Neurologically speaking, ascribed "authenticity" matters to us

"Authenticity" is such an interesting part of art crime and illicit antiquities research. The need for an object to be "real" seems to be a poorly examined aspect of collecting. Known copies or unknown forgeries are treated like the scourge of the art world. Moreover, tales of fakes and fakers are gleefully consumed by the general public. Ascribed value, reality, authenticity, and so forth appear to be an important aspect of the human experience of art. As it turns out, there is neurological proof of this.

An "authentic" Rembrandt is surprised at the results of this study (1630)

Frontiers in Neuroscience has just published a paper by a team of neuroscientists from Oxford: Mengfei Huang, Holly Bridge, Martin J. Kemp. Entitled "Human cortical activity evoked by the assignment of authenticity when viewing works of art", the authors devised an experiment where research subjects were shown a series of Rembrandt paintings while their brains were being fMRI'ed. In their own words, "use of this image set allowed us to separate the brain’s response to images of genuine and fake pictures from the brain’s response to external advice about the authenticity of the paintings." Basically the authors of this paper wanted to see, first, if we experience real and fake Rembrandts in neurologically different ways and, second, if we experience what we are TOLD are real and fake Rembrandts in neurologically different ways.

The authors begin by noting that our understanding of the 'realness' or 'fakeness' of a piece might have a significant effect on our experience of the piece as an art object. While previous fMRI studies have shown that the neurological experience of art goes far beyond the visual, the effect of non-visual authenticity information has only been an area of discussion in art-history. Authority figures come into play here: so-called expert opinion is highly influential on how art is received. The question is, then, what happens neurologically when we are told by an authority figure that a piece of art is either "real" or "fake"?

The results were super interesting. To risk simplifying them beyond use, the authors found that subjects experienced (neurological) reward when told that a Rembrandt that they were viewing was "real" and they found that subjects brains freaked out a little when told that a Rembrandt that they were viewing was not "real".

Taking it step by step:

1. the authors found that subjects' brains responded the same to real Rembrandts as to fake Rembrandts when they had no knowledge that a piece might be fake, i.e. with no info to go on, they experienced real and fake Rembrandts the same way. 
2. when told that a piece they were looking at was fake, "participants reported that they were actively engaged in trying to detect the flaws in the presented image to gain confirmatory evidence in favor of the assignment"; this was seen in the fMRI.
3. when told that a piece they were looking at was real, the only part of the brain that lit up was the area associated with reward and monetary gain which researchers link to an increase in the perceived value of the artwork.
4. it didn't matter if the fake was really a fake, or if the real piece was really a real piece. All that mattered was what the researchers called it.

"Real" or not, I'll always experience
the Getty Kouros as suspect

Their conclusion, then, is that authenticity as assigned by an expert has a clear effect on how non-expert audiences experience any particular artwork at a neurological level. Calling a "real" masterpiece a fake and a "fake" masterpiece real has non-subtle results.

This fits in to what many of us see as an almost strange power that certain experts have over the "value" of art as well as anecdotal and personal evidence which indicates that if there is any question to an object's authenticity, we can never see it the same again.

Take, for one obvious example, the Getty Kouros. Fake or not, I find that every time I see a photo of it I look for flaws much like the subjects in this study. It is undeniably a well made piece, interesting and beautiful for what it is no matter when it was made, yet I see it as a potential fake and thus as suspect. Or, in a particularly embarrassing example, I was 100% sure that the lintels from Yaxchilan were in Mexico and that the pieces in the British Museum were "fakes": plaster casts of the real objects made by Alfred Maudslay in the late 1800s. I went so far as to stick my finger right into the bas relief, showing my companion what I saw as a seam in the plaster. There were lasers going across it, the alarm sounded, the security guards came, they were the real Yaxchilan lintels.  I had looked at them for two years as casts in my mind, and I could honestly feel my experience of them change as the polite but stern guard told me to cut it out.

Lintel 24 from Yaxchilan which is
most certainly in the British Museum

Anyhow, I want to think about these sorts of results as they might apply to research into the sale and collection of antiquities. Talking purely of discouragement and prevention, if we have a neurological aversion to fakes perhaps that is what we need to play up to the general public. Explanation of the destruction of context is a noble pursuit, but perhaps more time should be spent promoting major fakes, publicizing clear fakes that appear in auction catalogs, and all around sowing the seeds of doubt.

As a conclusion of sorts, I had a chuckle when I read the following line: "there are experts who devote themselves to the study of fakes. We reasoned that such experts might find the viewing of fakes more rewarding than the viewing of authentic works." I love fakes...

Ad implications: Helping us all get through customs

For the past few months I have been meaning to write about an ad that was featured in the Economist. The ad caught my eye as I sat on the porch drinking coffee with a few friends. The ad, which is for a company I have never heard of called Chartis, boasts "We'll help you get through customs" splashed across a green Mesoamerican style mask. Green like Maya jade. The outline of the ruler makes it artifacty/archaeologyish. I nearly dropped my coffee.

To be fair, in super-small print, we see that the mask is "in handcraft market, Mexico", which, I suppose, means that it is not ancient (maybe), but the message is clear. Chartis insures your tricky imports and there are only a few trickier imports than antiquities.

It is hard to decide just what to say about this ad. On a very superficial level, the ad promotes the image of the elbow-to-the-ribs, "old collection"-wink, of what I hope has become a bygone era in antiquities importation. It seems to declare "rich people, have a great time collecting your baubles, we will take care of those pesky non-import regulations" or "don't get caught with it at customs, hire our company to sort your smuggling out". I really hope that this is not what Chartis meant by the ad...but look at it. The "we will get your illicit antiquities through customs" message is less than subtle. 

Even assuming the best (that Chartis never saw the "we'd be happy to smuggle for you" angle to this ad) the fact that they didn't see anything questionable means that the "illicit antiquities=bad" message has not permeated into the marketing sector. They wouldn't have used "We'll help get you through customs" over an image of boxes of toy guns (or candy cigarettes, or fur coats, or diamonds from questionable parts of Africa, or, I don't know, boxes of coca tea?), would they? Probably not. Instant red light.

I know next to nothing about marketing, but I wonder if it is a reflection of public sentiment or a driver of public sentiment. Changing the public perception of collecting is difficult. Either way, ads like these are worrying.

Peruvian MOU hearing: submitted to an email list

Dear All,

First I would like to thank everyone who voiced their support for the continuation of import restrictions on antiquities from Bolivia. Last week it was announced that the extension was approved and we have another 5 years of protection of Bolivian material.

Yes, this is Ecuadorian but the point is made

Just as importantly, on January 18th the State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee will hold an open session to discuss extending import restrictions on archaeological material and other cultural property from Peru. This session is specifically for oral public commentary and anyone with information or expertise relevant to this matter is highly encouraged to attend or even speak.  From the Federal Register:

"If you wish to attend the open session on January 18, 2012, you should notify the Cultural Heritage Center of the Department of State at (202) 632–6301 no later than 5 p.m. (EST) January 3, 2012, to arrange for admission.

If you wish to make an oral presentation at the open session, you must request to be scheduled and must submit a written text of their oral comments, ensuring that it is received no later than January 3, 2012, 11:59 p.m."

That said, you need not attend to let your voice be heard. CPAC invites comments from the public on this matter. If you are an archaeologist who works in or near Peru, the continuation of this bilateral agreement is important to your livelihood. Take a moment to voice your support for the agreement. Again from the Federal Register:

"Electronic Delivery. To submit comments electronically, go to the Federal eRulemaking Portal (http://www.regulations.gov), enter the Docket No. DOS–2011–0136 for Peru, and follow the prompts to submit a
comment. For further information, see http://exchanges.state.gov/heritage/whatsnew.html."

Please note that any letter submitted is public.

If anyone is considering presenting and would like to know what it is like, feel free to contact me. The same for anyone who thinks they might have information that they would like to put in a support letter: you might just have data that is relevant!

Sincerely,

Gold [sic] Monkey, that funky monkey: Finally going back to Perú

In other hell-freezing-over news, the New Mexico History Museum has just announced that is is returning a particularly dubious (and well known) artifact to Perú.

(from the AFP)

The gold monkey head in question was donated to the museum in 1995 by John Bourne, the notorious receiver of some of the looted material from the famous Moche site of Sipán. To make a long story short, evidence seems to indicate that Bourne and the museum knew full well that the head came from the Moche site of La Mina, which was ransacked in 1988 shortly Sipán, that the object left Perú illegally, but that they didn't care.

In 1998, the FBI seized the head as part of investigations into the looted Sipán material. The museum stated that they would return the object IF anyone could prove that it came from Sipán (presumably in a court of law). In 2000 the head was returned to the museum because the district attorney's office felt the case was weak. And it was...if the object WAS from La Mina (and how do we know it is? Various news agencies are reporting that it is from Sipán), it was just as horribly looted as a Sipán object but maybe not (?) subject to the emergency import restrictions in place for Sipán material. Bourne, of course, got a massive tax write off for donating the thing.

In the press release from the New Mexico history museum, Bourne is quoted as saying:

“I’m glad that the artifact was available for many New Mexicans to see during the time it was on display here and I support the process of due diligence that has led to it returning to Peru.”

Pottery from the Lord of Sipán tomb.

The darker part of my illicit antiquities sole requires me to say that New Mexicans are far more able to get to Perú to see a museum than Peruvian are able to get to New Mexico. Also, that dark spot in my soul notes that Bourne probably supports both not getting arrested and having dumped a hot object while getting a substantial tax deduction.

I always thought of that monkey head as the prime example of a museum openly and brazenly supporting crime and painting a false picture that they didn't actually believe. Let us be realistic. Not a single person involved in that museum honestly thought that there was anything legal about how that monkey head left Perú. Not a single person honestly thought that the object was from an old collection. Not a single person honestly thought that the object was not tangled up in the Sipán looting. The wink, the nudge, the "prove it".

They just didn't care.

But it is going back!  A new day has dawned! A page of my master's thesis is now outdated! Three cheers for the New Mexico History museum getting their act together!

Provenience Curation? The MFA's response and responsibility

Yesterday, the Boston Globe published an article on the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the much criticized alleged perpetrator of many a past art/antiquities crime.  With the hell-freezing-over return of the Weary Herakles this year, I wondered, with no solid information, if the MFA was starting to crack down, get serious, and try to repair their terrible image problem.

Victoria Reed from Artinfo

Perhaps this is an element of it. The article profiles Victoria Reed, the first "curator of provenance" at a major world museum. Her job is portrayed as tracking down the ownership history of historic art objects so that the museum doesn't have a holocaust art explosion on their hands.

I do note, however, that Ms. Reed is curator of provenance, not a curator of provenience. I am a big fan of the distinction that has grown between these two words in academic circles. Provenance = ownership history, past sales, publications, museums, collections. Provenience = where did it actually come from, the physical archaeological site and geographic coordinantes, who illicitly smuggled the thing.

As you can imagine, provenience is usually only an issue when we are talking about antiquities. While I don't profess to know the bounds of Ms. Reed's job, the Boston Globe article only mentions her work with art, not any work with artifacts. Her dubious histories are all provenance based: museum robberies, personal property theft, etc. An interview with Ms. Reed by Art Info projects the same image: provenance not provenience, art not artifacts.

But then again, maybe this is a good first step. I thought for a moment, perhaps the MFA should hire me for provenience work, but I fear they wouldn't get their money's worth. I'd probably declare nearly everything to be un-acquirable. That said, I am into repentance and reform. I live in Boston, have some degrees in the subject, and would happy consult if it means fewer Maya sites in Guatemala get torn to shreds so that some pretty pottery can go on display in the new Americas wing. Give me a call, MFA.

US/Bolivia MOU Extended!

I'm as happy as this adorable Bolivian child!

The US/Bolivia MOU has been extended!

I and many other people have been on the edge of our seats over this one since June. This was the first time that I experienced a bilateral agreement hearing first hand and I wasn't sure what to expect.

Beyond being a success for cultural property preservation, this is a step towards normalizing relations with Bolivia. By keeping the ties that we have left, we leave the door open for sorting out past grievances. I'm proud to have been involved in this.

Five more years!

(cross posted)

Returns from a Swiss Collector: Anonymity Amnesty?

Continuing with the idea of the anonymous Swiss collector as an auction catalogue trope, I want to raise the question of returns. If Switzerland is getting better, if the "tide has turned", so to speak, on the antiquities market, and if the items that I imagine are collecting dust in some Swiss warehouse are now unsellable, will we see a sort of anonymity amnesty develop?

A Chilean Mummy: collectable? (the Mummies of the World Exhibit)

In January of this year, it was announced that an anonymous Swiss collector was returning four human mummies to Chile. The mummies were said to be from the Atacama desert, and range in date from perhaps 7,000 years old to only 500 years old, meaning after the Conquest.

To quote the AP newswire piece:

"The Swiss government says the unnamed collector agreed to voluntarily hand the mummies over to Chile."

What a cryptic statement! It reeks of back story! To quote the AFP: 

Besides the mummies, the private collection also included other human remains in an 'advanced state of degradation', which will therefore be buried in Geneva." 

Mystery, intrigue, grotesque...and a pass? 

Clearly I don't (and can't) know the details of the situation but it seems like a fellow was caught in Switzerland with a surprising amount of Chilean human remains, he was probably under the impression that holding them in Switzerland would clean up their illegality, and he found out that he was wrong. Perhaps they had been sitting around there for a while. Yet, to read between the lines a little bit, a few issues beg comment.

First, is this a collector or is this a dealer? As I noted before, in the auction world, the "anonymous Swiss collector" is rarely a true collector, s/he is an antiquities dealer/middleman who historically passed artifacts through Switzerland so that they might gain a pseudo-legal provenance. That there were so many mummies (and other bits and pieces!!) from Chile in this one "collection", and that some were in a poor state makes me wonder if this is a dealer.

Is a corpse art? Is smuggling a human different from smuggling a statue?
(From the Museo of Quillagua, Chile)

Second, why does the individual get to cling to his Swiss anonymity? This seems to be a "we will let this slide if you give it all back and don't make a fuss" situation. A sort of amnesty for a return. Amnesty returns in the looting/antiquities crime world are horrible divisive to the point where I don't even know where I stand. Plus: the object is returned and a sale is not made! Minus: a dealer gets a chance to smuggle and try to make bank on an illicit object and is able to 'return' it with no penalty if he can't find a buyer. Either way there is no transparency in either the market or the fight against the market.

A further level of complication is that we are talking about human remains. I have no idea how Switzerland governs such things, but in much of the rest of the world a human body, no matter how old, is in a totally different category of regulation than non-human cultual property. (Word to the wise: if you live in the UK and you find a three thousand year old human body, you still need to call the police.) This may have been a grey area in Swiss law, complicating the matter. If anyone out there knows more about human remains regulation in Switzerland, let me know, but the facts seem to be that these bodies left Chile illegally, the entered Switzerland dubiously, and they have been returned with government-sanctioned anonymity.

Will the anonymous Swiss collector become the anonymous Swiss returner?

Q: Who is the Anonymous Swiss Collector?

Polaroid seized from the Swiss warehouse of Giacomo Medici

A: No one.

"Property of an Anonymous Swiss Collector" is, perhaps, the most famous auction cliché. The phrase seems harmless to the uninitiated. When it is seen in an auction catalogue, attached to an objet d'art, it conjures the images of a ruined European aristocrat selling off the family collection anonymously so as not to besmirch his name.  Like a minor subplot in a victorian novel, the auction house serves as the middle man and appearances are kept up. Yet this is all constructed around our ingrained cultural idea of who art collectors are and what auction houses do. 

There is no Anonymous Swiss Collector. Historically, Switzerland has been seen as a haven for art and antiquities traffickers. A lack of specific legislation or regulation meant that once a stolen or looted object was moved into Switzerland, it could gain a sort of pseudo-legality. By saying that an object was the property of an anonymous Swiss collector (or any of the other tropes such as "from a Swiss collection"), the auction house and the seller of the object were making an important claim: that an object with a dubious past had been held in Switzerland long enough to make it "safe" to buy. "Property of an Anonymous Swiss Collector" is the equivalent of a wink and a nudge in the auction world.

To be fair, Switzerland has been getting better in the past few years. The concept of neutrality is a difficult labyrinth to think through. Doing nothing, in this case having no regulation against the movement of stolen antiquities and art into your country, clearly favors individuals who wish to commit international crimes and penalizes those who do not want to commit international crimes. Rolling with the idea that such a stance is anything by neutral, Switzerland has started to play fair over the last five or six years. They are participating with international investigations, they are helping to raid warehouses, and they are signing anti-antiquities trafficking agreements with other countries. One hopes that the Anonymous Swiss Collectors of the world (read: shady, criminal antiquities middlemen and dealers) are slowly becoming less anonymous.

Yet it is hard to step away from the image of a Swiss vault or free zone as housing vast unknown treasures. That somewhere in there is a secure room filled with everything that has clearly left Iraq since 2003, but has seemingly not hit the open market...that someone out there invested in the long term and is waiting for those illicit antiquities to be less "hot" 20 years down the line.  But then again, that image may be as fallacious as the ruined Swiss aristocrat idea. It might be leftover bias from a situation that has changed. I suppose I will just have to wait and see.

Inaugural Post!

Working under the fallacious assumptions that (a) the world needs another looting/art crime blog and (b) I will actually update this thing, consider this your standard hello world!

Hopefully this blog will serve as an impetus for me to keep up to date on antiquities crime issues. I carry myself around like I am an expert on the topic (degrees! degrees!) but I fear I am falling out of the loop. Let us help me keep it together, together.

Thus welcome to Property of an Anonymous Swiss Collector, commentary on art crime topics with an openly archaeological slant. Hopefully these words will be amusing and fun, even if they concern a horribly depressing topic. Please get in contact with comments and ideas and do take a look at my oft neglected heritage blog Grotesque Stone Idols.