Stolen Icons Discovered in London

Six stolen Byzantine-style icons have been discovered in London near the Greek embassy.

The plundered art was revealed after a telephone call from a woman claiming to recognise one of the icons – a famous rendition of the Virgin – on the website of the Temple gallery in west London.
Further investigation showed that the immaculately preserved gold-edged painting was among six icons reported missing from Greece that the specialist was selling for up to £5,000 each. 

Richard Temple, who owns the gallery and is acknowledged as London’s foremost dealer in icons, said that when he bought them he had “absolutely no reason” to suspect they were stolen. 

“I’ve been in the business for 51 years and I’m too well known as a gallery to take any risks at all,” he said. “We are an obvious target. We had gone through the correct protocols, but one has to have a certain amount of trust as business is conducted in good faith. I know the seller – he is somebody I deal with and I think he, in turn, was duped.” 

Upon presentation of documentation showing them on display in Greece, the art dealer voluntarily gave up his rights to the icons last week. “They left last Thursday in the hands of Scotland Yard,” he said. “It was very painful and unfortunate.”

So Mr. Temple blames the sale on another unnamed dealer, who was also “duped”. Another unfortunate example of incomplete history. If the dealer was in fact duped he would have a remedy against the unnamed dealer.

  1. Helena Smith, Stolen Greek relics found in London | Art and design | The Guardian, The Guardian, March 20, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/mar/20/stolen-greek-relics-in-london (last visited Mar 21, 2011).
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Art-Beat Constables

Martin Bailey of the Art Newspaper has the story of Scotland Yard’s part-time volunteer officers which have been tasked with policing art theft, the sale of looted antiquities, forgery and fraud. 

ArtBeat began in January 2007, and there are currently 13 special constables (six males and seven females). These include two from national museums, three from the Art Loss Register, three archaeologists with the remainder from a variety of institutions. The two from museums are Zoe Jackman of the V&A (see below) and Michael Lewis of the British Museum, where he is deputy head of the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

The Art and Antiques Unit needs all the manpower it can get. Last year Scotland Yard proposed halving the staff of its Art and Antiques Unit, which had four officers. In the end, the cuts did not proceed and funding has been confirmed for the current financial year. Nevertheless, resources are tight and having 13 part-time special constables for two days a month is equivalent to one extra full-time officer. Inspector Alan Seldon told us: “There are only four officers in the unit. The scheme expands what we can do, and enhances our capability.” He wants to encourage more recruits from the London art scene.

This seems to be a good idea generally, and if it helps the Arts and Antiques Unit, that must be a good thing.  But its no substitute for an open and honest market in art and antiquities. 

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

Olympics or Arts

A steady string of arts venues have suffered closure in the UK in recent weeks. The Komedia in Brighton has had to shut its doors; the Windsor Arts Centre closed its doors last friday; and earlier this month the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen suddenly shut its doors as well. I should note in the interest of full disclosure that my wife had been in charge of marketing at the Lemon Tree for nearly a year, and its sudden closure came as quite a shock. It was hardly the season’s greetings we were expecting from the Aberdeen City Council. The Lemon Tree closing was particularly disappointing for us, as it was a great venue which did a lot of community and charity work; and in many cases funding was secured which actually made these events profitable.

Sadly the trend seems likely to continue. And what is the root cause? Arts funding is always a battle, especially for real new and creative enterprises. In many cases much of the money the arts council and other organizations had previously given these organizations has been diverted to the Olympic fund. Not only that but corporate and other sponsorships are diverted to the Olympics as well. It’s not only arts funding either.

The Portable Antiquities Scheme, a pioneering community archeology project will likely have its funding cut this year. Will Anderson rightly points out that “to halt the PAS now that it is operating so successfully would be folly. All so they can build another few domes for the Olympics. It is the department of ‘Culture’ Media and SPORT and its proxy the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, that deserve to be scrapped”.

Colin Renfrew had an excellent summary of the scheme’s benefits in an opinion piece in the Guardian earlier this week. He points out that the scheme is “starting to transform our understanding of many aspects of the past”. Seventeen PhDs have used PAS data. I know it featured prominently in my thesis as an excellent and pragmatic way to effectively regulate sites in source nations. In terms of concrete discoveries, a Viking age cemetery was discovered in cumbria, a Roman bowl bearing the names of forts on Hadrian’s wall has been acquired by the British Museum and others. Perhaps most importantly, “the scheme has also taken the initiative in policing the internet for objects that should be reported under the Treasure Act and has promoted a code of practice”.

The situation isn’t any better in Scotland either, where funding for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow will likely begin to increase as well. I don’t doubt that holding the Olympics in London will give a number of benefits to London and the UK. Perhaps if most British citizens were given a choice maybe they would choose Olympic funding over the arts and culture. However, I think those in charge should be upfront about the hidden costs and very real cuts which this Olympic bid will cause.

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.



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What is the Practical Effect of the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003?

“Dealers are Confident their methods won’t trigger the offence…”

Yesterday evening I had the great pleasure in attending a program by Dr. Simon Mackenzie at the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies in London. He gave some of his initial findings on a survey of important players in the antiquities market he had just completed with Professor Penny Green. Mackenzie was just starting to interpret his data quite obviously. A couple things he said really jumped out though, and should make the scholarly output from this project much sought-after.

According to Mackenzie, many of the respondents thought the act was of minimal effect. This is my view as well. There have been no completed prosecutions under the act, though apparently some charges have been brought for altering parts of registered buildings, but no convictions have been achieved. As I’ve argued before, prosecutions under the act will almost certainly be few and far between The reason for that is the difficulty of proof. The market does not operate with provenance or chain of title. Any given vase could have been in a collection for 150 years, or could have been unearthed last week. There is no way of distinguishing them once they have been restored.

I found one interview response from London’s law enforcement community quite fascinating. The respondent basically stated that the job of the police is to protect London, not to recover Iraqi or any other antiquities. Mackenzie labeled this problem national self-interest. On one level, I can completely see this police perspective. After all, if Londoners were going to allocate enforcement resources, wouldn’t most of them choose safety and security for London first? I think so. However this becomes problematic for the illicit trade in cultural property, which is truly international in character.

Another issue was the fact that these dealers are “powerful constituencies in their own governance”. Essentially, dealers have a great deal of say in how their own regulations are created. In conclusion, Mackenzie summarized the quandary by putting forward two different forms the antiquities market might take: (1) the market would end, or (2) the market would function along the lines of partage. In the latter model, experts would excavate sites, source nations would keep important objects, and then the excess antiquities would be auctioned off to finance the dig itself. In theory that seems a workable model. I’m not an archaeologist, and I have only a cursory knowledge of what they do, but that seems to be a difficult model for them to implement. One possible compromise might be for archaeologists to begin to commercialize their research, and thus allow for responsible commercial exploitation. In turn, dealers could implement some truly effective self-regulatory measures.

In the end, what I took from the discussion was a new-found respect for the Cultural Objects offence. I have been quite critical of it in the past, but I think, that only a truly draconian regulatory framework can effectively police the market as it currently operates. The best means of reform is to convince dealers that more money can be made by selling provenanced antiquities. That is a big job, and quite daunting, but achievable in my view.

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

Art Beat Constables


Lucian Harris of the Art Newspaper has an article on efforts of the London Metropolitan Police to recruit volunteers. Shockingly, the center of the second-largest art and antiquities market in the world, London, has only four full-time officers in its Art and Antiquities Unit. Furthermore, the Art squad has been told that it could become disbanded if it does not become 50% self-financing by 2008. What precisely “self-financing” would be does not appear clear to me. In response, the squad has been recruiting volunteers from museums, universities, and insurance companies to serve as Special Constables who will spend one day every two weeks patrolling markets or doing undercover work. The volunteers will receive training in police procedure and specialist art squad techniques.

The goal of the effort is to build bridges between the police and the art world. Perhaps the program will garner results, but I’m highly skeptical. What self-respecting art dealer would risk damage to his reputation by putting on a police uniform and patrolling the streets of London, looking for stolen masterpieces (such as Camden Passage, pictured here)? The measure seems a bit bizarre, and if authorities in London are actually serious about limiting the trade in illicit cultural property, there are much better, more practical ways to proceed. Authorities could start by amending the extremely weak Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003.

This measure seems to me a public relations jaunt, and one that carries a substantial risk of backfiring. Could you imagine the Italian Carabinieri adopting such a scheme? I think not.

(Image Courtesy of Channel 4)

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