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February 1, 2014

Saturday, February 01, 2014 - ,, No comments

Lipinski Stradivarius violin theft: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Ashley Luthern reports "$100,000 reward announced in Stradivarius violin theft"

Frank Almond: Lipinski Stradivarius
Ashley Luthern of the Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee) reports "$100,000 reward announced in Stradivarius violin theft" (January 31):
A $100,000 reward was announced Friday for a priceless 300-year-old Stradivarius violin that was stolen in an armed robbery this week. Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Frank Almond was attacked with a stun gun Monday and robbed of the violin, which has been on indefinite loan to him from its anonymous owners since 2008, a common practice in the music world. The reward will be offered to anyone who can provide information that results in the safe return of the stolen violin. Officials declined to disclose Friday who, or what organization, is financing the reward. 
[...] 
A Milwaukee police spokesman confirmed Friday that Almond reported the robbers were a man and a woman. Investigators are reviewing security footage and following leads in the case, but no further information was available Friday. 
The theft marks at least the second time the "Lipinski Stradivarius" has disappeared from public view. The violin was built in 1715 in Cremona, Italy, by famed violin craftsman Antonio Stradivari. Its first known owner was the virtuoso Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770), known to listeners for his "Devil's Trill" Sonata. The instrument has also belonged to Polish violinist Karol Lipinski (1790-1861), whose name has stayed attached to it. In 1962, the Lipinski Stradivarius was sold to Richard Anschuetz, a pianist in New York who spent summers in Milwaukee as a child. Anschuetz purchased it for his wife, the Estonian violinist and child prodigy Evi Liivak, with whom he had performed since the 1940s, according to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. The couple performed around the world as a duo until the late 1980s. Once they stopped performing, the Lipinski Stradivarius disappeared from public view for nearly 20 years. The violin had not been heard in public until it was given on loan to Almond in 2008. The current owners, who remain anonymous, have been characterized as people with "strong ties" to Milwaukee.
Milwaukee police held a press conference the day after the theft to discuss the investigation.

Saturday, February 01, 2014 - ,,, No comments

Archaeologist and journalist Vernon Silver Reports on the Underwater Discovery of the Apollo of Gaza for Bloomberg Businessweek

From Bloomberg Businessweek
Vernon Silver, author of The Lost Chalice: The Real-Life Chase for One of the World's Best Masterpieces (Harper Collins) about recovering a cup designed by the Greek artist Eurphronios, writes in Bloomberg Businessweek about the underwater discovery of the bronze Apollo of Gaza ("The Apollo of Gaza: Hamas's Ancient Bronze Statue", January 30, 2014).

Last year in August, Silver retells, 26-year-old fisherman Jouda Ghurab dived into the Mediterranean off the Gaza Strip and discovered what would ultimately turn out to be a bronze statue:
The Apollo of Gaza is almost six feet tall and made of bronze. He has finely wrought curly hair, one intact inlaid eye, an outstretched right hand, and a green patina over most of his body, which weighs about 1,000 pounds. His slim limbs are those of a teenager, and he’s so unusually well preserved that his feet are still attached to the rectangular bronze base that kept him upright centuries ago. On the international market, bronzes have become the rarest and most disputed artifacts of antiquity. Few survive today; over the past 2,000 years most have fallen victim to recycling: melted in antiquity for weapons or coins and later for church bells and cannon. The survivors are mostly those saved by mishaps or disasters—sinking in shipwrecks or buried by volcanic ash.
Silver includes a quote from Giacomo Medici on the rarity of the bronze statue:
“A bronze of this size is one of a kind,” says Giacomo Medici, a dealer whose 2004 conviction in Rome for acting as a hub of the global antiquities trade led to the repatriation of works from the world’s biggest museums and richest collectors, including the Getty and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. If the Apollo could be sold, such a statue would bring “20, 30, 40 million euros, maybe more, 100 million for the highest quality,” Medici says, speaking by phone from house arrest at his villa north of the Italian capital. “You could make it a centerpiece of a museum or private collection.”
As for the estimated value, Silver reports:
By way of comparison, an ancient bronze a little more than half the Apollo’s size, depicting the goddess Artemis with a stag, sold for $28.6 million at Sotheby’s (BID) in New York in 2007. “That’s a good guide” for understanding the value of the Gaza bronze, says James Ede, chairman of London-based antiquities dealer Charles Ede. “Of course, it’s worth a lot of money if it can be sold, but it can’t be,” he says. A thicket of issues surrounding the Apollo’s provenance and ownership will make it hard to establish legal title, he says. It doesn’t help that Gaza is governed by Hamas, the Islamist movement considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union. Says Ede, “It would be a hell of a furor if they tried to sell it.”
 You can read more of this article through this link to Bloomberg Business week. And you can read more about The Lost Chalice on the publisher's page here.

Mr. Silver presented at the ARCA Conference in Amelia on "Crime Scenes as Archaeological Sites" in 2011.

Saturday, February 01, 2014 - ,,,, No comments

Introducing Sam Hardy and "Conflict Antiquities" -- the blog that aims to track the use of antiquities to fund war

In Vernon Silver's article "The Apollo of Gaza: Hamas's Ancient Bronze Statue" in Bloomberg Businesweek, Sam Hardy is quoted as to the complications of the discovery:
In the hands of the Hamas government, the bronze is worth more than just money. The most valuable reward would be recognition of any kind by U.S. or European institutions and governments. Even the slightest cooperation, say, over restoration, sale, or loan of the statue, could open the diplomatic door a crack. “This case is fiendishly difficult,” says Sam Hardy, a British archaeologist whose Conflict Antiquities website tracks the use of looted artifacts to fund war. “National and international laws make it difficult to assist the administration in the West Bank, let alone that in the Gaza Strip. Indeed, any sale or leasing of the statue might normalize looting of antiquities as a funding stream for Hamas.”
We've added Hardy's blog "Conflict Antiquities" to ARCA's "Related Blogs" on the right side of our website.

Saturday, February 01, 2014 - ,,, No comments

Libération's Vincent Noce Reports on Belgian Heiress' Claim Against Sotheby's for Alleged Fraud Regarding Sale of Stamp Collection

Libération: Among the missing items,
the original design of the envelope
 "BelgianArctic Expedition" of 1957. (Photo CD)
by Isabel Abislaiman

Last December, the newspaper Libération revealed that French authorities are conducting an investigation into a claim brought by a Belgian heiress against Sotheby’s for alleged fraud (Vincent Noce, Libération, Sotheby's et la philatéliste estampée, December 26, 2013). According to Libération, the woman inherited a significant stamp collection from her father in 2009 and contacted Sotheby’s who put her in touch with Sotheby's France Vice President, Alain Renner. According to the claim, Noce reports, Renner, accompanied by expert Grégory Russel, visited the potential client and offered to put the collection up for auction at Sotheby's in Paris, estimating the revenue from sale at auction at 600,000 Euros, which piqued the lady’s interest.

The claimant alleges, according to Noce, that a month later, the two men came back and took the entire collection with them, without doing an inventory. According to the woman, they hurriedly fetched boxes from a grocery store and said it would be best for them to send the inventory once they returned to Paris. Mr. Renner sent her a certificate of deposit describing the lot in a general manner "48 stamp albums Belgium 1892-1970" and "a lot of philately bulk" estimated "500,000 to 750,000 Euros." A sale date was set "after thorough assessment, for December 10, 2009 in Paris.”

According to the claim, Noce reports, time passed and there was no sale because it had never been put on Sotheby’s auction calendar. After further inquiry, Mr. Renner informed the lady that Sotheby's did not have the collection in its custody, but that Mr. Russel was holding possession of the collection, all this allegedly without the lady's knowledge or consent. Likewise, the owner allegedly discovered that the collection had toured to a philatelic exhibit in Monaco and ended up at an auctioneer’s in Toulouse, Marc Labarbe, with whom Mr. Renner was allegedly associated. Turns out, Sotheby's does not auction stamps in Paris, Noce reports.

About a year and a half after the collection had been taken from the lady’s house without an inventory, Mr. Russel allegedly had the lady sign an inventory for the sale to take place in Toulouse. The sale yielded less than expected. Disappointed, the lady discussed it with her son, a philatelist, who asserts rare pieces had disappeared; while on some pages stamps were repositioned to hide the absence of missing stamps.

Sotheby’s position is that the lady had agreed to sell the collection with the auctioneer in Toulouse, and signed all the papers knowingly. The owner claims at all times she relied on Sotheby’s reputation and that by entrusting the collection to Mr. Russel, a third party, Sotheby’s willfully or negligently jeopardized the integrity of her collection. In another case, Mr. Russel is implied in the diversion of a stamp collection belonging to an elderly couple in eastern France. According to Vincent Noce's article published in Libération, Gregory Russel is being investigated for embezzlement, abuse of weakness and concealment in both cases.

Ms. Abislaiman is an attorney and Personal Property Appraiser.

January 31, 2014

Friday, January 31, 2014 - , No comments

Institute Français London: "The Fate of Europe's Treasures After WW2 -- Perspectives from France, Germany, Italy, Austria and the UK" Feb. 7 through the 9

Italian journalist Fabio Isman, a specialist in covering antiquities and cultural heritage from Rome, joins other European speakers at the Institute Français in early February to discuss the repatriation of Nazi-looted art after World War II (here's a link to the program's website page):
This launch evening will shed light on looted art – in the context of the recent discovery of the Gurlitt hoard in Munich and the release of Monuments Men – broaching the personal story of art historian and WW2 heroine Rose Valland, and moving personal accounts, fantastic finds and hard-fought legal battles. The debate will be introduced by a rare screening of Anne Webber’s documentary Making a Killing, about the Gutmann family’s 50-year quest to recover their missing art collection. 
Debate with Emmanuelle Polack (Head of the Archives of the Musée des Monuments français), Fabio Isman (Italian journalist, Il Messaggero), Anne Webber (Founder and Co-Chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe), Melissa Müller and Monika Tatzkow (co-authors of Lost Lives, Lost Art: Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft and the Quest for Justice).

January 30, 2014

Thursday, January 30, 2014 - ,,,,,, No comments

ARCA'13 Alum Summer Kelley-Bell asks: Is this the program for you? Really now.

A medieval town & its secret passageways
by Summer Kelley-Bell, ARCA 2013

WARNING: this essay is a work of satire.  It will be best understood if read in the voice of the Dowager Countess of Grantham, from Downton Abbey.

As an ARCA alumna, I have come to warn you about all of the things that you will hate about this small program on art crime. In that vein, I here offer you a list of the woes of living in a small Umbrian town the likes of which will keep you up at night as you scroll through old Facebook photos.  A letter of warning, if you will, to all prospective ARCA-ites. Should you choose to ignore my advice, I cannot be responsible for the consequences.

Your first few days in Amelia will leave you with an intense urge to explore and make friends.  The town is ancient, surrounded on most sides by a Neolithic wall with even more history buried beneath it.  There are secret passages and hidden rooms and you’re going to want to grab a new-found buddy and sneak through every one of them.  DON’T.  The more you explore, the more you will love the town, and it will make it that much harder to leave.  Yes, there is a secret Roman cellar underneath one of the restaurants.  Yes, the town’s people do scatter the roads with rose petals in the shape of angels every June.  Yes, there quite possibly is a hidden room in your classmate's flat.  All of these things are beside the point.  Walk steady on the path and avoid all temptations to adventure.

As for friends, stick with people that live near to you back in the real world.  I know Papa di Stefano is fantastic, and yes, he will befriend you in a way that transcends language, but do you really want to miss him when you’ve gone?  And your fellow students?  Well, most of them are going to live nowhere near you.  Do you really need to have contacts in Lisbon and Melbourne and New York and Amsterdam?  No, you don’t.  It’s so damp in the Netherlands and we all know London is just atrocious.  I mean really, all those people. Take my advice, ignore anyone that lives far away from you.  You are here to learn and leave, not make connections that will last you the rest of forever.

You will also want to avoid the town’s locals.  Amelia is tiny, so getting to know most of its shopkeepers and inhabitants will not be very hard, but you must resist the urge to do so.  It’s true that Massimo will know your coffee order before you get fully through his door, and the Count will open his home with a smile to show you around his gorgeous palazzo, but these things are not proper.  Do not mistake their overflowing kindness and warmth for anything other than good breeding.  And when you find yourself sobbing at the thought of saying goodbye to Monica, you can just blame your tears on the pollen like the rest of us.

Your instructors are going to be just as big of a challenge.  The professor’s are really too friendly.  I know that Noah Charney says that he’s available for lunch and Dick Ellis will happily have a beer with you, but is getting to know your professor socially really appropriate?  I mean, we’ve all attended seminars where you barely see the speaker outside of stolen moments during coffee breaks, and that’s the best way for things to go, isn’t it?  Sterile classroom experience with little to no professorial interactions is the way academic things should run.  I know I never saw any of my professor’s outside of class.  And I certainly don’t keep up with Judge Tompkin’s travels through his hilarious emails; that would just be inappropriate.

And then there’s the conference.  It lasts an entire weekend.  Why would I want to attend a weekend long event where powerhouses in the field open up their brains for poor plebeians?  I mean honestly, meeting Christos Tsirogiannis at the conference will be a high point in your year, and it will be too difficult to control your nerdy spasms when Toby Bull sits down next to you at dinner.  And then, when you find out that Christos joined ARCA's teaching team in 2014 and you’ll find yourself scrambling to come up with a way to take the program a second time just so you can pick his brain. Think about how much work that will be.  They aim to make this an easy experience where you rarely have to use powers of higher thinking.  This should be like the grand tour, a comfortable time away from home so that you can tell others that you simply summered in Italy. 

And the program would be so much better served in Rome.  I mean, just think on it.  You would never have to learn Italian because you’d be in a city full of tourists.  You’d get to pay twice as much for an apartment a third of the size of the one you rent in Amelia, and you wouldn’t have to live near any of your class mates.  A city the size of Rome is big enough that a half hour metro ride to each other’s places would be pretty much de rigueur.  This means you wouldn’t have to deal with any of those impromptu dinner/study sessions at the pool house.  And there certainly wouldn’t be random class-wide wine tastings at the Palazzo Venturelli. That’s just too much socializing anyway.  It’s unseemly.

And finally, let’s talk about the classes.  Do we really care about art crime? Sure, Dick Drent is pretty much the coolest human you’ll ever meet, and Dorit Straus somehow manages to make art insurance interesting, but really, do we care?  Isn’t that better left to one’s financial advisor?  And the secret porchetta truck that the interns will show you as you study the intricacies of art law, could surely be found on one’s own.  Couldn’t it?  I think we would all be much better served by just watching the terrible Monuments Men movie, fawning over George Clooney and Matt Damon, and thinking about the things we could be doing all from the safety and comfort of our own homes.  I do so hate leaving home.  The ARCA program involves work, and ten courses with ten different professors, and classmates that will quickly become family. It’s all so exhausting.  I mean really, tell me, does this sound like the program for you?

ARCA Editorial Note:  If you would like more information on ARCA's 2014 program please see our faculty and 2014 course listing here or write to education (at) artcrimeresearch.org for a copy of this year's prospectus and application materials. 

January 29, 2014

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - ,, No comments

Lipinski Stradivarius violin theft, Milwaukee: Police Chief Says "These are Wildly Valuable to a Tiny Slice of the Art World"

Lipinski Stradivarius/Frank Almond
by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn held a press conference Tuesday to announce the theft of the Lipinski Stradivarius violin stolen from Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Frank Almond when he was attacked by a taser after leaving a concert at Wisconsin Lutheran Church Monday night. The Milwaukee Police Department also uploaded a 14-minute video on YouTube (Milwaukee Police, "Rare Violin Taken in Robbery") and published information about the theft on its website.
After a performance at Wisconsin Lutheran College, the concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra was assaulted and robbed of a rare, valuable Stradivarius violin built in 1715. At approximately 10:20pm on January 27, Frank Almond was walking to his car after performing at Wisconsin Lutheran College with other musicians. As he approached his parked car, a suspect used an electronic control device on Mr. Almond, causing Mr. Almond to drop the violin he was carrying. The suspect then took the violin and fled in a waiting car driven by a second suspect. 
The vehicle description is a late-80’s or early-90’s maroon or burgundy Chrysler or Dodge minivan.  It appears at this time that the violin was the primary target of this assault and robbery. It is important to note that this violin is valuable to a very small number of people in the world and is not something easily sold for what it is worth. We have a photograph of the specific Stradivarius violin and a car similar to the one used in the crime at the bottom of the screen.
Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said “Last night, the artistic heritage of the City of Milwaukee was assaulted and robbed.”  Flynn was joined at the press conference by Mark Niehaus, President of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.
The Milwaukee Police Department is working with the FBI’s Art Crimes Team out of FBI Headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. This team specializes in high-end art thefts, including instruments like the violin taken on Monday. This violin has been entered into the international art theft database. The FBI team works with Interpol to connect with international art dealers who are able to help locate stolen items throughout international markets. 
We are following up on every lead. We encourage anyone with any information about things they have seen or heard that may be related to this assault and robbery to contact the Milwaukee Police Department at 414-935-7360 or the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at 414-226-7838.
During the press conference, Chief Flynn asserted that the violin was the "primary target". Although this violin may be considered 'priceless' by some, practically, Flynn said, a Stradivarius would sell in the "high seven figures" (indicating tens of millions of dollars). Flynn elaborated:
It's important to note that this violin is very valuable but very valuable to a very small population. This is not something that can be easily sold for even a fraction of its monetary value.
Flynn showed a photo of the front and back of this wood violin made in 1715 and identified 'very specific striations that for a violin of this type are virtually the violin's fingerprint.'

The police chief, who was appointed in 2008, asked the media to support the investigation:

I urge the media to please respect the privacy of our crime victim. It is unusual for us to identify the victim in a crime like this. We are doing it because the information was publicly available, but he is still a crime victim. He is still our witness. Please do not put him in a position that he may inadvertently give information that he may give under stress that could compromise the integrity and ultimately the success of this investigation.

MSO's President, Mark Niehas confirmed that Almond is in "good condition" however he is recovering from being tasered and will not be on the stage this weekend. Niehas, in answering questions from journalists, said that the Stradivarius violins need to be played to "live on" otherwise it would "rot". 

Frank Almond posted information about the Lipinski violin here.

Thefts of Other Stradivarius Violins:

The Gibson Stradivarius violin owned by Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman was stolen from his hotel room in 1916 and returned hours later. In 1936, while Huberman was playing another rare Stradivarius violin onstage at Carnegie Hall, the "journeyman violinist Julian Atman stole the Gibson Strad and played it -- dirty -- for 50 years. Joshua Bell purchased this violin in 2001 for $4 million to save it from being stored in a museum.
It was reported that the 1927 $3.5 million Stradivarius Violin owned by 91-year-old Erica Morini had been stolen from her Fifth Avenue apartment in October 1995 while the retired violinist was dying in the hospital; the Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius violin has not been recovered.
In December 2010, three 'opportunistic' thieves stole a Stradivarius violin from Min-Jin Kym at a Pret A Manger sandwich shop in Euston station in London; two and a half years later, the violin was recovered by police in July 2013 from a property in Midlands with very little damage.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - , No comments

Kunsthal Rotterdam Art Theft: The Kunsthal Rotterdam Reopens Feb. 1 after renovation to improve sustainability

The Kunsthal Rotterdam reopens this Sunday, February 1, after a renovation to improve its sustainability.

Adrian Procop, age 21, a Romanian accused of stealing seven paintings from the gallery in October 2012, was arrested in Britain at the Eurotunnel Folkstone outbound terminal on December 6.

Procop is alleged to be one of the two people who actually carried out the heist (DutchNews.nl, December 6, "Final Rotterdam art heist suspect arrested in Manchester"):
Two of the other suspects were sentenced to six years and eight months in prison by a Bucharest court last month. The 29-year-old Radu Dogaru and 25-year-old Eugen D were found guilty of the theft and of membership in a criminal organisation. Dogaru took part in the robbery in October last year. Eugen D was responsible for transporting the stolen paintings to Romania. The case against three other defendants is continuing.
The paintings have not been recovered amidst rumors that they have been destroyed.

January 28, 2014

Tuesday, January 28, 2014 - ,,, No comments

Norway: Fire Damaged the village of Lærdalsøyri, part of UNESCO's World Heritage listed West Norwegian Fjord landscape

Borgund Stavkirke, an old church
by A.M.C Knutsson

At 11 pm on Saturday the 18th of January a fire erupted in the village of Lærdalsøyri, in the municipality of Lærdal, Norway. The fire, which is believed to have started in a house on Kyrkjegatan, spread rapidly towards the centre of the village due to strong easterly winds. These winds also hindered the extinguishing work and not until 5 pm the following day the fire was finally under control. [1]

Despite the ferocity of the fire, described by observers as an ‘inferno’, no one is reported to have died or gone missing. However, many people suffered from smoke inhalation and 400 people were forced to seek medical attention.

Whilst Lærdal might be small, it has a grand history. The region is part of the UNESCO World Heritage listed West Norwegian Fjord landscape and boasts sites such as the old Lærdalsøyri village and the Borgund Stave Church, the best-preserved stave church in Norway.[2]

Synneva Eris House (Photo Arlen Bidne)
The history of the old village of Lærdalsøyri reaches back about a thousand years. Since the Middle Ages it has been an important trading centre for the surrounding villages. The buildings that make up present day Lærdalsøyri reach back to the 18th and 19th centuries and are an important part of the Norwegian wooden heritage.[3] Among the buildings in Lærdalsøyri there are 161 protected wooden buildings. In a statement from the National Heritage Board about the fire, the site is described thus:
The wooden houses in Lærdalsøyri are among the most important wood-house milieu in Norway, in line with towns like Røros, Bergen and Old Stavanger.[4]
Unfortunately, despite early reports of little damage to the built heritage, several buildings have been severely damaged with some being permanently destroyed. Thirty-five houses are reported to have burnt down of which six or seven have great historical value.[5] Whilst the fire does not appear to have reached the oldest parts of Lærdalsøyri, the true extent of the fire is yet to be established. 

The Local "Norway's News in English" reports "Listed villa destroyed in Lærdal blaze" that the Synneva Eris House was burned to the ground.

Further Reading
 Nina Selbo Torset , Mats Bleikelia , Solveig Ruud , http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/--Et-unikt-trehusomrade-med-svart-hoy-verneverdi-7439216.html#.UuFeRuvLeYU (NO)
http://www.riksantikvaren.no/?module=Articles;action=Article.publicShow;ID=135245 (NO)
http://www.svd.se/nyheter/utrikes/branden-i-laerdal-ater-under-kontroll_8907804.svd  (SWE)
http://www.svd.se/nyheter/utrikes/norsk-kulturhistoria-odelagd-i-brand_8908212.svd (SWE)
http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/spesial.php?id=9517 (NO)
http://www.visitnorway.com/us/Where-to-go-us/Fjord-Norway/Sognefjord/What-to-do-in-the-Sognefjord-area/Attractions-in-the-Sognefjord-area/Lardal-by-the-Sognefjord/ (EN)

List of recognised heritage sites in Lærdal
http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_over_kulturminner_i_L%C3%A6rdal (NO)

January 27, 2014

Monday, January 27, 2014 - ,,,, No comments

Postcard from Skara, Sweden: An unexpected collection of Swedish art at the Jula Hotell and Konference

Skrämda, Anders Zorn 1912
by A.M.C. Knutsson

Having travelled quite extensively in the last year, I have had the privilege to come across some very interesting places, both planned and unplanned. Some of the least expected being the gallery-hotel, a hotel that houses a large collection of original art. Arriving late one night in one of Sweden’s oldest towns, Skara, I completely missed the large sign hanging by the side of the road announcing that the hotel I was approaching housed one of the largest private collections of paintings by Anders Zorn (1860-1920) in Sweden.

I was therefore completely unprepared for what awaited me upon entering the modern-looking hotel. The walls were tastefully dressed with masterly portraits and enticing nudes. The works accounted for most of the great names in Swedish art from Anders Zorn to Carl Larsson (1853-1919, the figurehead of the Swedish Arts and Crafts Movement).

Steeped, as I irrevocably am, in the world of art crime one of my first thoughts went to the security arrangements of this magnificent collection. My interest was met with great hospitality and the following morning I was met by the hotel manager, Catarine Larsson, for a talk about the collection.

The collection as well as the hotel are the creations of Lars-Göran Blank, founder of the Swedish company Jula, founded in 1979 to sell woodcutters now has shops across Sweden, Norway and Poland, supplying everything related to house and garden maintenance.

Watercolour by Carl Larsson
Lars-Göran Blank inherited his interest in art from his father and spent most of his childhood frequenting museums. Due to his entrepreneurial success, he suddenly found himself in a position to be able to act on his interests. In 2007 Jula Hotell and Konference was built and before long exquisite art started appearing on its walls. The employees, which included Catarine Larsson, were at first unsure how to react to the art that appeared around them. They had never been involved in protecting valuable art before. ‘We were worried,’ Ms. Larsson explained, ‘we didn’t know if we could tell anyone about the paintings. But then the owner put up a huge sign by the road, so then we understood that it was fine.’ 

Mr. Blank is proud of his collection, and rightly so. In addition to probably the largest private collection of Zorn paintings in Sweden, paintings by Carl Larsson, Bruno Liljefors (1860-1939, Wildlife painter), and some paintings by Blank’s own hand can be found in the hotel.

Through the help and assistance of the Jula Security department and an insurance company, an all-encompassing security policy has been developed for the collection. When the hotel was renovated in 2012, it was designed with the safety of the collection in mind; subsequently, a large portion of the paintings were moved from the dining room to a specially constructed art gallery. The hotel consulted a local museum about how to properly hang and display the collection which resulted in a tasteful and safe new home for the paintings. Great care was taken to secure both the paintings and the rooms themselves. Each painting is alarmed directly to the police and covered with protective glass to protect against all kinds of sticky fingers. When Ms. Larsson notes that ‘the paintings are as safe here as anywhere else’: with around the clock surveillance and reinforced night guards, the art as well as the guests can rest safely.

New art gallery completed in 2012
The hotel maintains good relations with the national police force and would be contacted directly if there were any rumours about an art-coup taking place in the area, allowing Ms Larsson to reinforce her security measures. The hotel works with its collections in various ways, including holding conferences in the art gallery and hosting art talks with speakers from the Zorn Museum. They are mentioned in local guidebooks -- even pre-school classes come to draw in the gallery.

This magnificent collection manages to straddle both the definition of public and private collection. Despite being a privately owned assembly of works, it remains accessible to the public. Over a glass of wine in the evening or a cup of coffee at breakfast, the visitors to Jula Hotel can enjoy art in the same way as a private collector but for the price of the beverage in hand.

The phenomenon of art in hotels takes on various forms, from being a tool of barter in Les Templiers in Collioure, France, to a cheap Van Gogh print in a forgettable place in New York. Most interestingly the practice of housing private collections in hotels could possibly negate the criticism of the private collection as elitist, as the paintings might even prove more accessible than in a museum, and might in actual fact convey art to a new kind of audience, that normally would not put their foot in a museum.

Even as I struggle to stay awake, solving my last Sudoku for the evening, my eye is caught by the nudes walking down towards the lakeside in Zorn’s 1912 masterpiece Skrämda. The very painting that Ms Larsson confessed to be her favourite, and which she would take if she would have her pick in the collection.

A.M.C. Knutsson earned a Master of Arts in General History from the University of St. Andrews and completed ARCA's Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage in 2013.

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