THURSDAY 13 APRIL 2000

DR NEIL BRODIE

  Chairman: Dr Brodie, I am sorry, the previous evidence stimulated an interesting conversation between us and that being so I am afraid we have kept you waiting for a moment.

127  Good morning. You argue that the conduct of the antiquities trade damages the reputation of the much larger and better regulated fine art market. In what way does the latter better regulate than the former?

  (Dr Brodie) I think in the fine art market it is more accepted practice that you have a provenance, you have an ownership history accompanying objects for sale, and this is not the practice with antiquities. So what is seen to happen is that we will point the finger at the antiquities trade and say, "This is all a bit murky here. We do not know what is going on. This has been entered onto the market and it is all a bit dodgy", and then by association it might be that the art trade, generally, in London becomes tarred by the same brush.

128  In the fine art market we see brochures where there is no indication whatsoever of which owner was there before or where it came from, although most people know where it came from. Are they not just as bad as the other trades?

  (Dr Brodie) I think if you investigate a piece of art, generally you can trace back an ownership history. You know who painted the object in the first place, or you hope that you know the painter. I think it is a lot more open than the antiquities trade. I think that is the crucial point. It is more open to investigation.

129  So are we falling down on the export laws? Are they the things at fault really and truly?

  (Dr Brodie) I think the problem with the export laws is that they offer a mechanism to trace part of an ownership history of an antiquity. I am not talking about export control, I am not talking about stopping objects leaving the country, I am just saying that when an object leaves the country we should make a check on its previous documentation to make sure that it was exported legally from the country from whence it originated. The only way we can do that really is if we say that every object over a certain price needs an export licence, and to obtain an export licence you need to produce documentary evidence of its legal export from the country of origin. That will do two things, it will give us some quantifiable information about the scale of the trade and the shape of the trade, and it will also go some way to stamping out the illicit movement of material through this country.

130  What figure are you putting on it—anything over £2,000 or £3,000—as a price threshold?

  (Dr Brodie) I put it at about £1,000 I think, perhaps even lower. I would look towards a lower threshold actually, at about £1,000 or even lower. I think for the large majority of antiquities that go out of this country you are probably looking at under £500, so if you set a threshold of £500 or £1,000 you are going to catch a lot of antiquities but you are not going to be dealing with all the little odd Roman coins or all of those types of thing that are going out. I would have a threshold in the £500 to £1,000 area.

131  Have you ever followed any object through to find out what happens to it yourself?

  (Dr Brodie) Myself, I have not. You cannot do it really. If I go to an auction house or a dealer and say, "Who did you sell that object to?", he will just say, "I'm not telling you." So the inquiry stops there really.

132  Would you still purchase something if someone said to you, "I don't know where it came from", or, "I'm not telling you where it came from"?

  (Dr Brodie) I think it would be very foolish to purchase something in those circumstances in any market.

133  Do people do that?

  (Dr Brodie) Yes.

134  I am sorry I interrupted when you were answering Mr Fearn. The threshold that you suggested is very low. If we are talking about the necessary requirements to do that, we are almost talking about going into the average high street junk shop at that sort of level and turning over what is on every shelf. Is it actually deliverable and feasible if you do set the threshold so low?

  (Dr Brodie) We are only talking about objects which are exported, we are not talking about objects which are sold in the United Kingdom. I think if you do not have a low threshold it becomes a pointless exercise. If we are only going to license objects over a high price threshold, we will only be licensing a very few objects and it is a bit of a waste of time really. The point is that we want to have an idea of what is moving out of the country and the only way we can get an idea of what is moving out of the country is by logging it effectively. We do not achieve that if we exclude a large part of it in the first place. So I think to be effective it has to have a reasonably low threshold.

135  Do you think it is actually deliverable to do this? Are we going to be able to have the resources to chase up thresholds that low?

  (Dr Brodie) I have been told that it is illegal to charge for an export licence. I do not understand this. I do not see why there cannot be a handling fee involved, even a very low handling fee. If an export licence was required you could charge £1 maybe or a percentage of the price of the object. If the volume of objects flowing out of the country is as high as we are led to believe, that would generate a large sum of money which could be used to administer the system. I personally do not see that there is a problem there. I would like to hear what the legal objection is. [17]

136  What, so far, is the objection? Is it a legal objection?

  (Dr Brodie) I have just been told at secondhand that we cannot charge for an export licence, it is illegal. I do not know what the basis of that is. I would like to hear an authoritative version of that.

137  I am still a bit confused about antiquities. Did you hear my earlier question to Professor Renfrew about the freeing up of the trade to some extent?

  (Dr Brodie) Yes.

138  Is that not the more legitimate way of doing it, or rather the better way to do it? There are so many antiquities. What archaeologists want is the knowledge and information. That site there next to that site there is not necessarily going to give you any different information except on a very narrow point. Would it not better to just say, "All we need are some sites, not all of them"?

  (Dr Brodie) There are several aspects to this question. In the present market situation I think it would be very dangerous to free up controls completely. If we look at the US, it is one country in the world with no export controls and it suffers very badly from archaeological looting. So obviously a liberal export regime does upset the archaeological heritage. There is also the point that there is a lot of material lying around the Mediterranean countries which they could export and maybe that would help them. I am a bit mystified by this. I have worked in three provincial museums in Greece and I have never seen a lot of material lying around in the storeroom, it is on display. If there are objects that people would be willing to buy on the market here, there they are only on display in museums. What you see in the storerooms are boxes full of fragments and broken pots, which by and large I do not think people here would want to buy. I am not too convinced by this argument that there is a lot of material waiting to be exported. I do agree with Professor Renfrew in that I think in an ideal world if the market here was fully open, fully transparent, so that everybody could see what was going on and everybody trusted everybody else, the Italians or the Greeks, could look at the international market and say, "Yes, it is all above board. No problems here", and then you could see a position emerging where these governments would be more on the level and they would be prepared to release a portion at least of their archaeological material into the market.

139  I do not think anybody would suggest that it should be a totally unregulated market, but it would be better if it was a regulated market. If someone finds something, they would have to take it to the local museum or some organisation who would then say, "Where did you find it? Can you tell us about it and exactly where you got it? Right, we have 1,000 of those already, you can put that on the market." Would that not make more sense?

  (Dr Brodie) It is all about achieving the correct balance, because you want a system which encourages people to report any chance finds, but you do not want a system that encourages them to go out and look for more. I think the problem at the moment is that because prices are so high people are encouraged to go out and actively look for material for sale. Obviously, if you completely de-regulate that market environment it would be a disaster. So we really need to have a market environment where antiquities are not seen to be desirable commodities, collectibles or investment objects. If we de-regulate then, I think it would work.