Artwork loans, Sicily gives lessons: generous with Greece, succubus with the Met

The agreement between Sicily and Greece on the temporary loan aimed at the final restitution of a fragment of a slab belonging to the eastern frieze of the Parthenopean, the so-called “Fagan Exhibit,” currently housed at the Salinas Museum in Palermo, is a clear example of squinting in international cultural policy by the Region, which creatively applies Article 67 of the Cultural Heritage Code with its Hellenic brothers and disregards it to its own disadvantage (!) with the Americans of the Met, having to give up, every 4 years and for 40 years, the precious Morgantina’s Argenti, forced to be subjected to a commuting that jeopardizes their preservation. Moreover, Sicily, by virtue of a regional rule, is the only region in Italy in which the decision about extra-territorial loans is not made by technicians, but by the governing junta, aldermen such as those for Health, Family, and Agriculture. An absurdity sanctioned by law.

But let’s go in order. The articles of the Code that regulate the“temporary exit” (and not permanent) of goods and works of art are 66 and 67, under which last the agreement between the Salinas and the Acropolis Museum in Athens was precisely signed. The first article prohibits lending in two cases: “for goods susceptible to damage in transport or in the permanence in unfavorable environmental conditions”; and for “goods that constitute the main fund of a determined and organic section of a museum, picture gallery, gallery, archive or library or of an artistic or bibliographical collection.” Which is not, the latter, the case with our fragment. It is worth pointing this out, since according to government propaganda the Sicilian initiative would even “lead the way on the issue of the return to Greece of the Parthenon artefacts, making its own contribution to the debate that has been going on for some time worldwide.” The reference is especially to the Athenian Parthenon marbles from the early 19th century in the British Museum. Beyond the validity or otherwise of the purchase title by the London museum, the subject of an endless tug-of-war between the two countries, it is clear that the “Elgin Marbles” constitute one of the main attractions of the museum, the deprivation of which would be greatly impaired. They can, that is, be included in the category of “property that constitutes the main fund of a specific and organic section of a museum.” The same cannot be said for the fragment in the Palermo museum. The Parthenon fragment is not even recognized by the Sicilian Region as an “essential testimony of ancient civilizations,” nor as an “essential resource” of its cultural heritage: in fact, it is not included in the list of the 23 special goods to which these values are recognized. A single fragment of the foot of a goddess, while “the Elgin Marbles” include some 17 statues from the two pediments, 15 metopes depicting battles between Lapiths and Centaurs, and 75 meters of the temple’s interior frieze. They represent more than half of what remains of the Parthenon’s sculptural decoration today, displayed in the Duveen Gallery, built especially for them. The above is to make clear that the Sicilian “precedent” is unlikely to trigger a spirit of emulation on the part of the British.

Turning, then, toArticle 67, which regulates "other cases of temporary exit" (and not permanent, let us reiterate), among other things, it provides that the one “requested in implementation of cultural agreements with foreign museum institutions, under reciprocity and for the duration established in the same agreements, which cannot be more than four years, renewable once.” No more than eight years in all, then. The news, in fact, lies not in what is called an “agreement of extraordinary international importance,” as batted by Ansa, that is, a temporary loan to Greece that has already occurred on several occasions in the past, but in its propaedeuticity to final repayment. Therefore, when the Greek Republic’s Minister of Culture and Sports, Lina Mendoni, thanks the Sicilian government and councillor Alberto Samonà “for having undertaken the procedure toward the legal agreement under the Code of Cultural Heritage of the Italian Republic, so that this fragment can return permanently to Athens,” she is stating what the Italian legal text does not say.

Quite another matter, on the other hand, to relinquish the right of ownership: it would be a gesture of high cultural and civic value, aimed at strengthening “a relationship of brotherhood and common cultural roots that unite Sicily with Ellas,” to use the words of Nikolaos Stampolidis, director of the Acropolis Museum in Athens. But for this, the autonomous region’s interlocutions are still ongoing and continue, however, through the MiC.

In this whole affair, however, there is a strange amnesia. In official communications they are keen to emphasize that the agreement is being made by virtue of the law, that Article 67 of the Code. But how come there is no mention of the regional norm that governed how the Salinas fragment is to be released? A norm desired by the Musumeci government itself. What’s more, signed by the unfortunate Councilor Sebastiano Tusa. Which sounds at the very least singular given the explicit reference made, precisely, to a state law. In fact, the Tusa Decree of January 29, 2019 introduces, after years of “do-it-yourself” regulation of the modality of loans (on the controversial procedures and modes of lending works of art and goods in the Sicilian Assessorate we wrote here). One would call this good news, were it not for the fact that it was the very technician Tusa who determined that the authoritative opinion of the technicians themselves could be dispensed with. The decree stipulates that the loan, both “inward” and “outward,” “shall be arranged by order of the Director General of the Department of Cultural Heritage and the I.S., after the appreciation of the Assessor of Cultural Heritage and the I.S, after hearing the opinion of the director of the lending institute and, where necessary for the sole purpose of safeguarding the state of preservation of the property, the director of the Regional Center for Design and Restoration.” Translated, the technical body (DG) can initiate the procedure only after the political body has given a favorable opinion. In fact, the authorization has been put back in the hands of the Assessor, when, instead, political discretion should not interfere with technical decisions. The opinion of the body in charge of protection, the superintendency, also disappears, replaced by a technical-scientific body of the Assessor, the CRPR (as if it were the ICR in Rome replacing the superintendencies).

So, of two things: either only Article 66 was referred to in the official communications, to avoid saying that the loan of the Salinas fragment takes place “subject to the appreciation” of the political body and without the Superintendence being the one to ascertain the conservation conditions of the property; or the Assessorate has instructed a file disregarding a regional norm that is still in force.

Either way, interlocutions are ongoing. As they say, what counts are intentions and the will, as well as the ability, to materialize them. And so the lack of coherence in foreign cultural policy of the Musumeci government, which is to be applauded in generosity toward the Greeks, but which slips right on the issue of identity so dear to its Leghist councillor for Cultural Heritage and, indeed, Sicilian Identity, Samonà, cannot but leap to the eye.

An unbalanced foreign cultural policy

The Morgantina Silvers. Despite, in fact, the promise he made in June 2020, upon their return from the Met in New York to Aidone to “work in the direction of a possible revision of the agreement that would lead to the stable and definitive placement of the Morgantina silverware in the natural museum site of Aidone,” the sixteen pieces (3rd century BC.C.) that make up the treasure of Eupolemus, among the Region’s 23 identity assets, still remain hostage to an agreement that is unbalanced, not to say punitive toward a Region “victim” of misappropriation of assets subject to proven illicit trafficking.

In fact, the 2006 agreement between the Italian government, the Sicilian Region and the Met, provides, as a quid pro quo for restitution, a periodic alternating loan for forty years, during which the treasure must be sent to the New York museum for four years and for as many, then repatriated (the writer has dealt with this issue on several occasions in addition to "TheArt Newspaper,“ no. 254, Feb. 2014). An interval granted on home soil to restart the four-year loan period stipulated by the Code. Voices from the soil never stopped being heard. In an open letter dated Dec. 30, 2020, several acronyms of the associational world, from Legambiente to Archeoclub, and then ”Ecomuseum: The Seeds of Demeter of Aidone,“ ”Citizens’ Committee of Aidone,“ ”N.O.I.S. Aidone headquarters,“ along with several others, recalled the results of the diagnostic investigation campaign in the summer of 2014 that ascertained ”a precarious state of preservation of the artifacts," which would already be enough to enforce the aforementioned Article 66 of the Code.

The Head of Hades. A goad to which the archaeologist Serena Raffiotta, now councillor for Culture in Aidone, who was the protagonist, together with an official of the regional department, Lucia Ferruzza, of the January 2016 restitution to Sicily by the Getty Museum in Malibu of the Head of Hades, a life-size Hellenistic polychrome terracotta, stolen in the late 1970s from the sanctuary in contrada San Francesco Bisconti, in the Enna area. An affair with implications that have never been fully clarified, in which the Region, again a “victim,” comes out with a role of cultural and political subalternity (see “Il Giornale dell’Arte,” no. 362, Mar. 2016, p. 12). A full-scale restitution, but one that was initially thought to pass off as a donation. With the Sicilian department playing an unclear role, where the then head of the office involved in the “practice,” Guido Meli, was left in the dark about the identification that had meanwhile already been arrived at in the land of Sicily. The restitution started, in fact, from the recognition by that regional official. Ferruzza, who had studied the “head” years earlier at the Getty as a Graduate Intern, realized that it could belong to the curls in storage since the 1970s, first in warehouses in Agrigento, then in Aidone, and that they had been published by Raffiotta in her graduate thesis. The litmus test came in 2012, when she took the opportunity of an exhibition set up there on the cult of Demeter at Morgantina to juxtapose the “head” with the urchin, along with three others recovered in 1988 in the same area of the sanctuary as the former and resurfaced in 2011, during the arrangement of a new storage facility in the Aidone museum. Here, when one speaks of full cooperation on the part of the American institute, it would be worth remembering that in order to verify the legitimacy of the request on the Sicilian side for the return of the find, the official motivation with which the fragments flew to the Los Angeles museum was an exhibition, and not that comparison, the need for which also rested on solid scientific grounds and would not have needed any other pretext. Especially since it was a “suspect” exhibit, having come through the Symes dealer. Especially since with that exhibition set up between April 2012 and January 2013, on a theme, moreover, contiguous to that which a few months later would be at the center of the great exhibition on Sicily, between April 2013 and January 2014, first at the Getty and then at the Cleveland Museum of Art, inOhio, one was in the midst of “Operation Transparency,” launched in the summer of 2012 by the Getty to verify the provenance of the entire collection of antiquities.

Regional lending regulations. It was precisely the exhibitions at the Getty and Cleveland that were the impetus by which the region attempted to rebalance the matter of defective loans. With poor results, however, both in terms of quid pro quo and even more so of the legal arrangement of the matter. It dates back to that time, in fact, the decree, so-called "blinda prestiti," signed ad hoc by then Councillor Mariarita Sgarlata, who died prematurely. It was written on the occasion of the dispute that arose between the Sicilian Region and the two U.S. museums, to close the spigots of easy lending for the restricted list of 23 assets mentioned above, recognized as an “essential resource of the actions of cultural heritage enhancement in Sicily.” Or so it was said at the time. In reality, it is anything but a “armored loan” regulation, doing nothing more than loosening the meshes for that very narrow list of assets identifying the region. Thanks, in fact, to a waiver it shifts the evaluation of specialized issues from the technicians to the Government Council, allowing the latter full latitude, regardless of the questions of expediency raised by the former. In other words, in Sicily it is left to the discretion of aldermen such as those for Health, Family or Agriculture to determine whether a fragile pictorial film or silverware in a compromised state of preservation can take a trip.

The defective counterparts. And while Sicily is busy lecturing abroad, it has forgotten what it was promised. In 2015, in fact, Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of St. Andrew was supposed to arrive in Sicily from Cleveland for an exhibition that the American museum pledged to mount entirely at its own expense (there was even the title: “Caravaggio and His Followers”), as part of reciprocity agreements woven by then alderman Sgarlata with director David Franklin, in exchange for sending the region’s jewels such as the “Auriga” from Mozia and the “Golden Phiale” from Caltavuturo.

On the blog of Crocetta’s former alderman there is even a nice intercontinental map that makes the “deal” obvious: for two Sicilian works that had packed up as many as nine would come back from the States. Strange deal, however, because instead of setting out, between 2016 and 2017 the “Crucifixion of St. Andrew” underwent a delicate restoration. Since then, then, the U.S. museum has not allowed the work for any exhibition abroad, due to the conservation conditions that do not allow for any movement. While from Sicily, the Argenti can set out regardless of its condition.

In 2016, however, it was the turn of ten precious works that left the island specifically for the British for the exhibition "Sicily: Culture and Conquest," which sanctioned how the coveted reciprocity was still quite far from being achieved. The original pacts were sent legs up in the air. They envisioned for the first time the application of a principle of reciprocity whereby first an exhibition would be organized in Sicily, in the high season, and only then would reciprocation take place. Instead, we were content to put a cultural signing down, between a 10 percent royalty derived from catalog and merchandising sales and a series of initiatives promoting Sicilian culture in the London museum spaces, from listening to folk music to the sale of products of regional gastronomic excellence, good enough just to reinforce the solid cross-Channel equation of a Sicily=land of lemons. Not to mention communication. Because if the British had committed itself to publicizing the event to the main newspapers and televisions, British and international, and through advertising campaigns in London’s busiest places, as well as to supporting the trip, to the main Sicilian sites and museums of a group of journalists from newspapers such as the Financial Time or The Guardian (and, indeed, from expensed journalists it is difficult for anything other than a glossy image of Sicilian heritage to be fired), in the island, on the other hand, precisely because of that principle of anticipated reciprocity for which two exhibitions had been set up between late October and mid-December earlier (but not in the high season), between Syracuse and Agrigento had been penalized by limits on the publicity battage imposed by the London museum that had yet to make its official launch. The fact is that the news only got around close to the inaugurations. With no impact on visitor numbers. In the first stage of the exhibition entitled Treasures of Sicily. Golds from the British Museum in Syracuse, between Oct. 23 and Nov. 23, 2015, there were about 2,600, about as many as there were in the same period in 2014. Finally, it only had to wait until 2018 to see at the Salinas the twelve drawings of the Selinunte metopes by Harris and Angell, as part of the agreements with the British as well. One really has to struggle to find an equivalent cultural significance between a large 5-month exhibition like the one in London with major loans from the island’s major institutions and short exhibitions here and there at home with a few objects (the gold patera and two rings from Sant’Angelo Muxaro at the Lucchesiana Library, to which had been added the jewels from the Avola repository at the Orsi Museum, the drawings at Salinas) and not linked by the common thread of a single exhibition project adequately communicated.

In 2013, Councillor Sgarlata said, “we have to ask ourselves: have those who have rejoiced in recent years over the presence of our ’family jewels’ in London wondered whether the British would accord with equal generosity the loan of a few slabs of the Parthenon frieze to a Sicilian museum? I think these lopsided relationships have had their day.” In 2022, Sicily remains generous, this time for a good cause, but as for symmetry, there is still a long way to go.

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