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October 23, 2011

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Marking the First Anniversary of the launching of the Cultural Plunder Database

This week marked the first anniversary of the October 18, 2010, launching of the Database of Art Objects that transited through the Jeu de Paume from 1940 to 1944. The ARCA Blog wrote about the Database here, here and here.

Marc Masurovsky, the Project's director, sent out an email to supporters that he has permitted the ARCA blog to publish here:
In order to celebrate 12 months of global usage of the contents of this historical database, here are some generic statistics that give some idea about the people who visit and use it. 
Thanks again to the Conference of Jewish Material Claims against Germany, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Commission for Art Recovery, the interns, technicians, programmers, and volunteers who made this database a reality.
He provided the following information:

Number of pageviews: 377,715

Number of user source countries: 137

Top 10 user languages:
1/ English
2/ French
3/ German
4/ Dutch
5/ Spanish
6/ Italian
7/ Polish
8/ Danish
9/ Japanese
10/ Russian

Top 10 user countries (in decreasing order of importance):
1/ United States,
2/ France
3/ Germany
4/ Netherlands
5/ United Kingdom
6/ Spain
7/ Italy
8/ Belgium
9/ Canada
10/ Denmark

Top 10 user States in the US (by decreasing order of importance):
1/ New York
2/ California
3/ District of Columbia
4/ Massachusetts
5/ Texas
6/ Florida
7/ Virginia
8/ Illinois
9/ Pennsylvania
10/ North Carolina

The most popular artist queries were (in decreasing order of importance):

Picasso, Monet, van Gogh, Rembrandt, Rubens, Eugène Carrière, Greuze, Renoir, Chagall, Sisley, Teniers, Degas, Léger, Nattier, Modigliani, Sèvres vase, Pissarro, Manet, Rodin, Dali, Braque, Goya.

The most popular collection queries were (in decreasing order of importance):
Hugo Andriesse, Alexandrine de Rothschild, Louis Louis-Dreyfus, Rothschild, Arthur L. Mayer, Princess Colloredo, Adolphe Weiss, Frederic Unger, Riesener (Ball), Flavian.

The most viewed items were (by ERR number, name of artist/type of object and source user country):
1/ Unb 55/Salvador Dali (Spain),
2/ A Le 1/bronze of Napoleon (United States),
3/ Unb 326/Picasso (United States),
4/ KAP 21/Picasso (United States),
5/ A Le 32a/clock (United States),
6/ AD W1/Raphael (United States),
7/ Unb 30/Picasso (United States),
8/ Unb 327/Picasso (United States),
9/ Fla 39/Monet (France),
10/ Wbg 128/van Gogh (United States),
11/ Li 35/Renoir (United States),
12/ Li 38/Monet (United States),
13/ R 905/van Gogh (United States),
14/ R 1505/van Gogh (Germany),
15/ Unb 348/Monet (United States),
16/ Heilbronn 4/Monet (United States),
17/ Ha 1/van Ostade (United States),
18/ Wbg 127/van Gogh (Netherlands),
19/ Unb 39/Picasso (United States).

You may access the Cultural Plunder Database here.

October 21, 2011

Friday, October 21, 2011 - No comments

Application Period for the 2012 Postgraduate Certificate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies is now open

Amelia, Umbria: Home of ARCA's summer program
The official application period for the 2012 Postgraduate Certificate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies is now open. Early Decision applications are due November 15, 2011 (and admissions notifications begin) which will enable students to purchase competitively priced airline tickets and begin the search for housing. Please contact ARCA at education@artcrimeresearch.org for detailed information on the application process for this summer’s programming.

The Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) 2012 Postgraduate Certificate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies will be held from June 1 through August 10 in the beautiful setting of Umbria, Italy.

In its fourth year, this program provides students with in-depth, postgraduate level instruction in a wide variety of theoretical and practical elements of art and heritage crime: its history, its nature, its impact, and what is currently being done to mitigate it. Students completing the program earn a professional certificate under the guidance of internationally renowned cultural property protection professionals.

This program will expose participants to an integrated curriculum which occurs in a highly interactive, participatory, student-centered setting. Instructional modules include both lectures and “hands-on” learning from case studies, simulations, and group discussions. At the end of the program, participants will have a solid mastery of a broad array of concepts pertaining to cultural property protection, preservation, conservation, and security.

Target:

This interdisciplinary program offers substantive study for art police and security professionals, lawyers, insurers, curators, conservators, members of the art trade, and post-graduate students of criminology, law, security studies, sociology, art history, archaeology, and history.

Important Dates:

November 15, 2011 - Early Decision applications due (Admissions notifications begin)
January 15, 2012 - Regular Decision application due
February 01, 2012 Regular Admissions notifications
May 30, 2012 – Students Arrive in Amelia, Italy
June 01, 2012 – Program Orientation
June 04, 2011 – Classes begin
August 10, 2012 – Classes end
August 11, 2012 – Students Depart

You may obtain more program information by emailing ARCA at education@artcrimeresearch.org.

October 20, 2011

Thursday, October 20, 2011 - ,,, No comments

Tracking Ozgen Acar's Adventures in the Turkish Press

Journalist Ozgen Acar has crusaded for the return of looted antiquities from Turkey for decades. He recently sent out a link to various articles published in the Turkish daily newspapers "Hurriyet" and "Cumhuriyet" about Ozgen Acar's long mission to bring "Weary Herakles" back to Turkey.

These articles were published on 16 and 17 of September in "Cumhuriyet" and on September 16th in "Hurriyet".

The articles talk about Ozgen's long battle to bring the upper half of the statue back to Turkey. More "Like a Police Mystery Movie-Whodunit"; "Turkish Indiana Jones", "'Weary Herakles' is here and the "old fisherman" is on his way," according to Mr. Acar. "History should stay where it belongs."

Now that the statues of 'Weary Herakles' is displayed in the Antalya Museum, Ozgen Acar is retelling the highlights of his journey to bring the statue back to Turkey. The article talks about the importance of the statue, a replica of the original statue 'Weary Herakles' by Lysippos in the 4th century BC. It symbolizes Herakles after he killed the lion on his 12th mission. He is tired and leaning on a stick covered by the lion's skin. The statue was loved by the Romans and about 50 replicas were made. The original statue is missing.

'Weary Herakles" also has a sarcophagus in Perge. The smugglers tired to take this out of the country in the 1970s but they were not successful. It was unfortunately cut into pieces because it weighed 4 tons. Pieces were caught in a truck in Istanbul and some pieces were later found at the Getty Museum, which later returned them. Other pieces were in a private collection which Ozgen once saw during his visit to see the collection; although the collector denied the history of the pieces at the time, he later returned the pieces. Ozgen also found another sarcophagus that belong to the Perge Excavation in Brooklyn Museum and that too has been returned.

It was in the early 1980s when "Weary Herakles' was discovered on privately owned land between the Necropol (graveyard) and Perge. The owner of the land discovered the statue while illegally excavating on his property and didn't tell the authorities nearby what he had found (he covered it up and took it away with him at night). Mr. Yegenah, according to Ozgen Acar, was the international smuggler who brought the statue to the head of the Museum of Fine Art, Corneleus Vermule III who contacted Leon Levy and Shelby White. They purchased the statue with the museum for $1.5 million and went into the Leon Levy-Shelby White collection. The museum cut a deal that eventually Leon Levy-Shelby White would donate it to the museum.

Ozgen Acar says there will be 'another happy ending' on the "Old Fisherman" statue which he has been working on for its return for years.

October 19, 2011

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The Collecting History of Stolen Art: Hercules and his son Telephos in the Chiaramont Museum inside the Vatican

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, 
ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief

 Updated August 19, 2013

Even the Roman general Pompey wanted a souvenir when he defeated Mithradates VI of Pontus and brought the Kingdom of Armenia into the Roman Empire.

 In The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates: Rome's Deadliest Enemy (Princeton University Press, 2009), Adrienne Mayor has a photo of Hercules and his son Telephus in the Chiaramonti Museum at the Vatican. This sculpture shows Hercules in a lion-skin cape holding an infant. Ms. Mayor writes: "Recent analysis of portraiture in contemporary coins and sculpture suggests that the model for the little boy was none other than Mithradates!"
Heracles with infant Telephos
Pompey the Great recognized the likeness of the baby Telephus to Mithradates and took it to Rome after defeating Mithradates in 63 BC (Mayor):  "Pompey installed this Hercules statue in his Theater on the Field of Mars in Rome.  The statue was discovered in 1507 in Campo dei Fiori, near the ruins of Pompey's Theater."

 The 19th century Chiaramonti Museum, one of the buildings known as the Vatican Museum set up more than 500 years ago.

 In August 2013, when I revisited this subject, I found an image of the sculpture of "Heracles with infant Telephos" on the website of the Chiaramonti Museum. When I first wrote about this work in 2011 after reading Ms. Mayor's biography of Mithradates  on the sculpture of "Heracles with infant Telephos", the Chiaramonti had no such entry. The Chiaramonti writes that "Heracles with infant Telephos" is a second century AD copy.

Heracles with infant Telephos
Cat. 1314
This statue, which was discovered in Rome in the vicinity of Campo de' Fiori, was one of the first sculptures to come into the Vatican collections. Pope Julius II (1503-1573) exhibited it in the Courtyard of the Statues in the Belvedere. The presence of Heracles, in fact, leads us back to the mythological origins of Rome, and alludes in particular to the victory of the Romans over the tribes of ancient Latium. The god Heracles, with his club and lion skin, holds his son Telephos in his arms. Telephos is the son born to Heracles by the priestess Auge who was forced to abandon the child in the mountains of Arcadia, where he was nourished by a doe until he was rescued by his father.

Telephos became King of Mysia and one of the leading characters in a rich and complex mythology that sees him involved in the Greek expedition against Troy. This statue is a second century A.D. copy, probably of a Late Hellenistic original.

October 18, 2011

Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - ,,,,, 3 comments

The Collecting History of Stolen Art: the Capitoline Museums’ krater of Mithradates VI Eupator the Great, king of Pontus

Bronze krater of Mithradates the Great
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-chief

A large bronze vase, crafted under Mithradates the Great of Pontus, was stolen from Asia Minor during one of the Mithradatic Wars by either Sulla or Pompey; displayed in the seaside villa of a Roman Emperor; and owned by a pope before it entered the collection of the Capitoline Museum in Rome. This summer it visited Amelia.

According to the Archaeological Museum in Amelia, the krater may have been a gift to a school, a gymnasium, on the Greek Island of Delos for the inhabitants' support of Mithradates, the Greco-Persian ruler from the Black Sea kingdom who expanded his territory into Anatolia and Asia Minor to protest the occupation of the Romans and their taxation policies. The krater was likely shaped to mix wine with water and honey, and linked to Dionysus -- it is likely that the original vessel loops were decorated with branches and brunches of grapes (Museo di arcaeologico, Amelia).

In 87 BC, Mithradates’ generals fought for Roman-controlled Delos. “The destruction was devastating: the city was sacked and burned to the ground,” Adrienne Mayor writes in The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy (Princeton Press, 2009). “Thousands of able-bodied slaves, suddenly freed from Roman chains, joined the Greek liberation army. Mithradates’ generals killed virtually all the unarmed Italian merchants of Delos and sold their wives and children into slavery.”

On Delos, Mithradates’ generals looted the treasures from the great Temple of Apollo, then after storing most of the plunder on the island of Skiathos, moved the treasure to Aristion in Athens. The treasure was then used to finance Athens’ fight against Rome.

Mayor shows an image of this first century BC krater in The Poison King.  “During the First Mithradatic War,” Mayor writes, “this krater was apparently plundered by Sulla and taken to Rome.” [Mayor sites her information from a book by Deniz Burcu Erciyas, Wealth, Aristocracy and Royal Propaganda under the Hellenistic Kingdom of the Mithradatids in the Central Black Sea Region of Turkey. Colloquia Pontica 12. Leiden: Brill).

Whilst Mayor figures Sulla took the krater from Athens, information posted from the Archaeological Museum in Amelia this summer claims it was Pompey the Great who brought the krater from Greece to Rome with the spoils of war after the defeat of Mithradates. Regardless, both of these men looted from Mithradates.

Lucius Cornelius Sulla was dispatched by Rome to avenge the 88 BC massacre of Romans and Italians instigated by Mithradates the Great. Unfortunately, as soon as he left Rome, the 50-year-old Sulla (the name meant “Pimples” and referred to his complexion) suffered an upset by a political rival who declared Sulla “Public Enemy of Rome” and cut off his supplies and funds for 30,000 men. Before he could reach the Province of Asia, Sulla landed in Greece and began demands for money and fought for supplies. He eventually, as Mayor writes in The Poison King, “seized the sacred treasures of Greece, plundering the temples of Zeus at Olympia and Asclepius in Epidaurus. Selecting the most beautiful, precious art for himself, he melted down massive amounts of silver to pay his men and buy supplies.” Sulla destroyed Athens and then went on to the Province of Asia to win the First Mithradatic War.

Pompey the Great won the third and last of the Mithradatic Wars. In late 65 BC, the victorious Pompey, searching for Mithradates who had crossed to safety over the Caucasus Mountains, seized fortresses and treasures in Pontus. “The vaults at Talaura yielded cups of onyx and gold, splendid furniture, bejeweled armor and gilded horse bridles, Persian antiques, and the treasure from Cos – including the precious cloak of Alexander the Great,” Mayor writes.

The krater eventually reached the Italian peninsula:

"Two hundred years later, the krater belonged to the emperor Nero, who kept it at his luxurious seaside villa at Antium," Mayor writes.  "Unearthed from the villa’s ruins by Pope Benedict XIV in the eighteenth century, the bronze krater is now a centerpiece in Rome’s Capitoline Museum."

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was the grandson of Germanicus whose bronze image ended up in Amelia’s archaeological museum.

October 17, 2011

Monday, October 17, 2011 - ,,, 1 comment

The Collecting History of Stolen Art: Amelia’s Bronze Germanicus

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief

One of my reasons for writing about art crime is the history behind the objects stolen; artifacts in galleries and museums that physically tie us to the past. The collecting history of an object brings a historical context and a relevancy, a narrative from which we can differentiate some objects from the other hundreds or thousands on display. In this series on The Collecting History of Stolen Art, all of these objects can be found on display or in the collections of art or archaeological institutions. We can start with the bronze statue of Germanicus found in Amelia, the home of ARCA’s International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies program.

Amelia’s bronze Germanicus is the combination of different parts, according to scholar Giulia Rocco, author of La Statua Bronzea con Rittratto di Germanico da Ameria (Umbria) (Roma 2008, Bardi Editore Commerciale). Rocco’s book is a detailed examination of the restoration of the bronze statue found outside the historical center of Amelia in 1964 while workers were excavating a mill.

In the English translation of her abstract, Rocco writes:
The thorax belongs to the Hellenistic Age, around the beginning of the first century BC and can be attributed to a Greek, perhaps Pergamene workshop…. The statue, which the cuirassed torso belonged to could represent Mithradates VI, king of Pontus, because of the myth on the chest of the breastplate, which Achilles killing Troilus, perhaps an allegory of the wished destruction of the Romans as descendants from the Troians. It could be one of the numerous objects brought to Rome as booty in the age of the Mithridatic wars.
Adrienne Mayor, an independent scholar, published a new biography of Mithradates under the title, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadlinest Enemy (Princeton, 2011).

Mithradates the Great, of Greco-Macedonian-Persian descent and culture, objected to the Roman presence and subsequent onerous taxation policies in Asia Minor and Anatolia (now present day Turkey). In 88 BC, Mithradates organized the slaughter of 80,000 to 150,000 Romans and Italians living in the region. Then he established his headquarters in Pergamon, the kingdom bequeathed to the Romans in 133 BC and delivered a speech decrying his unification of the region against the Romans. Shortly thereafter, in the Theatre of Dionysus in Pergamon, he oversaw the execution of his Roman nemesis Aquillius, by melting gold and pouring it into the general’s mouth in front of an audience of 10,000 people.

It is probably at this time that the workshop in Pergamon made the cuirass that is now part of the Germanicus statue in Amelia. A cuirass is a piece of armor consisting of a breastplate and backplate fastened together.

Sulla, a ruthless Roman patrician commander dispatched to avenge Mithradates massacre of Romans and to recover Greece, according to Mayor in The Poison King, looted art from Greece to Asian Minor. It is possible that after the First Mithradatic War that he obtained the thorax that is now part of Amelia’s bronze Germanicas.

Rocco continues in her abstract:
It was subsequently transformed as an image of a Roman general speaking to his troops, probably one of the imperatores who fought against the king of Pontus. The provenance of the cuirassed bust and the chronology of the added parts, so as the fact that it has been found in Ameria, suggests that the bronze was transformed into a statue probably representing L. Cornelius Sulla, in whose honour monuments were erected in several municipia. 
Many years later, wishing to commemorate Germanicus, the monument was reused as iconic statue of the young prince, with a new head. This probably happened in the age of Caligula.
Germanicus was the father of the Roman Emperor Caligula.

The next post in this series will discuss more objects stolen by Sulla, including the krater on display in the archaeological museum in Amelia while Germanicus was displayed in Rome this year.

October 16, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: Q&A with the Québec Art Crime Team

Québec Art Crime Team
ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief Catherine Schofield Sezgin interviews the Québec Art Crime Team in the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime. In 2008, the Sûreté du Québec, in collaboration with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, created Canada's first national art crime enforcement unit now consisting of Jean-François Talbot and Sergeant Alain Dumouchel (both of the Sûreté du Québec) and Sylvia Dubuc, RCMP, and Sergent Superviseur Alain Gaulin (Sûreté du Québec).

Beginning in 2003, Jean-François Talbot worked for four years with Alain Lacoursière, an art historian and now-retired Montreal police officer, to develop a new investigative art crime team and Art Alert, an email bulletin sent out to 25,000 members of the art and police communities in 75 countries whenever artworks in Canada are reported stolen.

The team was interviewed in French. In acknowledgement of the international issue of art crime, the interview is presented in both French and in English translation.

A copy of this issue of The Journal of Art Crime may be found through the ARCA website or through Amazon.com.

October 15, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: The Art Loss Register Recovery Update

"Portrait of a Man"
by Sir Henry Raeburn
In the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, Christopher A. Marinello, Executive Director and General Counsel for The Art Loss Register, answers the question "Is art ever stolen to order?"

Marinello serves as the ALR's chief negotiator and has mediated and settled numerous art related disputes for the world's largest private international database of stolen, missing, and looted artwork. In this editorial essay, he discusses the recovery of a photograph stolen from the Prague Museum; Andy Warhol's Candy Box; and a two-year dispute over Sir Henry Raeburn's 'Portrait of a Man', stolen from Joanne King Herring, who was portrayed by Julia Roberts in the film Charlie Wilson's War.

You may read Marinello's essay by subscribing to The Journal of Art Crime through ARCA's website or purchasing an individual issue through Amazon.com.

October 14, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: Noah Charney on "The Art We Must Protect: Top Ten Must-See Artworks in New York City"

In the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, Editor-in-Chief Noah Charney writes "The Art We Must Protect: Top Ten Must-See Artworks in New York City."

Art historian Noah Charney selects works of art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Kouros, Edgar Degas' Nude Woman Bathing, Rembrandt van Rijn's Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer); the Brooklyn Bridge; Edward Hick's The Peaceable Kingdom at the Brooklyn Museum; Kazimir Malevich's Untitled Suprematist White-on-White at the Guggenheim Museum; Robert Campin's The Merode Alterpiece at The Cloisters; the Chrysler Building at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue; Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon at MoMA; and Bronzino's Portrait of Lodovico Capponi at the Frick Collection.

Find out why you should run all over NYC to see these artworks by subscribing to The Journal of Art Crime through ARCA's website or by purchasing this issue through Amazon.com.

October 13, 2011

Thursday, October 13, 2011 - ,,, No comments

Professor Jennifer Kreder Clarifies Statement Made to The New York Times about a 16th Century Painting on Extended Display in a Nazi-era Looted Art Dispute

Jennifer Kreder, a participant in ARCA's 2010 International Art Crime Conference where she spoke about the issues of Nazi-era looted restitution claims, would like to clarify an opinion of hers that was roughly quoted in the New York Times in the October 12 article, "For Florida Museum, Dispute Over Romano Painting is a Boon".

A U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Florida ordered the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee to 'hold onto' a 16th century painting by Girolamo Romano,  on loan from the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan at the close of a Baroque exhibition last month. The American Institution "renegotiated its contract to display" Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue (1538) while 'Italian officials in Rome' 'negotiate with the family of Giuseppe Gentili, which says the collaborationist Vichy government in France seize dthe painting and sold it at auction in 1941,' journalist Patricia Cohen reported.

Kreder is Chair of the American Society of International Law’s Interest Group on Cultural Heritage and the Arts and Professor at Salmon P. Chase College of Law in Northern Kentucky University.

According to Jen Kreder, something got lost in translation by the time the article hit the press.  Although Kreder cannot comment on the merits of the claim, she said that it is particularly surprising that no one on the Italian side, which had knowledge of the claim, seems to have insisted that the museum apply for immunity from seizure, which is not available after the object is in the U.S.  Before this incident, Professor Kreder published the following article in the Washington University Law Review discussing the prior Wally, Benningson/Alsdorf Picasso and Jullian Fallat seizures, which may be of interest to readers:  http://lawreview.wustl.edu/commentaries/executive-weapons-to-combat-infections-of-the-art-market/.

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