Israeli museum plans to sell off rare Islamic antiquities

A museum in Israel has sparked outrage with plans to promote dozens of uncommon Islamic antiquities, together with centuries-old carpets, armaments and ceramics from throughout the Middle East, at a public public sale.

The L A Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem plans to place 190 items on the block at Sotheby’s on Tuesday and to public sale off greater than 60 vintage watches and timepieces later this week. The uncommon items are anticipated to fetch a number of million {dollars}.

Israel’s Culture Ministry has condemned the sale and vowed to do every part it might probably to forestall it. President Reuven Rivlin mentioned he was following the difficulty with “concern” and known as on authorities to forestall the sale of such cultural belongings.

The museum declined to touch upon the public sale, and Sotheby’s didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

The objects up for bidding embrace a 15th-century helmet designed to be worn over a turban and embellished with inlaid silver calligraphy, a 12th-century bowl depicting a Persian prince and complex vintage carpets from Egypt and what’s now Turkey.

The watch public sale on Wednesday will embrace three watches designed by the famed Parisian horologist Abraham-Louis Breguet, whose timepieces adorned European royalty within the 17th and 18th centuries, together with Marie Antoinette.

The museum was established within the 1960s by Vera Salomons, the scion of a British-Jewish aristocratic household, and named for Leo Arie Mayer, a distinguished scholar of the Middle East. It homes hundreds of Islamic artifacts courting from the seventh to the 19th centuries. It additionally has a group of vintage watches handed down by the Salomons household, together with dozens designed by Breguet.

The Holy Land was a part of varied Islamic empires for greater than 1,000 years, and the museum goals to advertise understanding between Jews and largely Muslim Arabs, who make up round 20% of Israel’s inhabitants.

The museum has been closed for a lot of the 12 months as a result of coronavirus pandemic, however the public sale has reportedly been within the works for 2 years, and the favored museum is extensively believed to be financially steady.

Antiquities officers and consultants say the central function of museums is to convey precious artifacts out of personal collections to protect them and show them to the general public. With the Sotheby’s public sale, the Museum of Islamic Art is doing the precise reverse.

Nava Kessler, the chair of the Israeli Association of Museums, mentioned it’s unethical and exceptional for a museum to promote objects to personal collectors.

“It’s a very bad thing,” mentioned Kessler, whose organisation is affiliated with the Paris-based International Council of Museums, which units skilled and moral requirements. “I was so ashamed that it happened in Israel.”

She mentioned even when the museum have been struggling financially, the moral response would have been to discover a purchaser amongst different museums or cultural establishments, a course of that takes time. Instead, antiquities authorities solely discovered of the deliberate sale in latest weeks.

The Israel Antiquities Authority was in a position to forestall two artifacts from going to public sale as a result of that they had been found in Israel. But the museum was in a position to ship the remaining objects to London.

Michael Sebbane, the authority’s director of nationwide treasures, mentioned officers have been “in shock” once they discovered in regards to the sale, which he mentioned reveals a “lack of professionalism.” “This is a collection that is so important,” he mentioned. “It is a museum that we would never dream would do something like this. This is not just any museum.”

He anticipated non-public collectors to rapidly snatch up all of the items, each as a result of they’re uncommon and since their provenance is virtually assured since they arrive from a revered museum.

“They are selling items that are very important, very unique, and the moment they sell them the public will have lost them,” he mentioned. “If a private collector buys them, you won’t see them again.”

Israeli Culture Minister Hili Tropper mentioned authorities have been stunned to be taught in latest weeks that such a “valuable and unprecedented” sale was within the works.

“We will use every legal and public means to prevent the sale of these inalienable assets of the Islamic Museum in Jerusalem,” he mentioned in a press release, including that the items have “great historical and artistic value.”

(This story has been printed from a wire company feed with out modifications to the textual content.)

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