Tag: Art Theft

More on Antiquities Leasing

Can antiquities leasing form a good compromise between strict regulation, which can be counterproductive, and the cultural property trade? Tim Harford has an interesting article in Slate today, Rent-A-Treasure: How to Eliminate the Black Market in Stolen Antiquities. He talks more about the working paper Antiquities: Long-Term Leases as an Alternative to Export Bans, co-authored by Michael Kremer and Tom Wilkening. Kremer and Wilkening take an economic perspective and argue antiquities leasing is a better alternative to the current rigid regulation which ends up fostering a black market.

Leasing is an exciting idea as I’ve argued before; but not in every case. The Slate article does a good job of painting the problem in broad strokes, and traces the idea to the antiquities controversy which is probably the most widely known, the Parthenon Marbles. Some kind of sharing agreement between the British Museum and Greece might work in theory, but neither side would be willing to undergo such a compromise in my view. A better use of leasing would be in developing source nations in response to the illicit trade of today, not long-standing repatriation disputes. Source nation antiquities leasing could produce revenue, foster international appreciation, all while objects are still under the control of the source nation

The first mention of the idea, that I am aware, came in 1993 by Nusin Asgari. The former head of the Antiquities Museum in Istanbul, Turkey, argued that ten-year loan agreements between major museums might reduce the temptation to acquire antiquities illicitly. (Suna Erdem, New Trojan War Highlights Pillage of Turkey’s Past, Reuters, Oct. 13, 1993, available in LEXIS, News Library, Curnws File).

There are a few versions of this idea in practice, including the blockbuster King Tut exhibition, which I would venture to say was more about showing off the gold than anything else, and that seemed to be Tyler Cowen’s take as well.

But a far better example is the Menil Collection Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum in Houston, pictured here. The frescoes were stolen during the Turkish occupation of Cyprus in the 1980’s. With the permission of the Church of Cyprus, the Menil Foundation agreed to a long-term lease and restoration. This is a far better example than the King Tut exhibition, which seemed far more concerned with earning revenue than education or conisseurship. I haven’t seen the chapel in Houston, but the final product looks stunning. It’s an example of what the antiquities market can and should produce, and everyone wins.

There was also a great deal of uproar over Lynne Munson’s criticism over the National Geographic Society’s deal with Afghanistan to display the Bactrian gold, which I talked about here. Are folks aware of other good, or bad antiquities leasing schemes? I’d be very interested to know, if you would care to share them in the comments section.

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

Why Distort the Facts when they support you?

The Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responded to the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad by saying, “Stuff happens… the images you are seeing over and over and over. It’s the same pictures of some person walking out of some building with a vase and you see it twenty times. And you think, my goodness, were there that many vases?” Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?” Those are callous and ridiculous comments to be sure, and there were a myriad of failings in protecting the museum when hostilities began.

However Naomi Klein in her new book The Shock Doctrine is just plain wrong when she attempts to criticize the coalition forces after the Iraq invasion. An excerpt of her new book is published in today’s Guardian. After reading the piece I wondered, why distort the facts so badly when the solid facts actually could support your position. Here is the relevant excerpt:

The bombing badly injured Iraq, but it was the looting, unchecked by occupying troops, that did the most to erase the heart of the country that was.

“The hundreds of looters who smashed ancient ceramics, stripped display cases and pocketed gold and other antiquities from the National Museum of Iraq pillaged nothing less than records of the first human society,” reported the Los Angeles Times. “Gone are 80% of the museum’s 170,000 priceless objects.” The national library, which contained copies of every book and doctoral thesis ever published in Iraq, was a blackened ruin. Thousand-year-old illuminated Qur’ans had disappeared from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which was left a burned-out shell. “Our national heritage is lost,” pronounced a Baghdad high-school teacher. A local merchant said of the museum, “It was the soul of Iraq. If the museum doesn’t recover the looted treasures, I will feel like a part of my own soul has been stolen.” McGuire Gibson, an archaeologist at the University of Chicago, called it “a lot like a lobotomy. The deep memory of an entire culture, a culture that has continued for thousands of years, has been removed”.

Thanks mostly to the efforts of clerics who organised salvage missions in the midst of the looting, a portion of the artefacts has been recovered. But many Iraqis were, and still are, convinced that the memory lobotomy was intentional – part of Washington’s plans to excise the strong, rooted nation that was and replace it with their own model. “Baghdad is the mother of Arab culture,” 70-year-old Ahmed Abdullah told the Washington Post, “and they want to wipe out our culture.”

As the war planners were quick to point out, the looting was done by Iraqis, not foreign troops. And it is true that Rumsfeld did not plan for Iraq to be sacked – but he did not take measures to prevent it from happening either, or to stop it once it had begun. These were failures that cannot be dismissed as mere oversights.

During the 1991 Gulf war, 13 Iraqi museums were attacked by looters, so there was every reason to believe that poverty, anger at the old regime and the general atmosphere of chaos would prompt some Iraqis to respond in the same way (especially given that Saddam had emptied the prisons several months earlier). The Pentagon had been warned by leading archaeologists that it needed to have an airtight strategy to protect museums and libraries before any attack, and a March 26 Pentagon memo to coalition command listed “in order of importance, 16 sites that were crucial to protect in Baghdad”. Second on the list was the museum. Other warnings had urged Rumsfeld to send an international police contingent in with the troops to maintain public order -another suggestion that was ignored.

Even without the police, however, there were enough US soldiers in Baghdad for a few to be dispatched to the key cultural sites, but they weren’t sent. There are numerous reports of US soldiers hanging out by their armoured vehicles and watching as trucks loaded with loot drove by – a reflection of the “stuff happens” indifference coming straight from Rumsfeld. Some units took it upon themselves to stop the looting, but in other instances, soldiers joined in. The Baghdad International Airport was completely trashed by soldiers who, according to Time, smashed furniture and then moved on to the commercial jets on the runway: “US soldiers looking for comfortable seats and souvenirs ripped out many of the planes’ fittings, slashed seats, damaged cockpit equipment and popped out every windshield.” The result was an estimated $100m worth of damage to Iraq’s national airline – which was one of the first assets to be put on the auction block in an early and contentious partial privatisation.

From what I understand, Klein argues in her book that crisis has been manipulated by leaders to bring about sweeping social change. That seems like an interesting hypothesis, and its the kind of controversial and engaging argument that I usually find interesting. But in discussing the looting of the Iraq museum, she gets a myriad of facts wrong, distorts the truth, and wholly fails to account for the good work American soldiers, led by former prosecutor, and then Colonel Matthew Bogdanos did in tracking down objects. I talked about this last year.

Most notably, the 170,000 figure has been discredited, and the number of objects still missing is probably around 3,000. That’s still an alarming number to be sure, but why quote old and inaccurate estimates? Also, the Iraqi military occupied the site, and fired on coalition troops from the museum. To be sure, the invading forces dropped the ball when they neglected to secure the museum after the museum was abandoned, but that paints a very different picture from what Klein describes here. When you have plenty of good accurate evidence to support your position, why would you resort to this kind of lazy inaccuracy? I presume that in her zeal to lay out here position she neglected to account for other points of view. This is the same kind of myopic view which has plagued the current administration. It becomes all the more puzzling though when you consider Rumsfeld did most of Klein’s work for her.

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

Native American Art Returned

Scott Sonner has an interesting AP story on the decision by the US Forest Service to return boulders bearing petroglyphs to the site they were removed from four years ago. Here’s an excerpt:

U.S. Forest Service officials never believed John Ligon’s claim that he dug up two boulders etched with American Indian petroglyphs four years ago to put them in his front yard for safekeeping.

But they did share a concern he voiced that someone would steal the centuries-old rock art on national forest land a few football fields away from a growing housing development. After they recovered the stolen property, federal land managers struggled for years with the question of what to do with the rock etchings of a bighorn sheep, an archer, a lizard and a wheel.

Now, after initially thinking it was best to place them in a state museum, the agency — in consultation with local tribal leaders — has decided to return them to the mountainside where they were for perhaps as long as 1,000 years before they were disturbed.

“It belongs out there,” said Linda Shoshone, cultural resources director for the Washoe Tribe in Nevada and California. She and others said removing the petroglyphs from the site takes them out of their spiritual context.

“I realize it is a tough decision on our part because we don’t want it to be damaged any more than it has been,” Shoshone said. “But I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe the more we educate John Q. Public at the sites, the more they will help us preserve stuff like this.”

The theft of the petroglyphs on the northwest edge of suburban Reno garnered national attention at the time and still reverberates through the community.

“The significant assault on Native American memories and cultural items is as bad as walking into a Catholic church and taking a cross off the wall,” said Arlan Melendez, chairman of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony.

Archaeologists believe the rock pile where the drawings were located was a hunting blind where 800 to 1,000 years ago tribesmen lay in wait for deer and elk migrating from Peavine Peak toward the Truckee River valley below.

The site is visible three miles away from the upper floors of the federal courthouse in downtown Reno where the accused looters stood trial in 2003.

That’s an interesting problem with no easy solution. If they return the petroglyphs, they risk another theft. But the art loses something if its housed in a museum I think. The only real solution is to educate the public about the benefits of archaeology, why it is important, and how easy it can be to lose information from important sites forever. I think that is one of the biggest reasons why more nations should adopt the approach most of the UK has taken with the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which David Gill talks about today as well. As Professor Patty Gerstenblith has argued, a nation protects those elements of its past which it values. As Linda Shoshone, cultural resources director for the Washoe Tribe in Nevada and Colorado, said in the article “It is really hard to educate a society that has no culture here in the United States — our land. They left it in Europe… But when we teach fourth graders about things like this, they are going to teach their parents.”

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

Fourth-Largest Criminal Enterprise?

Cameron Skene of CanWest News Service had an overview of art theft over the weekend. He talked to the usual folks who speculate about the size of the art theft problem, and gave the normal ranking of art theft as the fourth-largest criminal activity.

Estimating the size of the illicit market is a difficult undertaking. Skene writes “Interpol ranks art theft as the fourth largest criminal enterprise after drugs, money laundering and weapons.” This appears incorrect, but its a common mistake. A number of media reports and even scholarly articles use this ranking, but I’m not sure its accurate. Interpol certainly does not endorse it:

We do not possess any figures which would enable us to claim that trafficking in cultural property is the third or fourth most common form of trafficking, although this is frequently mentioned at international conferences and in the media. In fact, it is very difficult to gain an exact idea of how many items of cultural property are stolen throughout the world and it is unlikely that there will ever be any accurate statistics. National statistics are often based on the circumstances of the theft (petty theft, theft by breaking and entering or armed robbery), rather than the type of object stolen.

The best estimates I have found are the FBI’s rough account of $6 Billion annually, and the various reports given to the UK’s Department of Culture Media and Sport Illicit Trade Advisory Panel which was given a number of very different estimates. I wonder, do any readers have any better or more concrete estimates? Empirical research is very popular in legal scholarships these days, does anyone have any ideas about how we could calculate the size?


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

"Loot" Reviewed


This weekend I’ve had a chance to finally finish Loot: Inside the World of Stolen Art, by Thomas McShane with Dary Matera. McShane worked as an undercover agent for the FBI for 36 years, and recovered a number of works of art. In order to win the confidence of the handlers of the stolen works, McShane had to adopt aliases, most notably Thomas Bishop, the elegantly dressed art buyer.

The book starts strong, revealing the recovery of Rembrandt’s the Rabbi. The theft from the Bonnat Museum was “[a]s is so often the case with art thefts…a crime of opportunity rather than precision planning. On 1 March 1971, a young French art student named Robert LeBec visited the Bonnat Museum as he often did to study the brushtrokes of the ancient masters.” The travels of the work reveal a great deal about art theft. The work was very easy to steal, but the handlers were unable to unload it, and it seemed to cause them nothing but trouble. I enjoyed the description of smaller art museums as “reminiscent of the ‘easy jug’ banks American bandit John Dillinger robbed with impunity 40 years earlier. Security was lax or non-existent. Alarm systems, if present, were rudimentary and easily overcome. The atmosphere was friendly and hands-on.”

Most of the book accounts how McShane transformed himself into his art buying alter-ego. He would invariably set up a “buy”, then authenticate the work, checking the brush strokes, paint composition, nails on the canvas; and then would signal the other agents listening in to make the bust. Interestingly McShane was always arrested with the thieves, to preserve his cover.

The stories are interesting, and fun to read. The book was great summer reading, but unfortunately it never seems to go below the surface. Part of that may be that McShane is unable or unwilling to reveal what goes on behind the scenes. For example, he would always get “tipped” that someone was looking to unload a Picasso or major work. It would be interesting to know how difficult it really is to fence stolen artwork. McShane gives a baseline. A thief can usually expect to get 10% of a stolen painting’s value. But how often to museums cave in and pay a ransom. What about insurance companies? Is it more important to recover the work or catch the thief?

One of the most interesting chapters involved Picasso’s still-missing Man with the Purple Hat. It was a 6 foot bright-purple canvas which was stolen on the way from Houston’s Jasper Museum to Manhattan. The work was sealed in a truck in Houston, but when it arrived in New York the painting was missing. The authors argue this is a likely “Dr. No” theft, where someone commissions a theft: “He, and she, exist all right. From Riyadh to Beverly Hills, they’re out there gazing up at their special prizes each and every day, proving once again that ‘stolen apples taste the sweetest.’ They’re just extremely difficult to catch.” There is no hard evidence that these evil geniuses are out there, but McShane should command some deference for his long service and many recoveries.

In the book’s second half, some momentum is lost, as the prose gets a bit muddled; and for some reason the author’s start describing each new character based on their likeness to Hollywood and tv Celebrities like Kojak and the like. Some of this is regained at the end with McShane’s take on the largest unsolved art theft: the theft of 13 works from the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. I enjoyed the speculation on that theft a great deal. But shockingly, if the thieves have sold the works on, the statute of limitations for the theft has expired, so the actual thieves may be able to collect on part of the $5 million reward. One wonders how often that goes on, but seldom is a full and open account given.

It’s a fun read, but ultimately it left me wanting more substance. In the epilogue a call is made for increased security and criminal penalties. But how? That does not seem to provide a complete picture, as museums are often strapped for funds, and they have to walk a balance between access to the public and security. No discussion of provenance was given, or how effective stolen art databases have become. I was also disappointed more was not said about current efforts at the FBI, including the Art Crime Team which seems to have had some notable successes. The authors seem to think this is still not enough, claiming that only one agent works full time on the problem. I had believed it was closer to half a dozen, but perhaps many of these agents have other duties. In any event it is a fun read, has some exciting stories to tell, but ultimately does not help us arrive at a better way of actually thwarting art theft.

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

Due diligence, a licit trade, and the Ka-Nefer-Nefer


David Gill over at looting matters has had some interesting things to say about due diligence in recent days. I agree with him on a number of points, including the problems caused by the destruction of archaeological sites, some of the silly rhetoric the numismatist-lobby has used on the internet and the scope of the antiquities problem generally. He has also contributed some excellent scholarly work by moving beyond mere anecdotal evidence towards concrete data.

I disagree with him strongly on the ability of a licit antiquities market to remedy some of these problems however. I think he misses the point on due diligence procedures in acquiring antiquities. You can argue they are voluntary, are not followed, or are too weak. But rigorous due diligence procedures are absolutely essential to a better state of affairs and can have a quick and quantifiable impact on the black market.

On Friday, he rightfully took John Merryman to task for using the acquisition of antiquities by Marion True for the Getty as an example of due diligence procedures which were unfairly criticized by archaeologists in 1989. Gill points out that the archaeologist’s criticisms of the policy were vindicated with the decision by the Getty to return 40 objects. I think Merryman should admit he was wrong on that point. However, Merryman’s more important point, and the one Gill fails to account for is that there needs to be a licit trade in antiquities with clean provenance, and the current state of regulation in source nations makes that impossible. We should also keep in mind that the new acquisition procedures of the Getty museum are now quite rigorous, and the Getty should be recognized for righting its ship. The Indianapolis museum of Art has also adopted some very strict procedures.

I do not think anyone would argue that the present legal framework of regulating antiquities works. Sites are looted, and the black market continues to thrive. The important question becomes how can we prevent that? Establishing provenance is a difficult thing to do, especially when they are often fabricated. Auction catalogs say “from a Swiss collection”. Such information is not enough to create a clean chain of title. Relying on such information is not enough to satisfy a proper due diligence inquiry either.

Article 4(4) of the 1995 Unidroit Convention makes a set of recommendations for the exercise of due diligence:

In determining whether the possessor exercised due diligence, regard shall be had to all the circumstances of the acquisition, including the character of the parties, the price paid, whether the possessor consulted any reasonably accessible register of stolen cultural objects, and any other relevant information and documentation which it could reasonably have obtained, and whether the possessor consulted accessible agencies or took any step that a reasonable person would have taken in the circumstances.

The next day Gill turns his attention to the Ka-Nefer-Nefer mask, pictured above. It was purchased by the St. Louis Museum of Art in 1998 from the Phoenix Gallery, run by the Aboutaam brothers who have had legal issues in both the United States and Egypt regarding antiquities transactions. An outstanding article by Malcolm Gay for the River Front Times revealed that the sculpture may have been stolen some time between its excavation in 1952 and its acquisition by the St. Louis Art Museum in 1998.

Gill points out that a number of the facts used to construct the provenance were highly questionable, including this exchange:

Hicham Aboutaam directed the Riverfront Times to a woman identifying herself as Suzana Jelinek, of Zagreb, Croatia. ‘I bought the mask many many years ago, and I sold it many many years ago,’ says Suzana Jelinek when reached at her Zagreb home. ‘I have so many things in my collection that my children don’t know what all I have.’

This raises a number of questions certainly. However, Gill fails to acknowledge the most important thing the museum did, it contacted the Cairo Museum in Egypt:

“I think for 1998, the year that this mask was acquired, the level of diligence that was done here is exemplary,” says Brent Benjamin. “We had an inquiry hand-delivered to the Cairo Museum’s director, Mohammed Saleh, saying that this was an object that had been offered to the museum for acquisition, and did he know any reason why the museum should not do that. We got a written response from Dr. Saleh that raised no concerns about the acquisition.”

The letter the museum sent Saleh contains sparse details. The letter, penned by Sidney Goldstein, the museum’s antiquities curator who initiated and oversaw the mask’s purchase, says the museum has “been offered a mummy mask of the 19th dynasty and I was wondering if you know of any parallels to this object. I have never seen anything quite like it with a reddish copper-like face probably owing to the oxidation of the gold surface. It is currently on exhibition in the Egyptian exhibition at the Museum of Art and History in Geneva. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on any parallels you might know of this piece and hope that I might have the opportunity to speak with you in several weeks by telephone about this opportunity.”

Goldstein sent a photograph and physical description of the mask along with his letter to Saleh, but he did not mention Goneim by name, nor did he refer to the Saqqara excavations.

“The excavation information was not on the description of the mask because the letters [to Saleh] were sent out before the entire provenance was even discussed,” says Jennifer Stoffel, director of marketing for the Saint Louis Art Museum. “This was early on, when we were only considering the object.”

That is a very important fact Gill misses. To be sure, the acquisition should have raised a number of red flags; and I think the Egyptians probably have an excellent ethical claim for repatriation. But there will not be a tenable legal claim under US law. It does not appear Egypt had adequately documented their collection. If they had, and the collection was stolen from a storeroom as the article indicates, Egypt would have had an absolute legal right to the object because it was stolen, and the museum would have had a claim for the purchase price against the Phoenix gallery. This would have rewarded a diligent purchaser, punished the Phoenix gallery for selling a dubious work, and the object would have returned to Egypt.

A very important and inexpensive step which source nations absolutely must do is to document their collections. Granted, such a step may have been more difficult 10 or 20 years ago, and the letter could have provided more details to Saleh, but Egypt needs to make it easier to check provenance, not harder. The museum made a questionable acquisition to be sure, but Egypt dropped the ball as well. This reinforces Merryman’s persuasive argument that source nations should consider excess cultural objects which are merely gathering dust in a storeroom. At the very least I think antiquities leasing or long-terms loans should be used. It adds to the cultural exchange, and most importantly creates revenue which can be used to protect sites and excavate them before looting takes place.

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

Be careful what you throw away

Wild story from Earth times:

Vienna – An old cross recovered by an Austrian woman from a garbage container turned out to be an 800-year-old French masterpiece stolen from a Polish collection by the Nazi regime, Austrian police said on Thursday. In 2004, the woman from Zell am See in the province Salzburg got permission from her neighbours to look through a garbage container of things they had thrown out. Among other things, she took an old, gold-coloured cross. As nobody else liked it, the woman kept the gold-plate and enamel cross under her couch until showing it to art experts earlier this year. According to experts from Vienna’s Fine Arts Museum, the piece of garbage turned out to be a passion cross from a manufacturer in Limoges in France made around 1200. Similar pieces fetched up to 400,000 euros (537,000 dollars) at international auctions. Police traced the origin of the cross, showing the piece had been stolen by the Nazi regime from the Polish art collection of Izabella Elzbieta of Czartoryski Dzialinska in 1941. Pieces from the collection were moved from Warsaw to Austria, where the trail ended in 1945. The cross’s fate still remains unclear. The London-based Commission for Looted Art, informed by the Polish authorities, is representing the heirs. The local court in Zell am See decided that for the time being the garbage-treasure was to be kept at the local heritage museum at Leogang, where it could be properly stored.

Pretty cool find. One wonders how much is thrown away that does not get rescued. The case presents some interesting legal issues. I imagine the heirs of the deceased collector would perhaps have a claim. I’m not sure what the relevant limitations period in Austria would be, but it may be that the limitations has expired and the finder would get to retain title.

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

Napoleon III and the NSPA

Lomi Kriel of the San Antonio Express-News has an interesting account of the FBI’s confiscation of a carbine rifle owned by Napoleon III which was stolen from the Musée de l’Armée during WWII. French authorities saw an advertisement for the weapon on the internet. French authorities contacted interpol, which later involved the FBI’s Art Crime Team.

Napoleon III served as the emperor of France from 1852-70, and this carbine was one of the earliest breech-loading arms produced. Ralph Diaz, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio Division said “In the big picture, the FBI doesn’t typically get involved in the pursuit of a rifle… But this weapon is of great historical value to the country of France.” One wonders how the rifle was stolen. I wonder if it was perhaps an American soldier, as was the case with the Quedlinburg treasures.

The FBI did not identify the seller, and it seems he did not know the weapon was stolen when he acquired it for his collection. Federal prosecutors are reviewing the case, but charges are probably unlikely. The rifle was listed for sale at $12,000, a sum which is likely far below what it would have fetched at an open auction.

There are a few interesting things about this case. First, it reveals the extent to which the National Stolen Property Act can impact the trade in art or antiquities. In this case, charges probably will not be filed, but the NSPA allowed authorities to seize the weapon and return it to France. Also, collectors of any object which might have cultural value would be wise to conduct a thorough provenance check, and if a seller cannot or will not provide one, red flags should be raised.

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

Catching Up

  • Frank Pasquale of Concurring Opinions talks about how the difference between viewing a digital reproduction on the internet is much less effective than viewing a photograph in person, and perhaps this is a good argument for strong IP protection of works of art.
  • Michael Lewis in Commentary magazine talks about efforts by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation to compile a stolen art database of works taken from Prussia. Many of them are now in Russia, where they were removed after WWII.
  • Stephen Farrell of the NY Times reports on Baghdad hiring dozens of artists to paint murals on concrete barriers in the city.
  • Bradley Hope of the New York Sun reported on a ceremony to return an ancient Egyptian vessel which appeared in a Christie’s auction last year.
  • David Gill on looting matters compares archaeologists to animal rights activists; one would hope that not too many archaeologists take their ideas too far as some animal rights activists have done.
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

3 Picasso Works Recovered

Police have recovered 3 important works by Pablo Picasso stolen from the home of the artist’s granddaughter in February. These two canvases– Portrait de femme, Jacqueline pictured on the left and Maya à la poupée on the right. Another drawing, Marie-Thérèse à 21 ans was recovered as well. Details of the February theft are available here.

Three suspects have been arrested. In February police estimated the drawings may have been worth as much as $66 million. It seems the suspects were shopping the works to art dealers, and one of the dealers contacted French police. The suspects would have had a very difficult time selling the works, as they are widely known. Hopefully there will be a similar recovery of the works stolen from Nice on Sunday.

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