Earlier this month, things appeared to be looking up for the former Louvre director Jean-Luc Martinez and the French curator Jean-Francois Charnier, respectively charged for “complicity” in and “facilitating” the sale of illicit antiquities to the Louvre Abu Dhabi for some 50 million euros. In a surprise twist, the French prosecutor assigned to the sprawling case, which involves an international smuggling ring, had recommended in November that charges be dropped against both men.
Instead, earlier this month a Paris appeals court announced it would maintain all charges pending against the men. On Thursday, the Court released their reasoning for doing so. A panel of three judges concluded that both men were indeed “closely tied” to the sale of allegedly looted Egyptian antiquities to the Emirati museum, which they helped usher through the acquisition process, despite “difficulties” and “serious alerts” regarding provenance, including what investigators have proven to be forged documents. Both men maintain their innocence, and that they were acting in good faith, based on information available at the time.
Seven Egyptian artifacts purchased by the Louvre Abu Dhabi are at the heart of the case. They include a rose granite stele depicting the pharaoh Tutankhamun, sold for €8.5 million in 2016; a set of nested, gilded sarcophagi belonging to the Princess Henuttawy, sold for €4.5 million in 2014; a bust of Cleopatra sold in 2018 for €35 million; a bronze sculpture of the goddess Isis nursing her son sold for €135,000 in 2015; a blue glazed hippopotamus sculpture, dated ca. 1850 BCE, sold for €900,000 in 2015; a model funerary boat and crew sold for €200,000 in 2014; and a funerary portrait of a man with a cup.
The magistrates also stated that French investigators at the OCBC art trafficking unit followed correct protocol, contrary to arguments from the defense. All charges were also maintained against Hamburg-based dealer Roben Dib, who is accused of gang fraud and money laundering. He is considered a key figure in the smuggling network, and a front man for fellow dealers Simon and Serop Simonian. Dib has denied wrongdoing. To date, no charges have been brought against the Simonian family in connection to the case.
The judges’ decision came as a surprise to some. On February 2, the day before the announcement that charges would be maintained, Charnier, keen to clear his name, told ARTnews he’d be happy to meet for an interview following that decision. By the time of the ruling, he declined to speak after all. He and Martinez are appealing the February ruling to the highest French court.
Charnier’s initial, albeit hesitant optimism, was partly due to the prosecutor’s about-turn. It suggested a shift amid growing concern that the accusations against the French curators were, “bad for all French museums, the Louvre, and Louvre Abu Dhabi,” Charnier said in a phone interview. After all, France’s reputation and so-called soft power were at stake.
Soft Power and Pledges to Do Better
The case has already brought new scrutiny to some of France’s most cherished cultural institutions, as well as the nation’s methods of wielding cultural influence abroad, or soft power. Though sometimes controversial, French soft power is a source of national pride, and a highly profitable diplomatic tool. With the emblematic case of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the French exported their museum expertise and good name, accompanied by a hefty licensing fee.
In addition, the widely reported art trafficking investigation has further exposed endemic weaknesses in France’s museum culture and its art market—with its effects being felt globally—in terms of how they deal with the acquisition of “sensitive” artifacts originating from conflict zones.
“Even if there’s no ultimate conviction, just the investigation itself is a really powerful signal,” Derek Fincham, an art and cultural heritage law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, told ARTnews. “I think this is a real undermining of whatever noble ideals France and the Louvre want to have at this point.”
Following French president Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 pledge to return African artifacts held in the French national collection to the African Continent, and some initial steps to that end, “it seemed like France was trying to turn the corner and have a more enlightened view of its collections and its relationship with these creator communities, but then to have this scandal is really not a good look,” Fincham added.
Martinez, who led the Louvre from 2013 to 2021, has reportedly said in his defense that he only had reason to doubt the origins of at least one suspect antiquity, the Tutankhamun stele, in 2019—years after its sale to the Louvre Abu Dhabi as new information became available. That year the head of the antiquities trafficking unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Matthew Bogdanos, seized a stolen gilded Nedjemankh sarcophagus from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and helped restitute it to Egypt. The coffin was sold to the Met by the same French dealers who sold antiquities with forged provenance documents, according to court documents, to the Louvre Abu Dhabi: Christophe Kunicki and Richard Semper. They have also been charged with gang fraud and money laundering as part of the French government’s ongoing investigations.
While Martinez has the right to remain silent, his decision not to alert French investigators at any point during the years from when he learned of the D.A.’s Met seizure and Kunicki’s involvement, to his indictment in May 2022 casts a shadow on his judgment and the integrity of the institutions he led.
Martinez is currently France’s cultural heritage ambassador, though his duties have been temporarily reduced, particularly in the realm of preventing art trafficking, which had been his area of expertise. During his tenure at the Louvre, he was also president of the Agence France-Muséums (AFM) scientific committee, which was tasked with vetting antiquities suggested for acquisition by the Louvre Abu Dhabi. (The AFM is a joint public-and-private museum consultant agency.)
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A New Report
In the wake of the art trafficking scandal, France’s ministry of culture commissioned a report, released in November, that looked at how to improve the security and integrity of national acquisitions. Among its list of proposals is a special committee dedicated to provenance research. In its introduction, the report states, “Recent events question the quality of acquisition procedures and the functioning of its market. A reaction is necessary to guarantee France’s capacity for influence in the cultural and heritage domain.”
The report’s co-author Marie-Christine Labourdette, who heads the Chateau de Fontainebleau, outside of Paris, however, made it clear that the report was ordered “on the occasion of, but not because of,” the investigation into smuggled antiquities and should not be taken as a reckoning against the Emirati museum purchases. She noted that the current criminal investigation only deals with acquisitions by the Abu Dhabi museum, while the report strictly addresses French national museum acquisitions and systems, adding that “we’re not in a situation of putting blame on French museum acquisitions. That is not the issue.”
The French Ministry of Culture and the Louvre Abu Dhabi did not return a request for comment regarding the ongoing trafficking investigation or the commissioned report.
Corinne Hershkovitch, the lawyer for curator and archaeologist Charnier, told ARTnews that when her client was scientific director at AFM, he relied on the expertise and procedures used by AFM’s 17-museum network, which includes the Louvre. According to Hershkovitch, Charnier led a team who “functioned in complete coordination with the Louvre antiquities department to conduct their research on an object’s pedigree.” Researchers under Charnier were “less specialized” than those at the Louvre, to whom the AFM submitted objects for review, she said. In fact, she argued Charnier required his staff to do “more than what was expected at the time” in terms of due diligence.
With past concerns about the Louvre “selling its soul” by licensing its name and alleged brutal labor conditions that migrant workers from South Asia have reportedly been subjected to, the road to create the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which is also a civil party in the trafficking case, has never been seamless. The latest scandal has also led to questioning of the Abu Dhabi institution’s inherent ambition to become a “universal museum” in a relatively short period.
Since Egypt declared ownership of all its artifacts per the 1983 Antiquities Protection Law, it has become increasingly difficult to legally purchase antiquities from the region on the art market. In fact, hindsight suggests the chances of avoiding legal trouble grew dangerously slim as soon as the Abu Dhabi museum set out to buy a number of major Egyptian antiquities.
“If we want to create a universal museum in Abu Dhabi, it’s going to include risks, and we can’t have one single person bear the responsibility for those risks, particularly when he did everything in his power to minimize them,” said Hershkovitch, referring to Charnier. Given her client’s background on preventing illicit antiquities acquisitions, “it’s all the more unjust that he’s the one who has been sacrificed on the public square like this,” she added.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi grew out of a 2007 intergovernmental accord, in which the UAE agreed to pay 400 million euros to use the Louvre’s name over 30 years. The agreement was recently extended to 2047, adding 165 million to the price tag. Initially, some 600 million euros were also budgeted to pay for French loans and help with building up the museum, which opened in 2017. France signed a similar agreement with Saudi Arabia in 2018, involving the sale of French expertise to develop the heritage site AlUla. That project is budgeted at $15 billion, and Charnier oversaw its cultural development through a French governmental organization prior to his indictment. In a new development, the French media reported last week of a pending Centre Pompidou satellite to open in AlUla as well.
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Antiquities Trafficking in New York
In addition to the inherent risks of the Egyptian antiquities market, Fincham, the cultural heritage law professor, also argues the Abu Dhabi project was marred by a conventional focus on crowd-pleasing acquisitions over substance.
“It’s all about the mission: Is it to be showy and flashy, and have an important masterpiece? Or is it more about history and teaching in a different way?” asked Fincham. “Museums are set in this old way of thinking that you must have permanent acquisitions in beautiful treasure houses.” A less grandiose, meaningful methodology could focus on short-term loans, while also exhibiting surplus parts of collections as opposed to “masterworks that are shiny and bring a lot of attention,” he added.
When it comes to the pressures of building flashy collections, Hershkovitch says the Louvre Abu Dhabi is no different from institutional counterparts like the Met. To date, the Manhattan D.A.’s office has seized 12 objects in the US worth approximately $8.7 million, all in connection to the same criminal investigation tied to the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Many of those objects have come from the Met. However, to date, no curators at the New York museum have been charged with crimes. The Met apologized in a statement for the purchase of the Nedjemankh sarcophagus, while promising to improve acquisition procedures. However, additional seizures from the institutions of stolen antiquities, both in connection and independent to this case, continue at a regular clip.
According to Hershkovitch, the discrepancy in her client’s treatment, versus those of other museum professionals in similar positions, is further example of injustice. “It’s very interesting to put into perspective the situation in France and this person who was indicted, in comparison to what is happening around the world, where objects were proven to have been trafficked, and returned by the Met,” she said.
But Bogdanos, the D.A.’s antiquities trafficking head, told ARTnews there was no comparison. “We certainly conducted, like we always do, a thorough investigation and interviewed all of the relevant people in New York.” He explained individual responsibility in antiquities trafficking cases can depend on where and when a person intervenes along the chain of events following a theft. Along that chain, stolen goods become increasingly laundered, and more likely to fool buyers. Once a looted art piece enters the US from a place like Egypt, Bogdanos said, it typically passes through Europe first. Curators in France are therefore entering at a different stage and context than their counterparts at the Met.
Europe’s position as a key stop on the laundering route of stolen antiquities is also why “we here in New York welcome the increased awareness and scrutiny that is taking place [there] right now,” said Bogdanos.
Similarly, greater public awareness in the US about the hazards of the antiquities market and reports identifying art traffickers have led more institutions and collectors to come forward with concerns about artifacts in their possession. “We’re seeing a real dramatic change for the better in the attitude of professionals in the antiquities and cultural heritage field,” said Bogdanos.
While he could not comment on why professionals at the Met or other US museums have not been charged in the case which began with the golden Nedjemankh sarcophagus, due to this being a “very, very active criminal investigation,” Bogdanos nevertheless highlighted several “red flags” in the Met’s acquisition of it.
“The fact that this extraordinary, $4 million gold coffin appears on the market in 2015, never having been seen or photographed before—it suddenly shows up. From where? Was it hidden in someone’s attic? That’s absurd,” he said by way of example. He also noted the coffin’s shipping documents and “anything indicating when it got to Germany” from Egypt were missing, such as an insurance certificate. “If you have a $4 million coffin, I’m guessing you’d insure it,” he said.
New York law stipulates that “reasonable inquiry” must be used when determining a pedigree for the purposes of trading antiquities. A judge and jury can decide if due diligence was indeed performed.
Could US museum workers still be charged for crimes in connection to this case?
“Right now, we’re still just executing seizures and gathering evidence, which takes time in a multinational investigation. If the evidence leads us to the fair and just charging of individuals, then that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.