Art Theft – Page 11 – Illicit Cultural Property

334 Antiquities Returned to Peru… but what result?

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have released a statement announcing the return of 334 objects to the Peruvian government.

Of particular interest is how the objects were seized:

On March 1, 2007, a CBP officer at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport referred Lanas-Ugaz, who had just arrived from Lima, Peru, for a secondary examination. During CBP’s inspection of Lanas-Ugaz’s luggage, officers noted several items in bubble wrap, including a clay figurine of a man in a chair and clay bowls. CBP officers held the five items as possible pre-Columbian Peruvian artifacts, which are protected under the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act. CBP contacted ICE, which had the artifacts evaluated by archeologists from the American Museum of Natural History. Museum archaeologists confirmed that the items are authentic pre-Columbian and have significant cultural value.

Four days later, ICE, CBP and Laredo Police Department officers executed a federal search warrant at Lanas-Ugaz’s home in Laredo. They discovered many additional authentic artifacts, which included: textiles, ceramic figures, wood sculptures, and metal and stone art. All the items had been illegally exported from Peru into the United States. Lanas-Ugaz, a U.S. citizen, was arrested at his home without incident.

Lanas-Ugaz reached a plea agreement:

Lanas-Ugaz pleaded guilty May 16, 2007, to one count of knowingly and fraudulently importing into the United States merchandise that is against the law to sell, and receiving stolen goods. On Sept. 13, 2007, he was sentenced to three years probation and a $2,000 fine; he also paid $100 to a crime victims’ fund.

That’s a pretty slight sentence for a crime which carries a maximum punishment of 5 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. One thing the press release does not discuss is why the sentence was so slight, and if Lanas-Ugaz is continuing to trade in antiquities.

According to the Department of Justice press release in 2007, Lanas-Ugaz operated a website, perularedo.com, which offers Pre-Columbian artifacts for sale. A simple google search of “perularedo” reveals there is an ebay seller, by that name selling antiquities from Peru, the last sale appeared to be as recently as September 2008.

One wonders if this antiquities dealer has decided to cooperate? Has he left the antiquities trade for good? Is he continuing to sell antiquities under a different name?

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

Rare Book Theft

Sandra Laville has the story in today’s Guardian of a number of rare book thieves, including David Slade, who is due to be sentenced today:

Today at Aylesbury crown court, another member of this band of thieves faces a custodial sentence after admitting the theft of £232,880-worth of extremely rare books from one of the most powerful financiers in the world, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. It is a case that has until now received no publicity. Like Jacques, 59-year-old David Slade is a well-educated and highly knowledgeable loner, but also the former president of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association in the UK, and a dealer who has sold internationally since he was 17.

Slade was hired by Rothschild to catalogue the family book collection. As he did his work, visiting Rothschild’s home, Ascott house in Buckinghamshire, two or three times a week, Slade discreetly removed the odd book, each of which was an extremely valuable and beautifully crafted production by one of the private presses that operated in the late 19th and early 20th century.

He took them to an auction house where his reputation was unquestioned and sold them for significant sums. It was during a routine audit that Rothschild noticed the books, 68 in all, had gone missing. Slade’s guilty plea went unnoticed, but the ABA has now decided to speak out.

Alan Shelley, current president, said the only way to eradicate the trafficking of rare books was to work closely with libraries, auctioneers and dealers.

The British Library has led the way by admitting when it is the victim of theft. But while major international libraries alert each other to details of stolen books or descriptions of thieves, these do not always reach the antiquarian book trade and not all libraries are honest about falling victim to theft.

“We all need to be a bit more grown up,” said Jolyon Hudson, from Pickering and Chatto antiquarian bookseller. “[Libraries] are the curators of the nation’s knowledge, and when they lose it they are somewhat embarrassed to admit that.”

This again echoes the same difficulties that plague the art trade and the antiquities trade. There is insufficient scrutiny of the chain of title when these objects are transferred, bought and sold. Relying on a seller’s reputation does not provide a meaningful check on the process.

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

Nearly 38,000 French Works Missing

In a French report last week it was learned that the French have lost or mislaid a staggering number of works. From Adam Sage for the Times:

The tale of what may well be art’s greatest mystery was published in France this week amid claims of greed, negligence and dishonesty at the heart of the State.

Take, for example, the tapestry by Joan Miró that has gone missing from the French Embassy in Washington. Or the drawing by the 20th-century French painter Raoul Dufy, which vanished from a museum in Marseilles; or the oil painting by the Slovene artist Zoran Music, lost by the French Finance Ministry.

Where they have gone, nobody knows – or, at least, nobody is saying. They have just “slipped on to picture rails inaccessible to the public”, in the discreet but damning words of Jean-Pierre Bady, a civil servant who has recounted in arid bureaucratic language the ten-year hunt to find thousands of artworks that have disappeared.

In all, 306,993 paintings, sculptures, antiques, porcelain and other works are supposed to adorn ministries, embassies, local government offices and official residences, including the Elysée Palace, he said.In fact, Mr Bady discovered that 37,658 French state artworks were missing, of which 3,444 are known to have been destroyed and 145 reported stolen – with the rest simply mislaid.

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

Fake and Stolen Dalis Seized

From the BBC:

Spanish police say they have confiscated dozens of suspected fake artworks by Salvador Dali that were to be sold in the town of Estepona. More than 80 pieces were seized, 12 of which might be genuine, but are on Interpol records as having been stolen in Belgium, France and the US. A fake 10ft (3m) Dali sculpture of an elephant was priced at $1.5m (£1.1m).

Police have arrested a Frenchman who transported the pieces from France for the sale. He was not identified.

The art includes sculptures, lithographs, engravings, cutlery and textile pieces.

Police also uncovered “20 certificates of authenticity” for sculptures attributed to the Spanish artist. Police said their suspicions were raised because the Frenchman had not sought special security arrangements for the show. Dali died in 1989, leaving a multi-million dollar estate, the exact value of which is difficult to calculate partly because of the widespread existence of forgeries.

The works were seized from the town of Estepona, a resort town. Reminding us again, that when you’re on vacation, take extra care when purchasing art. Of the 81 seized works, 12 were thought to have been genuine. The difficulty, it seems, is with the huge number of Dali works, and purported works. From the Times:

Dalí, who died 20 years ago tomorrow at the age of 84, was said to have flooded the art market with thousands of fakes. He is thought to have signed as many as 35,000 blank sheets of paper to which lithographs could later be applied at any time. Some auction houses will not touch his work

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

China Will Sue over Looted Bronzes

AFP is reporting that China will bring a repatriation suit in France over bronze statues taken from the Old Summer Palace before it was burned in 1860.

Chinese lawyers will sue auction giant Christie’s over the sale of relics owned by the late Yves Saint Laurent which they say were stolen from a looted Beijing palace, according to state press. The lawyers are hoping that French courts will stop the auction house from selling two bronze animal heads at a February sale in Paris and order the return of the relics to China, the Beijing Times reported. “The lawsuit will be placed before a French court in accordance with international law,” Liu Yang, one of 67 Chinese lawyers working on the case, told the paper. “We are demanding that the auction house stop the sale and order the owner of the stolen items to return them.” The relics currently belong to the Yves Saint Laurent Foundation and were being put up for auction by the late fashion magnate’s partner Pierre Berge, the paper said.

This should shape up to be a fascinating dispute. There’s little question I think the bronzes were taken under lass-than-noble circumstances by the British. More background on the dispute here.

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

Largest British Art Theft Comes to Light

Earlier this month, Cahal Milmo had an excellent article in the Independent on the story of John Nevin, an employee at the Victoria & Albert Museum between 1944 and 1953 who stole over 2,000 objects, some of which are still missing. That makes this the largest art theft ever from a British museum in terms of the scale of objects taken. This is an old theft, but many thefts which take place aren’t done by armed gunmen or in a dramatic fashion, but rather in a mundane way by museum staff.

Documents held at the National Archives in Kew, west London, reveal that Nevin was able to slowly remove his haul from the storage areas of the museum – smuggling out items such as a small table, which he dismantled and secreted bit-by-bit in his trouser leg – after he was granted unique access to showcases in the aftermath of the Second World War.

By the time police caught up with the kleptomaniac museum worker, who was 48 when he began his crime spree, Nevin had amassed a vast array of precious objects, including 20 Japanese silver sword guards, 229 illustrations torn from books, 18 pieces of Albanian embroidery, 132 original drawings and watercolours and a 300-year-old Flemish tapestry.

Nevin profited from the opportunity presented when elements of the V&A’s collection were returned to its building in Kensington after the war, when they had been in storage.

Senior managers at the museum were shocked when the string of thefts was discovered late in 1953, the documents make clear. In his statement to police, Peter Floud, Nevin’s boss and head of the Circulation Department, the part of the museum responsible for external loans, said: “His duties involved moving, handling, sorting and checking museum objects. As a result of the war years, when stocks were being moved into shelters and then back to the museum, a great deal of sorting was necessary.

Museums and institutions have learned many of these lessons, that their own employees can sometimes betray them. This of course highlights the importance of accurate and complete documentation of museum collections, and is another consequence of the art trade, which does not rigorously check title histories. There is a bit of comedy about this story though. With Mrs. Nevin using an 18th Century Italian tortoiseshell handbag and claiming it as her own, and decorating their council house flat with objects from the V&A.

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

Italy Announces Recovery of 10 Works, Doubled Recovery of Stolen Heritage

Italian police have recovered 10 works which were stolen back in 2004. Among the recovered works is this 16th Century painting depicting the holy family attributed ot Hendrick van den Broeck.

Gen. Giovanni Nistri announced the works had a value of $5.3 million USD, noting the works were found in a trailer wrapped in newspaper. The were were stolen in 2004 from “an ancient religious complex in Rome” according to the AP story.

The Culture Ministry also announced today that it had returned over 2,000 antiquities to Bulgaria, many of which were coins.

Nistri also announced that works totaling $243 million had been recovered in 2008, more than double the amount recovered the year before. Also noted in a Bloomberg account: “The number of known illegal digs in Italy last year increased by 15 percent to 238, mostly in the area around Rome, the Carabinieri police said.” It seems most of this increase was due to the increased policing of unauthorized archaeological digs (which we might just call looting). How has Italy found the resources or will to increase its efforts? Perhaps its new heritage advisor Mario Resca, profiled in today’s Wall Street Journal has some ideas on how to earn revenue from this heritage.

Whether Resca is the man to make the necessary changes remains to be seen, but he:

points in particular to Pompeii — Italy’s most popular site with 2.6 million visitors in 2007 — where littering, looting and the dilapidation of 2,000-year-old buildings and frescoes prompted the government this summer to declare a “state of emergency.” His concerns extend beyond conservation to issues of marketing and service.

Preserving this massive body of heritage is a difficult undertaking, and I touched on the difficulties at Pompei briefly here, but just because Resca is an outsider does not necessarily mean his ideas will be bad. In fact many of his suggestions have been floated before.

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

Egypt Returns Stolen Antiquity to Iraq

The AP is reporting on Egypt’s return of a bronze statue to Iraq. Zahi Hawass, ever the showman knows how to run a press-conference. I was also surprised to read Egypt has recovered some 5,000 objects from Iraq. The smuggler currently faces a 3-5 year prison sentence, but it could escalate to a troubling 25 years if the Egyptian parliament enacts a new law. I’m a proponent of serious penalties for antiquities smuggling, put a 25 year ex poste facto sentence seems outrageous, especially one enacted after the criminal activity:

Egypt’s antiquities chief unveiled Sunday a bronze statue of what he described as an ancient Mesopotamian goddess that had been looted from Iraq.

Zahi Hawass said an Egyptian man working in Jordan was caught at Nuweiba port trying to smuggle the statue into the country.

In the course of the ceremony, Hawass sliced through the plastic bubble wrap covering the 10 centimeter tall statue and handed it over to the Iraqi Charge d’Affaires, Abdel Hadi Ahmed.

“When the invasion of Iraq began in 2003, we wrote to the British and American governments asking them to protect Iraq’s heritage and museums,” said Hawass. “But that didn’t happen.”

Hawass said that since then his office has been tracking stolen Iraqi artifacts and has recovered some 5,000 items.

Hawass, who is a vigorous campaigner to recover Egypt’s own stolen antiquities, said he will not do business with museums that buy stolen Iraqi artifacts.

The antiquities chief said he couldn’t tell exactly the age or historical background of the statue, but said its headpiece suggests it is a female fertility deity.

Hawass said the smuggler now faces between three to five years in jail, but this could change to 25 years if a new law is approved in parliament next month.

Iraqi diplomat Ahmed told reporters that 24,000 stolen artifacts have been returned to Iraq as of July 2008.

According to UNESCO, between 3,000 to 7,000 pieces are still believed missing, including about 40 to 50 that are considered to be of great historic importance.

The smuggling of stolen antiquities from Iraq’s rich cultural heritage is allegedly helping finance Iraqi extremist groups, according to the U.S. investigator who led the initial probe into the looting of Baghdad’s National Museum.

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

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

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