http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/arts/ ... ref=slogin
But. seriously folks, this has been in the news for a while. Want some debate on unknown provenance and unproven claims?“I do not want my wife or my son to inherit what has become a curse,” Lord Northampton, now 60, told The Sunday Times of London
Robert Brooks, the chairman of Bonhams, said he hoped this private exhibition, which ends on Friday, would at least provoke a debate. “In particular, there is the question of what happens to objects when their early provenance is unknown,” he said in an interview. “Do important objects get locked away forever, or are they exhibited and studied?”
Lord Redesdale, secretary of an all-party parliamentary archaeology group, called for a full examination of the treasure’s origins. “While the treasure remains here with its status unresolved, it represents a standing challenge to the effectiveness of the measures in force in this country to combat the trade in illicit antiquities,” he wrote.
That said, nothing certain is known about the collection before 1980, when its first six pieces were reportedly sold by a Lebanese-born art dealer called Halim Korban to Peter Wilson, a former chairman of Sotheby’s. Two years later, Mr. Wilson and a London lawyer, Peter Mimpriss, persuaded Lord Northampton to invest in the venture, and four more works were acquired.
In 1983, these 10 were offered to the Getty museum, but the museum lost interest after Lebanese export licenses were proved to be falsified. That same year Mr. Wilson died, but through Mr. Mimpriss’s connections, Lord Northampton later bought four more pieces. The collection of 14, by then owned entirely by Lord Northampton, was exhibited in New York in 1990 in anticipation of a Sotheby’s auction planned for later that year in Switzerland.
“What is an affront to public decency,” said Mr. Brooks, the auction house’s chairman, “is the thought that these objects will never be seen by anyone, anywhere, at any time. The alternative is to give them to some country that has not proven its claim.”
“The fact is,” he went on, “no one has come up with a decisive answer as to where the treasure originated, where it was used and where it might have been hidden. All we know is that it was probably hidden, which is why it survives in unbelievable condition.”
