Philo talks museum stealing

Many hear the word “tomb raider” and think of Lara Croft. According to Richard Leventhal, they should think of their local archeology museum instead.

The Philomathean Society hosted Leventhal, Anthropology professor and former Williams Director of the Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, for a talk entitled “Stealing Culture: Museums in the 21st Century” on Tuesday.

“How would we feel if we woke up and the Liberty Bell was in the British Museum of Art?” he asked the audience, sharing insight on how a nation would feel about their artifacts being exhibited abroad.

Leventhal highlighted the ethical and economic problems of acquiring antiquities. Museums are often faced with legal problems when purchasing artifacts, since many pieces have an illicit past. Some pieces have been excavated by looters, others illegally extracted but smuggled from their native country. In light of this, some museum directors have faced serious legal prosecution. Former curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles Marion True, for example, faced five years of trials in Italy for allegedly buying ancient artifacts while conscious of their illegal provenance.

Leventhal also argued against the “blockbuster model” of museum management, focusing on the creation of eye-catching events such as the Franklin Institute’s King Tut exhibit. Ultimately, he said, museums belong to their community.

According to Leventhal, museums should foster long-lasting relationships with their community, rather than focus on creating exhibits geared toward high attendance.

“These institutions represent us,” he said. “We should demand that they represent us in ways that we want.”

College junior Joshua Bohar compared this to Wisconsin’s sense of ownership of the Green Bay Packers: much like a community’s participation in its team’s Superbowl victory, communities have a stake in the survival and success of their museums.

For College freshman Whitney Kite, the lecture served as an “interesting framework” for thinking about the problems surrounding the Silk Road exhibit at the Penn Museum.

College sophomore Paul Mitchell, a member of the Philomathean Society and organizer of the event, said that the talk was a “great reminder” that “there is a world-class museum down the road, and that it is very much representative of the problems faced by museums in today’s world.”

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