Older Than Italy

The New Yorker magazine weighs in this week with an article on the scheming by Greece and Italy and Egypt to wrest from American museums and collectors art that was lawfully bought. Readers of these columns may have noticed a series of editorials on these issues, including "The Kroisos What?" June 16, 2006; "Patrimony Strikes Again," March 21, 2006; "The Italian Job," February 23, 2006, and "Innocents Abroad" February 22, 2006. The collected set of editorials are available at nysun.com. The New Yorker article concludes with a quote from a curator of antiquities at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carlos Picon, who notes, "The Metropolitan Museum is six months older than Italy. Italy unified in 1870, six months after we were founded. That puts things in perspective, eh?" Sure does. Yet another reason for New Yorkers to resist these efforts to take these objects away from us.