Olympia Resolution – The Importance of international collaboration for the protection of national cultural properties

 

Statement from Dr emeritus Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer, Director, Antikensammlung (Collection of Classical Antiquities), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:

As a contribution to the “Art and Culture” section at the Olympia Symposium entitled “The need for Constructive Dialogue between Peoples and Cultures” (Ancient Olympia, 1-7 September 2015), the lecture “The importance of international collaboration for the protection of national cultural properties” took account* of the ongoing “discrepancy between archaeology as a science oriented towards contextual evidence, protection of monuments and commitment to enlightenment, and the fate of archaeological objects that have been torn out of context, robbed of their provenance, and looted from devastated pits: objects that year after year arrive illegally on the antiquities market, in private collections and museums.”** The reasons for withholding documentation of these objects, namely their illegal excavation and unlawful export from the country of origin, are judicially intolerable. Every day our newspapers are full of recently plundered sites in regions endangered by war.

To counter this worldwide development, for more than 25 years museums of different European countries, both rich and poor in antiquities, have been constructing a network of direct collaboration.*** Central to an analogous agreement of 2002 between Italian and German museums is the exchange of well-documented antiquities as res extra commercium, as long-term loans for restoration, exhibition, scientific investigation and publication. We propose to bring this dialogue at an international level and to promote such a network as a basis for the protection of cultural properties world-wide.

The complete Olympia Resolution 2015 text is given below.

Olympia Resolution 2015 on international museum collaboration and protection of cultural heritage

Participants of the International Symposium “The need of a Constructive Dialogue between Peoples and Cultures”, Ancient Olympia, 1-7 September 2015
– expressing their consternation over the plunder of ancient sites and museums as well as the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in connection with armed conflicts;
– notifying the ongoing illegal excavations, robbing archaeological objects from their contexts and surrendering them illegally to a “transnational” market;
– knowing the legal difficulties in direct collaboration of partner museums to avoid such illicit market and handle the exchange of long-term loans and counter-loans, their restoration, exhibition, scientific investigation and publication;

agree to ask the responsible curators of the International Council of Museums (ICOM),  the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM)
– in accordance with their conventions on museums ethics and against illicit cultural properties;
– in accordance with the UNESCO Convention of 1970/72 and the UNIDROIT Convention of 1995,

  1. to accept the responsibility of demanding from national politics and administrations worldwide to develop direct museum collaborations on loan-exchanges;
  2. to enhance national laws, especially in the source States, limiting the loan-periods in a restrictive way: four or five years under international controlled museum-conditions should count as a norm;
  3. to draft model contracts about long-term loans for studies in teamwork to be nominated in the contract, for possible restorations according to the regulations of the lending museum, for exhibitions in adequate climatic situations and security;
  4. to encourage museums to build up networks of institutions interested in loan-exchange under these conditions;
  5. to call on the museum-administrations to formulate and then to make publicly known their acquisition policy in relation to antiquities, with equal force for the acceptance of objects on loan or conservation: this policy includes the strong observance not to handle objects without a “pedigree” about its provenance;
  6. to ask all museums and institutions interested in cultural exchanges to inform constantly the public about destruction of cultural heritage caused by illicit excavation or terrorism.

The resolution was accepted unanimously at Olympia on 4 September 2015 by Ashish Baheti, Sarika Baheti, Tung Ching, Angelos Delivorrias, Eleutherios Diamantaras, Hatto Fischer, Alexandros Hahalis, Dionysos Gangas, Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer, Jane Ip, Way Jing, Li Junghong, J. Christian Kirsch, Leonidas Liu, Alexandros Mallias, George Manginis, Alexia Mercouris, Spyros Mercouris, Chico Sciuto, Robert Sidelsky, Panagiotis Skordas, Agne Vlavianos Arvanitis, Shelley Wache, Zang Xiaoming, Andreas Zaimis, Konstantinos A. Zaimis and many others.

* http://poieinkaiprattein.org/conferences-symposiums-workshops/symposium-the-need-of-a-constructive-dialogue-1-7-sept-2015/ – Organizer: Horizons – Human and Cultural Activities, Spyros Mercouris, Athen, and International Olympic Academy, Isidoros Kouvelis, Athen

** Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer-Cordelia Eule (ed.), Illegale Archäologie – Internationale Konferenz über zukünftige Probleme bei unerlaubtem Antikentransfer, Berlin 2003 (2004)

*** Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer, 20 Jahre Berliner Erklärung – Illegale Archäologie, Leihgaben, Zusammenarbeit, L. Boltzmann-Institut für Europarecht, Vorlesungen und Vorträge, Heft 28, Wien 2008 (cf. Heilmeyer-Eule, supra note 2, 230-235); in general now: Susanne Petterson u.a. (ed.), Encouraging collections mobility – A way forward for Museums in Europe, Helsinki (2010) (cf. http://www.lending-for-europe.eu/handbook/)