art, heritage, & law
Noah Charney was interviewed by Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace yesterday. Charney argues that the majority of art theft after World War II can be traced to organized crime syndicates, and that the media actually helps set the price point for the black market transfer of high profile works of art.
The interview appears after the jump.
The Marketplace Interview:
On the missing panel from the Ghent Altarpiece:
I’ve just finished reading Noah Charney’s “Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece”. This review should probably begin with a disclosure. Noah is a friend and colleague, first an internet acquaintance, and now we meet up every summer in Amelia during ARCA’s MA certificate program which he founded.
This work tells the story of one massive 2-ton altar piece, the single most stolen work of art of all time, and one that should be familiar to anyone who has taken an introduction to art history course.
After dropping the reader into history as allied forces are searching for the altar piece during World War II, we learn early on that this work was the prize of Hitler and Napoleon. That this massive masterpiece was nearly destroyed many times over. Yet somehow it has endured.
And we should all be glad it has. The object itself is stunning, Charney in the first chapter takes the reader through the importance of the painting itself, how it helped launch the career of Jan van Eyck, how art historians have puzzled over how much of the work was completed by van Eyck’s brother Hubert, how the artist used intricate symbolism, how it helped usher in the era of oil painting and beautiful detail. But perhaps most importantly, the discussion of this painting and all it symbolizes reminded me why art matters, and how a stunning work of art can change the way we all see the world, and each viewer gets a chance to re-learn or even re-evaluate those shifts in opinion. And in the end the work begins with a lively account for why individuals have stolen, mutilated, and coveted this work of art.
Next the reader learns about the artist himself, about the “Magician in the Red Turban”. the reader also learns about attribution, the recent decline of connoisseurship in the appreciation of art, how the movement of art can cause the re-appraisal of works of art as happened when the Albert Barnes Collection is preparing to move and many of its Old Master paintings were found to have been misattributed. We learn about the creation of the Louvre, the place the Ghent altarpiece played in the creation of that museum, and how many of the arguments made for a universal museum were made by Dominique Vivant Denon who served as the architect of the art looting during Napleon’s reign.
Charney spends great care telling the story of the altarpiece during both World Wars, noting the debt we art theft writers owe to Karl Meyer, Robert Edsel and Brett Witter’s fine work telling the story of the Monuments Men, and Lynn Nicholas among many others. Yet what really comes through in Charney’s book is a breathless story which merges history, towering figures like Napoleon or Hitler and their associates, art, artists, and imagery that revalidates why so many are interested in the study of art theft: these are really good stories. And it ends with an epilogue, yet another of the work’s enduring mysteries, that should not be spoiled here.
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| The still-missing “Poppy Flowers”, by Vincent van Gogh |
An Egyptian minister said Sunday that an employee working at the Cairo museum likely participated in the theft. Habib al-Adly told Egypt’s official news agency “There are many circumstances around the theft of the Poppy Flowers that point to the fact that a museum employee participated in the theft or stole it himself . . . The location and placement inside the museum confirms this”. This may explain why there was such a strong reaction to the arrest and a crack down on the museum’s own staff and security personnel, or it may be an attempt to find a scapegoat. Either a museum employee was complicit in the theft, or there was gross negligence which allowed this work to be cut from its frame. There are still precious few details, and the work remains missing.
cross-posted at: http://art-crime.blogspot.com/
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| The stolen work, “Poppy Flowers” |
A week ago today the 1887 work Poppy Flowers, by Vincent van Gogh was stolen from a Cairo museum. Hadeel Al-Shalchi has a very good piece reporting on the security (or lack of it) at the Mahmoud Khalil museum in a piece for the AP which you can read on MSNBC.
I’m quoted at the end of the piece, noting that the best way to protect works of art is not necessarily with an elaborate electronic security system. Those alarms and sensors certainly play an important role, but for a nation like Egypt, an active, engaged security guard who isn’t dozing off as these guards perhaps were, would seemingly have been a successful deterrent for the thieves. They apparently walked in and cut the work from the frame during hours the museum was open. And I want to make clear that when I was quoted in the piece saying “It’s not an exciting job, but you need to take it seriously”, I mean that security staff at museums are professionals, and should be given that status. In Cairo, these guards were certainly not expected or required to maintain an adequate standard, and the theft and damage of this artwork is the unfortunate result. But hopefully Egypt will learn from this crime, and enact some sound security procedures to ensure more works of art are not stolen in the future.
When Ms. Al-Shalchi called me to discuss the theft, she told me she had learned that many of the guards may have been praying—this is still Ramadan—while the theft was taking place, that they may have been dozing off, and that the museum was not heavily visited on the day of the theft. But perhaps most troubling of all were the breakdowns in technology at the museum. As the piece states, there were no working alarms, only seven of the 43 cameras were in operating condition, and video from the cameras is recorded only when a guard “senses” an incident may be taking place. As Ton Cremers, founder of the Museum Security Network says, this is not a good state of affairs for the protection of such valuable artworks: “The value of the van Gogh is $40 (million) to $50 million . . . A complete security system of that museum would be $50,000, and to keep it running would cost $3,000 a year. … Need I say more?”
Also of interest will be the arguments against repatriation of other classes of objects—such as the bust of Nefertiti—on the grounds that Egypt is not going to be able to adequately care for the object when it is returned. yet Art theft occurs in every nation, and bad security is bad security whether the museum is in Egypt, Europe, or North America. Thieves will exploit obvious gaps in security. As Mark Durney, current moderator of the Museum Security Network, asked this week “Why are some national collections not as well protected as others? Who, in addition to the thief, is responsible for the theft?” I think that is the right set of questions to ask, yet they need to be asked whenever a museum is unprepared for a theft, whether that museum is in Egypt, or France—where the security system at the Modern Museum may have not been in working order earlier this summer when five works were stolen.
(cross-posted at http://art-crime.blogspot.com/)
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| “The Poppy Flowers” by Vincent Van Gogh |
“[Y]ou’ve got two prime examples of people being indifferent to the need to protect their paintings”.
So says Charles Hill in an interview with BBC Radio 4 on the theft of this work from the Khalil Museum in Cairo on Saturday, which bears similarities to the theft in Paris earlier this summer. The thieves cut the work from the frame. Though some early reports indicated that the work had been recovered, that now appears to be inaccurate. Two Italians have been detained at the airport, they were among the ten people who apparently visited the museum on Saturday. It seems only 7 out of 43 security cameras were functioning.
The same work was stolen in 1978, and was apparently recovered in Kuwait soon after.
Stealing art is shockingly easy. See below video of an art theft on Royal Street here in New Orleans. The theft of two of George Rodrigue’s Blue Dog paintings occurred late in the day on Friday. As you can see below a man walked in, took two small canvases from a back room and walked off. A few simple steps could have easily averted this theft, and as usual CC tv cameras don’t really do much good. A step as simple as placing a number of marbles behind the frames would have alerted the gallery staff, or even a very loud alarm system like art guard — which is a simple and relatively inexpensive way to prevent this kind of theft.
Crime video: ‘Blue Dog’ robber in action |
According to a report by the Art Newspaper, the V&A museum has hired Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley away from Scotland Yard’s art and antiques. The V&A is a massive museum, which has been difficult to safely secure in the past. Here’s to hoping he can continue to improve the V&A’s security. From the Art Newspaper:
He joins the museum on 21 June, to take charge of security and visitor services. Before turning to art, Rapley investigated murder, paedophilia and child abuse at the Metropolitan Police. He really got to know the V&A in 2004, when there was a spate of thefts at major London museums. The V&A was hit three times, and 38 rooms had to be shut, many for years, while security was upgraded. Supported by the V&A, the Yard set up the London Museum Security Group. Rapley even took a turn as guest curator earlier this year, when he organised a Scotland Yard-curated display at the museum on fakes and forgeries, which spotlighted the case of the Greenhalgh family from Bolton, who created objects ranging from Egyptian antiquities to modern paintings.
Another theft in France, this time from a private residence in Marseille. Five works, including a Picasso lithograph were stolen in a violent theft. The owner was assaulted during the robbery. Reports indicate that two men managed to get past the home’s security gates and take the works. Mark Durney asks: “Was this theft inspired by the audacious theft from Paris’s Museum of Modern Art?”
