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September 29, 2011

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Evidence of changing attitudes: The Art Loss Register recovers valuable medallion on behalf of the Castle Friedenstein Foundation in Gotha Germany

When SJ Phillips, a jewellery and art dealer, offered to sell a rare 17th century gold medallion to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts museum the institute contacted the Art Loss Register who confirmed that the item was on it's database of stolen works, and once contacted with this information, the seller offered to return the item to it's pre-World War II owners. You may read the press release on the Art Loss Register's website here.

September 28, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: Noah Charney's Q&A with Alan Hirsch

Williams College's Professor Alan Hirsch spoke with Noah Charney for a Q&A column for the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime.

Hirsch is author of For the People: What the Constitution Really Says About Your Rights (Free Press, 1998) and Talking Heads: Political Talk Shows and Their Star Pundits (St. Martin's, 1991). His most recent book is The Beauty of Short Hops: How Chance and Circumstance Confound the Moneyball Approach to Baseball (McFarland, 2011).
Why, you might ask, [Charney writes] is he being interviewed for a column about art historical mysteries and art crime? Because he is the world's foremost expert in the 1961 theft of Goya's "Portrait of the Duke of Wellington," stolen from the National Gallery in London -- he's currently writing a book on it.
Hirsch addresses the issues of art history, law, and true crime as involved in the Goya Theft. You may read this interview in the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime by subscribing through ARCA's website or purchasing individual issues through Amazon.com.

September 27, 2011

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"The Three Elephants" are Fighting For Survival in Court: Moral Rights Through the Prism of the South African Constitution

'Elephant' by artist Andries Botha under construction
Press release issued by Toby Orford, TOBY ORFORD ART LAW, who attended ARCA's Third International Art Crime Conference.

In order to protect his “Three Elephants” artwork – a life-size sculpture at the Warwick Triangle Viaduct in Durban – the internationally respected artist Andries Botha has been forced to institute legal proceedings. The case is brought against eThekwini Municipality and other parties, including the Minister of Arts and Culture, Mr Paul Mashatile. Botha will be represented in the Durban High Court proceedings by the prominent constitutional and administrative law Advocates Gilbert Marcus SC and Max du Plessis.

The dispute has generated much public interest since February 2010 and the dilemma of Andries Botha and “The Three Elephants” has been reported on extensively in the media, in South Africa and internationally.

At the heart of the dispute is the fate of “The Three Elephants”. “If eThekwini has its way, my sculpture, which was approved and commissioned by them, will be torn down”, said Andries Botha. Although eThekwini concluded a contract with Botha to build three elephants emerging from a sea of stones, it changed its mind in June 2010. Having formally ordered Botha to stop working on the public sculpture, eThekwini passed a Resolution which approved the destruction of two of the elephants and the incorporation of the remaining elephant into a new urban design concept consisting of the “Big Five” animals.

eThekwini's about-turn is closely linked to rumours that local ANC politicians are fearful that “The Three Elephants” are too closely related to the official symbol of the Inkatha Freedom Party:

“This is ironic because the elephants were specially chosen – by eThekwini - as an apolitical African metaphor for tolerance, co-existence and due consideration for a vulnerable eco-system”, said Botha.

Botha wants to complete “The Three Elephants” project in the public interest, and to receive payment for the work he and his employees have done. Notwithstanding Botha's efforts to find a solution to the stand-off, eThekwini has refused to give an undertaking to safeguard the integrity of “The Three Elephants” – which means that the elephants may be removed at any time.

Andries Botha says that he has been left with no choice but to seek the court's protection. His legal representative Toby Orford of Toby Orford Art Law has been instructed to lodge application papers at the Durban High Court. Toby Orford confirmed that the papers have been filed and are being served on the respondents. According to Toby Orford, “The purpose of the application is fully set out in the application papers but it is no secret that it is an application for a declaration to confirm Andries Botha's rights, a review of eThekwini's decision and an interdict prohibiting eThekwini (and others) from modifying, altering or destroying “The Three Elephants”. Andries also has separate claims in contract and delict against the contractors involved in the Warwick Triangle project.”

Botha's case is that eThekwini's decision to remove two of the elephant figures is a decision to destroy, mutilate or change a work of art. eThekwini's decision amounts to censorship and interference, which violates the artist's freedom of artistic expression which is guaranteed by the Constitution.

Above all, eThekwini's decision is a breach of the moral rights of an artist. Toby Orford explained further:

“Moral rights are known in copyright law as the author's “moral right” and are closely derived from Article 6 of the Berne Convention, 1886. An artist's moral rights (as set out in section 20 of the Copyright Act) are infringed when without his approval his right of paternity in the work is not acknowledged or (as in this case) an unjustifiable distortion, mutilation or other modification of the work takes place or is threatened.”

It is time that the moral right of the artist is upheld in South Africa, as seen through the wide-angle lens of section 16 of the Constitution:

“Art and artists have clear rights. Unfortunately, it appears that the only way to protect those rights and the public's interest in The Three Elephants is by recourse to the courts. This decision has been taken only after careful deliberation and unsuccessful efforts to broker a compromise solution”, said Toby Orford.

Toby Orford can be reached at toby@tobyorford.com OR www.tobyorford.com.

September 26, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: Noah Charney's Q&A with Peter Watson

Peter Watson, the critically-acclaimed author, answered questions posed by Noah Charney for the Q&A column for the fifth issue of The Journal of Art Crime.

Mr. Watson has been a senior editor at the London Sunday Times, the New York correspondent of the daily Times, and a columnist for the Observer. He has also written regularly for the New York Times and the Spectator. He is the author of several books of cultural and intellectual history, including Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention and, most recently The German Genius. His work on the art world and art crime includes The Caravaggio Conspiracy; Sotheby's: the Inside Story; and The Medici Conspiracy. From 1997 to 2007 he was a research associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge.

Charney asks Watson about writing, his first interest in the dark side of the art world, and his theory about the fate of the Caravaggio Nativity, and his opinion as to the best way to curb art crime in the future.

You may subscribe to The Journal of Art Crime through the ARCA website or purchase individual issues through Amazon.com.


September 23, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: Douglas L. Yearwood Reviews books on Henry Walters, Bernard Berenson and Giuseppe Panza

Doug Yearwood, Director of the North Carolina Criminal Justice Analysis Center, has reviewed two books on collecting for the fifth issue of The Journal of Art Crime.

Henry Walters and Bernard Berenson: Collector and Connoisseur
by Stanley Mazaroff
John Hopkins University Press, 2010
Stanley Mazaroff, a retired barrister who returned to Johns Hopkins to pursue the study of art history, documents the tumultuous, dynamic and topsy-turvy love-hate relationship between the railroad tycoon and art collector, Henry Walters, and Bernard Berenson, a world renowned Italian Renaissance art expert and dealer, between 1902 and 1927.  Drawing on extensive museum records and related archival documents, including the personal correspondence, papers and letters of the two men, the author cogently depicts the highs and lows of Walters collecting career, reveals the inherent difficulties of identifying works attributed, and misattributed, to the Italian masters all within the context of America's gilded age and the lust for anything remotely related to the Renaissance among the nation's most wealthy industrialists and their families.

Giuseppe Panza: Memories of a Collector
by Giuseppe Panza
Abbeville Press, 2008

Memories of a collector is Giuseppe Panza's autobiographical explication of his love, devotion and nearly obsessive desire to put together the best collection of modern or contemporary American art.  Unlike Walters who often left purchases uncrated for months at a time, Panza was a true connoisseur, scholar and an extremely astute buyer who had an uncanny innate ability to know which artists and their works would become famous or desirable well before others in the market.

You may read the complete reviews in the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime by subscribing through the ARCA website or by purchasing individual copies through Amazon.com.

Friday, September 23, 2011 - ,,, No comments

Getty to Return More Items to Greece - The Aftermath of "Chasing Aphrodite"

Los Angeles - The Associate Press is reporting today that the J. Paul Getty Museum will return three Greek marbles to Greece. The "5th century B.C. works [are] two pieces of a relief sculpture from a grave marker — a third fragment of which is in a Greek museum — and a slab with an inscription related to a religious festival". It's part of the continued story of Chasing Aphrodite as reported by journalists Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino about the collection of antiquities at the "world's richest museum." The book is not just an indictment against the Getty but also the narrative of the types of pressures involved in the trade of antiquities and the changing perception of what is and isn't acceptable after the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Since writing their book, Felch and Frammolino also continue posting additional stories on their website, Chasing Aphrodite, such as the curator who was under surveillance by the FBI for alleged spying activities. Felch and Frammolino spent more than five years investigating the story then condensed the information in an easy to read and informative volume.

Here's a link to more on the story in The Los Angeles Times.

September 21, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: Noah Charney reviews two exhibitions

The Journal of Art Crime's editor-in-chief Noah Charney reviews an exhibition, "Jan Gossaert at the National Gallery, London, 23 February - 30 May 2011" in the Spring 2011 issue of this peer-reviewed academic journal on the interdisciplinary study of art crime.

The exhibit featured Jan Gossaert, a Flemish Mannerist (1478-1532), who had spent time in Italy. This review was first published in ArtInfo in April 2011.

In a second review of an exhibition, Mr. Charney covered the "Mostra Palazzo Farnese" at the Palazzo Farnese in Rome that was held from 17 December 2010 through 27 April 2011 in the building which is has been the French Embassy of Rome.

September 20, 2011

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The Art Loss Register Recovers Two Seventeenth Century Colonial Paintings Stolen from a Church in Bolivia

St. Rose Viterbo
ART LOSS REGISTER PRESS RELEASE - On Christmas Eve in 1997, more than a hundred religious artefacts were stolen from the Church (Templo) of San Andres de Machaca in La Paz, Bolivia. The church, declared a Bolivian National Monument in 1962, had been the target of thieves several years earlier before being stripped of its colonial masterpieces in 1997. The theft was reported to the Bolivian Ministry of Culture and Interpol and subsequently recorded on the Art Loss Register’s international database of stolen, missing and looted artwork.

Saint Augustin
In May 2011, over thirteen years after the theft, the Art Loss Register received a request to search its database of stolen art for two of the Bolivian colonial works. The request was submitted by a U.S. art dealer who claimed to have received the paintings on consignment from an elderly American collector. The art historians employed by the Art Loss Register were able to conclusively identify the portraits of ‘Saint Rose of Viterbo’ and ‘Saint Augustin’from several unique areas of damage thanks to the good quality archival photographs taken by the church prior to the theft.

Bolivian Ambassador Maria Beatriz Souviron Crespo
 and Christopher Marinello of the Art Loss Register 
Christopher A. Marinello, a lawyer who specializes in recovering stolen art for the Art Loss Register in London, handled the complicated negotiations that brought these iconic pictures back to Bolivia. “We could not have located these paintings without the important and groundbreaking work of Interpol and the Interpol Database of Stolen Art. This case is emblematic of the cooperation between the public and the private sector, a relationship that, in my view, is crucial to the protection of cultural heritage worldwide.”

In a brief ceremony at the Bolivian Embassy in London on 12 September 2011, the paintings were returned to Ambassador Maria Beatriz Souviron Crespo on behalf of the Bolivian Ministry of Culture.

September 19, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: An excerpt from Elena Franchi's book "I viaggi dell'Assunta. La protezione del patrimonio artistico veneziano durante i conflitti mondiali"

The Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime presents excerpts and images from a book by Elena Franchi, published in Italian, entitled "The Travels of the Assumption: the Protection of Venetian Cultural Heritage during the Two World Wars" (Pisa University Press 2010).
As ARCA is based in both the United States and Italy we wish to encourage the international cooperation of scholars in the joint pursuit of the protection of art and the advancement of art crime studies. The Introduction is published here [in the JAC] in Italian with the permission of the author, and the images have been provided with captions in English by the author.
Elena Franchi was nominated for a 2009 Emmy Award for "Research" for the American documentary The Rape of Europa, made in 2006 with filmmakers Richard Berge, Bonnie Cohen and Nicole Newnham. She participated in an international project on the study of Kuntschutz, a German unit created for the protection of cultural heritage of the countries involved in the war. She is also the author of Arte in assetto di guerra. Protezione e distruzione del patrimonio artistico a Pisa durante la seconda guerra mondiale (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2006).

You may obtain a copy of this issue by subscribing through ARCA's website or by individual copy through Amazon.com.

September 18, 2011

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Vernon Silver Presented "Crime Scenes as Archaeological Sites" at ARCA's International Art Crime Conference

Silver discusses Euphronio's Krater
 (Photo by Urska Charney)
"Crime Scenes as Archaeological Sites"
Vernon Silver
School of Archaeology, University of Oxford

Vernon Silver, senior writer at Bloomberg News in Rome and author of "The Lost Chalice" (Harper Paperbacks, 2010), presented his paper, "Crimes Scenes as Archaeological Sites" at ARCA's third annual International Art Crime Conference in Amelia in July 2011.

"The Lost Chalice" is a nonfiction thriller about the oldest known work by ancient Greek artist Eurphronio's $1 million pot that formerly resided at The Met and its lost twin that traveled through the hands of Bruce McNall and the Hunt Brothers then was sold at auction through Sotheby's in 1990.

Here Silver describes his work:
Italy's criminal investigations of the illicit antiquities trade have largely ignored the archaeological sites from which artifacts have been removed. Greater attention to these crime scenes -- which double as archaeological sites -- can help restore some of the archaeological context lost in the process of looting objects. 
This paper uses the example of the 1971 illicit dig at Greppe Sant'Angelo in Cerveteri, Italy, in which tomb robbers uncovered a previously unknown complex of Etruscan tombs, removing sellable artifacts that included a red-figure Attic vase that became known as the Euphronios krater. The recent trials in Rome that led the Metropolitan Museum of Art to return the vase to Italy did not address the archaeological origins of the object. Although Italy's requests for its return drew on the moral argument that the nation's archaeological heritage had been harmed, the lack of crime-scene analysis was a lost opportunity to rebuild a record of the vase's history, including the other objects with which it was buried, and details of the necropolis where it was found. 
Drawing on research for the author's doctoral thesis ("The Antiquities Trade: Object Biographies of Euphronios vases looted from Etruria") and his related book, "The Lost Chalice" (2009, 2010) this paper presents examples of the rich selection of untapped data about the site: photos from the early 1970s in the archive of the Villa Giulia museum; interviews with a surviving tomb robber; contemporary visits to the site itself and objects in the Cerveteri archaeology museum that were also found at the site but never labeled as such. All can help rebuild the lost context. 
From a policing view, an eye for archaeology would enhance the collection of such records. (Fans of one crime-scene television show might think of this approach as "CSI: Ancient Victims Unit.") For the sake of archaeology, there is more to investigate than just the buyers and sellers. 
In the future, greater police and prosecutor attention to developing and publishing crime-scene data on illicit excavations, and involving archaeologists in the process, would be a step to restoring damage to the archaeological record. Outside Italy and other source countries such as Greece and Egypt, scholarly attention to police evidence should also help meet those ends.

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