CAIRO (AP) — UNESCO pledged Friday to help restore a renowned museum dedicated to Islamic history in Cairo that was devastated by a bomb last week, with officials expressing "shock" at the scale of the damage. [...] Egypt's Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said that 164 of the 1,471 items on display were damaged, of which 90 could be reassembled or restored. Most of the 74 irreparably damaged items were glass and porcelain, smashed to powder. On a tour of the building on Friday, shattered glass littered the floor while fragments and steel slabs from the broken windows lay all over. 

"It was an outstanding museum and to see it now, inside at least, totally destroyed is a big shock for us," Christian Manhart, head of UNESCO's museums sections, said at a news conference. The U.N. cultural agency had already set aside emergency funds of $100,000 on the same day of the blast and said further technical and financial help would follow after detailed reports were filed. Ibrahim said the American government would provide 1 million Egyptian pounds (about $150,000) while a well-known actor, Mohammed Sobhy, said he was giving 50,000 pounds (around $7,200).

Ibrahim said Egypt's National Library and Archives in the same building with the museum was also damaged. In addition, the blast smashed windows and caused other damage to historic mosques in the neighborhood. [...] Friday's visit to the museum was by a joint mission involving UNESCO and two protection and conservation groups, the International Council on Monuments and Sites and the International Committee of the Blue Shield. Manhart said the team will also prepare documents and figures to be presented to potential donors, which he was not authorized to name immediately. [...] Three years of unrest has devastated Egypt's economy, including the vital tourism industry, and the security vacuum has taken a heavy toll on the country's monuments. In one of the worst incidents, looters made away with more than 1,000 artifacts from a museum in the southern city of Malawi as violent clashes roiled the country in August. Ibrahim said Friday that the restoration of the Malawi Museum will be done in six months.

Other museums have also been hit, including the famed Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square that holds Pharaonic antiquities including the treasures of King Tut. During the 2011 uprising would-be looters damaged mummies and other artifacts before being caught by army soldiers. Some items stolen from museums or archaeological sites have been recovered. The ministry said Friday that 935 stolen Pharaonic artifacts were found in a house in Cairo's twin city of Giza. The pieces included masks, pots, and statues. Security forces said they also confiscated guns and ammunition.

The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, today expressed grave concern about the damage to Egypt’s Museum of Islamic Art, following the reported explosion of a car near the Police Security Directorate, which is located at Port Said Street in Cairo, in front of the main entrance of the Museum. “I firmly condemn this attack and the destruction it has caused to the world-renowned Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo, which hosts thousands of invaluable artefacts,” said Irina Bokova. “This raises the danger of irreversible damage to the history and identity of the Egyptian people.” 

The Director-General applauded the Ministry of State for Antiquities, as well as representatives from civil society in Cairo, for their immediate action and efforts to rescue damaged artefacts and take first measures for their conservation. “In the spirit of solidarity, I appeal today to all Member States to support action to rehabilitate the Museum, the galleries and displays,” concluded Irina Bokova. “I pledge today that I will mobilise all of UNESCO’s experience and expertise to rebuilding the Museum and restoring the damage – this is as essential for the people of Egypt as it is for women and men across the world,” declared the Director-General. “This heritage is part of the universal story of humanity, shared by all and we must all do everything to safeguard it.”

WSJ: This Picasso Painting, 'Two Women at a Bar,' is among the works named in Mr. Edelman's court filings. 2014 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/The Gallery Collection/Corbis

New York art collector and dealer Asher Edelman on Friday filed a lawsuit against the Swiss company Artmentum, claiming his art-financing firm was the victim of a fraudulent deal involving the proposed sale of more than 100 works by masters such as Picasso, Monet, van Gogh and Matisse. The lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court and seeking $204 million, alleges that ArtAssure, Mr. Edelman's firm, was wrongly led to believe by Artmentum and its associates last spring that Japan's Hiroshima Art Museum was trying to sell roughly $400 million in art by masters from the late 19th- and early 20th centuries. The complaint alleges the art was never actually for sale, and the financial details provided by Artmentum about the collection—including that the Hiroshima Bank owned the museum works and the Japanese government owned the majority interest in Hiroshima Bank—were false.

[...]

 

The $204 million figure represents the profits ArtAssure would have made in the sale of all the works, Mr. Edelman said, adding that he never actually handed money over to Artmentum for any paintings. In addition, he said he lost "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in staff time spent investigating the deal. Some art lawyers didn't see the sum as realistic. "In my view, the damages which are requested are absurd because I don't see how he was really hurt," said New York art lawyer Peter R. Stern. 

Mr. Edelman, 74 years old, is a former corporate raider who has generated controversy in the past for his defense of his art interests. He entered the field of art finance roughly four years ago after spending decades as an art collector, museum director and gallery owner.

Frank Almond: Lipinski Stradivarius

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.

From Bloomberg Businessweek

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.

“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.”

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.”

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.”

Lipinski Stradivarius/Frank Almond

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.

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.

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.