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Vincent Noce, La Collection Egoiste (The Selfish
Collector) pp. 328. J. C. Lattès, Paris, 2005. ISBN
2-7096-241-9.Few people who follow cases relating to the illicit trade can have
missed the celebrated case of Stéfane Breitwieser, the Alsatian
misfit who stole, over a period of 8 or so years, hundreds of objects from
museums and churches to squirrel away in his attic rooms, or that of his
mother Mireille Stengel, who destroyed almost all of it by disposal in the
family garbage bin or by throwing it into a canal. This book, however,
shows just how much a dedicated investigative journalist can add to the
record, details that are not only useful in trying to understand the
mentality of Breitwieser (by no means an isolated case as this account
shows) and even more useful in showing the loopholes in the
investigations, the lack of coordination between countries, and the sheer
ineptitude of many institutions in securing their collections. Noce,
editor of the cultural section of the French newspaper
Libération, has joined the select company of Karl Meyer
(articles in the New York Times) and Peter Watson who have added
greatly to our knowledge of how the illicit trade works. French
journalists, too, are greatly helping expose the unsavory details of these
activities (see Noce's previous book Descente aux
Enchères and that of Emmanuel de Roux and Roland-Pierre
Paringaud, Razzia sur L'art).

The view that "cultural property internationalism" (Merryman) is represented by the Hague Convention 1954 and that it has been departed from in later UNESCO instruments can be challenged. Words which carry particular connotations can distort the argument—propertyis one of them, socultural propertyis already a loaded term. The historical sources used to buttress the modern argument for more liberal trade in cultural objects bear other interpretations. Similarly, UNESCO's mandate has been narrowed in a way not justified by its constitution. UNESCO's later instruments, such as the 1970 Convention, do not represent an aversion to the art market, as is witnessed by its development on an international Code for Dealers. However, the art trade at present is based on the secrecy of transactions, and this has led to a number of scandals. Neither assessment of the interests at stake nor treaties on human rights or trade require tolerance of these practices.