PARIS – British auction house Christie’s sold dozens of Taino artifacts this afternoon in Paris. The objects have been on display in Paris for bidders to view. The auction began today at 4:00 PM CET and was titled, “Pre-Columbian Art & Taino Masterworks from the Fiore Arts Collection.” As the auction concluded about two hours later, some objects realized prices as high as €287,000. The objects were sold individually, and the sales collectively totaled €3,062,750.
The Taino people are one of the Indigenous nations of the Caribbean and inhabited the Greater Antilles on the island of modern-day Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico.
Christie’s states that, “The Fiore Arts Collection of Taino art is a unique private collection composed of thirty-eight works made in a variety of media including manatee bone, shell, wood and terracotta, layered with symbolically charged iconography.”
Left to right: A breastplate pendant (sold for €287,000) and vessel were among the Taino masterworks being auctioned today at Christie’s. [Via CHRISTIE’S]
The majority of the pieces have been on long-term loan at several institutions. Christie’s lists them as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They have also been in special exhibitions on Taino culture at the American Museum of Natural History, the Museo del Barrio, and the Petit Palais in Paris. Some pieces had remained in private display.
The lot also includes pre-Colombian artifacts from mainland regions of Latin America and the Mexican government attempted to halt their sale. The Mexican Secretary of Culture, Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, issued a statement discouraging the sale citing the Declaration of Intent on the Strengthening of Cooperation against Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Property. That declaration agreement was signed by both France and Mexico committing them to restitution and the protection of each nation’s cultural property.
Christie’s denies that the artifacts have been obtained illicitly.
The auction house said in a statement, “As custodians of the art that passes through our doors, we recognize we have a duty to carefully research the art and objects we handle and sell.”
Their statement continued, “We devote considerable resources to investigating the provenance of works we offer for sale, and have specific procedures, including the requirement that our sellers provide evidence of ownership.”
They added, “In the case of the upcoming sale, these checks have been carried out and we have no reason to believe that the property is from an illicit source or that its sale would be contrary to French law.”
André Delpuech, the director of the Musee de l’Homme, introduced the auction items in a video. He said, “Unfortunately, for the Taíno, they were completely destroyed by the Spanish conquest,” Delpuech notes in the video. “And we can imagine that around 1530 or 1540, no Taíno were living in the Caribbean.”
Meanwhile, Taino People have been protesting the sale. Stephanie Bailey, the chief, or cacique, of the Arayeke Yukayek tribe, told The New York Times, “They’re still perpetuating this idea of extinction or annihilation to drive sales, essentially… That’s really what we feel that it’s doing, driving sales, because we become more of a valuable asset if we no longer exist.”
As ethnohistorian Jalil Sued Badillo notes that despite the official Spanish narrative of Taino disappearance, many Taino survived and left descendants. DNA studies have affirmed the hypothesis. Many Cubans, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans have Taino mitochondrial DNA.
Ra Ruiz Leon (JibaRa Jikotea Ni’Akutu), a Borikua-Taino dancer, poet, organizer, and teaching artist, has also been protesting with a group of Taino in front of Christies in New York holding a sign that read, “Respect Indigenous people! Return our artifacts” and holding a ritual on Monday called, “Bring Back Our Artifacts.” The ritual was led by Sanakori Luis Ramos, the behike, who invoked the ancestors and Zemis.
The Delpuech video has since been removed.
A petition is also up on Change.org. The petition reads, “We, the Taino, are the first indigenous peoples of Turtle Island to be colonized. We are not ‘extinct’ and survived the horrors of Columbus and his men. So much of our culture was lost and innumerable of our sacred artifacts destroyed or stolen by Europeans since 1492.”
So far the petition has obtained over 40,000 signatures and continues to be available despite Christie’s proceeding with the auction.
As one commenter wrote after signing the petition, “Our ancestral and sacred artifacts do not belong in the hands of those who continue to deny our existence nor should they be auctioned and sold for profit since they were stolen in the Dominican Republic. The right thing to do is to return them to our elders and our people.”
The petition notes that it, “hopes that these artifacts can be returned to the island of their indigenous Taino creators so that they may be honored, studied, and displayed for cultural education by the Taino in their homeland.”
Sherman told CBS News “The overall sentiment of the Taino people is, we feel it’s wrong, we feel it’s wrong for Christie’s to be auctioning off anything that belongs to our ancestors.”
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.