The year 2020 saw the passing of two enormous forces in the arts and antiquities exchange – Paolo Giorgio Ferri, and Douglas Latchford. What can the general public learn from such opposing legacies?
In 2008, Paolo Giorgio Ferri brought the Euphronios krater home to Italy – thus ending the country’s thirty-year dispute with New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. This triumph was said to be the pinnacle of Ferri’s storied career, which had already earned him his prestigious affiliation with the highest of the high institutions for art law: UNESCO, ICCROM, and his impressive career as a prosecutor (which, in his lifetime, would net over 10,000 names implicated in black market profiteering). And not least in 2010, he was appointed to the Ministry of Italian Cultural Heritage. Ferri was known to be an all-around wonderful person to work with, both for his dedication to justice and for his pleasant nature. His caliber of stewardship over cultural property is an example for how we may make strides in returning critical pieces of history to their homeland. We’ve still a long way to go in this regard – but Ferri is nonetheless an excellent role model for scholars and experts today and tomorrow.
There are a lot of great things to say about Paolo Giorgio Ferri; I could write this entire article about him if I’m not careful.
Let’s go back to the Euphronios krater: how did the Met get hold of the 2,500-year-old Greco-Roman artifact in the first place? The answer, unsurprisingly, is tomb robbers.
For all that the Met has in its possession, why take thirty years to return one stolen piece? The Met is internationally renowned, with literally thousands of other valuable antiquities under its belt. By 2008, the krater had accrued decades of controversy, and the general topic of repatriation was gaining traction in professional art communities all over; returning the krater seemed the right thing to do. More and more people were agreeing that this rare, brilliant workmanship of Euphronios deserved a safe return to Italy – but even still, the artifact may have remained another statistic in a global inventory of illicit antiquities if it weren’t for Paolo Giorgio Ferri.
This is an example of stewardship to follow. The massive scale of artifacts procured by theft, and then harbored by elites, is an open secret in the antiquities sphere. And yet, if we decide that we care, we can restore these characters to their rightful places and make whole their fragmented chapters in history.
Of course, there is some credence to be given to those who beg the question as to whether the answer is always to repatriate. This is a two-pronged debate that concerns 1. whether the objects will be safe where they are going, and 2. if there is anyone left to whom the objects can be rightfully returned anyway. Much of our inaction in repatriating antiquities stems from the due diligence required to satiate these two concerns. However, our stagnancy is also due in part to an elitist intent to gatekeep ill-gotten goods as trophies.
The movement of objects within the antiquities market – for all of the historical complexity that’s involved, layered with how the objects are commodified – is nuanced enough, that any hand in moving these objects to where they are wanted is more easily viewed as the natural order of exchange; perhaps a “chaotic neutral” market that sustains itself, though it certainly is not that simple. On the surface, Paolo Giorgio Ferri and Douglas Latchford could be viewed similarly on the basis of their roles in moving arts and antiquities, and for their expert knowledge of such – though their motives and influences are stark in contrast.
As with anything, demand for the arts and antiquities comes from a spectrum of sources; a spectrum which ranges from the lowest pits of black markets up to the tallest ivory towers of academia, or the highest seats in government. The many hands through which a treasured antiquity may pass could be anywhere in this spectrum, even against the best knowledge of he who had possessed it before (or will possess it later). This varied nature in the antiquities exchange is the essence which differentiates Ferri, a relentless advocate for repatriation, from Latchford, a laundering thief.
“Please, I’m begging you, please just tell me what the heck this Douglas guy did that was so bad already, you’re taking forever” okay well –
Douglas Latchford was a reliable source for museums and private collections alike in Europe and North America, including the Met. As an “art dealer” under the Khmer Rouge, Latchford exported such a huge scale of Cambodian artifacts that even those “few” he kept for himself (125!) amassed a value of $50M – sculptures and jewelry of such historical significance, yet Latchford was still awarded a Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Monisaraphon in Cambodia. Such an honor is reserved for those who exhibit “accomplishment and outstanding support in the fields of education, arts, science, literacy, or social works.” Latchford’s legacy as an “expert” and “patron of the arts” retains a certain veneer of honest scholarship over the true nature of how he participated in the exchange. The image he curated for himself was of a man who “saved” valuable works of art from the threat of a violent regime – altruistic in theory, but marred with corruption in practice when you factor in the massive profits he made from moving these artifacts, multiplied by his family’s attempts to evade inheritance taxes.
Latchford’s daughter agreed to return his personal haul in full to the Cambodian government in 2021, and it even bears his name in their National Museum: “The Latchford Collection,” seeming to suggest that this is a gracious gift from Douglas Latchford himself for which he could say, “you’re welcome.”
We cannot quantify with any degree of certainty how many historical artifacts may have actually been saved by Douglas Latchford, but his practice of commodifying Cambodian history is certainly quantifiable to the exact dollar and cent for which he sold each item to its highest bidder.
At his death, Latchford had finally been facing charges for falsifying the provenance of some materials he had procured from Cambodia. Without a complete prosecution, though, his complex story is punctuated with that much more ambiguity; the very same ambiguity in ethics and exchange that scholars like Paolo Giorgio Ferri work tirelessly to clarify.
And that is the difference.
Present Preservation 