UNESCO'S DOCTORED PHOTOS AND DISINFORMATION

"I imagine you have already seen this piece concerning the dishonest and deceptive promotion issued by UNESCO.

"This certainly relates to coins. Because such vast numbers of coins were exported from their "points of origin" in the past, when there was little interest in attention or obligation to preserving information on the sources, most numismatic items now in the hands of museums, collectors and dealers lack provenance, sad to say. Personally, I have known dealers and even collectors who deliberately discard accompanying documentation so as to obscure from others (or to avoid recalling) what they paid for items. Yet I would not be surprised to know that these same characters would not want archaeological sites and contexts to be ruined or even disturbed. It is a conundrum.

"Today, there are certain elite circles that seem to want to curtail and regulate all private "collecting" under the guise that it leads to criminal looting, destruction and trafficking, whereas they would probably do nothing to stop the practices of governments that destroy archaeological sites for the sake of their politics or improving their infrastructures (or of not offending certain influential parties). There does seem to be a movement underway today to acknowledge considerably higher values for items that have a long documented provenance, which is as it should be, in my opinion. Maybe this tendency will convince destructive renegades not to keep to their nefarious practices."

UNESCO celebrated the 50th anniversary of the signing of the 1970 Convention with a public relations campaign alleging that collecting antiquities is a primary cause of heritage loss in recent conflicts, funds terrorism, and promotes the theft of artifacts from museums. UNESCO's The Real Price of Art campaign showed purportedly looted and stolen antiquities decorating affluent homes. According to UNESCO, the campaign tells the ‘hidden' story of these objects in order to "reveal the dark truth behind certain works… The other side of the décor… terrorism, illegal excavation, theft from a museum destroyed by war." The campaign was created by the Paris-based DDB agency and publicized on the internet and UNESCO's website. The objects used for the campaign were a Palmyran bust of a woman, a ‘moon mask' from the Ivory Coast, a Gandharan Buddhist head from Afghanistan, a pre-Columbian pot, and a panel from the Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck.

However, except for the van Eyck altarpiece, which was taken from a Belgian museum in 1934, UNESCO's ‘looted' objects were not looted or stolen, and the text that accompanied them was a fabrication. The objects photoshopped into these privileged, private settings were actually legally owned artworks belonging to New York's Metropolitan Museum. They had been acquired in 1901, 1930, and 2015 (this object was in another collection from 1954). The pre-Columbian pot was an Alamy stock image with an equally erroneous text. The last poster depicted a panel from the Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck which actually had been stolen from a museum in Belgium in 1934.

Buddhist head from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY, photo-shopped into the UNESCO campaign poster

The campaign text made false claims about terrorist connections to the art market and stated that there is a multi-billion dollar organized criminal trade in illicit artifacts. These accusations do not stand up to even a second of scrutiny. The economic data on which the campaign is based is invented (and the quoted sources actually tell a different story). In fact, all of UNESCO's claims are contrary to data documented in a major analysis by the RAND Corporation and are belied by World Customs Organization data and other law enforcement reports. The RAND report shows that antiquities crime is actually for the most part ad hoc, opportunistic, and poorly organized, and notes that many, even most objects marketed in the Middle East are likely fakes.

Contrary to UNESCO's oft-repeated claims that antiquities trafficking comes third or fourth in criminal trafficking, after drugs, weapons, and human trafficking, the World Customs Organization reports that the illegal trade in antiquities represents only a tiny sliver of all criminal trafficking – about 0.2% of the total.

When the Metropolitan Museum became aware of the deceptive use of its images it immediately asked that they be removed from the campaign. The Met makes professional quality photographs of objects in its collections available to the public – but requires that they be correctly credited. Instead, UNESCO framed them within false stories that harm the museum's image.

When news of the faked publicity campaign became public, UNESCO published a statement half-apologizing for telling a false story using Metropolitan Museum images:

"In an initial version of UNESCO's campaign, the ‘Real Price of Art', some posters displayed items from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) database, which is in the public domain. UNESCO's intention was to alert the general public by depicting objects of high cultural value, which should be on display in museums, presented in luxurious private interiors. UNESCO had no intention of questioning the provenance of items in the MET collection… UNESCO regrets the use of MET images that caused any misunderstanding."

UNESCO continued to justify the publicity campaign as, "encouraging [the public] to exercise due diligence when purchasing cultural property." UNESCO also failed to completely remove the campaign from the Internet, still seen here on December 1.