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Showing posts with label Tom Flynn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom Flynn. Show all posts

February 3, 2017

ARCA is accepting late applications to its 2017 Postgraduate Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Program

ARCA student photo homage to Rene Magritte and his painting
"The Son of Man", 1946*
ARCA's Postgraduate program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection is now accepting late applications for its summer 2017 program.

In 2009 ARCA started the first of its kind, interdisciplinary, approach to the scholarly study of art crime. Representing a unique opportunity for individuals interested in training in a structured and academically diverse format, the summer-long postgraduate program is designed around the study of the dynamics, strategies, objectives and modus operandi of criminals and criminal organizations who commit a variety of art crimes.  

Turn on the news (or follow this blog) and you will see over and over again examples of museum thefts, forgeries, antiquities looting and illicit trafficking of cultural goods.  Intentional heritage destruction during armed conflict, once a modern-day rarity, now affects multiple countries and adds to regional instability in many areas of the globe.  Looted art, both ancient and Holocaust-related finds its way into the galleries of respected institutions, while auction houses and dealers continue to be less than adept at distinguishing smuggled and stolen art from art with a clean provenance. This making dealing with art crime an unrelenting problem and without any one easy solution.

Taken incident by incident, it is difficult to see the impact and implications of art crime as a global concern, but when studied across disciplines, looking at the gaps of legal instruments country to country, one begins to have a clearer picture of the significance of the problem and its impact on the world's collective patrimony.

The world's cultural heritage is an invaluable legacy and its protection is integral to our future. 


Here is 11 reasons why you should consider joining us for a summer in Amelia, Italy. 

At its foundation, ARCA's postgraduate program in Italy draws upon the overlapping and complementary expertise of international thought-leaders on the topic of art crime – all practitioners and leading scholars who actively work in the sector. 

In 2017 participants of the program will receive 230+ hours of instruction from a of range of experts actively committed to combatting art crime from a variety of different angels.

One summer, eleven courses.

Taught by:

Archaeologist, Christos Tsirogiannis from the University of Cambridge, whose forensic trafficking research continues to unravel the hidden market of illicit antiquities.  His tireless work is often highlighted on this blog and reminds those interested in purchasing ancient art, be it from well-known dealers or auction houses, that crimes committed 40 years ago, still taint many of the artifacts that find their way into the licit art market today.

Art historian and London art lecturer Tom Flynn, who eloquently paints a picture of the burgeoning business which is art whilst examining the interplay between our cultural obsession with risk and collecting.  Flynn disentangles the paradoxical alliances between the financially lucrative art market and the collector, relationships that feed upon the art market's unregulated trade and lack of transparency in its transactions.

Duncan Chappell, the Chair of the International Advisory Board of the Australian Research Council’s Center of Excellence in Policing and Security. Chappel is a national award winner for his lifetime achievements in criminology and will be lecturing on the growing number of bilateral, regional and global legal agreements that reflect a growing realization that transnational art crime has to be addressed through international cooperation, and that just as criminal groups operate across borders, judicial systems must consequently do the same.  

Marc Masurovsky, co-founder of HARP, the Holocaust Art Restitution Project who will lecture on the variations among countries’ historical experiences and legal systems, as well as the complexities of provenance research and the establishment of claims processes.  Focusing not only on the implementation of the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-confiscated art but also on modern day examples that underscore the difficulties facing any heir in recovering their property, Masurovsky underscores the need for fully trained provenance experts within museums and auction houses. 

Richard Ellis, private detective and the founder of the Metropolitan Police - New Scotland Yard Art and Antiques Squad.  His law enforcement background reminds us that trafficking in art and antiquities provides criminals with an opportunity to deal in high value commodities that are often poorly protected, difficult to identify and easy to transport across national boundaries. Ellis' lectures paint a little-talked-about portrait of the motley cast of characters who operate in the high-stakes world of the art crime.  His course introduces students to sophisticated criminal organizations, individual thieves, small-time dealers and unscrupulous collectors who don't just dabble in hot art, but who also may be involved in other crimes, such as the smuggling and sale of other illicit commodities, corruption or money-laundering.

Criminal defense attorney and criminologist Marc Balcells, whose animated lectures on the anatomy and etiology of art crimes will illustrate that even if every art crime is unique unto itself, often the underlying causes of criminal behaviors fit into certain established patterns.  Students will explore various theories of crime causation each of which are key to understanding the crime and the criminal as well as evaluating its danger to our cultural patrimony.

Museum security and risk management expert Dick Drent, whose role in the recovery of two Van Gogh paintings from a Camorra reminds us that finding stolen works of art is much harder than protecting them in the first place, especially when organized crime is involved. In Drent's course students will learn about safeguarding culture before it goes missing, analyzing practical approaches to securing a collection, using risk and decision analysis as a form of analytics to support risk-based decision in museums, galleries and reference institutions around the globe.

New Zealand District Court Judge and founding trustee of the New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust, Arthur Tompkins who gives us a fast-galloping 2000-year romp through the history of art crimes committed during war and armed conflict. Tompkins reminds us that armed conflict, whether interstate or intrastate, poses various threats to cultural monuments and cultural property and that while laws have been enacted in an attempt to prevent or reduce these dangers; better laws are also needed to sort matters out after the fact.

Independent art & insurance advisory expert Dorit Straus explores the worlds of specialist fine art insurers and brokers, who underwrite the risks associated with the fine art market.  As the former Vice President and Worldwide Specialty Fine Art Manager for Chubb & Son she knows first hand the active, financially-motivated role insurance firms play in analyzing the risks involved in owning, dealing, buying, transporting or displaying art to the public.  While art insurance expertise is sometimes overlooked as a less-than-sexy side of the art world, insurers have served to make galleries, museums and private collector's collections safer, as their oversight and contract stipulations have produced a dramatic reduction in attritional losses.

ARCA's founding director, Noah Charney who draws upon his knowledge of art history and contemporary criminal activity to explore several of the most notorious cases of art forgery. Emphasizing that art forgery not only cheats rich buyers and their agents, ruining reputations, his course illustrates how crime distorts the art market, one which once relied heavily on connoisseurship, by messing with its objective truth.

Valerie Higgins, archaeologist and Program Director for archaeology, classics and sustainable cultural heritage at the American University in Rome. Higgins course examines material culture as the physical evidence of a culture's existence, illustrating that through objects; be they artworks, religious icons, manuscripts, statues, or coins, and through architecture; monumental or commonplace, we can and should preserve the powerfully potent remains which truly define us as human.

For more information on the summer 2017 postgraduate professional development program, please see ARCA's website here.

Late Applications are being accepted through March 30, 2017.

To request further information or to receive a 2017 prospectus and application materials, please email:  education (at)artcrimeresearch.org

Interested in knowing more about the program from a student's perspective?

Here are some blog posts from and by students who have attended in 2016, in 2015 in 2014, and in 2013.

ARCA student photo homage to "The Standard of Ur", 2550 BCE

-------------------------------
*ARCA strives to be careful regarding its students reimagining and/or recontextualizing derivative works of photography that pay homage to famous works of art less than 70 years after the original creator’s death to be sure there is no infringement of the copyright in that work. 

January 20, 2017

Is art crime understudied? Yes, but you can help us change that.

Who studies art crime?


ARCA's Postgraduate program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection is now accepting applications.

In 2009 ARCA started the first of its kind, interdisciplinary, approach to the scholarly study of art crime. Representing a unique opportunity for individuals interested in training in a structured and academically diverse format, the summer-long postgraduate program is designed around the study of the dynamics, strategies, objectives and modus operandi of criminals and criminal organizations who commit a variety of art crimes.  

Turn on the news (or follow this blog) and you will see over and over again examples of museum thefts, forgeries, antiquities looting and illicit trafficking of cultural goods.  Intentional heritage destruction during armed conflict, once a modern-day rarity, now affects multiple countries and adds to regional instability in many areas of the globe.  Looted art, both ancient and Holocaust-related finds its way into the galleries of respected institutions, while auction houses and dealers continue to be less than adept at distinguishing smuggled and stolen art from art with a clean provenance. This making dealing with art crime an unrelenting problem and without any one easy solution.

Taken incident by incident, it is difficult to see the impact and implications of art crime as a global concern, but when studied across disciplines, looking at the gaps of legal instruments country to country, one begins to have a clearer picture of the significance of the problem and its impact on the world's collective patrimony.

The world's cultural heritage is an invaluable legacy and its protection is integral to our future. 


Here is 11 reasons why you should consider joining us for a summer in Amelia, Italy. 

At its foundation, ARCA's postgraduate program in Italy draws upon the overlapping and complementary expertise of international thought-leaders on the topic of art crime – all practitioners and leading scholars who actively work in the sector. 

In 2017 participants of the program will receive 230+ hours of instruction from a of range of experts actively committed to combatting art crime from a variety of different angels.

One summer, eleven courses.

Taught by:

Archaeologist, Christos Tsirogiannis from the University of Cambridge, whose forensic trafficking research continues to unravel the hidden market of illicit antiquities.  His tireless work is often highlighted on this blog and reminds those interested in purchasing ancient art, be it from well-known dealers or auction houses, that crimes committed 40 years ago, still taint many of the artifacts that find their way into the licit art market today.

London art editor and lecturer Ivan Macquisten who eloquently paints a picture of the burgeoning business which is art whilst examining the interplay between our cultural obsession with risk and collecting.  Macquisten disentangles the paradoxical alliances between the financially lucrative art market and the collector, relationships that feed upon the art market's unregulated trade and lack of transparency in its transactions.

Duncan Chappell, the Chair of the International Advisory Board of the Australian Research Council’s Center of Excellence in Policing and Security. Chappel is a national award winner for his lifetime achievements in criminology and will be lecturing on the growing number of bilateral, regional and global legal agreements that reflect a growing realization that transnational art crime has to be addressed through international cooperation, and that just as criminal groups operate across borders, judicial systems must consequently do the same.  

Marc Masurovsky, co-founder of HARP, the Holocaust Art Restitution Project who will lecture on the variations among countries’ historical experiences and legal systems, as well as the complexities of provenance research and the establishment of claims processes.  Focusing not only on the implementation of the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-confiscated art but also on modern day examples that underscore the difficulties facing any heir in recovering their property, Masurovsky underscores the need for fully trained provenance experts within museums and auction houses. 

Richard Ellis, private detective and the founder of the Metropolitan Police - New Scotland Yard Art and Antiques Squad.  His law enforcement background reminds us that trafficking in art and antiquities provides criminals with an opportunity to deal in high value commodities that are often poorly protected, difficult to identify and easy to transport across national boundaries. Ellis' lectures paint a little-talked-about portrait of the motley cast of characters who operate in the high-stakes world of the art crime.  His course introduces students to sophisticated criminal organizations, individual thieves, small-time dealers and unscrupulous collectors who don't just dabble in hot art, but who also may be involved in other crimes, such as the smuggling and sale of other illicit commodities, corruption or money-laundering.

Criminal defense attorney and criminologist Marc Balcells, whose animated lectures on the anatomy and etiology of art crimes will illustrate that even if every art crime is unique unto itself, often the underlying causes of criminal behaviors fit into certain established patterns.  Students will explore various theories of crime causation each of which are key to understanding the crime and the criminal as well as evaluating its danger to our cultural patrimony.

Museum security and risk management expert Dick Drent, whose role in the recovery of two Van Gogh paintings from a Camorra reminds us that finding stolen works of art is much harder than protecting them in the first place, especially when organized crime is involved. In Drent's course students will learn about safeguarding culture before it goes missing, analyzing practical approaches to securing a collection, using risk and decision analysis as a form of analytics to support risk-based decision in museums, galleries and reference institutions around the globe.

New Zealand District Court Judge and founding trustee of the New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust, Arthur Tompkins who gives us a fast-galloping 2000-year romp through the history of art crimes committed during war and armed conflict. Tompkins reminds us that armed conflict, whether interstate or intrastate, poses various threats to cultural monuments and cultural property and that while laws have been enacted in an attempt to prevent or reduce these dangers; better laws are also needed to sort matters out after the fact.

Independent art & insurance advisory expert Dorit Straus explores the worlds of specialist fine art insurers and brokers, who underwrite the risks associated with the fine art market.  As the former Vice President and Worldwide Specialty Fine Art Manager for Chubb & Son she knows first hand the active, financially-motivated role insurance firms play in analyzing the risks involved in owning, dealing, buying, transporting or displaying art to the public.  While art insurance expertise is sometimes overlooked as a less-than-sexy side of the art world, insurers have served to make galleries, museums and private collector's collections safer, as their oversight and contract stipulations have produced a dramatic reduction in attritional losses.

ARCA's founding director, Noah Charney who draws upon his knowledge of art history and contemporary criminal activity to explore several of the most notorious cases of art forgery. Emphasizing that art forgery not only cheats rich buyers and their agents, ruining reputations, his course illustrates how crime distorts the art market, one which once relied heavily on connoisseurship, by messing with its objective truth.

Valerie Higgins, archaeologist and Program Director for archaeology, classics and sustainable cultural heritage at the American University in Rome. Higgins course examines material culture as the physical evidence of a culture's existence, illustrating that through objects; be they artworks, religious icons, manuscripts, statues, or coins, and through architecture; monumental or commonplace, we can and should preserve the powerfully potent remains which truly define us as human.

For more information on the summer 2017 postgraduate professional development program, please see ARCA's website here.

Late Applications are being accepted through April 28, 2017.

To request further information or to receive a 2017 prospectus and application materials, please email:  education (at)artcrimeresearch.org

Interested in knowing more about the program from a student's perspective?

Here are some blog posts from and by students who have attended in 2016, in 2015 in 2014, and in 2013.




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. 


July 20, 2014

Sunday, July 20, 2014 - , No comments

Book Review: ARCA Lecturer Tom Flynn adds chapter to "Risk and Uncertainty in the Art World"

by Martin Terrazas, ARCA Alum '13

Risk and Uncertainty in the Art World (ISBN: 9781472902924) is a notable attempt at compiling into cohesive curricula research by scholars such as Marina Bianchi, Tom Christopherson, Neil De Marchi, Elroy Dimson, Tom Flynn, Daiva Jurevičieně, Arjo Klamer, Roman Kräussl, Javier Lumbreras, Fleur Maijs, Benjamin Mandel, Clare McAndrew, Jianping Mei, Michael Moses, Laurent Noel, Anders Peterson, Rachel Pownall, Olivia Ralevski, Steve Satchell, Jaketrina Savičenko, Aylin Seçkin, Kyle Sommer, Christophe Spaenjers, Nandini Srivastava, Hans Van Miegroet, Thorstein Veblen, Olav Velthuis, and Luca Zan.

Published by Bloomsbury, it is edited by Anne Dempster (Sotheby’s Institute of Art). Contributors include Tom Christopherson (Sotheby’s Europe), Anders Petterson (ArtTactic), Olav Velthuis (University of Amsterdam), Hans J. Van Miegroet and Neil DeMarchi (Duke University), Marina Bianchi (University of Cassino), Rachel Pownall (University of Tilburg/University of Maastricht), Elroy Dimson (London Business School), Steve Satchell and Nandini Srivastava (Cambridge University), Christophe Spaenjers (HEC Paris), Laurent Noel (Audencia Nantes School of Management), and Arjo Klamer (Erasmus University). 

The book takes a multidisciplinary approach, through alternative investments, art history, behavioral economics, cross-cultural studies, due diligence, macro- and microeconomics, Modern Portfolio Theory, emerging markets, provenance research and many other topics. It is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the international art market.

Petterson’s discussion of how the Internet has changed the art market was robust. His description of the art market ecosystem and how it is adapting in light of online galleries, artist portals, social media, blogs, online auction/art fairs, online inventory management, price databases, indices, investors, art funds and wealth management, showed that there both a new audience and desire for transparency. In creating a more educated consumer, both traditional and upcoming entities have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Petterson’s article is a treatise against all those that desire not to adapt to provenance standards in the market.

Flynn’s discussion of the role of government and private corporations in art commissioning showed that more needs to be done in regards to authentication of art in the public space. What was striking about the article was that it showed a dissonance between corporate views on art and the industry, itself. A clear conclusion was that, in desiring to imagine itself as an ‘exception’ to business, the art world has only done itself more harm. As both a lecturer with the Association for Research into Crimes against Art and also in hosting a blog titled ArtKnows, Flynn, continues to be frontier of these discussions.

Satchell and Srivastava’s derivations about wealth and utility, adding upon Pownall’s essay, showed that there is still much more to connect between mathematical models, financial markets, and the art world. Integration of Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class, the price and wealth effects, Marshallian demand, attempts at indexation – whether through the Financial Times All Shares (FTAS) and the London All Art price index or the Mei-Moses index – the Miller-Modigliani theorem, and the aesthetic dividend, make the reader wonder if the time is here for further data integration with the Standard & Poor’s and Thomson Reuters of the financial world.

The most disappointing was Christopherson’s essay that showed some dissonance against “testosterone-fuelled bond traders” (Risk and Uncertainty 65). The main discussion on legal title, authenticity, issues of attribution comparisons, condition, and valuation was vague. In discussing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Artists Resale Rights, and Bribery Act, Christopherson described a desire to return to an imaginary past. The ultimate lesson learned appeared that he merely seems unsatisfied with changing business models in the art market.

June 19, 2014

Report from ARCA Amelia '14: Second week of courses by Flynn and Ellis bookended with visit to Orvieto

The end of Dr. Flynn's class.  Photo by Summer Kelley-Bell
By Camille Knop, ARCA '14 Intern

Professor Tom Flynn’s course, ‘The International Art Market and Associated Risk’, resumed last Monday with discussions on the tensions between the aesthetic and economic values of works of art. The class concluded two days later with the screening of Furcht, a 1917 German Expressionist film written and directed by Robert Wiene that explores the colonialist roots of collections and the magical haptic quality of works of art that moves one to possess them (even at the risk of one’s safety, in this case). In order to fulfill the course requirements, students composed a 1,500-word response to Gregory Day’s article, “Explaining the Art Market Thefts, Frauds, and Forgeries (And Why the Art Market Does Not Seem to Care).” This exercise allowed students to synthesize and expand on the consequences of the logic of art when put at odds (or not) with the logic of capital.

The End of Dick Ellis' class. Photo by Summer Kelley-Bell

Professor Dick Ellis’ course (“Art Policing, Protection, and Investigating”) the second half of the week included student presentations on art-related crime, focusing on issues regarding due diligence, motivations, and legal and jurisdictional frameworks. Cases ranged from paintings stolen from private property, to an Egyptian pectoral stolen from a university library, to manuscripts smuggled out of Mali, to underwater archaeological looting. The weekend began with many students joining Professor Ellis at two local spots in Amelia: Bar Leonardi and Bar Vertigo.

Despite the forecast of heavy rain, students enjoyed various weekend activities without the stress of any coursework. On Saturday morning, a small group of eight went on an optional trip to Orvieto, which rests on a small plateau of volcanic tuff. After arriving at the foot of the city by bus at around 9:00 a.m., they enjoyed a ride up the funicular that took them right to the edge of the city walls. While some students visited a Roman double-helix well, others wandered around the city, which was preparing for an annual festival that afternoon. Eventually, everyone reunited in the Duomo di Orvieto, whose impressive exterior decoration drew them in like flies to bright lights. Luckily, the group left minutes before a large thunderstorm, which had been seen making its way through the valley towards the city.

Duomo di Orvieto. Photo by Summer Kelley-Bell
By the end of the second week of the ARCA program, the initial nervous excitement of orientation and move-in had worn off, and students began to feel more comfortable as they established their daily routines. In my case, the owners of Caffe Grande, concerned with my poor Italian, have been helping me expand my vocabulary from simply “Grazie!” and “Ciao!” by teaching me alternative greetings through some very animated gestures and universal sign language. Although I was not yet prepared to help a lady who had asked me for directions that week, I was still ecstatic over the fact that I had even been asked! By the end of the second week of classes, ARCA students, including myself, have begun to feel (and apparently appear) less like newcomers and more like Amerini.

You may read about the first week of the program here.

June 12, 2014

Report from ARCA Amelia '14: Inside the lecture hall, Dick Ellis on art investigations and Tom Flynn on the art market; outside: students explore Narni and Amelia

by Paula Carretero, ARCA '14 Intern

Friday, June 30th marked the official start of the 2014 Graduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection, with the arrival of the students to Italy. Students managed to arrive and find their way from Rome to Amelia after navigating the occasionally chaotic Italian transport infrastructure. The bus strike going on that day for sure made it interesting for the students, but everyone arrived safely to the welcome cocktail at La Locanda del Conte Nitto , one of the restaurants in town that, friendly as always, took in all the ARCA students as a welcome to the start of the summer. Over the weekend, students started exploring the city and guided tours were organized during which some of the city’s most wonderful corners were discovered. Among them, students walked into the centro storico of the town, wandering through the medieval streets and exploring some wonderful places: such as the Duomo, the Roman cisterns, and the Teatro Sociale
"Interns in the Cisterns" by Camille Knop

Week one of classes started with Dr. Tom Flynn, a RICS-Accredited Art Market and Art Appraisal lecturer at Kingston University in London.  His course in this year's program was “The International Art Market and Associated Risk.” Though the first half of the week, students explored the history and evolution of the art market; how early collections were gathered in the Cabinets of curiosities (also known as Kunstkabinett, Kunstkammer, Wunderkammer, Cabinets of Wonder, and wonder-rooms); the mechanisms of auctions houses, dealers and collectors; and issues on the value of art. The vast experience of Dr. Flynn, and the relaxed atmosphere in class, helped in creating interesting debates that were enriched by the multiple backgrounds of students from all over the world.

Dick Ellis took over the second half of the week with the course on “Art Policing, Protection and Investigating.” The founder of Scotland Yard’s Art & Antiquities squad introduced the students to the world of art theft, covert operations, money laundering using art, and the mechanism of organized crime as well as thieves motivations to steal art. By the end of the week, students were blown away by the vast experience of Professor Ellis and his generosity in sharing his wisdom with the class.

View from the top of Narni (Photo by 
ARCA Intern Camille Knop)
After this first week full of activities, and with the students’ heads full of plenty of new and valuable knowledge, a well-deserved weekend break arrived. Some of the students, using their remaining energy, took part in a trip to Narni on Saturday, a nearby town. The students enjoyed discovering and walking around the medieval-like streets of the town and went to visit some of the most important monuments like Rocca Albornoz, a 14th century fortress that became the home of popes and cardinals. In Subterranean Narni, the guided tour included the old convent of San Domenico, ancient Roman water tanks, prison cells used during the Inquisition, and 12th century frescoes in a medieval church (here's a link to an article on archaeologist Robert Nini who discovered the former Benedictine abbey in 1979 through an entrance from an old man's garden).

The ones who stayed in Amelia did not miss the chance to explore in their own way. Some of them went to the movie club organized at Chiostro Boccarini each weekend and started getting to know and interact with the Amerini, the citizens of Amelia, to confirm that they are as friendly as their reputation says. Finally, and to help fight the hot temperatures that are starting to arrive, some of the students spent some time hanging out around the pool house and recovering energy for the upcoming weeks. Summer has just arrived and courses are just beginning, but many other adventures are yet to come.

January 30, 2014

ARCA'13 Alum Summer Kelley-Bell asks: Is this the program for you? Really now.

A medieval town & its secret passageways
by Summer Kelley-Bell, ARCA 2013

WARNING: this essay is a work of satire.  It will be best understood if read in the voice of the Dowager Countess of Grantham, from Downton Abbey.

As an ARCA alumna, I have come to warn you about all of the things that you will hate about this small program on art crime. In that vein, I here offer you a list of the woes of living in a small Umbrian town the likes of which will keep you up at night as you scroll through old Facebook photos.  A letter of warning, if you will, to all prospective ARCA-ites. Should you choose to ignore my advice, I cannot be responsible for the consequences.

Your first few days in Amelia will leave you with an intense urge to explore and make friends.  The town is ancient, surrounded on most sides by a Neolithic wall with even more history buried beneath it.  There are secret passages and hidden rooms and you’re going to want to grab a new-found buddy and sneak through every one of them.  DON’T.  The more you explore, the more you will love the town, and it will make it that much harder to leave.  Yes, there is a secret Roman cellar underneath one of the restaurants.  Yes, the town’s people do scatter the roads with rose petals in the shape of angels every June.  Yes, there quite possibly is a hidden room in your classmate's flat.  All of these things are beside the point.  Walk steady on the path and avoid all temptations to adventure.

As for friends, stick with people that live near to you back in the real world.  I know Papa di Stefano is fantastic, and yes, he will befriend you in a way that transcends language, but do you really want to miss him when you’ve gone?  And your fellow students?  Well, most of them are going to live nowhere near you.  Do you really need to have contacts in Lisbon and Melbourne and New York and Amsterdam?  No, you don’t.  It’s so damp in the Netherlands and we all know London is just atrocious.  I mean really, all those people. Take my advice, ignore anyone that lives far away from you.  You are here to learn and leave, not make connections that will last you the rest of forever.

You will also want to avoid the town’s locals.  Amelia is tiny, so getting to know most of its shopkeepers and inhabitants will not be very hard, but you must resist the urge to do so.  It’s true that Massimo will know your coffee order before you get fully through his door, and the Count will open his home with a smile to show you around his gorgeous palazzo, but these things are not proper.  Do not mistake their overflowing kindness and warmth for anything other than good breeding.  And when you find yourself sobbing at the thought of saying goodbye to Monica, you can just blame your tears on the pollen like the rest of us.

Your instructors are going to be just as big of a challenge.  The professor’s are really too friendly.  I know that Noah Charney says that he’s available for lunch and Dick Ellis will happily have a beer with you, but is getting to know your professor socially really appropriate?  I mean, we’ve all attended seminars where you barely see the speaker outside of stolen moments during coffee breaks, and that’s the best way for things to go, isn’t it?  Sterile classroom experience with little to no professorial interactions is the way academic things should run.  I know I never saw any of my professor’s outside of class.  And I certainly don’t keep up with Judge Tompkin’s travels through his hilarious emails; that would just be inappropriate.

And then there’s the conference.  It lasts an entire weekend.  Why would I want to attend a weekend long event where powerhouses in the field open up their brains for poor plebeians?  I mean honestly, meeting Christos Tsirogiannis at the conference will be a high point in your year, and it will be too difficult to control your nerdy spasms when Toby Bull sits down next to you at dinner.  And then, when you find out that Christos joined ARCA's teaching team in 2014 and you’ll find yourself scrambling to come up with a way to take the program a second time just so you can pick his brain. Think about how much work that will be.  They aim to make this an easy experience where you rarely have to use powers of higher thinking.  This should be like the grand tour, a comfortable time away from home so that you can tell others that you simply summered in Italy. 

And the program would be so much better served in Rome.  I mean, just think on it.  You would never have to learn Italian because you’d be in a city full of tourists.  You’d get to pay twice as much for an apartment a third of the size of the one you rent in Amelia, and you wouldn’t have to live near any of your class mates.  A city the size of Rome is big enough that a half hour metro ride to each other’s places would be pretty much de rigueur.  This means you wouldn’t have to deal with any of those impromptu dinner/study sessions at the pool house.  And there certainly wouldn’t be random class-wide wine tastings at the Palazzo Venturelli. That’s just too much socializing anyway.  It’s unseemly.

And finally, let’s talk about the classes.  Do we really care about art crime? Sure, Dick Drent is pretty much the coolest human you’ll ever meet, and Dorit Straus somehow manages to make art insurance interesting, but really, do we care?  Isn’t that better left to one’s financial advisor?  And the secret porchetta truck that the interns will show you as you study the intricacies of art law, could surely be found on one’s own.  Couldn’t it?  I think we would all be much better served by just watching the terrible Monuments Men movie, fawning over George Clooney and Matt Damon, and thinking about the things we could be doing all from the safety and comfort of our own homes.  I do so hate leaving home.  The ARCA program involves work, and ten courses with ten different professors, and classmates that will quickly become family. It’s all so exhausting.  I mean really, tell me, does this sound like the program for you?

ARCA Editorial Note:  If you would like more information on ARCA's 2014 program please see our faculty and 2014 course listing here or write to education (at) artcrimeresearch.org for a copy of this year's prospectus and application materials. 

June 13, 2013

Thursday, June 13, 2013 - ,, No comments

Report from Amelia: ARCA Intern Sophia Kisielewska Writes about Dr. Tom Flynn's "Art & Business" Course

Photo of ARCA Class 2013
by Sophia Kisielewska, ARCA Intern

Art Historian Dr. Tom Flynn led the first course of ARCA's Postgraduate Certificate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies.

Dr. Flynn, a London art lecturer and docent, began "The International Art Market and Associated Risk" on Monday by asking the students to consider the question ‘what is the relationship between economic and aesthetic value’.  During the week he went through the history of the art market and explored how ideas of value were initially generated and understood within it.  The class looked at how the fashion for Cabinets of Curiosity stimulated an interest in enlightened thought and then later in the 18th century how the first auction houses in London, Christies and Sotheby’s, stimulated an interest in creating collections of art.  We learned how the desire to form collections of all things Classical and Italian was initiated by the travels made by the young aristocracy that had travelled to Greece and Italy on their ‘Grand Tours’.

With his vast experience in the art market Dr. Flynn guided the class through its complex structure, explaining the contemporary significance and ever-evolving roles of every faction: the auction houses, the art dealers, art collectors, museums and the art media.  He created a very easy atmosphere for debate and discussion and right from the off everyone was keen to contribute knowledge gained from their different experiences of the market. The vibrant mix of nationalities and expertise in the class made for a fascinating arena of discussion and those with specialist areas of knowledge brought valuable insights to share with the class, such as Anna Knutsson who, having worked as a researcher and cataloguer at The Smith Library and former Sales-room assistant at Christies, has had a lot of experience in the market of books and manuscripts.

Students also shared their own cultural/national perspectives.  Mink Boyce, a gallerist and art consultant from Auckland, shared her experiences of working in the New Zealand art market.  She spoke of the complicated ethical issues surrounding the trading of traditional Maori art, and the need for greater cultural sensitivity in the art market when dealing with such works.  This discussion arose from a mention of the recent controversial sale in Paris that auctioned off Native American Hopi and Zuni tribal masks. 

Every day after class, the debates have been transferred with enthusiasm to either Punto di Vino – a sophisticated wine bar just around the corner that welcomes the ARCA students like family -- or Bar Leonardi – a bar placed just outside the gate which offers an authentic Italian bar experience.

On Tuesday morning, Monica Di Stefano (ARCA’s resident Amerino) directed those who had signed up for Italian lessons in their first ciao’s and mi chiamo’s.  Armed with their exercise books, the students moved very speedily through the basics and by Thursday morning could be seen rushing into Caffe Grande before class to confidently test out their new skills on Massimo, everyone’s favorite barista.

On Saturday, at 7.45 a.m., more than 20 students made their way by bus to the beautiful Umbrian town of Orvieto. Monica Di Stefano, the trip’s tour guide, spoke of the city’s history from its inception as a major Etruscan settlement to its interesting relationship to the papacy in the Renaissance period and to being the one-time home of Thomas Aquinas.  The highlight for all the students seems to have been  Luca Signorelli’s astonishing San BrizioChapel in the Duomo, whose powerfully exaggerated nudes are famously thought to have been inspiration for Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgement’ fresco in the Sistine chapel.  When asked about the trip, ARCA student Georgina Roberts said, ‘A quaint town with astronomical amounts of culture… and great ice cream’.

That evening many ARCA students joined the locals of Amelia in a pizza evening hosted by the ‘Collis’ contrada.  Amelia, like many medieval towns of Italy, such as Siena, is divided into condrade, and these zones of the city compete in various medieval events throughout the year.  The evening was finished off with music and a raffle, where ARCA student Sloane Taliaferro won third prize: a snazzy beach-bag and tights.

By Sunday everyone seemed a bit exhausted. Most people were seen taking it easy in the sun - when it wasn’t raining - but a few were hurriedly finishing their assignments for Dr. Flynn or desperately flicking through Noah Charney’s book Stealing the Mystic Lamb in preparation for Monday’s class.

Sophia Kisielewska recently finished her MA History of Art degree from the University of Edinburgh , which included a year of study at the Universita' di Roma Tre.

December 7, 2012

Conclusion of Dr. Tom Flynn's Interview with Georges Abungu at Forum d'Avignon

TF — We’re here at Forum d’Avignon where we’ve all been discussing culture as a source of hope. What excites you most about ICOM’s activities at present and what gives you most hope and optimism for the future?

GA — What gives me a lot of hope is that ICOM has tried to lead from the front, and from the bottom up, engaging museum professionals, and particularly in those areas involving the youth because they are the future of museums and heritage, and culture in general. ICOM has systematically made sure that where it has initiatives and programmes, where it has meetings, young people can begin to get involved. That is the first thing. The second is the ICOM Code of Ethics, which stipulates how we need to act together and negotiate and move forward on what we can do. The third is setting up these mediation teams where institutions don’t have to quarrel over things but can go through the mediation process with professional mediators, allowing them to discuss amongst themselves and agree on issues. And the same things I’ve been discussing with you can be taken through this mediation process. So to me that is very important. Speaking on an intellectual level as an academic, and referring to the production of intellectual material, ICOM has done that too. The only problem is that it lacks in peer review and that is something some of us have been arguing for because ICOM has a great body of intellectual potential and we could use that. We need to intellectualize our products, to generate more peer-reviewed material using our human resources as a network. It is taking place but we can do better. Lastly ICOM has been flexible enough to guide the development of museums from temples of heritage to community spaces, so it is not rigid. If you look at ICOM as an institution, compared with other bodies it really has embraced this idea of community as a bottom-up approach. I think that is very powerful. It has given museums a direction to enable them to engage with their communities, to open up museums as places of dialogue and as places where communities feel at home. And also to allow museums, indeed to encourage museums in different parts of the world to develop alongside the community’s way of living, of believing, the way the society looks at itself. When you go to Africa, the museum since the 1990s has developed in a very different way, so it is a place of meeting, it is a community centre, a place of dialogue, where you can talk politics. It is the only place that is open to the public in a very fresh way.  To me that issue of diversity that is embraced within ICOM is very important.

TF — Is this your first Forum d’Avignon?

GA — Yes, it’s my first forum and I’ve been enjoying it. I think it’s a fantastic event and I look forward to many more. Over the last two days I have seen how it’s moving on. I think because it’s in Avignon it is very French...

TF — Quintessentially French.

GA — Yes, it’s very French! But I hope that in future they will bring in even more people. They are talking about 42 different nations. It will have to be able to move to embrace those voices. I would have liked to hear what is happening in South America, what is happening in Africa. Africa is the emerging economy, the future of the world, the continent of the future. It is where things are taking place. People are talking about mobile phones here, Africa is where the majority of mobile phones are sold, where communication is moving so fast and I would have liked, when we are talking about culture, not to box it so that European culture is the main thing that needs to exported out, but that we look at other areas, particularly on the issue of diversity. There is no better place to talk about this than here because the whole of West Africa is more or less French. And Asia too. So it will take time, but I’d like to see us move away from the Eurocentric way of looking at culture to a much more globalized way of approaching it. But I’m very happy that we have been looking at culture in terms of innovation, in terms of digital technology, in terms of diversity, and in terms of hope. I’m very happy about that but I’d like to see it opened up to embrace other perspectives because we can learn a lot from the diversity of other cultures.

TF — Why do you think the African art market has not emerged in the same way that, for example, the Chinese art market has, or the Indian art market, or the Russian and Middle East art markets have? After all, Africa has produced great art.

GA — Africa does make fantastic art, but Africa is very busy with other things! We are still trying to find out what resources we have. We have oil, we have uranium...Kenya has oil, Uganda is now producing oil. Every part of Africa has mineral resources coming out if its ears, so there is a second scramble for Africa taking place. And of course the Chinese are there and the Indians are doing things, but Western Europe is finding itself late in this  second scramble for the continent. So I think Africa is trying to manage that before it goes into other things. Everybody is positioning themselves, but everyone talks about Africa as the future continent or the future in terms of the economic scramble. But I think culture is still being left on the side, which I think is a mistake because it should go hand-in-hand. We should use culture to manage those resources that are coming out. It is not that I am approving of what is happening now. I’m actually disapproving because this is the time to use our culture to manage the developments that are being driven by the new resources that are emerging out of the continent. Africa now is able to choose. As a continent, and its various countries, they don’t have to go to Washington to kneel to the IMF or the World Bank. The Chinese will give them money if those guys refuse, so there are choices now. There are resources, but if we don’t manage them now, using our heritage and our culture, we will regret it.

TF — So you’re reinforcing what has been said here at Forum d’Avignon this week, that culture should not be marginalized but should be placed right at the centre of economic activity?

GA — It should be central, but it should also to some extent dictate development because if you don’t do it your way someone else will do it their way and then, by the time you realise it, suddenly it will be too late and that could be a problem for Africa. That is why I’d like to hear more critical analysis at forums like this of how things are happening in Africa and how they could happen better, especially now that these new resources are coming in.

TF — So we should be pushing for greater African representation at Forum d’Avignon next year and in future years?

GA — Yes, that would be fantastic but not only Africa; there is also South America, and Asia, which is developing very fast, as well as the Pacific and other places. But Africa does deserve more critical analysis because we are the continent that still has the raw resources. We have to develop them in the right way, using our various cultures as central to that process. And of course the museum is part of that process too.

December 6, 2012

Part II of Dr. Tom Flynn's Interview with Georges Okello Abungu at Forum d'Avignon


TF — If the original acquisition involved intense violence or things were taken as a part of the subjugation of another culture — as was the case with Benin in 1897 — is that not a justification for thinking again about those objects?

GA — The Benin question is very complex. The first thing we need to accept about the museums that own those Benin collections is to come out and say: ‘Yes, we know these things were taken under those circumstances; we know the Benin kingdom, the Benin royal family, they still exist even if they are not as powerful as they were; we know there are contestations, we know there are claims’. How are we going to satisfy this after all the changes that have taken place? Even if you took it back, who are you going to give it to? Are you going to give it back to the kings? Are you going to give it back to the Nigerian government? Who are you going to return it to? These are issues that need to be discussed. They have been through so many hands, how are we going to trace them back? But these questions do not give you immunity against discussion. You cannot even talk about compensation because these things were done in the late nineteenth century. It was an attack, it was looting, it has ended up in some of these museums. If you measure them even in terms of financial economic benefits to the Benin people, how much is it? In some instances it may not apply because, as others argue, even if it were compensation, who would it go back to? Will it go back to the community, for who are the community? Will it go back to the royalty, for who are the royalty? Will it go back to the government and how will it trickle down there? So the issue is that we must engage in this. We cannot run away by claiming that we are a superior status or that we don’t want to talk. If we can start to engage in a discussion we will probably come to an understanding whereby source communities will be saying, ‘Now we understand. This case is so complex, that this heritage is better preserved where it is’. But if we do not engage and discuss with the [source communities], this problem will continue to be there, because there are people also who are making money out of this. There are NGOs who are paying so that they are in business, there are community members for whom it is a business to continue to agitate for return. There are also people who are genuine, who feel they have a genuine case that they need to be able to discuss and agree on. So at the end of the day I think sitting down, talking, negotiating, compromising and agreeing — ‘Ok, time has passed, you have had this. We are transferring it in good will, on a permanent loan. Have them because you have recognised that ideally these should have belonged to us.’ That is very simple because mentally and psychologically it also helps the community. They know you have reached a compromise, that their ownership has been accepted, symbolically, but physically things remain in the custody of the institution that now owns it on behalf of the world. But you see this is what we have never reached because most of the big institutions think that once they accept that, there will be another big legal challenge, you know, ‘OK, now you have accepted it, now we want it back.’ But if it is in good faith and negotiated properly, this issue of the flood of returns will disappear. I don’t think this is something that will last forever, but it is energized by the fact that big institutions refuse to negotiate and refuse to accept responsibility even where they have been wrong. You cannot win without dialogue, especially in terms of heritage because people feel very attached to it at times and emotional about it.

TF — Where do you stand on partage? As an archaeologist, is it not a way of enabling archaeology to continue to take place, for countries to collaborate on unearthing things and sharing them when they’ve found them? Or do you think anything that is dug up in a country should stay in that country?

GA — That is a very difficult question because we have had some very bad experiences. For years I personally have resisted the issue of sharing when it comes to commercial activities and this applies much more to underwater archaeology which has been misused because you have private companies with suspect archaeologists, you know, so-called archaeologists, who go and negotiate with governments who don’t understand the Convention and then you have officials who are corrupted for a few hundred dollars and they give permits and people go into the sea within the territories and get this material. In Africa there is a lot of problems with that. And they say ‘Fifty percent’. But the fifty percent in the first place on what basis? These are cultural materials. Their fifty percent is going to be sold somewhere. And so you are turning archaeological material into a sellable material. The second things is that the people who are digging here are people from outside so when they say fifty percent, how do you know that is really fifty percent? In most cases when you are told fifty percent, it is actually one hundredth of what is found. I was educated at Cambridge and so I grew up in a culture of cooperation; to me cooperation in the archaeological field is very important. But that sharing was always in the sharing of the knowledge, not in the sharing of the material, unless there was a request from an institution for a particular object or set of objects where there were more and you did not need all of them. In that case it should not be a problem. But I think the idea of people ganging together to go the field to exploit it and then share it; to me that has a risk, the risk that it becomes more of an occupation than the pursuit of knowledge and the representation of humanity’s heritage. It becomes like treasure hunting and if we can do away with the treasure hunting out of it then I have no problem with governments or  institutions sharing knowledge and information and sharing material as long as it is clear and documented and everything is clean. But I’m saying there must be clear policies and regulations and arguments as to how this can be done. It must not be based on bureaucratic decisions taken at government levels with people who could be compromised by giving them a hundred dollars and then the fifty percent comes in.

The conclusion of this interview will be posted tomorrow.