UNESCO'S Picasso Mural "The Fall of Icarus" 1958

by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

UNESCO Headquarters in Paris is hosting the Second Meeting of States Parties to the 1970 Convention today and tomorrow to optimize the international agreement's "implementation, appraise its effectiveness with particular regard to new trends in trafficking in cultural property, and formulate strategies geared primarily to improve its application".

This meeting is a follow-up to the March 2011 meeting in Paris which commemorated the 40th anniversary of the legal instrument designed to promote international cooperation to stopping the illicit looting of archaeological sites by limited the flow of ancient objects across borders.  The ARCA blog covered the 2011 event here; Mexicans and Canadians attend; Mexico's plea; Turkey's statement; and the speakers including Jane Levine of Sotheby's.

"The meeting will examine in depth the status of this indispensable legal instrument in the fight against the illicit traffic of cultural property and its relevance to the needs of the international community," writes UNESCO.

The proposed agenda includes a 2007-2011 analysis of the implementation of the 1970 Convention by States Parties; regional reports on the implementation and the evolution of the art market at the regional level; and proposals concerning follow-up on the implementation of the 1970 Convention.

From 2007 to 2012, 12 countries signed  the 1970 UNESCO Convention bringing the total number to 122 states which have ratified the treaty on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.  UNESCO and its partners created "legal, practical and awareness-raising tools" (Report of the Secretariat on its Activities) to facilitate and implementation of the 1970 Convention: 1) UNESCO's Database of National Cultural Heritage Laws; 2) basic measures concerning cultural items offered for sale on the Internet (proposed by INTERPOL and ICOM; 3) model export certificate for cultural objects developed jointly by the UNESCO and World Customs Organizations; 4) the publication of "Witnesses to History - Documents and writings on the return of cultural objects; 5) public awareness video materials and co-production of a documentary "Stealing the Past"; 6) continuing distance education (e-patrimoines.org) for French-speaking countries; 7) model provisions on state ownership of undiscovered cultural objects; and 8) cultural heritage protection handbook No. 6 securing religious heritage.  Training workshops have been held regionally.

Five members of the European region who have not yet signed the 1970 convention (Austria, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta and Monaco) will be targeted by UNESCO for 'awareness-raising, information and training actions in conjunction with the authorities of these countries and art market stakeholders where relevant (UNESCO).

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

Last April British business Christian Levett opened a museum to display the more than 700 pieces of art and antiquties he has purchased over the past seven years, reports Dayla Alberge for The Guardian.  The article does not refer to the collecting history of these ancient Roman, Greek and Egyptian objects. Compare this to tomorrow's opening of the Second Meeting of States Parties to the 1970 Convention, which more than 40 years ago was designed to fight against the illicit traffic of cultural property.  How are ancient artefacts marketed, sold and displayed in this post-1970 Convention era?

The Mougins Museum of Classic Art ("Musee d'art classique de Mougins") is located northeast of Cannes in the South of France.  Its website contains images of the objects but no reference to the collecting history.

Levett is the owner of the archaeology magazine Minerva.  Last November he received the Ashmolean Museum Fellowship Award in Oxford.  One of the rooms in the Ashmoleans new Egyptian galleries is named after Mr. Levett and his family.

Alberge describes Levett's Mougin collection as 'ranging from Egyptian reliefs to masterpieces by Rubens and Picasso" of 'approximately 700 works spanning 5,000 years' with such 'jewels' as 'exquisite 1st-century Roman statues of Hadrian and the empress Domitia'.

Dr. David Gill, author of the blog Looting Matters, wrote more than a year ago about the history of a Greek Apulian hydria. Dr. Gill reports that Levett/Mougins Museum of Classical Art purchased some objects from the Royal-Athena Galleries and that some of the objects were from the collection of Patricia Kluge (see Dr. Gill's comments on an article by Italian journalist Fabio Isman).

Also a year ago, PHDIVA blogger Dorothy King wrote that she understands that "the Museum has a strict policy of 20 to 25 years' provenance for lesser items and 40+ years' provenance for more important antiquities."

If any of our readers are in the South of France this summer, maybe they would report back on the ARCA blog as to whether or not the museum provides additional information to visitors about the history of the objects on display.

Retired FBI Agent Virginia Curry, who will co-teach with Dick Ellis "The World of Art and the Fine Art of Crime" symposium at Stonehill College this summer, would like to inform interested students that two seat have been added to the program.

"It has come to our attention that spam filters some emails failed to accept our response emails," Curry wrote in an email to the ARCA blog.  "In order to address the inquiries which we have received after the close of registration, we have added two additional seats to this very special program, on a first come, first serve basis."

The Stonehill College Symposium runs from July 30 to August 3, 2012.  Details may be accessed on the website: www.artcrimesymposium.com.

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

Theft and authenticity intertwined in the case of the 1972 robbery of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.  In the years prior to the break-in, museum curators had been examining the collection and questions of authenticity had been left in the archives' files.  A recent article in the June issue of ARTnews about the authenticity of paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) sent me back to my notes on two Corot oil paintings stolen in 1972 from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the largest art theft in Canada.  What kind of research is available to study the provenance of two missing Corot paintings?

Two oil paintings by Corot, "La rêveuse à la fontaine/The Dreamer at the Fountain" and "Jeune fille accoudée sur le bras gauche/Young Woman Resting Her Head in Her Left Hand), had both completed in the 1860s and donated a century later to the Quebec art gallery.

The museum's archives have very little information about the medium-sized paintings removed four decades ago by three thieves who entered the MMFA through a unsecured skylight on Labor Day Weekend and stole 18 paintings and 39 decorative art objects.

"The Dreamer", with its right corner signature of "COROT", was believed to have been painted between 1855-1863.  The museum received the painting from an anonymous donor in memory of Mr. and Mrs. William F. Angus (steel foundry executive).  In a 1969 press release, prepared for the exhibition From Daumier to Roualt, Bill Bantey -- a notorious journalist and the director of public relations for the museum -- noted that the painting 'was virtually unknown as it had been "lost" to scholarly knowledge for over 60 years in a private Montreal collection'.  The other stolen Corot painting, "Young Woman Resting" was a donation in 1963 from the estate of Miss Olive Hosmer, daughter of 'multi-millionaire financier Charles S. Hosmer'.  Miss Hosmer also bequeathed Jean-François Millet's signed portrait of his first wife (Portrait of Madame Millet), also taken on September 4, 1972.

The collection at Montreal's premier art gallery had been built from donations from wealthy Anglo families that had prospered from the construction of Canada's transcontinental railroad and trading from the port of Montreal.  During the late 19th century and early 20th, many art dealers had offered paintings to Montreal collectors before approaching buyers in New York City.  The MMFA published a book by George-Hébert Germain, A City's Museum: A History of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which chronicles the growth of the art gallery founded in 1860.  (Journalist and art historian Cynthia Saltzman tells of how American collectors bought up European masterpieces a century ago in her book, Old Masters, New World).

Laurie Hurwitz, writing for ARTnews, 'If It Doesn't Dance, It's Not Corot', tells of how 'a family steeped in Corot uses connoisseurship and instinct to distinguish the real paintings from copies and fakes'.  Hurwitz's article features the two-decades long work of Corot expert, Martin Dieterle, and his stepdaughter, Claire Lebeau, to create a database of authentic and fake paintings by the Barbizon School painter.  Alfred Robaut's four volume catalogue raisonné of Corot's work published in 1905 (you can read it online through the Getty Research Portal) identified 2,460 paintings.  A supplement published in 1948 added 100 canvases.  According to Dieterle, the notoriously generous artist had gifted numerous canvases to friends -- and those works had little documentation.  Dieterle's connection to Corot goes back to his great-great-grandfather who painted with the artist on the Normandy coast.  Other paintings not inventoried by Robaut had been those sold early on out of Corot's atelier "so it is impossible for Robaut to have known about them," Hurwitz quoted Dieterle.  According to Dieterle, most copies were executed during the artists' lifetime "thus eliminating the need for forensic authentication." Dieterle and Lebeau are preparing the sixth supplement to the artist's catalogue raisonné.

Hurwitz's article is available in the June issue of ARTnews.

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin,

 ARCA Blog Editor-in-chief

Mizzi Zimmerman was the red-haired teenager in Gustav Klimt's 1899 painting, Schubert at the Piano.  In Anne-Marie O'Connor's 2012 book, Lady in Gold, the journalist mentions this work in describing the seduction powers of the artist.  In this painting of the Austrian composer, Mizzi is pregnant with Klimt's son.  The 'whispery silk gown' Mizzi models is lent by Serena Lederer, a wealthy Viennese art patron who collected 14 of Klimt's paintings, including a portrait by Klimt of Egon Schiele's mistress, Valerie Neuzil.

Mizzi also posed nude for another of the artist's works, Naked Truth, but Klimt had no intention of marrying the pregnant Catholic girl, O'Connor writes.  Klimt, who had also impregnated another woman at the same time, told Mizzi that he would be focusing his energies on a big commission to paint ceiling murals for the University of Vienna -- Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence.   Mizzi told her mother of her pregnancy, O'Connor reports: her stepfather threw Mizzi out of the house and she begged the artist for financial support.

But we can't see Schubert at the Piano in any museum.  This and the other Klimt paintings collected by Lederer, were destroyed in 1945 when retreating Nazis set Schloss Immendorf on fire.  The paintings from the Lederer collection had been placed at the residence of Baron Rudolf Freudenthan, an officer in the Wehrmacht (German armed forces), for safekeeping in 1943.  O'Connor recounts that the Lederer Klimt collection of "as many as fourteen spectacular Klimt paintings" included Golden Apple Tree, Philosophy and Jurisprudence (which the Lederers had purchased when the University of Vienna rejected them), Girl Friends and Music II ("The precise number of paintings burned at Schloss Immendorf is unknown, O'Connor notes).

by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief

Turkish journalist Özgen Açar sent out a link to June 11 article in the New York Times, "Archaeologists Say Greece Threatened by Austerity".  When the man who tracked down the stolen Lydian Hoard from Turkey to New York City sends out an email, I pay attention, very close attention.

Açar is pointing out an article written by Randy Kennedy that shows how more than a 10% reduction in Greece's state archaeologists is limiting access to artifacts in museums and reducing the country's ability to protect its cultural heritage.  The Association for Greek Archaeologists has created a television commercial to create public awareness.

In Kennedy's article, Minoan vases are being washed away and bulldozers are paving roads to ancient sites while fewer archaeologists can respond to the problems of securing Greece's culture and history.

Many schoolchildren must be disappointed to have access limited to the symbols of Greek mythology as bestselling books such as those by Rick Riordan have reignited popular reading about the gods and the humans who interact with them. Aren't we trying to encourage the younger generation to take an interest in cultural institutions? My 12-year-old daughter volunteered to spend the day at Istanbul's Archaeology Museum and walked through all the exhibits looking for Greek and Roman gods -- only to find out that that section was closed for renovation last winter.

YouTube has a 14-minute video which is a walking tour through the National Archaeology Museum of Athens, including a view of the impressive 2,500 year old Artemision Bronze.

What happens when a source country of ancient objects cannot protect its patrimony and needs funds? What would you do living and working in a country with 21% unemployment? You might not loot antiquities but would someone more desperate with family obligations or someone less scrupulous be able to resist the temptation of taking one of the many pieces that just lie underneath the dirt?

by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief