World Views: Missile Defense in Gaza, Pres. Obama's Asia ''Pivot,'' Illicit Art and Antiquities (Nov 23, 2012)

As hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians appear to be winding down in Gaza, Suzette Grillot and Rebecca Cruise talk about missile defense. Grillot, a global security expert, says the so-called "Iron Dome" missile defense system has about a 90 percent effectiveness rate shooting down incoming rockets from Gaza.

"It's changed the way people have responded to air raid sirens," Grillot said. "Instead of running to take cover, they're actually running out into their front yards, or the streets, to watch the missile defense system go to work."

Comparative politics specialist Rebecca Cruise says in a larger scope, such a missile defense system may not be the answer for global security.

"There's a human component here few people are talking about," Cruise said. "Not every missile is attacked by this shield. The personnel involved will take a look, they'll do the trajectory, they'll see if this is going to be a significant concern, then they'll aim and fire."

Earlier this week, President Obama wrapped up his first post-election trip with a visit to Southeast Asia, where he visited Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia and proposing a more cooperative engagement in the region. Cruise said China is likely approaching the situation with caution.

"When the United States gets involved, it's perceived by some in the region, Japan for example, and others that the U.S. is making this pivot to show a strength toward China," Cruise said. "Of course, China is not going to interpret that too kindly, but I think they're going to wait and see what the United States' intentions are."

Grillot said Chinese anxieties are running high, which could extend more broadly to include other countries bordering the South China Sea.

"This is a very strategically important part of the world," Grillot said. "Major shipping lanes, lots of oil resources, lots of competition over that region, and disputes about who owns territories."

During the interview segment of the program, Grillot and Cruise spoke with Renaissance Art historian Kirk Duclaux. Art trafficking is a billion-dollar industry, and Duclaux said some museums actually use their own patrons as buffers for illicit art and stolen antiquities.

"The art comes out of the ground, the museum looks at it, they want to buy it, so they ask one of their donors to put their name to it," Duclaux said. "Then a provenance is created. I mean, this is systematic looting and profiting."

Duclaux serves as the Director of Italian Programs for the University of Oklahoma's center in Arezzo, Italy.

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:

On the value of having art in a museum

“For most Americans, having a work of art in a museum is fundamental to their cultural experience. If you can't go to Italy, the next best thing is perhaps go to a museum and see some Italian art, and that way you do see a bit of Italy and its culture. The more you know about the work, the more you see about the culture. But it's the approach that museums have taken over the years - really beginning in the 1930's and 40's with collecting - that was OK at one point. That is now not OK. A lot of that has to do with UNESCO, who stepped in 1970 and passed a mandate that required folks to check the provenance - that is the owner's history - and museums very often conveniently don't do that.”

On emphasizing the artist over the artwork

“Well, you have to reconcile something when you talk about artists of the stature of Michelangelo. They take on mythical proportions in the history of art. The reality of the situation is sometimes not as pretty. It's not as sexy. It doesn't make the neophyte like Michelangelo in that way. Michelangelo represents the individual in a particular kind of way. Much of what you see in Michelangelo's art is very much Michelangelo, and that's part of that modernity. Michelangelo's emphasis on his finances makes him very human.”

On the “passive due diligence” of museums gathering art appropriately

“Museums are very, very useful, but they can be more useful if they recreate the original intent of these objects, and asking a government if they have seen this work of art, and asking them if it's been looted, and if the government cannot attest to that looting, then it's theirs? It's kind of passive due diligence, which is what most museums have done, then that in itself is not a very decent way to go about collecting art. In fact, some art museums have even used their donors as fences for looted works of arts. The art comes out of the ground, the museum looks at it, they want to buy it, so they ask one of the owners to put their name to it, and then a provenance is created. I mean, this is systematic looting and profiting from that. That's not OK.”

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

SUZETTE GRILLOT, HOST: Kirk Duclaux, welcome to World Views.

KIRK DUCLAUX: Thanks for having me.

GRILLOT: I can't help, I have to start here, the ultimate question to me, and don't get me wrong, I love art, but why do we care about art? What is it about art that matters to us in our lives today?

DUCLAUX: I think art, at its very heart, searches, or at least the creative process, searches for some kind of perfection - whether it's a bowl of fruit that's been abstracted, whether it's a photorealist rendition of that same bowl of fruit. What happens is artists look for the perfect moment, and in finding the perfect moment, they reach that universal. They understand that. They tap into that universal soul, the collective soul that we all have, and that's what unifies art and its emotions and feelings across cultures. I guess some are more specific to certain cultures, and some are more universal in their approach to the creative process.

REBECCA CRUISE: Well, you say that this is a universal, but I can look at a piece of art, and I can imagine that you can look at the exact same piece of art, and we may have completely different points of view. So what makes a piece of art good? Is it about the intent of the artist, or is it perhaps about how it's interpreted, or that feeling that one gets?

DUCLAUX: Well, in terms of interpretation, I think people tend to interpret too much. I do think that people tend to go out on a limb to support an argument, and I'm not sure if that's just a symptom of an over-historiated process that we call, perhaps, "art history," or whether or not there's actually something to that, but I think at the end of the day, a work of art functions depending on the viewer, and what that viewer is trying to understand about the piece. It is subjective, and that's kind of the nature. I think subjectivity is not a bad thing. It invites dialogue, and with that dialogue comes conversation, comes community, comes disagreements, but that's the nature of the game.

GRILLOT: So your specialty really is art from the Renaissance period, where there was a full-fledged changed in which people not only experienced art, but life in general, and growth and understanding of how we relate with one another. What is it about the Renaissance period that is particularly important regarding art, and the art that you know best? What does it tell us at all about society today? The Renaissance was centuries ago, but is there still a connection between that period, and particularly Renaissance art, and how we live our lives today?

DUCLAUX: Well, I think the Renaissance period is one in which we find a lot of ourselves. In fact, I like to say this is really, in terms of art, this is the birth of the modern. There are all kinds of components of that modernity. There are financial aspects that are very important to this. There are personal expression aspects of this generated out of the artist-object relationship. There's a special cognizance that's taking place. The artist is understanding his place in the history of this creative process, and cultures are appropriating this self-understanding in order to articulate its own, larger messages. The combination of the macro and the micro understanding, using one for the other, is all very much a part of this process. The Renaissance is where we begin to see ourselves in the 21st Century. That exists on all kinds of different levels.

GRILLOT: Well, I want to get back to this issue of the artist, and what I'm hearing from you Kirk is art is clearly a very personal experience. But we really tend to emphasize the art over the artist. We do recognize the artist. Donatello and Michelangelo, and others that are the artist, but what do we really know about artists? Should we know things about these artists? I know you've done a lot of work on Michelangelo. You know him well, I guess we should say. What is it that we know about him, and why is it important to know about him? How does that relate to how we understand the art?

DUCLAUX: Well, you have to reconcile something when you talk about artists of the stature of Michelangelo. They take on mythical proportions in the history of art. The reality of the situation is sometimes not as pretty. It's not as sexy. It doesn't make the neophyte like Michelangelo in that way. Michelangelo represents the individual in a particular kind of way. Much of what you see in Michelangelo's art is very much Michelangelo, and that's part of that modernity. Michelangelo's emphasis on his finances makes him very human.

GRILLOT: This man was not a poor artist.

DUCLAUX: Not at all.

GRILLOT: We always hear about the starving artist, or the poor artist, those that are not appreciated in their time, and somebody makes a lot of money on their art after they die, but this was not the case for Michelangelo.

DUCLAUX: Michelangelo was fabulously wealthy. He's one of the very few private citizens in the history of the Republic of Florence that was asked for a loan from the local government.

GRILLOT: But he didn't live this way, right? He didn't live like a wealthy man, did he?

DUCLAUX: No he didn't, not at all. In fact, most of his money typically went into land, and Michelangelo has millions of dollars, what we might consider modern-day dollars, in real estate when he dies.

GRILLOT: So I want to take a little bit of a turn, and talk about something a little more contemporary regarding art, and that is art theft. We don't tend to pay as much attention to art trafficking, or the trafficking of antiquities and art objects, because we don't tend to see them with the same degree of concern as we see drug trafficking, or weapons trafficking, or certainly human trafficking. Yet, art theft and trafficking is a significant problem, particularly in Italy, where we see a lot of antiquities being stolen and trafficked. And in the Middle East, where a lot of ancient historical sites are not well-protected. Museums are not well-protected. So what are we to make of this subject today, Kirk? Why should we care, first of all, about art theft and art trafficking, and really, is this something that is of major concern?

DUCLAUX: For many, many years, the theft of these kinds of objects, whether they're archaeological-related, or they're paintings, or they're sculpture, are seen as something that rich people collect, and why should I be so worried about that? But I think as time goes on, and we're realizing the amount of theft that's going on, I mean, if this is indeed the right figure, a $6 billion business. I mean, it's the third-most trafficked, in terms of making profits, art is the third-most...

GRILLOT: After drug trafficking, and weapons trafficking, and human trafficking...

DUCLAUX: ...a distant third. Exactly.

GRILLOT: So where would it come in, in that order? Drug trafficking is obviously the most profitable, right? Human trafficking is the next, and art trafficking...?

DUCLAUX: Well, you have arms in there as well. So, these figures are all kind-of jumbled in, because there's no real understanding of the numbers. If I have three paintings on a wall, and I insure all three - which means of course, if one of them is stolen, I have to report it - if they steal all three, and I've only insured one because the insurance rates are too high, then I'm not even really reporting the entire amount of theft. So we don't have clear numbers. Museums don't want to acknowledge theft because it looks bad. So there are all kinds of reasons why this number of $6 billion is either higher, or lower, and it's probably much higher than that. It's certainly very lucrative for many, many people.

CRUISE: Well, you mentioned the museums. What are the museums doing to try to deal with this situation, and going just a step further, what is the value of having art in a museum in the first place?

DUCLAUX: I think, for most Americans, having a work of art in a museum is fundamental to their cultural experience. If you can't go to Italy, the next best thing is perhaps go to a museum and see some Italian art, and that way you do see a bit of Italy and its culture. The more you know about the work, the more you see about the culture. But it's the approach that museums have taken over the years - really beginning in the 1930's and 40's with collecting - that was OK at one point. That is now not OK. A lot of that has to do with UNESCO, who stepped in 1970 and passed a mandate that required folks to check the provenance - that is the owner's history - and museums very often conveniently don't do that.

GRILLOT: There have been some high-profile cases, in fact, of museums that don't do their diligence to make sure that works of arts, or some sort of artifact, is not stolen, or inappropriately gathered, right? Do we know this when we go to museums? We don't know these things, right? So it's up to the museum ultimately to do the right thing here, right? But this is how they make money.

DUCLAUX: Well, certainly having a precious work of art brings people in. But I think it loses its context. If I don't know where that Tuscan crater came from, where it was dug out of the ground, and what kind of context it had, it loses all of its importance. It's lost its messages. It's lost its original intent. It's no longer an artifact. It's no longer a manifestation of the culture in which it was created. Museums objectify things. It's their nature, and the beauty of studying abroad is that you see things in their original context. So museums are very, very useful, but they can be more useful if they recreate the original intent of these objects, and asking a government if they have seen this work of art, and asking them if it's been looted, and if the government cannot attest to that looting, then it's theirs’? It's kind of passive due diligence, which is what most museums have done, then that in itself is not a very decent way to go about collecting art. In fact, some art museums have even used their donors as fences for looted works of arts. The art comes out of the ground, the museum looks at it, they want to buy it, so they ask one of the owners to put their name to it, and then a provenance is created. I mean, this is systematic looting and profiting from that. That's not OK.

GRILLOT: Looting and profiting off of someone's culture. I mean, I think that's what's really interesting here, is this larger issue, as you're saying, context or the connection between a work of art, antiquities, some sort of artifact, and its connection to its location, its people, its history. The context that it comes from, and how that gets lost somehow. I've always found it interesting that if you really wanted to see a lot of interesting Egyptian artifacts, we go to Paris. We go to the Louvre. It's great to be able to see these things, but why are they not in Egypt. So how do we come to terms with this particular issue?

CRUISE: And I think I would add onto that, in private conversations we've talked, Kirk, about the fact that some of this cultural robbing, if you will, is being done by people living within the culture. There are a number of famous Italians that have gotten into this business and made a lot of money off of selling these cultural artifacts.

GRILLOT: They're profiting off of the country's culture.

DUCLAUX: Some very high-profile individuals. Giacomo Medici in particular, is the one that's been taken as the best example. This is somebody who had an entire network of tombaroli. These tomb-robbers, who would go along at night, and with their iron posts, jam the post down into the ground to listen closely for the cracking of pottery. That in itself scares me. They're hearing the cracked pottery. These things are thousands of years old. And of course inside, there's non-cracked pottery, and that's what ends up going out onto the market. It goes out onto the market in all kinds of different ways. It goes out in pieces later to be assembled by a museum. Almost like stealing a car and stripping it down and selling it off in pieces. You make more money to eventually come back together again as this great work of art.

CRUISE: And it still has value, even if it's been recreated.

DUCLAUX: In fact, there's a whole collection of these shards that are waiting to be put back together when the rest of the stuff comes out onto the market.

GRILLOT: So one last kind of related issue on art theft and looting - a kind of different spin on it - and that is counterfeiting. The way in which art is actually faked. We all have, I admit, I have the fake van Gogh on my own wall, and that's great for me. I can't afford, obviously a real van Gogh, but I love "Starry Night," so I purchase a copy. What's wrong with that? This is also a big issue today, some say the counterfeit, or at least passing off a fake product as a real one is a real concern today in the art and antiquities world.

DUCLAUX: Absolutely. When you spend $10 million on an ancient Greek kouros sculpture and you're told by everybody that this is a fake, and that you shouldn't buy it, but the person you bought it from clandestinely tells you he just dug it out of the ground, but you can't say that, that's when you get into a quandary, and that's where the J. Paul Getty Museum found itself. So, even though it's illegal to pull these things up out of the ground, and to not declare them, that's still a sign of veracity.

CRUISE: Well what's being done to try to end this? Particularly in Italy, which is obviously home to so many of these beautiful works of art. There's, I believe, a special police that monitors this sort of thing, and they have really tried to be proactive about this.

DUCLAUX: Italy is the standard. Italy has had a police unit for quite some time, and it's been very successful. Policing, on average, again, these numbers are not easy to tie down, but 20,000 thefts every year. That's only what's reported.

GRILLOT: That's amazing. And I can only imagine how complicated that must be if you even look at the ways in which we have difficulty trying to track down other forms of trafficking, let's just add art trafficking to the mix. Well, Kirk Duclaux, thank you so much for joining us today, it was a real pleasure having you here.

DUCLAUX: Thank you, it was a pleasure.

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