Dr. Erin Thompson, a New York Professor recently wrote about this, now restituted Roman marble portrait bust of a bearded man which was sold by Phoenix Ancient Art in 1998 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  When it was sold, this marble portrait of a vigorous middle-aged man with sharply turned head and piercing gaze was said to have been part of the collection of Belgian-born, Neuchâtel resident André Lagneau, who had gotten it in 1977 from the Geneva collector Pierre Sciclounoff.  At the time, we thought the piece may have originated in Libya. 

Sciclounoff (1926-1997), who moved to Geneva from Bulgaria, was a powerful attorney and businessman in the city who is known to have been a friend and advisor to other powerful men of the period including Aristotle Onassis, Edward Kennedy, the Geneva Rothschilds, and J. Paul. Getty.  He was also an avid and wealthy collector, filling his 50-room mansion with art and antiquities while becoming a patron to the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire (MAH) in Geneva, although he seldom visited it.  

Jacques Chamay, a problematic curator from this Geneva museum, wrote a memoir of sorts about Sciclounoff's important collection of Greek vases, many of which, from southern Italy, have problematic provenances as well as a second book about the disbursal of specific pieces once part of the Sciclounoff collection. 

Chamay's first book about this collection was published through the Hellas & Roma association (started by Chamay) in its 19th volume, which assisted in providing a veneer of legitimacy to ancient objects in the collection which otherwise had no prior collecting history, aside from their initial purchase by the Geneva-based lawyer.  Chamay published a second volume of Sciclounoff's collection, Céramiques de grande Grèce et autres antiquités : Pierre Sciclounoff collectionneur et mécène, 1926-1997 in 2021.  It presented forty additional antiquities in the attorney's collection, including a grouping of astonishing monumental vases with mythological and funerary themes, several of which have never been studied, nor previously published on. 

Sciclounoff is also known to have been purchased a forged Vermeer, painted by Hans van Meegeren, formerly in the collection of Hermann Wilhelm Göring via a transaction with the Dutch arms dealer Daniël George van Beuningen. That work was returned to van Beuningen’s family after the conclusion of World War II and the family in turn gave it to Pierre Sciclounoff, its Geneva-based lawyer.  

Sciclounoff also had transactions with Christian Boursaud, who opened Galerie Hydra with Giacomo Medici. He also conducted business with the Swiss classical archaeologist and art dealer Christoph Leon, who brokered the J. Paul Getty Museum’s 1993 purchase of the looted Greek gold funerary wreath for $1.1 million, as well as the 1984 sale of all twenty-one pieces of Apulian pottery, looted from a single grave, which were later restituted from the Altes Museum.

Aside from Sciclounoff's mention in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's accession record for the Roman marble bus of a bearded man when it was acquired by the museum, ARCA didn't find any related open source evidence connecting this bust to either the Sciclounoff collection or of him having sold a bust of this description on/around 1977 to André Lagneau. 

So who was André Lagneau? 

ARCA began cataloguing Lagneau's pieces in circulation by Phoenix Ancient Art, in 2017.  Back then, the Aboutaams Swiss investigation was gathering steam, and it wasn't until 2019 that Paris Match reporter Frédéric Loore reported that Ali Aboutaam had been charged in Switzerland with VAT fraud, concealment and breach of the law on the transfer of cultural goods.

While the open source digital footprint André P. Lagneau was very small, who could see that he was purportedly an archaeologist and ethnographer, as well as a subject matter expert in Switzerland who studied to the doctorate level.  According to a single open-source record, Lagneau purportedly also collaborating with federal customs, and at least one UN agency.  

A biography published on the website Art Passions in 2015 stated that Lagneau was at some unnamed date responsible for the detailed inventory and the reorganisation of the ancient Egyptian collections at the Musée d'ethnographie de Neuchâtel, for which he wrote and published a brief explanatory brochure.  He was also known to have collaborated with Jacques Chamay, who he visited at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire (MAH) in Geneva. 

Exploring further, ARCA documented more than twenty-five eclectically diverse artefacts tagged with Lagneau's name as the prior owner, several of which, listed below, are found in other notable museum collections.  All have demonstratable proof that they were once in circulation via the Aboutaams or other art market actors, who are documented as having possessed, and/or circulated, problematic antiquities. 

Take for example the following: 

This Black-Figure Mixing bowl (krater) with sprinters at the Museum of Fine Arts - Boston was sold by Phoenix Ancient Art in 1998.  André Lagneau attested that this krater had been in his collection, and that he had acquired it in 1975 from his friend, Pierre Sciclounoff.

This 500 BCE Archaic-period terracotta oil lamp was gifted in 2001 to the Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum by Dina and Hicham Aboutaam. Its ownership history is recorded as being: 

an integral part of the personal collection of a Belgian family. The family of Dr. Andre Lagneau moved from Belgium to Geneva, Switzerland in 1961. They now live in Neuchatel.

Yet, no mention is given as to when or how or from whom Lagneau acquired it from. 

This diminutive 2900–2350 BCE, Mesopotamian (Sumarian) votive statue of a male cupbearer, with large inlaid eyes, bear to the waist and wearing a kaunake, was purchased by the Saint Louis Art Museum from Phoenix Ancient Art, S.A. on 28 September 2000.  It comes with a letter dated May 18, 2000 from Andre Lagneau purportedly confirming that the figurine was acquired by his father, Alfred Lagneau, sometime in the 1950s, from a cousin, Auguste Hiermaux, who was an officer in the Belgian army occupying Germany. 

Dr. André Lagneau, Switzerland, [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Antiquarium Ltd. New York, 1996, no. ANT 1375 [mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 1997, by purchase.

Planned as a focal point of the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester's Egyptian collection, this 332 BCE-30 BCE, Ptolemaic Period anthropoid coffin, nested in the rectangular outer coffin, has eyes decorated with shell and stone, eyelines and chin lines of inlaid glass, and a face of gold leaf gilding.  Both pieces were purchased by the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester via the Marion Stratton Gould Fund in 2000 with a provenance of: 

Private collection, Lucerne, Switzerland; purchased from that owner by the family of Dr. Andre P. Lagneau, Neuchatel, Switzerland, ca. 1970; purchased from Dr. Lagneau by Francis Wilhelm, Geneva (dealer); purchased from him by Antiquarium, Ltd., New York (dealers); purchased from them by the Gallery, 2000.

Note: This is the same New York gallery that the New York Times reported earlier this month had recently surrendered 20 valuable ancient artifacts linked to the trafficker Douglas A.J. Latchford.

This portrait head of a middle-aged bearded Plato shows chips and damages above the right eyebrow and across the forehead.  His nose is also broken.  This artefact was purchased on 9 June 2011 by Yale University Art Gallery during a sale at Christie's New York as Lot 200. 

According to an attestation signed and dated 21 May 2011 by Lagneau and provided by the consignor of the artefact, Lagneau saw the bust in the apartment of Byron Zoumboulakis, Geneva, in the second half of the 1960s on the occasion of a visit to Zoumboulakis’s apartment gallery at the Rue de la Taconnerie in Geneva, with Niklaus Dürr, Curator at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva. 

This 2000 BCE Mesopotamian lama deity with the head of a man and the body of a reclining bull was purchased by the Museum of Fine Arts - Houston in 2003.   It's provenance is listed as: 

Alfred Lagneau (d. 1979), by the early-1950s–1979; by inheritance to his nephew, André Lagneau, Neuchatel, Switzerland, from 1979;[Phoenix Ancient Art, New York/Geneva, by 2003]; purchased by MFAH, 2003.

The Museum of Fine Arts - Houston also purchased a set of mosaic panels depicting The Musical Contest between Apollo and Marsyas in 2006.

Their provenance is listed as: 

René Bursztejn-Lavigne (d. 1981) and Mercedes Alfonseca Bursztejn-Lavigne, 1970–1981; by inheritance to Mercedes Alfonseca Bursztejn-Lavigne, 1981–1988; sold through Dr. André Lagneau, Secretary General of Credit Suisse; purchased by Sleiman Aboutaam (d. 1998), Geneva, 1988–1998; by inheritance to his sons, Hicham Aboutaam and Ali Aboutaam, New York, 1998–2006; sold through [Phoenix Ancient Art, New York/Geneva]; purchased by MFAH, 2006.

In 2015 Egyptian art collector Joseph A. Lewis II and his wife Sofi, known for their problematic loaned and donated pieces, gifted these two Egyptian Ushabtis, one for Khaemwaset and one for Ramesses to the Michael C. Carlos Museum.  Said to have been found at the Serapeum in Saqqara, Egypt, both were purchased between January and March 2012 from Galerie Gunter Puhze in Freiburg, Germany with a purported provenance that stated they were acquired by Florent Dalcq from the Service des Antiquities in Egypt in 1923 and then passed on to André Lagneau. 

This Egyptian white glazed composition shabti for the Lady of the House, Inhay has a similar backstory.   

This artefact came up for sale at Bonhams, London, New Bond Street on 28 November 2017 with a provenance listed as:

Florent Dalcq (1878-1950) collection, Belgium, acquired from the Service des Antiquities (Egyptian Museum, Cairo Museum) in 1923; and thence by descent to the Andre Lagneau collection, Neuchatel.

with Galerie Puhze, Freiburg, 2011.

Private collection, North America.

It would be nice to compare the documentation concretising this 1923 transaction across all three ushabtis.  

Why I am bringing all this up? 

According to a 29 September 2021 Swiss penal order André Lagneau, in Switzerland, in a period between 1992 and 2016, was accused of having

•⁠  ⁠produced and/or signed false invoices,

•⁠  ⁠produced documents of indications of source contrary to reality,

•⁠  ⁠provided indications of source contrary to reality to be used by others,

and this, for the purpose of obtaining cultural goods, within the meaning of article 2 of the law on the transfer of cultural goods (LTBC), a pedigree aimed at dispelling suspicions of illicit provenance and/or at facilitating their customs transfer and their sale on the art market.

These facts were committed mainly within the framework of his relations with Phoenix Ancient Art and Lagneau was found guilty. 

According to the same Swiss penal order, during a hearing held 20 August 2019, at Lagneau's home, given his particularly fragile state of health, he admitted to having made false invoices and attestations in furtherance of specific antiquities sales.   

Following the Swiss six-year investigation into the provenance of 15,000 antiquities, Ali Aboutaam pled guilty to charges of violating Swiss law on the transfer of cultural properties on 10 January 2023, admitting to the use of forged provenance documents.  He was given an 18-month suspended jail sentence, a three-year probation term, and ordered to pay 450,00 Swiss Francs (approximately $488,000) in legal costs to the Geneva Police Tribunal.

Listed as "a passionate collector" with the initial's "BM" (one convenient letter off from his actual initials of "AL") this November 2021 SwissInfo news article, cites that André Lagneau was convicted of forgery in relation to this antiquities scheme and sentenced to a suspended fine of 4,500 francs at the age of 86.  His sentence was relatively light due to his advanced age and the statute of limitations having expired for several of the offences which were committed between 1992 and 2006. 

In the end, André Lagneau died, at age 89, on 2 June 2023 in Neuchâtel.  He was never questioned about the veracity of his paperwork and attestations in relation to any of the objects sold or donated to the 9 museums in the United States mentioned in this article.  

Taken together, these transactions raise a narrow but serious legal and evidentiary point.  Where a museum acquisition depends on a prior owner’s attestation, and that same individual is later convicted of producing false invoices or false provenance statements in connection with antiquities sales, the evidentiary value of any unsupported provenance associated with that individual is necessarily diminished.  This does not, by itself, prove that every object linked to Lagneau is illicit.  It does, however, mean that museums, dealers, and researchers can no longer treat his attestations as neutral or self-authenticating evidence.

For the Roman marble portrait bust that was restituted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the problem was not simply that its earlier collecting history remains incomplete.  The problem was that the claimed chain of ownership appeared to rest on names and documents now associated with a proven pattern of provenance laundering.  In legal and ethical terms, that distinction should matter to all museums.  A provenance gap is one kind of risk.  A provenance gap bridged by a later-discredited attestation is another.

The Lagneau-linked material dispersed across these major American museums should therefore be reviewed with heightened scrutiny.  Institutions that acquired objects through Phoenix Ancient Art, Antiquarium Ltd., Galerie Puhze, or other market actors or collectors associated with these known chains of criminality should not wait for law enforcement intervention before reassessing their files.  Due diligence is not satisfied by preserving old paperwork in an acquisition file when that paperwork has become materially unreliable.

At a minimum, museums should publicly disclose the underlying documents accompanying these objects which supports these purported provenances, identify which statements depend solely on Lagneau’s attestations or invoices, and distinguishing between independently corroborated ownership histories and unsupported market narrative.  Where no credible pre-1970 or lawful export history can be established, continued retention becomes increasingly difficult to justify.

By:  Lynda Albertson