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Showing posts with label Noah Charney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Noah Charney. Show all posts

October 13, 2016

Conference: Artcrime 2016 - The New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust

Yayoi Kusama public artwork, “Dots for Love and Peace” 2009,
City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand 2009
Sponsored by: The New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust

Date: Saturday 15 October 2016

Location: City Gallery, Wellington

Times: 10:00 am - 7 pm

10.00am - Welcome; Formal Opening
Arthur Tompkins and Elizabeth Caldwell

10.20am - Introduction
Louisa Gommans

10.25am - Art Crime as a discipline: progress since 2008
Noah Charney

10.55am - Anatomy of an international statue trafficking network.
Simon Mackenzie

11.25am - Q & A

11.30am - Morning tea

12.00pm - Introduction
Ngarino Ellis

12.05pm - Repatriation in a museum context: no one size fits all
Puāwai Cairns

12.35pm - Stolen Art in Paradise? Stories of Illicit trafficking of Cultural Property in the Pacific: Case Studies from Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea
Tarisi Vunidilo

1.05pm - Q & A
1.10pm - Lunch

2.00pm - Introduction
Penelope Jackson

2.05pm - Copying for the colonies: W. S. Hatton and the forging of national histories
Rebecca Rice

2.35pm - Re-Use and Misuse of images of Museum collection items
Victoria Leachman

3.05pm - Q & A

3.10pm - Afternoon tea

3.40pm - Panel discussion: Security in the Galleries Catherine Gardner
New Zealand Police
Erika McClintock – City Gallery, Wellington
Courtney Johnston – The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt
Reuben Friend – Pātaka, Porirua

4.40pm - Art Thieves, Fraudsters and Fakers: The New Zealand Story by Penelope Jackson (Awa Press 2016) Mary Varnham; Elizabeth Caldwell interviewing Penelope Jackson

Following the formal programme, attendees are invited to stay on for an informal cocktail and networking function at the Gallery from 5.00 pm to 7.00pm.  This will include the launch of Art Thieves, Fraudsters and Fakers: The New Zealand Story by Penelope Jackson (Published by Awa Press 2016).

June 24, 2015

Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - ,, No comments

Noah Charney's book "The Art of Forgery" discussed on NPR's "Fresh Air" with Dave Davies

Here's a link to NPR's Fresh Air program on ARCA Founder Noah Charney's recently published book "The Art of Forgery":
Michelangelo is known for masterpieces like the Sistine Chapel and the statue of David, but most people probably don't know that he actually got his start in forgery. The great artist began his career as a forger of ancient Roman sculptures, art scholar Noah Charney tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. 
By the time Michelangelo's forgery was revealed, the Renaissance master was famous in his own right. But many other artistic forgers continue to copy the work of past artists in the hopes of passing their creations off as authentic. 
The art industry, says Charney, is a "multibillion-dollar-a-year legitimate industry that is so opaque you can't quite understand why anyone participates in it." In his new book, The Art of Forgery, Charney traces a tradition of fakes and forgeries that dates back to the Renaissance. 
In many instances, forgery is a question of economics; a forgery that is authenticated may be worth millions of dollars. But Charney says that many other art forgers are doing it as a "sort of passive aggressive revenge" against an art world that was not interested in their original work — but was too dim to tell forgeries from true masterpieces. 
Charney adds that the business practices of the art world provide a "fertile ground" for criminals: "You do not necessarily know who the seller is when you're buying a work of art. You might have to send cash to anonymous Swiss bank account. You may or may not get certificates of authenticity or any paperwork attributing to the authentic nature of the work in question. You may not be certain the seller actually owns the work. You might have gentlemen's agreements and handshakes rather than contracts — and this is normal in the legitimate art world."

June 8, 2015

Spring 2015 Issue, The Journal of Art Crime: New issue examines archaeological looting and art theft

The Spring 2015 issue of The Journal of Art Crime edited by Noah Charney, founder of ARCA, includes articles, reviews, and columns on the interdisciplinary field on the subject of art theft, authentication, fakes and forgeries, and looted antiquities. Here's the table of contents for the latest issue of this bi-annual publication:

ACADEMIC ARTICLES

The Multifarious Nature of Art Forgery in France: 
Four Case Studies of Belle Époque Fakes and Forgeries
by Carolyn EmBree and David A. Scott

Rekindling the Flame:
The Role of Hawaii’s Museums in Resurrecting Hawaiian Identity
by Suzette D. Scotti 

Analyzing Criminality in the Market for Ancient Near Eastern Art
by Ryan Casey

Damaging the Archaeological Record: The Lenborough Hoard
by David Gill

“But We Didn’t Steal It:”
Collectors’ Justifications for Purchasing Looted Antiquities
by Erin L. Thompson

REGULAR COLUMNS

Lessons from the History of Art Crime
“Napoleon: Emperor of Art Theft”
by Noah Charney

Context Matters
“From Palmyra to Mayfair: The Movement of Antiquities from Syria and Northern Iraq”
by David Gill

Nekyia
“Duplicates and the Antiquities Market”
by Christos Tsirogiannis

EDITORIAL ESSAYS

The Grape War of China: Wine Fraud and How Science is Fighting Back
by Toby Bull

New Archaeological Discoveries and Cultural Ventures beyond War Threats:
A Model of Excellence Stemming from Iraqi-Italian Cooperation
by Francesca Coccolo

REVIEWS

Cultural Heritage Ethics: Between Theory and Practice 
Edited by Constantine Sandis
Reviewed by Marc Balcells

America and the Return of Nazi Contraband: The Recovery of Europe’s Cultural Treasures
Written by Michael J Kurtz
Reviewed by Kirsten Hower

The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth
Written by Ben Macintyre
Reviewed by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

EXTRAS

ARCA 2015 Award Winners

JAC Essay Collection

Acknowledgements

Contributor Biographies

Design and layout is by Urska Charney.

This link to ARCA publications provides information about subscribing to the issues of The Journal of Art Crime.

February 26, 2015

Faculty and Course Schedule for the 2015 Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection


 The Faculty and Course Schedule for the 2015 Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection in Amelia, Italy has been confirmed** and  the general application period has been extended through March 30, 2015.



For a copy of this year's prospectus and application materials please write to ARCA at education (at) artcrimeresearch.org

For more information on this year's program please see this earlier blog posting.

June 2015

Course I  - “The International Art Market and Associated Risk”
Dr. Tom Flynn, Art Historian and London Art Lecturer,
Adjunct Assistant Professor Richmond The American International University in London
Senior Lecturer and Visiting Lecturer Kingston College and Christie's Education

Course II - “Art Policing, Protection and Investigation”

Richard Ellis, Law Enforcement
Detective and Founder of The Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard Art and Antiquities Squad (retired),
Director, Art Management Group

Course III - “Breitwiesers, Medicis, Beltracchis, Gurlitts and Other Shady Artsy Characters:  How to Analyze their Crimes Empirically”
Marc Balcells, Criminologist; Criminal Defense Attorney
Doctoral Fellow at The City University of New York - John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Professor, Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche
Consultant, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Course IV - “Art Forgers and Thieves”
Dr. Noah Charney, Author, Founding Director of ARCA
Adjunct Professor of Art History, American University of Rome 

Course V - “Insurance Claims and the Art Trade”

Dorit Straus, Insurance Industry Expert
Insurance Industry Consultant, Art Recovery Group PLC
Vice President and Worldwide Specialty Fine Art Manager for Chubb & Son, a division of Federal Insurance Company  (retired)

July 2015

Courses VI - “Art Crime in War”
Judge Arthur Tompkins, Forensic Expert
District Court Judge in New Zealand

Courses VII - “Art and Heritage Law”
Dr. Duncan Chappell, Professor
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law at the University of Sydney,
Former Director of the Australian Institute of Criminology (1987-1994)

Courses VIII - “Risk Assessment and Museum Security”
Dick Drent, Security and Risk Management
Omnirisk, Director
Corporate Security Manager, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam  (retired)

Course IX - “TBA”

August 2015

Course X - “Looting, Theft, Destruction, and Repatriation of Cultural Property: Community Impacts”
Dr. Laurie Rush, Cultural Property Protection Expert
Board Member, United States Committee of the Blue Shield

Course XI - “Antiquities and Identity”

Dr. Valerie Higgins, Archaeologist
Associate Professor and Chair of Archaeology and Classics at the American University of Rome





**While the 2015 course listing has been confirmed as of January 13, 2015, the 2015 course listing and instructor line-up may change,in the event unforeseen circumstances affect the assigned instructor’s availability. 


February 1, 2015

ARCA Founder Noah Charney returns to Amelia for seventh year to teach "Art Forgers and Thieves" for the 2014 Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection

Noah Charney in Ghent
ARCA founder Noah Charney returns to Amelia for the seventh year to teach "Art Forgers and Thieves" for the 2014 Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection.

What is the relevancy of your course?

Art theft and forgery fascinate professional and the general public alike, but both fields have received relatively little in the way of scholarly study prior to the foundation of ARCA. This course will examine historical case studies of art theft and forgery from which we can glean more global lessons about both phenomena. What are the preferred modi operandi for art thieves and how can knowing them help us better secure our art collections? What is the most common confidence trick used by art forgers, and how can we guard against it? We will examine these questions through the context of fascinating historical case studies.

Why do you keep coming back to teach in Amelia?

I love teaching and I love Amelia. It's an ideal small Italian town, one which provides the true immersion experience in Italian life. It is gorgeous, charming, and the locals adopt our students as their own. It's a great place to spend a summer.

What do you hope students will get out of the course?

My students should, first and foremost, enjoy themselves enough that they don't realize just how much they are learning until the end of the program. Then everything will shift into place and they will realize that they are among a tiny group of fellow experts and program graduates who know more about this subject than anyone else in the world. It's a very empowering feeling. But during my course, I try to teach through engaging anecdotes, to which I tie in theory, which makes the lessons far easier to comprehend and retain. If a course is interesting enough, students learn without feeling like they are "Working."

What would a typical day be like in your classroom?

I tend to talk a lot, as I have a lot of stories to tell. I'm something of a performance junkie, so I'm jumping around in front of my slides, but then we always engage in group discussion. I feel that if there's anything a student has not understood, it is because I have not taught it well enough, and I say that on the first day. So it's up to me to lay out case studies as examples of theories in practice, to make complicated matters clear.

In anticipation of your course, what book, article, or movie would you recommend to students?

In an act of shameless self-promotion, I recommend that my students read my non-fiction books on the subject: Stealing the Mystic Lamb; The Thefts of the Mona Lisa; Art & Crime, and even The Wine Forger's Handbook. Rare wine counts as edible art!

December 22, 2014

The Fall 2014 issue of the Journal of Art Crime is now available

The Fall 2014 edition of The Journal of Art Crime is now available. Editor-in-chief Noah Charney writes to readers:
Welcome to the new issue of The Journal of Art Crime, and thank you for subscribing. Your subscription supports ARCA in our research and educational endeavors, and we are grateful for it. Lauren Zanedis served as proof-reader in this issue, and I was ably assisted by my fellow editors, Marc Balcells and Christos Tsirogiannis, who are both far more organized than I. 
In this issue you’ll find academic papers on Adam Worth (the Napoleon of Crime), national prosecution of cultural heritage, art crime in Slovenia, the Ka Nefer Nefer mummy mask and the Sevso Treasure. We are also looking forward to ARCA’s next academic publication, an edited collection of essays, half of which were published in the Journal of Art Crime, half of which are new. This collection will be published in late 2015 by the fine academic press, Palgrave, and all profits from it will go directly to support ARCA. We are also planning the next ARCA symposium in London, following the great success of last year’s event at the Victoria & Albert Museum—it will be held next Fall at The Courtauld Institute. And the latest news for the Journal is that we have been invited to join the prestigious HeinOnline catalogue of academic journals, which means that the JAC will be available in thousands of research libraries around the world. Having been courted by several fine publishers, we are pleased to sign on with this one and look forward to the chance for a vastly expanded scholarly readership. 
We hope that you will enjoy these articles. Best wishes and thanks again for your support.
Noah Charney
Founder, ARCA
Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Art Crime

In this issue:

Academic articles: "Thinking Some More about the Sevso Treasure" by Neil Brodie; "The Case of the Ka Nefer Nefer Mummy Mask" by David Gill; "Outline of the Benefits coming from a National Prosecution Service in Cultural Heritage Protection" by Paolo Giorgio Ferri; "Adam Worth: A Critical Analysis of the Criminal Motivations Behind the Man Who Stole the Duchess of Devonshire" by J. Mark Collins; "Criminality Related to Cultural Heritage - Analysis of Interviews" by Viktorija Zupancic and Bojan Dobovšek.

Regular Columns: "Learning from the Herm: The Need for more Rigorous Due Diligence Searches" by David Gill; Not in the Headlines "Emptying Spain: The W. R. Hearst Case" by Marc Balcells; and Lessons from the History of Art Crime "Art Crime in Pop Culture: a Year in Review" by Noah Charney.

Editorial Essays: "Why Hong Kong can save the Ozone Layer but not China's Cultural Heritage" by Toby Bull; "Attitude or Action: Closing the Gap Between Words and Deeds in the Restitution of Looted Cultural Property in the Second World War" by Christopher A. Marinello and Jerome Hasler; and "A Brief History of Art Theft in Conflict Zones" by Noah Charney.

Reviews: Marc Balcells on Contemporary Perspectives on the Detection, Investigation and Prosecution of Art Crime: Australasian, European and North American Perspectives edited by Duncan Chappell and Saskia Hufnagel; Kirsten Hower on The Art of the Steal (2013) and The Best Offer (2013); Catherine Schofield Sezgin on From Pompeii: The Afterlife of a Roman Town by Ingrid D. Rowland; and Marc Balcells on Indiana Jones sin futuro: la lucha contra el expolio del patrimonio arqueológico by Ignacio Rodríguez Temiño.

Extras: Kirsten Hower's "Q&A with Ron Pollard"; JAC Essay Collection; ARCA 2014 Award Winners; Contributor Biographies; and Acknowledgements.

Subscriptions to The Journal of Art Crime or individual copies of eEditions or printed issues may be obtained through ARCA's website here.

December 21, 2014

Sunday, December 21, 2014 - ,, No comments

Noah Charney in Salon: '"Home Alone's" secret lesson: How to foil an art heist'

In a December 20th post on Salon, "Home Alone's" secret lesson: How to foil an art heist", ARCA founder Noah Charney writes on how a holiday movie has messages about museum security:
This Christmas, like every Christmas, millions of televisions will broadcast the exploits of young Kevin McCallister, whom his family forgot in their rush to the airport, to spend the holidays in Paris. “Home Alone” is a Yuletide staple, and I make a point of tuning in every year. But while most will watch “Home Alone” for its heartwarming moments, slapstick comedy and family-as-the-greatest-holiday-gift message, I see in it something else entirely—a master class in low-budget museum security.
I promise, this will all make sense in a moment.
The rest of the article can be found on Salon.com here.

June 6, 2014

Noah Charney Interviews Three Leading Art Lawyers: Ian de Freitas, Howard Spiegler and Fabio Moretti in the Spring 2014 issue of ARCA's Journal of Art Crime

by Noah Charney

The Journal of Art Crime had the pleasure of interviewing three leading art lawyers, Ian de Freitas, Howard Spiegler, and Fabio Moretti. We spoke of art law, forgery, intellectual property, and fashion law, with each responding to questions related to their personal specializations. Ian de Freitas practices in the UK with Berwin Leighton Paisner and specializes in intellectual properties law. Howard Spiegler practices in the US with Herrick, Feinstein and is an expert in art reparations and repatriation, particularly with regard to art that changed hands during the Second World War and its aftermath. Fabio Moretti practices in Italy with Moretti & Burgio, and is an expert in fashion law. All three will be speaking at the UIA (Union Internationale des Avocats) conference held in Florence, Italy on October 31, 2014, a conference in which ARCA representatives will be participating.

Noah Charney: I like to give my students a puzzle, Howard. Whose culture heritage is a Titian painting of a Habsburg prince that hangs in Madrid? It might be claimed by Spain, Italy, Venice (which likes to think of itself as a different state, and was when Titian was around), or even Austria or Switzerland (where the Habsburgs originated). In legal terms, it is the property of the last legal owner, but in the moral debate of whose “cultural heritage” it is, how do you deal with the situation when multiple nations can claim a single work?

Howard Spiegler: I like to say that as an attorney, my job is relatively straightforward: I just have to deal with the law and not the often complex policies and moral issues that may pertain to these kinds of questions. In general, if the country from which the work has been illegally expropriated has a so-called patrimony law providing for ownership by that country’s government of every antiquity found in or on the ground, and the effective date of that law is prior to the time that the antiquity was expropriated, then the US courts will permit the foreign government to sue in the United States to recover it, subject to defenses like the statute of limitations. If I were to venture into the moral realm, it would be difficult for me not to favor the return of items to a country from which it was expropriated without permission, but if such a position is not viable under the existing law, I would encourage negotiation to ensure a mutually acceptable resolution. This might involve, for example, a confirmation by the possessor that the antiquity is rightfully owned by the source nation, but could provide for a long-term loan of the item, perhaps in return for similar loans to the country involved, especially if the possessor is a museum. As far as multiple nations claiming the same antiquity, when this has occurred in a U.S. litigation, the jury essentially decided that none of the countries involved were able to establish that the antiquity involved had been illegally excavated from one rather than another of the countries, and ruled in favor of the possessor, even though it was clear that it must have come from one of these lands. Proving that the illegal excavation took place in a particular country is often one of the hardest elements of the plaintiff’s case in these actions, mainly because ancient boundaries of nation-states do not necessarily correspond to the current boundaries of modern nations. 

NC: The Internet Age has seen a lot of lawsuits dealing with art looted during the world wars, because all of a sudden families could locate online the works lost to their families decades prior. Before the digitalization of museum collections, it was a lot harder to know where your art might be, if you didn’t just stumble on it. We hear a lot about the restitution of Nazi-looted art, but very little about art looted by the Red Army. Why is that?

HS: Actually, there have been claims brought against Russia with respect to artworks taken during the War, but in general, Russia subscribes to the concept that anything taken from Germany during and after the War represents just compensation for the enormous losses of life and property suffered by Russia during the War. This concept is not in accord with usual precepts of international law, however, and obviously makes it more difficult to resolve these claims. In one case, currently pending in the U.S., the Jewish religious sect Chabad brought an action to compel Russia to turn over archives and a library to Chabad, allegedly misappropriated by Russia or its predecessor governments. After losing a motion to dismiss, Russia remarkably refused to participate in the lawsuit any further, and the court imposed a default judgment against it. Attempts to enforce the judgment, including with sanctions levied against Russia, have been met with resistance from the U.S. government and have yet to be resolved.

You may finish reading this interview in the Spring 2014 issue of The Journal of Art Crime by subscribing through the ARCA website or ordering an issue through Amazon.com.

Noah Charney is a professor of art history specializing in art crime and an international best-selling author of fiction (The Art Thief) and non-fiction (Stealing the Mystic Lamb). He teaches for American University of Rome and Brown University, and is an award-winning columnist for a variety of popular magazines and newspapers. He is the founder of ARCA, and has served as its president since its inception.

May 31, 2014

Noah Charney on "The British Origin of the Monuments Men" in "Lessons from the History of Art Crime" in the Spring 2014 issue of ARCA's Journal of Art Crime

Noah Charney is a professor of art history specializing in art crime and an international best-selling author of fiction (The Art Thief) and non-fiction (Stealing the Mystic Lamb). He teaches for American University of Rome and Brown University, and is an award-winning columnist for a variety of popular magazines and newspapers. He is the founder of ARCA, and has served as its president since its inception. In his column "Lessons from the History of Art Crime", Noah Charney writes about “The British Origin of the Monuments Men”: 
This winter, when George Clooney’s drama comes out about the Monuments Men and their adventures in saving Europe’s art treasures during the Second World War, viewers will be privy to a Hollywoodization of a true, dramatic, epic story of the race to rescue an estimated five million cultural heritage objects, from paintings and sculptures to rare books and valuable archival materials, that were looted by the Nazis and risked complete destruction. The Clooney film is only loosely based on historical fact—it necessarily compresses, condenses, and alters reality to fit the rules of a Hollywood feature. But one aspect of the Monuments Men that most American accounts skip past or exclude altogether is the fact that the Monuments Men began as a British operation—its spearhead was a most British brand of hero, Sir Leonard Woolley. 
The Monuments Men was the nickname of a group of some three-hundred Allied officers, members of the art world during their civilian lives (architects, conservators, archaeologists, art historians), who were charged with identifying art and monuments that might be in the line of fighting in Europe during the Second World War. Once these works, from Notre Dame Cathedral to the entire contents of the Uffizi, were identified, the officers would advise the Allied armies they accompanied on how, whenever possible, to avoid damage to these cultural monuments. That part of their call of duty was the British plan. But their role changed in practice, once the officers were in the field and it became clear, only late in the war, that there was an enormous, proactive art-looting plan that the Nazis had put into operation, led by their art theft unit, the ERR, and intended to both enrich the Nazi war effort and fill Hitler’s planned “super museum” that would occupy the entirety of his boyhood town of Linz, Austria, which would contain every important artwork in the world. Once in the field, as an under-appreciated and under-supported twig attached to the massive Allied armies, the Monuments Men began to act as war-time art detectives, seeking out key stolen works, piecing together clues as to the overall Nazi art theft plan, and eventually rescuing tens of thousands of looted masterpieces, including van Eyck’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb and Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna—the twin focal points of the Clooney film.
You may finish reading this column in the Spring/Summer 2014 issue (#11) of The Journal of Art Crime edited by ARCA founder Noah Charney. The Journal of Art Crime may be accessed through subscription or in paperback from Amazon.com. The Table of Contents is listed on ARCA's website here. The Associate Editors are Marc Balcells (John Jay College of Law) and Christos Tsirogiannis (University of Cambridge). Design and layout (including the front cover illustration) are produced by Urška Charney.

May 23, 2014

The Spring/Summer 2014 issue of The Journal of Art Crime Is Now Available

The Spring/Summer 2014 issue (#11) of The Journal of Art Crime edited by ARCA founder Noah Charney is now available. The Table of Contents is listed on ARCA's website here. The Associate Editors are Marc Balcells (John Jay College of Law) and Christos Tsirogiannis (University of Cambridge). Design and layout (including the front cover illustration) are produced by Urška Charney.
Letter from the Editor Spring/Summer 2014
Welcome to the new issue of The Journal of Art Crime, and thank you for subscribing. Your subscription supports ARCA in our research and educational endeavors, and we are grateful for it. 
In this issue you’ll find academic papers from graduates of ARCA’s Postgraduate Certificate Program, as well as the work of world-renowned experts in the field, who likely need no introduction, Neil Brodie and Martin Kemp. This precisely embodies what ARCA and the JAC is all about: supporting new scholars and established experts in a common venue. Where else can a young postgraduate student find her name alongside Martin Kemp’s, a man who is quite probably the most famous art historian living today? I would particularly like to thank Drs. Kemp and Brodie for including their fine essays in this issue of the JAC. They were originally prepared for a forthcoming essay collection, to be published by Palgrave. This collection, as yet untitled, will function as a follow-up to ARCA’s Art & Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World (Praeger 2009), and will feature a dozen new essays by top scholars and professionals, as well as a selection of the finest essays already published in the JAC, over its first five years in print. More information on this volume will follow, but these two essays will give you a preview of “coming attractions,” as it were. 
We hope that you will enjoy these articles. Best wishes and thanks again for your support.
Noah Charney Founder, ARCA Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Art Crime
 The Journal of Art Crime may be accessed through subscription or in paperback from Amazon.com. 

May 13, 2014

Ginanne Brownell quotes ARCA Founder Noah Charney in "New Arms for Fighting Back Against the Looters" (International New York Times, May 8)

ARCA Founder Noah Charney quoted in GINANNE BROWNELL's piece on MAY 8, 2014, "New Arms for Fighting Back Against the Looters" in the International New York Times:
WARSAW, POLAND — The Division of Looted Art at Poland’s Ministry of Culture is a small office with a big mandate. Since 1992, the four-person unit has been charged with collecting and digitizing information about the more than 63,000 objects stolen from the Polish state, churches and private citizens during World War II. Until now, the division’s website was only able to exhibit 3,000 of the objects. Thanks to an upgrade and reintroduction in March, today almost 14,000 lost pieces — including Raphael’s “Portrait of a Young Man,” taken by the Nazis from a family collection in Krakow — will have a virtual home. 
“The Internet has become the main source of finding information on Polish looted art,” said Karina Chabowska, an employee, seated next to several filing cabinets full of photographs and files about stolen works waiting to be uploaded. “The new site will be important to exchange information with auction houses, with people from museums and also to give them some tips of what to do if they find pieces of art that could have been looted or stolen from Poland.” 
Technology has given new impetus to the search for lost and stolen art. Through projects ranging from websites to digital fingerprinting of artworks, governments and organizations are now able to share information and images of missing works widely, allowing the images to be recognized and, it is hoped, returned. 
“For people interested in lost treasure, technology has made it much more likely that we will find things like, for example, locations to excavate to find dozens of other hiding places,” said Noah Charney, an art historian and founder of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art. “So technology has made the world both smaller and more transparent.”

February 7, 2014

ARCA Founder Noah Charney Writes on "Inside Hitler's Fantasy Museum" for The Daily Beast

Published in The Daily Beast on February 7, 2014, "Inside Hitler's Fantasy Museum":
Before World War II’s start, Hitler was driven to create his dream museum containing all his favorite Aryan-approved art. Noah Charney on how the Monuments Men had to unravel the thousands of objects plundered by the Fuhrer’s minions—and what they learned from Napoleon. 
When Monuments Men Robert Posey and Lincoln Kirstein walked into the white-washed cottage in the German forest that housed Hermann Bunjes, the Harvard-educated one-time SS officer and art advisor to Herman Goring, they learned of an elaborate plan involving the wholesale looting of Europe’s art treasures. Bunjes, hiding in fear of reprisals against SS officers by angry German citizens, told these fellow art historians about the ERR—the Nazi art theft unit—and about Hitler’s plan to create a city-wide museum in his boyhood town of Linz, Austria: a “super museum” that would contain every important artwork in the world, including a wing of “degenerate art,” a sort of chamber of horrors to demonstrate from what monstrosities the Nazis had saved the world. It was news to Posey and Kirstein, who had to restrain their shock. The Monuments Men had heard rumors of art theft and looting throughout the war, but had no idea of the scale (some estimate that around 5 million cultural objects were looted, lost, or mishandled during the war), the advanced level of organization (scores of Nazi officers and hundreds of soldiers were assigned exclusively to the confiscation, transport, and maintenance of looted art and archival material), and the ultimate destination of the choicest pieces—the Führermuseum. It was years into the war, when this encounter took place, and only then did the Monuments Men finally realized what they were up against. Bunjes further detailed a number of hiding places for looted art, including the famous salt mine at Altaussee, in the Austrian Alps, which contained some twelve-thousand stolen artworks, the mother-load destined for the Linz museum. Posey and Kirstein were on the hunt for The Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck, the most influential painting ever made and the most-frequently stolen, but could hardly believe what they were hearing. Yes,The Ghent Altarpiece was the number one target that Hitler wanted as the centerpiece for his museum, both because of its beauty, fame, and importance but also because it had been forcibly repatriated to Belgium from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, and seizing it back would right this perceived wrong against the German people. But here was the chance to save not just this painting, but tens of thousands of artworks.
You can finish reading this article by going to the article on The Daily Beast.

February 2, 2014

Noah Charney Is Featured in "Hunting Hitler's Stolen Treasures: The Monuments Men" to be Aired Feb. 5 on National Geographic in US

Noah Charney is featured in “Hunting Hitler’s Stolen Treasures: the Monuments Men,” the documentary tie-in to The Monuments Men Feature Film (Directed by and starring George Clooney). It will be aired on the National Geographic Channel at 8pm Eastern Standard Time on February 5 in the United States.
NGC presents the true story of an unlikely World War II “band of brothers.” The unsuspecting group of scholars, academics, historians and architects headed to the front lines of the bloodiest war in history to rescue thousands of years' worth of European art and culture from Nazi-occupied Europe. Through extensive archive sources and photographs, journals and letter excerpts, along with the personal accounts from surviving family members, this special sheds light on the remarkable story.
From the show's website:
According to Dr. Noah Charney, "while the soldiers were trying to save Europe physically, the Monuments Men were really charged with saving its soul."

December 4, 2013

The Fall 2013 issue of The Journal of Art Crime Now Available

The e-Edition of the Fall 2013 issue of The Journal of Art Crime is now available. Noah Charney is Editor-in-Chief of the 10th issue published by ARCA; Marc Balcells, John Jay College of Law, and Christos Tsirogiannis, University of Cambridge, serve as Associate Editors. In the Letter from the Editor, Dr. Charney writes: 
For this issue, I’m pleased to introduce two new editors who will put together the JAC along with me: Marc Balcells and Christos Tsirogiannis. Readers will know their written work from past issues, and they will not only help me to edit, but also contribute regularly, with Marc taking on the role of our primary book reviewer, and Christos preparing a new regular column. They interview one another in this issue, to provide an introduction to readers. In this issue you’ll find academic papers on art theft in the Victorian era, the in-depth story of the looting and return of the Axum obelisk, two pieces on art fraud and forgery, and a dissertation from one of our program graduates on Armenian “cross-stones” in Azerbaijan.
Table of Contents:

ACADEMIC ARTICLES: "The Crime That Pays? The Canadian Print Media’s Construction of Art Fraud, 1978-2012" by John and Adie Nelson; "Victorian Art Theft in England: Early Cases and Sociology of the Crime" by Noah Charney and John Kleberg; "Criminal Inspectors and Art Crime Investigation in Slovenia" by Bojan Dobovšek and Boštjan Slak; "The Mythology of the Art Forger" by Felicity Strong; and "Destruction of Jugha Necropolis with Armenian Khachqars (Cross-stones) in Azerbaijan" by Marine Fidanyan.

REGULAR COLUMNS: David Gill's Context Matters on “The Cleveland Apollo Goes Public”; Noah Charney's Lessons from the History of Art Crime on “Art-Burning Mother & Art Loss Register Issues”; and Christos Tsirogiannis' Nekyia on “From Apulia to Virginia: An Apulian Gnathia Askos at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts”.

EDITORIAL ESSAYS "Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You: the Axum Obelisk" by Suzette Scotti.

REVIEWS Marc Balcells reviews The Venus Fixers by Ilaria Dagnini Brey and Saving Italy by Robert Edsel. 

EXTRAS "Marc Balcells Introduces Christos Tsirogiannis" and "Christos Tsirogiannis Interviews Marc Balcells".

November 28, 2013

The Art Newspaper Quotes ARCA's Noah Charney and Dick Ellis in "Recovery rate for stolen art as low as 1.5%"

Melanie Gerlis and Javier Pes for The Art Newspaper quote both ARCA founder Noah Charney and ARCA Lecturer Dick Ellis in today's online article "Recovery rate for stolen art as low as 1.5%":
The rate of recovery and successful prosecution in cases of art theft is startlingly low, with one expert putting it at only 1.5% globally, The Art Newspaper has learned, underlining the challenges of identifying and returning stolen works.  The global cost of crimes linked to art and antiques was recently estimated at £3.7bn a year by the UK’s Association of Chief Police Officers. Noah Charney, a professor of art history specialising in art crime and the founder of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art, which organised a symposium on the subject at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum this month, says that statistics are hard to come by because police forces seldom distinguish between stolen art and other stolen goods. “A Rembrandt is classified with a CD,” he says.
At the core of the problem is the low importance that most police forces attach to such crimes; the exception is Italy’s Carabinieri, which claims that its force of 350 officers recovers around 30% of lost art. The theft of property in general “has a low priority in Britain and across Europe”, said Dick Ellis, the former head of the Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiques Unit, at the symposium. In the UK, for example, the Metropolitan Police has just three officers dedicated to art crime (down from 14 around 20 years ago). In the US, the FBI has around 14 agents trained to investigate art crimes, although they do not work on these exclusively. Attempts to pool information on stolen works to create a comprehensive, international database have failed, largely because of a lack of funding.
Without proper public funding, the onus is on private firms, who charge a recovery fee of as much as 30% of a work’s value. Here, there are also areas of contention, particularly surrounding the issue of paying informers for leads on stolen works. This area is a “legal minefield”, said Claire Hutcheon, the head of the Met’s Art and Antiques Unit. “Art cannot be recovered at any cost,” she said.

November 13, 2013

Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - ,, No comments

ARCA Founder Noah Charney Publishes in The Guardian on the Question: "Did the Nazis steal the Mona Lisa?"

This is the photograph by Jean-Pierre-Muller Javier
Sorrian/AFP/Getty Images of the Louvre's Mona Lisa
 and the copy housed at Madrid's Prado Museum. guardian  
Here's a link to an article in today's Guardian, Did the Nazis steal the Mona Lisa?, written by Noah Charney, founder of ARCA. The article was adapted from Charney's book, The Thefts of the Mona Lisa: On Stealing the World's Most Famous Painting.
With the recent discovery in Munich of €1bn (£860m) worth of art looted by the Nazis, and the forthcoming release of a feature film, starring George Clooney, based on the exploits of the Monuments Men, it is a fitting time to recall how fortunate we are that so much art survived thesecond world war. The Nazi art theft division, the ERR (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg), was responsible for the theft of around 5m works: from the Louvre, the Uffizi and countless churches, galleries and homes. From headline-grabbing works like Michelangelo's Bruges Madonna to the most frequently stolen artwork in history, Jan van Eyck's Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, both of which feature in the Clooney film, to lesser-known gems that nevertheless held a place in the hearts of museumgoers or families, the story of art looting during the second world war is a tree with countless roots. Each masterpiece has its own history, a provenance ripe with intrigue. Few of the individual stories have been told, fewer still in depth.
Among the many enduring mysteries of this periodis the fate of the world's most famous painting. It seems that Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was among the paintings found in the Altaussee salt mine in the Austrian alps, which was converted by the Nazis into their secret stolen-art warehouse. 
The painting only "seems" to have been found there because contradictory information has come down through history, and the Mona Lisa is not mentioned in any wartime document, Nazi or allied, as having been in the mine. Whether it may have been at Altaussee was a question only raised when scholars examined the postwar Special Operations Executive report on the activities of Austrian double agents working for the allies to secure the mine. This report states that the team "saved such priceless objects as the Louvre's Mona Lisa". A second document, from an Austrian museum near Altaussee dated 12 December 1945, states that "the Mona Lisa from Paris" was among "80 wagons of art and cultural objects from across Europe" taken into the mine.
You may read the rest of the article here.

October 12, 2013

ARCA Symposium in London at the V&A on November 7, 2013 focuses on Art Recovery & Reward and Art Forgery & Provenance

The V&A will host a one-day symposium on art crime, organized by the Association for Research into Crimes against Art). The event will feature leading speakers in the fields of investigation and art crime research providing in-depth talks on the subjects of Art Recovery & Reward and Art Forgery & Provenance.

V & A Blue Gallery
Session 1 - Art Recovery & Reward - 10:00 am
Detective Sergeant Claire Hutcheon, Metropolitan Police, Head of the Art & Antiques Unit.
Charlie Hill, Security Adviser and Art Crime Researcher, Former Detective Chief Inspector, Metropolitan Police

Richard Ellis, Director of the Art Management Group, Former Head of the Art & Antiques Unit, Metropolitan Police.
Jonathan Jones, author, lecturer, journalist and art critic for The Guardian
                                                         Session 2 – Art Forgery & Provenance – 3:00 pm
by Moody, Francis Wollaston
Vernon Rapley, Head of Security and Visitor Services at the V&A, Chairman National Museum Security Group, Former Head of the Art & Antiques Unit, Metropolitan Police
Christopher Marsden, Sr. Archivist, V&A Museum and Chairman for the Standing Conference on Archives and Museums
Christos Tsirogiannis, Archaeologist and Art Crime Researcher, University of Cambridge, former member of the Hellenic Ministry of Justice
Noah Charney, Founder of ARCA, Author, Professor of Art History specialising in Art Crime
This symposium will be held in the Hochhauser Auditorium in the Sackler Centre at the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, London SW7, on Thursday November 7, 2013. Sessions begin promptly at 10:00 am and 15:00 pm, with a two hour break for lunch. Attendance is free and open to the public.
To register for this event please email the symposium coordinators at london.conference@artcrimeresearch.org on or before November 1, 2013. Please indicate the names and email addresses of the attendees and if attendance will be for one or both sessions of the programming. Space is limited and attendees are respectfully encouraged to reserve early.

August 31, 2013

The New Yorker: Mark Landis as forger or con artist? Alec Wilkinson quotes ARCA Founder Noah Charney

The August 26, 2013 issue of The New Yorker magazine includes an article on Mark Landis in an article by Alec Wilkinson "The Giveaway: Who was the mysterious man donating all the valuable art?"
Matthew Leininger, of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, was the first person to pursue Mark Landis, but Landis had been suspected as a forger by at least one museum, the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, in Laurel, Mississippi. In 2003, five years before Everett Shinn called "Nymph on the Rocks." Landis had promised other works, which the museum tried for a year to obtain; which he didn't provide the pieces, the staff grew suspicious of him.
The article includes a quote by art historian Noah Charney, founder of ARCA:
Some people consider Landis to be not so much a forger as a con artists which is the epithet Leininger most often employs. Noah Charney, an art historian who is the founder of the Association for Research Into Crimes Against Art, in Rome, wrote me that he thinks of Landis as an adept impostor "more akin to identity fraudsters, like Clark Rockefeller." Money isn't what such people desire. They want to be treated as substantial citizens. "Social status and a feeling of belonging is their reward," Charney wrote. In this context, the painting or drawing Landis spends an hour making is ephemeral: it needs to last only long enough to admit him to a sympathetic haven.   


August 20, 2013

Noah Charney's "Q&A with Ken Perenyi" (The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2013)

Noah Charney, ARCA Founder and Editor of The Journal of Art Crime, interviews Ken Perenyi, American art forger and author of Caveat Emptor, in the Spring 2013 issue.
Noah Charney: Could you begin by telling me about the very first work that you forged, the process of making it, and what made you turn to creating a work that would be passed off as something it was not? 
Ken Perenyi: The first one was a matter of circumstance that led me to it. I found myself in a great need of money when I was 18, and I had already started painting. I had worked under the direction of a well-known commercial artist from New York called Tom Bailey, and I discovered that I had a real natural talent for oil painting. It impressed my mentor, Tom, and I learned to paint simply by looking at Old Masters in museums. I never had lessons or formal training, it was just looking at paintings, studying them, and figuring out how the artists achieved their effects. 
I started painting in 1967, with no intention of creating fakes. I wanted to paint surrealistic pictures to impress my friends at the time. The hippy era was big, and my friends from New York City were all avant-garde, they were all older than me. They leased a crumbling old mansion on the Palisade cliffs overlooking the Hudson River, and so I began hanging out there with them. I wanted to fit in and impress them, so I started painting a number of surrealistic pictures. But everyone who looked at them said that they seem to be influenced by the Old Masters -- that wasn't a criticism, just an observation. And that's the way I understood how to paint, to layer and make things appear like the Old Masters.
I spent a lot of time in museums, studying painting. When I found myself in desperate need of cash, an artist friend joked that I should try forging a painting. He gave me a book about the forger [Han] van Meegeren, that he had just finished reading. I was impressed, and in the brashness of youth, I figured, maybe I can do this?
On my next trip to the museum, I visited the Dutch section and was looking at the portraits. I looked at these little portraits, and thought that they've got to be simple. I thought, why don't I try something like this? So I painted one on a small wooden panel that I scavenged, it was the bottom of an early piece of furniture. I managed to make a fine little portrait on the panel, and was able to sell it to a gallery on 57th Street [in New York]. I got $800 for it -- that was my first fake. From that point on, it wasn't a matter of if I would paint another one, but when I would paint another one. It was the beginning of a career -- I didn't look upon it as a career at that point, I saw it as something I could always fall back on, to raise some quick cash, until a turning point came later in life.
This interview is continued in the ninth issue of The Journal of Art Crime, edited by ARCA Founder Noah Charney. It is available electronically (pdf) and in print via subscription and Amazon.com. Associate Editor Marc Balcells (ARCA '11) is a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Department of Political Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice -- The City University of New York.

August 19, 2013

Noah Charney's "Q&A with Ruth Godthelp" (The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2013)

Noah Charney, founder of ARCA and the editor of The Journal of Art Crime, interviews Ruth Godthelp, Senior Amsterdam Police Officer with the Dutch Art Squad ["Q&A with Ruth Godthelp" in the Spring 2013 issue].
Noah Charney: How did the Politie Art Squad first become established? I believe that prior to its establishment, Martin Finkelnberg was informally the go-to agent for art-related cases, but that there was no formal team in place.
Ruth Godthelp: In 2010, I was given the opportunity, by the serious and organized crime department of the Amsterdam Police, to explore the phenomenon of "art-related crime;" this being not only theft, fencing or embezzlement of art, antiques (possibly being cultural heritage) but, in addition, also more abstract variations, such as money laundering and types of fraud (forgeries of objects of art or their provenance documents, insurance fraud, etc.) 
This opportunity was the effect of the general acknowledgement, within the Amsterdam Police, that certain characteristics of the art world, and the involved objects, lead to risks on the illegal activities. These are defined as risks, mainly following from high and fluctuating art prices and the ease of acting anonymously which, knowing or unknowing, can have the effect of undermining activities which damage the legal structures of the art world and its players. 
To improve our information, the exploratory activities gradually led to the formation of a strong network of "players" in the art world. Not only art dealers and trade associations, but also representatives of auction houses, fairs, galleries, insurance companies, certified appraisers of art and antiquities, foundations, museums and, of course, the Ministry of Culture and its Heritage Inspection department. Where at first we noticed that "the art world" was reluctant to cooperate with the police because of an understandable fear of lack of action, later we saw this attitude change into a very cooperative modus. In recent years, lots of useful information about stolen objects, and bad faith/rogue buyers and dealers has come to us from our network. From exploring the art world, we fluently started dealing with actual cases, with the result that cases could be solved, and our intelligence became better and better.

This interview is continued in the ninth issue of The Journal of Art Crime, edited by ARCA Founder Noah Charney. It is available electronically (pdf) and in print via subscription and Amazon.com. Associate Editor Marc Balcells (ARCA '11) is a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Department of Political Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice -- The City University of New York.