Hey #clst6! For this #cyo4 #ethics, I listened to an Arch & Anth podcast (a) from Michael Riviera with Professor Erin Thompson, an art historian-lawyer who specializes and teaches in art crime!

This podcast was incredibly interesting and really gets at issues that have taken the mainstage in recent days, and that are very important to address.
Riviera and Thompson with a discussion of Erin’s interest in art crime and what it actually means.

Erin Thompson explains how she used her education backgrounds as a PhD in Art History and law degree that lead to her interest in art crime and the legality of art forgeries, thefts, etc. Such a cool intersection!

Art crime, according to Thompson, is something that is “incredibly grey”, a lot of what we think should be illegal really isn't. She says that we cant always assume who has the right to certain privileges, for example, not all forgeries are actually illegal.

She talks about art students replicating famous artists’ works, and that, although they are recreating this work, it's a learning strategy, not a criminal one. We cannot criminalize the right to destroy or disassociate with an old belief or statue of someone’s own culture.

This was a really great insight here, and it made me really think about how we have considered the destruction of old confederate statues in the US. Is it within our right to destroy or disassociate ourselves with the beliefs or ideals perpetuated by the confederate statues?

This discussion expanded into the Islamic State’s destruction of cultural sites in war. Thompson emphasizes the difficulties of prosecuting and enforcing laws about destruction of cultural property, citing how a man in Bali was just prosecuted for this crime for the first time.

Erin Thompson also explains the difficulties in trying to protect cultural property, explaining how it really furthers colonialist attitudes of who should and shouldn't own art.

She gives an example of the debate over moving artifacts from the National Museum at Baghdad to the US, and then they will return it all when Iraq is safe from conflict again.

This really reminded me of the debate we had in #CLST6 class about the repatriation of the Elgin marbles to Greece. As Tiffany Jenkins argues in Keeping their Marbles, culture supersedes national borders and should be consolidated in museums to best educate many people. (b)

Thompson counters this view, saying that the right to preserve and interpret cultural property is complex, because, for example, digital reconstructions are often done in first world countries by tech women and men without any input from the origin culture.

I really agree with this view. The issue of recreating and replicating art like this is something that should be done in respect and recognition for the artists and culture, not in order to commodify a work that is essential to the identity and culture of a nation.

Erin Thompson and Michael Rivera talk at length about ISIS’s destruction of the cultural site of Palmyra in Syria, a blow the whole world took very seriously.

Thompson explains how she strongly believes the most effective and best way to prevent these sad and disheartening destructions of cultural property is through attention and deterrence.

Perpetrators need to know that destruction of cultural sites is not a safe option, and it must and will come with serious consequences.

The destruction of cultural property is a very sad loss of culture and history, and it deeply affects the communities who feel they lose their identity and past with these monuments.

In terms of archaeology, we, of course, always want for the best preservation and maintenance of monuments and cities like Palmyra, but similar to the Elgin marbles, it's tricky to say whether that warrants taking such cultural property away from the origin country.

In archaeology, its essential to remember that respecting this culture and identity is just as important as studying and preserving these monuments and artifacts.

(a) Arch and Anth Podcast with Michael Riviera and Erin Thompson "What is Art Crime?" https://archandanth.com/episode-114-interview-with-erin-thompson/
(b) Tiffany Jenkins, Chapter 6: "Who Owns Culture" from Keeping Their Marbles