That Harrison Ford says goodbye to Indiana Jones is a loss for the cinema and a victory for the fight against plunder.
“The myth of Indiana Jones has done a lot of damage, it was like the worst thing that has ever happened to cultural heritage,” says Elizabeth Marlowe, director of the museum studies program at Colgate University.
The character of the adventurous archaeologist was born on the screen in 1981. Its premiere occurred at a time of maximum intensity in terms of the theft and looting of pieces of art in numerous countries to feed the greed of the big museums, which in many cases preferred to look at elsewhere instead of being interested in the origin of those treasures.
The Met in New York, one of the largest museums in the world, had a period of rapid growth between 1970 and 1990. Many of his objects that are in the spotlight for their provenance date from that time.
Given the repeated claims and facing deeper scrutiny from the law, academics and the media about the extent to which its collection includes looted pieces, the Met announced the creation of a plan to review the provenance of its possessions. This includes a team of researchers unlike any other museum. "We estimate that this examination will include several hundred or more objects," acknowledges Max Hollein, director of the institution.
“The Met understands that times have changed,” reflects Professor Marlowe. “They can't pretend that the problem will go away, which I think is what they expected to happen,” she says. "I'm cautiously optimistic, partly because I'm afraid the purpose is to keep the Manhattan DA at bay by saying they're already working on it, to leave them alone," she adds.
The Prosecutor's Office is on the lookout. Last year he seized 27 antique objects, worth $13 million, as they were stolen. They were returned to Italy and Egypt. Recently, in March, a headless bronze statue from 225 B.C. was seized. dedicated to the emperor Septimius Severus, worth 25 million, who presided over the gallery dedicated to Greece and Rome for 12 years.
That same month, investigators obtained a seizure warrant for 15 antiquities linked to Subhash Kapoor, a Manhattan art dealer and prolific smuggler of stolen art. And then there are the pieces that the museum has returned to different countries due to negotiations, although in many other artifacts it refuses to release the acquisition papers.
“There are still stolen objects that have blood on them,” the professor emphasizes.
That period of maximum expansion was marked by the influence of Thomas Hoving, who served as curator and then director of the institution from 1967 to 1977. "Not a single decade of any civilization that took root on Earth is not represented by some worthy piece ... The Met has it all,” he wrote of his work.
One of its peak moments was the arrival in 1972 of the Euphronio Krátera. Marlowe recalls that a million dollars was paid, the largest amount ever paid for an ancient Greek pottery. There was controversy, since the question arose: "Where does it come from?" The Met guaranteed legality, but Hoving, once outside the house, wrote that they knew it was a stolen relic. Although he earned a reputation as a loudmouth, he told the truth about that chalice, which was returned to Italy in 2008.
“Museums are in a questionable place in the public eye,” concludes Marlowe, “so they have to clean up their image, and this requires changing their practices. If the Met does it, it will have a huge impact."
