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| Cartoon by Sacrava |
By TOM MASHBERG
The New York Times
Cambodia has asked that a Sotheby’s executive who sits on a State Department panel that advises that agency on cultural property issues recuse herself from its deliberations on import restrictions for Cambodian antiquities.
In a letter to the State Department, written last fall but not publicly released, Him Chhem, Cambodia’s minister of culture and fine arts, said the executive, Jane A. Levine, faced a potential conflict because her auction house is embroiled with Cambodia in a lawsuit over the ownership of an ancient Khmer statue that Sotheby’s hopes to sell on behalf of the statue’s owner.
The panel, known as the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, held closed-door talks in October on the regulation of Cambodian and Khmer Empire cultural artifacts in Washington. It is scheduled to meet again this month and next.
Sotheby’s said in a statement that Ms. Levine would not attend the meeting this month because of a scheduling conflict. But the company declined to comment on whether she had recused herself in the fall or would take part in any continuing discussions.
“It is Jane’s practice to request and follow guidance from appropriate ethics officers on questions about conflicts of interest,” the statement said. “The issue in this instance, however, is moot because of a scheduling conflict with a Sotheby’s board of directors meeting.” The statement said that Ms. Levine had previously notified the State Department that she would not be attending the panel’s meeting.
A Sotheby’s spokesman, Andrew P. Gully, said Ms. Levine could not comment further, given State Department restrictions on discussions of the panel’s deliberations.
The cultural panel’s major role is to advise the State Department on how to handle requests from foreign governments seeking to control and protect cultural heritage items, many of which are vulnerable to looters and can wind up on the art market. Its recommendations form the basis for agreements, called memorandums of understanding, that, in general, place broad American import and sales restrictions on cultural heritage items.
Ms. Levine, the senior vice president and worldwide compliance director for Sotheby’s, was appointed to the unpaid position on the 11-person panel in 2011. She is one of three members who specialize in the international sales of archaeological items. The panel’s charter also requires three members who represent archaeologists, two who represent museums, and three who represent the wider public.
Sotheby’s and the office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York are currently awaiting a judge’s ruling on whether to permit a lawsuit over a 10th-century Khmer statue, valued at $3 million, to go to trial.
At Cambodia’s request, the American government sought last April to seize the hulking sandstone sculpture, depicting a mythic Hindu warrior, from Sotheby’s. Cambodia said the statue was looted in the 1970s from a crumbling temple in an ancient complex called Koh Ker.
Sotheby’s has said that there is no proof that the statue was removed from Cambodia after 1970, and that its Belgian consignor’s husband, now deceased, had bought it in good faith from a London antiquities dealer in 1975.
State Department officials would not discuss whether Ms. Levine had recused herself. Susan R. Pittman, a spokeswoman for the State Department, said the fall meetings had been closed sessions. “As a result, we have no information to provide to you, including the attendance at the meeting,” she said.
Rick A. Ruth, a senior official with the department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which oversees the panel, said reasons for private sessions included a wish to encourage freewheeling debate; the need to keep negotiating strategies secret; and the fear that organized traffickers would step up looting in advance of legal restrictions.
The United States currently has cultural property agreements with 15 nations. In general, they forbid the import or sale of items that lack export permits and documentation showing they were obtained legally from the country of origin after the agreement was signed.
In 1999 the State Department imposed emergency restrictions on cultural imports from Cambodia, which, beginning in 1970, had suffered catastrophic looting from its prized temples during decades of war, genocide and civil upheaval. The department negotiated a two-nation agreement in 2003 and renewed it in 2008. The agreements are reviewed every five years, and Cambodia hopes to extend the agreement from 2013 to at least 2018.
The existing agreement does not affect the Sotheby’s statue because the statue is known to have left Cambodia before the 1999 accord. Cambodia is seeking its return based on its own laws, which it says have banned the unauthorized removal of items like the statue for more than 100 years. Sotheby’s calls the laws “hopelessly ambiguous French colonial decrees” that have no force today.
In his letter the Cambodian minister praised Ms. Levine’s expertise but said, given the dispute, his government felt her recusal was appropriate.
Parts of the letter were read to The New York Times by two people who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the Cambodian government. A Cambodian government spokesman, Phay Siphan, acknowledged that a letter was sent but declined to comment on it.
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