Month: March 2011

Book Contributors Wanted

I’m currently working with a co-editor gathering authors for an edited volume examining legal and enforcement efforts from various localities. The chapters themselves will discuss specific thefts, instances of looting, and crimes and examine the laws at work.  The book will include the legal framework, but also be accessible to non-lawyers.  Chapters will be written in a fluid, accessible style so that they may be understood by readers from a variety of professional and academic backgrounds, not exclusive to law.  The chapters will give practical guidance and present a starting point for interested readers, scholars and lawmakers to combat heritage crime.  Citations and footnotes should provide specialized readers with further information that may not be necessary to readers from other fields.  Each chapter will be 3000-7000 words in length, excluding citations and bibliography, and should will contain a bibliography for further reading and thorough citations that will be useful as reference points.  


I am particularly interested in getting authors from Africa, South America or Asia to contribute their expertise. 


If you are interested, or know an expert who might be, please email me at derek.fincham “at” gmail.com.

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

Footnotes

    A Monumental Ewer from a Controversial Smithsonian Exhibit, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Moctezuma’s Crown

This Headdress the “Mona Lisa of anthropology” may be returning to Mexico for the first time in 500 years

Mexico and Austria may be nearing an agreement which would allow this stunning crown to be returned to Mexico. This feaethered headdress, or kopilli ketzalli currently sits in the Vienna Museum of Ethnology. It was sent there by Hernán Cortés in the mid 16th century as a gift to Charles V, the Kindg of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. There are over 400 Quetzal feathers in the headdress. The gold helmet attached to the feathers was melted down. But there are obstacles to the return of the headdress:

Two issues need to be resolved before a loan can be arranged. The first hurdle is legal, since there is a long-standing Mexican law that forbids the re-export of any archaeological material from the country. Initially it was hoped that the headdress would not be regarded as archaeological, but the Vienna museum needs assurance that its return would not be blocked. A special presidential decree on the headdress was discussed, but this might not be legally binding on future presidents. The Mexican government is now considering a change in the law on the re-export of antiquities.
Austrian and Mexican conservators also need to agree to the loan. The headdress was remounted on a display board in 1992 and cannot be easily detached. Conservators are reluctant to do so until a decision has been made on a new backing. This will depend on whether it has to be fit to travel. The feather vanes are fragile so a vibration-free case would have to be devised.

  1. Martin Bailey, Heading back to Mexico a step at a time, The Art Newspaper, March 10, 2011, http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Heading+back+to+Mexico+a+step+at+a+time+/23243 (last visited Mar 10, 2011).
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

ARCA 2011 Annual Conference Call for Presenters, July 9-10 2011, Amelia Italy

Embedded below are the details for the 2011 ARCA annual conference in Amelia, Italy. Each of the past two years the conference has been a terrific event, and I encourage you to consider submitting a proposal to me at derek.fincham “at” artcrime.info.

Conference Announcement

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

Should Street Art Stay where it was Made?

New York and Detroit are both encountering the difficulty which arises when street art achieves recognition.

In Detroit, a group removed a Banksy work from near an abandoned Packard plant. The 555 Non-profit gallery which cut away the wall is now engaged in a legal dispute with the owner of the Packard site over the mural. The dispute brings to mind so many interesting questions. Banksy may have intend his mural to be temporary, and only seen for a limited time in the context of the decaying auto plant. Did the gallery strip the mural of its context by removing it? How is that removal much different than the stripping of pre-Columbian stelae from central and south America? The techniques of sawing are probably similar, and we are left with a decontextualized panel in a different space, left to imagine what the work would have looked like in its original, though perhaps threatened, context.

5 Pointz in Queens

In Queens, a similar difficulty may be emerging. The owner of this warehouse space in Long Island City has announced his intention to develop the warehouse into a residential project, supermarket, and space for artists. As Marlon Bishop reports for WNYC “Since 1993, the former warehouse space in Long Island City has served as an informal training ground and gallery for street artists from around the city. The space is regularly visited by graffiti and hip-hop fans from around the world, earning it a reputation as a street art mecca.”

But now that space is being re-purposed by the owner of the building. The warehouse itself may be in need of serious repair anyway, as an external staircase collapsed in 2009. As the owner of the building, Jerry Wolkoff would ordinarily be free to do what he wishes with his building. Yet the artists are upset that their creative space is disappearing and may seek to have the building declared a historical landmark. Will the re-purposed developoment continue to serve the same function of bringing together artists? Surely not. And part of the excitement of the street art scene was its newness and how it emerged as a new art form breaking free of conventions. Yet wider appreciation for street art, and the commodification of these works, are slowly imposing the conventions anyway.

  1. Matthew Dolan, If You Take Street Art Off the Street, Is It Still Art?, wsj.com, March 9, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704071304576160544164062176.html#articleTabs%3Darticle (last visited Mar 9, 2011).
  2. Marlon Bishop, Queens Graffiti Mecca Faces Redevelopment, WNYC, , http://culture.wnyc.org/articles/features/2011/mar/07/queens-graffiti-mecca-faces-redevelopment/ (last visited Mar 9, 2011).
Video from Detroit after the break:

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

Archaeologist Pleads Guilty to Artifact Theft

Daniel Amick, an assistant professor at Loyola Chicago pleaded guilty to violating the Archaeological Resources Protection Act after removing 17 prehistoric objects from federal lands in New Mexico. He was sentenced to a year’s probation.

Johna Hutira, vice president of Northland Research and a member of the Society of American Archaeology, said she didn’t feel comfortable commenting on this particular case, but added that these kinds of allegations are troubling for archaeologists. 
“It’s a short jump from a person removing artifacts to wholesale looting,” Hutira said, adding that one of the primary roles of archaeology is the preservation of historically significant artifacts that offer insights into early civilizations. 
In general, “if you want to go collect information, you need to get an archaeological permit,” Hutira said. “If it’s federal lands, you have to play by federal rules.” 
Amick’s attorney asserted that the professor’s decisions were driven by academic pursuit. And had Amick applied for a research permit, he would have been granted one, his attorney said.
Amick is one of two archaeologists on staff at Loyola’s anthropology department. 
According to the Loyola website, he received his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 1994. Amick teaches introductory anthropology courses, including Anthropology 101, as well as more advanced classes such as Archaeology Lab Methods.
  1. Erin Meyer, Artifacts stolen: Loyola professor pleads guilty to robbing archaeological site, Chicago Tribune, March 1, 2011, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-loyola-guilty-0302-20110301,0,7965373.story (last visited Mar 8, 2011).
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Guns, Degas, and Legal Disputes

A work purportedly by Degas, at the center of a legal dispute in Florida

Details of an odd art dispute are unfolding in Florida. A law firm is being sued by its client for failure to release this work, allegedly by Degas. All the red flags are up in this case, yet it wasn’t the auction house Sotheby’s which delayed the auction, but rather a dispute over legal fees and a $1 million retainer.

In August, a pleasantly cool month in Chile, Bonati was in Santiago, where he and McInnis boarded the chartered, nine-seat Cessna. The plane refueled in Ecuador and landed in Fort Lauderdale after the 4,000-mile flight.
As the men headed for the terminal, they drew suspicion because of what the law firm later called their “bizarre” conduct.
“Bonati carried the multi-million dollar painting in his arms as the pair made their way across the tarmac . . . while McInnis walked alongside with a gun holstered at his waist,” the firm said in a court filing. 

“Bonati was also carrying in excess of $10,000 in cash on his person, a sum which he did not declare to U.S. Customs as required by law.” 

Anyone taking more than $10,000 in currency into or out of the country must file a report with customs. 

Paintings and other original works of art also must be declared, though most are allowed to enter the United States duty-free. But with art theft a major international problem, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stepped up efforts to ascertain the ownership of potentially valuable works. 

In January, the agency returned to France a Degas painting stolen from a museum there in 1973. It resurfaced last fall in the catalog of a Sotheby’s auction in New York. 

That episode “shows why we take an interest in these kind of cases and if it is stolen, returning it to its rightful owner,” says Danielle Bennett, an ICE spokeswoman.

  1. Susan Taylor Martin, Doctor’s legal battle reveals potential art trove, St. Petersburg Times, March 6, 2011, http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/civil/doctors-legal-battle-reveals-potential-art-trove/1155579 (last visited Mar 8, 2011).
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Armed Attack on Antiquities Storehouse in Egypt

After the resignation of Zahi Hawass, there are reports of looting and theft including one disturbing report from Kafr el-Sheikh on Saturday:

Forty armed men attacked an antiquities warehouse in the northern Egyptian city of Kafr el-Sheikh on Saturday, shooting at warehouse security men and injuring several, state news agency MENA said. The attack is the second attempt to rob Kafr el-Sheikh’s Tal al-Faraeen (Hill of the Pharaohs) antiquities warehouse since Jan. 25, the first day of the nationwide protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11.
…
The warehouse doors were destroyed as were display cases, MENA cited the Head of the Central Department of Lower Egyptian Antiquities Mohamed Abdel Maksoud as saying. Some of the attackers had been caught, while others had escaped, he said.

In a statement on his blog yesterday, Hawass confirmed these reports.

So what concrete steps can be taken now? Chris Marinello and the Art Loss Register have pledged their support, but their efforts require the authorities in Egypt to notify them of the specific objects which have been taken. Larry Rothfield argues that while public statements are a necessary step, they have no real effect. He argues institutions should call on their members to help identify and reclaim missing objects, and to pool resources to hire locals and security personnel to protect storehouses and sites. He also suggest financial and logistical support could be provided by the United States to help Egyptians secure and guard their sites.

  1. Forty armed men attack Egypt antiquities store-MENA, Reuters, March 5, 2011, http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFLDE7240E820110305 (last visited Mar 7, 2011).
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Hawass Resigns

Kate Taylor of the New York Times is reporting that Zahi Hawass has resigned:

After Egypt’s prime minister resigned on Thursday and the army asked his replacement to form a caretaker cabinet, Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s powerful and controversial antiquities chief, said he would not be part of the new government. His comments came after he posted on his Web site for the first time a list of dozens of sites that have been looted since the beginning of the uprising that led to the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.

Reached by telephone Mr. Hawass, a member of the previous cabinet, said he was happy that he had made the “right decision” and lashed out at colleagues who have criticized him, including one who has accused him of smuggling antiquities.

Egyptian Antiquities Chief Resigns – NYTimes.com

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

Why Get so Worked up over the Ka Nefer Nefer Mask?

I’m a bit puzzled by all the criticism being directed at the St. Louis Museum of Art. The looting of antiquities destroys archaeological context, but the Ka Nefer Nefer mask was not looted. Both the Museum and those who would have the mask returned to Egypt agree that the mask was professionally excavated in 1952. Egypt has claimed the mask was stolen from a storehouse at some point, while the Museum argues it researched the provenance and found no information to indicate it had been looted. One may argue that the acquisition procedures of museums are generally lacking. And we can certainly criticize the imperfect procedures implemented by the museum to ask questions of the mask in this case—though they did ask some questions in good faith. Though there was no export permit for the mask, but I’m not sure that justifies the criticism of the museum for its suit against the federal government. The museum is only asserting that the Federal government sat on its hands and waited too long to bring a forfeiture claim. This is a perfectly reasonable cause of action, particularly given the enormous benefits to the government and the claimant when a civil forfeiture is brought.

If you are upset that no claims were brought earlier, why not criticize the U.S. government for waiting so long to bring a forfeiture proceeding? I think one of the frustrating things about these repatriation issues are what I’d call the tone deaf nature of much of the rhetoric irrespective of the merits of the claims. This claim is not the same as every other repatriation claim, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. And though I’d agree that many objects need to go back, not all of them do. Universal repatriation should not be the preferred remedy. The Museum here certainly could have checked closer into the history of the mask, but Egypt also didn’t realize the mask was missing. As Mark Durney pointed out, this might be a good reason for renewed emphasis on documenting objects which are in storage. If you don’t, it will be difficult to leverage the trade into ending the sale of objects completely, and that argument loses persuasiveness when the same rhetoric is used for each and every dispute, irrespective of its strengths and weaknesses.

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