Tag: Art Theft

Vigango from Kenya


Robin Pogrebin has an interesting article in today’s New York Times on a decision to return 9 wooden grave objects to Kenya. A ceremony at the UN yesterday marked the decision. They had been purchased by Lewis and Jay allen and were on display in their Park Avenue apartment. Their daughter decided to return them to Kenya after learning of their significance to Kenyans. It took her four months to arrange for their return. That seems to be an underconsidered problem with many source nations: they need to make it easy for individuals to repatriate artifacts to ensure they aren’t subject to criminal liability and that there are places to hold the objects.

It seems the statues are used to decorate graves, and often become part of ongoing ceremonies, discussions and celebrations. It would be as if someone took the headstone from your grandmother’s grave and displayed it in their living room. The clear implication is that all vigango are stolen in one form or another. They are valued by collectors in the US, Europe and Japan because they are beautiful works of african art, but they may not know they were meant as grave decoration. This strongly indicates all exported vigango were stolen.

But some US museums have them in their collection, and are loathe to return them. The ethical and legal grounds for their return is very strong, the only thing missing from a repatriation would seem to be an initiative by the African source nations.

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

A Magritte is Recovered


Magritte’s Les Reflets du Temps has been recovered. The work had been stolen from storage in 2006. The work may be worth up to £350,000. The work was discovered by a member of the public who checked it against the London Stolen Art Database. This is welcome news, and perhaps will give pause before planned cuts the the Art and Antiques unit take place.

Det Supt Vernon Rapley, head of the unit, said: “For anyone considering buying art, antiquities or cultural property the database is an invaluable resource to help buyers check that they aren’t being sold stolen items.

“I am really pleased that the database has enabled this Magritte to be found so that the victim can have it returned to them.”

Exactly right, but the website explicitly states that it should not be used for due diligence purposes. The problem with databases, is there are too many, and they are divided regionally. Ideally there would be one overarching database any prospective buyer could check.

There is no word either on who stole the work. Unfortunately that is often the case when stolen art like this is recovered. The thieves are long gone, and the authorities main priority (and perhaps rightly so) is the recovery of the work. This also makes it appear as if there are little or no penalties to be had for stealing works though.

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

Stolen Greek Statue Returned to Greece


This 1,900 year-old torso has been returned to Athens after it was seized in Switzerland. It was recovered in March from the Swiss city of Basel. It had been taken in 1991 from the island of Crete. Switzerland has historically been a transit state for many antiquities, however it has worked to change that in recent months by signing on to the largely symbolic 1970 UNESCO Convention, but also implementing that convention effectively by signing bilateral agreements with Peru, Italy and Greece.

I wonder why the Swiss dealer David Cahn who had the statue was not subject to any criminal penalties, or indeed why he gave up the object so freely. Had the object been in the United States, he would have been subject to Federal Prosecution.

This object was not illicitly excavated, but rather was stolen along with 9 other items. From the comments of the Greek Culture Minister George Voulgarakis, it seems he is connecting the return of this theft with the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum. Clearly though, the two cases are much different.

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

Theft of a Small Masterpiece in Sydney


Last week a work by Dutch master Frans van Mieris, A Cavalier (Self Portrait), was taken from a busy gallery last Sunday. The work may be worth as much as $1.4 million Australian. The work is not large, measuring about 30cm x 26cm. The Director of the Art Gallery of NSW, Edmund Capon said “To be honest, I could slip it under your coat… it could have happened that way”.

Many of the Australian news outlets refer to an interview on Australian ABC radio with Robert Goldman, an agent with the FBI Art Crime Team. Goldman runs through the usual speculation which occurs when a valuable painting has been stolen, as the market for a high-profile work is negligible. As he said, “Our experience, the FBI experience, is that approximately 80 per cent of museum theft cases of art are inside jobs – either people who work there – people whom we say ‘have the keys to the kingdom’.”

Other theories are that the thieves were just foolish, thinking they could have sold it, when in reality they cannot. Also there is the usual speculation that the work could have been stolen on consignment by a Dr. No character because as Goldman says “There are collectors out there that don’t care if the items are stolen.”

The recovery rate for these works is very low. When this kind of work does resurface, it is often a generation later. The irony in this case is this gallery had begun to trumpet its new security in preparation for an upcoming exhibition on Islamic Art. The other possibility may be that security is so lax, a gallery visitor may have just admired the work and wanted it on their wall. Though much of the gallery is under video surveillance, it seems the room where this object was displayed was not.

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

Vanishing Heritage in the Cradle of Civilization


Things are looking increasingly grim in Iraq these days, with the US considering arming Sunni groups that once attacked coalition forces. Soon after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, western journalists visited the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad and reported incorrectly that 170,000 objects were stolen from the museum. More careful reporting soon accurately placed that number far lower, and current estimates seem to indicate that a still alarming 3,000 objects are still missing, with about 47 main exhibition artifacts missing.

Thus I always maintain a healthy bit of skepticism when articles come out detailing the loss of archaeological context and heritage in Iraq. The article last Friday by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian titled “In Iraq’s four-year looting frenzy, the allies have become the vandals”even viewed skeptically reveals some very troubling things about the way archaeological sites are treated by coalition forces.

The catalyst for the discussion was a presentation by Abbas al-Hussaini, the head of Iraq’s board of antiquities and heritage to the British Museum. He detailed a number of disturbing things. The former head of the antiquities board in Iraq, Donny George, left for a teaching position in New York, fearing for his life. Today the national museum “is not open but shut… Its doors are bricked up, it is surrounded by concrete walls and its exhibits are sandbagged. Even the staff cannot get inside.” A 10th century caravenserai of Khan al-Raba was used to explode captured weapons. Looters are better armed than the Iraqi forces seeking to protect the ancient monuments. Two 4,000 year-old cities, Isin and Shurnpak, have been demolished by looting pits. The 11 teams Hussaini has organized travel the countryside attempting to retrieve any artifacts the looters have left behind. Even muslim sites are subject to destruction, with a number of bombings of mosques from the 10th and 11th centuries

When I was in Istanbul in May, I saw some of the glazed bricks from the Ishtar gate leading to Babylon, and they are stunning. The lion image above was very impressive. For me then perhaps the most disturbing claims detail the destruction taking place at the ancient city of Babylon:

Hussaini confirmed a report… on America’s conversion of Nebuchadnezzar’s great city of Babylon into the hanging gardens of Halliburton. This meant a 150-hectare camp for 2,000 troops. In the process the 2,500-year-old brick pavement to the Ishtar Gate was smashed by tanks and the gate itself damaged. The archaeology-rich subsoil was bulldozed to fill sandbags, and large areas covered in compacted gravel for helipads and car parks. Babylon is being rendered archaeologically barren.

Despite some unnecessary snarking by Jenkins here, the destruction at Babylon is a grave tragedy. He does conveniently overlook some facts though. The coalition forces only seem to be continuing the destruction and disdain Saddam Hussein had for the site when he was in power. This slide show taken by US Marine Gunnery Sergeant Daniel O’Connell in 2003 shows the ancient city, the unfortunate modern reconstruction by Hussein on top of the archaeological site, and the modern palace he built where marines first stayed. The colonel in charge of the site apologized last year, and UNESCO officials are even considering developing the place into a tourist attraction at some point.

It seems very unfortunate that coalition forces, in the face of the looting of so many sites, should have blundered so badly at Babylon, which is in one of the most secure regions of Iraq. The Geneva Convention dictates that forces should treat opposing cultural heritage with care. Also, though the US and UK have failed to implement the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict(because it might restrict their ability to use nuclear arms), they notionally abide by its tenets.

The US is doing a good job of policing its antiquities market, as a Fox News cameraman was arrested for smuggling Iraqi antiquities into the country recently. The UK also has legislation preventing the import of Iraqi antiquities. Jenkins gets a final jab in at the Department of Culture Media and Sport which seems far more concerned with the upcoming London Olympics than the illicit cultural property market. I wonder if the £400,000 recently spent on the unfortunate mascot would have been better served policing the antiquities market. The Met’s Art and Antiquities squad has only 3 full time investigators, and is in jeopardy of further budget cuts. But only so much can be done when provenance or a title history is not routinely given during transactions. As long as the market is hidden from view, looters will continue to find purchasers for their ill-gotten gains.

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

$2 to $6 Billion Worldwide

All Things Considered featured an interesting story on art theft last week by Frank Browning. It gets to the heart of the intrigue behind art theft. Does it support terrorism, drugs or organized crime? Is there a modern Dr. No? Here’s part of the story:

May 31, 2007 · Art theft has turned into a global industry that experts believe now fuels everything from terrorism to drug-running. At least one art sleuth puts art crime, including stolen antiquities and traffic in forgeries, behind only drug and arms trafficking as the third-most lucrative criminal activity in the world, at $2 to $6 billion a year.

Late one night last winter, thieves broke into the Paris apartment of Pablo Picasso’s daughter and granddaughter. When the granddaughter went downstairs, she found two of the painter’s best-known works missing.

And several years ago, thieves made off with Edvard Munch’s globally famous “The Scream” from an Oslo museum; before that, thieves carted off a dozen masterpieces from a Boston museum.

There are almost as many theories about what happens to the booty from these capers as there are stolen art works.

The most romantic ideas posit an enigmatic “Dr. No” character who commissions thieves to snatch particular works to adorn a secret hideout on a remote island.

But most art sleuths think this is hogwash. Another intriguing theory has stolen art functioning almost as commodities – traded over and over again on the black market, at less than 10 percent of its auction value, for guns or drugs. This theory has almost all art theft perpetrated by organized crime syndicates.

Listen to the radio segment here. The comments by Dick Ellis, that the resources devoted to the problem by Scotland Yard are inadequate are right on point. I also think the notion that stolen art and antiquities are used as collateral is interesting, and quite plausible. Unfortunately there just isn’t a lot of good evidence to support the hypothesis.

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

International Law and Trade Conference in Istanbul

Last week I had the good fortune to present my work at the ILTC Conference in Istanbul. The title of my talk was “New Strategies for Source and Market Regulation of the International Trade in Cultural Property”. It went well, and we really enjoyed our time in Istanbul, the highlight of which was a dinner cruise on the Bosphorus. Here’s a quick summary of my presentation, in which I talked about the suitability of increased criminal penalties, antiquities leasing, and electronic databases as tools for decreasing the illicit trade:

Cultural property has a universal appeal. Objects of artistic, cultural, archaeological, and historical importance are rapidly escalating in price. As demand for these cultural items increases, the theft and looting of cultural property escalates as well. A number of legal measures have been created to attempt to limit the illicit market in cultural property. With notable exceptions, these restrictions have proved largely unsuccessful in limiting the trade in illicit cultural property, which has been estimated as the third largest black market behind illegal narcotics and firearms. Regulation of the illicit trade in cultural property has been difficult for two reasons. First, many of the current regulatory measures, such as export controls and national patrimony laws, have the unintended consequence of increasing demand for these objects on the black market. Second, the flow of cultural items is international. Many of the World’s most important and historic antiquities are located in the developing world. This international character requires an international regulatory framework. It requires the cooperation of authorities from the industrialized and the developed world. Regrettably, effective cooperation has not yet taken place.

Nearly every nation, especially those rich in art and antiquities, has some form of restriction on the transfer of cultural property. The restrictions at the source of these objects take various forms, and include: export restrictions, a pre-emptive right to buy some objects, or a declaration of national ownership. The United States and the UK have both recently affirmed the notion that their criminal justice system will recognize as stolen objects taken in contravention of a national ownership declaration. This stands as an important step, but only marks the very pinnacle of the regulatory framework, intended only for the most egregious transgressions.

A truly effective regulatory scheme must work in concert with the art and antiquities trade to push the movement of cultural items, and the profits derived from their sale, in beneficial directions. To accomplish this end, I advocate a strong and vibrant arts and antiquities market. However it must be closely regulated to prevent illicit transactions. To accomplish this, I propose a system of regulation and investment which would require arts and antiquities transactions to be conducted openly, with records of transactions, provenance, find-spots, and export permits. Regardless of the other intricate regulatory frameworks we might endorse, the illicit trade will almost certainly continue to flourish without a fundamental shift in the way art and antiquities are bought and sold.

In recent years, the cultural property debate has focused on the extent to which the criminal law can impact the illicit trade. This has unfortunately shifted the discussion away from cultural property policy. Museum curators are forced to acquire objects, not based on their artistic or historical value, but rather on the criminal advice of their counsel. Connoisseur ship has been displaced by other considerations. We should be looking at how best to safeguard archaeological sites, museums, and other historic sites to prevent theft and destruction. A criminal response, in isolation, can never hope to achieve success without overwhelming law enforcement resources or draconian legal measures.

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

Bernard Taper


Last Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an interesting profile of Bernard Taper, one of the so-called Monument Men who worked to recover works stolen by the Nazi’s after WWII. He worked as an art-intelligence officer with the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section of the U.S. military. I wonder what became of this section. It hasn’t seem to have been involved in any of the major conflicts the U.S. has waged since. Notably the efforts of Matthew Bogdanos in Iraq were on his own initiative because he has a background in Classics. It may be worth examining why this section has disappeared or if it is still functioning. It appears that it was a singular unit charged with repatriation Nazi spoliation. Profiles of these guys are always interesting, and this is no exception. Taper is featured prominently along with some others in the forthcoming documentary titled The rape of Europa. That film is being screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival. For more information click here. Taper has an excellent story to tell as this excerpt shows:

“I was in the Army for three years, and I didn’t fire a shot at anybody and nobody fired a shot at me. That’s the definition of a good war,” the white-haired Taper, sharp at 89, says with a smile. But he did his part to bring forth light, in the form of recovered art, from the darkness of the war.

Born in London and educated at UC Berkeley, Taper was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. He served in intelligence and infantry units before being sent back to Berkeley to learn Chinese in preparation for work as a liaison officer assigned to Chaing Kai-Shek’s army in China. But at the last minute, the entire class was sent to Germany, where the war was over.

“It was the Army. Why do you think they invented words like ‘snafu’?” laughs Taper, who was assigned to Patton’s Third Army, then sent to Munich to write intelligence reports. Lunching outdoors one day at an officers’ club, he fell into conversation with a dashing chap named Walter Horn, an Aryan German who abhorred Hitler and left, became a professor of medieval history at UC Berkeley and saw combat action during the war.

“He started telling me marvelous, fascinating stories about what it was like in his job to search for lost and stolen art,” recalls Taper, who had begun contributing to the New Yorker and the Nation while serving in occupied Germany. Horn was desperate to go home, but couldn’t until he found a successor for his art-investigating job. “When he met me he found his successor,” says Taper, who told Horn he wasn’t an art historian and probably wasn’t qualified. Horn said the Monuments section was “lousy with art historians,” but what was needed was somebody who knew how to ask questions. As a budding journalist, Taper fit the bill.

As a further inducement, Horn told him he would have the use of a white BMW roadster, wouldn’t have to wear a uniform, could travel freely without orders and would meet women. “And he said if nothing else, there’s all this art you can look at,” recalls Taper, quick to point out that he got a brown Audi sedan, not the promised BMW. For about six weeks, Taper was in charge of the Army’s art-collecting center at Wiesbaden, which was filled with not only looted art but works from various German civic collections.

“They had fantastic stuff there,” Taper says. “In the office, across the whole back wall, was Watteau’s ‘Embarkation for Cythera,’ and a wonderful Degas, where you look up through the orchestra pit, through the beards of the musicians, at these elegant dancers. It was from the Frankfurt Museum.” As Taper says in the documentary, “Just that office alone was worth the price of admission to World War II.” Outside the door stood a 5,000-year-old stone Nefertiti, which also stopped Taper in his tracks. “I couldn’t just brush by. I had to stop and commune with her.”

Building on the work of previous Monument Men, such as his friend Stewart Leonard, a bomb diffuser who single-handedly removed 22 mines from the Chartres Cathedral and later opened crates containing priceless books and Dürer drawings, Taper tracked down mostly mid-level missing artworks, by painters like the 16th century Dutch artist Mierevelt and his Flemish contemporary Teniers, as well church statuary and other looted objects.

“Probably the best artwork I helped recover was from Göring’s train,” Taper says, abandoned on a rail siding not far from Neuschwanstein Castle, where Allied troops found a huge cache of stolen art. The locals had heard there was schnapps on board, Taper says, and after stealing the schnapps, they took the rest of the stuff, which included late-Gothic wood statutes and a 15th century School of Rogier van der Weyden painting. “Not bad,” says Taper, who had the bright idea of tapping the de-Nazifed German police to help him find stolen goods.

Just a thought, but the stories of these Monument Men and the return of stolen art are quite popular and exciting. I wonder if that popularity and the good will they engender may have some kind of a connection to the generous statutes of limitations rules which have been applied to claimants seeking the return of art stolen from their forebears in recent decades.

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

Lowry Theft at Knifepoint

The Viaduct by LS Lowry

Five paintings by LS Lowry have been stolen at knifepoint. The works may be worth as much as £1.5m. They were taken from an art dealer’s home outside of Manchester. It seems the police have released images of the paintings and a composite sketch of one of the thieves. However, they have not put the images on their website. A police spokesperson said, “They must have known Mr Aird was an art collector and that he would have the paintings in the house.” The trick of course will be how the thieves can cash in on the theft.

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

Scotland Yard Halves Art and Antique Squad Funding

Grim news for the London Metropolitan Police Art and Antiques Squad. Saturday’s edition of the Guardian had the following:

The dramatic scaling down of Scotland Yard’s once renowned arts and antique squad has left organised criminals free to plunder the nation’s heritage, according to a leading fine art insurer.

Police have sought private money to finance the squad after its annual budget of some £300,000 was halved earlier this year. But the Guardian has learned that Scotland Yard has failed to secure a penny from insurers or auction houses, after months of discussions.

Britain’s art market is second only to the US and experts claim up to £200m worth of stolen art and antiques are sold in the UK each year. Interpol estimates that art theft is the fourth largest organised crime after drugs, people trafficking and arms.

Annabel Fell-Clark, chief executive of Axa Art UK, which pays out tens of millions of pounds a year to reimburse victims of art theft, condemned the slashing of the unit’s budget. She warned that scaling down the unit was already having an impact on pursuing art thieves who target Britain’s stately homes and museums.

“We have seen that they [the team] are increasingly overstretched and being treated as a very low priority. At the moment we have very good information which we are wanting to pass on, which would bring arrests, if not convictions. But we are not being treated particularly seriously, let’s put it that way.

“We want to see criminal gangs brought to justice, and in some instances lack of interest from the squad has stopped us being able to pursue further recovery. We want and need to work with the police.”

She said Axa was aware the government was seeking funding for the squad but the company had decided it would not consider paying directly for the unit, adding that attempts by the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police to find private sponsors in the art world were shortsighted.

“It would be a conflict of interest for us to get involved,” she said. “We have slightly different agendas. As insurers, we are interested in recovering the pieces however we can, and are not that bothered about finding and prosecuting the perpetrators. We are concerned that this aspect of law enforcement is not taken particularly seriously right now.

“Very often when you are investigating art theft connections are uncovered with organised crime in relation to drugs and arms dealing, so it doesn’t make sense to ignore this aspect of criminal activity.”

The London based “arts squad” was formed in 1969 to pursue and prosecute criminals who operate in the second biggest art market in the world. In the past the unit, which is called in to investigate 120 cases a year, was involved in recovery of art works across the world.

(continue reading)

This is a troubling development. 150,000 is not a very large sum, and a drop in the bucket compared to the amounts of money which changes hands in the UK art and antiquities market. If the United Kingdom is serious about combating the illicit trade in arts and antiquities, it needs to maintain a well-funded art-theft unit. To expect the arts and antiquities unit to solicit funding from those they are supposed to regulate and police also strikes me as ridiculous.



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