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March 19, 2011

Saturday, March 19, 2011 - , No comments

A Post in the Memory of Donny George, the former Director of the Iraq Museum

Donny George, the former director of the Iraq Nation Museum who tried to stop the looting in 2003, died on March 12 in Canada. You may read about his life and his work at the following links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/middleeast/15george.html?_r=1

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=44943

http://www.aina.org/news/20110312145547.htm

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/Donny/George/hombre/salvo/Museo/Nacional/Irak/elpepucul/20110313elpepucul_3/Tes.

Saturday, March 19, 2011 - ,, No comments

"Human Rights and Cultural Heritage: from the Holocaust to the Haitian Earthquake" Scheduled for March 31 at Cardozo Law School in New York

The Cardozo Art Law Society is conducting a one-day seminar, "Human Rights and Cultural Heritage: from the Holocaust to the Haitian Earthquake", from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on March 31, 2011 at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York.

Other organizers include the American Society of International Law, Lawyers' Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation, and the Hofstra Law School Art and Cultural Heritage Club.

You may read the day's schedule and register here.

Those speakers who have appeared in previous posts on the blog include: Marc Masurovsky, Co-Founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project; Howard N. Spiegler, Partner and Co-Chair of the Art Law Group, Herrick, Feinstein LLP; Patricia K. Grimsted, Senior Research Associate, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and International Institute of Social History; and Jennifer A. Kreder, Professor of Law, Salmon P. Chase College of Law.

March 18, 2011

Friday, March 18, 2011 - ,,, No comments

Paris Diary: Mexico's Plea for UNESCO to Provide International Leadership on the 1970 Convention for Countries to Work Together to Stop the Trafficking of Illicit Cultural Objects and the Destruction of Archaeological Sites... and Revisiting Paris' Most Celebrated Stolen Art, the Mona Lisa

PARIS - Thursday morning I walked to Les Deux Magots for breakfast before heading to Le Carrousel du Louvre to purchase a 4-day museum pass. Upon arrival at the St. Germain café, I recognized Dr. Jorge Antonio Sánchez Cordero Davila, director of the Mexican Center for Uniform Law, engaged in serious conversation with two distinguished men. After indulging in a Provançal omelette, I passed them again, still talking, but this time I re-introduced myself. Dr. Sánchez-Cordero, an expert on the panels at the two-day UNESCO meeting on the 1970 Convention anniversary, immediately stood as did his companions and after his customary warm greeting and introduction to his companions (in French), then returned to English to emphasize that Mexico had been impassioned in it's plea to UNESCO to establish a leadership role on the 1970 convention. Further posts here will elaborate on his specific intent but one of the points made at the conference by another expert was that UNESCO's staff of one on the 1970 convention could not be effective by itself. Participants had almost all agreed that communication between countries, the ratification of the agreement by another 73 countries (only 120 of 193 signatories have ratified it), and subsequent awareness and training on the ways to implement ways to stop the trafficking and looting of cultural objects would require more than one UNESCO staff member.

While not everyone ignores Veronese's The Wedding at Cana, many people are just waiting to see The Mona Lisa

The crowd in front of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is continuous and slow as so many people want to be photographed with this centuries old celebrity.

Three paintings by Titien are on the other side of the wall of 'La Joconde'
In 1911, a former workman walked out of the Louvre with Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, an artwork that had been owned by France since François I had purchased it after the artist had died at his court. The two-year search for the painting resulted in the fame the painting now has today. Even in March, hordes of visitors cram into one room to view 'La Jaconde' even while paintings by Titien on the other side of the wall and a wall-seize canvas of The Wedding at Cana by Veronese remain relatively ignored.

March 17, 2011

Thursday, March 17, 2011 - No comments

ARCA is Hiring A Program Assistant and Two Onsite Interns

ARCA needs 2 resident interns and a program assistant to join us in Amelia this summer. Details are below:

Program Assistant Job Announcement

Resident Intern Job Announcement

Thursday, March 17, 2011 - ,, No comments

Samuel Sidibé, Director of the National Museum of Mali, Spoke Wednesday at UNESCO in Paris about the 1970 Convention and How the Severe Problem of Looting of Archaeological Sites Was Exacerbated By Demand in the Art Market for Wooden and Ceramic Masks

Samuel Sidibé of Mali posed for photograph
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, editor

PARIS - Samuel Sidibé, the director of the National Museum of Mali, the last speaker scheduled on Tuesday, actually opened the second day of the 40th commemoration meeting at UNESCO on the 1970 Convention when time ran out on on the panel, "Illicit trafficking of archaeological objects". Attendance appeared to have thinned out and the cameras had disappeared, but when I mentioned this to Mr. Sidibé at the lunchbreak, he said, "I don't need any cameras." But I thought what he said was important enough to mention here. As one of the other delegates mentioned, Mr. Sidibé was one of the few experts from the continent of Africa to speak at the meeting, and the only one from outside of Egypt and Tunisia.

Mali, Mr. Sidibé began, perhaps because the Niger River runs across it, has many archaeological sites. He said that problems of looting and illicit excavations peaked in the 1970s and 1980s due to the publicity of the discovery of legitimate archaeological sites and the popularity of traditional wooden masks prized on the international market. Some unscrupulous people were falsifying the wooden masks, he said through an English interpreter as he spoke in French, the discovery of ceramic masks 'sparked interest as people lost faith in wooden masks'. This led to looting in ceramic masks. 'Originally looting occurred near the site by the Niger river where the ceramic masks were discovered but demand grew and spread to an interest in pottery in prehistoric sites,' Mr. Sidibé explained. 'It is a serious problem unique to Africa because although written manuscripts have been found in the Sahil region, they are lacking for other centers so artifacts are prized. It is an unacceptable moral situation to deprive people knowledge of their history.'

'What has Mali been doing to protect it's cultural heritage?' he posed. In 1985, he said, Mali adopted strict legislation that objects from archaeological sites cannot be traded commercially or exported for sale. 'All our archeological objects found in Europe are in violation of the law in Mali,' he said.

Mali ratified the 1970 Convention as a tool for international cooperation, he said. 'Mali signed an agreement with the United States to forbid the import of objects from Mali's archaeological sites and we are in partnership with the Swiss to set up an agreement to protect our heritage.'

They have other agreements with various countries and are in consultation with France, a significant art market, he said. 'Sixteen terra cotta statutes seized by the French government were returned to the Mali museum.'

In addition to working with the International Conference of Museums and the 'red list' for stolen items, they have had training programs at the professional and technical level in the field. To create awareness of the problem, they examined 'severely looted sites' of what remained to remained to better understand their context and spoke to communities throughout Mali.

'Communities have traditionally had the concept that sites are income,' he said, 'and we have been educating them that archaeological sites are culture.' He said that they will continue with research and training programs because 'too much looting is going on the African continent.'

March 16, 2011

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - ,, No comments

Mexico and Canada at UNESCO's meeting on the 40th anniversary of the 1970 Convention

Ambassador Carlos de Icaza and Jorge Sánchez-Cordero
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

PARIS - I have two-days of notes on the more than 11 hours of panels and discussions that occurred over the past two days at UNESCO as attendees and experts discussed the 1970 Convention, the first international agreement that recognized that the smuggling and trade of art, antiquity objects, and the illegal excavations of archaeological sites was a global problem best attacked with international cooperation. But it is a beautiful spring evening in Paris and the Louvre is open tonight so this post features the delegates from Mexico and the anecdote of how I purchased a great cup of decaffeinated coffee as I walked away from the conference.

Carlos de Icaza, Ambassador of Mexico in France (and former Ambassador to the United States, spoke at the public debate today, moderated by the distinguished Dr. Davidson L. Hepburn, Chairman of the Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation of The Bahamas. Ambassador de Icaza spoke about Mexico's history with the 1970 convention -- it was actively involved in the formulation and the eight country to ratify it. A national inventory identifies archaeological artifacts in public and private collections in Mexico. However, he said, "We are in a situation that we cannot tolerate. Many countries are being plundered through clandestine excavations. Despite all our efforts, criminals operate on sites and in the trafficking of cultural and archeological objects."

He went on to ask that UNESCO consider finding solutions to the gaps in the 1970 convention. "It is practically impossible to prove ownership from illicit excavations or from underwater sites. There is a huge illicit market today."

The Canadian delegate, Kathryn Zedde, Senior Policy Analyst for Canadian Heritage, later responded that "gaps" are in the interpreting and implementing the 1970 convention. "Canada has returned objects to ten other states including multiple groups of objects and none have been on any inventory list and almost all of them have been archaeological artifacts. Canada's legislation has prohibited the importing of any cultural property from other countries. We don't require objects to be listed as stolen from any museum."

Hours of discussion followed this subject so I'll write more about it later.

Antoine Netien and Tom Clark at Coutume
On my way home, I noticed a clean and crisp shop with a well-displayed list of coffee drinks. Approaching the bar I ordered a "latte" and was immediately busted as English-speaking by Tom Clark, who with Antoine Netien, operates Coutume (47, Rue de Babylone), a cafe specializing in high quality coffee and espresso drinks. Upon inquiry, Tom, an Australian brought up on great coffee, told me about how he graduated from law school then decided to help introduce fine coffee beans to Paris. In the back of the restaurant, Antoine was roasting beans, something he says he does from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. each day, roasting small batches at a time. The store has only been open a week, so grateful for their hospitality, I told them I'd let our readers know about a great place in the 7th arrondisement in Paris for coffee on the level of Intelligensia... and with no disrespect to our guys in Chicago and Los Angeles, I think Coutume may have a few more machines imported from Japan -- such as a 24 hour extraction that with its slow drip enhances the caffeine in the coffee. Well, I'm off to the Louvre to admire the objects Napoleon was able to keep after he plundered the best of Europe in the early 19th century. Ah the ironies...

March 15, 2011

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - , 1 comment

Passing out "Save Egypt" buttons at UNESCO's 40th Anniversary of the 1970 Convention

Gihane Zaki, Director General, Nubia Fund, Ministry of Culture for Egypt wearing SAFE's button

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

ARCA Alum (Class 2009) Julia Brennan arranged with Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) to ship some buttons to me to promote cultural heritage protection in Egypt at the 40th commemoration meeting of UNESCO in Paris today. The gesture appeared worthwhile as one of the themes of today's discussions was promoting awareness of the importance of protecting the artifacts of culture. Although Zahi Hawass was unable to attend the meeting as scheduled, Egypt's representative from the Ministry of Culture was Gihane Zaki, Director General of the Nubia Fund. She put on the button, "Say Yes to Egypt's Heritage" and gamely posed for the photo promised Cindy Ho at SAFE. Ms. Zaki took additional buttons for her staff to wear at tomorrow's meeting. Dr. Zahi Hawass did post his 'address' to UNESCO on his site here. More reports here on the blog will follow regarding the meeting in the next few days.

March 14, 2011

Monday, March 14, 2011 - ,,, 1 comment

"The Louvre: A Golden Prison" produced by Lucy Jarvis and NBC News in the 1960s hints at the plain sight hiding location of a large painting during the Nazi Occupation of Paris

Lucy Jarvis (Paley Center)
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

During my almost sleepless flight to Paris last night, I watched again a charming video downloaded for free from iTunes: an NBC News produced one-hour show on the Louvre, narrated by Charles Boyer and produced by Lucy Jarvis titled "The Louvre: A Golden Prison" (1964). The Paley Center for Media writes this about the film:
"Jarvis next produced a dual tour of the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., Museum Without Walls, which aired on NBC in 1963. The logistically complex project—among the first to utilize telecommunications satellite technology—served as a forerunner to a more detailed exploration of the Louvre that Jarvis had in mind. The previous year she had accompanied Kennedy on a state visit to Paris and it was there, during a social event, that she had first broached the idea of a documentary about the hallowed institution to French President Charles de Gaulle and Minister of Culture André Malraux. In a feat comparable to getting approval to shoot inside the Kremlin, Jarvis finagled permission to bring a camera crew into the Louvre; when the museum’s curators expressed concern that the intense lights required to gain a proper exposure (for the sake of aesthetic, the film was shot in color on 35mm rather than the customary black and white 16mm) might damage their treasured paintings, Jarvis reassured them by saying, “If Khrushchev trusted me, why can’t you?” The color cinematography was an important element for Jarvis; indeed, General Sarnoff, chairman of NBC, the parent company of RCA, credited her programs on the Kremlin and the Louvre with helping to sell four million color television sets. The Louvre: A Golden Prison, airing in 1964, was recognized with a staggering number of awards, among them six Emmys, a Peabody, and a Radio-TV Critics Award. In 1968, Jarvis became the first woman—and one of the few Americans—ever to receive the French government’s prestigious Chevalière de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres."
In her introduction, Madame Jarvis speaks about how the curators emptied the Louvre prior to Nazi occupation of Paris. Yet one large painting, too big to move outside of the city, hung from the ceiling of a restaurant while Nazis dined below until the end of the war. What is the painting she is referring to? I would tell you but I don't recall in the video that they ever named the painting. I am wondering if one of our readers knows the answer.

Monday, March 14, 2011 - No comments

Museums and Nazi-looted Art: Provenance research departments and registeries

by Emily Blyze, ARCA Alum 2009
The last post of a five-part weekend series

In September 2009, the Indianapolis Museum of Art built an Object Registry for the AAMD devoted to the Resolution of Claims for Nazi-Era Cultural Assets. This registry provides information on the resolution of formal claims made to AAMD member museums regarding works of art stolen by the Nazis between 1933-1945. It lists objects restituted and settlements made since June 4, 1998, the date the Report of the AAMD Task Force on the Spoliation of Art during the Nazi/World War II Era (1933-1945) was adopted. The registry encourages openness regarding works nationally and internationally, a source for information on resolved claims for AAMD member museums, as well as supplement information provided by the AAM.

Guidelines and Procedures for World War II Provenance Issues created in September 2009 by The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is a 136-page document that breaks down the mechanics of how to conduct provenance research. The Freer/Sackler guidelines and procedures address their protocol on handling works, but also offer an ample resource for museums needing assistance. How to conduct provenance research was mentioned before in this paper. The AAM Guide to Provenance Research does achieve this goal and provides a sample for recording provenance, as well as specific case studies of how detail oriented a provenance researcher’s job is. However, the Freer/Sackler expands on the process of how to handle acquisition policies, loan agreements, suggested procedures and questionnaires for donors, vendors, curators who help in acquiring research information. A provenance research checklist and a provenance display procedure and guidelines section is available to reference as well.

With regard to making effective and economical steps towards correctly addressing their collection with proper provenance research, some museums have established provenance research websites. In accordance with the AAMD and AAM guidelines, institutions such as The Getty, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago have a designated space on their website addressing provenance research. The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art stated that through a significant gift from the Chase family of Connecticut, the Atheneum was able to conduct an in-depth provenance research project on its museum’s collection of approximately 50,000 objects of art. Their findings are posted on their website, stating if a work has clear or questionable provenance.

Museums have made strides towards compliance with the AAMD and AAM guidelines. But there is always room for strategic and effective growth. A recommendation for the future is to create a Nazi-Era Provenance Researchers Association (NEPRA). Alongside the WG Looted Art recommendation 7, the aim would be to establish an association where provenance researchers have a peer group not only to help each other, but develop the profession as well. NEPRA would need to be initiated by the Terezin Declaration, under the arm of the Terezin Institute. The Terezin Institute would be the umbrella for operation, but the association would maintain its own entity. That way it would have the support of the Terezin Declaration goals and objectives, but be able and nimble enough to create its own mission statement, purpose and bylaws. As with other associations, a Board of Governors or Council would need to be identified. From there, the founding principles would be drawn up by the Council. Nazi-era provenance researchers are a small, but powerful group of individuals. The goals of the association would be to educate and spread awareness with a concrete set of identified persons in the field; adhere to unified standards that will bring cohesiveness to the profession; bring together these individuals to disseminate information and resources; create a database of all affiliated personnel and institutions – a central location will help to alleviate time of contacting those in the field and promote more time towards research of the artwork.

All individuals and establishments involved with provenance research would be encouraged to join, adhering to the non-binding regulations of the Terezin Declaration. An act of “requirement” of participation would not be feasible. It is only when the Terezin Declaration becomes binding that the guidelines and recommendations falling under it will be followed. Establishments such as auction houses should be encouraged to join.

Auction houses, such as Sotheby’s, have established Nazi-era provenance research departments. Since 1997, Sotheby’s has run a due diligence program targeted at identifying possible WWII provenance issues amongst the artworks brought to them to value or sell. The program maintains a specialized international team of provenance researchers within Sotheby’s whose role is to support Sotheby’s specialists throughout the world in dealing with provenance research and spoliation issues. The team is staffed with art historians and lawyers in New York and London and calls on the services of a network of independent art historians based in Europe and North America. If auction houses join then there will be an economic and commercial incentive for doing so. By completing provenance research, it obviates the possibility of the auction house being litigated against for selling Nazi-era work. Their research will also often lead to the discovery of works that end up coming under the hammer as part of a settlement. Museums would be persuaded to join the association where they are forced to complete provenance research anyways for moral reasons.

As many as 70,000 artworks remain scattered in museums and private collections or simply lost around the world. There is a feeling that the process has stalled in some countries, thanks to a combination of political will and sheer ignorance of the provenance of artwork. In tackling the problem of Nazi-era looted works of art in public collections, provenance research has now shifted to the forefront of concern to many persons inside and outside the museum profession.

The very need to establish the Terezin project in addition to, and so soon after, the Washington Principles demonstrates that the issue is still an urgent and important one in international museum culture and is expected to remain so for the foreseeable future.

March 13, 2011

Sunday, March 13, 2011 - ,, No comments

Museums and Nazi-looted Art: Washington Principles vs. Terezin Declaration

by Emily Blyze, ARCA Alum 2009
Part four of a five-part weekend series

Principles 3, 4, and 5 of the Washington Principles are worthy of attention compared to the equivalent recommendations in the Terezin Declaration Looted Art Working Group (which happen to be 3, 4, and 5 as well). The Washington Principles address the issue of resources and personnel being available to facilitate identification of a Nazi confiscated work not restituted (3). If established that a work was confiscated and not restituted, consideration should be given to unavoidable gaps or ambiguities in the provenance in light of the passage of time (4). Efforts should also be made to publicize the work of art in order to locate its pre-War owners or heirs (5). By contrast, the WG recommendations state that export, citizenship, inheritance and cultural heritage laws should not be used to prevent the restitution of cultural property to claimants. The Principles make no mention of legal issues, whereas the recommendations from the WG that the 46 states modify restitution legislation and establish national claims procedures create a stronger point to be considered.

The WG Looted Art recommendation 7 asserts that Participating States should actively support the establishment and operation of an international association of all provenance researchers. The association should encourage cooperation between researchers, the exchange of information, the setting of standards, and education. The proposal to create an association is the first of its kind. It begs the question of why this has not been done before now.

A notable difference between the Washington Principles and the Terezin Declaration is the availability of information via the Internet. Relevant records and archives should be open and accessible to researchers, in accordance with the guidelines of the International Council of Archives, reads Principle 2 of the Washington Principles. Keep in mind the technology of 1998 was very sparse and the material that was recommended to be open and accessible was primarily documents and books. However, the openness and accessibility of the Internet today has offered up a whole new dimension. This is particularly significant with regard to Principle 6, which states that efforts should be made to establish a central registry. This conjures the questions of how it would be accomplished and by whom.

The guidelines that have been created are an initiative to address and bring awareness to the Nazi World War II era plundering of art. A practical mind would ask whether these guidelines are achievable. Museums have asked how effective and economical steps might be made towards correctly addressing their collections with proper provenance research. Specifically stated, the AAMD Commission recognizes that provenance research is difficult, expensive and time-consuming, often involving access to records that are hard or impossible to obtain, and that most museums lack the resources to accomplish this. The Washington Principles recommended that art confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted be identified. Terms in the Principles such as “should,” “encouraged,” and “fair and just solution” can be ambiguous and leave room for interpretation. Language with such vagueness is hard to define and leads to the question, how to proceed with the principles presented. Furthermore, the mechanics of conducting provenance research is a topic that has been mostly neglected in both art-historical literature and in academic programs, especially at a time when the museum profession is being required to draw increasingly upon a variety of disciplines in order to adapt and survive. Legal proficiency can surely occupy no lower a priority than the more general skills of economic literacy, resource management and commercial enterprise that have become so substantial a part of contemporary museum and gallery administration.

Museum professionals today are in need of a transferable and interdisciplinary skill set. Knowledge of art history, politics, the history of collections, and the locations of archival materials that document the movement of art, in addition to provenance research, (a fairly specialized methodology in its own right), are all essential.

From 1998 to 2009, the recognized guidelines have plotted out scenery of what provenance research should look like. However, has this been accomplished? Have museums taken a direction that is suitable? On September 3, 2003 the AAM created a website aptly named the Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal (NEPIP). The Internet Portal provides a searchable online registry of objects in U.S. museum collections that changed hands in Continental Europe during the Nazi Era (1933-1945). Since the website was established, more than 28,000 objects have been posted by 165 U.S. art museums.

In 2001, The AAM Guide to Provenance Research was written by Nancy Yeide. The comprehensive AAM Guide is divided into two parts. Part One is an overview of basic provenance research and principles. Instruction is given on how to gather information from the work itself and how to use primary and secondary sources. It also has a template on how to write a provenance record used by several major museums such as the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Part Two discusses Holocaust-Era provenance research and how research should be prioritized. A significant aspect of the AAM Guide is the appendix and a list of selected bibliographies on the history of collecting, research resources, dealer archives and locations, resources for auction sales and exhibitions. “Red-flag” names from The Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU) are present, as well as a list of consolidated and detailed interrogation reports and Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) codes. The ERR was the Nazi organization that carried out confiscations of Jewish property in occupied countries. Confiscations by the ERR in France alone total almost 17,000 objects from more than 200 families. The meticulous cataloguing of the collections confiscated was organized by codes assigned to the families from whom the objects were looted.

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