The Michael C. Carlos Museum held an open program on Jan. 31 to discuss issues museums face regarding the legality and ethics of acquiring and repatriating antiquities. This came nine days after the Carlos Museum returned three illicitly exported artifacts from its collection to Greece.
During the discussion, Assistant Registrar and Provenance Researcher Annie Shanley (15G) and Curator of Greek and Roman Art Ruth Allen focused on how the Carlos Museum acquired and returned five looted artifacts from Italy in August 2023.
The illicitly exported artifacts were the “Apulian Red-Figure Fish Plate,” “Plate Fragment,” “Attic Black-Figure Band Cup,” “Apulian Red-Figure Volute-Krater” and “Laconian Cup.” Italy allowed the latter three artifacts to remain on loan at the Carlos Museum while Emory University physically returned the fish plate and plate fragment.
Italy’s Museum of Culture presented the Carlos Museum with evidence that the fish plate, band cup and laconian cup were connected to convicted antiquities trafficker Gianfranco Becchina. Additionally, the Ministry of Culture found that the volute-krater was previously in convicted antiquities trafficker Giacomo Medici’s archive, while fragments from the same plate came from illegal excavations at the Timpone della Motta sanctuary in Francavilla Marittima.
Shanley said that choosing which artifacts the museum wanted on a loan basis was heavily based on their need for the item, especially regarding its educational value.
“We had to examine our own holdings, our own priorities,” Shanley said. “What does education use? What do our teachers use?”
Shanley said that the Carlos Museum has formed good relationships with other countries’ ministries of culture and now operates on an evidence-based policy.
“We’re in a really great position right now where we can reach out to the Italian Ministry of Culture, we can reach out to the Greek Ministry of Culture, Egypt Supreme Council of Antiquities,” Shanley said. “But, they are not willing to initiate repatriations based on suspicions and rumors, and nor are we. And so I just cannot stress enough that everyone here is working together off of the evidence that is available to us.”
The museum also contains exhibitions displaying Mesoamerican artifacts from Central and South America. However, the Carlos Museum does not have a curator for this region, making it difficult to evaluate these antiquities properly, according to Shanley.
“I need to get curators in before I can really properly evaluate those objects,” Shanley said. “Now, of course, if we were to get a claim or repatriation request in the meantime, we would work on it, we would solve that issue. But, for right now, unfortunately, they just kind of have to wait.”
In a statement on display in the museum, the Carlos Museum acknowledges that many of the artifacts lack provincial research and that they “cannot always be sure that the objects were excavated and exported legally from their country of origin.”
However, over the past few years, the museum has enforced a “very robust” policy for obtaining future artifacts that requires “extensive research” into their provenance, according to Allen.
“It absolutely means that there is a smaller pool of objects that we can consider for purchase,” Allen said.
This new rule also influences the museum’s decisions to accept gifts and loans. While the Carlos Museum could receive family heirlooms in the past, they cannot now unless there is proper documentation, according to Allen. The museum also updated certain exhibitions in the Greek and Roman Art Collection to indicate which illegally trafficked artifacts will remain on loan at Emory.
“It’s very difficult because it’s not that we are calling these specific people liars, or even that they’re being deceitful, but just to really be responsible, to make responsible decisions and set up future generations of Carlos employees for success,” Shanley said.
