Metal Detectors Discover Important Viking Hoard in Yorkshire


A father and son metal detecting in a field near Harrogate discovered what could be the most important Viking hoard discovered in Great Britain in 150 years. The hoard was likely buried some time in the 10th century.

The two detectors, David and Andrew Whelan, found 617 silver coins, a gold arm-ring and a gilt silver vessel. The objects come from Afghanistan, Russia, Scandinavia and Ireland among others.

To qualify as treasure, generally speaking a find must be composed of valuable materials like silver or gold. Such was the case here, and as a result the finder and the landowner will receive an award based on the value of the find. In this way, the treasure act encourages finders to report their discovery. Of course they will also receive a great deal of publicity for this important discovery.

There are problems, because its application hinges on the composition of the find. But it does an excellent job of forming a good compromise between treasure hunters and archaeologists. These metal detectors are compensated; while if there was simply a national ownership declaration, finders might be tempted to hide their discovery and sell it on the black market.

One of the local treasure Coroners, Geoff Fell stated at the treasure trove inquest in Harrogate that “Treasure cases are always interesting, but this is one of the most exciting cases that I have ever had to rule on. I’m delighted that such an important Viking hoard has been discovered in North Yorkshire.”

Michael Lewis, the deputy head of the British Museum Treasure Scheme praised the finders because “[they] resisted the temptation to tip the hoard … That gave the museum the opportunity to investigate the hoard.”

This find seems to have produced great results for everybody. Metal detecting cuts both ways. Responsible detectors like the Whelan’s can really add to the body of historical knowledge, but there are irresponsible detectors as well, as the forthcoming nighthawking (detecting at night) study to be conducted by the British Museum will reveal.

The BBC has an account here, with pictures and video. There is more detail here from 24dash. Hat tip to Cronaca.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

The United States Introduces Import Restrictions for Cypriot Coins


The Cultural Property Advisory Committee has recommended, and the State Department has issued an import ban on Cypriot coins. Here is an excerpt from the Federal register notice outlining the new import restrictions:

Coins of Cypriot Types
Coins of Cypriot types made of gold, silver, and bronze including but not limited to:

1. Issues of the ancient kingdoms of Amathus, Kition, Kourion, Idalion, Lapethos, Marion, Paphos, Soli, and Salamis dating from the end of the 6th century B.C. to 332 B.C.

2. Issues of the Hellenistic period, such as those of Paphos, Salamis, and Kition from 332 B.C. to c. 30 B.C.

3. Provincial and local issues of the Roman period from c. 30 B.C. to 235 A.D. Often these have a bust or head on one side and the image of a temple (the Temple of Aphrodite at Palaipaphos) or statue (statue of Zeus Salaminios) on the other.

Jeremy Kahn of the New York Times has a summary in today’s paper here. The new restriction is noteworthy because the Cultural Property Advisory Committee has never placed restrictions on ancient coins before. However, no request for restrictions by another nation has never been refused, so this was the likely outcome. To trigger a recommendation for import restrictions, a source nation must show it is working to police its archaeological sites, and the ancient sites are in danger of being pillaged. It seems Cyprus was able to make that claim, though we won’t be able to know the actual deliberations which went on because the deliberations of the CPAC are secret.

Cyprus’ ambassador Andreas Kakouris said in the NYT article “We are very pleased coins have been added to this … Coins constitute an inseparable part of our own cultural heritage, and the pillage they are subjected to is the same as other archaeological material.”

Representing the other side though is Peter Tompa who said “This decision shows that the Department of State is putting the narrow interest of the cultural bureaucracies of foreign states and the archaeological community over those ordinary Americans who believe that collecting increases appreciation of the past and helps preserve artifacts.”

It’s a difficult issue I think. The work of numismatists has helped archaeologists to be able to date their finds. However, ancient coins are found in the same areas as other archaeological materials. I argue in my thesis that the bilateral implementation of the 1970 UNESCO Convention which the US and Switzerland have undertaken can be quite effective, and at least gives a voice to the interests of antiquities dealers. They may not think their views are taken into account in the CPAC, but it is a much stronger voice than they have in other nations. The restrictions are limited as well, they extend for five years only, and have to be renewed.

In my view the solution is a compromise which strongly restricts the trade in the most important objects, but allows a limited and licit trade in surplus and other objects. To fund these efforts I propose antiquities leasing and other initiatives. The magic bullet which could end all of these problems though is the publication of detailed provenances for all sales. Unfortunately the current climate does not promote the sharing of that information.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Tyler Green and the Nelson-Atkins’ Bloch Building


Tyler Green has a fantastic review of the impressive new Bloch Building at Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins museum, pictured here at night. Here’s part of what he wrote:

In the last few minutes of full daylight Holl’s building seemed to be as much a glass pile as museum’s main building is an Indiana limestone pile, only whiter and cleverer. But as the sun began to set, a couple things happened: The building lit up. It lost weight. It gave away a second set of secrets (more on that as the week goes on).

The young men playing flag football stopped and stared. Out of nowhere about half a dozen photographers materialized, tripods at the ready. A taxi drove up, stopped, and out ran a man with a digital camera. He ran around snapping snapping, and then jogged back to his cab. Kids rolled through on bikes — not privileged kids from the ritzy neighborhoods to the east of the museum, but city kids. The photographers and the yuppie football players treated the new building with reverence, but these kids rode their bikes right up to it. They touched it, tapped it, yelled , “Hey, it’s glass!” They parked their bikes and ran around the exceptional Mark Di Suvero that sits in front of the Bloch Building — which seems just right because Rumi reminds me of a whirling dervish.

He’s going to write more about the new building this week. Green has a refreshingly populist view of art criticism. His review on NPR of the new Getty Villa was excellent as well.

Though most art is bought and sold in New York, Los Angeles, or London, we shouldn’t mistake those places as the center of the art world. Really terrific art exists everywhere. Green’s account of the impact this new building has on the regular people who live in the area strikes me as unique and a breath of fresh air. I think the cosmopolitan idea of spreading art and its influence when done respectfully holds a lot of promise. But to be truly cosmopolitan art and antiquities should be enjoyed everywhere, not just in New York or London. I guess that is why I’m skeptical of a lot of the criticism heaped on the new Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas. The idea of a World-Class art institution in Arkansas strikes me as exciting. I should note for the purposes of full disclosure that I grew up in Lawrence, Kansas just a short drive from the Nelson-Atkins. It’s where I first started to like art, so I’m very excited to get back there and see what all the excitement is about.

Also, I personally get quite frustrated with the idea that there should be centers to the art world.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Picasso Theft from a Seattle Mall


Two etchings by Pablo Picasso were stolen from the Bellevue Square mall last week the Seattle Times reports. This is Bacchic Scene with Minotaur which was taken along with Aquatinte 26 Mai 1968. It seems a woman distracted the store clerks by asking about a work in the back of the gallery while two men casually took the etchings out of the mall. These aren’t masterworks, but their $92,000 estimated value is nothing to sniff at.

The chances these drawings will be returned quickly are probably not good. The most likely scenario is that a subsequent purchaser who didn’t know about the works’ tainted past will end up in a dispute with the gallery or the Insurance company if the gallery was able to insure the works. The Seattle piece says “unscrupulous art collectors have few qualms about purchasing stolen pieces for their private collections.” I think that may be over-stating the case a bit. In most situations the ultimate litigant is a buyer who was unaware a work had been stolen. This is why buyers should always consult organizations like the Art Loss Register before every significant purchase, and provenance should be thoroughly researched.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Comparing Digital Images to Art Theft Databases

David Nishimura at Cronaca noted a piece from Discovery News which provided more details on the cell phone technology which can take a picture of a piece of art and then compare it quickly with an art theft database. I wrote about this new development back in March. The technology allows an investigator to take a digital photo of the object with a cell phone, which is then sent to a central server. The image analysis system then compares the picture with the user’s database. It identifies similar works based on shape, outline, color, or texture, and then returns a list of the top ten closest hists.

At Present, the systems works on paintings, carpets and coins; though they hope to extend the system to work on 3-dimensional objects soon.

Nishimura seems to be a fan of the idea:

Sounds like a pretty simple and practicable idea, patching together well-established technologies. Take a database of images of stolen artworks, and search it using other images and a pattern-matching application. You’ll end up with some false positives, of course, but as long as the matching algorithm is reasonably sophisticated, you should still have a useful tool for flagging possible problem paintings for further investigation.

I think that’s right, though the problem of course is which database to check. At present there are a number of different theft databases. The largest and most successful is the Art Loss Register. However that site is not accessible to the public at large. You have to pay for and request the ALR to conduct its own search of its data. Though this technology would seem to make that process easier, Julian Radcliffe, the chairman and most vocal proponent of the ALR says “None of the imag matching is good enough to replace the art historians we use.”

That may be true, but as I’ve argued before, the first company which figures out how to make a simple, universal and easy-to-use database will really stand out, and will also really help to legitimize the art and antiquities trade generally. Until such a database exists though, we will continue to see good faith purchasers buying stolen or illicitly excavated works leading to the classic art law dispute between an original owner and a good faith purchaser. In these cases both parties are relative innocents and the law can have a difficult time evaluating the respective claims.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Sharon Waxman and Source Nations

I want to point out an interesting blog by Sharon Waxman, a culture writer for the New York Times. She’s writing dispatches from the middle-east while doing research for a forthcoming book on the antiquities and repatriation problem. She seems to have some impressive contacts, and has already talked about meeting with people like Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s Antiquities Minister. The question of repatriation is a difficult and controversial subject, and many journalists have done excellent work on the topic in the past. Books by Peter Watson and Roger Atwood have been particularly excellent. Waxman’s forthcoming work certainly starts with some fascinating stories and conflicts, and I’ll be interested to see her take. Here is an excerpt of her time spent with Hawass:

I’m sitting in the office of Zahi Hawass, chief of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, in Cairo. His office, in the SCA headquarters on the island of Zamalek, is a garden variety Egyptian bureaucrat’s bland mix of tan walls and oversized stuffed furniture. (Happily, the wireless Internet works.) But there’s a curious thing in the lobby. In a large vitrine, the famed bust of Nefertiti — see it at left — sits in a place of honor. Strange because this is a copy, and Egypt has no end of authentic artifacts to show off in the lobby of its antiquities service. The bust has not been in Egypt since its discovery in the first part of the 20th century. It now lives in Berlin, and is prime on Hawass’s list of requests for loan in 2012. Berlin has responded that the statue is too fragile to travel. Hawass does not accept this argument, and continues to push.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Spain and Odyssey Marine

The Spanish civil guard has seized a vessel belonging to Odyssey Marine soon after it left Gibraltar. As I’ve stated in earlier posts, Odyssey Marine found a 17th Century wreck somewhere in the Atlantic, which it says may be worth $500 million. The gold has already been shipped back to the United States. Both Odyssey Marine and authorities from Gibraltar say the ship was illegally seized because it was in international waters according to the BBC. However, as I’ve said before it isn’t at all clear where Spanish waters end and International waters begin, and the interested parties have of course not clearly laid out their maritime boundaries. I don’t consider myself an expert on admiralty law, so I’m not really sure who has the stronger claim to the treasure which was shipped back to the United States. I do know that the Federal case pending in Florida will be interesting to watch unfold. From the cultural policy perspective though, I haven’t seen any evidence that Odyssey is conducting serious archaeological study, though perhaps they are.

(Hat tip to David Nishimura at Cronaca)

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Dividing a Nazi Art Dealer’s Collection

Catherine Hickley wrote a very interesting article for Bloomberg on the efforts by France, Germany and Switzerland to divide Bruno Lohse’s art collection. Here is an excerpt:

Bruno Lohse, a German art dealer appointed by Hermann Goering to acquire looted art in occupied France, dispersed his private collection of Dutch 17th-century masterpieces and expressionist paintings among friends and relatives in his will, the lawyer handling his estate said.

Lohse died on March 19, aged 95, and has since become the focus of a three-nation investigation into a looted Camille Pissarro painting discovered in a Swiss bank safe that was seized by Zurich prosecutors on May 15. The painting’s prewar owners said the Gestapo stole it from their Vienna apartment in 1938. Lohse controlled the Liechtenstein trust that rented the safe.

“Paintings have been willed to relatives and friends in individual bequests,” Willy Hermann Burger, the executor of Lohse’s will, said in an interview at his home in Munich. Burger, who declined to name the beneficiaries or disclose details on individual artworks, said he’s sure none of the paintings in Lohse’s private collection are looted.

Lohse became Paris-based deputy director of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the Nazis’ specialist art-looting unit, in 1942, according to the interrogation report compiled by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services’ Art Looting Investigation Unit, which questioned him in Austria from June 15 to Aug. 15, 1945.

The E.R.R. plundered about 22,000 items in France alone, according to the O.S.S. reports. The Jewish Claims Conference estimates that the Nazis looted about 650,000 artworks in total.

“There is a lot of art still missing and we believe that a significant proportion remains in private collections, especially in Germany and Austria,” said Anne Webber, co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, a not-for-profit organization based in London that helps families recover plundered property.

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that Lohse became an art dealer in the 1950’s, and thus most of his private collection is probably legitimate. However, the Pisarro found in the Swiss bank vault, Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps is probably looted, at least according to the Art Loss Register. This all underscores the importance of establishing and checking provenance for works of art when they are sold or donated. If the various European prosecutors are not as aggressive as their American counterparts have been, a lengthy and complex legal dispute between the successor and the descendants of the original1938 owner will likely ensue.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

More Posturing from Francesco Rutelli


Italy’s Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli just returned from a visit to the United States, and no visit is complete without more criticism of the Getty. Yesterday Rutelli repeated his claims. The LA Times has a good compilation of the Wire reports here. There is little new information save a new deadline. Rutelli says the Getty has until the end of July to return contested objects, else risk a “real embargo” which would preclude loans and collaborations with Italy in research and conservation projects. Rutelli said he had submitted a “final proposal for dialogue and agreement [and if no deal is done,] a real conflict will begin, a real embargo–that is, the interruption of cultural and scientific collaboration between Italy and that museum.”

What exactly the “final proposal” entails is unknown. Ron Hartwig the Getty spokesman did say that Rutelli sent a “very cordial…very encouraging” letter and that Michael Brand had “responded in kind”. As I understand it, the Getty has agreed to return many of the contested objects which Italy wants. However, the Getty is unable to reach an agreement because Rutelli has insisted no deal can be finished without the return of this statue, the “Bronze Statue of a Victorious Youth”. I’ve discussed this particular claim before, which you can read about by clicking the label below. Italy has no legal claim to the bronze statue, and a weak ethical argument for its return as well.

Rutelli is trying to associate the stronger claim the Getty has in the Bronze statue with the other objects with far more dubious provenances. It gets Rutelli’s comments in the papers, and it keeps the repatriation issue open, but seems unlikely to lead to a workable compromise.

UPDATE:

Rutelli made yesterday’s announcement from the fishing port of Fano in Italy, where the statue was brought ashore by the fishermen who found it. I have updated the first paragraph accordingly.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

In the News

I saw a couple of noteworthy items in the papers this morning.

First, there was an interesting note of a legal event held in London last week. Edward Fennell of the Times Online in his “In the City” feature talked about this event:

Last week Withers hosted one of the most curious legal events I have ever attended. In a gripping account to a smart multinational audience of art professionals, insurers and well-heeled collectors the firm’s art recovery expert, partner Pierre Valentin told how he helped to recover paintings from the Bakwin collection that had been stolen in America in the 1970s.

Working with the Art Loss Register (which operates in that seductive area where culture and money meet glamour and crime) Mr Valentin described a Hitchcock-like thriller featuring painstaking research, dodgy Russians and even murder – but all ending in happy success for the resolute legal sleuth. As the tale unfolded we could see on display the very “McGuffin” that had driven the drama – the collection of paintings themselves by Cézanne, Matisse, Soutine, Vlaminck By the end of an astonishing evening Withers had proved itself a true ornament to the City’s legal scene.

I take it Whithers must be a firm of Solicitors. Sounds like some fascinating stories. I do not know about this particular case, but I am familiar with Pierre Valentin. It sounds fascinating. Here is hoping he makes it up to Scotland.

Second, I noticed an AP story by Ariel David which has been picked up by a number of papers in recent weeks. I haven’t noted it before but it is an interesting story of the notorious tombaroli Pietro Casasanta who has testified at the True/Hecht trial and Rome. Here is an excerpt:

It used to be so easy for the “tombaroli,” Italy’s tomb raiders.

Pietro Casasanta had no Indiana Jones-type escapes from angry natives or booby-trapped temples. He worked undisturbed in daylight with a bulldozer, posing as a construction worker to become one of Italy’s most successful plunderers of archaeological treasures.

When he wasn’t in prison, the convicted looter operated for decades in this countryside area outside Rome, benefiting from what he says was lax surveillance that allowed him to dig into ancient Roman villas and unearth statues, pottery and other artifacts, which he then sold for millions of dollars on the illegal antiquities market.

“Nobody cared, and there was so much money going around,” he recalled. “I always worked during the day, with the same hours as construction crews, because at night it was easier to get noticed and to make mistakes.”

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com