Tag: Art Theft

Da Vinci Recovered

After four years this work has been recovered. Madonna of the Yarnwinder, a masterpiece by Leonardo Da Vinci was stolen four years ago from Drumlanrig Castle. It was a daring theft, and was listed on the FBI’s top 10 Art Crimes. The BBC has the details of today’s recovery here.

Three men were arrested today in Glasgow, apparently after they attempted to sell the work. This was a major theft, and a great recovery. I’ll have a lot more to say on this tomorrow. If everything goes as planned I should have an interview on the Good Morning Scotland program tomorrow morning, and I’ll post a link here when one becomes available.

In the meantime congratulations should go to the law enforcement services who recovered the work, led by the “Dumfries and Galloway Police and involved the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA), Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and Strathclyde Police.” Odds are that a work like this only has a 20% chance of recovery within 30 years.

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

Donny George Youkhanna on Iraqi Heritage

Mike Boehm of the LA Times has an interesting summary of the talk given by the former director of the Baghdad museum, Donny George Youkhanna, at the Bowers Museum on Sunday. It’s a troubling account. Here’s an excerpt:

“To have the museum hurt in this way, it bleeds my heart,” George said in a quiet, even voice during the opening moments of his talk and slide presentation Sunday at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art. Among the images worth a thousand sad words were before-and-after photographs of statuary that had been pulverized or beheaded. And there were numerous “before” photos with no “after” standing in for some of the 7,500 or objects still missing from the museum — most of them small items such as coins and cylindrical seals used to press imprints into clay tablets.

The huge projections on the auditorium’s screen during George’s 75-minute talk included views of an almost perfectly round hole left by American tank gunners above the entry arch of the Iraq Museum’s children’s wing. George said the gunners had returned the fire of Iraqis who had taken up positions on the museum’s rooftop during the U.S. ground assault to capture Baghdad in April 2003. An image from last January showed the same building, hole-free, but with one wall now marred by huge bloodstains — part of the spatter-pattern from a car bombing in the street below.

George, a stocky, graying man who speaks English fluently, is a war refugee who has landed at Stony Brook University in New York, where he is a visiting professor of anthropology. He told of how, in short order during 2006, he was stripped of his authority and forced to resign because “this institution should not be led by a Christian, it should be led by a Shiite Muslim.” Simply living in Iraq soon became untenable. His 17-year-old son received a death threat — an envelope containing a bullet and a message that accused the youth of “cursing Islam, teasing Muslim girls” and having a father who was helping the Americans.

George said that during the American ground assault on Baghdad, he and a colleague who had been baby-sitting the Iraq Museum were forced to leave for three days. When they returned, its interior looked “as if it had been hit by a hurricane.”

Initial media reports said the museum had been utterly ransacked, with 170,000 objects stolen or destroyed, but the truth was closer to 15,000. Many priceless collections, including the fabled Treasures of Nimrud, a horde of exquisitely wrought gold and jewelry, had long been secured in Iraq’s Central Bank. Still, an investigation-and-recovery task force led by Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos found that looters who knew what they were looking for — and probably gained entry with help from somebody with inside knowledge — had made off with 40 prime objects on display in the galleries and more than 10,500 items that had been secreted in a basement storeroom.

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

Rare Book Thefts in Italy

Marta Falconi has an interesting AP story, Book Thief Investigation in Italy. An Italian man disguised himself as a priest and stole “dozens of 300-year-old books, drawings and watercolors from top libraries and public archives in Rome”. Italian authorities have recovered items worth close to $1 million.

The suspect, in his mid-40s, used ink remover to delete identification numbers and library stamps from the items, said Gen. Giovanni Nistri, who heads Italy’s police art squad.

When marks were engraved in the paper, he used an iron to smooth them out. He dripped coffee on pages to make them look moldy.

“He showed great competence and even ingeniousness,” Nistri said. “In some cases, he dressed as a priest and even locked himself in a bathroom for one day, besides altering the items to make their identification harder,” Nistri said.

Some items were sold in Italy and abroad, particularly in France, Nistri said. Nistri did not reveal what led police to the man.

The investigation is now aimed at tracing other trafficking channels, police said.

“Even in the libraries, there’s a gigantic cultural heritage that we risk losing for the pleasure of some,” Nistri told a news conference Monday.

The suspect, whom authorities would not identify, has been convicted of similar thefts in Turin and is believed to have stolen papers in Modena, Turin and Florence in recent months, Nistri said.

The suspect, who is cooperating with officers, has not been arrested, but police did not rule out an arrest in the future. Officers said there was no immediate risk he would try to flee the country.

An undersecretary in the Culture Ministry, Danielle Gattegno Mazzonis, said the ministry was planning to increase staff and set up alarm systems to monitor libraries and public archives because the trafficking is increasing.

“There are collectors and amateurs of specific epochs that would spend a fortune to have; for example, the original edition of a newspaper which came out the day Garibaldi was born,” Mazzonis said.

Police said that as of the end of August, 73,000 stolen books and archive documents were recovered across Italy.

That final number is staggering. How many items are still missing? These items are the most difficult to protect, as they are not especially rare or rise to the level of ultra-valuable items. This makes them much easier to sell.

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

The GAO takes the Smithsonian to Task


Many have argued that a compelling case can be made that art and antiquities should be displayed in market nations in the developed world because they are better preserved there than they might be if returned to source nations which are often underdeveloped. The GAO report which James Grimaldi highlights in today’s Washington Post seriously undermines such arguments. It reveals a troubling picture of what should be America’s proudest cultural institution. Instead a picture of staggering institutional incompetence is revealed:

  • Alarms ring and guards are unable to respond;
  • A water leak in the Sackler Gallery could have destroyed artwork worth half a billion;
  • Fossils were stolen from display cases at the Natural History Museum;
  • Plastic sheets are required to protect Native American artifacts from damage;
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Another Dutch Holocaust Claim


Four heirs of art dealer Nathan Katz have brought a claim for 227 works recovered in German at the end of World War II reports Marlise Simons in todays NY Times. Among the contested works is this painting by Salomon van Ruysdael, Horsefair at Valkenburg. The claim was made public Friday, just as the Dutch were moving to discourage new restitution claims.

These restitution disputes are ill-suited to an adversarial litigation process with one winner and one loser as is the current situation in the United States. Professor Norman Palmer has persuasively made this case in the UK, while Jennifer Anglim Kreder has proposed an interesting idea. She makes a great case for an International Tribunal for dealing with Nazi-Looted Art. It’s forthcoming in the Brooklyn Law Review, an early version is up on SSRN. In the Netherlands the claims are studied by the Restitution Commission which advises the government on the return of objects lost or stolen when the Germans invaded in WWII.

Here’s an excerpt of the NYT story:

Although the Dutch government in exile had decreed that citizens could not trade with the enemy, many Dutch art dealers, both Jews and non-Jews, sold works to eager German collectors, who circulated wish lists in the first few years of the war. Dutch traditional painting was sought after, because the Nazis did not consider it “degenerate” art.

After the war the Dutch government returned 28 paintings that the Katz brothers had claimed. Among them was Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a Man,” believed to have been used to buy their mother’s freedom.

Evelien Campfens, a member of the Restitution Commission in The Hague, said the claim of the Katz heirs would “be a complex case, with many different aspects to it: it will take time.” She said that the Katz brothers were important dealers involved in many transactions, and that many important paintings had passed through their hands.

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

Upcoming Conferences

Next week in London the American Bar Association will be holding its fall international meeting. On Thursday, from 4-5.30 there will be a panel discussion on the International Movement of Art & Cultural Property:

Customs/Trade
Public International Law

Museums around the globe confront numerous obstacles in dealing with claims made on the art works and cultural objects in their collections. In some cases, works may have been placed on loan years ago and a museum may not know the current owner or may be presented with a claim to restore the works to the lender. Museums must also safeguard the ownership rights of victims of theft, including nations whose antiquities have been illegally excavated and removed and Holocaust victims and their heirs whose art properties were stolen during World War II. Finally, works on loan may be claimed to satisfy judgments received against the owner. In the United States, the ability of museums to remove art works from their collections through deaccessioning depends on laws that vary from state to state. The problem is more complicated in countries where museums are prohibited by law to remove any works from their collections. This panel will address issues of deaccessioning, long-term loans, and return guarantees for works on international loan and consider policies that may lead to greater cooperation in this complicated area of international law.

Co-Sponsoring Committees:
Europe Committee International Commercial Transactions, Franchising, and Distribution Committee, International Intellectual Property Committee , Information Services, Technology, and Data Protection Committee, Immigration and Naturalization Law Committee, and Financial Products and Services Committee

Program Chair:
Cristian DeFrancia, Legal Adviser, Iran – United States Claims Tribunal, The Hague, Netherlands

Moderator:
Ricardo A. St. Hilaire, Chief Prosecutor, Grafton County, Concord, New Hampshire

Speakers:
Lawrence M. Shindell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, ARIS Corporation, Milwaukee, WI
Norman Palmer, Rowe & Maw Professor of Commercial Law, Faculty of Laws, University College, London, England
Patty Gerstenblith, Professor, DePaul University College of Law, Chicago, IL
Bonnie Czegledi, Founder, Czegledi Art Law, Toronto, Canada

A likely topic for discussion may be the new consultation paper on Draft Regulations for the Museums and Galleries of Information for the Purposes of Immunity from Seizure Under Part 6 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007.

Another conference will be taking place at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign April 24-25, 2008. It looks beyond the law at how heritage is constructed, and sounds fascinating. Here are the details:

CONTESTED CULTURAL HERITAGE IN A GLOBAL WORLD

Thursday and Friday, April 24-25, 2008
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Program

Spurlock Museum and the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage and Museum Practices (CHAMP) have organized a major conference on “Contested Cultural Heritage” to be held at the Museum on Friday, April 25, 2008. Dr. Donny George Youkhanna, former Director of the Iraq National Museum and now Visiting Professor at the State University of New York-Stony Brook, will deliver the keynote address of the conference (“Mayhem in Mesopotamia” on April 24).

The conference brings together an international group of scholars to discuss how forces of religion and nationalism may act to heighten inter-group tension around heritage claims, even to the point of causing the destruction of ancient and historic sites. Among the cases to be considered are the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan; Christian and Muslim conflict resolution at a major mosque in Cordoba, Spain; different views and practices toward the indigenous past among Native Americans and the archaeologists who study their ancestors; the Parthenon/Elgin Marbles debate; Egypt’s demand for the return of the Bust of Nefertiti; heritage frictions implicated in the recent Balkans War; Peru’s attempt to repatriate the Machu Picchu collections from Yale University; and the aggressive marking of Protestant and Catholic identities in Belfast, Northern Ireland through wall art. A roundtable discussion at the end of the conference seeks to chart new directions for implementing policies that lessen the negative dimensions of cultural heritage and further awareness of its value for a larger public, thereby promoting site preservation as well as social/political harmony.

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

Arrests in Italy

From UPI, Italian authorities have arrested a group of antiquities smugglers. Based on the description of the goods, I wonder if a portion of these objects were destined for a domestic sale in Italy to Italians. Not all of the antiquities trade is international, and adequate regulation begins with the source nations themselves. Italy is the model, as its cultural policy is perhaps the most comprehensive and, more importantly, successful. Here’s an excerpt:

ROME, Sept. 20 Police have foiled a scheme to sell millions of dollars worth of artifacts plundered from historic sites throughout Italy.
Investigators prevented a group of art traffickers from selling the stolen property, which included thousands of priceless objects bought from tomb raiders, the Italian news agency ANSA reported Thursday.
The coins, lamps, funerary objects and other ancient artifacts were believed to have been transported through the Republic of San Marino, where they were assigned fake provenance documents.
Among the 26 people charged in the operation was a 60-year-old Italian dealer from England who was caught just as he was about to cross the Italian border into Austria. “This is an amazing haul and proof that we are intensifying our efforts to stamp out illicit trading in antiquities,” said General Ugo Zottin, head of the Carabinieri’s special unit for protecting Italy’s cultural heritage. “We got to the traffickers as they were about to move the objects through various outlets in Verona, Bolzano and Rimini — some of them quite respectable establishments.”

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

A Sad Day for Danes (UPDATE)


In a puzzling theft, Denmark’s national treasure, copies of the already stolen and destroyed Golden horns of Gallehus were stolen early Monday morning. From AFP:

COPENHAGEN (AFP) — One of Denmark’s national treasures, a set of two horns made in the 1800s, was stolen in the early hours of Monday, Danish police said. Called “Guldhornene” in Danish, or the Golden Horns, the pieces are silver replicas of two original gold horns made in 400 A.D. which were stolen in 1802 and destroyed. The replicas, with a thin gold coating, were on loan from the National Museum of Denmark for an exhibit in Jelling, near the central Danish town of Vejle, when they were stolen by thieves who smashed a display case.

Even though the works are replicas they are part of the country’s cultural heritage, National Museum curator Carsten Larsen said.

The originals were discovered in the town of Gallehus in southern Denmark in 1639 before they went missing and were found again in 1734.

They were stolen in 1802 from the Royal Chamber of Art by an indebted jeweller, Niels Heidenreich, who melted the gold to make jewellery and counterfeit coins.

The horns are a national symbol known to all and have even inspired a famous poem penned by Danish writer Adam Oehenschlaeger. Experts said the thieves would not be able to sell the treasures. “The thieves cannot put them to any use whatsoever,” said Michael Fornitz from Copenhagen’s Bruun Rasmussen auction house. “Maybe they thought the horns were made of solid gold and thought they would melt them down. But they are gilded and do not have any intrinsic worth.” He also shot down the idea that a collector could have ordered the theft. “Our experience shows that this hypothesis only exists in detective novels,” he said. “Collectors are proud of showing off their acquisitions, not hiding them.”

Danish police have meanwhile stepped up a search for the thieves who fled from the precincts in a Volvo V40, according to witnesses.

The thieves appear to have been ignorant of the true nature of the horns, or they were trying to make a political statement. The horns probably looked more valuable than they really are; or perhaps that’s what the police are saying to try and convince the thieves to make a quick return. Wikipedia indicates the copies were made some time in the 1980’s. It seems difficult to guess what the motive for the theft might have been.

UPDATE:

The horns have been recovered, and a press conference has been scheduled for this morning to give more details. From AFP:

COPENHAGEN (AFP) — One of Denmark’s national treasures, a set of two horns made in the 1800s, was recovered by police Tuesday after being stolen in the early hours of Monday, local television station TV2Syd reported.

Police inspector Steen Edeling told the station in the central town of Vejle that the horns had been found. He did not give any details, but a press conference was to be held in Vejle at 0800 GMT Wednesday.

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

Iraqi Cultural Heritage

In today’s Independent Robert Fisk has a special investigation on Iraqi cultural heritage. It’s an interesting account, though it gives only one side of the argument. I’m not sure what the special investigation was, he seems to be relying in large measure on one Lebanese archaeologist. Here’s an excerpt:

In a long and devastating appraisal to be published in December, Lebanese archaeologist Joanne Farchakh says that armies of looters have not spared “one metre of these Sumerian capitals that have been buried under the sand for thousands of years.

“They systematically destroyed the remains of this civilisation in their tireless search for sellable artefacts: ancient cities, covering an estimated surface area of 20 square kilometres, which – if properly excavated – could have provided extensive new information concerning the development of the human race.

“Humankind is losing its past for a cuneiform tablet or a sculpture or piece of jewellery that the dealer buys and pays for in cash in a country devastated by war. Humankind is losing its history for the pleasure of private collectors living safely in their luxurious houses and ordering specific objects for their collection.”

Ms Farchakh, who helped with the original investigation into stolen treasures from the Baghdad Archaeological Museum in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, says Iraq may soon end up with no history.

“There are 10,000 archaeological sites in the country. In the Nassariyah area alone, there are about 840 Sumerian sites; they have all been systematically looted. Even when Alexander the Great destroyed a city, he would always build another. But now the robbers are destroying everything because they are going down to bedrock. What’s new is that the looters are becoming more and more organised with, apparently, lots of money.

“Quite apart from this, military operations are damaging these sites forever. There’s been a US base in Ur for five years and the walls are cracking because of the weight of military vehicles. It’s like putting an archaeological site under a continuous earthquake.”

I’m afraid I have a pessimistic view of conflict and cultural property. Conflict always leads to theft and destruction. The activities of the US military in and around some of these archaeological sites is indeed troubling as I’ve written about before. But I have a bit of skepticism about the looting of sites. Is this something that only began after the Invasion in 2003? I’m not sure about the answer to that question. But though the 1954 Hague Convention is mentioned briefly, no mention is made of the efforts of Marine Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, the import restrictions in the US and the UK on Iraqi objects, or any other efforts.

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

Moving Cultural Property


Alasdair Palmer has half a good article titled The greatest art should not be moving in yesterday’s Telegraph. Why half? He only gives one view of the argument against transporting cultural property (though Italian Senator Paulo Amato surely agrees).

The background for the article is the exhibition at the British Museum of 20 terracotta figures from the grave of Chinese emperor Qin Shihuangdi. It is the largest number of these figures to ever leave China. Palmer does a good job of giving the argument against transporting works. But only by summarizing the work of Michael Daley and Michael Savage in the ArtWatch UK Journal, which I have been unable to track down.

Palmer cites the following:

In 1994 the Tate lent two Turners to a Frankfurt museum, but they were stolen and were not returned until a £2 million ransom was paid.

  • Canova’s Three Graces developed a crack when it was transported to Madrid in 1998.
  • A Swiss Air jet carrying Picasso’s Le Peintre was lost when a Swiss Air flight crashed off Nova Scotia.
  • Speculation exists that some of the 251 Assyrian objects the British Museum shipped to Shangai in 2006 were partially damaged.
  • The Goya which went missing last year is cited as well. Though it was incorrectly assumed it came from Spain. It was actually on its way from Cleveland. It was also recovered.

Those are some good examples of the drawbacks; but these traveling exhibitions do a great deal of good as well. It promotes cultural internationalism, improves access, allows institutions and source nations to raise funds. Most importantly traveling exhibitions allow for compromise between ardent cultural nationalists, and those who think art should be accessible internationally. There are right and wrong ways to go about it to be sure, and there are risks. But Palmer gives only half the picture, and even that is inaccurate. Perhaps the biggest inaccuracy: there are 1,000 of these figures excavated, and perhaps as many as 6,000 more which have yet to be unearthed. Are the risks of damage to a select few enough to outweigh the benefits? I think not.

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