"IS THE COLLECTING OF WORKS OF ART A LEGITIMATE PURSUIT?"*

 by Gerald G. Stiebel**

 

Until the 1960's I do not believe the question above would have even been understood.

 

"Trading in artifacts may not claim to be the world's oldest profession, but it is certainly among the oldest," so commences John Walker, former director of the National Gallery in Washington DC in his introduction to the catalog Expert's Choice: 1000 Years of the Art Trade, the 1983 exhibition at The Virginia Museum of Art. Collecting can be documented for thousands of years in China, Sumaria, from ancient Egyptian times and traced through Greece to Rome.  The sacking of Corinth by the Romans in 146 BC led to one of the first and certainly one of the greatest auction sales in history.  At the time it was, of course, celebrated not condemned.  Even then prices reached heights that no one could believe.

Collecting has always been associated with political power and financial means.  Art has been collected through commission, purchase and plunder by Emperors, Kings, Popes, Robber Barons and most recently by heads of corporations. 

Some collected contemporary art representing the achievements of their time, some collected the cultural heritage of their past, and some daring souls were fascinated by the achievements of "the other" and acquired exotic artifacts from foreign civilizations.

Collecting has been considered a positive exercise if done for the benefit of the public but not necessarily if for private enjoyment and satisfaction.  As far back as the first century BC, Cicero prosecuted Gaius Verres for enriching himself by augmenting his art collection at the expense of the provinces he ruled over.

In modern times, works of art eventually find their way into public collections; such as the princely collections of Europe which have become public museums and it is just as true in the United States today.  My father once pointed to an object in a newly opened gallery of German art at the Metropolitan Museum made possible by a collection donated by one of our gallery's clients, Emma Sheafer. Other clients, Jack and Belle Linsky had traded that very object for another in our stock. Had they not done so, the piece would have ended up in the display of the Linsky donation, exhibited in the adjacent galleries of the same museum

People everywhere have always collected in order to be accepted by those whom they wished to be their peers (aka social climbing.)  In the United States, however, possibly because of our puritan background, we seem to feel a need for an excuse to collect.  Therefore, collections have been formed, or more often justified later, in the name of the moral good of the public. i.e. the self-made millionaire or robber baron giving back something to the society from which he had gained so much.

History records Henry Clay Frick and J. Pierpont Morgan as  unprincipled captains of industry and finance of the early 20th century but posthumously their personal reputations have been greatly enhanced by their involvement in art. Today they are remembered less for their business and banking skills, and ruthless practices, than for the great art collections they assembled and left for the public to enjoy

Less familiar is the story of Samuel H. Kress (1863-1955) who developed his five-and ten-cent store in Memphis, Tennessee into a nation-wide chain. From 1929, when he established the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, he devoted himself to art collecting. Taking philanthropy to the ultimate degree, he not only made major donations to the Metropolitan Museum and Washington's National Gallery, but he divided his substantial holdings of European masterpieces among the municipal and university art museums of the communities where Kress stores were located. Thanks to him generations of citizens of towns like Allentown Pennsylvania and students in state schools like the University of Arizona in Tucson have had prime examples of European art to appreciate directly, study first hand, and call their own.

Due to the Depression and Hitler, my family was able to help American museums build their collections with great treasures from important European family collections, such as the Rothschilds.  This began when our gallery was still located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Even then prices of collections were often too high for one gallery to acquire alone.  In the late 1920's when the great medieval collection belonging to the Dukes of Braunschweig known as the Guelph Treasure became available our firm was one of the three major German dealers who got together to acquire it. A team of the preeminent medieval scholars was hired to study and catalog the collection. Their research was only completed in the ill-fated year of 1929.  Germany was already in economic shambles after World War I, and, with acute inflation, the state was in no position to acquire this important collection.  In 1930 the Guelph Treasure was exhibited in Frankfurt, then Berlin, but only a few insignificant purchases were made by European collectors. After the exhibitions in Germany, an American tour was organized and the Treasure travelled to New York, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco. We have press clippings showing visitors waiting in long lines to see what was one of the first "block buster" shows in American museum history at the Cleveland Museum of Art.  The three week run of the exhibition there brought in almost 75,000 visitors and the museum acquired a number of pieces to form the core of a medieval treasury which remains well worth the trip today.

Medieval objects or the paintings by Titian, Rubens or Rembrandt acquired from our gallery by the museums of this country are obviously not American art, but they have become the cultural treasures of our cities and a legitimate source of civic and national pride. Just like the Oriental treasures or the African works in those museums' collections they teach each new generation about of the various heritages from which our culture derives.

Throughout history the collection of works of art has served as a stimulus in the on-going development of culture. It was the collecting of the artifacts of the golden age of Greece and Rome, literally picking up the pieces of a civilization lost during the middle ages, that sparked the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the late 18th century the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii, and the dispersion of new-found antiquities across Europe, inspired the Neo-classic movement that affected every form of intellectual expression.

One generation's cultural appropriation becomes the following generations' patrimony. Napoleon's methodology in removing major art works from countries he invaded for the national museum in Paris is frowned on today. Through commissions he was also a patron of contemporary art. His overall intent was to build up what would be regarded by the end of his century as the patrimony of France.

In our time governments have become increasingly involved in issues of the loss of art treasures through export. The definition of cultural heritage is still often given a far reaching interpretation. Some years ago my gallery had an 18th century Meissen German porcelain vase refused export from England as a national treasure. While a fine example, it was one of many such wares that were sold throughout Europe at the time they were made and have been collected internationally ever since. Many comparable examples existed in England so I questioned the English curator who had stopped our export and acquired the piece. He was forthright in admitting his sole reason was that his museum did not happen to have an example of this particular color.

The western tradition of collecting "the other" has developed special problems since "third world" countries have gained a voice in the international political arena.  A case in point is the field  of Pre-Columbian art which developed as a serious collecting market only in the second quarter of this century.

In Mexico the law is quite simple.  Everything from under the ground belongs to the state.  Citizens are not allowed to have collections and, of course, nothing can be exported.  The rules in the Central American countries vary but even where private collecting is permitted, export for a private market is not.

Laws like these did not have an international effect until there was international interest in collecting the artifacts.  Many of the archaeologists working in these countries were and are from the United States and much of the funding came from here as well. During the early excavations deals were struck that the archeologist could take a certain percentage of his discoveries back to the sponsoring institution.  As a result of space limitations in these institutions and political concerns in the source countries this practice has practically ended as well.  Artifacts which are no longer at their original archeological site are left to very poor storage conditions and often not inventoried and therefore lost.

As this material began to be seen north of the border and in Europe interest developed.  Michael Coe, the Yale archeologist, in an illuminating paper, "From Huaquero to Connoisseur: The Early Market in Pre-Columbian Art" he gave at Dumbarton Oaks in 1990, tells us that one of the first dealers in this field was Ernst Brummer, known best for collecting and dealing in medieval art. 

His major client in the Pre-Columbian field was Robert Woods Bliss, the founder of Dunbarton Oaks.  Brummer sold Bliss his first piece, an Olmec Jade, in 1912 when Bliss had a diplomatic post in Paris.

There were, however, not many dealers or collectors in this field until the decade of the 1960's which saw a great increase in art  collecting of all kinds including Pre-Columbian. Conditions were right: it was a time of great prosperity, and, in this country, a new curiosity about the world.  We were no longer the pre-war isolationist country we had been.

 

With the increased demand for archeological material, the archaeologists became alarmed.  They joined forces with governments in calling for the preservation of cultural heritage thus giving additional legitimacy to the concept that artifacts should not leave their country of origin.  The archaeologists' argument is that when artifacts are removed from a site it destroys their context and therefore leaves the site incomprehensible for the purposes of understanding the past. While the archeologist has a valid claim that the context of an artifact should not be lost, to deny that an object can have aesthetic and even educational value on its own is being disingenuous.

 

A single archeological site is also just one more part of anentire picture of a culture. To recreate the culture we cannot just fit the pieces together.  Rina Swentzell points out in a most thoughtful article "Levels of Truth: Southwest Archaeologists and Anasazi/Pueblo People" (1991, Papers in Honor of Stewart Peckham. Meliha S. Duran and David T.Kirkpatrick, eds. Pp. 177–181. Archaeological Society of New Mexico) we do not find The Truthjust by amassing the details.  In the case of the Native Americans myth and stories which often contradict each other play a vitalrole.  There is more than one truth. 

Works of art do act as cultural ambassadors of their time and place. It is important that they be seen and held not only within their own culture. If a painting is painted and no one sees it or a play is written and no one ever sees or reads it, its value is lost to humanity. The way we learn about another culture is by becoming intimately acquainted with its products. Many an  archaeologists will admit to having learned the love of their material through a first encounter in their local museum. 

A work of art that is not treasured is wasted.  Dare I say it, the most blasphemous statement of all, people do treasure what they pay for.  What is given away is often easily discarded but what someone had to struggle to acquire is usually well taken care of.

Obviously the more we can bring to any work of art be it music, a play or an exhibition the more we can enjoy it but often our first contact is without preparation and can be the beginning of a most enlightening journey.

As I have learned the best way to illustrate a concept is by telling a story, let me recount here my personal experience, not as a dealer but as a collector.---

It all started as a joke.  My wife, Penelope, a museum curator,  will find a museum anywhere including on holiday in the Swiss Alps! When she asked me one year what I wanted to do during our son's Spring vacation I thought back to the fantasies of my youth and suggested a dude ranch (couldn't be any museums there!).  Now the last time I had been on a horse I had fallen off so I did not think anything would actually come of this thoughtless comment. 

Sure enough we ended up at a dude ranch in Wickenburg, Arizona.  Now Wickenburg just happens to be a few hours drive from the Grand Canyon which neither I nor our son, Hunter, had ever seen so Penelope suggested we take a look.

Driving through Flagstaff on the way to the Canyon we needed a "pit stop" and, you guessed it, Penelope spotted The Museum of Northern Arizona.  I couldn't argue with the fact that a museum must have rest rooms. Needless to say, we took a look around and "discovered" the arts of the Native Americans of the Southwest extremely well installed and explained. It happened that we had also arrived at a propitious moment, shortly after they had had an exhibition and sale of a neighboring tribe's works, the Hopi Indians.

I cannot explain it but it was love at first sight.  Suddenly artifacts which we had known nothing about previously (what Native American art we had seen before had meant little to us) took on a whole new meaning. At other times in our lives we had been introduced to the Native Americans and their arts but it had not struck any chords.  Indian art to me had always meant grass baskets and arrow heads.

Like most experiences of love it starts out as infatuation and excitement with the new.  We bought a couple of pieces of Silver (a bola tie, a belt buckle), a small basket, a Zuni (another tribe in the neighborhood) fetish. All we knew when we left the museum was that we had spent a lot of money and that we liked what we had acquired and off we went to join the crowds at the Grand Canyon...  we soon realized that we had fallen in love!

We began to discuss our "discovery" and like any new love we wanted to learn more about it. Learning  about all the Indian nations, however, would be an impossible task, so my wife, the curator, said we must concentrate on a single tribe and through that study gain an understanding of our new-found love. She then started to build a library of books written about the Hopi tribe... and what's more she read them. That lead to reading the recent literature written by Native Americans themselves. She would then tell our son, Hunter, and me about what she had read and we would discuss these entirely "foreign" ways of the Native Americans. (In his junior year of high school Hunter chose a course in Native American literature to fulfill his English requirement and donated his dog-eared copies of the required readings to his mother's library!)

 From the start we wanted to find out more about the people who were making these objects that we were in love with so we asked a friend and mentor how one went about going to Hopi which is up on three mesas in Northern Arizona. He said "you just drive yourselves up to the reservation and book yourself at the Cultural Center (read motel)" and ...then what?

 We drove through the Navajo reservation which surrounds the Hopi mesas and up through some of the most barren yet breathtaking scenery we had ever seen.  We got to the Cultural Center and checked in. It is known as the Cultural Center because of a small museum located there.  Unfortunately, over the close to 20 years that we have been going, it has been in a state of neglect and closed most of the time.  We looked around to find a couple of shops and some lone Indians selling trinkets outside.

We then got back in the car and started to tour the mesas where we found, scattered along the road other small shops in which the Hopi sold their wares. One of these was a real trading post where the Native Americans would come to buy or trade for the materials they needed.  For instance, a kachina carver might bring in a basket placque in order to get some cotton wood to make his Kachina or he might need a kilt for the dance next weekend.

 We became very friendly with the Hopi owner and her Anglo (as the non-hispanic white man is known) husband and they began to introduce us to the sights, the people and culture of Hopi. Like many other collectors in the field we are in Santa Fe every summer for Indian Market and there we have met and purchased from artists who have also given us introductions on the reservation. But it is Janice and Joseph Day's trading post, Tsakurshovi, that has become our base. There is always much cross-cultural banter ; for instance when we hosted them in New York (not the first visit for them) they took photos of us coming in from work and marketing, "in order to document the native New Yorker in his natural habitat!"   Early on our son had questioned  "Are we such good friends with Joseph and Janice because we are clients"... another of life's lessons! Any academic will grant that commerce is a vehicle for interaction across cultural barriers but it is rarely acknowledged that trade inspires and sustains personal relationships on a deeper level.

I travel regularly to foreign countries mainly in Europe for my gallery business and my wife has curated exhibitions from five different countries but this was a culture that was totally alien to us, not only the land and objects, but the way of thinking as well.  What was truth, what was beauty, what was spiritual.

 Being of German background I probably had the biggest problem with the question of "time".  The Native Americans do not think of time as we do.  Again it is not something I can explain but there are no schedules or timetables.  Things happen in their own time or as it is known on the Rez as "Indian Time."

For instance, we met a craftsman who had a shop at Hopi.  We had seen a silver buckle of his in the Museum of Northern Arizona's collection and I asked if he could make me a bola tie with a similar motif.  He said, of course, and I could pay him when he sent it to me.  The following year no bola had arrived so we went back to his shop. We bought an object made by his teen-age daughter and took photos of the grand kids which we sent him.  Still no bola. Next year we returned and met his older daughter whose children we had photographed and talked to her about it.  Two months later an envelope arrived with bola and bill. It all took time, Indian time.

 We thought our son would not be as lucky when he commissioned a Kachina doll from a teen age carver. Several letters were exchanged about the kachina to be depicted. Then months and months passed. We had all given up hope when a box arrived containing the doll and a letter explaining that the boy's mother had first sent it to a gallery show, where, luckily for Hunter, it had not sold. The Anglo simply has to accommodate to a different set of priorities.

 But I have gotten way ahead of myself...  After  being "dragged" around to dealers in Native American art our then 10 year old son said, "I saw a Kachina doll in the gallery we were just in and I want to buy it". When we asked,  "Do you realize how expensive that is?".  He responded, "Yes, I asked. I have that much in the savings account that was started for me when I was born and there is nothing more important in the world..."  We said he should sleep on it and we would talk about it the next day, figuring he would have forgotten about it.  He didn't.  We drove back and made Hunter go into the gallery alone to tell the gallery owner what he wanted and a little about his finances.  The gallery was Gallery 10 in Scottsdale and the owner was the late Lee Cohen who said, as our son reported to us: "I am a father myself and I know how much this must mean to you. I am on a fifty-fifty basis with the kachina carver and I will take off half of my half" (a 25% reduction).

With that acquisition Hunter Stiebel became a collector. For his next birthday he got a new savings account known as the Kachina fund which was built up with earnings and gifts to continue his collecting.  The fund remained active until Hunter went off to college when economic priorities took over!

 From that day on our son became an equal partner in a family endeavor where the three of us discuss each acquisition; but only Hunter collects the kachinas. Even if there is one that we would all like, if there is not enough money in the kachina fund he does not get it.  In recent years, Hunter has informed his parents that when he has settled down he will wish to have his Kachinas and that they should start collecting in their own right… which we have done!

As with many collectors we started out collecting contemporary objects and slowly worked our way back in history all the while gaining an understanding and a respect for what we were collecting and the people and culture we were collecting from.

Soon after we started collecting and going up to the Mesa's the Comic book company Marvel published a comic which showed a kachina as a crazed killer, this was bad enough.  Even worse, as far as the Hopi fathers were concerned, the comic showed the kachina's mask ripped off to reveal an individual as a human.  In the Hopi religion kachinas are spiritual entities that participate in the rituals and dances.  The children know nothing more until they are initiated as young teens.  The comic had committed a true sacrilege and the Hopi punished the Anglos by banning them from religious dances.  Our son who had bought 10 shares of Marvel stock was devastated and went to the next annual meeting of Marvel to protest.  He was not alone and the president of the company did apologize profusely.

This was an excellent lesson for the three of us in gaining respect for the new customs we were learning about.   We were learning what was important to the Indians.  The Hopi silver, for instance, was made in a style that was created with the help of the curator at the Museum of Northern Arizona in the late 1930's  This silver they hardly wear themselves preferring the more traditional wares of their Navajo neighbors.  The Hopi silver was made just for sale, mostly to the Anglos.

The baskets are made for gifts for weddings and other ceremonies but are afterwards often used in trade.  Ceramics were initially utilitarian but are now made essentially for the Anglo art market.  Kachina dolls were and continue to be made for the children but they have also become important commercial trade items.

Then there are Kachina masks. These are part of the religion.  One does not discuss what is under the mask; the mask is part of the Hopi religious ceremony.  Here it is easy to draw the line.  We know that it is felt in the Hopi society that masks as part of the religion should not be collected or exhibited, therefore  we do not acquire them. We have probably, at one time or another, collected artifacts which some member of the tribe may object to, but at least we try to have a responsible attitude.

Our collection has changed us. We have learned so much from each acquisition. It has made us into de facto ambassadors for Hopi culture, or, as our Hopi friends tease us, "pet Pahaanas".

Well, is collecting a legitimate pursuit?  Obviously, I think so.  I must admit, however, that there are many sides to the question.  Collecting may be a positive activity but so is preserving archeological sites, protecting temples from destruction and keeping key pieces of one's own cultural heritage.

Clemency Coggins, the archeologist probably most responsible for calling attention to the problems of looting since the 1960's, is, in her own words "on record in opposition to the market in antiquities."  Yet, she wrote in The International Journal of Cultural Property, "Every point in the debate has been made many times by each side, and no one listens anymore.  It seems that few measures have genuinely enhanced the preservation of the world's ancient cultural heritage; in fact, the situation may be deteriorating."

Attempts to stop art collecting run up against a basic human impulse. Neither the approach  of "just say no" nor the extreme of sweeping legislation will work. With the Prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920's we have seen unrealistic law lead to blatant violation and often worse abuse. The total prohibition of art export from Italy today follows a similar pattern.  

 Some years ago there was a great deal in the press about a scandal where an international auction house participated in the smuggling of a work of art out of Italy for sale in London.  A sting operation had been set up for a British television news magazine episode aired in February 1997 by a journalist who wanted to show that this auction house regularly flouted the law. I am definitely not condoning smuggling but I have been involved in Old Master paintings for a long time and can say that the work in question was minor, a painting by a second-rank 18th century portraitist, Giuseppi Nogari.  When sold in the auction it brought very little money.  The journalist had wanted a work of art he could afford to buy back and return to Italy.  The administrative cost of dealing with this painting could not have been worth the bother.  It was not even a decent ambassador of its time and place!  Yet, it was illegal to remove that picture from Italy - it is considered part of Italy's cultural patrimony!  Would not a few dollars of export tax to help preserve the great treasures of this art rich country have been more to the point.

 When no artifacts can be exported legally, then dealers and collectors, be they private or institutional, will find ways around the laws.  If, however, a licit art market is officially recognized, an illicit trade becomes far easier to identify and address.

 A rational compromise must be reached if we are to begin to resolve the problem.  It has to start with the source countries which must make workable regulations which not only protect their interests but also allow for the human factor.  They must officially recognize that collecting on a national and international scale are in their interests from a political and public relations point of view.

 There can even be additional economic advantages. Years ago there was an article in the New York Times about Sony Pictures focused on George Stevens, Jr., the head of the American Film Institute, who had voiced concern when the Japanese had acquired a studio with an important archive of American films. He feared that these foreigners would not respect our legacy.  Later he came around and said that possibly they had cared for it better than if it had been kept in the American hands.  Sony had the wherewithal and vested interest to preserve the property.

In countries where the major issue is archeological material, many "duplicates" are dug up. The museums of these countries cannot display all the material they have and it is usually relegated to poor storage conditions in which it will survive far less well than when it has been paid for and considered of value.  If it is known that one can own and trade in certain artifacts people would even pay for the privilege of export.  These export taxes could be used to help preserve and exhibit those major pieces that should be held as national treasures.

In countries where the issue is art that was made in more recent times Governments must decide what clearly represents their nation's history and constitutes a vital link to its past. Simple U.S. examples would be The Declaration of Independence and possibly the painting by Emmanuel Leutze of "Washington Crossing the Delaware".  A more difficult case caused a stir in the Bicentennial year  when the heirs of General Lafayette sold the ceremonial sword he had been given as a token of appreciation by the government of new United States. At the New York auction a French descendant of Lafayette bought the sword, outbidding the Smithsonian Institution. There were those at the time who felt that our patrimony was being taken even though Lafayette was, after all, French. The argument was moot because there are no art-related export laws in the United States.  This entire issue is even more complicated when the works of art in question came to the country in the first place through the process of collecting. 

Workable methodologies must be developed to deal with the issues and allow for free trade within a context of cultural protection.

Great Britain and France have established a review system for the export of any work of art depending upon how long it has been in the country and its export value. Unfortunately, the politics of economic expediency have come to outweigh scholarly debate over the importance of the object to the nation in this process. Works of art proposed for export have become the shopping list for the nation's curators. The reason is simple: museum acquisition funds are not forthcoming from the government until there is a threat that a work of art will leave the country.

 The situation in England has become almost ludicrous in the case of paintings by the 17th century French artist Poussin whose work was avidly collected by English aristocrats to hang in their country houses. The National Gallery in London, often using the official export review board, continues to add to their collection of Poussin, having by now nearly 20, at least a third of which have been acquired in the last 20 years. Yet another Poussin from an English manor house, where it was rarely if ever been seen by the public, was purchased by the Getty Museum in 1997 at a value of £16,000,000. It too has been stopped so that the National Gallery of Scotland, which owns one Poussin and has eight more on loan, can try to raise the funds to acquire it.

 Dealers must, of course, do their part to become more responsible.  They are at the fulcrum of the exercise and must help to educate their private and museum clients.  Collectors have always relied on the trade to not only guide them to prized objects but to inform them as to the necessary laws that might surround their acquisitions be they import/export or tax ramifications.

 Dealers must themselves desist from acquiring artifacts which are stolen or exported illegally.  They must do more checking regarding provenance with entities such as The Art Loss Register. They can no longer ignore a thinly-veiled circumvention, such as the recently discovered object that conveniently arrives in a country from which they can legally buy and sell it.  To this end several art dealer associations have already written codes of ethics.  These do not instantly make all dealers honest or caring of the cultural heritage of others but it does start a consciousness raising.  It shows dealer "A" that dealer "B" may feel that what he or she is doing is no longer acceptable.  Peer pressure has its effects.  

If governments define what is important to them and create a reasonable environment which will both allow their patrimony to be collected and protected. If dealers are allowed to perform their role as guide and make a living without breaking laws in either the source or collecting countries.  If collectors are allowed to continue to acquire and treasure the artifacts of foreign lands. I believe that we will have made an even greater step than the internet in international communication.

 

* This paper written in 1997 as a chapter for a book resulting from a Symposium at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, but the project was never realized.

 

** The author is a fourth generation art dealer in old master paintings, drawings and sculpture covering roughly the period of 1550 to 1850 and his gallery also has a specialty in the decorative arts of 18th century France.  His family and their gallery had to leave Nazi Germany in the 1930's.  He thanks his wife Penelope Hunter-Stiebel who has been a curator with a stint at Rosenberg & Stiebel, for being instrumental in bringing this article to fruition.