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February 10, 2017

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Repatriation: Stolen Greek sarcophagus fragment heading home

Image Credits: ARCA
Sarcophagus fragment depicting battle between Greeks and Trojans
Just one month after an illicit sarcophagus fragment was reported to Matthew Bogdanos, Assistant District Attorney for New York in Manhattan, the object is heading back to its rightful home in Greece.  

Pictured in the four photographs above, the fragment of this sarcophagus was laundered through the licit art market, making its way to New York via Italian antiquities dealer Gianfranco Becchina and ultimately to the gallery windows of Royal-Athena Galleries, a New York City-based gallery operated by Jerome Eisenberg which specialises in ancient Greek, Etruscan, Roman and Egyptian art.

Details on the supporting documentation which reflects the object's looting and laundering gathered together and presented to authorities by Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis can be found in an earlier ARCA blog post here. 

Gianfranco Becchina is a name well known to those who follow the trade of illicit antiquities.  His role in the trafficking of looted objects first drew Italian prosecutors interest following the death of Pasquale Camera, a former captain of the Guardia di Finanza turned middle-man trafficker, who lost control of his car on Italy’s Autostrada del Sole, Italy's north-south motorway, as he approached the exit for Cassino, a small town an hour and a half south of Rome.  Smashing into a guardrail and flipping his Renault on its roof, Camera’s automobile accident not only ended his life but set into motion a chain reaction that resulted in the identification of one of the world's most well known antiquities trafficking networks. one responsible for the systematic spoliation of the artistic heritage of Southern Italy and Greece. 

The Greek sarcophagus fragment was handed over by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and Assistant District Attorney to Dr. Constantine Koutras, the Consul General of Greece in a formal ceremony in New York today.

During the event District Attorney Vance stated:

“Trafficked antiquities often acquire a veneer of legitimacy after the passage of time or changes in ownership.....Galleries, auction houses, and art collectors, however, should be on alert that my office and our partners in law enforcement are closely following the listing and sale of items of suspicious or dubious provenance. As looting becomes more common, collectors must exercise greater scrutiny when it comes to evaluating whether an item may have been unlawfully acquired. To do otherwise is to implicitly endorse an unacceptable practice through willful ignorance. I thank our partners for their commitment to ending the trade of stolen antiquities, and today, I am gratified to return another treasured artifact to its rightful owner, the Hellenic Republic and people of Greece.”

 Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance told reporters at the repatriation ceremony that as the owner of the gallery, unnamed during the press conference, had forfeited the sarcophagus voluntarily when presented with the evidence of its provenance, and nobody from the gallery will face prosecution.

This is not the first time that Royal Athena Galleries has been made to forfeit looted antiquities as can be noted here, here, and here.

ARCA would like to extend its heartfelt appreciation to Dr. Tsirogiannis.  His identification of this fragment made its repatriation possible.  

February 8, 2017

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How do you go about dismantling an Indian antiquities trafficking ring? One trafficker at a time.

Over the last year, officers of the Idol Wing–CID attached to the Tamil Nadu 
Economic Offences Wing (EOW) have been busy, dismantling an international network of antiquities smugglers, some of whom have links with the infamous New York-based art dealer on trial in Chennai, Subash Kapoor. 

On October 30, 2011 Kapoor was arrested at Frankfurt International Airport in connection with his role in running a $100 million international smuggling racket.  Extradited from Germany on July 14, 2012, Kapoor currently spends his time between two prisons: the Puzhal Central Prison, a central prison complex located in Chennai (Tiruvallur District) and the Central Prison at Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India. 

Before his arrest, Kapoor maintained contacts around the globe, in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Bangkok, Bangladesh, Dubai, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan, several of whom have been implicated in shipping and selling stolen objects from India, trafficked with fake provenance. At the height of his operation, Kapoor visited Tamil Nadu frequently which underscores the collector-dealer-smuggler-looter network all too clearly. 


May 31, 2016 - Police recieve a tip that stolen antique idols are being packaged for export from a location on Murrays Gate Road in Chennai’s upscale neighbourhood of Alwarpet. Three men are arrested, Maan Singh, "Kumar" and "Rajamani" who have been working for the octogenarian smuggler, Govindaraj Dheenadhayalan (alternatively spelled "Deenadhayalan").

Dheenadhayalan briefly disappears before turning himself in a few days later. 

During the raid of his house, Aparna Art Gallery in Alwarpet, Chennai, and a storehouse, police seized more than 200 ancient idols in bronze and stone, a large stone Nandis, 96 rare paintings, various miniature statues, ivory and wood carvings, lamps, figurines, ornamental pillars and pooja utensils.  

Image Credit: Hindu Existence 
June 04, 2016 - Four days after the search and seizure at his residence, smuggler Govindaraj Deenadhayalan surrenders to authorities. He is remanded into custody. 

June 24, 2016 - Following Deenadhayalan's confession, the Idol Wing CID arrest Mahabalipuram-based smuggler Lakshmi Narasimhan (also known as "Latchu","Lakshminarayanan" and "Narasimhan" ) and seize nine panchaloha idols dating back to Later Chola period (roughly 1,000 years ago).


July 02, 2016 - Following the arrest and subsequent interrogation of Lakshmi Narasimhan,  200 more idols are seized following the execution of a search warrant of the smuggler's gallery and godown.


October 25, 2016 - After further tip-offs, DRI raid the houses of Professor T. M. Balaji at T Nagar and the grandson of Dheenadhayalan, Srikanth Omkaram, at Valasarawakkam after receiving information that several antique idols and artefacts were being stored in their residences. Both men had been implicated as being part of Dheenadhayalan’s organisation.  

While being interrogated by authorities, the duo confess that they were smuggling objects out of the country using fake Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) certificates produced by another accomplice, Udit Jain, a forger from New Delhi.

Objects seized by authorities during the raid included a statue of Brāhmī, a Buddha in sitting posture, the deity Mahavishnu, stone pillar carvings and Tanjore paintings.

Following an alert by the Tamil Nadu DRI, the Mumbai DRI team intercepted Udit Jain in Mumbai and took him into custody. 


November 2016 - Reopening an 11-year-old case, authorities in India, with the help of HSI special agents, were able to identify the smugglers of the now repatriated religious stone idol of Vriddhachlam Ardhanari to two antique dealers in Mumbai. Vallabh Prakash and his son Aditya Prakash, operated Indo-Nepal Art Centre, a gallery which offered the stolen Ardhanari to Subash Kapoor who together smuggled the statue to the United States. Kapoor later sold the idol with false paperwork to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2004.

Their arrest has been linked to the theft of 13 idols from the Sri Narambunatha Swamy Temple, Pazhavoor, Tirunelveli district and are believed to have smuggled antiquities through various routes, including Nepal.


February 6, 2017 - Indian authorities arrest, Vijay Nanda, an American citizen of Indian origin at his residence in Girgaum Chowpatty, in the Girgaon area of Mumbai, charging him with antique smuggling. 

Antiquities recovered from his warehouse in Byculla include statues stolen from various temples in both the eastern and southern India and include six large stone statues of the Hindu god Vishnu, the Buddhist  bodhisattva Padmapani, Varada Ganesha, Awalokateshwara, and figurines of Naga and Nagini as well as terracotta figurines from 1st Century A.D. and bronze figurines of Hindu deities Ganesh and Mahishasura dating from the 17th and 18th centuries.

A local court has remanded Nanda in judicial custody till February 20. 


We couldn't agree more. 

February 6, 2017

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Press conference: The Van Gogh of the Camorra on display at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples

Via Miano, 2, 
80137 Naples, Italy

Live Periscope link to event

Image Credit: sAG
In a standing room only event, the two stolen paintings, View of the Sea at Scheveningen, 1882 and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen 1884 - 1885 by Vincent Van Gogh were presented to the international press today at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples Italy.  This press conference follows the convictions of eight members of the international drug trafficking Amato-Pagano clan, an organized crime network once affiliated with the Secondigliano-based Di Lauro crime syndicate, and an offshoot of the Naples Camorra.  The historic artworks were recovered during a lengthy investigation into the cocaine business overseen by figurative, Raffaele Imperiale.

Image Credit: sAG
The paintings, stolen 14 years ago, will be hosted for just 20 days on the second floor of the Museo di Capodimonte next to the Hall of Caravaggio through February 26, 2017.

Image Credit: ARCA
On hand for the press conference were Antimo Cesaro, State Secretary for Cultural Assets and Activities and Tourism in Italy, Joep Wijnands, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Rome, Sander Bersée, Director General of Culture and Media of the Ministry of Culture and Science, the Netherlands, Luigi Riello, General Prosecutor of Naples, Giovanni Colangelo, the Public Prosecutor of Naples, Herman Bolhaar, Head of the Dutch Public Prosecutors, Lt. Gen. Giorgio Toschi, Commanding General of the Guardia di Finanza, Gen. B. Gianluigi D'Alfonso, Provincial Commander of the Guardia di Finanza in Italy, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, Head of the Amsterdam Police as well as the undercover officers and investigators most closely connected to this case.

Image Credit: ARCA
Image Credit: ARCA
The Museo di Capodimonte is open every day except Wednesday from 08:30 to 19:30 (last entry at 18:30).

Image Credit: ARCA

Image Credit: sAG

Image Credit: sAG

Image Credit: sAG

Image Credit: Museo Capodimonte

Image Credit: Museo Capodimonte

Image Credit: VGM

Image Credit: VGM

Image Credit: VGM

Image Credit: VGM

Image Credit: VGM

Image Credit: ARCA



February 5, 2017

Sunday, February 05, 2017 - ,, No comments

New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust writer's book reviewed in the Guardian.

By Judge Arthur Tompkins

In October last year, art-historian, curator, art-crime writer and founding trustee of the New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust published her ground-breaking Art Thieves, Fakers and Fraudsters: the New Zealand Story (Awa Press, Wellington NZ; 2016). A fascinating and fine read, the book has just been reviewed in the UK's the Guardian.  

As the reviewer notes:

From stolen Italian masterpieces ending up on the walls of a provincial South Island gallery, to a steady supply of fake Dick Frizzells being sold online, New Zealand’s history has been rife with art crime.

And the shady world of fakes, forgeries and fraudsters in the South Pacific island nation has for the first time been subjected to a comprehensive book, by art historian and independent curator Penelope Jackson.

The ARCA Blog featured the book at the time of publication here.

Art Thieves is available in good bookshops around New Zealand - and also at the publisher's website here.

February 4, 2017

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Conference - From Refugees to Restitution: The History of Nazi Looted Art in the UK in Transnational Perspective.


Location: 
University of Cambridge
Newnham College - Cambridge Lucia Windsor Room
Cambridge, UK 

Dates:  
March 23-24, 2017 

Cost: 35£ (25£ for students)
Attendees are asked to register by 1 March 2017 by emailing the conference organizers 

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Opening remarks

Panel I. A Paradigm Shift? From Legal to Moral Solutions in Restitution Practice

Commentator: Victoria Louise Steinwachs (Sotheby’s London)

– Debbie De Girolamo (Queen Mary, University of London), ‘Fair & Just Solutions – A Moniker for Moral Solutions?’

 – Tabitha I. Oost (University of Amsterdam), ‘Restitution policies of Nazi- looted art in The Netherlands and the UK. A change from a legal to a moral paradigm?’

 – Evelien Campfens (Leiden University), ‘Bridging the gap between ethics and law in looted art: the case for a transnational soft-law approach’

Panel II. Loosing Art/Loosing Identity: the Emotions of Material Culture

Commentator: Bianca Gaudenzi (Cambridge/Konstanz)

– Emily Löffler (Landesmuseum Mainz), ‘The J-numbers-collection in Landesmuseum Mainz. A case study on provenance, material culture, & emotions’

 – Michaela Sidenberg (Jewish Museum, Prague), ‘Rescue/Ransom/Restitution: The struggle to preserve the collective memory of Czech and Moravian Jews’

 – Mary Kate Cleary (Art Recovery Group, New York), ‘Marie-Louise von Motesiczky: self-portraits of a woman artist as a refugee’

Roundtable I. From Theory to Practice: Provenance Research in Museums

Chair: Robert Holzbauer (Leopold Museum, Vienna)

– Tessa Rosebrock (Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe), ‘Inventory records as a dead-end. On the purchases of French drawings by the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe from 1965 to 1990’

 – Laurel Zuckerman (Independent Researcher, Bry sur Marne), ‘Art Provenance Databases: Are They Fulfilling Their Promise? Comparative evaluation of ten major museum databases in the USA and the UK’

 – Shlomit Steinberg (Israel Museum, Jerusalem), ‘What started as a trickle turned into a flow- restitution at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem’

 – Emmanuelle Polack (Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris), ‘Ethical issues regarding the restitution of Henri Matisse’s Blue Profile in front of the Chimney (1937) or Profil bleu devant la cheminée (1937)’

Friday March 24, 2017

 Panel III. The Postwar Art Market: The Impact of a Changing World

Commentator: Richard Aronowitz-Mercer (Sotheby’s London)

– Johannes Nathan (Nathan Fine Art GmbH, Potsdam), ‘Switzerland and Britain: Recontextualizing Fluchtgut’

 – Maike Brueggen (Independent Provenance Researcher, Frankfurt), ‘Arthur Kauffmann – dealing German art in post-war London’

 – Nathalie Neumann (Independent Researcher, Berlin), ‘Have the baby born in England!’ The trans-European itinerary (1933-1941) of the art collector Julius Freund’

 – Diana Kostyrko (Australian National University, Canberra), ‘Mute Witness: the Polish Poetess’

Panel IV. Restitution Initiatives and Postwar Politics in the United Kingdom

Commentator: Simone Gigliotti (Royal Holloway University of London)

– Elizabeth Campbell (University of Denver), ‘Monuments Woman: Anne O. Popham and British Restitution of Nazi-Looted Art’

 – Marc Masurovsky (Holocaust Art Restitution Project), ‘Operation Safehaven (1944-49): Framing the postwar discussion on restitution of Nazi looted art through British lenses’

 – Angelina Giovani (Jewish Claims Conference - Jeu de Paume Database), - A case study: ‘Looting the artist: The modern British paintings that never came back from France’

Panel V. Conflicting Interests: Restitution, National Politics and Vergangenheitsbewältigung across Postwar Europe

Commentator: Lisa Niemeyer (Independent Researcher, Wiesbaden)

– Ulrike Schmiegelt-Rietig (Wiesbaden Museum), ‘Pechora monastery, Russian collection looted by ERR and landed in Wiesbaden CCP’

 – Jennifer Gramer (University of Wisconsin-Madison), ‘Dangerous or Banal? Nazi Art & American Occupation in Postwar Germany and US’

 – Agata Wolska (Independent researcher, Krakow), ‘The Vaucher Committee as International Restitution Body – the Abandoned Idea’

 – Nicholas O’Donnell (Sullivan & Worcester LLP, Boston), ‘Comparison of statutory & regulatory origins of restitutionary commissions in Germany, Austria, NL & UK after WWII’

Roundtable II. From Theory to Practice: Provenance & the Art Market

Chair: Johannes Nathan (Nathan Fine Art GmbH, Potsdam)

– Friederike Schwelle (Art Loss Register, London), ‘The difference between US and UK in resolving claims for Nazi looted art’

 – Isabel von Klitzing (Provenance Research & Art Consulting, Frankfurt) and Pierre Valentin (Constantine Cannon LLP, London), ‘From Theory to practice – when collectors want to do the right thing?’

February 3, 2017

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ARCA is accepting late applications to its 2017 Postgraduate Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Program

ARCA student photo homage to Rene Magritte and his painting
"The Son of Man", 1946*
ARCA's Postgraduate program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection is now accepting late applications for its summer 2017 program.

In 2009 ARCA started the first of its kind, interdisciplinary, approach to the scholarly study of art crime. Representing a unique opportunity for individuals interested in training in a structured and academically diverse format, the summer-long postgraduate program is designed around the study of the dynamics, strategies, objectives and modus operandi of criminals and criminal organizations who commit a variety of art crimes.  

Turn on the news (or follow this blog) and you will see over and over again examples of museum thefts, forgeries, antiquities looting and illicit trafficking of cultural goods.  Intentional heritage destruction during armed conflict, once a modern-day rarity, now affects multiple countries and adds to regional instability in many areas of the globe.  Looted art, both ancient and Holocaust-related finds its way into the galleries of respected institutions, while auction houses and dealers continue to be less than adept at distinguishing smuggled and stolen art from art with a clean provenance. This making dealing with art crime an unrelenting problem and without any one easy solution.

Taken incident by incident, it is difficult to see the impact and implications of art crime as a global concern, but when studied across disciplines, looking at the gaps of legal instruments country to country, one begins to have a clearer picture of the significance of the problem and its impact on the world's collective patrimony.

The world's cultural heritage is an invaluable legacy and its protection is integral to our future. 


Here is 11 reasons why you should consider joining us for a summer in Amelia, Italy. 

 At its foundation, ARCA's postgraduate program in Italy draws upon the overlapping and complementary expertise of international thought-leaders on the topic of art crime – all practitioners and leading scholars who actively work in the sector. 

In 2017 participants of the program will receive 230+ hours of instruction from a of range of experts actively committed to combatting art crime from a variety of different angels.

One summer, eleven courses.

Taught by:

Archaeologist, Christos Tsirogiannis from the University of Cambridge, whose forensic trafficking research continues to unravel the hidden market of illicit antiquities.  His tireless work is often highlighted on this blog and reminds those interested in purchasing ancient art, be it from well-known dealers or auction houses, that crimes committed 40 years ago, still taint many of the artifacts that find their way into the licit art market today.

Art historian and London art lecturer Tom Flynn, who eloquently paints a picture of the burgeoning business which is art whilst examining the interplay between our cultural obsession with risk and collecting.  Flynn disentangles the paradoxical alliances between the financially lucrative art market and the collector, relationships that feed upon the art market's unregulated trade and lack of transparency in its transactions.

Duncan Chappell, the Chair of the International Advisory Board of the Australian Research Council’s Center of Excellence in Policing and Security. Chappel is a national award winner for his lifetime achievements in criminology and will be lecturing on the growing number of bilateral, regional and global legal agreements that reflect a growing realization that transnational art crime has to be addressed through international cooperation, and that just as criminal groups operate across borders, judicial systems must consequently do the same.  

Marc Masurovsky, co-founder of HARP, the Holocaust Art Restitution Project who will lecture on the variations among countries’ historical experiences and legal systems, as well as the complexities of provenance research and the establishment of claims processes.  Focusing not only on the implementation of the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-confiscated art but also on modern day examples that underscore the difficulties facing any heir in recovering their property, Masurovsky underscores the need for fully trained provenance experts within museums and auction houses. 

Richard Ellis, private detective and the founder of the Metropolitan Police - New Scotland Yard Art and Antiques Squad.  His law enforcement background reminds us that trafficking in art and antiquities provides criminals with an opportunity to deal in high value commodities that are often poorly protected, difficult to identify and easy to transport across national boundaries. Ellis' lectures paint a little-talked-about portrait of the motley cast of characters who operate in the high-stakes world of the art crime.  His course introduces students to sophisticated criminal organizations, individual thieves, small-time dealers and unscrupulous collectors who don't just dabble in hot art, but who also may be involved in other crimes, such as the smuggling and sale of other illicit commodities, corruption or money-laundering.

Criminal defense attorney and criminologist Marc Balcells, whose animated lectures on the anatomy and etiology of art crimes will illustrate that even if every art crime is unique unto itself, often the underlying causes of criminal behaviors fit into certain established patterns.  Students will explore various theories of crime causation each of which are key to understanding the crime and the criminal as well as evaluating its danger to our cultural patrimony.

Museum security and risk management expert Dick Drent, whose role in the recovery of two Van Gogh paintings from a Camorra reminds us that finding stolen works of art is much harder than protecting them in the first place, especially when organized crime is involved. In Drent's course students will learn about safeguarding culture before it goes missing, analyzing practical approaches to securing a collection, using risk and decision analysis as a form of analytics to support risk-based decision in museums, galleries and reference institutions around the globe.

New Zealand District Court Judge and founding trustee of the New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust, Arthur Tompkins who gives us a fast-galloping 2000-year romp through the history of art crimes committed during war and armed conflict. Tompkins reminds us that armed conflict, whether interstate or intrastate, poses various threats to cultural monuments and cultural property and that while laws have been enacted in an attempt to prevent or reduce these dangers; better laws are also needed to sort matters out after the fact.

Independent art & insurance advisory expert Dorit Straus explores the worlds of specialist fine art insurers and brokers, who underwrite the risks associated with the fine art market.  As the former Vice President and Worldwide Specialty Fine Art Manager for Chubb & Son she knows first hand the active, financially-motivated role insurance firms play in analyzing the risks involved in owning, dealing, buying, transporting or displaying art to the public.  While art insurance expertise is sometimes overlooked as a less-than-sexy side of the art world, insurers have served to make galleries, museums and private collector's collections safer, as their oversight and contract stipulations have produced a dramatic reduction in attritional losses.

ARCA's founding director, Noah Charney who draws upon his knowledge of art history and contemporary criminal activity to explore several of the most notorious cases of art forgery. Emphasizing that art forgery not only cheats rich buyers and their agents, ruining reputations, his course illustrates how crime distorts the art market, one which once relied heavily on connoisseurship, by messing with its objective truth.

Valerie Higgins, archaeologist and Program Director for archaeology, classics and sustainable cultural heritage at the American University in Rome. Higgins course examines material culture as the physical evidence of a culture's existence, illustrating that through objects; be they artworks, religious icons, manuscripts, statues, or coins, and through architecture; monumental or commonplace, we can and should preserve the powerfully potent remains which truly define us as human.

For more information on the summer 2017 postgraduate professional development program, please see ARCA's website here.

Late Applications are being accepted through March 30, 2017.

To request further information or to receive a 2017 prospectus and application materials, please email:  education (at)artcrimeresearch.org

Interested in knowing more about the program from a student's perspective?

Here are some blog posts from and by students who have attended in 2016, in 2015 in 2014, and in 2013.

ARCA student photo homage to "The Standard of Ur", 2550 BCE

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*ARCA strives to be careful regarding its students reimagining and/or recontextualizing derivative works of photography that pay homage to famous works of art less than 70 years after the original creator’s death to be sure there is no infringement of the copyright in that work. 

February 2, 2017

Thursday, February 02, 2017 - ,,,, No comments

Foreshadowing for the Cornelius Gurlitt Case?

By: Mairead McAuliffe

On January 13, 2017 a Frankfurt District Court confirmed the legal use of Germany's statute-of-limitation in a Holocaust art restitution case, thereby muting the need for an exacting provenance of the artwork in question. This article questions what this decision indicates for other restitution cases in Germany, specifically the Cornelius Gurlitt case. This piece also explores possible legal amendments to current laws according to Marc Masurovsky*, co-founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project.    

In February 2012, German police and customs officials executed a warrant to search Cornelius Gurlitt's apartment located in Munich. Inside the apartment, officials discovered 121 framed and 1,285 unframed artworks by artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Renoir and Chagall. It was a collection that could be valued at more than a billion dollars. Gurlitt was first placed on a customs watch list in 2010, appearing suspicious to the officials that boarded his train crossing the Lindau border. Gurlitt remained largely untraceable, investigators found no trace of a state pension, health insurance, tax and employment records, or bank accounts. Yet, his name raised some questions with investigators. Cornelius Gurlitt shared a name with Hildebrand Gurlitt, a known art curator under the Third Reich. 

The relation was confirmed in December 2011, when Gurlitt surfaced after selling one of Max Beckmann's masterpieces, The Lion Tamer. Gurlitt split the proceeds of the sale with the heirs of the Jewish art dealer, Alfred Flechtheim, who, as Gurlitt acknowledged, sold the piece under duress to his father in 1934. It was then that authorities acted on the search warrant issued a few months prior, on the grounds of suspected tax evasion and embezzlement, and discovered the trove of art. 

For the next three days, officials packaged and moved the artworks out of Gurlitt's apartment to a customs warehouse in Garching. The discovery was kept from the press as public knowledge of Gurlitt's collection would have sparked mass outcry and an inundation of claims to the art. However, the covert case was exposed on November 4, 2013 when the German newsweekly, Focus, published the story on their front page. The expected firestorm ensued as restitution activists demanded the publishing of the art pieces to allow Holocaust decedents to lay claim to the looted works. 

German restitution laws are, quite frankly, unsympathetic to those who seek reprisal of Nazi looted artworks. Germany did sign the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, which states that museums and other public institutions should return such works to their rightful owners. However, compliance is voluntary and excludes cases in which private citizens hold the pieces – as is the case with Cornelius Gurlitt. Furthermore, Germany enforces a 30-year statute of limitations on making claims to stolen property, thereby calling into question the ability of heirs to lay claim to pieces from Gurlitt's collection. 

Since the discovery, efforts have been made to conduct and complete a provenance trace for the 1,406 artworks found in Gurlitt's apartment. However, despite the possibility of solid, traceable provenance, under German law, there is no mandate to return the artworks to their original owners, or heirs. In November, 2013, the newly appointed Bavarian Minister of Justice, Winifried Bausback, initiated legislation to revise the statute-of-limitation law such that heirs to looted art could reclaim their familial property. Currently, the law is not automatically invoked, the defendant must expressly invoke the limitation in order to protect against the claim of the owner. The proposed legislation would install a two-pronged defense that the owner can employ to proceed with the requisition, despite the law's invocation. The first requirement would be that the property must have been lost in a legal sense. The second requirement would mandate that only the true possessor can rely on the statute, therefore, a bad faith possessor would not be able to invoke the statute and legal action can proceed. Such legislation would obviously aid in the return of looted works to their correct owner. 

Yet, while the status of the Bavarian Minister's legislative initiative is unknown, the District Court in Frankfurt recently handed down a decision that could have consequences for the Gurlitt case specifically, and other restitution cases, more generally. In Frankfurt, an heir of Robert Graetz, a Jewish textile manufacturer and art collector, brought a claim against the current owner of a Max Pechstein painting, which he believes Robert was required to forcefully sell prior his family's deportation to Auschwitz. The defendant invoked the statute-of-limitation and challenged this alleged provenance. The Frankfurt court ruled that the expired 30-year limitation took precedent over the need for an exacting provenance, thus the Graetz estate has no claim to the painting. This decision, in essence, upholds Germany's statute-of-limitation in regards to artworks.   

When asked about this recent decision, Marc Masurovsky, the co-founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP), said that this decision reflects a "traditional legal defense against restitution claims." However, he stresses that this decision should "in no way" prevent the drafting of an exacting provenance in such cases. He believes that this decision highlights a need for the "passage of stricter laws governing provenance," such adjustments may include setting "sufficient standards whereby objects with no provenance should not be introduced into the marketplace, or offered to museums." Instead, Masurovsky believes that such objects should, ideally, not be "traded, sold, bought, displayed, loaned, borrowed or donated." Yet, he acknowledges that this is "not even remotely possible to enforce," since most objects in the art market fall into these categories and the demand for a full provenance would kill the industry. Therefore, Masurovsky believes that new standards should be developed that "clearly define an acceptable provenance," in other words, outline what minimal criteria should be met in order for an object to be lawfully moved in the market. Masurovsky further believes that Germany, because of its history, "carries an unusual responsibility, an ethical burden if you will, to 'do what is right'" and initiate changes to its current laws. Currently, the German courts allow the statute-of-limitations to function as a "technical defense" or "convenient tool" which he believes allows defendants to "debunk and kill a claimant's request for restitution," as seen in the Graetz case. However, for Marc, all countries "regardless of their historical relationship with the Nazi/Fascist years, the Holocaust and WWII, should enact laws that protect victims of cultural plunder, that raise the ethical bar in the art market."  

Regarding the Gurlitt case specifically, Masurovsky confirms that the artworks discovered in Gurlitt's apartment are in the custody of the German government, yet, the entire collection was transferred to the Kunstmuseum in Bern, Switzerland in accordance with Gurlitt's last will. Gurlitt died on May 6, 2014 in Munich. However,  the special task force “Schwabinger Kunstfund”  processing the trove had not yet finished its restitution-based provenance research and so a compromise was made between the Kunst and the executors of Gurlitt's will. According to Masurovsky, any object deemed to be "clean" would be instantly transferred to Bern, while objects requiring additional research would remain with the German Task Force as they ascertain whether any evidence of plunder exists and if there is the possibility of identifying the plundered owners. Theoretically, this process is set to conclude in 2020, given the large number of works. This compromise is meant to ensure that only "clean" artworks end up in the Kunst. 


In accordance with the compromise, the Kunstmuseum Bern now owns the "clean" works, a reality that worries HARP. Since it is now the responsibility of the museum to conduct a more exacting provenance for these items, Marc argues that "how well Bern will do this job is pure conjecture." The fear, according to my interviews with Masurovsky is that un-restituted objects are indeed part of the hoard in Bern's possession, and their location in Switzerland, a country that "leaves no legal room for consideration of restitution for looted objects," will prevent the initiation of claims to the artworks. 

In sum, it appears that German courts are bowing to precedent in regards to restitution cases, allowing the statute-of-limitation to be used as a defense. Only time will tell if such precedent will be followed or ignored, in cases such as the Gurlitt case, as families continue to lay claim to what they believe has been wrongfully taken from them. 

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Editor’s postscript:  The Kunstmuseum Bern obtained exclusive jurisdiction over the 238 (arguably more significant) artworks that were seized in Gurlitt’s house in Salzburg (Aigen), Austria in February 2014. As the Germin remit does not extend to property held in Austria, these artworks have their own separate inventory and are the exclusive province of Bern regarding the research into their past ownership. ARCA hopes that these works will undergo the same moral and ethical due diligence required of the Munich grouping.

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* In 2017 Marc Masurovsky will be teaching provenance research training as part of ARCA's Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection, as well as a short course affiliated with ARCA's June conference. 

Thursday, February 02, 2017 - ,,,,, No comments

The very fine line between 'collecting' & 'obsession' - Alexander Historical Auctions auctions a looted Adolf Hitler's telephone


“I picked up all of Hitler’s furniture at a guesthouse in Linz,”.....“The owner’s father’s dying wish had been that a certain room should be kept locked. I knew Hitler had lived there and so finally persuaded him to open it and it was exactly as it had been when Hitler slept in the room. On the desk there was a blotter covered in Hitler’s signatures in reverse, the drawers were full of signed copies of Mein Kampf. I bought it all. I sleep in the bed, although I’ve changed the mattress.”

--British Millionaire, Kevin Wheatcroft, owner of the Wheatcroft Collection, widely regarded as the world's largest private accumulation of German military vehicles and Nazi memorabilia. 

The French sociologist and theorist of postmodernism Jean Baudrillard once noted that collecting mania is found most often in “pre-pubescent boys and males over the age of 40” reminding us in Le Système Des Objets  that “what you really collect is always yourself.”

With that in mind, it is interesting that at a time when most of the major auction houses, and even eBay have some semblance of restrictions on the ghoulish and macabre trade of Nazi memorabilia, Alexander Historical Auctions, in Chesapeake City, Maryland, and their online partner Invaluable have chosen to auction Hitler's telephone.

Looted from the subterranean Führerbunker near the Reich Chancellery in Berlin in the days following Germany's surrender, the fürer's phone was smuggled into England by British officer Brigadier Sir Ralph Herbert Rayner MBE who kept the Nazi relic in his English country manor, Ashcombe Tower from 1945 onward.

Part-home, part-personal museum, Ashcombe Tower is filled with the Brigadier's collection,  of which the blood-red phone was just one of the trinkets collected by the conservative MP before his death. In an article written by the UK’s Western Morning News in May 2011, Major Ranulf Rayner, the Brigadier's son, said the gruesome family heirloom was “not for sale at any price” but I guess the family has had a change of heart or perhaps financial circumstance.

Sale 66, Lot 1040 of their February 19th sale reads:

“ADOLF HITLER'S PERSONAL PRESENTATION TELEPHONE, RECOVERED FROM THE FUHRERBUNKER”

“ADOLF HITLER'S PERSONAL TELEPHONE, presented to him by the Wehrmacht and engraved with his name, gifted by Russian officers to Montgomery's Deputy Chief Signals Offcer [sic] who had arrived at the Fuhrerbunker only days after the fall of Berlin.”

“ARGUABLY THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE "WEAPON" OF ALL TIME, WHICH SENT MILLIONS TO THEIR DEATHS AROUND THE WORLD”

Collecting the relics of death is big business.

Despite what is morally acceptable or what is blatantly offensive, the law remains on the side of the dealers who willingly profit from the sale of this disturbing and ghastly material.  America, Russia, and China and to a lesser extent England remain burgeoning markets in Third Reich-era memorabilia, where original Nazi uniforms and concentration camp clothing can sell for tens of thousands of dollars to private collectors.

In 2015 three copies of Hitler's racist autobiographical manifesto sold through Los Angeles auction house Nate D Sanders in just a month.  Two sold for $64,850 and the third sold for just over $43,000.

Dealers justify their commerce saying collectors who buy this material are fundamentally people who are interested in preserving military history.  In defense of the trade they are often quoted as saying that the majority of their clients are not Fascists or skinhead extremists but regular Joe's like the people scene in this video, who choose to collect this type of divisive heritage as a means of remembrance.


I once knew a boutique freight forwarder who used to have a client who collected instruments of torture, shipping them from all around the world. They finally decided to sever their relationship when the collector asked for a quote to import a gas chamber. (I can't even imagine the customs paperwork on that).

For me the line between remembrance and obsession stops short of sleeping in Hitler's bed, showing your friends and hunting party guests your Hitler telephone or making room in your house for your very own private gas chamber.

Macabre objects of this type belong in museums, where they can be displayed in the proper context as reminders of mankind's tragic past, not in settings where there is a risk of being used to sensationalize, glorify or aggrandize the horrors of the Nazi movement.

Op Ed: Lynda Albertson

January 31, 2017

Tuesday, January 31, 2017 - ,,,,,,,,, No comments

If paintings could talk...recovered Van Gogh paintings to go on exhibition in Naples February 6-26 before returning to the Van Gogh Museum


Dear Italian art lovers, 

Despite our lengthy stay in Campania and the hospitality of one of the Camorra's largest suppliers of cocaine to the Bay of Naples, it is, unfortunately, time for us to bid your country and its citizens farewell. 

Following the convictions handed down to our kidnappers, by Italian Judge Claudia Picciotti, we no longer need to remain as witnesses to testify to their crimes and have been informed by the judge that we are free to go home.

To show our appreciation to the fine officers of Italy's Corpo della Guardia di Finanza, which probes financial crimes related to organised crime, and to the Italian Public Prosecutions office, and to the Naples Direzione distrettuale antimafia and to the Dutch investigators who never gave up looking for us, our owners have persuaded us to stay in Naples for a few weeks longer.  

In this way, true art lovers, and not just mafia camorristi, can enjoy the beauty created by Vincent's fine hand.

Fourteen years and two months is a long time for us to be away from our beloved Netherlands and one of us desperately longs for the gentle touch of a conservator to help us heal from the wounds inflicted by our captors, not to mention the chance to shake this dust from our weary canvasses. 

Despite all that, and while we look forward with anticipation to returning to the Van Gogh Museum, we are happy that the director of the Museo di Capodimonte, Sylvain Bellenger and Axel Rüger, the director of the Van Gogh Museum, have encouraged us to remain for just a short while longer.  Under the care of their staff and advisors, we can rest and be exhibited in an atmosphere more befitting to us than a dusty crawl space behind a mafioso's workout gym. 

Being stolen when your famous only makes you more famous afterwards.  We suspect that for months, if not years to come, people will whisper about us, wondering what we went through and talking about the awful men who thought some day to use us, either for collateral or as a means to reduce their sentences for crimes worse than holding art hostage. 

But we as paintings prefer to dwell upon our younger and more carefree days, newly created on stretched canvas.  We like to remember when our paint was still wet and sand specks stuck to us in Scheveningen, the small fishing village where Vincent set up painting, partly to appease his brother Theo. Or when our Vincent began experimenting with colours to capture his mood at Nuenen, rather than using colours realistically.  Just like he sought, with his course application of paint, to define his own unique style, he brought each one of us to life giving each of us a little bit of his soul.  This is what we like to remember, not Vincent's tortured death and certainly not our time held captive by criminals. 

But enough of this talk about the past, let us try and stay in the present. 

 Why don't you pay us a visit before we leave Naples for home?  

 I am sure the fine people at the Capodimonte can point you to our room on the second floor.  From what we understand, we will be lodging with quite respectable company, in a room right next to the "Flagellation" by  Caravaggio. 

A hearty handshake in thought, and, believe me, 
yours, 

View of the Sea at Scheveningen 
and 
Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen

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Exhibition Dates: 6-26 February
Via Miano, 2, 
80137 Naples, Italy
Hours: 08.30 to 19.30 daily, NOTE:  Museum is closed on Wednesdays
Ticket price: 8 €
Contacts and information: 081 7499111 

January 24, 2017

Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - ,,, No comments

ARCA is now accepting abstracts for its June 2017 art crime conference

Conference Dates 
June 23-25 2017


Conference Location
Sala Comunale F. Boccarini
Boccarini cloister, Amelia Italy


Conference Fees:
$120 for all Saturday and Sunday sessions for professionals


$75 for all Saturday and Sunday for university students providing proof of enrollment in an academic program

ARCA will host its annual interdisciplinary art crime conference the weekend of June 23rd through June 25th 2017.  Known as The Amelia Conference, the association's weekend-long event aims to facilitate a critical appraisal of art crimes and the protection of art and cultural heritage.  As it has for the last eight summers, the event will bring together researchers and academics, police, and provenance researchers as well as members from many of the allied professions in the art world, to discuss issues of common concern. 

Held annually in the historic city of Amelia, in the heart of Italy's Umbria region. Amelia also plays host to ARCA's Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection and for the first time, the joint ARCA-HARP Provenance Training course, “Provenance and the challenges of recovering looted assets.” 

Topics center on the following subject areas:

• art crime and its prevalence
• art crime during war and symmetric and asymmetric conflicts
• archaeological looting and predation
• art crime policing and investigation
• art and heritage law and legal instruments
• the art market and its associated risk
• risk management in the art world
• the provenance of works of art and their historical record of ownership

ARCA welcomes speaking proposals from individuals in relevant fields, including law, criminal justice, security, art history, conservation, archaeology, or museum security and risk management. We invite individuals interested in presenting to submit their topic of choice along with a presentation title, a concise 250 word abstract, a brief professional biography and a recent CV to the conference organizers at:

italy.conference [at]artcrimeresearch.org

Accepted presenters will be asked to limit their presentations to 15-20 minutes, and will be grouped together in thematically organized panels to allow time for brief questions from the audience at the conclusion of each panel session.

The accepted speaker list will be posted March 30, 2017.

To register for this event and read more about the conference please visit the conference information page on the ARCA website. 

We hope to see many of you in Amelia in June!



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