Antiquities – Page 11 – Illicit Cultural Property

Vernon Silver reports on the Gaza Apollo

Palestinian MInistry of Tourism and Antiquities via Bloomberg

Vernon Silver reported on Friday for Businessweek on the Gaza Apollo. The Bronze was found in remarkably good condition in shallow waters off the Gaza strip, just north of the Egyptian border. Silver is an archaeologist who wrote a terrific account of the Euphronios Krater in 2010 called “The Lost Chalice“. He’s done some excellent reporting on this Bronze. We learn a Palestinian fisherman, Jouda Ghurab, found the statue while diving with a net last August. Silver reports that with the help of his brother and other men, they were able with some difficulty to bring the Bronze ashore.

Ghurab dove down with the rope and tied it to the statue’s neck. Using the boat, they managed to right the statue. They tied another line around its base and tried to lift it so they could tow it to shore. Instead, they nearly sank the boat. Finally, Ghurab and another diver were able to turn the statue, sliding it head over foot, and foot over head, spinning it along the sea bottom until it reached the beach. They finished around 4:30 p.m., almost five hours after Ghurab had discovered the prize. It took six of them to lift the bronze onto a donkey cart. They took it to a nearby cluster of buildings Ghurab shares with other family members. Among the structures is a hut with a sand floor, a roof of palm fronds, and a wall made from a plastic banner picturing Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, whom Israel assassinated using Hellfire missiles in 2004. The men placed the statue on the floor of a house in the compound, unaware they had discovered what might be the most valuable archaeological find of the century. Soon, though, things would get very complicated. After all, it is Gaza.

It does not sound like much of the archaeology was recovered or even considered.

Jawdat Khoudary, “an antiquities collector who makes his money in construction” was asked to find a buyer for the Bronze. Yet conservation is essential. A Bronze which has been preserved by the ocean for so long needs expert care, and time is extremely precious during the early moments of discovery.

Bauzou at the Université d’Orléans was one of the experts Khoudary called. The French archaeologist corresponded with the Gaza Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, using photographs to assess the bronze. “This statue is a major discovery,” he wrote in a Sept. 23 letter in which he expressed alarm over the work’s conservation. “I do not like the light green spots visible on the pictures … it is an emergency!” He said specialists in metal preservation and restoration needed to be called in at once to decide how to proceed. The transition from the dark color seen by the fisherman to the new green hue might be a sign of a type of corrosion akin to a grave dermatological condition.

. . .

Bauzou concluded from his research that the statue dated from between the 5th century B.C. and 2nd century A.D. “The Apollo of Gaza is exceptional because it is the only classical Greek bronze life-size statue found in the whole Middle East,” he wrote in another report, dated Oct. 4.

Silver notes of course that one of the difficulties plaguing the Bronze is the uneasy position that the Hamas government finds itself in. It is not an independent state yet, and has yet to be recognized by many foreign governments. Given that our current system of cultural heritage laws are predicated on state ownership and regulation, the Gaza Apollo is an uneasy case which stands in a gap in heritage law. A fact that some have speculated is quite convenient for the current possessors of the Bronze, and has led to speculation that the Bronze may have been discovered elsewhere and taken to Gaza.

David Gill speculates:

The surprising thing, as Silver points out, is that the statue shows little evidence that it was submerged in the sea for centuries. Is the reported find-spot a blind to distract the authorities from a ‘productive’ site?

Yet Silver’s reporting would seem to preclude that possibility.

Silver, Vernon. “The Apollo of Gaza: Hamas’s Ancient Bronze Statue.” BusinessWeek: Global_economics, January 30, 2014. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-30/hamass-ancient-bronze-statue-the-apollo-of-gaza.

Explosion at the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo

On Friday in Cairo three explosive devices have killed a reported five people. One of those explosions was close to the Museum of Islamic Art in central Cairo. The facebook page titled ‘Egypt’s Heritage Task Force’ reports:

Unfortunately, the hanging ceiling at the museum collapsed due to the explosion while several of the objects such as those of glass and ceramics have been seriously damaged. The museum dates back to 1870 and as can be seen from the images, its front face has been seriously affected. In Dar el-kutub behind the museum, 8 manuscripts have been destroyed and several others damaged and are currently being transferred to a safe place.

The Islamic Art Museum in Cairo, picture via Egypt's Heritage Task Force — The Islamic Art Museum in Cairo, picture via Egypt’s Heritage Task Force

There may be more risks to museums in the coming days. January 25th marks the three-year anniversary of the Revolution of 2011 which ousted former Prime Minister Hosni Mubarak. It also led to increased looting of remote archaeological sites, and coincided with thefts at the Cairo Museum of Antiquity, along with other incidents of damage, looting and destruction. But there were also examples of Egyptians standing up and shielding their own heritage from destruction.

The Museum of Islamic Art was re-opened in 2010 after an eight-year renovation project.

Continue reading “Explosion at the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo”

Italy protests against selling antiquities to satisfy Symes’s debts

ivory mask — An ivory head of Apollo, looted in 1995 by Pietro Casasanta near the Baths of Claudius, and seized from Robin Symes in 2003 and repatriated to Italy.

Italy is making another great push for information and cooperation in recovering material from Robin Symes. Why is Italy pressuring the Government and not the estate of Symes? Because the objects may be used to satisfy a tax judgment. These illicit antiquities were seized not because they have illicit histories—though allegedly many of them do. Rather these objects are being held for an eventual sale that may be used to satisfy tax obligations. The disagreement over the objects sets up a conflict between Italy and Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs which is holding the objects. The issue is the tax bill owed by Symes’s firm which is now in liquidation. The Art Newspaper reports that the liquidator attempting to satisfy Symes’s creditors, BDO, may be considering selling the antiquities to Abu Dhabi in order to help that nation build its collection of classical antiquities. And Italy is threatening to sue the liquidating firm.

Robin Symes is an interesting figure. He once held the dubious distinction of being London’s most widely-known antiquities dealer. In a short piece for Culture in Context, Peter Watson describes the fall of Symes (hosted by the folks at Trafficking Culture). It began at a rented villa in Umbria in 1999:

At a dinner . . . hosted by (the late) Mr. Leon Levy, a noted collector of antiquities, and his wife Shelby White, Mr. Symes’s partner, Mr. Christo Michaelides, fell down some steps, hit his head on a radiator, and died in hospital the next day.

Symes and Michaelides had lived together as a couple since the 1970s, but Michaelides’s Greek family considered the men business partners as well, and sought a portion of the antiquities business. This led to a great deal of court scrutiny into Symes and the objects he was buying and selling. Watson reported in 2004:

So far, this case had been a civil case. However, during the course of the (interlocutory) hearings, it had transpired that Mr Symes, who had originally
admitted to storing his assets (mainly antiquities) in five warehouses, in fact had twenty-nine ware-houses spread across London, Switzerland and New York. Becoming sceptical of Mr Symes’s openness in disclosing his assets, the lawyers for the Greek family, Messrs Lane and Partners, began to examine some of Mr Symes’s transactions closely. Mr Symes was followed, and the paperwork for his transactions double-checked. During this scrutiny it emerged that Mr Symes had sold, or said that he had sold, a Granodior-ite Egyptian statue of Apollo to a company in America, Philos Partners, of Cheyenne, Wyoming. When Lane and Partners examined this transaction, it turned out that Philos was a fictitious company, and that the address Mr Symes had said he sent the statue to did not exist. It later transpired that the statue had in fact been sold to Sheikh Al-Tani in the Arabian Gulf.

That is only the first part of the story, which culminated in Michaelides’s family establishing that he had a legal claim to half of Symes’s assets and led Symes to declare bankruuptcy. Of interest to the Italians is the role Symes played in operating between Robert Hecht and Giacomo Medici. The objects which passed through Robin Symes carry a strong suspicion of illegality. This illegality though runs up against the obligations that Symes owes to his creditors and the tax authorities. The Art Newspaper reports that Maurizio Fiorilli has requested information about 700 objects which were seized from Symes, including Greek pottery, marble sculpture, teracotta sculpture, and other objects. Archaeologists are rightfully upset that these tainted objects may be sold on the market.

Christos Tsirogiannis tells the Art Newspaper:

“It’s a scandal for the British government,” . . . . Tsirogiannis says that he requested access to the collection as part of his research for his PhD at the University of Cambridge but that BDO failed to respond to his queries. “It would be good to have official announcements from all the governments concerned about the Symes case, so that everyone can learn the whole truth about the key questions: why are the objects identified by the Italian state not being sent to Italy? Are the other governments concerned claiming any objects too? If so, how many and which are they?”

Will the ultimate sale of this material continue to embarrass the British Government? Or will Italy be able to secure repatriation of some or all of this material. I would not bet against Italy and Maurizio Fiorilli…

Italy threatens to sue UK firm over ancient loot The Art Newspaper, http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Italy-threatens-to-sue-UK-firm-over-ancient-loot/31445.
Watson, Peter. “The fall of Robin Symes.” Culture Without Context newsletter of the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre, Issue 15, Autumn 2004.

Mo Rocca on Repatriation

This is a slow time of the year for original reporting, and one popular set of stories for editors near the holidays are reports on art theft, Museums, and repatriation. This video rises above the usual and gives some serious discussion to a wide audience: Mo Rocca reports for CBS on repatriation and repatriation claims. Of particular interest will be the comments of Max Anderson at the Dallas Museum of Art. It must be said that he does not appear to be very sympathetic to most claims, and he seems to suggest repatriation is useful mainly as a tool to help museums collect.

Sicily says 23 works won’t travel

A depiction of Scylla, one of the objects from the "Morgantina Silver" collection recently repatriated — A depiction of Scylla, one of the objects from the “Morgantina Silver” collection recently repatriated

A good reminder that even when loan agreements are crafted, they don’t always produce a good deal for the source of this art. Sicily’s regional government has declared that 23 works of art should not go abroad for loans unless there are ‘extraordinary circumstances’. The list includes important paintings by Caravaggio, but also some antiquities, many of which have been the subject of recent disputes, including the Morgantina Silver, La dea di Aidone, the Gold Phiale, and other objects.

The reason for the ban? Loans are only going one way. When these objects are loaned abroad there is not sufficient art sent to Sicily. In essence it’s a one-way exchange, at least from Sicily’s point of view. If art is to be a good ambassador, the transfer should go both ways.

Hugh Eakin reports in the NYT that:

In recent years, Sicily, long a victim of looting, has gained back some of the most prized ancient art in the world, including a seven-foot limestone and marble Greek goddess from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. But many of the works reside in small regional museums that struggle to draw visitors. According to a report this year in the Corriere della Sera, a leading Italian daily, the museum in Aidone, which houses the silver and the cult statue, received 13,410 visitors in 2012.

A new administration that took power in Sicily in the last year has expressed disappointment with existing loan practices. In 2005, for example, the Sicilian region sent, on its own initiative, three Antonello paintings to the Met for a much publicized exhibition. Now, those three paintings are on the “immovable” list.

“It’s perfectly understandable,” said Philippe de Montebello, the former director of the Met who negotiated the museum’s 2006 restitution accord with Italy. “Sicily doesn’t have the depth. If you take away one of these top pieces, you’ve created a big gap.”

Hugh Eakin, Citing Inequity, Sicily Bans Loans of 23 Artworks, N.Y. Times, Nov. 26, 2013.

United States v. One Triangular Fresco Fragment

The Chasing Aphrodite blog has the story of a noteworthy new federal forfeiture involving billionaire hedge-fund manager and buyer of antiquities, Michael Steinhardt. At issue is this lovely fresco allegedly looted from Paestum. The name Steinhardt will likely be a familiar one as he was a claimant who lost another federal forfeiture action over the Gold Phiale, which helped set useful precedents for federal prosecutors.

The Federal prosecutor’s complaint alleges the importation of the fresco violated US customs law, §1595a, which prohibits the importation of objects contrary to law. The fresco was part of a FedEx shipment into Newark in 2011 that was detained by Customs and Border Protection. the shipment had a customs declaration form, but again, just like with the Godl Phiale case there appears to been misstatements on the customs form with respect to the country of origin for this object. The form declared the origin to be Macedonia, while the complaint alleges the fragment was taken from a tomb in Paestum.

The provenance for the object claims that the fresco was acquired by Lens Tschanned from a Swis art gallery in 1959, and it had been in his home from then until April of 2011. The fresco had no export permissions.

Customs and Border Protection contacted the Italian Carabinieri, and the Tutela Patrimonio Cultrale was able to identify the object as the pediment of a painted tomb north of Paestum in present-day Salerno. This site is known as the necropolis of Andriuolo. The complaint alleges that the figures on the fresco in question are painted in mirror image to another fresco from tomb 53 suggesting they may have likely been installed on different sides of the same tomb.

Here’s the mirror image fresco from tomb 53, which is not on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Paestum. Federal prosecutors appended both of these images in the complaint:

Chasing Aphrodite gives some background of the company Mat Artcare, based in Switzerland:

Mat Securitas is the same Swiss shipping service that transported the Getty Museum’s looted goddess of Aphrodite from Switzerland to London. (See Chasing Aphrodite p. 148).Their motto is “Safe. Discrete. Reliable.”

Will Steinhardt litigate this dispute as aggressively as he did in the 1990’s with the Gold Phiale forfeiture? The Federal complaint makes an extremely compelling case that this fragment was looted from a tomb in Paestum. It’s connection to macedonia seems ludicrous when compared to the other pediment which was excavated and is on display at the museum there.

Complaint, United States v. One Triangular Fresco Fragment, CV 136286 (S.D.N.Y. 2013).

Steinhardt Redux: Feds Seize Fresco Looted from Italian World Heritage Site, Destined for New York Billionaire CHASING APHRODITE, Nov. 18, 2013.

Have you seen Tutankhamun’s sister?

This Limestone figurine "A Daughter of the Pharaoh Akhenaten" was stolen in August 2013 — This Limestone figurine “A Daughter of the Pharaoh Akhenaten” was stolen in August 2013

Egypt has issued an alert asking for the return of this statue of Tutankhamun’s sister. This and close to 1000 other objects were stolen from the Mallawi City Museum in Egypt in August. The publicity given to this object in particular is a very good idea, as it will likely drive down any possible licit market for this stolen object, and may perhaps compel its current possessors to return it and any other objects. There have been a reported 600 other objects returned, but there are many many other objects still missing. Egypt gave UNESCO a 300 page list in Arabic of objects which were taken.

In a piece describing the looting and the destruction in Egypt generally in the last 3 years, Richard Spencer offers accounts from those on the ground in Egypt during the Mallawi theft:

“We heard what had happened in Cairo and started to see the gangs gather,” said Jaihan Nessim, a curator at Mallawi Museum. It was clearly in a dangerous position, next to the city’s municipal offices and round the corner from the police station.

“Then there were big crowds, and they started firing into the air.”

Eventually the staff closed the museum and left it in the protection of the tourist police, but they were attacked and driven off. Within hours, the museum had been almost totally wrecked, with attempts to defend it beaten away. A ticket seller was among those killed in the unrest.

The looting was continuing when Miss Hanna arrived three days later.

Eventually, the provincial chief of tourist police, Col Abdulsamie Farghali, called members of his own family to stand guard while she and colleagues inspected the damage and took what could be salvaged to safe storage.

She said she asked two teenagers what they were doing. “They said, ‘The government is destroying their people, so we are destroying this because it belongs to the government’,” she said.

Of 1,089 exhibits, only 46 remained, items too heavy to carry off, and some of those were smashed and burned. Wooden sarcophagi simply split open. An Old Kingdom, 23rd Century BC statue of Pharaoh Pepi and his queen had parts of the faces broken off and its pedestal split.

Spencer, Richard. “Tutankhamun’s Sister Goes Missing.” Telegraph, November 14, 2013.

The Baghdad Museum set to reopen

The National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad, in 2008

A glimmer of good news from Iraq, where cultural heritage has sustained so much damage. Martin Bailey reports for the Art Newspaper that the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad could reopen as soon as next year. The museum (and other in Iraq) were shuttered during the 1991 Gulf War, and have only intermittently reopened in the subsequent two decades.

The main obstacle given to reopening the Baghdad museum is the lack of a new entrance building, needed to strengthen security and provide facilities, such as a café. Initially it was to be a replica of the Ishtar Gate at Babylon, but this idea was dropped as it was thought to be too gimmicky. Building work has now started on a more conventional entrance building. The tense security situation in Baghdad has also contributed to the decade-long delay. Most of the Baghdad museum’s curatorial and administrative staff of 130 are working on a database of the collection, which Eden said numbers more than 500,000 objects (around half are antiquities and the remainder individual coins). Only 50,000 items have been added to the database after years of work, so at this rate it will take many decades to complete. The labelling of antiquities in the galleries is rudimentary and needs improving.

And there are even plans to convert one of Saddam Hussein’s many palaces to a new museum with antiquities and exhibits describing Sumer, Babylon and Ashur.

The first phase of the building work involving the palace’s exterior and installing security measures was completed a year ago, but the second phase has been delayed because the lengthy process of electing a new governor for Basra province has slowed down the tender process. Qahtan Al Abeed said that the museum’s interior should be completed in a year.

Bailey, Martin. “End of the Dark Age Is in Sight.” The Art Newspaper, November 14, 2013.

New York’s highest court orders return of Assyrian gold tablet to Germany

The Assyrian gold tablet excavated by German archaeologists before WWI

“Allowing the Estate to retain the tablet based on a spoils of war doctrine would be fundamentally unjust.”

So held New York’s highest court in a ruling today ordering the return of this Ancient gold antiquity to Germany. This was the second appeal to resolve the dispute over this small tablet. In an earlier probate proceeding, the estate was allowed to keep the tablet on the grounds that the German museum had waited too long to make its claim. The German claimant was the Vorderasiatisches Museum, a branch of the Pergamon in Berlin.

Here’s the story of the tablet based on the court’s ruling. Its a 3,000-year-old gold tablet which dates to the 13th Century BCE. The tablet was found before the first World War by German archaeologists near the Ishtar temple in Ashur, Iraq. The tablet was in the inventory of a Berlin Museum starting in 1926. The Museum was closed during the second World War, and its collection was put in storage. But in 1945 the tablet was discovered to be missing.

The tablet “resurfaced” in 2003 when its possessor, Riven Flamenbaum, passed away and his daughter and executor of his estate Hannah listed a “coin collection” in the accounting. But her brother Israel objected to the accounting and asserted that what he described as a “gold wafer” was an ancient Assyrian artifact and properly belonged to a German Museum.

The court opinion is silent on how Flamenbaum may have acquired the tablet. The story according to the family was that the elder Flamenbaum, an Auschwitz holocaust survivor, acquired the tablet from a Russian soldier in exchange for cigarettes. Hannah Flamenbau is quoted by the AP with respect to her claim that “The thought was if we’re allowed to retain it, put it on display in one of the museums, whether down here in Battery Park City in Manhattan or even in Israel. Use it as a way to talk about the Holocaust … and my parents’ story”.

The estate argued that it should retain the tablet because of the doctrine of laches, an equitable legal principle that essentially says it would be unjust to let a claimant wait this long to make a claim. However, the New York Court of Appeals held that though there may have been a delay, it was not unreasonable in light of the circumstances, and importantly no injustice would be done to the estate. Especially considering there was an indication that Flamenbaum knew the tablet rightfully belonged to a German museum.

The other claim was that when Russia invaded Germany, Russia acquired artifacts like the tablet from Germany as spoils of war, and thus the German Museum could no longer hold good title. This legal argument conflicts with the steady stream of domestic and international principles of the last 150 years. You cannot invade a nation and strip it of its works of art. And so, this unlikely dispute which arose out of a dispute between siblings who lost their father results in the return of this gold tablet to Germany.

In re Flamenbaum, 213 NY Slip Op 07510 (N.Y. 2013).

“Berlin Museum Seeks Return of Ancient Gold Tablet.” AP, October 15, 2013.

Lyndel Prott argues this idol should be returned to India

Bronze Idol of Shiva acquired from Subhash Kapoor

In an op-ed in the Australian, Lyndel Prott argues that Australia’s Attorney-General George Brandis should repatriate this Bronze idol to India:

Documents revealed in The Australian state the gallery, under director Ron Radford, paid alleged smuggling mastermind Subhash Kapoor $5.1 million for the 900-year-old statue. There have been several other notorious cases of similar bronzes. One arrived in the Norton Simon Museum, California, in 1973. India protested and, following an agreement in 1976 to allow its exhibition in that museum for nine years, it was returned to India.

…

These events, widely published at the time, should have put any potential purchaser on notice to research diligently the origin of any such item offered. Furthermore, the International Council of Museums has had a strict code of ethics since 1986 concerning acquisitions. A museum professional should not support illicit traffic and should follow national legislation and the principles of the 1970 convention, which require governments, for example, to take the necessary measures to prevent museums from acquiring cultural property originating in another state party and that has been illegally exported.

Australia adopted federal legislation to implement that agreement, the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986, and set up the National Cultural Heritage Committee to supervise its workings. It is an offence to import an object that has been exported illegally — as is the case of the idol in the hands of the NGA. If such an object arrives in Australia, it may be forfeited. A person who imports an object, knowing that the object is a protected object of a foreign country whose export was prohibited by a law of that country, is guilty of an offence.

Let us live up to our international commitments and our own legislation. We await a thorough and rapid review of this case and a decision from the new Attorney-General.

Prott, Lyndel V. “Bronze Idol Should Be Returned to India Now.” The Australian, November 6, 2013.