Re: permission denied

On Tue, May 23, 2000, Pat Sloane <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
>
> Here's how I see it. There's an art historian whose name escapes
> me (although well-known in his field) who's been claiming that
> important Italian buildings are being damaged because the
> government, when it sets out to restore, say, a medieval or
> renaissance basilica, does a grossly incompetent job, and in the
> end does more harm than good. This is not my area but I believe
> what I've read, partly because the descriptions of what was done
> at particular sites, and what should have been done instead, make
> sense. Also, I'm disposed to trust the author, because he's
> studied and taught about this area for years, and has the expected
> credentials -- which amount to a PhD at minimum. My default
> assumption is that he knows what he's talking about, that he's
> proved his competence in this area.
>
> That's not my default assumption about a stockbroker with an
> undergraduate specialisation in art history. He has no more
> standing than a law school dropout who claims to know as much
> about the law as a supreme court judge. I'd urge your man to
> recognize this hard fact of life, and get to work filling in the
> gaps. The first thing I'd like to see is some evidence that this
> man -- who at the moment is a self-styled expert -- is able to
> stand up to peer review. He should publish articles in
> professional journals like the Art Bulletin, so that Martini
> specialists can see what he's doing. I don't say they have to
> agree with him. I just want to see that they take him seriously
> enough to believe his ideas are worth publishing. Also, isn't
> he interested in finding out how original his ideas really are?
> What if Martini specialists already know that the attribution is
> dubious, as in fact are many, many attributions?
>
> I'm assuming he's of an age where he doesn't feel it's worth
> back-tracing to pick up a PhD (and perhaps develop his theory
> as a dissertation). But don't rule that out either, as it's
> been done. Robert Spoo is an established James Joyce scholar who
> found himself gravitating to copyright issues re Joyce's manuscripts.
> He's presently in law school, and the strategy makes sense. He's
> going to be extremely persuasive on Joyce and copyright issues if
> he has a background in law as well as literature.
>
> I'm not belittling your man so much as cutting to the core of what
> I see as his claim. That he's an exception, an untrained person
> (or a person with only limited training) who knows more than those
> who have the expected credentials in the area. It's possible.
> Benjamin Whorf was an insurance adjustor for Hartford Fire and
> Casualty who proved himself as an expert on Mayan Indian languages.
> But this is the peer review issue. It was linguists who attested
> to the importance of Whorf's ideas, and he wasn't just walking
> around promoting himself among people who didn't know a thing about
> Mayan Indian languages.
>
> As you describe the situation, I see a few areas your man might
> want to rethink. An undergraduate degree from Yale is not too
> impressive when what's expected would be a PhD, from Yale or
> anywhere else. He's got to be careful here, as he doesn't want to
> look as if he's trying to pull the wool over people's eyes. Also,
> it's common knowledge among art historians that many works of art
> are misattributed. About twice a year the NY Times runs an article
> about a particularly egregious example. Bernard Berenson made his
> reputation on straightening out many of the misattributions. A
> basic problem particularly with the early renaissance is that so
> many works are unsigned. If there isn't documentation establishing
> who the artist was, it boils down to guess work, and not every art
> historian has as good an eye as Berenson.
>
> If your man feels the misattribution of this particular Martini is
> much more important than hundreds or thousands of other misattributions
> -- so important that everyone should get involved--that's going to
> require a separate justification. That owners have an economic stake
> in the work, and therefore resist exposure of misattributions and
> forgeries, is not exactly news either. And, yes, governments like
> to attract tourists. What baffles me the most, in fact, is this
> urge to slug it out with "local officals" in a foreign country and
> solicitation of an attorney for that purpose. This simply isn't
> what research is about. Look to Amnesty International for a better
> example. They've had a tremendous effect through their publications,
> and they know better than to get sidetracked into fights with every
> "local official" they see mistreating a prisoner. Should the editors
> of Consumer Reports take time out to sue every manufacturer whom they
> discover to be producing an inferior product? Does your man want to
> be a scholar or a policeman?
>
> Life is not fair. One can publish an idea and find that nobody
> accepts it -- that one's judgment isn't respected. Maybe new
> information will come to light later, and one's peers will see that
> they were wrong. In the meantime, it rarely makes sense to look for
> a pretext to take "the issue" to court. A court doesn't have the
> power to order other people to agree with us.

Isn't the crux of the problem whether the STATE should be able to control what is written about art and how its lineage may be questioned?

I don't see how the credentials of the writer matter in this context. If a misinformed writer wants to rant about a totaly unsupportable position the state should not be able to stop him/her. In the states we have the First Amendment and the ACLU to thank for such rights, I don't know how such rights are treated elsewhere.

Keith

Keith E. Taber
<keith[_at_]drylaw.com> Received on Thu May 25 2000 - 14:58:30 GMT