California Raids Echo Through the Field

California Raids Echo Through the Field

By Joelle Seligson

This article was published in Museum, March/April issue of 2008.

Four California museums received an unexpected influx of visitors in early 2008: federal agents. Dozens flooded the museums on the morning of Jan. 24, presenting search warrants that authorized them to search through galleries, offices and archives—and to seize objects and records connected with the institutions’ alleged pursuit of looted artifacts.

The raids were the first public evidence of a five-year undercover investigation of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, the Pacific Asia Museum (PAM) in Pasadena and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego. The institutions are accused of accepting—if not soliciting—objects that may have been illegally exported from Thailand, China, Myanmar and unlawfully acquired from Native American sites.

As of press time in February, the government had not pressed any individual charges, which could include receiving stolen property, import violations and tax fraud. But the raids’ longstanding effect on the field remains to be seen. It could range from calling off exhibitions—Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum has already canceled a display of objects owned by a collector connected to the investigation—to dissuading legitimate donors from dealing with museums. Whether or not any staff member is indicted in the schemes, museums nationwide are on trial in the court of public opinion.

“That’s the most frustrating thing,” says Martin Sullivan, director of Historic St. Mary’s City in Maryland and co-chair of the AAM Ethics Taskforce on Cultural Property. “This latest round seems to reaffirm the suspicions of those people who think that museums will stop at nothing to get wonderful stuff.”

Agents searched the museums for objects and records tied to the investigation’s main targets: 79-year-old art dealer Robert Olson, identified as “the smuggler,” and Jonathan Markell, owner of the Silk Roads Gallery in Los Angeles, which was raided as well. According to the warrants—based on the accounts of an undercover National Park Service agent—Olson regularly flew to Thailand and returned to the U.S. with smuggled antiquities, sometimes affixed with “Made in Thailand” labels to disguise them as replicas and expedite their trip through customs. Olson also allegedly visited Native American sites in New Mexico, where he dug up artifacts without authorization.

Markell and Olson sold such artifacts to clients such as Chicago-based collector Barry L. MacLean, whose collection of Thai artifacts and Cambodian daggers was seized a few days after the California raids. They would then help clients make donations to the museums in question, inflating the objects’ value—with the help of a “friendly” appraiser—by as much as 400 percent to obtain an equally inflated tax write-off. According to the warrants, staff of at least two of the museums—the Bowers and PAM—knew about and even facilitated this arrangement.

At first the setup does not seem lucrative enough to rationalize the risk. Even with the inflation, many of the objects, which were sold at about $1,500 a piece, were valued at just under $5,000; the Internal Revenue Service requires additional documentation on donated objects worth $5,000 or more. This equates to about $700 in savings for donors in the highest tax bracket. (Compare this to the recent negotiations between the Italian government and the J. Paul Getty Museum over the museum’s collection of contested artifacts, one of which was valued at $20 million.)

In this case, however, quantity outweighs quality. There are a decade’s worth of objects at stake here; savings of a few hundred dollars per piece could add up quickly for any taxpayer. But behind each looted artifact lies priceless damage to historical sites and their cultural patrimony.

The museums, which have agreed to cooperate fully with the investigation, have so far denied any explicit wrongdoing. “We honestly did not know this material was illegal,” Bowers Museum director Peter Keller told the New York Times, referring to the institution’s collection of artifacts that the warrants state were likely looted from the Ban Chiang historical site in Thailand, considered the most important prehistoric settlement yet discovered in Southeast Asia. Keller also said the museum has never required proof from donors that artifacts were obtained legally, adding that this is a “very difficult thing to prove.”

Although Thailand banned the export of antiquities in 1961, its capital city remains a mecca for illegal art trade, which puts an estimated $6 billion into the hands of criminals each year, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Thailand also has not signed the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property, making it difficult to monitor the sale and transit of such objects.

Even so, museums must determine as much provenance as possible to avoid liability. “If you can trace back the history of an object 30, 25, maybe even 20 years and show a legal chain of title . . . then you’re probably going to be okay,” explains Patty Gerstenblith, director of DePaul University’s program in cultural heritage law. “But if you can’t do that, you’re running a substantial risk that the object was looted.” It is then safer not to accept the object, she adds. “If you can’t search back far enough, leave it alone.”

The museums in question reportedly did not follow this policy. Much of the blame is placed on the late Armand Labbé, former chief curator at the Bowers Museum, who allegedly regularly accepted antiquities that he suspected were illegally obtained. The warrant for the Bowers states that Labbé told the undercover agent he was able to accept these objects because he “could not determine” the official policy on such donations. Keller informed the agent that he and Labbé used to debate the legality of Olson’s practices—then continue to accept his offerings.

Marcia Page, deputy director of collections at PAM, met with the undercover agent in November 2005 to discuss a donation of objects the agent had purchased from Markell. According to the warrants, she informed the agent that she was expected to “put up token resistance to accepting antiquities without proper paperwork.” A few weeks later, the museum accepted the majority of the agent’s donation without documentation.

“The standards have obviously changed,” notes Joan Marshall, PAM’s executive director. “They’re not the same as when the museum was established in 1971 and not the same as they were two or three years ago. I think as museums we need to set the bar higher.”

PAM has had a collections policy in place for many years, Marshall says; the question now is whether this policy has been followed. The museum already has begun self-evaluating and making changes, such as involving more staff when selecting new acquisitions, which has been suspended for the time being. In addition, she vows that PAM will be more discerning when it comes to taking donations. “We have in the past trusted the information that’s been given to us. We have not been overly suspicious or assumed that something was altered or forged. But I think we need to be doing our own investigation. I don’t think it’s enough for someone to say, ‘It was in my grandmother’s collection and came down to me.’

“We’re going to take a closer look at how we operate. All museums are going to be taking a closer look. This is not an issue that just affects the Pacific Asia Museum but every major institution around the country,” Marshall adds.

All four museums have posted responses to the events on their websites.

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