Universiteit Leiden

nl en

Curator Ruurd Halbertsma: ‘Surely we can’t just sweep away antiquity?’

Like many others, Ruurd Halbertsma has had a rollercoaster of a year. His museum, the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO), was closed for a long while because of the lockdown. Visitor numbers picked up again from September, but it the next few weeks will be tense now the hospitals are full again. Halbertsma: ‘It’s been an intense year. The Covid rules meant that exhibitions and conferences were cancelled, but it did give me time to write “Roofkunst”.’ The book was published this summer.

Like many others, Ruurd Halbertsma has had a rollercoaster of a year. His museum, the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO), was closed for a long while because of the lockdown. Visitor numbers picked up again from September, but it the next few weeks will be tense now the hospitals are full again. Halbertsma: ‘It’s been an intense year. The Covid rules meant that exhibitions and conferences were cancelled, but it did give me time to write “Roofkunst”.’ The book was published this summer.

Roman à clef

The book’s main character – Tjalling Kingma – has more than a passing resemblance to Halbertsma. Kingma also studied Archaeology and Classics in Leiden, is a curator at RMO and teaches Leiden students. ‘I obviously drew inspiration from my own work and life, but not from those of others. Kingma isn’t a complete copy of me. The book is a roman à clef and the characters have been inspired by people I’ve met in my career.’

‘It’s becoming more common to see angry visitors, complaining at the till.’

The plot in short: it is 2025 and the Leiden museums are under attack. Calls to return objects from the collections are growing stronger. Woke students and young people are protesting and a prominent statue in RMO is defaced. Halbertsma: ‘The debate is likely to become more heated in the near future and my book is my warning to be prepared. It’s becoming more common to see angry visitors, complaining at the till. They tell us that everything we have here is stolen.’

Photo of Ruurd Halbertsma
Ruurd Halbertsma ‘We want to move with society, but in a judicious way.’ Photo: Rob Overmeer.

More nuance needed

Halbertsma calls for more nuance in the debate. ‘People are quick to use the term looted art. There are many ways in which art was collected in the past and one of these was to loot it. Looted art obviously has to go back to the country of origin. But objects from former colonised countries were not necessarily looted. In the past art was produced for the market, as it still is now. Past acquisitions can have been via donations, trade and bequests or via dubious means such as illegal excavations, illegal trade or coercion. The latter three are examples of looted art.’

Provenance research

The digitisation of sources has made provenance research easier and more important in recent decades. RMO is also investigating its own collections. Halbertsma: ‘The large collections acquired in the 19th century are the result of legal purchases and are not colonial art. For us as a museum, restitution relates to just a few cases.’ One of these was Halbertsma’s first acquisition for RMO, in 1988: a Greek funerary vase (c. 400-300 BC) that was excavated in southern Italy. Last year, the Italian authorities came with evidence that the vase had come from an illegal excavation. Why hadn’t he noticed at the time? ‘Neither antique dealers nor museums did much in the way of provenance research in those days. They do now and an investigation by the carabinieri showed that before 1988 the vase had been in the possession of someone who had also carried out illegal excavations. We therefore decided to err on the side of caution and return the vase to Italy this year.’ 

Art stranded at Schiphol Airport
A few times a year Halbertsma receives a phone call from the Information and Inspectorate asking him to come to Schiphol where there are concerns about art and artefacts that are being shipped. As an expert on ancient Greek and Roman art, he races to the airport to study statues and objects from countries such as Greece, Italy and Turkey. ‘Sometimes they have just been dug up and still have the mud on them. There are a lot of illegal excavations and trade, which means a lot of archaeological information is lost. After a clean-up, the objects may be sent to auction with false information and the country of origin may suddenly have changed. But it sometimes proves just to be modern Greek planters for the garden that get stuck in customs. You can usually smell antiquity on ancient objects; the earth has penetrated deep into their pores.’ 

Discussion in countries of origin

There is also a discussion about whether something is looted art in the countries of origin. Critics can label art looted art for political aims in their own countries. Halbertsma incorporated this in his book, with a big row breaking out about Tunisian objects in RMO. ‘We’ve got legally obtained objects from Tunisia. Political motives can lead certain groups in the countries of origin to use that heritage to put pressure on the government, for example. There have been warnings about this in the past and I somewhat magnified this theme and used it in my novel, where the discussion gets completely out of hand.’

RMO on Rapenburg in Leiden

Move with society

RMO understands that visitors want more information about the provenance of the collection. Halbertsma: ‘We are currently revising the information on our website and in the museum to give a better explanation of how we acquired the collection and how we view objects from other cultures. People from outside the museum are also reviewing our texts. We want to move with society, but in a judicious way.’ 

Trajan daubed

In his book the statue of Trajan is daubed in protest because an emperor does not deserve a pedestal if he stood at the helm an enormous slave empire. ‘If you ask me this is a worst case scenario. I describe how in the near future the calls become louder to remove ancient statues from the museum, for instance if the people depicted had enslaved people in their possession. Of course you have to ask critical questions about slavery. What matters to me is that you shouldn’t sweep away the past.’ 

The museum also has statues of the gods Apollo and Pan chasing girls and a vase of the goddess Eos forcing young men into sex. ‘Should those be banned too? In the museum we can explain that there were unequal relationships between gods and mortals, as there are between people. These often come to a sticky end.’ 

Discussions with students

Halbertsma teaches classics to Leiden students as a guest lecturer and researcher. To what extent does he – like Kingma in his book – have heated discussions with his students? ‘I only teach bachelor’s students at the moment and you don’t get those kinds of discussions yet. They ask good, critical questions, but don’t think that you should no longer discuss certain matters. My colleagues at other universities come up against that more, especially when there are lots of international students. Some students think that historical figures should no longer be discussed. Surely we can’t just cancel antiquity because lots of stories wouldn’t be allowed nowadays? We don’t want iconoclasm here.’

Text: Linda van Putten

This website uses cookies.  More information.