Donor at Center of Artifacts Storm

Archaeology experts from three colleges this weekend criticized Harvard and other universities for taking money from a philanthropist whose personal antiquities collection contains some artifacts, they say, were of dubious origin.

Leon Levy—a well-known Wall Street investor who died in 2003—and his widow Shelby White started the Shelby White-Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications at Harvard in 1997 to support research on terminated and unpublished field work from sites in Greece, Turkey, Cyrpus, Iran, and the Middle East.

The program has has awarded $6 million over the past decade.

But archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, and the University of Cinncinnati say that because Levy and White’s own artifact collection was obtained through questionable means, academic institutions like Harvard should not take money from them.

According to Philip J. King, head of the Harvard program, many artifacts held by collectors have been attained as a result of illegal looting and grave robbing of historical sites, taking them out of their important original context.

These artifacts are often then transferred to dealers who sell them to private collectors.

Italian officials in particular have questioned whether some items in White’s collection were attained in an illegitimate manner, according to King.

Even if White’s items were all attained legitimately, King said that the practice of private collecting itself has been called into question by some experts, as it is associated with the destruction of archaeological sites in the pursuit of artifacts.

The excavation “of archaeological sites in the procurement of ‘beaux objects’ without accompanying context...amounts to ripping pages out of the book of human history,” Randall W. White, a professor of anthropology at New York University, wrote in an e-mail.

“Every looted site is a page that we shall never be able to read.”

Randall White, who is not related to Shelby White, resigned from a position at the NYU’s Center for Asian Studies to protest the university’s decision to accept a $200 million gift from the Leon Levy Foundation.

Skeptics of the Levy and White collection have lodged similar concerns over the Harvard’s use of her funding for archaeological endeavors.

Jack L. Davis, a professor of Greek archaeology the University of Cincinnati, is a strong opponent of the use of White’s funding and called White’s grants a “danger.”

“If we accept financial support from persons whose activities simultaneously endanger the objects of our scientific and humanistic enquiry, archaeologists are, I think, unlikely to convince anyone that we are serious about protecting the world’s cultural patrimony,” said Davis.

Members of the Harvard community have taken a decidedly different stance on the issue. The assistant to the head of the Harvard program, Charles G. Haberl, described the controversy as “a tempest in a teapot.”

King said that besides the three institutions, few archaeologists seem galvanized by the Levy and White donations.

“There is a minimal number of concerns over this,” King said. “If NYU doesn’t want the money, others will take it willingly. A few people don’t want the money, so they extrapolate that no one wants the money.”

In addition, King said that White’s collection has nothing to do with her funding of the Harvard program.

“[White] says [she and her husband] always bought from public auctions,” King noted.

He also mentioned that many of the world’s most important historical artifacts have been taken out of their original contexts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are believed to have been written during the same time—and in the place—that Jesus lived. Bedouin shephards cut the scrolls up into pieces and sold them separately in cigar boxes for higher monetary gain, according to King.