Amenemhat II © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

In late January, during the protests that eventually led to the revolution in Egypt, the news broke that looters had raided the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, current home to some of the most impressive artifacts of early human history. The thieves made off with 18 objects and The Huffington Post, practicing its own brand of excavation, lovingly brushed away the dirt covering the sexiest part of the story and placed it in the headline: “Egypt Looters Rip Heads Off 2 Mummies at Famed Cairo Museum.”

As they were dead, the mummies were ultimately O.K., but the news hinted at a question that would become increasingly pertinent in the coming months: what were the implications of the revolution for those who work with Egyptian artifacts the U.S.?

In the subsequent months, we’ve learned more about the provisional government’s attitude toward its cultural artifacts. The Supreme Council of Antiquities (S.C.A.), the organization responsible for handling such matters, was downgraded from a cabinet ministry. Its prominent and outspoken head, Dr. Zahi Hawass—famous for his Indiana Jones fedora and soapbox passion for repatriation—said in March that he would step down. The impending departure of Dr. Hawass, the face of modern Egyptian archaeology, indicates a shift in the way Egypt will handle its artifacts. Not much is known about Mohamed Abdel Fattah, the man appointed his successor just this week, and the question remains as to how Dr. Hawass’s successor will navigate the tricky role of being both a goodwill ambassador and a staunch nationalist faced with colleagues who own works that, spiritually, still belong to his country.

To understand the dual role assumed by anyone regulating Egyptian artifacts, it may be useful to understand how we arrived here. Throughout the 20th century, Egypt battled rampant smuggling. The export of Egyptian artifacts was essentially banned by a UNESCO treaty in 1970, and those restrictions were tightened with a domestic statute in 1983. Newly discovered artifacts still leave the country on loan, but the Egyptian government now owns anything discovered in its soil, even on digs sponsored by American institutions like the Met.

While that might seem logical, it was far from the case in the past. Previously, Egypt, like most other countries with a wealth of antiquities, used a system known as partage. After selecting the most culturally significant artifacts for the government, the parties representing the S.C.A. and the museum would split anything left over, 50-50.

“After everything is found at the end of the season,” said Oscar Muscarella, archaeologist and senior Met researcher, “the archeologist and the local representative would try to make two separate piles where you lay out all the materials and then you flip a coin. Heads you get one side, tails you get the other.”

Many museums and universities still sponsor digs in Egypt, for research and conservation purposes—though it’s hard to imagine that, politically, these digs don’t also help to secure loans from the government. The digs are monitored by the S.C.A., which interacts closely with American cultural institutions, broadly represented in the country by an organization called the American Research Center in Egypt (A.R.C.E.). The relationship is close enough that both parties are aware of minor bureaucratic shifts and when the S.C.A. board that approves dig permits missed a meeting immediately following the revolution, some American organizations became nervous. Emily Teeter, president of the A.R.C.E., advised some intending to work in Egypt to apply for other work, like conservation, in addition to active fieldwork, in case their fieldwork permits were, for whatever reason, not approved.

“Archaeology is a destructive process and if you’re not conserving, it’s better to leave it not dug up,” Dr. Teeter told The Observer, adding that conservation has become a growing part of their work anyway.

When it comes to digs, American museums, in the aftermath of the recent changes in Egypt, seem to be prepared for the worst without being entirely certain about what’s going on in the country. The Observer was unable to obtain any comment from a cultural representative of Egypt despite attempts to contact several outposts in this country, two of which featured AOL email addresses and one whose three listed phone numbers seemed to work earlier this month but now yield a persistent busy signal in the place of a reply.

“The really big problem for the antiquities service is that it is almost entirely funded by tourist dollars,” said Ed Bleiberg, the Egypt curator for the Brooklyn museum, which hosts extensive digs in the country. “That money goes to support the S.C.A. and allows for excavations in Egypt, and so because tourism has fallen off so much since the end of January, the S.C.A.’s budget is endangered. Our hope is that will return to normal in near future.”

The previous government seemed to believe that tourism in Egypt was soon going to be bigger than ever. In 2012, the country will open its $550 million Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, presumably a major motivator in Dr. Hawass’s very public attempts to repatriate big-ticket artifacts. On his blog, Dr. Hawass has a wish list of major Egyptian artifacts that he’d like to see returned to the country, among them the Rosetta Stone. If it seems like he’s aiming high, he has been successful in the past—the Met recently returned 19 items taken from King Tut’s tomb.

But Dr. Hawass’s reputation in these matters is that his bark is a bit outsize vis-à-vis his bite. Dr. Teeter said that several institutions that Dr. Hawass had railed against publicly had never received any sort of official follow-up from the government. And the publicity has been a little too effective. Visitors regularly walk into her own institution, the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago, and inform her that she really should return her artifacts to Egypt, despite the fact that the museum stopped acquiring Egyptian artifacts in 1930.

“As far as Hawass goes, he’s a brilliant, complex guy, but a megalomaniac and a solipsist,” said Dr. Muscarella, who is extremely sympathetic to his position and has frequently accused his own institution of “plunder.” “[Hawass is] someone who just opens his mouth and causes harm to his own cause, because I think his basic cause is to protect Egyptian antiquities, but he goes about it in a way where he just throws things out and is compromising his own position, to be quite frank.”

“If they replace him they may have to get someone calmer,” he added.

This isn’t to say that Dr. Hawass’s role is unnecessary. A study by David Gill, an archaeologist at Swansea University in Wales, found that 95 percent of the Egyptian antiquities sold at Sotheby’s between 1998 and 2008 could not be traced back to where they’d been excavated. That doesn’t mean that they were smuggled, but it points to the murkiness involved in determining provenance, even for a house with high standards like Sotheby’s. Because of the 1983 law, auction catalogues tend to nonchalantly dwell on this time period for Egyptian artifacts (e.g., “Purchased in Berlin in 1968,” which could roughly be translated to: “Everything’s just fine here, officer!”).

Dr. Hawass’s role, outsize though it may be, was also crucial because of another recent development in the world of Egyptian artifacts—a growth in demand for pieces on the private market. Christie’s and Sotheby’s have seen increased interest in antiquities across the board, and just this past December, an Egyptian limestone statue from around 1200 B.C.E.—and, later, an estate with stellar province—went for $1.31 million, though its high estimate was only $300,000.

Part of this has to do with the fact that since 1983, the supply has been effectively cut off, but Sam Merrin, owner of the Merrin Gallery in midtown, said much of this has had to do with the cash-flush art market at large.

“A lot of these people buy contemporary art and comparatively antiquities are still relatively inexpensive,” Mr. Merrin said. “They’re used to shelling out $20 million dollars, $40 million dollars, and they look at antiquities and they say, ‘Wow this really is undervalued.’”

The new competition means that museums are acquiring less and less. That’s certainly been the case at the Brooklyn Museum, which boasts one of the top Egyptian collections in the country, along with the Met and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

“It’s become so difficult to acquire legally and ethically,” Dr. Bleiberg said. “We do follow the market, but we pretty much stay away from acquisitions. It’s become very expensive.”

The twin factors of Egypt’s attempting to reclaim its cultural heritage and the newly invigorated market means that, looking ahead, Egyptian artifacts newly displayed in this country will most likely originate from Egypt. (This isn’t the only way they’ll come here, of course—the Met just received a ten-foot statue of Amenemhat II from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin.) This doesn’t mean that artifacts will cease to cycle in and out of museums here, but it does make things slightly more complicated. Any museum hosting an artifact from Egypt, for example, has to put up a representative from the S.C.A. to accompany the piece or exhibition.

But there’s also a possibility that Egyptian artifacts will be available to a larger audience than ever before. The previous Egyptian government embraced a trend increasingly common to many museums and used traveling exhibitions as a way of ensuring that as many people see their works as possible. Kathryn Keane, director of Traveling Exhibitions for National Geographic, said that over the past six years her touring King Tut exhibit—featuring exclusively Egypt-owned artifacts—has been seen by seven and a half million people worldwide.

“It’s a pretty successful model so far,” Ms. Keane said, adding that Dr. Hawass, who holds the title Explorer-in-Residence for National Geographic, was “instrumental” in establishing it. “We anticipate the government of Egypt will continue to want to share its culture because I know it’s a priority for them.”

With the government in such a transitional stage, many of the changes ahead in the relationship between the S.C.A. and our city’s institutions are very much up in the air, but this may be the takeaway. Egypt’s artifacts are now more than ever before firmly in the control of the S.C.A. and that organization is well positioned to share them, on its own terms.

And in the wake of this nationalistic revolution, the odds are good that the repatriation efforts will continue, with or without Dr. Hawass. Dr. Teeter pointed out that the S.C.A. is currently reorganizing itself with the knowledge that there’s a long list of objects already under disputed ownership.

“I can’t imagine they’re not going to pursue some of these cases that are still open,” Dr. Teeter said.

dduray@observer.com

Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea. In recent years, New York¹s midtown gallery scene has found itself fighting for attention with its younger, hipper West 20s sibling. The epicenter of the art world two decades ago, the  radius around 57th street is still the home to nearly 70 art galleries. Several of these are headquartered in the historic Fuller Building on Madison Avenue and even more of them were pioneers in the art and antiques business in the city.
The neighborhood may reclaim some of its energy, critical mass and collector traffic when Phillips de Pury moves its headquarters uptown to 450 Park Avenue, off 57th Street, in November.
Until then, on Oct. 14, a handful of midtown galleries try to take back the night, Thursday night that is, with coordinated openings, special
exhibitions and performances.
A handful of highlights.

Edwynn Houk Gallery

745 Fifth Avenue

This photography gallery opened in Chicago three decades ago, representing André Kertesz and Brassai. A New York transplant, it moved to Fifth Avenue in 1997. Currently, the gallery is showing the somewhat lascivious work of Bettina Rheims. The French photographer made her name with a 1981 series of arresting photographs of acrobats and strippers that earned her a solo show at the Centre Pompidou before her 30th birthday. She went on to develop a specialty--photographing famous women, often nude or wearing clothing unbuttoned, whose bodies fill the frame. (She's done covers for Elle, Paris Match and Details.) Views of Madonna, Marion Cotillard and Heather Graham are interspersed here with those of lesser-known, and less-clad, models.

The Pace Gallery

32 East 57th Street

Who buys all this stuff? Pace pulls back the curtain on that issue with a show of works it has sold to collectors over the years and pried back to exhibit in celebration of its 50th-anniversary. The wall hangings on loan include Texas collector Ray Nasher's nude Picasso, Homme et Femme Nus (1971); Jon and Mary Shirley's Untitled XVII by Willem de Kooning; and Women of Venice iX from the [Michael] Ovitz family collection. Works by Piet Mondrian and other Picassos round out the trove.

Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art

37 West 57th Street

The huge Armory Art Fair held every March features more than 280 galleries, but Mr. Nahem's booth the past couple of years has been one of the busiest. (Calvin Klein and Museum of Modern Art director Glenn Lowry stopped by to check it out.) This circumspect veteran dealer is known for teasing major postwar works out of private collections, and he showcased a $2.8 million Sam Francis, Blue Balls I, 1960 at the fair that hadn't shown outside of Japan in two decades. At this month's exhibition, the dealer shows 20th-century Modern masters. 

Francis M. Naumann Fine Art

24 West 57th Street

On Thursday night, the curator and author will open a show of Gordon Onslow Ford. He was a member of the Surrealist circle in Paris that included André Breton and Yves Tanguy. But his move to New York (where he lectured at the New School for Social Research on surrealism), and then to Mexico, split him off from that group and moved his art in a different direction. This is the first New York exhibition devoted to the artist's work since 1946. 

The Findlay Galleries

In 1870, art dealer William Wadsworth Findlay opened the Findlay Galleries in Kansas City, Mo. Then, the family headed east. Today, there remain three Findlay galleries in New York--David Jr. (41 East 57th Street), Peter (131 East 66th Street) and Wally (124 East 57th Street)--all descended, in one form or another, from that business. Some fifth-generation Findlay family members are still involved in the art business.Thursday evening, David Findlay, Jr. and Wally Findlay galleries will stay open late with special exhibitions, with the latter gallery showcasing paintings by Isabelle de Ganay and works on paper by Alexander Calder, Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth and several others.

The Merrin Gallery

724 Fifth Avenue

The gallery dates back nearly 40 years and, pretty much, if you were a museum and you wanted a classical Greek or Roman statue, pre-Columbian relic or even a mummy during that period, you bought it here from Edward Merrin. Client museums included the Met, Brooklyn, the Getty and the Louvre. In the past decade, hot-button repatriation issues have quieted (though far from ended) collecting in this market, but the gallery, now run by Samuel Merrin, still has among the richer assortments of antiquities of any dealer in the area. Ask to see the secret cabinet behind the revolving wall.

The Nohra Haime Gallery

730 Fifth Avenue

This gallery, which will celebrate its 30th birthday next year, was a pioneer, mingling Latin American contemporary art with U.S. art long before it was common to do so. Another aspect sets in apart: In an art world where artists dump the dealers who established them at the first whiff of success, gallerist Ms. Haime has been able to keep her roster.  Her current show is of the oil paintings of Adam Straus, who is celebrating his 20th year with the gallery.

The Spanierman Gallery LLC

45 East 58th Street

Descended from the former Savoy Art and Auction Gallery, founded by Samuel Spanierman in 1928 on 59th Street. the gallery is today run by his son, Ira. While it  has a modern-art branch next door, the original showcases classic American art. Through Friday, Oct. 16, it has exhibitions of the work of Susan Vecsey and Frank Bowling, but on Oct. 21 it opens a sweeping show: "In Praise of Women," a look at portraits of women over two centuries by several dozen artists.