Summary
• In March 2018, a pair of alumni of the SOAS Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art programme offered to donate to SOAS the nearly 1m-high torso of a 13th-century stone Thai Buddha statue valued at about 60,000 Euros.
• The acquisition of this donation illustrates the steps by which interests in money and self-promotion swiftly trumped ethical and legal requirements at SOAS.
• SOAS accepted the gift in only 8 working days, circumventing routine review thanks to action by the head of the university.
• SOAS received zero documentation of the ownership history or provenance of the sculpture. Therefore, SOAS has accepted a potentially looted or illegally trafficked object of Thai cultural property.
• This contradicts national and international ethical and legal standards for treatment of cultural property.
• SOAS has not contacted Thai authorities about this object of Thai cultural property.
• The donors are US citizens whom SOAS assisted to receive a US tax deduction on the gift.
• SOAS holds the right to dispose of the sculpture after 3 years, when it can sell it for cash.
• SOAS is now advertising this donation to other alumni in order to obtain similar gifts, thus offering a service to launder potentially looted antiquities in exchange for tax deductions.
• The donation of this Thai antiquity to SOAS was directly encouraged and expedited by Dr. Peter Sharrock and Dr. Heather Elgood, two of the managers of the £15-million, Alphawood Foundation-funded Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme (SAAAP).
• As the stated purpose of SAAAP is to “preserve” ancient Southeast Asian art, the unethical acquisition of this Thai artefact by SOAS at the behest of SAAAP leaders raises further questions about the credibility of SAAAP.
Below, I discuss this situation in detail. The circumstances are known from emails and documentation disclosed to me by SOAS under the Freedom of Information Act. All of the files provided by SOAS may be seen here. My discussion references the files by page numbers which are hyperlinked to the relevant file.
Introduction
On the evening of 22 March, as I trotted onto SOAS campus for class, a grey form caught my eye through the window of the Brunei Gallery, one of the main university buildings. Stepping into the foyer, I was astounded to behold the broken-off torso of a stone Buddha statue. It was a substantial piece, nearly 1 meter high, and, carved in a style 700 years old. Stationed incongruously next to a bookseller’s stand in the busy foyer, it was apparently unattended as I drew up to scrutinise it. Around the wooden plinth were scraps of the padding and straps which must have been used to transport it. Why was there a centuries-old Thai sculpture haphazardly placed, unprotected, at SOAS?
That night, I posted photos of the sculpture on social media and asked if anyone knew anything about it. Someone replied that Mr. John Hollingworth, the Head of Galleries & Exhibitions at SOAS, said that it was a recent gift to the university. The Gallery was about to install a new temporary exhibition of 19th-century photographs of Siam and would insert the Thai sculpture, though it was unrelated to the rest of the display. The gift of a 13th-century Thai artefact being hardly an everyday occurrence at SOAS, I emailed Mr. Hollingworth on 26 March to ask about it. He replied the next day (p. 1):
One phrase in Mr. Hollingworth’s reply leaps out to any curator, scholar or collector of Asian art: “He bought the piece over 30 years ago.“ That would indicate the 1980s, long after the ‘1970 threshold’ widely adopted by museums. 1970 is the year UNESCO accepted the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property. As the signatories recognised, the theft and illegal transfer of cultural property deprive nations and peoples of crucial information about their origins and history. Unregulated sale or transfer of antiquities incentivises illegal excavation, facilitates money laundering, and denies communities income from heritage tourism. In the wake of the Convention’s coming into force in 1972, governments and museums around the world have tightened their policies on the handling of cultural property. The 1970 threshold holds that a sale or transfer of an object of cultural property should only occur where there is documentary proof that it left its country of origin before 1970 or was legally exported after 1970.
The UK government confirmed its support for the 1970 threshold in 2000 and subsequently enacted the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003, making it a crime to knowingly acquire or transfer cultural objects that have been illicitly removed or excavated. The UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport states in its guidelines for museums on making acquisitions (p. 5):
The first step is to ensure that checks on provenance are carried out as soon as a potential acquisition is identified. Museums must be able to establish where an item came from, and when and how it left its country of origin and any intermediate country.
When considering a donation or purchase,
the museum should ask the vendor or donor to provide documentary evidence verifying the presence of the item in the UK prior to 1970, or confirming the legitimate export of the item to the UK after 1970.
Mr. Hollingworth’s statement that the sculpture was purchased over 30 years ago provides no satisfaction to the questions of how and when it left Thailand and how it came to the UK. Such questions are of heightened importance for artefacts such as this one, which is what the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport classes as “a major item” and is from a notoriously looted nation like Thailand. What reasons did SOAS have for accepting it?
There is also the mystery of why this sculpture ended up specifically at SOAS. The university’s Brunei Gallery hosts temporary exhibitions but has no permanent exhibition. There is no dedicated curator or conservator. Why would anyone choose to donate this rare Thai sculpture to SOAS as opposed to, say, a museum?
I assumed from Mr. Hollingworth’s message that he could share no further information with me. On 3 April, I sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request to SOAS for emails and documentation related to the donation of the Thai sculpture.
The university replied on 8 May. In its response, SOAS admitted (p. 2):
No papers providing evidence of the history of ownership are available. The donor has confirmed that they have owned the sculpture for over 30 years and that they bought it in the UK.
With no documentation for how this sculpture came to the UK or how it left Thailand, SOAS administration has accepted a sculpture that is potentially looted and/or illegally trafficked. During the acquisition process, it seems nobody in SOAS administration suggested the possibility that Thai authorities should be informed of this potentially looted and/or trafficked object of Thai cultural heritage. The university is now at risk of standing in violation of: Thailand’s Act on Ancient Monuments, Antiques, Objects of Art and National Museums (1961; amended 1992); the UK’s Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003 and Theft Act 1968, and in the US, the National Stolen Property Act. SOAS administration’s failure to obtain secure documentation is also contrary to the Codes of Ethics of the UK Museums Association (MA) and the International Council of Museums (ICOM) which are key benchmarks for museum policies.
SOAS administration’s disregard of legal and ethical standards is all the more mystifying given widespread news coverage on the repatriation of looted and trafficked items in collections in the US and Europe in recent years. Headlines in relation to Southeast Asia include news of the six Angkorian statues stolen in the 1970s from Prasat Chen that were returned to Cambodia between 2013 and 2015 by Christie’s, Sotheby’s, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and two other American museums. In 2016 the well-known dealer Nancy Wiener was arrested in New York for trafficking in looted Indian and Southeast Asian antiquities with the help of co-conspirators said to include scholars Emma Bunker and Douglas Latchford. Just a few months ago, Thailand’s Ministry of Culture called for the restitution of 23 artefacts in US museums and is in contact with the US Department of Homeland Security on the status of another 69 artefacts.
SOAS is an institution that prides itself on its engagement with Asia and not long ago received a £15 million grant from Chicago’s Alphawood Foundation to advance the preservation of ancient Southeast Asian art. What message is sent when SOAS then readily accepts an antiquity possibly looted from Thailand?
Disturbingly, SOAS is now advertising this Thai antiquity to encourage alumni to give similar in-kind donations, indicating SOAS has started a service for those seeking to offload potentially trafficked antiquities in exchange for tax deductions and the reputational glow of philanthropy.
The webpage states the donors are Paul and Mary Slawson, a retired couple who are
US alumni of the SOAS Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art course. Over 10 years, they studied five of the three-month modules of the course under Dr [Heather] Elgood and Dr [Peter] Sharrock … As a recognition of their enjoyment of the course, and in tribute to the inspiration they received from Drs Elgood and Sharrock, Mr and Mrs Slawson have generously donated a piece of art from their own collection to American Friends of SOAS (AFSOAS) …
The emails and documentation disclosed under Freedom of Information (which can be seen here) reveal the highly flawed gift acquisition process, in which Dr. Heather “Hettie” Elgood and Dr. Peter Sharrock, the honorees of the gift, played key roles. This process must be exposed in order to enable Thai, UK, and US authorities to investigate this gift. The missteps revealed here also show that SOAS must urgently reform its ethos and systems for handling private donations.
As the emails provided by SOAS are not in chronological order, I have placed them in sequence to recreate the chronology of the donation, which can be seen here. In what follows, I will discuss what happened and the results and implications.
I would like to note at the outset that there is no indication in the data disclosed under FOI that the donors, the Slawsons, were anything less than frank with SOAS about the lack of documentation for the sculpture. They seem to have relied upon the reputed authority of SOAS in Asian art and assumed SOAS would apply the necessary rigor in considering the donation according to domestic and international law and SOAS’s own rules. Unfortunately, they were wrong.
Personal Agendas Subvert Rules and Ethics in Process of Acquisition
Three staff members – Mr. Hollingworth, Dr. Elgood and Dr. Sharrock –knew that the Thai sculpture had no secure ownership history but endorsed and facilitated the donation.
On 8 March, Mr. Hollingworth, Head of Galleries & Exhibitions at SOAS, first spoke by telephone to the Slawsons about the donation. The next morning, Mr. Hollingworth visited the Slawsons and viewed the sculpture. (p. 9-11) By that afternoon, despite not having received adequate documentation from the Slawsons, Mr. Hollingworth was working to expedite the acceptance of the donation. He emailed Ms. Valerie Amos, who is the head of SOAS as well as Chair of the Brunei Gallery Advisory Panel, that “the provenance looks good as [the Slawsons] purchased it from a dealer in London c.30 years ago and [the Slawsons] will be sending additional supporting paperwork.” (p. 1) Mr. Hollingworth referred to his idea to insert the Thai sculpture as a last-minute addition into an exhibition by independent curators of 19th-century photographs of Thailand by John Thomson. The exhibition would open in the Brunei Gallery on 12 April, but the Brunei Gallery Advisory Panel’s next scheduled meeting was not until some time after that. Mr. Hollingworth thus requested Ms. Amos to invoke “Chair’s decision” to enable the donation to be approved without awaiting the review by the Panel. However, one wonders why the description of the gift he sent to the Director could not have been equally emailed to the Panel members for their consideration. Nonetheless, Ms. Amos declared Chair’s decision and thereby review of the donation by the Brunei Gallery Advisory Panel was circumvented. (p. 1)
Mr. Hollingworth did make requests to the Slawsons for documentary evidence of the provenance of the sculpture, in emails on 8 and 12 March, and possibly also during their initial phone call and meeting. (pp. 10, 35) On 12 March, Mr. Slawson sent Mr. Hollingworth a letter which states that the sculpture was purchased in 1985 at the “Ormond Gallery on Portobello Road,” the staff of which was “not aware of the exact origin” of the sculpture. (p. 1) Mr. Hollingworth replied that “it all ads to the pieces history [sic].” (pp. 8, 35) This letter is insufficient as evidence of provenance, as SOAS also understands, in view of its statement to me that “no papers providing evidence of the history of ownership are available.”
On 12 March, one working day after his meeting with the Slawsons, Mr. Hollingworth informed SOAS Development staff about the donation so that they could begin the process of due diligence and documentation. (p. 23) Thirteen minutes later, Mr. Hollingworth emailed the Slawsons that he was in touch with art moving companies about the transport of the sculpture; by the end of the day, he had scheduled it for 3 days’ hence. (pp. 8, 9, 36) Thus, even as the due diligence process had hardly begun, Mr. Hollingworth was already proceeding to take possession of the sculpture.
The lack of concern displayed by Mr. Hollingworth about the absence of secure documentation for the Thai sculpture is startling. According to his LinkedIn profile, Mr. Hollingworth has been employed in collections and exhibitions at SOAS for over 20 years and has guest-lectured on museum practice in Asian art courses at SOAS and elsewhere. He styles himself “John Hollingworth MBE AMA” in the signature block of his emails. AMA refers to Associateship of the Museums Association, an accreditation for museum professionals which typically takes 2 to 3 years to earn. According to the Museums Association’s Code of Ethics for Museums (p. 5), “To achieve Associateship of the Museums Association (AMA) members must demonstrate awareness of the code and the ways in which it is used.” Consistent with UK government policy, Clause 2.5 of the Code of Ethics for Museums enjoins members to “reject any item for purchase, loan or donation if there is any suspicion that it was wrongfully taken during a time of conflict, stolen, illicitly exported or illicitly traded,” and the Museums Association’s Guidance on the Ethics and Practicalities of Acquisition urges that museums “reject any item that lacks a secure ownership history, unless there is reliable documentation to show it was exported from its country of origin before 1970.” (Clause 2.8) Also, “it is normally unacceptable to acquire antiquities of unknown provenance.” (Clause 4.2)
SOAS’s own Collections Management Policy, which Mr. Hollingworth indicates in his LinkedIn profile that he had a hand in producing, echoes the Museums Association guidance on removing doubts about an object’s history (Clause 5.5) and affirms that “the School will adhere to the 1970 Unesco Convention (on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property).” (Clause 5.10)
There is simply no excuse for Mr. Hollingworth to have failed to apply the legal and ethical standards surrounding acquisition of objects of cultural heritage.
Another SOAS staff member, who was also in a position to call for proper review of the donation but failed to do so, was Dr. Heather Elgood. She was informed on 13 March by a Development staff member that the Slawsons had offered to donate the sculpture. (p. 1) A day later, the Development staff member emailed Dr. Elgood (p. 5) saying s/he was in the midst of preparing the gift agreement and that,
As part of this task, I would appreciate an email sign-off from you, considering two parameters. Could you please confirm that:
a) The gift is consistent and compatible with the goals, purposes and strategic plan of the School, and
b) The gift does not limit freedom of enquiry or encroach on academic integrity, involve the expectation of undue influence on academic decisions and appointments, or require the School to provide special consideration for student admission.
Dr. Elgood forwarded Development’s email to Dr. Peter Sharrock (p. 5):
Dr. Sharrock replied (pp. 7-8):
Dr. Elgood responded (pp. 8-9):
The exchange between Dr. Elgood and Dr. Sharrock. like all other emails provided to me, has been redacted by SOAS administration for what it describes as “personal data” or “information which falls outside the scope of the [FOI] request;” nevertheless, the text that has been disclosed of this exchange is very telling in multiple ways. To begin with, let us consider Dr. Sharrock’s description of the object’s history. Though I do not wish to impugn any “California ‘hippy’ shops” scrupulously adhering to the 1970 UNESCO Convention, it does not logically follow that because the sculpture was in one of these shops, it must have entered the US before 1970. It is also interesting that Dr. Sharrock showed awareness that there is a 1970 threshold, yet he utterly denied its application in this case. Dr. Sharrock has been for several years a Senior Teaching Fellow (a part-time, ad hoc lector) at SOAS who specialises in Southeast Asian, particularly Cambodian, art and archaeology. It is shocking for anyone who claims to be an expert in Southeast Asian art history to not only condone but to actively support the laundering of a potentially looted object of Southeast Asian cultural heritage. Yet as Mr. Hollingworth wrote to me, it was Dr. Sharrock who encouraged the Slawsons to donate the Thai sculpture to SOAS. Dr. Sharrock then deliberately advised Dr. Elgood to approve the gift despite its murky history.
Why did Dr. Elgood solicit Dr. Sharrock’s advice on whether to greenlight the gift? Possibly, she believed that he had expertise in Southeast Asian art and that through his friendship with Mr. Slawson he might have some additional information on the sculpture. (In two other emails, Dr. Sharrock is referred to as the “friend” and “good friend” of the donor. (pp. 6, 23)) Dr. Elgood is the long-time Course Director of the Postgraduate Diploma or Certificate in Asian Art (“Diploma in Asian Art”) programme at SOAS. Her staff profile lists her research areas as “Persian and Indian manuscript painting, Hindu early sculpture and ritual arts.” She teaches South Asian art history classes to Diploma in Asian Art students. It is hard to believe that there could be someone claiming to be a scholar of South Asian art who is unaware of the problem of looted antiquities. Yet despite Dr. Sharrock’s description of the dubious provenance, Dr. Elgood readily stated that she would approve the gift. Why didn’t she object?
There is no respectable museum or public collection in the UK that would accept a gift with no secure provenance. Was Dr. Sharrock aware of SOAS’s easily circumvented rules when he suggested the donors approach SOAS?
Conflicts of interest
The process of evaluating the gift was marred by conflicts of interest, which, instead of being thwarted or eliminated at SOAS, were instead used to expedite the acceptance of the donation. The Development staff member who requested Dr. Elgood to sign off on the donation apparently ignored the conflict of interest in giving the role of decision-maker to the donor’s friend and former teacher. Dr. Elgood, for her part, made no objection. Moreover, by forwarding Development’s request to Dr. Sharrock without explaining the context, she revealed that she knew of Dr. Sharrock’s involvement with the gift and relationship to the donor but still relied on his judgement that there was “nothing untoward.” According to the SOAS alumni webpage on the gift, the Slawsons said they offered the sculpture “as a recognition of their enjoyment of the [Diploma in Asian Art] course, and in tribute to the inspiration they received from Drs Elgood and Sharrock.” The conflicts of interest which enabled the acceptance of this gift that should never have been accepted have ended up being celebrated instead of shamed.
There was also another conflict of interest that impeded proper evaluation of the donation. It was vividly exposed in the email which the Development staff member sent to the Slawsons introducing her/himself and the gift process (p. 8):
In the message, the Development staff member mentions the preparation of documentation, but most of the communication concerns the publicity for the gift. Due diligence is not even mentioned, and the drafting of the gift agreement is presented as perfunctory and pro-forma, as the physical transfer of the gift from donor to SOAS has already been arranged. The Development staff member’s greater interest is in the donation’s publicity value to SOAS so that, “Hopefully others on Hettie’s course might also consider this giving pathway.”
The Development staff member’s lack of mention of due diligence is unexpected. Perhaps, s/he had already completed it, during the hours since Development staff were first told of the donation the day before and this first contact with Mr. Slawson. If so, then it was a rather superficial due diligence process if not one question was posed to the donor. If, on the other hand, due diligence had not yet been completed, then this email suggests a rather cynical approach to it: Development deemed due diligence so unworthy of notice and so unlikely to derail the gift that the photo op is being planned. As an example of an initial contact from a university development department to a donor, this is an extraordinary text.
This attitude to due diligence is probably not unique or personal to this particular Development staff member. SOAS Development’s donation process is not designed to handle donations of objects of cultural property. The university’s “Due Diligence Procedure for the Acceptance of Philanthropic Gifts,” although stated to apply to “art” and “artefacts,” makes no mention of the specialised due diligence needed for such items. The form for the “SOAS Gift Acceptance Record” likewise does not refer to the issues of provenance that must be considered for objects of cultural property. The forms and procedure assume cash donations, not gifts-in-kind. Thus, when Development staff were first informed of the donation by Mr. Hollingworth on 12 March, they stated that they would “carry out due diligence on Mr. Slawson.” No mention was made of scrutiny of the Thai sculpture. The Development staff members exhibited no training in the legal and ethical issues of donation of objects of cultural property. Yet SOAS Development has made it clear that it aims to obtain more such gifts. The reasons for their enthusiasm are discussed further below. First, there is one last aspect of this acquisition process to note.
The Plagiarised Wall Label
To top off this shameful sequence of events, it turns out that part of the text of the wall label later produced by SOAS for the Thai sculpture was plagiarised from a magazine article. Here is the label as I photographed it on 17 April:
The third paragraph discussing the gift is original language drafted by Development staff with the approval of the donors and Dr. Elgood, according to an email the Development staff member sent to Mr. Hollingworth on 4 April. (p. 41) The first and second paragraphs, however, derive from an article by Paul A. Lavy, “A Lopburi Buddha at the Honolulu Museum of Art,” Orientations 43.5 (June 2012), pp. 53-59. Mr. Hollingworth requested a copy of this article from Dr. Sharrock, who emailed it to him on 27 March. (p. 6)
SOAS wall label paragraphs 1 and 2:
Lavy article p. 54:
The first paragraph of the label is identical to Lavy’s text except for a comma. The question of who plagiarised Lavy should be posed to Mr. Hollingworth, who stated in his response to Development’s 4 April message that he would put up the label in the gallery. (p. 41) As noted, the sculpture was a last-minute addition by Mr. Hollingworth into an exhibition of 19th-century photographs of Siam. The independent curators of that exhibition were not consulted about the addition of the sculpture.
In the final sections of this blogpost, I will discuss the advantages the donors gained through this gift and the advantages, and problems, accrued by SOAS.
Benefits for the Donors
The emails show that the process of consideration of this donation, from the time that the donor first spoke to Mr. Hollingworth on 8 March to SOAS’s approval of the gift on 19 March, took only 8 working days. This contrasts with, say, the 24 working days it took SOAS to respond to my FOI request, which included 4 extra days beyond the statutorily mandated deadline of 20 days. Why the rush for this acquisition?
One factor was the imminent departure of Mr. Slawson for the US. In an email of 16 March, Mr. Slawson wrote, ““I leave for the States Sat Morning,” meaning 24 March. (p. 7) In an email of 13 March, the Development staff member wrote, “It’s our hope that he [Mr. Slawson] may return to London sporadically when he relocates.” (p. 1) This indicates that the move was permanent and not only a visit. The impending departure explains why, in the Development staff member’s email of 13 March to the Slawsons, s/he wrote, “I hope to get this [gift agreement] done for you before you leave.” Mr. Hollingworth’s swift actions to transport the statue to SOAS and evade the scrutiny of the Brunei Gallery Advisory Panel, and Dr. Elgood’s and Dr. Sharrock’s prompt greenlighting of the gift, could also be understood in light of the donors’ imminent exit. It should also be noted that because the donors were moving home, leaving the sculpture in the UK at SOAS could save overseas transportation expense as well as enable the avoidance of UK and US customs rules on export and import of cultural objects, which could result in government seizure of an unprovenanced item.
The donation brings honour and admiration to the Slawsons for their generosity. It also enables them to receive a tax benefit. According to emails of 12 March, the sculpture was valued at about 60,000 Euros by an insurance valuation submitted by the donors. (p. 23-25) Mr. Hollingworth repeatedly mentioned in his early emails to the Slawsons (8, 12 and 13 March) that SOAS could assist with US tax-advantaged giving. (pp. 8-10, 35, 36) Development staff routed the gift to an alumni group, American Friends of SOAS (AFSOAS), which is registered as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charitable organisation in the US. This ability to receive a US tax benefit through donation of an antiquity is now being advertised to other alumni by SOAS (the website shown above) and AFSOAS.
Advantages and Problems for SOAS
For SOAS, the sculpture has multiple potential benefits. It will be a plus to the asset side of the university’s balance sheet; perhaps it could be used as a teaching aid in Southeast Asian art history courses (though, notably, none of the staff members mentioned this aspect.) Very worryingly, the sculpture is also apparently monetisable by SOAS. At the time the final gift agreement was signed in late March, the sculpture was technically owned by AFSOAS (for tax purposes), and the gift agreement states that AFSOAS, consistent with the donors’ wish, would donate it as soon as possible to SOAS. The gift agreement also provides that (p. 1):
In other words, SOAS administration has specifically secured the right to sell the Thai sculpture after 3 years. At that time, any potential buyers would probably assume that SOAS had conducted proper due diligence at the time the university originally acquired the sculpture. The laundered sculpture could then be converted to cash by SOAS. This may well explain Development’s eagerness to generate publicity to seek similar donations. SOAS is now advertising an art laundering operation.
SOAS’s behaviour stands in contrast to that of neighbouring University College London (UCL), which discovered Thai artefacts dating from the Neolithic to Iron ages in its archaeological collection during an audit in 2009. UCL contacted the Royal Thai Embassy in London and arranged for the restitution of the artefacts to Thailand. At the same time, the Embassy and UCL Institute of Archaeology announced a cooperative project to support Thai Studies including a new scholarship to support student fieldwork in Thailand.
The Confusion in SOAS’s Ethics and the Betrayal of Its Largest Donor
It is apparent that nobody in SOAS administration has thought through the implications of SOAS soliciting objects of the world’s cultural property in exchange for tax benefits. Can SOAS, on the one hand, claim to be a leading institution for the study of Asia, Africa, and the Near and Middle East, while with the other hand, it launders potentially stolen antiquities from these same areas?
The cavalier dismissal of world-recognised ethical and legal standards for handling objects of cultural property in the case of this Thai sculpture also contradicts the stated objective of a much bigger donation, the £15 million given by the Alphawood Foundation in 2013. That gift created the Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme (SAAAP) “to further the understanding and preservation of ancient to pre-modern Buddhist and Hindu art and architecture in Southeast Asia.” What are we to make of SOAS’s careless acceptance of a possibly looted and illegally exported Thai artefact in view of SAAAP’s purported objective to “preserve” ancient Southeast Asian art?
This is not a case of crossed wires: the same players are involved in both donations. Dr. Elgood is a governing Board Member of SAAAP. Dr. Sharrock is SAAAP’s salaried Communications and Outreach Manager. Both Dr. Elgood and Dr. Sharrock also sit on the Outreach and Scholarships Sub-boards of SAAAP. Ms. Amos, head of SOAS, is not formally a SAAAP Board Member but regularly attends Board meetings.
Both Dr. Elgood and Dr. Sharrock are friends of Mr. Fred Eychaner, the American businessman and collector of Asian art whose fortune funds the Alphawood Foundation. In fact, Mr. Eychaner has stated that the idea for the gift to SOAS arose during a trip he took with Dr. Sharrock.
The personal friendship of Dr. Elgood and Dr. Sharrock with the donor has not always been positive for the professional management of SAAAP. Nonetheless, the two have been elevated to a special position at SOAS under the protection of the head of SOAS, Ms. Amos, even as mismanagement has plagued the programme.
An external administrator hired to review SAAAP in March 2016 wrote in her report of the “failure of leadership at several levels” and many other problems. She specifically warned against the interference in programme decision-making by the personal friends of the donor as well as the lack of clarity in Dr. Sharrock’s role in SAAAP (pp. 2, 5-6). However, this advice was ignored by Ms. Amos when she reinforced Dr. Elgood’s and Dr. Sharrock’s roles in her restructuring of the programme in July 2016.
Meanwhile, through emails obtained by me under Freedom of Information, Dr. Sharrock’s role in covertly manipulating the Alphawood Scholarship award selection process was exposed in May 2016. SAAAP officials lied to attempt to conceal the manipulation. Also that year, SOAS administration worked to hide a memo by Dr. Sharrock. After I successfully appealed to the UK Information Commissioner, the Freedom of Information watchdog, SOAS was ordered in August 2017 to disclose Dr. Sharrock’s slanderous and academically indefensible memo denouncing colleagues on spurious grounds and expressing a colonialist view of Southeast Asian art. Nonetheless, rather than dislodging Dr. Sharrock from SAAAP or restructuring his role, Ms. Amos has again and again protected Dr. Sharrock, and, embarrassingly for SOAS, assured his continuing role as the public face of the university and SAAAP. Now she has enabled the acceptance of an unprovenanced Thai antiquity as a public show of thanks to Dr. Sharrock for his work at SOAS. Presumably, her unflinching support is not unrelated to his friendship with Mr. Eychaner.
Dr. Elgood’s friendship with SOAS’s largest donor likewise has elevated her to a special, protected position under Ms. Amos. Development staff are currently working with Diploma in Asian Art alumni to fund a “Dr. Hettie Elgood Scholarship” for a student enrolling this autumn in the Diploma course. Dr. Elgood is the Diploma Course Director. It is extremely unusual, indeed unheard of, in the UK, for a scholarship to be named for the sitting director of the course for which the scholarship applies.
It has not gone unnoticed by SOAS management that Mr. Eychaner (like the Slawsons) was befriended by Dr. Elgood and Dr. Sharrock while he was a student of the Diploma in Asian Art course. The enormous donation by a Diploma alumnus drew attention to the graduates of that programme as a pool of potential donors to SOAS. As mentioned above, the Development staff member first notified Dr. Elgood about the Slawsons’ gift on 13 March. In that email, s/he stated, “As promised, I’m keeping you in the loop in terms of corresponding with your alumni.” (p. 1) Why was it important to Dr. Elgood to be kept informed about donors among Diploma (that is, – interestingly – “your”) alumni? On Development’s side, “keeping you in the loop” turned out to mean turning a blind eye to the conflict of interest, as Dr. Elgood was given the key role of confirming the strategic and academic acceptability of the Slawson’s gift. Indeed, the blindness to that conflict of interest may perhaps be better characterised as open acceptance of it, in light of the special position Dr. Elgood has attained under Ms. Amos. Development’s integration of Dr. Elgood in its processes means questions need to be asked of the Diploma in Asian Art programme. Are wealthy students being purposefully cultivated by Dr. Elgood and Dr. Sharrock? Are respect for the rights to cultural heritage of Asians and the laws and standards that defend those rights being taught to Diploma students?
Given free rein by Ms. Amos, Dr. Elgood and Dr. Sharrock, together with Mr. Hollingworth, encouraged and approved the gift in order to serve personal agendas. By ignoring laws and ethics designed to prevent trafficking, they give support to the covert excavation, theft, and smuggling of antiquities.
They have also created a crisis for SAAAP. Dr. Elgood and Dr. Sharrock, key managers of the programme, have betrayed SAAAP’s stated mission “to further the understanding and preservation of ancient to pre-modern Buddhist and Hindu art and architecture in Southeast Asia.” For them, the 13th-century Thai sculpture represented a favour for a departing friend, the generosity of Diploma alumni, an honour to boost their own profiles, bait for future donations and a means of consolidating their positions as key factors in SOAS’s prosperity; it was anything but what many others see: a potentially stolen and/or trafficked antiquity, the cultural heritage of Thailand, a prime example of the ‘ancient to pre-modern Buddhist art’ that Mr. Eychaner has invested millions to support. Appropriating the Thai sculpture as goods for SOAS, Dr. Elgood and Dr. Sharrock privileged the financial value of the Thai sculpture over its cultural, historical, and scientific aspects. As the U.S. Attorney’s office wrote on sentencing in a case of Thai antiquities smuggling in California in 2015, the illicit handling of antiquities “serves to deprive individuals from other countries of their own distinctive histories and heritages—in essence stealing not just their antiquities, but their ‘time and history.’” The only possible sense in which Dr. Elgood’s and Dr. Sharrock’s actions support SAAAP’s goal to “further the understanding” of Southeast Asian art is that they demonstrated how easy it is to launder it. SAAAP has actively recruited the staff of Southeast Asian museums to study at SOAS under its Alphawood Scholarships programme. These museum professionals have responsibilities including monitoring the art markets and overseeing the restitution of objects of cultural property from Europe and America. Placing SOAS staff involved in antiquities laundering in charge of teaching or recruitment is clearly untenable. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, Dr. Sharrock is the salaried SAAAP Communications and Outreach Manager. He is charged with the role of primary representative of SAAAP to Southeast Asian heritage officials, museum staff, academics and students. Can he now credibly look any of them in the eye and claim he wants to support the preservation of their cultural heritage?
Ms. Amos must immediately remove Dr. Elgood and Dr. Sharrock from SAAAP and from teaching duties. If she fails to do so, the SAAAP mission must be taken as hypocrisy.
The SOAS Board of Trustees must intervene immediately to halt the antiques laundering service set up by Development under Ms. Amos’ watch. The Board of Trustees must act in accordance with its duty and legal liability, for, as SOAS policy states, “The ultimate responsibility for the acceptance of gifts by the School lies with the Board of Trustees.” (p. 1) Furthermore, the problems in Development methodology, ethos and strategy exposed in this case reveal the clear failure of Ms. Amos in Development, an area that should have been one of her highest priorities. As an example of feckless financial management and a cynical attitude to academic and ethical values, the activity on display here is not a unique instance at SOAS, unfortunately. The recently announced Guardian University League Table shows SOAS falling from 25th place last year to 58th this year among UK universities. This decline challenges SOAS’s student recruitment efforts going forward and threatens the university’s future financial condition given its heavy reliance on student tuition as its main source of revenue. Development strategy and practice are now all the more crucial for SOAS’s future. The time for reform is now. The Board of Trustees is the only body in a position to act to right the long-term direction of the university.
As for the Thai sculpture, intervention by the Board is also needed. No responsibility for this sculpture can be entrusted to Ms. Amos, who herself abetted the approval of the donation through her Chair’s decision as well as her longstanding, misplaced trust in Dr. Elgood, Dr. Sharrock, and Mr. Hollingworth. I have informed the Royal Thai Embassy of the Thai sculpture and the circumstances of its transfer to SOAS.
UPDATE: On 15 June 2018, the Director (head) of SOAS issued an internal staff email regarding this blogpost. Her email and my response can be read in this separate blogpost.
UPDATE: In February 2019, A second poorly provenanced, potentially looted Thai antiquity was discovered in SOAS’s collection. See post here.
