Word: vase
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...York Met Director Thomas Hoving proclaimed that with the acquisition of the Euphronios vase, "the histories of art will have to be rewritten." Dr. Giovanni Scichilone, 39, archaeological director of the Italian government's antiquities bureau for southern Etruria, rejects this aesthetic evaluation as too narrow. "Maybe a new generation of men will come," says Scichilone, "who are finally ready to appreciate the fact that the Euphronios vase by itself is nothing more than a war trophy, a lion skin. You can't get any historical meaning from archaeology until you deal with tomb groups, not single items...
...they are found by pushing a steel probe into the earth or sometimes by stamping and listening for reverberations. Then a hole is opened with a pick and shovel and the prizes dragged out. Just two weeks ago, in the area of Cerveteri from which the Met's vase is alleged to have come, the police found one group at work; the robbers fled, leaving their haul of 51 valuable Etruscan objects behind...
...bronzes. Said an official of the antiquities museum in Basel, Switzerland: "It's public knowledge that 90% of the certificates of origin accompanying such works of art are totally unreliable. Most certificates are manipulated. The Italians can raise a ruckus, as in the case of the Metropolitan vase. But if they cannot prove anything, their claims are worthless. Unless the Italian authorities can come up with something like a photograph showing a work of art in an identifiable Etruscan tomb, they don't have a leg to stand...
What infuriates responsible archaeologists about the bootleg trade is not merely its illegality, or its size, but the fact that it involves a wholesale destruction of knowledge about the past. The traditional excuse of collectors-museums as well as private individuals-has been that the way a vase or a bronze is acquired cannot outweigh the benefits of having it on display to the public...
...possible solution to the dilemma would be an international fund to enable each country to protect its treasures, and then a systematic, international sharing-on a long-loan basis -or swapping, so each country could broaden its collections. Italy, for example, could swap a vase for a French impressionist painting. Failing that, museums must become more scrupulous. A group of museums in the U.S. has already taken the first significant step. In recent years policy statements have been issued by the Field Museum, the University Museum in Carbondale, Ill., the University Museum in Pennsylvania and all the collections of Harvard...