The June 15 editorial on the ongoing dispute between Yale University and the Peruvian government concerning the artifacts that Yale's Hiram Bingham brought back from Machu Picchu is a welcome one. However, its concluding paragraph leaves a false impression on the status of the complex issue of the ownership of antiquities.
American museums are only "returning precious antiquities to their countries of origin" in cases where there is clear violation of recent international agreements, or where the items' provenance has been grossly tainted by theft.
Readers need not fear that moving vans will be backing up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to load the Assyrian statuary up for shipment to the sands of northern Iraq. The reasons are fairly clear.
The statement that antiquities have countries of origin is inaccurate. The empires and cultures that produced these works of art are rarely extant.
How many Phrygians and Sarmatians have you seen recently at Black-Eyed Sally's? The Egyptians, Greeks and Italians of today are the product of successive waves of migrations that have altered their ancient societies beyond recognition.
The continuity of the Incan culture and Bingham's aggressive techniques make Peru's claim a stronger one than most. But the unjustified returning of items to often remote and inaccessible locales would deprive the citizenry of the whole world from sharing in what is truly our culture.
Fairness demands that a mediator be unbiased in opinion on the matter in question. Sen. Chris Dodd's plan to "return the artifacts to their rightful owners" shows his bias to return them to Peru. Maintaining the status quo requires no return. Having Sen. Dodd mediate this matter would be like naming Helen Thomas to mediate between Israel and the Arab Palestinians.
Without Hiram Bingham and Yale's Peabody Museum, the Incan artifacts from Machu Picchu would have been dug up by unprofessionals interested only in profits, not preservation. Those artifacts not broken in the process would have been sold to the highest bidder and scattered throughout the world.
We owe Hiram Bingham and Yale University a debt of gratitude for the planning, funding and effort that was expended, not only to discover these valuable artifacts, but to safely house them together in one place where they may be experienced by the public. The Peabody Museum is the rightful and safe repository for these items. The Courant should reconsider its opinion on this matter.
Source: Chicago Tribune