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July 20, 2013

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Report from ARCA in Amelia: Dick Drent on Museum Security and Integrated Risk Management for Cultural Heritage

Le pont d'Argenteuil
by Claude Monet - damaged in 2007 by intruders
by Sophia Kisielewska, ARCA Intern

This past week, our course was taught by Dick Drent, the Corporate Security Manager and former Director of Security at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, who led us through the ins and outs of museum security and risk management for cultural heritage. Mr. Drent offered up his vast and unparalleled knowledge from the practical side of art crime detection and prevention -- knowledge he has gained through his eight years heading the security team at the Van Gogh Museum and 25 years working in the field of Law Enforcement in the Netherlands.  We learnt about how, during his time as Security Director at the Van Gogh Museum, he has changed and refined the security procedures of the museum to meet a standard that is truly fitting for the treasure trove that it holds.

Through the week we identified the many threats that face any art institution: theft, vandalism, violent acts, natural disasters, fire, and environmental hazards and learned the practical approaches for protecting against these.  Mr. Drent guided us through the museum security training methods he devised with some of his former colleagues from Dutch law enforcement. He has spent several years promoting this method in museums and galleries around the world and in doing so has become a leading figure in an international movement calling for greater security for cultural property.  The training focuses on the detection of risks upfront in order to minimize actual threats, his mantra being that a museum must have a proactive stance in the protection of its art works rather than a reactive one. This, he emphasizes, need not be reliant on fancy and expensive equipment, rather a shift of attitude from the management level to the floor level on the training of security personnel and museum staff.  This includes training in how to properly observe and recognize deviant behavior and the regular analysis and revaluation of risks to the museum on a daily basis, followed by assessments on the best ways to intervene if such an event were to occur.


The highlight of Dick Drent’s course was undoubtedly the field class that he led in Rome. We rose early on Monday to take a coach bus into the capital where we spent the day surveying some of Rome's greatest collections of Western European art not merely as tourists but through the eyes of a security director. Through a series of group exercises, we gained an understanding of the complexity of securing a museum while keeping the collection available to visitors.


As my classmates talked amongst themselves during the field class, walking among collections, and even on the bus ride back to Amelia, we began to realize the complex field in which a modern-day museum security director works.  His or her job requires them to not only know what is best for their particular museum and their particular collection but to also convey that information to a broad group of interested parties and decision-makers.  It is one thing to talk among colleagues from the security field about what is needed, but it is quite another thing to articulate those same concerns to a museum director, its Board of Trustees, a finance review board, or a museum's curators and conservators.

Having survived a two-week stretch of intensive studying without a pausa, we were treated to a six-day holiday. Most students decided to venture away from Amelia and the chosen destinations ranged from Rome, Sienna, Florence, and Venice to Serbia, Basel, Switzerland, Amsterdam, and Marrakesh.  During the break, many of Europe’s great galleries were visited and no doubt many of us looked vaguely suspicious as we unconsciously carried out security audits of the collections.  During my own trip to Castel S. Angelo in Rome, it became apparent to me that visits to cultural institutions will never be the same again thanks to Dick Drent’s full on and rigorous museum security training.

July 19, 2013

Friday, July 19, 2013 - ,,, No comments

When is restitution a bad thing? The case of Melanesian wood carvings


Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I
 by Gustav Klimt. (1907).
 Neue Galerie, New York.
Source: Verity Algar

by Verity Algar, co-posting with Plundered Art

The Holocaust Art Restitution Project and other organisations aiming to restitute Holocaust-looted art to its rightful owners justifiably propose restitution to be a positive thing in this context. However, my research has shown that not all cultural groups want to re-possess their cultural heritage.

I recently spoke at the Association of Research into Crimes Against Art’s 5th Annual Conference, where I compared these two objects: the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt. (1907) and Malanggan from Northern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea (collected in 1890).

Malanggan, from Northern New Ireland,
Papua New Guinea. Collected in 1890.
 Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology,
 Cambridge
Source: Verity Algar
Why would I compare a twentieth-century European painting with a nineteenth-century wood carving from Melanesia, I hear you say?! Well, by comparing these different objects, I wanted to point out that their original owners take vastly different approaches to the restitution of these objects. Let me explain.

In Jewish communities, generally, the original owners of the cultural objects and/or their heirs, feel the need to re-claim their objects in order to gain a sense of closure on a traumatic past. As the following excerpts demonstrate, the language of restitution claims suggest that the Holocaust is not truly over until looted art objects have been restituted:

“The return of stolen art may be one of the last acts of the Shoah”
(Dellheim 2000 cited in Glass 2004: 117)

“museums … are dealing with the unfinished business of the Holocaust”
(editorial, Seattle Times 16 June 1999)

“Austria will move closer to closing the book on a somber chapter in 20th-century history”
(Czernin 1998 cited in Glass 2004: 118)

The people of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea, on the other hand, do not wish for the malanggan which they themselves created, to be returned to them, despite malanggan being essential to their culture. This may initially seem puzzling because they can often take more than three months to carve (Küchler 2002: 1). Yet they are not made to be displayed, treasured and revered as much of the art confiscated by the Nazis was. Malanggan are displayed for a few hours during mortuary ceremonies, before being left to the elements to decompose (Küchler and Melion 1991: 29). As money became increasingly important in New Ireland, the sale of malanggan to Western collectors became an attractive alternative (Küchler and Melion 1991: 29). More than five thousand malanggan have been collected by Western museums (Küchler and Melion 1991: 27).  As other indigenous groups began to claim the objects that constituted their cultural memory from Western museums, the museums considered restituting the malanggan too.

This illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the significance of malanggan to Melanesian culture.  During the carving process, the sculpture is imbued with life force, which is “symbolically killed” when ownership of the malanggan is transferred from the deceased’s family to related kin in exchange for money (Küchler and Melion 1991: 32). The image of the malanggan, however, is preserved as cultural memory and is reproduced in future sculptures (Küchler and Melion 1991: 32). Susanne Küchler and Walter Melion refer to the conflicting status of memory surrounding malanggan practice as “strategic remembering and deliberate forgetting” (1991: 30). To restitute these objects to the people of New Ireland would be to rekindle a specific aspect of their cultural memory, thus interfering with the process of “deliberate forgetting”.

Whilst it is fundamentally important that organisations such as ARCA and HARP continue to support research into Holocaust-era looted art, it is equally important that we understand why restitution can be incredibly problematic for some groups of people. Far from interrupting or countering my pro-restitution tendency, the argument against the restitution of malanggan can run alongside this tendency. As a concept, restitution is neither good nor bad. Rather, decisions about whether or not to restitute cultural objects need to be made on a culture-specific basis.

Verity Algar is a second year BA in History of Art student at University College London, where she minors in Anthropology. She recently spoke on ‘Cultural memory and the restitution of cultural property: Comparing Nazi-looted art and Melanesian malanggan’ at the Association of Research into Crimes Against Art’s 5th Annual Conference. She is hoping to complete the ARCA Postgraduate Certificate before working in a field relating to cultural heritage protection.

July 17, 2013

Wednesday, July 17, 2013 - ,,, No comments

SMU Announces Dick Ellis and Virginia Curry in "The World of Art and the Fine Art of Crime" at Southern Methodist University from October 14-18, 2013

Richard Ellis
Art crime investigators Richard "Dick" Ellis and Virginia Curry will present another seminar in "The World of Art and the Fine Art of Crime" at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University from October 14 - 18, 2013.
The seminar will be presented by two internationally noted art crime investigators. Richard “Dick” Ellis is a former detective with New Scotland Yard, where he founded and led the Art & Antiques Squad for more than a decade. Virginia Curry is a former FBI undercover agent and Art Crime Team member whose high-profile cases have been chronicled in such books as Chasing Aphrodite and The Medici Conspiracy (see full bios at end of release). 
Topics to be covered include the following: 
• Museums: A lecture on museum operations will be followed by a trip to a regional art museum, where participants will visit with professionals regarding exhibit curation, conservation, security and provenance issues. 
Virginia Curry
• Auction houses: A talk about the auction business is followed by a visit to an auction house, discussion with staff, preview of an upcoming auction and participation in a mock bidding experience. 
• Art galleries: A lecture on galleries’ roles in identifying tastes, finding clients and working with them to build collections is followed by visits to local galleries and meetings with owners and artists’ representatives to discuss current collecting trends in contemporary and traditional art. 
• Art crime and looted cultural heritage: From Egyptian antiquities to Native American art to Nazi thefts during World War II, issues of rightful ownership, provenance and repatriation of art works continue to challenge art organizations and governments worldwide. Current cases will be discussed by international experts.
Last summer, Mr. Ellis and Ms. Curry presented their symposium at Stonehill College.

Mr. Ellis is also a lecturer at ARCA's Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection. Ms. Curry presented at ARCA's International Art Crime Conference in 2009.

Here a link to this event on the SMU website for additional information about registering for the seminar.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013 - ,,,, No comments

Kunsthal Rotterdam Art Heist: Six People to be tried in Budapest for stealing 18 million Euros of art; DIOCT denies making any conclusions about the destruction of the stolen paintings

On Monday, July 15, Romanian authorities under the umbrella of "DICOT" will be prosecuting six people in a court in Bucharest for the theft of seven paintings from the Kunsthal Rotterdam on October 16, 2012, according to Mediafax.ro.

DIOCT is the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism, within the Public Ministry/Romanian Police, with 280 prosecutors and another 200 administrators and 40 specialists to combat and prevent organized crime. According to a statement issued on July 17 by DIOCT related to the Kunsthal Rotterdam theft indicates (based upon a Google translation from Romanian to English) that the DIOCT is not confirming or approving any conclusions regarding the stolen paintings (alluding to the question of whether or not the paintings have been destroyed).

The DIOCT's press release dated July 15, 2013 (loosely translated by Google from Romanian into English) announces the indictment of defendants Radu Dogaru; Adrian Procop (în lipså); Eugen Darie;  Alexandru Mihai Bitu; Olga Dogaru; and Petre Condrat (still at large). The prosecutor claims to have evidence that the defendants acted as a criminal group to steal seven works of art stolen from the Kunstal Rotterdam on October 16, 2012, worth an estimated 18 million Euros. One of the defendants (Bitu) is accused of trying to sell the artworks stolen by three of the defendants (Dogaru, Darie and Procop). Condrat is accused of knowingly handling two of the stolen artworks. Defendant Olga Dogaru (mother of one of the suspects) is accused of transporting and concealing the stolen art. The trial will be held in Bucharest.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013 - ,,, No comments

Kunsthal Rotterdam Art Heist: Journalists weigh in on reports of stove ashes evidence that suspects' mother destroyed stolen paintings when a buyer could not be found

Was this painting destroyed in Romania?
Alison Mutler for the Associated Press reported on July 16th in "Romania: Museum checks if paintings burned" that Romania's Natural History Museum is examining the ashes found in the stove of Olga Dogaru, the mother of Radu, one of the three suspects charged with stealing seven paintings from the Triton Foundation while on display at the Kunsthal Rotterdam on October 16, 2012.
Dogaru told investigators she was scared for her son after he was arrested in January and buried the art in an abandoned house and then in a cemetery in the village of Caracliu. She said she later dug them up and burned them in February after police began searching the village for the stolen works.
Ms. Mutler quotes prosecutor spokesman Gabriela Chiru as saying that it will take months to confirm Olga Dogaru's story.

In late May, the Agency France-Presse reported that Romanian prosecutors suspected that the paintings had been destroyed. Here's a link to that ARCA blog post and others about the art heist.

 The Washington Post published an article ("Ash from the stove of woman who claims she burned stolen artworks contains canvas, paint") from the wire service the Associated Press claiming that the results from analyzing the ashes in the stove will be presented to the prosecutors next week:
A Romanian museum official said Wednesday that ash from the oven of a woman whose son is charged with stealing seven multimillion-dollar paintings -- including a Matisse, a Picasso and a Monet -- contains paint, canvas and nails.
The finding is evidence that Olga Dogaru may have been telling the truth when she claimed to have burned the paintings ... Ernest Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, director of Romania's National History Museum, told The Associated Press that museum forensic specialists had found "small fragments or painting primer, the remains of canvas, the remains of paint" and copper and steel nails, some of which pre-dated the 20th century.

"We discovered a series of substances which are specific to paintings and pictures," he said, including lead, zinc and azurite.
He refused to say definitively that the ashes were those of seven paintings stolen from Rotterdam's Kunsthal gallery last year, because he said it was not his postion to do so. He said justice officials would make that decision. 
He did venture, however, that if the remains were those of the paintings, it was a "crime against humanity to destroy universal art." 
"I can't believe in 2013 that we come across such acts," he said. 
Oberlander-Tarnoveanu said forensic specialists at the museum have been analyzing ashes from Dogaru's stove since March, and will hand their results to prosecutors next week.
In The Atlantic Wire, Alexander Abad-Santos speculates that the mother of one of the thieves burned the stolen paintings because the thieves could not find any buyers for the artworks:
According to Romania-Insider, an English-language news site, the suspects stashed the paintings at Olga's house because they were having trouble finding buyers. And citing a local report from Romania, the NL Times is reporting that experts have confirmed that the ashes are the burned remains of Monet and Picasso work. It should be noted, however, that the AP story conflicts with that local report, saying that the main prosecutor and officials said it could take months for the results to be confirmed.

July 16, 2013

Tuesday, July 16, 2013 - ,, No comments

Sept. 13 deadline for papers for the Authentication in Art in The Hague from May 7-9, 2014

Here's a link to Authentication in Art's call for papers (Sept. 13) for their conference in May 2014 at the to the announcement and call for papers for their conference at the Louwman Museum in The Hague from May 7-9, 2014.
AiA encourages all members of the art market, legal and financial community to attend the 2014 Congress. This will be the primary forum where proponents of standards of best practice in art authentication are able to come together to discuss best practices, share information about trends in the international art world and promote the concept of global standards in art authentication.
Call for Papers: Authentication in Art (AiA) invites submissions of proposals of 500–700 words (up to 3000 characters) for oral presentations, to be given at the conference in The Hague, The Netherlands, 7-9 May, 2014. The deadline for papers is Friday 13th September, 2013. Please go to http://www.authenticationinart.org/call-for-papers/ to learn all about the process and the conditions.
AiA is a not-for-profit organization established in early 2012 for market, legal, and financial professionals interested in developing policies in art authentication. Partners include the Van Gogh Museum, the Frans Hal Museum, Wallraf das Museum, Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association, Deloitte, Art History Services, and Louwman Museum.

The AiA Foundation board consists of Professor Dr. Nico Schrijver, Chair of Public International Law at Leiden University, and Drs. Ingeborg de Jongh, an art-historian and painting conservator. The Advisory Board includes Dr. Chris Stolwijk, director of the Netherlands Institute for Art History; Professor Dr. Rudi Ekkart, art historian; Professor dr. Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor in the History of Art at Trinity College, Oxford University; James Roundell, art historian (Cambridge University) and Chairman of The Society of London Art Dealers; and Lawrence M. Shindell, Chairman of ARIS Title Insurance Corporation.

July 15, 2013

Monday, July 15, 2013 - ,,, No comments

BBC's Amanda Ruggeri: Exhibit in Rome showing recovered objects of stolen cultural property on display at Castel Sant'Angelo until November 5

Exhibition banner outside Castel Sant'Angelo
(Photo by Catherine Sezgin)
Here's a link to a BBC article by Amanda Ruggeri ("See the story behind the stolen treasures") on the exhibit at the National Museum of Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome exhibiting objects of stolen cultural property recovered by Italy. Capolavori dell'archaeologia: Recuperi, ritrovamenti, confronti (Masterpieces of archaeology: Recovery, findings, comparisons) will be open until November 5, 2013 (closed every Monday).

Items include large pieces of a 1st Century BC Pompei villa fresco recovered from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu; the head and extremities of a Morgantina acrolith recovered from the University of Virginia's Art Museum; and the Euphronios krater recovered from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ms. Ruggeri writes:
The exhibition, which includes dozens of works of art, serves as a sobering reminder of how widespread and damaging looting in Italy has been. One display points out that when an item is looted, the problem isn’t just that it risks disappearing into the hands of a private collector, winding up abroad or being damaged. (One popular way to transport looted vases, for example, is to deliberately break them into shards and reconstruct them later, as fragments are easier to hide and move.) The irreversible loss is the item’s context. Without knowing where the piece was found, at what depth, or near which other objects, it is all but impossible to fully reconstruct the piece’s history, use and meaning.

Monday, July 15, 2013 - ,, No comments

Rome's Greek bronze statue "Boxer at Rest" visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art through July 15, 2013

Photo from The Met: Boxer at Rest (Greek bronze)
Tomorrow (July 15) is the last day to view the ancient Greek statue, The Boxer, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of 2013 - Year of Italian Culture in the United States, an initiative held under the auspices of the President of the Italian Republic, organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the embassy of Italy in Washington, D.C., with the support of the Corporate Ambassadors Eni and Intesa Sanpaolo. From The Met's website:
The bronze statue Boxer at Rest was excavated in Rome in 1885 on the south slope of the Quirinal Hill near the ancient Baths of Constantine, where it is thought to have been displayed. The statue was intentionally buried in late antiquity, possibly to preserve it against the barbarian invasions that ravaged Rome in the fifth century A.D.
Scholars have long debated the date of the statue, which is most likely between the late fourth and the second century B.C. The sculpture is an exceptional work in bronze from the Hellenistic period (323-31 B.C.) and is of outstanding artistic value.
The statue was cast using the indirect lost-wax method. It was made in different sections that were then welded together: head, body, genitals, arms above the gloves, forearms, left leg, and middle toes. The top of the head was restored in antiquity. Although the inset eyes are missing, they would have been convincingly rendered, like a pair in the Metropolitan's collection.
The Greek bronze statue resides at the Museo Nazionale Romano-Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in the vicinity of the Termini Station.

The Boxer at Rest at time of discovery (Courtesy The Met)
Here's a link to the article on The Met's blog, Now at the Met, by Seán Hemingway, Curator, Department of Greek and Roman Art, which describes the discovery of the bronze statue and includes the image above. Hemingway quotes the archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani, an eyewitness present at the statue's excavation:
"I have witnessed, in my long career in the active field of archaeology, many discoveries; I have experienced surprise after surprise; I have sometimes and most unexpectedly met with real masterpieces; but I have never felt such an extraordinary impression as the one created by the sight of this magnificent specimen of a semi-barbaric athlete, coming slowly out of the ground, as if awakening from a long repose after his gallant fights."[1]
Hemingway, Seán. "The Boxer: An Ancient Masterpiece Comes to the Met". New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/now-at-the-met/features/2013/the-boxer 
[1] R. Lanciani, Ancient Rome in light of recent discoveries (Rome 1888), pp. 305–306.

July 13, 2013

Saturday, July 13, 2013 - ,,,, No comments

America's Book of Secrets features segment on the Isabella Stewart Gardner 1990 Theft

Here's the show, America's Book of Secrets on the History Channel, which interviewed ARCA trustee Erik Nemeth (PH.D., Independent Researcher) for an episode aired in June, Lost Treasures.  At around minute 29, the show focuses on the 1990 theft of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the segment "Bare Walls". Interviews include FBI Special Agent Geoffrey J. Kelly; Robert K. Wittman, former FBI Special Agent; Nemeth; Catherine Williamson, PH.D., Director of Fine Books and Manuscripts, Bonhams; and Chris Isleib, Director of Communications, National Archives.

July 12, 2013

Friday, July 12, 2013 - ,,,, 1 comment

FBI Looking for Owners of Recovered Art (Books and Maps)

The FBI has posted images of 57 rare books and maps in hopes of finding the owners:
After a well-known dealer of rare maps was caught stealing from a Yale University library in 2006, a subsequent FBI investigation revealed that the man had stolen antique maps and other valuable items from institutions around the world. Most of the pilfered material was eventually returned to its rightful owners—but not all of it. 
We are still in possession of 57 rare maps and books—some dating to the 17th century—and we would like to return them. To that end, we are posting pictures and information about the items in the accompanying photo gallery in the hopes that the individuals or institutions who own them will come forward to claim them. 
“These items have been legally forfeited to the U.S. government,” said Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, who manages the FBI’s Art Theft Program. “Technically, they belong to the Bureau now, but we don’t want to keep them. Even though we have tried to find the rightful owners over the years, we are making another attempt.” 
After Edward Forbes Smiley, III was arrested for the Yale library theft, he admitted stealing and selling nearly 100 rare maps from international collections over a period of seven years. With Smiley’s cooperation, we tracked down most of the dealers and collectors who purchased the approximately $3 million worth of stolen material. But returning the maps to their homes proved to be a daunting task. 
In many cases, the maps were cut from books with a razor and trimmed so they didn’t look like they came from books. Some of the maps had different titles—many in Latin—and could have come from several known copies of the same book. To further complicate matters, many libraries weren’t even aware they were missing items until we contacted them. 
“These maps aren’t vehicles with identification numbers stamped on them,” Special Agent Stephen J. Kelleher, who led the 2006 investigation, said at the time. Special Agent Lisa MacNamara, who is working the case now from our New Haven, Connecticut Division, added, “Our hope is that by reaching out to the public in this way, we can get these historical items back to where they belong.” 
The items still in our possession include rare maps such as an 18th century depiction of the United States, a 1683 street plan of Philadelphia, and several antique books. 
If you believe that one of the maps or books shown in the gallery was stolen from your collection, please contact Special Agent MacNamara at (203) 503-5268, or send an e-mail to artwork@ic.fbi.gov. To claim any of the items, you will need to provide evidence of ownership and positively identify the item in question. That might include—but is not limited to—giving a description of special markings or stamps, wear patterns, specific damage, or other detailed information.

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