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March 3, 2010

Wednesday, March 03, 2010 - , 3 comments

What happens after ARCA's Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime Studies?

As Business and Admissions Director of ARCA's Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime Studies, I have had a number of prospective students, current students, figures in the field, and others pose this question to me. Many have often queried, "Where are the opportunities in the fields related to art crime?" While not everyone can, or will, become a private art investigator, there are still opportunities within the fields related to art crime. This is the first post in a series on life after the MA in International Art Crime Studies. The first student profiled is Julia Brennan '09.

Julia has worked in the field of textile conservation for over twenty-five years (in practice). She established Textile Conservation Services in 1995 to serve private collectors, galleries, museums, and institutions. Early training included six years in a private atelier specializing in the conservation of 16th-20th century tapestries, Oriental carpets, Asian textiles and American samplers and quilts. Ms. Brennan helped establish the textile storage and conservation facility at the Philadelphia College of Textile’s Paley Design Center, and was the editor for a manual of conservation stitches. In 1989 she received a Getty Research Grant focusing on the analysis of dyes in historic Thai textiles, as well as treatments for oriental carpets. During her five years as Assistant Conservator for Exhibitions at the Textile Museum in Washington, she prepared over 30 exhibits, and was the guest curator of a contemporary textile show on Faith Ringgold.

She does regular contract work and maintenance of textile collections for The John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, The Daughters of the American Revolution Museum, George Washington's Mount Vernon and Smithsonian Institution Museums. For more info about Julia's work see her site "Caring for Textiles". Recently, she contributed a chapter on teaching preventative and textile conservation in Asia and Africa in Frances Lennard and Patricia Ewer eds. Textile Conservation: Advances in Practice. Butterworth Heinemann. March 2010, pp 336.

March 1, 2010

Monday, March 01, 2010 - , No comments

ARCA Trustee Anthony Amore Featured at IFAR's Twenty Years and Counting: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft

Twenty Years and Counting: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft
Anthony Amore - Director of Security, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Rebecca Dreyfus - Producer/Director "Stolen," a PBS Independent Lens Production
Brian Kelly - Chief of the Public Corruption & Special Prosecutions Unit, U.S. Attorney's Office, Boston
Geoffrey Kelly - Special Agent, Violent Crimes Task Force, FBI, Boston Division

Program Location:
"10 on the Park" at the Time Warner Center; 10th floor, 60 Columbus Circle, New York

In March 1990, in the early morning after St. Patrick's Day, thieves masquerading as policeman stole 13 works, including 11 paintings, from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Among the paintings were Vermeer's Concert and Rembrandt's only seascape. Twenty years later, the theft remains the most significant U.S. art theft in history, and it is still unsolved. This special program, organized with the cooperation of the Gardner Museum and both the FBI and US Attorney's Office in Boston, is a rare opportunity to learn more about the case from the people closest to it. It is a follow-up to the program IFAR organized -- also with the help of the FBI -- on the 10th anniversary of the theft, in March 2000.

Monday, March 01, 2010 - ,, No comments

ARCA Call for Papers

Call for Papers
2nd Annual ARCA Conference in the Study of Art Crime
Amelia, Italy
10-11 July 2010

ARCA (The Association for Research into Crimes against Art), an international non-profit think tank and research group dedicated to the study of art crime and cultural property protection, is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for its second annual conference. Papers are welcome from scholars and professionals in any field relevant to art crime and protection, including law, policing, security, art history, conservation, archaeology, and criminology. Please submit a title and abstract (up to 250 words) as well as a professional biography (up to 150 words) by email to director@artcrime.info by May 1.

The conference will be held in the elegant Zodiac Room of Palazzo Petrignani, in the beautiful town of Amelia in the heart of Umbria. The conference will feature the presentation of the annual ARCA Awards to honor outstanding scholars and professionals dedicated to the protection and recovery of international cultural heritage. The goal of the conference is to bring together international scholars, police, and members of the art world to collaborate for the protection of art worldwide.

Please direct any queries and submit papers to director@artcrime.info. For more information on ARCA, please visit www.artcrime.info.

February 25, 2010

February 12, 2010

Friday, February 12, 2010 - ,,, No comments

Blood Antiques

Recently, a variety of news sources carried stories that made reference to an article in the Fall 2009 issue of the Journal of Art Crime by Judith Harris, which discussed the many connections between looted archaeological artifacts and terror. For a both more in-depth study and visual supplement be sure to check out "Blood Antiques," a Belgian documentary by Peter Brems and Wim Van den Eynde featured on Linktv.org.

From LinkTV,
"The European art trade, synonymous with wealth and glamour, has always involved a degree of stolen and smuggled art. Now, Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage is financing terrorism and the Taliban. From Afghans scrabbling in the sand for treasures, to the dazzling show rooms of unscrupulous dealers and private collectors – ‘Blood Antiques’ uncovers one of the most outrageous illegal trades since blood diamonds."

January 19, 2010

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - ,,,, No comments

Crackdown on Culture Crime: Italy’s Proud Carabinieri Art Squad


by Judith Harris

ROME –The message: it works! Italy’s campaign to crack down on thefts of its treasures of art and archaeology has borne fruit, and the proof is in the statistics in the year-end report, released January 14 in Rome by General Giovanni Nistri, head of Italy’s crack Carabinieri art squad. Cultural heritage thefts were down by 14.5 percent in 2009 over the previous year. In addition, some 60,000 looted artifacts—from ancient to modern paintings, preciously inlaid Baroque furniture, archaeological artifacts, fine items of church décor and rare books—were recovered during 2009 for a total estimated value of almost $240 million. During the three-year period 2007-09 all crime has decreased, with thefts of cultural heritage dropping from 1,031 in 2008 to 882 in 2009.

Two of the most important recovered items—a Roman-era fresco painting hacked out of a wall and a precious black-figure decorated ceremonial Greek pot with handles (krater)—stolen from Italy but turned up recently at the auction house of Christie’s in New York.

Most recently the campaign to protect the nation’s cultural heritage has showcased the ongoing trial in Rome of two Americans, former Getty Museum curator Marion True and the elderly Paris-based dealer Robert Hecht. As a result of this highly publicized trial, the Getty Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Cleveland Art Museum have all returned items which the Italians demonstrated were looted from its territory. This three-pronged effort to throttle clandestine looting and sales involved the successful coordination with the Culture Heritage Ministry, the Carabinieri, and prosecutors and magistrates.

The advent of the Internet has both helped and hindered the illicit traffic. Specialized and general-interest web sites frequently sell looted items, but at the same time the Carabinieri-created website showing illustrations of stolen artifacts has been a successful tool. An example is the Pompeian fresco which had been stored for decades in a museum warehouse. No one knew when it was removed from storage, but in 1997 it was declared missing, and, thanks to the Internet, was found at Christie’s before it could be stolen.

One disappointing setback: a father-so team Lebanese art restorers working in Switzerland, known as the Burki, were implicated with Robert Hecht. Some 500 archaeological items were seized from them but bureaucratic delays with justice officials in Switzerland meant that the statute of limitations ran out, and all the artifacts had to be returned to them. At present, according to the Carabinieri, of the 500 items, only 137 remain in the Burki possession.

Archaeological theft is particularly important because by definition the looted items have no provenance certification, as would be required for selling, say, master works by Renaissance artists. For this reason independent experts like Prof. Noah Charney estimate archaeological thefts to amount to about three-quarters of the total. To address this, the Carabinieri now patrol the territory in helicopters and low-flying airplanes, which allow them to see, literally, the clandestine digs that would otherwise be invisible. As a result, on two sites looters were caught red-handed, and four arrests made.

Put another way, both supply side and the demand side are under attack. Stolen archaeological items are harder to sell because collectors are frightened, and the more skillful sleuthing means that the number of known clandestine excavations has fallen by a stunning 76% in just one year as a result.

Perhaps as a result, the number of counterfeit objects—“and particularly works of modern art,” said General Nistri—seized has risen enormously, by 427 percent in just one year. The problem remains, obviously, and especially in Central Italy (Lazio, Campania Regions), Tuscany and Lombardy.

State-owned museums are better protected today than in the past, as the statistics also show. Museum thefts are down by 29% across the board. Relatively few take place in the larger museums, whereas the smaller, city-owned (and hence less protected by high-tech security) museums account for half of all museum thefts.

Thefts from private collections, religious institutions of all kinds and historic archives remain a major concern. Church thefts dropped by almost 12% over 2008, but that year had seen a small boom in looting, and thefts from religious institutions of all kinds still account for 44.5% of the total. The relatively large number of archival materials recovered suggests that combatting this type of theft remains a priority.

January 13, 2010

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 - ,, 1 comment

Numbers Are Important


By John Kleberg


When I received my December issue of the Smithsonian Magazine, an excellent publication and always of interest, I was surprised to see a front page lead headline:

Stolen Wildlife

The illicit animal trade is surpassed only

by drugs and weapons trafficking.


Having operated on the premise and understanding that the theft of art and cultural property was the third most significant illicit trade, I wrote the publication on December 4:


“I was particularly interested in the story in the December issue on "Stolen Wildlife" by Professor Bergman. The cover headline "The illicit animal trade is surpassed only by drugs and weapons trafficking" caught my attention however, I was curious about the documentation to support the observation. The Department of State CRS Report for Congress, International Illegal Trade in Wildlife: Threats and U.S. Policy, updated August 22, 2008, notes "...at least $5 billion and potentially in excess of $20 billion annually..." It doesn't seem to mention that it is the third most significant category of illegal activity.

The US National Central Bureau of Interpol, Department of Justice reports, "The annual dollar value of art and cultural property theft is exceeded only by the trafficking in illicit narcotics and arms." This is broadly considered the case in the law enforcement community.

Is there another reliable source of the information in the article?


In response, I received the following:


Dear Mr. Kleberg:

Thank you for your recent letter regarding our article "Wildlife Trafficking" by Charles Bergman, which appeared in the December 2009 issue of SMITHSONIAN magazine. As requested, here is source for our cover line regarding illicit animal trade:

http://www.state.gov/g/oes/env/wlt/

We greatly appreciate your taking the time to send us your comments and are forwarding them to Mr. Bergman and his editors.


If one looks at the noted United States Department of State site and the Department of Justice at the US National Central Bureau for INTERPOL web site:

http://www.justice.gov/usncb/programs/cultural_property_program.php

it is evident that there is some lack of clarity as to the “real picture.” Noah Charney recently commented on that at the ARCA web site after we shared this detail. The point once again provides emphasis on the need for better and more comprehensive data on the frequency of art, artifact and cultural property crime.

It would be helpful if local law enforcement agencies in the United States would establish appropriate theft designations under NIBRS (National Incident Based Reporting System) for the theft of art, religious artifacts, cultural property and similar items and that the data be collected at the national level. In Ohio, under the OIBRS system, there is a classification under theft for Art Theft.

The opportunity for academic research is evident. The data collected would be most useful as efforts are made to combat this illicit trafficking in cultural property.

December 25, 2009

Friday, December 25, 2009 - No comments

Merry Christmas from the ARCA Staff


A very merry Christmas and a happy New Year. We at ARCA thank all of our volunteers, supporters, and friends and wish you all the best during the holidays.

December 24, 2009

Thursday, December 24, 2009 - ,,,,,, 1 comment

Report on the IFCPP Art and Book Theft Conference at Ohio State


by Doug McGrew

Perhaps when you recall incidents of cultural property theft your mind dwells on incidents in Europe or major institutions within the United States. Along this same process you remember priceless works of art created from oil and canvass missing from those institutions. Your thought process would only be partially correct.

On November 10th 2009, the Heartland Chapter of the International Foundation for Cultural Property Protection organized a daylong seminar titled: Cultural Heritage at Risk, Art and Book Theft: Past, Present, Future. Nearly 100 attendees from the cultural property community around the state of Ohio and beyond attended this event organized by Douglas McGrew and hosted at The Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts.

The mission for this seminar was simple and unique. Change the perception on what others view as cultural property and change your personal networks. Invitations were sent to a wide base of professionals in the cultural property community. This was an intentional casting according to Doug McGrew and one he believes made this event a successful venture. “We deliberately invited curators, registrars, librarians, archivist, collectors and law enforcement professionals. We wanted them in the same room, sharing observations, meeting new folks outside of their traditional networks. At the end of the day, hopefully, the attendees gained a new understanding of what cultural property is and how to protect our heritage.”

To accomplish this mission featured speakers Noah Charney and Travis McDade were enlisted to share their research and efforts to protecting cultural assets. Professor Travis McDade with the University of Illinois shared findings with the group focusing on thefts of rare books and manuscripts. Thoughtfully Prof. McDade covered cases with connection to the Ohio area and particularly touching on individuals with ties to Columbus the host city for this seminar. Mr. Charney continued the event covering some well known cases but also provided valuable information on prevention and recommendations for improving current procedures within the attendee’s institutions.

The speaking portion of the day was concluded with a roundtable discussion with McDade and Charney. Joining this discussion were:

· Patrick Maughan – former director of security the Ohio State University

· John Kleberg – former director of the Department of Public Safety, the Ohio State University

· Paul Denton – current chief of police, the Ohio State University

The roundtable provided expertise from all sides of the cultural property community, demonstrating the need to have a diverse professional network. After sharing their professional experiences creating, administering and protecting cultural property the entire panel received questions from the guest. The event concluded with the screening of the documentary The Rape of Europa.

Post mortem discussions have been very fruitful and the positive feedback received from participants has been overwhelming. Planning is currently underway for the next installment of what will become a series of events under the Cultural Heritage at Risk banner.

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