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March 23, 2011

Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - ,, No comments

Elizabeth Taylor and the Van Gogh Painting

Vincent Van Gogh's "View of the Asylum and Church at Saint-Remy/Sage Recovery
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, Editor

Elizabeth Taylor, actress, film star and the founder of the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, was also the owner of an 1889 painting by Vincent van Gogh, "View of the Asylum and Church at Saint-Remy", she had to assert legal ownership of in 2007 when the descendants of the former owners claimed that the painting had been stolen by the Nazis during World War II.

According to media reports here and here, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco affirmed Taylor's ownership of the painting that her father had purchased for her at Sotheby's in 1963. The heirs of the former owners had waited until 2004 to claim that the painting had been stolen although it had not been listed in any database for stolen or Holocaust-looted art database.  I was wondering about this case this morning so I made unofficial inquiries through my experts on Holocaust looted art to get their opinion: although the strict interpretation of Military Law 59 'any transaction is null and void between 1933 and 1945 and the onus is on the good faith purchaser to demonstrate his or her good faith' but that conditions around the sale of the painting may not have constituted a forced sale.  For me, this is the importance of using the courts to settle these disputes.

The photo for this painting was obtained from the website for Sage Recovery, which helps to recover objects looted during the Nazi era.  Their review of the case can be found here.

March 22, 2011

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 - ,, No comments

UNESCO 1970 Convention Today: Turkey's statement to the 40th anniversary commemoration meeting last week

 Reconstructed Temple of Trajan, Pergamum, Turkey
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, Editor

By marriage, Turkey is my adopted country, so I approached one of the Turkish attendees at last week's UNESCO meeting to ask for the statement from the Turkish delegate.  Mr. Murat Suslu, Director General of Cultural Assets and Museums for the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, delivered a prepared statement in English to UNESCO last week at the 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1970 Convention, the international agreement signed by 193 and ratified by 120 countries that promotes cooperation between states to stop the looting of archaeological sites and the trafficking of illicit cultural property. His short statement was one of many delivered by delegates on the second day. The ARCA blog invites other state delegates to also send us a copy of their statement for distribution. Many delegates stressed the importance of creating awareness of this problem on a global scale, and ARCA, a non-profit organization for research into crimes against art, can help facilitate.

According to UNESCO, at least 17,500 investigations were opened in Turkey for looting of art from 1993 to 1995.

Mr. Suslu addressed the international group in English and it was translated audibly in French and Spanish to the audience. The meeting was chaired by Dr. Davidson L. Hepburn, Chairman of the Antiquities, Monuments, and Museums Corporation of The Bahamas.
"Mr. Chairman, Turkey as a source country has had to fight very hard; both to prevent illegal trafficking of its cultural property and also for the return of its stolen objects. In fact, this struggle goes back as far as the 19th Century.

All our diplomatic efforts for return are under the framework established by the 1970 convention. We have several bilateral agreements with neighboring and market countries in line with the 1970 Convention. Last year we returned four objects to Iraq that were captured at the border from traffickers. We will continue to cooperate further with Iraq.

We show goodwill by lending cultural objects for exhibitions in other countries. We expect similar goodwill to be shown by market countries in return.

We are stıll expectıng the return of thousands of objects that were illegally exported from Turkey, rangıng from the tiles of Sultan's tombs and library to the stele of Samsat, many of you will be familiar with the case of the Boğazköy Sphinx.

There are countries ın our region which show exemplary cooperation. I would like to thank the authorities of the Republic of Serbia for returning to Turkey last month almost 2,000 archaeological objects seized at the border.

Mr. Chairman, the 1970 Convention has been of help. However, it has not fully solved outstanding issues of stolen, illegally excavated and illicitly exported properties of the past.

The convention does not cover the objects coming from clandestine excavations. So an entire sector is not covered by the convention as already mentioned by Mexico and other source country representatives.

It also does not cover those artifacts which come from regular excavations; which are stolen before they are registered and then illicitly exported.

Under the 1970 Convention, the burden of proving ownership is placed on the claiming state and not the present possessor. Thus it becomes almost impossible for the source country to obtaın the return of its cultural objects that were illicitly excavated or illegally trafficked right after excavation before being registered.

Another important issue is the application of the convention. The legal regulations of some states parties do not support the return of cultural properties to their country of origin.

Besides the ICPRCP [Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in Case of Illicit Appropriation], a body to facilitate returns within the framework of the 1970 Convention is also needed.

Of course, in the end, it all depends on the states parties.  Thank you."
If you would like to read more about UNESCO's 1970 Convention, you may read the column, The Secret History of Art, on ARTINFO.com by Noah Charney, founder of ARCA, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

March 20, 2011

Sunday, March 20, 2011 - , No comments

Art Theft History: Judge Arthur Tompkins Writes about Veronese's "The Wedding at Cana"

by Judge Arthur Tompkins

The recent reference in the ARCA Blog to the oft-overlooked Wedding at Cana, hanging opposite the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, triggered the recollection that this monumental painting, the largest hanging in the Louvre, is also the largest plundered painting on public display, either in the Louvre, or, probably, anywhere.


Veronese, The Wedding at Cana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paolo_Veronese,_The_Wedding_at_Cana.JPG

Originally painted, over about 15 months beginning in 1562, by the late-Renaissance Italian mannerist Paolo Veronese, it was completed in 1563 when the artist was aged 35. It was specifically painted for, and hung in, the refectory of the Benedictine Monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, on a small island off the entrance to Venice’s Grand Canal. It was so famous, in its original location, that at the beginning of the 18th century, the monks of the Monastery began restricting entry to visitors who wished to see it . There it hung for 235 years.


The Refectory, Monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore
http://www.factum-arte.com/eng/conservacion/cana/Default.asp

In the early summer of 1797 Napoleon, fresh from the looting (by forced treaty) of Modena, Parma, Milan and the “incomparable treasure house” of Rome, turned his attention to Venice. He did not stage a frontal attack, but rather engineered the rebellion of a number of the city-state’s vassal states and then, following a year of negotiations, on Friday 12 May 1797, the Venetian Grand Council voted itself into extinction. Thus ended an unbroken 1070 years of proud independence.

Four days later the Treaty of Milan was signed, which allowed the French to remove Venice’s artistic treasures. The Treaty of Campo Formio in October 1797 ultimately divided Venice and its territories between France and Austria. But the Austrians were slow to arrive to take control of their prize, and did not arrive until January 1798. In the intervening period, the French plundered the city, including the Four Horses of San Marco (returned in 1815 after a short spell adorning the Tuileries), and the Veronese.

The painting is vast. It measures 33’6” across, and is 22’ high. In its elaborate frame, it weighs over 1 ½ tons. It was cut into pieces to allow for transportation to Paris, and there reassembled. The Louvre website simply states that the painting “Entered the Louvre in 1798”, and gives no further clue as to the manner of its arrival.

Although the Venetians claimed the painting after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, in the end the French were able to send a substitute - Charles Le Brun’s “Feast in the House of Simon” – back to Venice in its place.

Its long sojourn in Paris has not been without incident. Napoleon married Marie-Louise of Austria in the Louvre’s refurbished Great Gallery in 1810. About 6,000 guests were expected to attend the wedding, and one commentator described the preparations:
“ … there was a tremendous scurry to rearrange pictures and furniture in order to accommodate the 6000 people expected. The size of the Marriage at Cana was an embarrassment. ‘Since it cannot be moved – burn it’, was Napoleon’s soldierly decision – one which, fortunately, [Baron Dominique Vivant] Denon ignored.”
During the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-1871, it was stored in a box in Brest, and during World War II it was rolled and trucked around France to avoid capture by the Nazis. Then at the end of a controversial three-year cleaning in begun in the late 1980s, it was, in the space of a few days, sprayed by water from a leak during a rainstorm, and then dropped. The canvas was ripped in five places, including one tear four feet long.

In late summer 2007, after a meticulous process conducted under strenuous conditions over about 18 months , a full size digitally copied replica was reinstalled back into the refectory at San Giorgio Maggiore – salving but not healing the wound left by Napoleon 210 years before.

So, Veronese’s masterpiece hangs still across from La Joconde – bruised, battered, dismembered, stolen, drenched, torn, displaced, far from home, and, as 9 million visitors a year jostle for a view of the painting across the floor, often overlooked.

It deserves better.

Judge Arthur Tompkins of New Zealand is a graduate of Cambridge University and teaches "Art and War"at ARCA's program in Amelia.

March 19, 2011

Saturday, March 19, 2011 - ,, No comments

Paris Diary: Replica of Stolen Art at Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

Paris - The statue above the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in front of the Louvre is a replica of the original "The Triamphal Quadriga" more commonly known as "Horses of Saint Mark". The original bronzes, analyzed to be more likely copper supporting the theory that they are more Roman than Greek, sat on top of a column in the Hippodrome in Constantinople until the Venetians took a detour during the Fourth Crusade in the 13th century to loot the Christian city of its wealth, including slicing off the horses' heads to ship back to San Marcos Square in Venice. Napoleon stole them in the early 19th century before they were returned to Venice. The horses outside of St. Mark's Basilica are also a copy; the originals reside inside the cathedral.

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.'

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