On July 20, 2010, on the eve of trial, the case of United States v. Portrait of Wally, which our firm litigated for more than ten years, was finally resolved by stipulation and order. The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan commenced the case in the fall of 1999 by seizing the painting, “Portrait of Wally” by Egon Schiele (Wally), while it was on loan for exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The case has been credited with awakening governments around the world, as well as museums, collectors, and others in the global art community, to the problem of Nazi-looted art almost seventy years after the beginning of the Nazi era in Europe. Although this case will surely be commented on and analyzed for many years to come – including in a documentary film due to be released in the spring – as the attorneys for the claimant in the case, we thought it would be helpful to provide some thoughts from our unique vantage point.

If international legal authorities and American civil courts agree, the law could establish 1925, rather than 1993, as the dividing point after which Cambodian artifacts taken without government permits can be treated as stolen property. Cambodia would still have to prove that the statue was looted after 1925, “a high burden but not an impossible one,” according to Mr. Bogdanos, who agrees the 1925 law “appears to be valid.”

Virginia Curry and Dick Ellis holding a painting  by David Teniers, Peasant Filling His Pipe,  stolen from the Richard Green Gallery in London.

Presenting our partnership with Stonehill College, in which we take full advantage of the beautiful campus and the rich resources of the greater Boston area we offer participants a "hands on" connection and an exceptional experience of scholarship and professionalism with art.  There will be lecturers on campus each morning focusing on topics which initiate the novice aficionado to the economics of art, provide suggestions for researching their own areas of art interest and of course we will discuss crimes against art and share our first hand international experience, scholarship and current topics in the field. 

In the afternoons we visit several museums, premier art galleries and conduct practical exercises, such as participation in a mock auction at Stonehill, and learn about how auctions are conducted at a major Boston fine art auction house our behind the scenes visit.   We will meet museum professionals who will explain their function in regard to exhibition preparation and curation. We’ll try our hand at solving the most important unsolved museum heist in U.S. history. We will observe how conservation specialists work and how security managers manage the risk of the exposure of their treasures.  We'll speak with the curator of an important corporate collection to see how business collects and presents investment art. We'll experience the culture of Boston from the Red Sox at Fenway Park to the clambakes of Cape Cod.  This unique seminar adventure equips you to pursue your interest in collecting and appreciating art and understanding the diverse crimes against art like none other.

Lunches on site at Stonehill College are included.  Transportation for excursions is included.  Scheduled evening events and socials such as the opening Sam Adams Boston Lager toasting reception, Boston Red Sox game, and the closing clam bake, barring inclement weather or unforeseen emergency, are included.  All basic course materials (handouts, etc.,) are included.  Other evening meals and meals off campus are at personal expense.  Local lodging at a discounted rate is available, which includes breakfast and transportation to Stonehill College and return.  Discounted airfare has been arranged through American Airlines for travelers.

Cost: $2,250. A Deposit of $300 is required to reserve your place by May 1, 2012; balance must be received by June 1, 2012.  Kindly respond early since participation is quite limited.

The case that The New York Times has called “the world’s largest unresolved Holocaust art claim” may provide an answer to that question. In de Csepel v. Republic Of Hungary (10-cv-1261), heirs of the Hungarian banker Baron Mor Lipot Herzog sued in United States District Court in Washington seeking the return of a collection worth more than $100 million. Since the suit is against the Republic of Hungary (and several of its state-run museums, where much of the collection still hangs), the question of foreign sovereign immunity naturally presents itself. The plaintiffs say the doctrine doesn’t apply because the works were taken in violation of international law -- even though it is well-established that a state’s taking of the property of its own citizens cannot violate international law. In a recent decision (issued September 1, 2011), the District Court agreed.

Every morning on their way to the Notting Hill tube many individuals run into (sometimes literally) Nadim Karam's Carnival Elephant sculpture, idly evoking the movement of people around it with it's gently revolving fan, spinning in unison with the whirlwind of activity at the Newcombe Piazza. Last week, however, the fan was not moving: some rascal had indiscriminately broken off one of the blades. The stasis causes many to wonder how and when the watchful elephant will be repaired, following the unholy act of animal cruelty enacted upon it. 

Deliberate damage upon public sculptures and monuments is by no means a modern development. Indeed even medieval morons pried bronze clamps and support bars from inside the walls of Rome’s Colosseum for use elsewhere in the city, owing in part to their own inability to manufacture the building materials they required.

Over the years there has been a major change in the way countries have sought to reclaim archaeological material that had been looted. Claims have been made against the background of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. This was accepted by the USA in 1984 and by the United Kingdom in 2002. 

Attempts to reclaim material were extended and tended to take time to go through the legal channels. Such disputes included the Kanakaria Mosaics to Cyprus, the Dekadrachm Hoard and the Lydian Treasure to Turkey, and the Aidonia Treasure to Greece. The case of the Sevso Treasure is unresolved as although it was certainly removed from its archaeological context by unscientific means, it has not been possible to confirm where this hoard was found. 

The seizure of the Medici Dossier in the Geneva Freeport (and related photographic archives in Basel and in Greece) has allowed the Italian authorities to adopt a different strategy. Images of objects in a fragmented state or still covered in mud have been an emotive force in the rhetoric surrounding the returns. Museums that were reluctant to negotiate were persuaded that bad publicity could be avoided if discussions about returns were initiated. In one case a major North American museum was shown images in 2005 and less than a year later had arranged to return 13 antiquities to Italy. It was, and is, hard to argue that something was in “an old collection” when the object had been recorded in a distressed state subsequent to the 1970 UNESCO Convention. 

Yet compliance has been reluctant in some quarters. Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts was aware nearly twenty years ago that the torso of a Weary Herakles fit the abdomen and legs of a statue that had been excavated at Perge in southern Turkey. The presentation of a collection history that suggested that the torso had surfaced in Germany in the 1950s was a distraction. The situation was made more complicated as the donors had retained part ownership of the torso. Full title was eventually transferred to the MFA.

Abstract: Spain is rich in art treasures: artwork ranging from religious works, modern paintings, ancient architecture, Roman ruins, and Visigoth remnants are densely scattered across Spain’s cities and countryside. Whereas some of the art is world-renowned and protected, much of the art is still hidden in churches and in depopulated towns and is left vulnerable to damage and theft. 

Spain’s cache of hidden works has great cultural value to the Spanish cultural identity; however, these works are often misappropriated because their existence is virtually unknown or unprotected. In light of the international upset over the theft of the Codex Calixtinus, this paper sets forth recommendations for Spain to follow to protect is patrimony, most importantly the necessity of creating an extensive catalogue, encompassing both State and Church property.

ABSTRACT: An exploration of the scientific and stylistic processes employed to determine the date and authorship of an ink on vellum drawing of a young girl. Sold by Christie's as a pastiche by a German 19th century artist, the results of the investigation nominated Leonardo da Vinci as the probable author of the drawing. An examination of critical response and possible implications of the phenomenon known as 'CSI effect is also considered.

The nineteenth-century forger emerged as an unlikely model of middle-class selfhood, embodying the bourgeois ideals of industriousness, education and thrift. More than this, he offered an example for living in a capitalistic society without being contaminated by it. Although his artistic productions supplied a market demand, he escaped the charge of base materialism. Representations of the forger were rigorously gendered; he was always male. The forger embodied a set of prized masculine values that had to be guarded from female intrusion. Contemporary literary, artistic, and journalistic texts constructed the figure of the female copyist to guard the parameters of faking. The depicted the copyist as the forger’s imperfect double; while their work methods were often the same, they were separated by a world of difference.