Museums assert right to art ‘loot’

Directors of 18 leading museums in Europe and the United States, including the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, have joined to assert their right to hold onto ancient art treasures that Greece, Turkey and other nations claim as plundered loot that should be returned.

The “declaration on the importance and value of universal museums” acknowledges that many masterpieces were seized in colonial times “under conditions that are not comparable with current ones,” and it deems repatriation “an important issue” that museums must decide case by case. But the directors contend that museums are a “valid and valuable” repository for world treasures, and that whittling ancient masterpieces from their collections would undermine their mission of spreading knowledge and interpreting the past. Without museum displays, the directors wrote, “The universal admiration for ancient civilizations would not be so deeply established today....”

Signers include the directors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Louvre in Paris, the Prado Museum in Madrid and the State Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg, Russia.

-- Mike Boehm