious observances and have used eagle feathers, heads and talons in the ceremonies and tribal regalia.
"That's where Steve Johnson and his unusual package come in. For more than three decades, the National Eagle Repository, an obscure federal agency near Denver, has quietly collected deceased eagles from zoos, highway departments and game wardens and distributed them to people so they could carryon religious and cultural practices without having to hunt or trap live birds. The repository sends about 1,700 eagles each year to American Indians across the country.
"But the system of legal protections and government-controlled distribution of eagle parts to Indians is showing signs of breaking down. Little-noticed by most Americans, the demand for eagle feathers has begun to soar. Black-market prices for eagle feathers and parts are climbing, too. And that, wildlife experts fear, could set off a wave of illegal poaching -- with disastrous results.
"One reason for the growing demand for feathers is that thousands of non-Indian practitioners of New Age religions have embraced Indian beliefs and ceremonies. Non Indian practitioners of Native American religions are arguing in federal court in Utah that restrictions on possessing eagle artifacts violate their constitutional right to freedom of religion.
"Demand is growing among Native Americans as well: Indian leaders, seeking a revival of the community bonds that can improve education and prevent alcoholism, are promoting a revival of traditional beliefs and ceremonies. As local powwows and other observances grow in number, so does the demand for eagle parts. Currently, it takes as long as five years to have a request filled by the National Repository.
"Many powwows now include competitions among American Indian performers, with cash prizes awarded, in part, for the most complete regalia. This year the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation is offering more than $200,000 in prizes at Schemitzun, an Algonquin word meaning 'feast of green corn and dance.' More than 3,000 participants are expected at the festival, near the tribe's Foxwoods Resort and Casino in Connecticut, for the dance competition alone.
"Then there are the private collectors of Indian artifacts, many of them in Europe, who pay tens of thousands of dollars for authentic regalia adorned with eagle feathers.
"With demand outstripping legal supply, wildlife experts warn that any significant increase in the killing of eagles could undermine their continued recovery. The eagle population cycle is especially vulnerable to disruption by hunters and trappers because the birds' reproductive cycle is long,slow and barely able to maintain itself even under favorable circumstances.
'Eagles are vulnerable to shooting because they produce few young,' said Jody Millar, bald eagle recovery coordinator for the U.5. Fish and Wildlife Service in Illinois. 'The way they thrive in numbers is through longevity.'
"Eagles are usually between 4 and 8 years old when they pair up and begin laying eggs. They remain productive for about 10 years, usually having one successful chick per year. In harsh climates, where they live only about 12 years, a typical couple will produce only six fledglings. No more than half of the baby eagles that survive long enough to fly will reach adulthood.
" 'Any animal that has a low reproductive rate is going to be sensitive to new sources of mortality,' said James Fraser, an eagle specialist at Virginia Tech who has been studying their reproductive patterns since 1974.
"Golden eagles between 2 and 3 years old are especially tempting targets for hunters and trappers because their black and white feathers are most prized by collectors, ceremonial dancers and religious practitioners.
"As things stand, to honor Indian treaties, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will issue a permit for eagle feathers to anyone with a government-issued Certificate of Indian Birth, but such permits are not frequently checked. Sam Jojola, a special agent with the Fish and Wildlife Service, said checking permits would take too long for the fewer than 200 federal wildlife agents in the field. 'I'm more interested in the most egregious wildlife violations we can find,' Jojola said.
"Native Americans retained the right to hunt eagles well into the 20th century. After the government banned eagle hunts, it created the permit system and the repository to allow Indians to maintain their religious practices. But the permit and repository system is under legal attack in the Utah case, which will be argued before a U.S. District Court judge in Salt Lake City this summer.
"The defendants, who are being prosecuted by the federal government for possession of eagle feathers, are Utah residents Samuel R. Wilgus Jr., Raymond Hardman, and Christopher and Faye Beath. Wilgus is a member of a Christian sect called the Native American Church; Hardman and the Beaths have spent much of their lives on the remote Uintah and Ouray Reservation, taking part in local American Indian ceremonies. None is Native American.
"In separate cases in the 1990s, Wilgus and Hardman were found guilty of illegally possessing eagle feathers. Each appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which in August 2002 ordered their cases reheard by the district court to determine whether the government was violating a federal religious freedom law by allowing only members of officially recognized Indian tribes to have feathers. The Beaths were charged in 2000 with illegally possessing eagle parts.
"The defendants call the permit system discriminatory and ineffective, saying that the government's restrictions go beyond what is necessary to protect eagles and preserve Native American culture. They predict that the black market will grow under current policies. One measure of the rising demand they say is the fact that the Eagle Repository's waiting list, now as long as five years, was only a few months long just a decade ago.
"Hardman was using a bundle of feathers to purify his truck after transporting a relative's body to a funeral. At the time, he had a wife and two children with Certificates of Indian Birth, and they regularly took part in religious ceremonies together. When he was given a feather bundle by a Hopi practitioner in Arizona, he promptly called the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to get a possession permit.
"He was told he was ineligible because of his bloodline. Though his wife and children had Certificates of Indian Birth and he was an accepted practitioner of American Indian religion, he was not a member of a tribe. 'They told me not to even bother -- that the best thing for me to do would be to turn over my feathers to the authorities' Hardman said. Instead, he hung the feathers from the rear-view mirror of his Ford pickup. They stayed there until 1996, when his wife left him and turned him in to tribal police. "Hardman is angry at being prosecuted because, he said, some Indians trap, trade and even sell eagle feathers. They don't get caught, he said, because police never check permits.
"'If you are buying or selling eagle parts, the likelihood of being detected is slim to none' said Jojola, the Fish and Wildlife agent.
"Hardman said police should check Indians' permits, but Native American practitioners consider that idea offensive. 'It's the same as having to have a permit to carry a cross' said Ron Rader, a powwow dancer in Sacramento, whose regalia includes the wings and wing feathers of several golden eagles.
"But Native Americans warn that allowing non-Indians to possess feathers because they practice Indian religions would create new demand for black- market feathers and spur an increase in poaching. Edward Wemytewa, a tribal council member at Zuni Pueblo, a 500-year-old settlement in New Mexico, wrote in an affidavit for the prosecution, 'Today, there are very few places left on Zuni lands where eagles still live in the wild. Additional demand for eagle feathers would have a detrimental effect on the Zuni way of life.'
"Though practitioners condemn the killing or selling of eagles, wildlife police, eagle biologists and Indian leaders agree that such a black market exists. In 2000, one bald eagle and two golden eagles were killed and stolen from the Santa Barbara zoo; authorities believe the birds were targeted for their feathers. In an affidavit in the Utah case, Fish and Wildlife Special Agent Kevin Ellis wrote that the black-market price for a whole golden eagle carcass was about $1,200, a price that has tripled since the 1980s.
" 'It's a problem of supply and demand' said Cindy Schroeder, who retired last year from the Fish and Wildlife law enforcement division. 'Every additional dancer or worshiper is more demand. The supply is flying around in the air.'
"You don't need a seismograph to know when the earth quakes" the story began.
"That's not exactly the way the song goes, but it's not a bad way to summarize the conclusion of an article this spring in Seismological Research Letters. The article, by scientists, American Indians and others, found references in art and stories of natives. of the Pacific Northwest to the Cascadia earthquake of 1700.
"The quake, judged to be magnitude 9.0, had already been dated. Japanese records of a tsunami allowed geologists to pin it down to 9 p.m. on Jan. 26, 1700. Tree ring patterns in cedar roots were also used.
"But the Japanese were not the only people affected by the quake. Natives of the Pacific Northwest would have experienced a great quake and tsunami because the earthquake occurred in a fault only about 80 miles offshore.
"Their stories of flooding and earth shaking date the quake to the same time, according to the article. The events are also memorialized in mythical stories about Thunderbird and Whale, shown in a ceremonial screen. Thunderbird is sometimes drawn down into the sea by Whale, causing great disruption, and sometimes drops Whale on the land, causing it to quake.
"The authors note that stories and fables of floods and earth shaking occur elsewhere, like Sumatra and Sri Lanka, which have experienced disastrous Indian Ocean tsunamis."
"Quipus are the mysterious bundles of colored and knotted threads that served as the Inca empire's means of recording information," the story began. "The code of the quipus has long since been forgotten,
and the only major advance in understanding them was the insight, made in 1923, that the knots were used to represent numbers.
"The quantity and positioning of the knots, at least in certain quipus, is agreed to represent a decimal system.
"A new and possibly significant advance in deciphering the quipu system may now have been gained by two Harvard researchers, Gary Urton and Carrie J. Brezine. They believe they may have decoded the first word - a place name - to be found in a quipu (pronounced KWEE-poo), and have also identified what some of the many numbers in the quipu records may be referring to.
"Though a single word would be just the first step in a very long road, it would open the possibility of discovering a whole new level of meaning in the quipus.
"It could also resolve a longstanding controversy by establishing that quipus included a writing system and were not just personal mnemonic devices understood only by the person who made them, as some scholars have maintained.
"That in turn would help explain the 'Inca paradox,' that among states of large size and administrative complexity the Inca empire stands out as the only one that apparently did not invent writing. The paradox would be resolved if indeed the quipu encode a writing system as well as numbers.
"The Harvard researchers also have ideas about the nature of the item being so carefully tallied in the quipus under study: units of labor, like an ancient time log. The Inca empire, which lasted from about 1450 to 1532, depended on tribute levied in the form of a labor tax. Because of the importance of the tax for building the imperial roads and other public works, both the requisition and delivery of the labor days owed in tax were likely to have been carefully recorded by the Inca bureaucrats.
"Quipus were used both by high officials to issue instructions and by lower officials to report what they had done. It is easy to imagine a diligent accountant wanting to compare the outgoing quipu, or a copy of it, with the incoming response quipu.
"It's this kind of a reporting system that the Harvard researchers believe is reflected in a set of quipus recovered from Puruchuco, an archaeological site near Lima, Peru. Among a cache of 21 quipus recovered from a house, probably that of the chief quipu keeper, seven are clearly related in a three-tier accounting hierarchy.
"The quipus at the lowest level record groups of numbers. The middle-tier quip us summarize the figures from these and other, missing, quipus, in a double entry system, in that the same summaries from the lower level appear on two midlevel quipus. Information from the mid tier quipus is also summarized in a pair of top quipus.
"'We know a great deal of the bureaucracy was occupied in overseeing tribute labor for the state, so I suspect a large percentage of the quipu had to do with labor,' Dr. Urton said.
"If the Puruchuco quipu are indeed records of the labor tax, then one unit at the lowest level would represent one laborer day of work for the state. The quipu could, of course, be recording other things, like sacrifices or head of llama, Dr. Urton said, but units of labor seem to him the most likely.
"Since the quipu could represent instructions sent to the ruler of Puruchuco from the provincial governor, or accounting records sent from Puruchuco to the governor, it would have been useful for the records to carry a tag identifying the place they referred to.
"As it happens, all the quipu in the two top summarizing layers carry an initial set of knots designating three ones, as if I-II designated the place name for Puruchuco. The lowest level quipus do not carry this ZIP code, perhaps because they never left Puruchuco and so didn't need one.
"If this interpretation is accepted by other scholars, it would be the first meaning beyond the number system to be identified in quipus, Dr. Urton said.
"Galen Brokaw, a quipu expert at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said it was plausible to suggest the numbers being tallied in many quipu referred to the labor tax. Dr. Urtori' s identification of 1-1-1 as a place name would, if confirmed, be 'a substantive contribution to understanding how quipu worked,' Dr. Brokaw said. The proposal is fascinating, he said, but hard to verify because the provenance of most quipu is unknown.
"Only 700 or so quipu have been preserved, since the Spanish destroyed them as a matter of policy. About two-thirds are clearly numerical records, with knots placed in a series of levels, each corresponding to a power of 10. But scholars have been baffled by the nature of the remaining third, which embody some different meaning.
"Those who believe the non numerical quipu were just personal mnemonic devices cite a 17th-century Jesuit chronicler who reported that each quipu maker could understand only his own quipu, not those of others. But the chronicler may have been. misinformed, Dr. Urton wrote in his book 'Signs of the Inka Khipu,' because his report was made 70 years after the Spanish authorities in Lima had condemned quipu as idolatrous in a decree of 1583 and had ordered them burned.
"Dr. Urton believes that the Puruchuco hierarchy of quipus would have been made by different people and hence show information passing between them via quipu. This would be a significant finding, if true, since it points to the quipu encoding generally understood signs, not a personal set of signs.
" 'The use of conventional signs is my definition of writing,' Dr. Urton said. In the Puruchuco set, 'information is being passed through three different levels in ways suggestive of a conventional system.'
"Dr. Urton has previously suggested that structural features of quipu, like the type of knot, the handedness of the thread and its color, could constitute a seven-place binary system for encoding information, an idea supported by contemporary accounts that the Incas read the quipu by passing their hands along the knots as well as looking at them. But his analysis of the Puruchuco quipu did not invoke this hypothesis."
Datelined Phoenix, the story began, "Decorated with spirals and migration symbols, Nathan Begay's multicolored jar resembles an ancient assemblage of shards. But it's actually a synthesis of historical and modern: Mr. Begay, a 46-year-old artist of Hopi and Navajo descent, created it five years ago.
"Its inclusion with some 2,000 other objects in the Heard Museum's new exhibition of its permanent collection here reflects a sweeping change in the way museums are presenting Native American art. Rather than focusing on an ethnographic past, they are celebrating the full continuum of such art, juxtaposing contemporary pieces with historical ones and integrating native voices - often first-person narratives - into explanatory text and media.
"From the Heard, to the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, to the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, museums with substantial Native American collections are aggressively pursuing new work.
"To that end, dozens of museum officials will converge this weekend on Santa Fe, N.M., along with thousands of other private collectors, for the city's annual Indian Market. The gathering, which began in 1922, draws more than a thousand Native American artists who sell their work and compete in a juried competition held by the Southwestern Indian Arts Association. Museums seize the opportunity to discover contemporary artists and to become directly acquainted with them.
"Aside from its striking landscape, the Southwest continues to capture the public imagination because of the presence of Native American communities that keep their art, culture and language alive. The Heard's proximity to those communities and its first-person approach has led to some curatorial insights.
" 'It all starts with a commitment to get it right in the eyes of our native advisers and native communities,' said Frank H. Goodyear Jr., director of the Heard. 'We want to present the material in a way that connects to people and helps them understand native cultures, builds cultural sensitivity, builds cultural awareness, and makes them want to go beyond what they've seen.'
"The museum's installation, titled 'Home: Native People in the Southwest,' opened in a refurbished 21,000 square-foot gallery in May. It was years in the making: the Heard's previous permanent exhibition was in place for two decades.
"In June, the Eiteljorg in Indianapolis also opened a reinstallation of some of its Native American collections, in a new 45,000-square-foot wing. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., is developing a new installation as well. A common thread in these efforts is to display Native American holdings as full-fledged art objects, but with a heavy emphasis on process and context.
"The installation at the Heard, displayed by tribal geography, covers the spectrum of peoples in the region. More than 50 recorded interviews with members of Native American tribes serve as the foundation for themes like homeland, language, family and community that are explored in exhibition text and presentations on electronic kiosks.
"Pottery provides a natural introduction to the exhibition themes, since clay is gathered from homelands and a finished work serves not only as decoration and a means for carrying on aesthetic traditions, but also as a vessel for cooking and storing
food and water. Nampeyo, whose pottery is on view, was the matriarch of a dynasty of Hopi-Tewa potters and artists: a 1976 jar with a butterfly motif by her great-granddaughter Dextra Quotskuyva is on display nearby.
"Ms. Quotskuyva's son, Dan Namingha, carries on the tradition as a painter; his 'Red-Tailed Hawk Katsina' is one of the few paintings on view in the exhibition. 'My mother's work, the technical aspect is very traditional, but her ideas are contemporary in the sense that sometimes she'll capture something that relates to her currently,' Mr. Namingha said in a telephone interview. 'I'm the same way, and Nampeyo was the same way.'
"In general, museums are distancing themselves from presenting Native American art through the lens of only one discipline like art history or anthropology, said Mr. Goodyear of the Heard. 'Museums and native peoples have had a tenuous if not difficult relationship over the years,' he said, 'and that relationship hasn't been helped by the fact that the folks that have been traditionally interpreting the material have been non-native anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnographers, cultural historians and art historians.'
"The Heard began breaking down some of these barriers in the 1980's, Mr. Goodyear said, but today the hot issue remains, Who controls the material?
"W. Richard West Jr., director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, said that his curators try 'to emulate the original context as much as possible. That's why we have worked directly with communities, that's why we have asked them to talk about the objects themselves,' he said, adding, 'From the native standpoint, it was the process involved in the creation of an object that was far more important in the end than the object itself.'
"The often densely packed objects and video histories in the Heard's show make for a saturated sensory experience. In a video, Larry Brown, a San Carlos Apache, handles a circa-1900 hand-tanned buckskin saddlebag and explains that the cutout designs with red material underneath were peculiar to the Apaches. A Zuni jeweler, Dan Simplicio Jr., says in the text that much of the large-format Zuni jewelry was made to be worn in ceremonies by both participants and spectators so that it 'could be could be seen by the ancestors looking down showing that people are well and surrounded with beautiful things.'
"The bracelets, pendants and bolos of Jesse Monongya, a Navajo-Hopi artist who became a jeweler in the mid-1970s after serving in Vietnam, figures prominently in a 'Defending Home' section. Other objects in that area include a Navajo bracelet fashioned around a Purple Heart awarded in the 40s.
"Amid the debate over presentation, from videos to mounted objects to blending old and new, the distinction of 'art versus artifact' remains an important issue, said Dan Monroe, director of the Peabody Essex Museum. 'Native American art was collected not as art, and not really even as artifact, but really as specimen,' he said. 'That's why the vast majority of art collected from indigenous cultures resides in natural history museums. The reason was that flora, fauna, and "primitive" cultures all were conceived as being closely aligned. Certainly no one was talking or thinking about "native American art." That view held well into the 1930s.'
"At the Peabody Essex, 'we like to make it clear that Native Americans are here and are still creating art, albeit in very different ways in some respects than they did in the past, which is precisely what one would expect,' he said, adding, 'Cultures can't exist and be static.'
"Neither can museums, which is why the Heard's 'Home' exhibition includes room for change. By updating exhibitions, it aims to keep the public informed about contemporary Native American culture and counter stereotypes.
"These days, plenty of contemporary works address those stereotypes head on, like the digital photographs in 'Will Wilson:
Auto Immune Response,' part of ' Artspeak:
New Voices in Contemporary Expression,' a show running through Sept. 30 a t the Heard, and 'Iconoclash,' continuing through Jan. 16 at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe. In 'Iconoclash,' Marcus Amerman's 'Something Wicked' depicts a train pulling cargo that includes Buffalo Bill, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, and the American flag, among other objects and personalities. In the foreground, buffalo are scattering in fear.
" 'The train is just American culture coming into this continent and all the things good, bad and strange it brings,' the artist said in an interview. David Bradley's sculpture 'Land O'Fakes' in the same show confronts fraud in the Indian art market and 'the commodification of Indian culture - the packaging of it in an attractive way to make money,' as the artist puts it. It is not clear whether the Indian princess he depicts is a Native American or a white woman dressed in Indian clothing. The logo on the back of the sculpture reads 'Land O'Bucks,' and the top mimics the packaging for 'Land O'Lakes' butter. (The company is based in Minnesota, and Mr. Bradley is a Minnesota Chippewa,)
"In his paintings, Mr. Bradley reinterprets popular imagery in a native context. His 'To Sleep, Perchance to Dream' for example, is modeled after Henri Rousseau's 'Sleeping Gypsy.'
" 'While the Indian is sleeping, his homeland is being turned into a huge tourist attraction - Hollywood on the Rio Grande' the artist said."
The story: "Two months before the chief antiquities curator of the J. Paul Getty Trust is to stand trial in Rome on charges of conspiring to receive illegally exported artworks, a newly revealed series of letters and photographs shows that the curator, Marion True, maintained close ties to dealers suspected of selling stolen art, The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday. Letters indicated the dealers were offering objects 'which appear to be from illegal excavations' and photographs showed the artifacts 'in an un restored state' that suggested they were recently looted, according to a confidential 2001 memo from the Getty's lawyer Richard Martin, a copy of which was obtained by The Los Angeles Times. In a statement, the Getty responded: 'The Times's story is based on privileged documents that have been stolen from the Getty. The Getty provided all of the materials that were requested and did not provide materials that were not requested.'
Italian authorities have identified 42 objects, including some of the Getty's most prized antiquities, as stolen and have demanded their return."
"The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have appointed Christina Hellmich to a newly created position with a title long enough to fill a business card: Curator of the Jolika Collection of New Guinea Art and Consulting Curator of Oceanic Art in the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.
"New York collectors Marcia and John Friede endowed the new curatorial position when they agreed to donate the bulk of their stellar New Guinea art holdings. They named the gift the Jolika Collection in honor of their grown children, John, Lisa and Karen.
"So few U.S. museums have concentrated on Oceanic art that the Jolika Collection, on top of the de Young Museum's already substantial material, will make the new museum the North American center for study of the arts of New Guinea. The galleries of Oceanic art named for the Friedes will make a spectacular centerpiece of the new de Young Museum when it opens on Oct. 15.
"With degrees from the University of Rochester and New York University, Hellmich comes to the de Young from the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. There, she served as a curator in the department of Oceanic art and as director of the department of Collections Management."
Datelined Washington, the story began, "In a move that will expand a strapped museum's resources, the Walt Disney Company donated a 525-piece collection of mainly West African traditional art on Thursday to the Smithsonian Institution, with the works to go to its National Museum of African Art.
"The art was amassed by Paul Tishman, the late New York real estate developer, and his wife, Ruth, in the 1960's and 70's and was sold to Disney two decades ago for $1 million. Experts' estimates of its current value vary wildly, from $20 million to $50 million.
" 'These works are unsurpassed in rarity and uniqueness,' Sharon F. Patton, the museum's director, said, adding, 'I think this will be a catalyst that will rekindle enthusiasm among curators, conservators and educators here and attract scholars.'
"Ms. Patton said the museum had only a modest acquisition fund, 'and that does not go very far when prices are so high. So we see this as a godsend gift of objects we would never be able to afford,' she said.
"Michael D. Eisner, who steps down as Disney's chief executive on Friday, came to Washington to announce the gift of the collection, which was acquired by a Disney subsidiary from the Tishmans shortly before he arrived at the company.
"One of the first things I did when I arrived - within two weeks - I was told that you should look at this collection,' he said on Thursday at the National Museum of African Art. 'So I went into a humidified warehouse, and there was an incredible collection of African art.'
"Mr. Eisner said that the art, known as the Walt Disney- Tishman Collection, had helped inspire staff members who worked on the movie 'The Lion King' and that some objects had been lent intermittently over the past two decades.
"Disney had originally planned to display the collection in one of its own sites but never followed through, he said, adding, 'We just didn't put our arms around it.'
" As calls for loans and gifts from the collection persisted - including an appeal from France's president, Jacques Chirac, who secured a loan for the Louvre, and from the Smithsonian's secretary, Lawrence M. Small - Mr. Eisner said he felt pressed to make a decision about it.
"So he decided about six weeks ago, he said, to give the collection to the Smithsonian because it was a national institution with a building - the National Museum of African Art - 'that could display it right.' His wife, Jane Breckenridge Eisner, who accompanied him for the announcement, is a member of the Smithsonian's board of trustees.
"On display as Disney and Smithsonian officials announced the gift were three pieces - including a rare 20th-century female headdress mask from the Lower Cross River in Nigeria fashioned from wood and antelope skin with hair styled like curved horns - that had already been transferred from the warehouses in Los Angeles where the art has been stored.
"African art specialists praised the collection, noting that it would be difficult to duplicate today given the rising prices for African art and the proliferation of fakes.
" 'It's the breadth of the collection and the choice pieces from around Africa that make this a historically important collection,' said Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins, a California-based art scholar who was the curator of an exhibition of works from the collection last year at the Disney American Heritage Gallery at Epcot in Orlando, Fla. - the first time Disney displayed any of these pieces.
"Among the collection's other highlights are an 18th-century copper alloy mask from the Edo tribe in Nigeria, a soapstone carving of a beetle-back man from Zimbabwe, and from Cameroon, a life-size 19thcentury statue of a seated king holding a weapon and the head of an enemy.
" 'There are some key pieces in the collection,' including the one from Cameroon, which has been displayed at the Louvre for three years, said Susan Vogel, an art historian at Columbia University and founder of the Museum for African Art in New York. Ms. Vogel was a curator for an exhibition of works from the collection for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1981. Ms. Vogel said the collection could be worth $50 million 'and probably more.'
"Alisa LaGamma, curator of African art at the Metropolitan, said the Cameroon figure 'is very powerful and monumental, and unsettling,' and alone may be worth more than $1 million.
"Ms. Patton, the Smithsonian's African museum director, said $20 million was probably a more realistic value for the collection, as did James Willis, a San Francisco dealer. He appraised the collection about
eight years ago; but noted that prices for African art had increased significantly since then.
"The collection, with its emphasis on West African art, will expand the National Museum of African Art's holdings, which are rich in works from Central Africa. The collection has a number of Yoruba pieces, including house posts from Nigeria as well as a 16th-century carved ivory hunting horn from Sierra Leone.'
"Ms. Vogel said the collection was important because of its range. 'He collected heartbreakingly tender, naturalistic, delicate and refined objects,' she said, 'and others that were terrifying like the Cameroon king.' "Ms. Patton said the additional pieces would allow the Smithsonian's African museum to 'make a 270-degree turn,' mounting traveling exhibitions while still maintaining a core exhibition of the quality that visitors expect to see.
"The museum will open a small exhibition of the works immediately, she said, and then mount a full exhibition with a catalog in February 2007."
EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
ATADA's Katrina Relief
Santa Fe Fundraising Party
We Love Jay!
Here is Mike McKissick's description of the benefit BBQ for Jay Evetts. Mike's as-we-go-to-press update: "I spoke with Bob Vandenberg today and the proceeds from the Santa Fe Bar-B-Que and Auction, along with other donations since, have reached the $80,000 figure."
In Memoriam
Andrew NagenSo many of us have known Andrew Nagen for so many years. He was a fixture in the Navajo rug business and was a philanthropist and museum founder as well. Here is a story on Andrew from the Albuquerque Journal, Wednesday, August 31, by Michael Davis with the headline, "Corrales Man Was a Philanthropist."
Andrew Nagen, expert in antique Native American textiles. September 1950 - August 2005. Died at his home in Corrales, New Mexico at 10:40am, August 26, 2005.
August ATADA Meetings
The annual Santa Fe board meeting was held on Sunday, August 14 at Roger and Pat Fry's and Susan and Clint Nagy's penthouse terrace at La Fonda (scene of the wonderful ATADA fundraising party the night before).
Bob Bauver
Merrill Domas
Roger Fry
Bob Gallegos
Alice Kaufman
Brant Mackley
Ramona Morris
Tom Murray
Wilbur Norman
Arch Thiessen
Len Weakley
The General Meeting was held on August 17 at Sweeney Center
Norman Hurst Donates Sacred Object to Navajo Medicine Man
Kennewick Man Updates Plus a New York Times Kennewick Man Story
Scientists spent an intense day Monday studying the Kennewick Man remains today at the Burke Museum in Seattle. The story, "Long day with bones leaves experts weary," has been posted to our site at: http://www.kennewick-man.com/kman/news/story/6685243p-65711S6c.html
Scientists begin studying the Kennewick Man remains today at the Burke Museum in Seattle. The story, "Kennewick Man under watchful eye of scientists," has been posted to our site at: http://www.kennewick-man.com/kman/news/story/6682532p-6569325c.html
Scientists are beginning to reveal some of the information from their first week of studying the ancient Kennewick Man bones. The story, "Kennewick Man's hip, skull replicas unveiled," has been posted to our site at:
http://www.kennewick-man.com/kman/news/story/6697688p-6584620c.html
Included with the story is a gallery of photos.
Last week, scientists studying the bones held a press conference to discuss . their findings so far. The story, "Scientists wrap up analysis of bones; report planned in October," has been posted to our site at:
http://www.kennewick-man.com/kman/news/story/6710361p-6597428c.html
Included with this story is a panoramic image from the press conference and two videos (one an interview with Doug Oswley and the other showing the acrylic skull). You will need the QuickTime plug-in to view these three videos.
An amendment to NAGPRA going through Congress could halt study of the Kennewick Man remains and other ancient finds. The story, "Debate over Kennewick Man's remains now with lawmakers," has been posted to our site at:
http://www.kennewick-man.com/kman/news/story/6759384p-6646511c.html
Included with this story is a panoramic image from the press conference and two videos (one an interview with Doug Oswley and the other showing the acrylic skull). You will need the QuickTime plug-in to view these three videos.
And from The New .York Times on the same subject, a July 19 story by Timothy Egan had the headline, "A Skeleton Moves From the Courts to the Laboratory."
Media File
Excerpts from recent newspaper, magazine and Internet articles of interest to the Membership. All opinions are those of the writers of the stories and of the people quoted, not of ATADA. Members are encouraged to submit press clippings or e-mail links for publication in the next Newsletter.
"Ancient Treasures for Sale: Do antique dealers preserve the past or steal it" asked Steven Vincent in an article in the online magazine "Reason" dated April 25, 2005. Tragically, Vincent was murdered in early August in Basra, Iraq, two days after The New York Times published his op-ed piece criticizing the Basra police.
And speaking of the problematic world of collecting antiquities, the headline for The New York TImes July 19 story by Elisabetta Povoledo read, "Trial of Curator at the Getty Postponed by Italian Court." See also the later, related story published in The Times on September 3.
"Demand for eagle parts threatens recovery" read the headline of a July 24 story by Steven Bodzin in the Los Angeles Times. The sub-headline: "Traditional and New Age ceremonies could lead to poaching, black market."
"When Bird and Whale Shook the Earth" was the headline for James Gorman's August 2 story in The New York Times.
"Those Ancient Incan Knots? Tax Accounting, Researchers Suggest," was the headline for Nicholas Wade's August 16 New York Times story.
"A New Dawn for Museums of Native American Art," declares the headline of Joshua Brockman's August 20 story in The New York Times.
From The New York Times' Arts, Briefly, on September 3, in a small story by Robin Pogrebin, more bad news for Getty curator Marion True (see the earlier Times story published on July 19). The headline: "The Getty Faces New Charges."
"New curator, new home for New Guinea art will make de Young key destination," wrote the San Francisco Chronicle's art critic, Kenneth Baker, on September 20.
"African Art Is Donated to Museum" was the headline for Elizabeth Olson's New York Times story on September 30.
