Derek Fincham

How to Buy a $125k Sculpture for $900?

Open up a scrapyard. Larry Harnisch reports on the theft of a 6-foot bronze miner statue stolen last February in Los Angeles and recovered by the LA Police Department’s art theft detail at a local scrapyard where the statue was purchased for $900.

This is an emerging problem given the high price of metals, though these prices are falling again. This is an inherent problem with public art, but much of the blame belongs to scrapyard owners as well, which might perhaps look the other way in such circumstances.

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

Subway Excavations Spur Looting in Phillipines

A very interesting story this morning from Jobers Bersales of the Cebu Daily News on the looting which took place when subway excavations under Cebu’s Plaza Independencia resulted in looting of ceramic and other objects uncovered by the digging.

The tragedy of Plaza Independencia was compounded somewhat because of the failure of the National Museum to send a monitoring team to observe the subway project, a recommendation made by the private archaeological firm that was hired to conduct pre-project archaeological assessment of the plaza in 2006. It was only when this columnist came out in August last year to report the looting that the National Museum immediately and without haste came over to begin the monitoring process! That report was triggered by the same online heritage forum where a member mentioned the golden treasures that were taken out of the construction site with regularity.

The looting was compounded further by the fact that Kajima Construction, which actually reported to the National Museum about the looting way back in June but got no response, had some sub-contracted workers coming from their former infrastructure project in Butuan province – workers who had experienced looting burial sites in artifact-rich Butuan. The looting had so alarmed Kajima that it ordered an investigation way, way before the looting was reported, fired the workers, and requested the sub-contracting firm to order the return of the gold bracelets, armlets, earrings and untold number of jars, plates and other ceramics that were carted away by an antiques buyer posing just outside the walls of the construction site, a gray-haired man who carried thousands in a clutch bag.

For more, see here, a series of blog posts with photos from Cebu.

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

Looting of Native American Sites in South Dakota

Josh Verges of the ArgusLeader had a good detailed story about the indictment of three men in South Dakota for trafficking in Native American artifacts:

The federal indictments of three men accused of trafficking in Native American artifacts reveal a lucrative trade centered on the illegal harvesting of a culture’s buried history.

U.S. Attorney Marty Jackley said the indictments – the first of their kind in his two and a half years on the job – are partly a response to his conversations with tribal members.”When I travel to Cheyenne River and Standing Rock … this is very important to their culture and their tradition,” he said.

Jackley said the investigation continues with the possibility of more indictments, and those already filed involve a “significant number of artifacts.”

Brian Ekrem, 28, of Selby and Richard Geffre, 49, of Pierre allegedly sold three copper arm bands in violation of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act and were involved in the collection of many other artifacts, including beads, arrowheads and bone tools. Scott Matteson, 60, of Fort Pierre is accused of buying red stone discs, arrowheads and a sandstone scraping tool, all of which had been removed from public and Indian lands.

Each man pleaded not guilty earlier this month in Pierre and was released without bond until his next court appearance. In each case, court records do not specify how the items were obtained or to which tribe they probably belonged. Matteson said last week that he bought the items from an artifacts dealer and he did not know their origins. He said that transaction of less than $300 has resulted in what he hopes is only a temporary loss of his artifact museum.

He said federal agents recently confiscated his 38-foot trailer filled with Native American arrowheads, pots and other relics, which he has collected during the past 50 years.

Verges and the two other men were most likely looting sites and burial grounds. Policing these violations is difficult given the vast geographical area federal agents and prosecutors are tasked with safeguarding. That’s why its particularly disturbing that President Bush has decided to pardon David Lane Woolsey (via) of St. George Utah, who violated the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.

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

30 Works Stolen from Berlin

Art thieves don’t party. 30 Works were stolen from a Berlin gallery sometime close to New Year’s Eve the AP reported earlier this week:

Thieves stole works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and others from a Berlin gallery over the New Year’s holiday, police said Friday.

More than 30 works — worth an estimated euro180,000 ($250,000) — were stolen, apparently between Wednesday afternoon and lunchtime Thursday, police spokeswoman Claudia Schweiger said. The artwork was taking from the Fasanengalerie, a private gallery near western Berlin’s central shopping district.

The etchings, prints and sculptures included “Profil au fond noir,” a 1947 work by Picasso; “Nude in a rocking chair,” a Matisse print from 1913; and “Le Boupeut,” a 1962 color print by Georges Braque.

The gallery’s owner discovered the loss New Year’s Day, having found signs the door had been pried open, police said. Given the number of works stolen and the weight of the sculptures, two or more people probably were involved, police said in a statement.

New Year’s Eve is a popular time to steal works of art, as are other nights when cities revel and police may be stretched thin. The theft from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum took place on St. Patrick’s day in Boston.

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

Brodie on the Market in Iraqi Antiquities

Neil Brodie, now at the Stanford University Archaeology Center, has posted a work in progress “
The market in Iraqi antiquities 1980-2008“. I highly recommend giving the text a read, but here are a few highlights:

It is clear that during the period in question [1990 to 2003] and despite UNSCR 661 the quantities of unprovenanced artefacts being offered for sale did not diminish; in fact if anything they increased over the years running up to 2003.
Since April 2003, the sale of unprovenanced Iraqi artifacts at public auction in New York and London has stopped entirely, perhaps because of the widespread negative publicity that followed on from the break-in at the National Museum, or because of UNSCR 1483.
After 2003, outside the auction market, Iraqi artifacts continued to be openly traded on the Internet. On one day – 5 December 2006 – there were at least 55 websites offering antiquities for sale and that might have been expected to sell Iraqi objects.
Circular saws are not the tools of archaeologists, and traces of their use are clear evidence that the “bricks” were removed destructively from their architectural context and cut down in size to facilitate their illegal transport from Iraq.

I think the final point is most damning of all, describing pretty clearly that many of the “bricks” appearing on the internet have been cut with circular saws, surely not the tool of an archaeologists, if there was any doubt that these objects were removed from their context by legitimate, legal means.

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

An End in Sight to Portrait of Wally Forfeiture?

Martha Lufkin of the art newspaper summarizes the nearly 10-year-long dispute between Federal prosecutors, the Bondi family and the Leopold Museum in Vienna. For past posts on the long-running dispute over this work see here.

Lufkin also reports Federal prosecutors have asked that a judgment to be postponed to allow the review of some new evidence:

Judgement on a long-running lawsuit in New York, which helped launch a world outcry over Nazi-looted art at museums and prompted many institutions to begin examining their collections for history of Nazi theft, has been postponed to let the US government review new evidence. On 3 June the schedule was suspended on a case brought by the US government in 1999 to seek confiscation of Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally from the Leopold Museum in Vienna, under the US National Stolen Property Act. The US says the Leopold knew that the art was stolen by a Nazi in 1939 from its Jewish owner, Lea Bondi. The case, which the parties had asked the court to resolve without a trial, is before the federal district court in Manhattan.

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

Financial Innovations and the Antiquities Trade

Earlier this year I was asked to participate in a gathering of lawyers, archaeologists, antiquities dealers, economists, and members of the museum community at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica California: “Financial Innovations to Curb Looting and Preserve Cultural Resources”

The institute has published a report available here (registration required). From the press release:

Participants examined how market-based financial innovations could help stem the black market on antiquities by changing incentives that would create cultural and economic value to all stakeholders.

“An open, more efficient market can help address many of the problems that plague the antiquities trade, including poverty, corruption and environmental and cultural degradation,” said Glenn Yago, director of capital markets at the Milken Institute. “The whole chain of events, from country of origin to museum or personal collector, needs a new set of legal market-based rewards.”

I gave a few comments on the intersection of the Treasure Act and the Portable Antiquities Scheme in England and Wales, which I expanded and developed into a longer article.

I’ve read the report, and it offers three potential ways we might use these “financial innovations” to reform the antiquities trade:

long-term leases for museums and exhibitions
museum/collector partnership-sponsored digs
the design and development of archaeological development bonds

The first is already taking place with increasing regularity. The latter two will likely be met with more controversy, but they do have a lot of merit I think if they are implemented carefully and thoughtfully. Any reform will have to have the support of nations of origin, and they have to be confident that their efforts are producing a good deal for them, and aren’t just a continuation of the taking of recent centuries.

The event itself was great, and it brought together a number of stakeholders — including archaeologists and antiquities dealers. It was clear that they have deep-seated disagreements, but there was a core of things upon which they did agree, which is the foundation of any effort at reform.

I strongly encourage those interested in the antiquities trade to give the report a read.

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

Deacessioning, Art and the Bottom Line

There’s been a great deal written about the National Academy’s decision to sell these two works Scene on the Magdalene by Frederic Edwin Church (1854) and Mt. Mansfield, by Sanford Robinsons Gifford (1859).

Lee Rosenbaum was the first to report the story (though she seems a little too fond of criticizing conventional news outlets for not linking her in — despite a paucity of links to other blogs by Lee herself). As regular readers of Lee will know she has been very critical of deacessioning generally and this one in particular:

I have never credited the deaccession-or-die argument and I still don’t. That was Fisk University’s justification for its attempt to monetize its Stieglitz Collection. When it was instructed by a judge not only to keep the collection but to get it back up on public view, it somehow managed to raise funds the old-fashioned way, allowing it both to display the collection and to keep the university afloat. I believe that deaccessioning is the easy way out, even more tempting today as museums grapple with Dow-ravaged endowments and distressed donors.

But she notes:

The National Academy is an honorary association of artists … who are responsible for its governance. The artist/members voted 181 to 1 … in favor of selling the works. An alternative that was considered but rejected was selling the Academy’s swank Fifth Avenue mansion and moving to less pricey quarters.

Donn Zaretsky at the invaluable art law blog responds to this argument:

So let me get this straight. The museum runs a “chronic operating deficit.” Its $10-million endowment is “restricted to specific purposes and cannot be used for general operating funds.” Its artist board members voted 181 to 1 in favor of the sale. The purchase agreement “stipulated that the paintings were to be hung publicly.” There’s a good chance they’ll end up on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum.

And we’re supposed to be outraged by this . . . why?

I think Zaretsky makes the more compelling argument here. Is art really this static? He notes yesterday as well that:

Another question worth exploring is whether it’s sensible to draw such a sharp distinction between the acquisition of art, on the one hand, and other ways museums spend money, on the other. Take, for example, Whitechapel Gallery, only because it was just in the news earlier this week. It recently completed a $20 million renovation and expansion — a “desperately needed” makeover. “The added space will allow the gallery to remain open continuously, whereas before it had to close about 10 weeks a year when installing new art. Its educational space was too small to accommodate even an average-size school class, and the former library had no wheelchair access.” Is it not possible to see those things as every bit as important to the institution’s mission as the acquisition of additional artwork? Is keeping the museum open an extra 10 weeks a year not a good art-related reason? Does expanding space for education not count either? Why should we automatically assume that buying art always justifies a deaccessioning, but that no other use of proceeds — no matter how important to an institution’s mission — ever can?

The argument against deaccessioning is essentially that funding should be found from private donors somehow, and its better for a museum to shutter its doors, and close up shop temporarily and move across town than to sell a work. Let’s compare the National Academy’s decision with the difficulties at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art. MOCA pencilled itself into a financial corner. The institution is in dire financial straights, but according to the LA Times’ Tim Rutten:

[T]he curatorial staff was busy putting on exhibitions that won acclaim around the world, nobody bothered about the cost. Year after year, as expenses outstripped revenue, the board let the professional managers dip into capital — the endowment — to cover the shortfall in operating expenses. More recently, they’ve also been borrowing from restricted gifts to the museum, including those for new acquisitions. While other institutions were pinching pennies and cutting back, Strick actually increased the size of MOCA’s professional staff by at least 50 people.As one trustee, who also asked to remain anonymous, said this week, “All this happened without anybody on the board screaming — and somebody should have screamed.”

We might point to the financial mismanagement, but how much of this financial difficulty can be focused on the decision to focus on the art itself, on the acclaimed exhibitions. MOCA seems to have focused entirely on the art, and now needs the art world equivalent of a financial bailout. The National Academy has instead chosen to deaccession works, which has produced a dramatic reaction from the Association of Art Museum Directors essentially ostracizing the New York institution from the American Art community. Are the two related?

I find it very interesting how swiftly the AAMD responded to the National Academy, especially given the downright glacial pace with which it responds to instances of antiquities looting or illegal export. But might the AAMD be also sending a message to MOCA here, and other institutions in looming financial difficulty that in the current economic climate deaccessioning is not a viable option? (As I was writing I notice that Christopher Knight has picked up on the same possibility). That seems the most likely reason for the dramatic and swift response. Fund raising and arts funding is going to be tighter in the coming years and months. The United States has largely been immune from these kinds of painfull art departures, in large part because it has been the buyer. But as American dominance may be waning, perhaps there will be some tension between America’s expansive art buying policy and the loss of works of art from museums and instituions. I think there are a lot of complicated questions to resolve here, as art moves from the historical financial and economic centers of America in cities like Philadelphia or Boston to Bentonville Arkansas or even abroad. Perhaps America’s laws will have to shift and become more ‘retentionist’ as this art loss becomes more common.

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

Limiting Art and Antiquities Restitution?

So argues Norman Rosenthal in the Art Newspaper today. The former Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy does not see the merit in the current expansion of restitution and repatriation. He draws parallels between antiquities restitution cases and the claims involving Nazi looted artworks.

Since the late 1990s there has been a strong push towards provenance research of collections and museums, and restitution of items that were looted or taken by the Nazis during their period of power in Europe from 1933 to 1945. This process has been ongoing for ten years, and the items in question have often been claimed by people distanced by two or more generations from their original owners.

I have, perhaps, an idiosyncratic, non-politically-correct view that many people will disagree with, but I believe history is history and that you can’t turn the clock back, or make things good again through art.

History has always looked after works of art in strange ways. Ever since the beginning of recorded history, because of its value, art has been looted and as a result arbitrarily distributed and disseminated throughout the world. Of course, what happened in the Nazi period was unspeakable in its awfulness. I lost many relatives, whom I never knew personally, and who died in concentration camps in the most horrible of circumstances. I believe, however, that grandchildren or distant relations of people who had works of art or property taken away by the Nazis do not now have an inalienable right to ownership, at the beginning of the 21st century. If valuable objects have ended up in the public sphere, even on account of the terrible facts of history, then that is the way it is.

If, because of provenance research, works of art are taken from museums, whether in Russia, Germany, France, the US or the UK, and are then sold on for profit or passed around for political expediency, it is nearly always the rich who are making themselves richer. The vast majority of individuals, who were beaten up or killed during the Nazi period—or indeed by other oppressors in different parts of Europe—did not have art treasures that their children and grandchildren can now claim as compensation. The concept of the “universal museum” is also, in certain circumstances, a politically useful euphemism. Nonetheless, it has to be good that important works of art should be available to all through public ownership. Restitution claims from museums go against this idea and result in the general culture being impoverished.

He makes a good point that much of the restitution litigation has been very profitable for both attornies and auction houses. But these claims are in response to very clear violations of the law. Perhaps we need to be more careful about what circumstances an art or antiquity claim should be made, but when laws are broken claimants should have a right to justice. He concludes by arguing for a statute of limitations on these claims. However such limitations periods currently exist. The difficulty is not the amoutn of time we might choose for a period, but rather what circumstances trigger the running of that limitations period.

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

Ninth Circuit Hears Nazi Restitution Appeal

It’s not often works of art are implicated by both World Wars, but these paintings present a conflict between successors of claimants from the First World War and claimants from the Second World War.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday heard an appeal over these 500-year-old works of art seized by the Bolsheviks and the Nazis, Saher v. Norton Simon Art Museum, 07-5669. Pictured here are Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1520. The claimant, Marei Von Saher is the successor in interest to Jacques Goudstikker who bought the works in a 1931 auction in Berlin. The works remained there in Amsterdam until 1940 when the Nazis instituted a forced sale.

After the war, Desiree Goudstikker reached a settlement with the Dutch government. She received some of her husband’s inventory, but did not claim another set of works because that would have ment returning the purchase price received from the Germans.

The Dutch government transferred those works to George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, the heir of a noble Russian family who was thought to have lost the paintings to the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution.

The issue here is the timeliness of the action, which may have implications for other claimants — including antiquities. Kenneth Ofgang, Staff Writer for Metropolitan New-Enterprise has more:

“This has nothing to do with foreign policy,” Kaye told the judges. U.S. District Judge John Walter of the Central District of California had ruled that Code of Civil Procedure Sec. 354.3 is preempted because it conflicts with federal primacy in foreign affairs. Fred A. Rowley Jr. of Munger, Tolles and Olson, representing Pasadena’s Norton Simon Art Museum and its supporting foundation said the district judge was correct and the dismissal of Marei Von Saher’s action should be affirmed. Von Saher, a Connecticut resident, sued last year following the collapse of mediation over her claim that she and her family have lawful title to Adam and Eve, a diptych painted by famed German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder in the 16th Century.Von Saher’s late husband, Eduard “Edo” Von Saher, was the son of Jacques Goudstikker, a Dutch Jew who was one of Europe’s leading art dealers in the years leading up to World War II. Goudstikker fled Holland when the Nazis invaded in 1940, but was killed in an accidental fall aboard ship. His widow, Desiree Goudstikker, and their son eventually came to the United States and became citizens, having left behind their gallery; hundreds of art works, many of them by famous painters; and valuable real estate. Young Edo Goodstikker became Edo Von Saher after his mother remarried. The parties agree that Jacques Goudstikker purchased the wood panels at an auction in Berlin in the 1930s. But while Von Saher claims that her father-in-law acquired good title from the Soviet government, the foundation charges that he knew that Cranach’s work had been wrongfully expropriated from the wealthy and powerful Stroganoff family after it fled the Russian Revolution. The museum and foundation say museum benefactor Norton Simon lawfully acquired the panels for $800,000 from Commander George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, who renounced his hereditary title, became a U.S. citizen, and served in the Navy during World War II.

The primary issue is whether California’s special limitations rule for works looted during the Holocauset era, Sec. 354.3 conflicts with an Executive Order issued by President Truman.

See here for more on Jacques Goudstikker.

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