Illicit Cultural Property

Applications Still Open for ARCA’s Postgraduate program

Amelia, Italy, home to ARCA’s summer program

If you are interested in learning why art theft happens (as occurred earlier this week in Athens) or understanding why antiquities are looted, or a host of other related questions, please consider ARCA’s program.

We have a terrific group of folks already signed on for 2012. Each year our group of applicants gets stronger and more varied. But there is still room for a few more if you are thinking of applying. The program is an investment in time and money, but we’ve done our very best to keep our tuition low, and our past students say their time in Amelia helps usher them into a new career path, establishes strong friendships, and is a terrific way to spend a summer.

The interdisciplinary program offers substantive study for a whole host of related fields from art police and security professionals, to lawyers, insurers, curators, conservators, members of the art trade.

In its fourth year, this program provides students with in-depth, master’s level instruction in a wide variety of theoretical and practical courses examining art and heritage crime: its history, its nature, its impact, and what is currently being done to mitigate it. Students completing the program earn a professional certificate under the guidance of scholars and professionals.

Here is our tentative schedule:

Courses 1&2 – June 04 -16
Noah Charney, Founding Director of ARCA, Adjunct Professor of Art History, American University of Rome – Art Crime and Its History

Dr. Derek Fincham, Academic Director of ARCA, Assistant Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law – Art and Cultural Heritage Law

Course 3 – June 18 – 22
Dorit Straus, Vice President and Worldwide Specialty Fine Art Manager for Chubb & Son, a division of Federal Insurance Company – Investigation, Insurance and the Art Trade

Course 4 – June 25- 29
Dr. Edgar Tijhuis, lawyer and assistant-professor of Criminology at the VU University in Amsterdam – Criminology, Art, and Transnational Organized Crime

Courses 5&6 – July 2-14
Richard Ellis, former Detective Sergeant Richard Ellis, founder of Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiquities Squad, Art Management Group Director, – Art Policing and InvestigationJudge Arthur Tompkins, District Court Judge in New Zealand – Art in War

Courses 7&8 – July 16-27
Dr. Tom Flynn, London-based writer and art historian – Art History and the Art World

Dick Drent, Director of Security, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam – Museums, Security, and Art Protection

Courses 9&10 – July 30 – Aug. 10
Dr. Valerie Higgins, Associate Professor and Chair of Archaeology and Classics at The American University of Rome – Archaeology and Antiquities

Dr. Erik Nemeth, Adjunct Staff at RAND Corporation, Founder and Researcher at Cultural Security – “Cultural Security: Interrelations of art crime, foreign policy, and perceptions of security”

It is a special program, and a really exciting opportunity for folks interested in preventing art and heritage crime. A prospectus and application may be obtained by writing to Admissions at education@artcrimeresearch.org. If you have any questions at all please contact me at derek.fincham “at” gmail.com.

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

Moral Rights in the Texas Law Review

Two interesting recent discussions of Moral Rights have appeared in the Texas Law Review.

First, in a student note, Lindsey Mills (Moral Rights: Well-Intentioned Protection and Its Unintended Consequences) argues that “by taking away ownership rights that purchasers of artwork would otherwise have, [moral rights legislation] diminishes the economic value of the artwork in question and further, to the extent that artistic expression is deemed desirable, harms society as a whole. After weighing these interests against each other, she concludes that moral rights protection has no place in the United States, let alone as part of the Copyright Act.”

In a follow up, Prof. Robert Bird responds (Of Geese, Ribbons, and Creative Destruction: Moral Rights and Its Consequences) with his own “misgivings based on her discussions of a Canadian moral rights case and artistic destruction. Professor Bird concludes with an appeal to pragmatism in light of “artistic doomsday rhetoric” against moral rights protections in American law.”

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

Stolen Magritte Returned

Olympia by Rene Magritte, has been returned

In 2009 two armed thieves stormed the former home of Rene Magritte outside of Brussels. They held the three curators and two tourists at gunpoint while they stole the work. Given the events yesterday at the Athens Museum, it is perhaps reminding ourselves why art thieves decide to steal. At the time I ran through some possible motives of stealing a work of art:

The first, is that a collector admires the piece, and hired a thief to take it for him. We can call this the Dr. No situation. This seems the least likely possibility, but the one that strikes a chord with the imagination. Writers in this subject frequently cite the Dr. No as being responsible for thefts, and I admit it makes for good Bond villains, but there has been no convincing evidence that thsi is why people are stealing rare objects. Another similar possibility . . . is that an unscrupulous dealer may have a similar piece for sale, and if he can establish some excitement around these kinds of pieces, the price for his similar work may go up.

Second, the thief may not have known that the object was so rare as to make its subsequent sale difficult.

Third, the thief may simply be trying to kidnap the object. They could then [ensure] its safe return for a generous reward, or negotiate its return.

Finally, perhaps the market is doing such a poor job of regulating what is and is not legitimate, that it may not be all that difficult to sell this piece after all. This strikes me as the most troubling possibility, but also not very likely.

We can also add a fifth possibility, that organized criminals use these works as collateral in a kind of shadow version of the stock market.

In this case it seems the second possibility was exactly right, as now the work has been returned because the thieves were unable to find a buyer. In a report the Curator of the Magritte museum, Andre Garitte said the painting was returned after the thieves “understood they wouldn’t be able to sell it because it was too well-known,” he said. “It became an embarassment and they preferred to get rid of it. Luckily they didn’t destroy it.”

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

Art Theft from the Athens National Gallery

This Picasso was given to Greece in 1949, because the Greeks resisted the Nazis

The Ink Drawing by Caccia

A 20th Century landscape by Piet Mondrian

Shortly before 5 am this morning in Athens thieves broke into the back of the gallery, forced open a balcony door and stole a painting by Picasso, and Mondirian painting, and a sketch by Guglielmo Caccia. The works were stripped from their frames, and might have been damaged. The museum guard heard an alarm, and saw a person running from the building. The thief dropped a painting, a landscape by Mondrian as he escaped. The thieves had distracted the guards all night by perhaps triggering alarms from outside the building, which prompted the guards to disable at least one of the alarms. Police say the theft took only seven minutes.

Picasso stolen from Greek gallery, BBC, January 9, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16470459 (last visited Jan 9, 2012).
Associated Press, Art thieves rob Picasso from Athens museum, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57355197/art-thieves-rob-picasso-from-athens-museum/ (last visited Jan 9, 2012).
Picasso and Mondrian paintings stolen from Greece’s biggest state art museum, The Telegraph, January 9, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/9002976/Picasso-and-Mondrian-paintings-stolen-from-Greeces-biggest-state-art-museum.html (last visited Jan 9, 2012).
Greek national gallery robbed of Picasso, Mondrian, CBC, http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/01/09/greece-art-theft-picasso-mondrian.html (last visited Jan 9, 2012).

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

Footnotes

Will Rome’s trash follow Hadrian outside the city centuries later?

There are concerns over the proposed siting of a landfill near Hadrian’s villa.
In New Orleans a man was sentenced to two years in prison and $327,000 in restitution for selling forgeries of works by Clementine Hunter.
Rick St. Hilaire summarizes the expected forfeiture of a painting,Cristo Portacroce Trascinato Da Un Manigoldo after the loaned work from Italy was seized, the work will be returned to the family who was dispossessed of the painting by the Nazis.
Yuck: A drunk Denver woman punched, damaged and urinated near the vicinity of a $30 million Clyfford Still painting.
The 1866 wreck of the USS Narcissus in the mouth of Tampa Bay will become a Florida state archaeological preserve.
Martin Kemp found the trial of five men in connection with Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder “deeply unsatisfying”. Me too.
Creativity makes people feel uneasy.
A Manhattan art gallery has offered a reward for stolen art.

The Portable Antiquities Scheme, the voluntary program for reporting objects legally found in parts of the United Kingdom, has received attention for a racy brothel coin, called a spintria, or was it a game token?
Finally, Tom King points out an interesting article (but no link) by Raimund Karl which describes an Austrian model of heritage management. I thought about posting a longer response and discussion, but sadly I’ve given up hope that the heritage advocacy sites on the interwebs can offer any useful forum for discussion. I’ve made a peer-reviewed case for what I think is best after looking at the law, policy and results.

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

Pompeii Still at Risk

Martin Bailey for the Art Newspaper reports on UNESCO taking the initial steps towards putting Pompeii on the World Heritage in Danger list. A report published in June (to little fanfare) found that:

Although much of Pompeii remains in good repair, the problems are numerous, including “inappropriate restoration methods and a general lack of qualified staff… restoration projects are outsourced and the quality of the work of the contractors is not being assessed. An efficient drainage system is lacking, leading to water infiltration and excessive moisture that gradually degrades the structural condition of the buildings as well as their decor. The mission was also concerned by the amount of plant growth, particularly ivy.” . . . Pompeii attracted more than 2.3 million visitors in 2010 and on the busiest days it had 20,000. Sheer numbers, along with careless behaviour, are causing considerable damage: “Visitors in groups rub against the decorated walls, all too often with their rucksacks, or lean against them to take the best possible photographs,” says the report.

That has been my experience on visiting Pompeii as well. Do people need to touch and scramble over everything? On visiting the site, perhaps the calls by some to just bury parts of the site, and leave open only those areas which can be properly managed and visited is the right answer. I was surprised to learn that in 1956 there were 66 restored houses open to visitors, but today only 15 are open, and these are badly damaged by ignorant tourists and inefficient security.

There has been €105m set aside by the European Union, and a UNESCO ‘action plan’ could enable that money to be spent. However the funding cuts at UNESCO which resulted from the unfortunate decision on the one hand by the U.S. to cut all UNESCO support, and second, but UNESCO member states and Palestine to force the political brinksmanship may put that funding in jeopardy.

Martin Bailey, Italy allows Unesco into Pompeii, The Art Newspaper, January 4, 2012, http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Italy+allows+Unesco+into+Pompeii/25422 (last visited Jan 5, 2012).

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

2011 in Review

It was a turbulent year in cultural policy, marked in many ways by unrest in Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere. But even elsewhere, funding shortfalls, and austerity have put pressure on our cultural institutions, with too many deaccessions and museum closings to mention.

Egypt really was an important nation of origin in a number of ways. First, Zahi Hawass made a number of unfounded allegations with respect to the Central Park Obelisk in New York, in a high-profile call that was to seem terribly trivial only months later. And even before the unrest came news that the United States and the St. Louis Museum of art had each brought suit to assert that the Ka-Nefer-Nefer mask was either rightfully possessed, or had been stolen from Egypt. Then of course we saw the demonstrations in Tahrir square and the fears of looting at sites, storehouses and the Cairo museum. And of course just a few days ago, the protests have escalated once again, and L’Institut d’Egypte was burned, and only a few of the manuscripts were salvaged. I’m not sure what solutions the law can offer to problems like this, when states radically shift. The opportunistic will take advantage of the uncertainty to destroy knowledge, steal objects, and attempt to sell whatever can be made portable. The Solution is continued vigilance of the market in these objects, and a renewed sense of urgency for transparency to ensure these precious objects aren’t trafficked and sold abroad.

In the Southwest the long string of sentencing hearings in the wake of the Four Corners Antiquities investigation continued, with partisans making repeated calls for stiffer sentences, despite serious questions about the force displayed by agents during the raids, and 3 suicides, including the death of the informant who would have been a key witness had any of the defendants chosen to go to trial rather than take lesser plea deals.

Yale and Peru finally finalized an agreement to send objects removed from Peru long ago by Hiram Bingham, and were able to conclude what both sides claim is a mutually beneficial deal. The Menil also announced it would return, as agreed, frescoes to Cyprus. Montrose will be without a very fine set of Byzantine Frescoes.

Italy was in the news a great deal as well, assisting in the protection of sites in conflict areas in the Middle East, receiving repatriated objects, most notably la dea di Aidone, even as calls for more returns were made.

The Smithsonian decided to postpone and later cancel an exhibition of objects from a looted underwater site in Indonesia, despite the fact that the site was excavated with an archaeologist present, and the site was published. Odyssey Marine also suffered a colossal setback in its efforts to salvage valuables from underwater archaeology sites.

Oh, and the Mona Lisa was stolen 100 years ago. In my brief forward to Noah Charney’s re-examination of the theft, I argued the World’s Most Famous Painting is almost certainly the Mona Lisa. Few would dispute its claim to the title, though many have personal favorites they would place higher (I certainly do). As such, the painting cannot help but be left open to claims that it may be overrated, perhaps even unworthy of its esteem. Nearly everyone knows when shown an image of the work that it is the Mona Lisa. Why then did this simple portrait of a smiling woman become so ubiquitous. Did its theft in 1911 help it reach these lofty heights? Would the world have come to appreciate its charms all on its own? The story of its theft is the story of an overrated painting that might have been better left stolen. But nevertheless it marks the beginning of the modern era of art theft, one of the first really high profile thefts.

Also, $150 million worth of art may have been thrown away, the thieves of the Musee d’Art Moderne were arrested however.

It’s been a turbulent year, hopefully next year we can just enjoy art, and there will be fewer thefts. Though I expect we might receive some bad news this week as museums and historic building reopen after the holidays.

Bonne Anée! and thanks as always for reading.

Previous entries:

2009 in Review
2008 In Review
2007 in Review

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

The Fire at the L’Institut d’Egypte a "great loss"

One of the frustrations about writing about the protection of art and heritage is the biggest news items are often really grim, and there can often be little room for optimism. On Sunday the Institute D’Egypte caught fire and burned. The Institute was established in 1798 by the French, and held an estimated 200,000 volumes, including rare accounts of Egypt in the 18th Century. I must confess I had no knowledge of the Institute before yesterday, but because I, like many privileged folks in the developed world, have access to Wikipedia, I know it is an important building, and an important repository of information. Yet most Egyptians don’t have that luxury. As Larry Rothfield points out, neither the protesters, nor the military seemed to know this was an important building containing books and manuscripts. Initial accounts describe troops throwing rocks down from the roof at protestors, and the protestors responding with molotov cocktails. It is not clear who started the exchange, but the result is clear. An important repository of knowledge has been destroyed.

The background for the destruction, which may or may not have been intentional, are rising tensions once again in Cairo near Tahrir Squar. The best current accounts of the destruction and attempts to rescue some of the volumes is the Ancient World Bloggers Group. And so there is at least some room for optimism. Many of the protesters were seen carrying books to a nearby church to attempt to salvage some of them. Also, William Kipycki, Tield Director of the Library of Congress–Cairo, Egypt at the U.S. Embassy photographed the stamps used at the Institute so antiquarian book buyers and sellers will be on the lookout.

Employees at the U.S. Embassy and the American University in Cairo have been reported as offering assistance to do what can be done to minimize continued destruction.

From the AP:

Zein Abdel-Hady, who runs the country’s main library, is leading the effort to try and save what’s left of the charred manuscripts. “This is equal to the burning of Galileo’s books,” Abdel-Hady said, referring to the Italian scientist whose work proposing that the earth revolved around the sun was believed to have been burned in protest in the 17th century. Below Abdel-Hady’s office, dozens of people sifted through the mounds of debris brought to the library. A man in a surgical coat carried a pile of burned paper with his arms carefully spread, as if cradling a baby. The rescuers used newspapers to cover some partially burned books. Bulky machines vacuum-packed delicate paper. At least 16 truckloads with around 50,000 manuscripts, some damaged beyond repair, have been moved from the sidewalks outside the U.S. Embassy and the American University in Cairo, both near the burned institute, to the main library, Abdel-Hady said. He told The Associated Press that there is no way of knowing what has been lost for good at this stage, but the material was worth tens of millions of dollars — and in many ways simply priceless.

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

A New Museum Position: Curator of Provenance

A Medallion looted during WWII

Geoff Edgers had a terrific piece over the weekend profiling Victoria Reed, curator of provenance at the MFA Boston. Her position was created in 2010, and is unique in the museum community. She is according to the piece the only curator of provenance at an American museum, a post which can put her in an uneasy position, recommending that the museum should not acquire objects with insufficient history.

Enter Victoria Reed, the MFA’s curator of provenance. Her job, which is almost as rare in the museum world as is the medallion, is to research works with questionable histories both in the collection and on the MFA’s shopping list. As a result, Reed’s other job is to break curators’ hearts. Through months of research, Reed traced the medallion to a museum in Gotha, Germany, that she knew had been looted during the Nazi era. With that information, the MFA’s jewelry curator, Yvonne Markowitz, put the brakes on its purchase. And in September, the Art Loss Register announced that S.J. Phillips Ltd., the dealer who had offered the medallion, would be returning it to the Castle Friedenstein museum.

This can’t be an easy position to be in, but as more scrutiny attaches to museums, their collection, and their acquisitions, this kind of position will likely become more and more common. The market and dealers have not been adequately accomplishing this painstaking but necessary task, but perhaps they should be.

Paying for a position like this can be difficult given the funding climate for many museums. The piece notes that the position was funded by an MFA Boston donor, Monica S. Sadler, who stipulated that her position should not be cut from the museum’s budget. So other benefactors to museums out there, if you are concerned with the practice at your local museum, give a gift with similar stipulations. Easier said than done of course, but all parties involved should be praised for undertaking an important piece of reform which really could continue to substantially change the importance of provenance research. The piece deals primarily with works of art and paintings, but a position like this which examines antiquities could have even more far-reaching consequences for repatriation and acquisition.

Geoff Edgers, A detective’s work at the MFA, The Boston Globe, December 11, 2011, http://bostonglobe.com/arts/2011/12/11/detective-work-mfa/6iaei4YOQOj83s9u3YfDXO/story.html?s_campaign=sm_fb (last visited Dec 13, 2011).

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

Madison on "Knowledge Curation"

Michael Madison (Univ. of Pittsburgh School of Law) has posted his recent article titled “Knowledge Curation“, published in the Notre Dame Law Review, on SSRN:

This Article addresses conservation, preservation, and stewardship of knowledge, and laws and institutions in the cultural environment that support those things. Legal and policy questions concerning creativity and innovation usually focus on producing new knowledge and offering access to it. Equivalent attention rarely is paid to questions of old knowledge. To what extent should the law, and particularly intellectual property law, focus on the durability of information and knowledge? To what extent does the law do so already, and to what effect? This article begins to explore those questions. Along the way, the article takes up distinctions among different types of creativity and knowledge, from scholarship and research to commercial entertainment and so-called “User Generated Content”; distinctions among objects, works of authorship, and legal rights accompanying both; distinctions among creations built to last (sometimes called “sustained” works), creations built for speed (including “ephemeral” works), and creations barely built at all (works closely tied to the authorial “self”); and distinctions between analog and digital contexts.

Prof. Madison has a number of interesting things to say about culture, creativity and technology. He I think pays too little attention to the ~~rule~~ role cultural heritage laws play in the stewardship of knowledge and heritage, but he acknowledges the piece asks more questions than it answers. In examining how we decide what to save and “curate” from our past, it perhaps offers yet another implicit reason for increased attention to heritage awareness and protection, highly recommended.

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