Master of the game

by Marc Masurovsky

Mikhail Piotrovsky is a heavily-decorated, scholarly, and savvy art historian who has been raised in Soviet then Russian museology. He is a true son of Mother Russia.

In a Washington Post article dated April 23, 2003, Piotrovsky was described by Linda Hales as Russia’s cultural ambassador. In an interview given that year, he described the Hermitage as a mirror of Russia. At that point, he was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deputy on the President’s Council on Culture, “Russia’s official voice in matters of culture.”

To demonstrate Piotrovsky’s willingness to wield the stick in order to get his way, he has threatened to cancel loan commitments to “Western” museums if his conditions were not met. For instance, a series of exhibits in London in 2005 was jeopardized by his insistence to obtain assurances of immunity from seizure. It’s simple. To gain access to the Hermitage’s treasures, museum leaders from around the world must play by Piotrovsky’s rule book.

The Hermitage Museum, which he has headed now for twenty years following in his father’s footsteps, is the pearl of the Russian museum world and an object of global envy and admiration. The Hermitage fuels Russian pride and is used to project Russia’s cultural hegemony. The 1995 display of “trophy art” at the Hermitage was the clearest expression of this sentiment.

The Hermitage is the cultural expression and, as such, the agent of Russian foreign cultural policy. It holds and stewards some of the most important collections in the world of Old Master paintings (from the West), Impressionist works (from the West) and antiquities from all parts of the ancient world (including those that were seized during the liberation by Soviet Army units of the eastern parts of Germany and other countries). It fuels the insatiable appetite of world-class “globalist” or “universalist” museums in Western Europe and North America. Russian leaders make wide use of the museum as a backdrop for high-level encounters with foreign heads of state and their delegations. When was the last time that an American president used the Metropolitan Museum of art or the National Gallery of Art as a similar backdrop to State visits?

To remain competitive and constantly be noticed, American museums through their lobby group, the AAMD, maintain good relations with Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky, and his superiors in the Kremlin, so as to continue to have access to Russia’s cultural riches and to be able to share bragging rights with Russian museums when staging exceptional exhibits.

One of Dr. Piotrovsky’s early allies was Thomas Krens, then director of the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, to whom he had asked for advice in creating joint projects that would be of direct benefit to the Hermitage (hence the Russian government) and to American museums.

Piotrovsky's thinking, his vision for the Hermitage is interdependent with that of American cultural institutions. But he does not always share their policies regarding repatriation of looted antiquities to source nations. In an interview that he gave to a Russian news outlet in 2013, Piotrovsky preferred that looted antiquities should only be returned with a court order, seemingly balking at the bilateral talks which led American museums to repatriate looted artifacts to source nations. “American museums should stop giving back various antiquities to the Italians and Greeks without court rulings.”

Piotrovsky is a fierce advocate of the globalist, universalist museum vision, which pretends to transcend all politics. Conversely, he is equally a fierce opponent of “deaccession”, which also includes, restitution of looted cultural assets. In his words, “Deaccession is wrong. A museum is a monument, an organism of history.”

In a 2009 statement issued by the Woodrow Wilson Center, Piotrovsky was described as being totally committed “to cultural diplomacy with the United States.” The Hermitage Museum Foundation is one of the instrumentalities through which these ties are expressed. Does this commitment go as far as seeking to exert influence on the legislative process of the US Congress and encouraging the passage of bills that favor Russia’s position as a global cultural lending power?

In 2011, when a US Federal District Court issued a judgment against Russia, Piotrovsky cancelled all scheduled and future loans to American museums. In his words, he advised American museum directors to “go to the State Department. The problem has to be solved. The year 2013 was declared the year of Russia and the U.S. Now the established cultural relations are under threat.” The reassurances offered by American museum directors to the Russians that the immunity from seizure procedures at the State Department were sufficient to protect Russian loans did not satisfy Piotrovsky.

In short, Piotrovsky, as Russia’s cultural ambassador, works very closely with his American counterparts to ensure that their vision of how museums should steward their collections, even the looted ones, are one and the same, in order to ensure proper cultural relationships in step with Russia’s views of the inalienability of cultural objects in museum collections, a view, by the way, that is routinely echoed and upheld by most European museum directors and their governmental overseers.

S.3155 gets the American museum world one step closer to conform to this arcane view of museum governance and its passage harmonizes AAMD’s vision with that of its European partners.

The new cultural imperialism?

Russian activity on the plundered art blog

by Marc Masurovsky

What could be so interesting about the “plundered art” blog that it has attracted a blizzard of pageviews unlike anything seen since the blog first started in 2010? The mission of this cultural blog has always been and will always be: to document and discuss acts of cultural plunder, the restitution of looted art, and the ethics of museum administrators worldwide.

This digital onslaught of “visits” to the plundered art blog has come from Russia. It coincides with the December 5, 2016,  publication of HARP’s study detailing the inability and/or unwillingness of the US Department of State to conduct provenance research when considering requests by foreign lenders for certificates of immunity from judicial seizure that provoked the Russian onslaught. Since then, the story has received more than 4000 pageviews. In our world, that number falls outside the range of “normal” readership on the plundered art blog. We’re happy if we get 2-300 pageviews in a month for a single article.

At the time of publication of the aforementioned article, the US Senate was considering a bill called S. 3155. This bill makes it possible for foreign lenders to obtain immunity from seizure for the objects that they consider lending to US museums. The American museum directors’ lobby, enshrined in the Association of American Museum Directors (AAMD) has been struggling for four years to pass such a law through the Senate. Twice defeated, the AAMD chose the “submarine” strategy. No publicity, no public discussion, just silent lobbying. It also obtained the good services of Mr. Sneak Attack himself, Senator Chuck Schumer, a “Democrat” from New York State, to shepherd the bill through the Senate.

Why would the Russian government be so concerned with an American administrative rule that ensures that works of art from abroad are not seized while on display in an American museum? The procedure in and of itself should be a sufficient guarantee that art works from Russian institutions will be adequately protected while on display in the United States. Apparently, that does not suffice. In a nation like Russia and perhaps other countries where the State oversees, to a lesser or greater extent, the cultural arena, explicit statements by national legislatures count more than an administrative rule. This might explain the motivation of the AAMD to go for the jugular and ask the US Senate to pass a law that enshrines the principle of immunity from judicial seizure as a clear expression of an American cultural policy that officially does not exist. The immunity from seizure procedure has been in place for decades, overseen and enforced by the US Department of State. So why pursue legislation that repeats pretty much what the State Department already does on a weekly basis?

There is no need to show up with reams of documents and thousands of emails to prove Russia’s interest in S. 3155. It is basic common sense to argue that it is in the interest of the Russian government that the AAMD should succeed in pushing S. 3155 through the US Senate.

And it did succeed, before the sun rose on December 10, 2016.

The AAMD’s success in the Senate should beam a strong enough signal to Vladimir Putin that American museum directors are doing their all to assuage him and to convince him to reverse his decision on the cultural loan freeze imposed by Russia since 2011.

S. 3155 will sterilize the American cultural environment at the exhibit level whereby all objects on display loaned by foreign institutions will not be subject to a claim for restitution by any aggrieved party. A perfect rendition of the absolutist idea that “Culture transcends History” as Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky, head of the Hermitage Museum, would have you note, an idea in line with the philosophy of “globalism” touted by the world’s leading museum directors and their governments according to which the museums they lead are the sepulchers of culture and art. We should worship them and thank them for “safeguarding” samples of the world’s best art and most significant cultural artifacts. The globalist museum world believes in the free exchange of artistic and cultural objects without any impediments or restrictions placed by governments and their institutions. Globalists refuse to allow history and all of its abject manifestations--civil wars, military and political upheavals, economic dislocation, ethnocide, genocide, and other mass expressions of human cruelty—to interfere with their ability to acquire and display objects, irrespective of their origin, which means, irrespective of their provenance, of their history. Provenance research, for these institutions, is an option to be exercised when needed.

Governments, including the American government, have been complicit in allowing their museums to acquire and exhibit willy-nilly. Their ethically lax behavior emboldens theft and plunder. Once illicitly-obtained objects enter a museum’s collection, they are only rarely removed as restitutable items to their rightful owners. The United States government, by its very inactions, refuses to compel American cultural institutions which harbor looted cultural objects to restitute them to their rightful owners. Although looting is publicly condemned as a reprehensible criminal activity, its fruits are protected once they enter cultural institutions. This paradox is alive and well and has been so for decades. S. 3155 is but a mere expression thereof.

Public outrage against looting may be universal but when a museum accepts the fruits of such criminal acts, there is generally no effort to force it to disgorge those looted objects and return them to their rightful owners. S. 3155 confirms that absolutist, Statist approach to culture.

Now that the US Senate has passed S. 3155 and President Barack Obama has signed it into law, the American museum community has proven that the US does not really need a ministry of culture, because the AAMD, with the blessings of the US Congress, acts as the de jure cultural arbiter of the nation’s cultural institutions in line with the Federally-controlled Smithsonian Institutions; the US Senate and the US government are there to do its bidding. Put another way, the museum directors’ lobby usually gets what it wants, much like the National Rifle Association.

Oppose Senate Bill 3155 which legalizes the display of looted art in the United States.

by Marc Masurovsky

Click here to voice your opposition.

If passed, Senate Bill 3155, sponsored by American museum lobbyists and art market players, is a dream come true.

S. 3155 makes it possible for an American museum or, for that matter, any institution located in the United States to borrow any object from any part of the world without fear of judicial seizure, resulting from a claim filed by a victim of cultural theft.

On paper, it all sounds innocent. If it is, how do you explain the total silence emanating from the American museum community’s lobbying arm, the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), which has not uttered a single public word in its campaign to press for passage of S.3155. The AAMD has essentially refused to engage in a public discussion about the merits of S. 3155 through Senate hearings or in the public sphere. Clearly, its sponsors in the Senate have also agreed not to solicit opinions from the public and those most likely to be affected by the passage of this bill—source nations, indigenous groups, victims of cultural theft.

S. 3155 ensures that acts of plunder, whether State-sponsored or not, against entire groups and communities, resulting in systematic looting and misappropriation of cultural assets, do not stand in the way of museums’ ability to borrow freely from art collections across the globe.

There are numerous countries which have suffered from autocratic, dictatorial, even tyrannical governments and regimes which have cost countless lives, suppressed individual freedoms and resulted in untold losses of personal property through expropriation, misappropriation, and outright theft. Many objects displaced during these events have never been returned to their rightful owners. The more desirable ones have been sold and resold on the international art market, or have entered art collections stewarded by the very governments which enabled and sanctioned these illegal confiscations and expropriations.

There are numerous archaeological sites around the world which have been illegally exploited and whose ruins have yielded untold numbers of artifacts recycled through countless intermediaries before reaching museum collections, auction houses, and private dealers in “the West”, including North America.

Indigenous peoples across the globe have been subject to continual harassment and persecution by the governments of the countries in which they reside, victimized by violence and by illegal removals of their sacred objects. These looted objects, often used for ritual practices, find their way into “Western” collections through the illicit trade, once they have been reclassified as "art."

Museums thrive on attracting visitors. To do so, they must constantly borrow beautiful, rare, objects from domestic and foreign collections and highlight them in exceptional exhibits for the public to come and enjoy. We all love to go to museums, but does that excuse their willingness to be be a party to theft and plunder?

It appears so.

Is S. 3155 necessary?

In practical terms, there is no need for S. 3155. The US Department of State has in place a system by which foreign lenders and their American counterparts can request a certificate of immunity from seizure to allow them to lend one or more objects to American institutions for the purpose of an exhibit. The State Department issues these certificates several times a week. For better and for worse, the immunity system works.

So, why does one need S. 3155? There is a political motive underlying its introduction in the Senate. For years, US museums have been unable to borrow masterpieces from Russian museums as a result of several court cases which were interpreted by the Russian government as a direct threat to their ability to lend works of art without fear of them being seized. Whether rational or not, these feelings have translated into a near-absolute freeze in Russian cultural loans to US museums.

Is the AAMD using S.3155 to signal the Russian government that, if passed, Russian museums should relax their stance on loans to the US?

The same reasoning can be applied to other governments with whom the US has had severe difficulties, like the Cuban government. Now that Fidel Castro is dead, all eyes are on that little island off the coast of Florida. The likelihood is quite high that art works confiscated from private Cuban collections will head to the United States. Again, S.3155 will make it possible for these confiscated works to be displayed and will deprive dispossessed Cuban families from being able to seek redress in US courts in order to recover their expropriated property.

The main sponsors of S.3155—Senator Orrin Hatch (Republican-Utah), and Senator Chuck Schumer (Democrat-New York)—are doing everything they can to have this bill passed before the end of 2016. So, time is of the essence to send a clear message to the Senate that this bill is unacceptable, indecent, unethical, and unnecessary.

If you agree that S. 3155 should not be passed by the US Senate, click here and voice your concern.

The long summer of 2016

by Marc Masurovsky

I confess.

The absence of any postings on the plundered-art blog this past summer was as a direct result of the thrashing that we suffered at the hands of the American museum lobby, its auction house allies and a handful of well-established community groups which found it easier to support museum boards than claimants suing them to foster some form of justice 80 years after the genocide against the Jews of Europe.

It’s not as if the roof collapsed over our heads. But it felt like a sucker punch, one that we had not been dealt in quite some time.

What am I referring to here? The US Senate Judiciary committee and its processing of two legislative proposals critical to the claims process affecting art objects displaced in Axis-controlled Europe—S. 2763 known as the HEAR Act and S.3155.

Round 1-- June 2016

The HEAR Act (S. 2763) was the subject of a hearing on 7 June 2016. Helen Mirren, a highly talented and versatile actress, was the star witness for claimants seeking the restitution of their cultural assets on US territory. Senators, Republican and Democrat, fawned over her when it came time for photo ops and autographs. A Hollywood actress always plays well in Peoria. She could have sold used cars to these elected fools, the result would have been the same.

Members of HARP, myself and counsel, Pierre Ciric, suspected that something was up at this Senate hearing. On the Republican side, Senator Cornyn (Texas) uttered menacing words (seize this opportunity because there won’t be another one like it, or something to that effect), Senator Charles Grassley (Iowa) advised Senator Orrin Hatch (Utah) that he could introduce his other bill (in effect, S. 3155). On the Democrat side, Senator Charles Schumer, great friend of museum lobbies, trial lawyers and mainstream Jewish organizations, abandoned the hearing five minutes after it had begun. These minor events contributed to an almost surreal atmosphere in the Senate hearing room. Added to the mix, the absence of a genuine debate on whether or not looted art claims would be extinguished after the proposed “truce” or sunset period lapsed (by this, I mean that the HEAR Act’s lure was to propose that  current possessors could not invoke echnical defenses when defending against cultural claims, only up to 2026. After that date, who knows? It’s been the ambition, no, the goal, of the art market in the US, including museum directors and their boards, to extinguish all cultural claims that could be filed on the US market.) And, last but not least, the unfortunate and misguided collusion of certain American Jewish groups, like the American Jewish Committee in its mistaken belief that the HEAR Act was a great gift to claimants, considering that the AJC never did anything constructive to support cultural claimants. Period.

Round 2--July 2016

The onslaught by the museum lobbyists of the AAMD (Association of American Museum Directors) and the leadership of New York museums was finding its mark. Their success among members of the Senate Judiciary Committee relied on the fact that the Republican and Democrat senators and their staff members had no basic understanding of the massive losses suffered by Jewish victims of the Nazis, the complexities of burdensome and costly recovery in postwar America of art objects confiscated and misappropriated between 1933 and 1945. In short order, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch introduced S. 3155 and was able to have it processed speedily through the Senate Judiciary Committee with unanimous consent. Even Democrat Senator Pat Healey who had vehemently opposed its forerunner, S. 2122, felt that he could not pursue his opposition to the museums’ attempt to create a claims-free market inside the United States.

Round 3--August 2016

HARP tried to rebuild the successful coalition of 2012-2013 against Senate Bill 2212 in order to neutralize its successor, S. 3155. In vain.

The newest and most visible group promoting the protection of cultural heritage and antiquities in the Mideast war zone, the Antiquities Coalition, was nowhere to be found and seemed to ignore the very existence of these two pieces of legislation.

It’s hard to tell what exactly happened. But it could be that its full attention was focused on overseas recruitment of and negotiations with source countries as part of their campaign to forge new coalitions among all source countries, in order to safeguard antiquities and archaeological sites under threat of destruction and crack down on the illicit trade. Despite all of this maneuvering on the international arena, no attention was being paid to the domestic US market and its complex, often absurd and confusing legislative environment. Only ARCA, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, has been a steadfast and reliable ally because its leadership understands the linkages between Nazi confiscated art, looted antiquities, and looted indigenous sacred objects on the international market.

One preliminary assessement would hold that the American cultural heritage community had failed to understand that S. 3155 affects them and their clientele, those constituencies and nations that they aim to protect. We don’t blame them, we simply nurtured expectations that ran higher than warranted.

As for the lawyers representing plaintiffs in art restitution and repatriation cases, most of them are based in New York, some are in Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, DC. Some of these attorneys participated in the drafting and amending of both bills that sailed through the Senate Judiciary Committee and therefore aligned themselves with their framers.

One can only wonder whether their tacit or explicit support of S. 2763 and S. 3155 was a business decision aimed at adapting to new realities, that, in their view, Holocaust-era claims are fated to be extinguished by the callousness and calculated hostility of the art world’s leadership and their opportunistic political allies whose main objective is to make sure that history, the kind that affects people’s lives and their cultural assets, no longer enters the sanctum of cultural institutions on American territory. We hope that this was all a big miscalculation, but we won’t know unless we ask them and they agree to go on the record.

S. 2763 and S. 3155, combined with other recent legislative proposals (the so-called Engel bill) that passed through the House of Representatives to protect antiquities and restrict their importation into the US is what we call a cultural policy, one that the US government pretends that it does not have. And yet, those who are on the front line of enforcement have been waging an incredible and outstanding battle to suppress with the few tools at their disposal the resale networks of looted cultural objects operating on US territory. These government agencies—ICE, the FBI, even the BIA--are simply not helped by the failure of other government agencies and a confused and ignorant Congress, and the obstreperousness of museum leaders and their lobbyists in fostering an environment that encourages a general clean-up of the domestic art and antiquities market.

Instead of antiquities and cultural heritage groups, HARP found solace amongst anti-communist and conservative groups which understood that cultural objects plundered in other historical contexts  (like during and after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917) would end up entering the US market without fear of being confiscated, thus embarrassing the lenders, like Russia, France, the UK, and many other nations with a lot of cultural skeletons to rattle in their display cases and exhibition halls. These groups’ enthusiasm at contributing to the fostering of a more ethical approach to the art market has contrasted sharply with the indifference of antiquities groups and their lawyers in this summer of 2016  Lesson learned.

Round 4--September 2016

Cultural claimants lost several major legislative battles between June and September 2016, for the first time since the Washington Conference on Holocaust-era Assets of December 1998.

Luckily for them, S. 2763 and S. 3155 do not appear to be hastily headed for a vote of the full Senate in the current session which ends on 7 October 2016. Operators like Senators Charles Schumer and Orrin Hatch may try to manipulate Senate procedures to have these two bills passed on voice vote with a quorum plus one in the Senate chamber. What with all of the nonsense generated by the Congressional resolve to hold the Saudis accountable for the attacks on New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC on 11 September 2001, budgetary issues and the presidential election campaign, one can only hope that these votes will be postponed. But anything is possible.

There’s a war to fight out there and the stakes are high.

For references, please consult past articles on the plundered-art blog:

plundered art: S. 2763: Restitution kabuki plundered art: Highlights from Senate Judiciary Committee hearing ...

plundered art: The American museums, the US Senate and the art ... plundered art: Revisiting Senate Bill 2212, Part Two