Mr. Ellis: I use Michel van Rijn to illustrate not only the importance of "informants" to the criminal investigator, but also the problems that "informants" can create for an investigator and hence the care that must be used when dealing with such individuals. I play an interview that I recorded with Michel in 2004 at the request of the Dutch Government, which was played to an EU conference to illustrate how criminals fabricate provenance and the difficulties that this presents for all those involved in cultural property. I am still in contact with Michel, which provides me with a constant insight in to the darker side of the art market. Michel will of course help the authorities if it is in his interest to do so and this is another reason why I introduce him to the students. Understanding why people become informants is essential to being able to use them and the information that they provide safely and legally and this is another part of the scope of my course. Understanding why people become involved in cultural property crimes, their motives and expectations will assist the investigator in reaching a successful outcome to a case.

Mr. Ellis: The past three decades has been interesting in respect of the response to cultural property crime by the police in many countries. At the start of the 1980's there was little interest in this area of crime with the exception of Italy, who throughout this time have devoted considerable resources to protecting their cultural property and investigating those responsible for the theft of it. In 1984 the art squad at Scotland Yard was actually closed and its 14 detectives were dispersed on to other crime squads. In the USA the FBI had no dedicated team and only in the police departments in New York and Los Angeles was there any recognition that art and antique crime posed a problem. It was largely due to the restructuring of the art market during the 1980's and the rapid increase in prices that this generated that criminals recognised the potential in art crime. The resulting increase in crime forced law enforcement to adjust and review the situation.

By the end of the 1980's I had reformed the art squad at New Scotland Yard, the FBI in New York were handling an increasing number of international requests through one dedicated office and in Los Angeles an art detail was put in place run by a detective Bill Martin who was later appointed to the President's advisory panel on cultural property crime. During the 1990's more countries recognised cultural property crime as a problem and with the end of the cold war and the opening of international borders the trafficking of cultural property crime grew rapidly becoming a major concern.

The introduction of computer systems during this period, which recorded and made accessible information on stolen objects was a major step forward and Interpol has been able to provide a central record of at least the most important stolen cultural property. France, Italy, the USA and a handful of other countries developed their own databases of stolen cultural property supported by dedicated investigators. UNESCO developed a programme of workshops through which it was able to raise awareness of cultural property crime and by utilising the help of specialist police officers such as myself, it delivered a programme designed to assist countries in protecting their cultural heritage.

There followed a number of high profile cases which illustrated how with the cooperation of these dedicated national squads successful prosecutions could be achieved such as the recovery of the Scream and the prosecution of Tokeley Parry and Fred Schultz to name but two of my own cases. However, as we entered the new millennium, other international crimes overtook cultural property crime in importance for law enforcement. Drug trafficking, people trafficking and terrorism now occupy the top three positions and with the global economic crisis financial fraud has also moved above cultural property crime in importance and I fear that we shall see a gradual reduction in the number of specialist officers dedicated to cultural property crimes. This makes the work of ARCA all the more important as the private sector will now be required to handle the many crimes and disputes left untouched by law enforcement and only through some serious academic research to demonstrate the true scale of the problem that cultural property posses will governments and law enforcement agencies be persuaded to direct more of their limited resources to it. The internet offers a fantastic tool for the investigator in terms of information about objects and where they are appearing on the market for sale. It does not however replace the need to actually talk to victims of crime or to interview those in possession of disputed items in order to reach some kind of resolution to a dispute. These are skills that you can only gain by actually doing the job and no amount of internet research will give you those skills.

Finally and in answer to the last part of your first question, "How can students best prepare for your class?" I would suggest that they cover as many art thefts and investigations as they can find in books and on the internet. To keep an open mind on who has committed the crime and not to be influenced by the often ill-informed opinions of the journalists. To read "The Irish Game" by Mathew Hart, which sets out probably the most thoroughly investigated art thefts of a single collection and gives a good insight in to who commits such crimes and how the criminal has arrived at the routes to market available to them for iconic works of art. A topic to be covered in my class.

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

Buon giorno. This photo shows Porcelli's thin crust pizza topped with gorganzola cheese, sliced

pears, and diced almonds. If you've been to Porcelli's, do you have a favorite pizza?

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

One of the reasons for our fondness for the restaurants in Amelia is certainly due to the ubiquitous owners who have to close their eating establishments to get any time away from their businesses. Valda, as she is known by her customers, the smiling and gregarious owner of Porcelli's, arguably serves the best pizza in Amelia. Personally, I favor the gargonzola cheese with sliced pears and crushed almonds. My children love the nutella pizza that Valda often presents to regular customers at the end of a late meal. Then there's a salad that's only on the Italian menu that has greens, kiwi fruit, and walnuts dressed with a vinaigrette.

Many people prefer pizza from Napoli. However, when my family and I tried the pizza in Napoli, I had to agree with my husband -- even as I enjoyed a seven cheese pie -- when he said, "This pizza is not as good as our pizza." I understood he wasn't talking about pizza from Pasadena. Because after living in Amelia for a month, 'our pizza' had become pizza from La Misticanza or Porcelli's. The pizza in Amelia typically has a thin crust, with cheese topped with thin slices of toppings such as zucchini, eggplant, red peppers, prosciutto, or even truffles. Oil does not drip through the pizza boxes or congeal on the plate as in California. With whole pies selling from three to eight euros, we ate pizza daily.

Valda, with her trademark dark eyeliner and long eyelashes, opens her taverne in the evening and keeps it open for as long as her customers and musicians play. It's not unusual for someone to arrive at midnight. Porcelli's is carved into the hillside and has spacious dining rooms stretching into caverns whose walls are decorated with art by Valda's deceased husband. The space is perfect for musicians to perform long into the night without disturbing the neighbors. However, the customers smoking outside Porcelli's doors on Via Farratini may not be so accommodating if the party is particularly good. And the party, like the pizza, is always good.

by Catherine Schofield Segin

Two of my classmates, Lauren Cattey, a criminologist, and Katie Ogden, an art historian, and I were sitting at one of the many shiny metal bistro tables on the patio of Bar Leonardi overlooking the Piazza 21 Settembre, the large open space outside of the walls of historic Amelia. As students of ARCA’s Postgraduate Program in Art Crime Studies, we had by then survived three weeks of lectures, five days a week, five to six hours a day. Our course time had cut into prime grocery shopping time that on Thursdays in Amelia meant from about 8 a.m. to about 1 or 2 p.m. when the stores closed for the afternoon and the evening. Drinking espresso drinks and prosecco, nibbling on potato chips and nuts, we watched the Italians around us, smartly dressed in various hues of purple, the men with their man-bags which held their cell phones and cigarettes, the women who that summer flagrantly displaced purple or leopard bra straps. We considered our options for dinner – inexpensive pizza from the shop across the park – and then we ran out of ideas. We’d eaten lunch at Punto di Vino, as usual, and could return since it was the one place that always remained open.

Our counting of purple outfits – we often reached double digits – was interrupted by a tall man who exited from a car in a parking space in front of us and ambled over with a piece of paper. In either Italian or English, likely the latter as that is why he chose us, he asked how he could find La Misticanza. We were baffled. We'd lived in Amelia for more than three weeks and although it was a small town and we were always discovering a new food market or shop -- and sharing the information as to when they were open -- Porcelli's was closed on Tuesdays, Cansacchi was closed on Wednesdays and Le Colonne was closed on Thursdays -- we hadn’t heard about this Misticanza. The fair haired man, now we were guessing he was German, claimed that he was meeting friends so in helpful desperation I recalled a pretty sign with a floral motif outside a bar door across the road from Bar Leonardi and directed him around the corner to the left.

This bar we had sent the newcomer to seemed to be deserted during the day and yet attracted a boisterous crowd in the evening but we'd never been inside the open doors nor had we seen a menu. So, as soon as it grew dark, we crossed the piazza, stepped into the sit down area of a brewery and walked up to the cashier and then peered into a side door to find a crowded dining room overlooking the Porta Romana. Using our rudimentary Italian, we ordered what we thought was one plate of salami and cheese only to receive three large platters of antipasto. We were laughing by the time the pizza arrived but didn’t turn down what would become one of our favorite pizzas, the caprese, a puffy crust covered in slices of tomato and mozzarella with basil and drizzled with olive oil.

We would return a few more times, very careful to order just pizza, as the gregarious and talented chef could be creative with the menu and the bill. Many long evenings were spent in the place we came to know as “Crazy Johnny’s” where nothing is predictable except the excellent quality of the food.

Tomorrow’s post will highlight Porcelli’s, a pizza tavern inside the historic center.

Top Photo: View of the Porta Romana from La Misticanza

Middle photo: The dining room of La Misticanza

Bottom photo: Caprese pizza

ARCA's Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies will be held for the third year in Amelia, Umbria, in 2011. The deadline for student applications has been extended to January 21, 2011.

Amelia is a beautiful walled medieval town about an hour drive north of Rome. It can also be reached from Rome by taking a train to Orte, then taking either a bus or a taxi to Amelia. Most visitors directed to Amelia are instructed to meet their host where all roads leading to the old town converge: Bar Leonardi, an establishment across from the main entrance to the old town, the Porta Romana, and on a piazza adjacent to a park.

Bar Leonardi opens very early in the morning and stays open late and, most importantly, in Italy, it stays open all day. In the morning, customers typically pick up espressos and cornettos, read newspapers, and greet friends and business partners. In the afternoon, during siesta, the bar can be quiet except for customers dashing in to play the lottery or to pick up cigarettes. After siesta, people emerge and gather again, drinking prosecco and more coffee. Of course, only the Americans order lattes and cappucinos so late in the day and although the server may admit to a wry smile, he will bring the milk-based drinks that cease for Europeans by 11 a.m.

I have just a bit of advice for a regular customer at Bar Leonardi: be consistent. Espresso drinks are inexpensive and plentiful; however, the cashier, who is often the ever-present owner, prides himself upon greeting you by remembering your order and the whole charm of buon giorno will be marred if you have to correct him with your whim of the day.

If you like a cappucino, then a latte, and maybe an espresso later on, I recommend that you order a cappucino from Bar Leonardi, another from Massimo's Pattisserie across the street, then cross the piazza to the smaller bar run by the red-headed Amelia to order a latte, and when you're ready for your fourth drink, maybe another latte or cappucino in the afternoon, you can visit Caffe Grande inside the walls and their staff will prepare you anything and include an artificial sweetner if you prefer.

Decaffeinated espresso is always available in Amelia's coffee bars. My bartenders well remember me for my order of 'decaffinato doppio cappuccino, per favore' which was a unique request in Italy although not in California where I normally reside. In Amelia, the cappucino is one euro or less; in Los Angeles, it's $4 so you can understand my free-for-all on the decaffeinated drinks.

Another reason people go to Bar Leonardi: everyone in town eventually goes to or passes Bar Leonardi so you can just sit at an outside table and wait. If your friend doesn't walk by, someone who knows your friend will walk by, and you can inquire, have you seen so and so, and that friend will be able to say, yes, I just saw them in Punto di Vino or at the Biblioteca because it only takes about 15 minutes and a pair of strong legs to cover the commercial area of Amelia which offers a few grocery stores, a couple of great eating establishments, many takeout places, and boutique clothing stores.

Later we'll talk about procuring food in Amelia -- when restaurants are open and closed requires knowledge of the weekly schedule.

ARCA is extending the official deadline for applications for the 2011 Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies to January 21, 2011. In certain circumstances ARCA will consider late applications. Please contact Mark Durney at mark@artcrime.info if you wish to apply after January 21, 2011.

In our continued series on ARCA lecturers, the ARCA blog is profiling returning lecturer Tom Flynn who will teach a course this summer in Amelia titled “Art History and the Art World” from June 6 through June 17, 2011.

Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and art historian with interests in sculpture history, art and business, museology, cultural heritage, the art market, and art crime. Flynn has a Masters in Design History from the Royal College of Art and a doctorate in Art History from the University of Sussex. He teaches courses on the art market and the history of museums at Kingston University, London and is the author of a number of books on sculpture, painting and the decorative arts. As a journalist Tom has written for a broad range of publications, including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Art Review, Art Quarterly, Apollo, The Spectator, Museums Journal, The Sculpture Journal, etc. Tom blogs regularly on art world matters at www.artknows.co.uk. In 2009, he launched an art consultancy, The Sculpture Agency (www.thesculptureagency.co.uk) to promote contemporary sculpture. A list of his books can be found here: (http://www.tomflynn.co.uk/about.htm).

ARCA blog: What will be the scope of your course in Amelia?

Tom Flynn: The course aims to give students a thorough grounding in how the art market works and how its key institutions interact and relate to one another. The art market can often seem a somewhat mysterious and intimidating business environment with its own specific codes of communication and ways of conducting transactions and establishing price. The course sets out to dispel some of the myths and mysteries surrounding the rapidly globalizing market in an enjoyable way that will enrich and empower students in their future careers.

ARCA blog: Does your course focus on particular subjects?

Tom Flynn: Yes, the course works its way through the main public and private institutions that make up the modern art market, offering a historical perspective on the market’s evolution as well as plenty of contemporary analysis. Through a series of intensive but lively and interactive teaching sessions, we explore the history of collecting, the evolution of museums, the emergence of the auction houses and the art trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the development of the contemporary art market. We also investigate the impact of technology on the art trade and art investment, how the art media works, and the importance of art fairs in the global market. Finally, we also touch on topical themes such as deaccessioning by museums, the repatriation of cultural objects, and the impact of the Artist’s Re-Sale Rights Levy.

ARCA blog: How would you advise prospective students to prepare for your course?

Tom Flynn: A preliminary reading list is circulated in the weeks and months prior to the course and anything students can read from that list will be useful preparation for classroom discussion. I also urge students to try and visit at least one fine art auction sale before arriving in Italy and to stroll around the museums and art galleries in their home towns and cities, taking attentive note of how objects are exhibited and thinking critically about how business is conducted in those environments.

ARCA blog: Tom, you’ve taught twice in Amelia with the ARCA program, what kind of a student do you think benefits from this program and what do you think they would get out of your class?

ARCA Founder Noah Charney recently interviewed ARCA Alum Riikka Köngäs, one of Europe’s youngest conservators of icons. She also works for the largest art gallery (Retretti) in Finald as a courier and a conservation specialist. She is Secretary of the Icon-Network Association, an organization providing information about icons, icon collections, education and conservation. One of the objectives of the Icon-Network is to prevent trade of stolen icons by creating a database of stolen icons (www.icon-network.org).

Riikka Köngäs graduated in 2003 with a BA (HONS) Conservation and Restoration of Art and Antiquities from Lincoln University, Great Britain. Specific work experience as an art conservator was acquired from Paliambela Archaeological Excavations in Greece and from the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, as well as other museums in Finald. She completed the MA-program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection in 2009. She published her dissertation, "Copy versus Forgery: The Difficulty in Determining Motive with Regards to Modern Iconography and Icon Collections" in the Spring 2010 Journal of Art Crime.

Noah Charney: What sort of conservation work do you do?

Riikka: I work as a head conservator in the Valamo Art Conservation Institute in Finland. We conserve paintings on wood and on canvas and are specialized on icon conservation. Our specialization is unique in Finland and in Scandinavia. We take commissions not only from the Orthodox church, but also other churches in Finland, from museums, insurance companies and works from private sources form perhaps half of our work load. Besides practical conservation, we do condition reporting to exhibitions and different art collections, give advice of preventing conservation and handling of art, and naturally give lectures about art conservation.

We are a small institute, but play a significant role in different European projects, from which the latest is a project called Icon Network. Within this project we set up an exhibition with theme “icons and war”, published a book supporting the theme and currently work partly with web pages to help people who are interested about icons.

Noah Charney: What is the process, when you receive a commission of an icon to restore?

Riikka: Each icon is unique, and there is no straightforward way to restore an icon. Firstly, when talking about icon, we usually think about painting on flat wooden support. But there are icons painted on canvas, as well as on metal, I have even seen one painted on dried fish skull!

Normally our work starts with documentation. We have full-time research photographer working for us, so he photographs the icon, and if necessary, he can take ultraviolet and infrared photos, even x-rays. Then follows written documentation, which we carry on through whole process, writing down every step we do. So called “normal” process includes cleaning, stabilization of paint layer and restoration (painting) only if necessary. Each case has to be considered separately. For example, if an icon is from the museum, we hardly do any restoration at all. But if an icon goes to a church, or at private home, we usually do restoration. It would be rather difficult to concentrate on praying in front of this icon if half of the face was missing!

Noah: You completed the ARCA postgraduate program in 2009. What did the program offer to you?

Riikka: It was terribly interesting, loaded with huge amount of information in short time, and it gave me a push to find out more about certain matters in illicit trade of art, and of icons. It assured me that the more we know about this dark side of art world and the more we educate ourselves, the more we can do to prevent these things happening. Finland is such a small country, but by no means a safe bird nest. The program gave me several ideas what to do next, and very importantly several good connections to turn to if I need advice.

Noah: Tell me about your work since completing the ARCA program.

Riikka: Full speed rollercoaster! I took over the head conservators role after returning to work immediately after the course, and have been settling into that. Besides managing the institute, marketing, finding new projects, traveling around Finland from church to church, giving lectures etc etc, I do practical conservation as much as I can, since that is the part I enjoy tremendously. In June 2010 an icon was stolen from a cathedral in Helsinki, and one icon was damaged badly. I did conservation on this particular icon, and started discussions about the need to secure churches. This continues and hopefully with good results. We set up an exhibition in our monastery and did the security plan for it (using ArtGuard) and now I am planning next exhibitions. The plan is to have an exhibition with fakes and forgeries, co-operating with some museums and police. The process has been started already, and it looks splendid.

Noah: What do you think are the greatest challenges facing the conservation world?

Riikka: Worldwide, there are so many challenges and demands to protect cultural heritage…

If I think only about my area of conservation, I almost see red when I meet today’s artists and see their work. I give many lectures trying to make artists understand the importance of good technique; it’s the matter of quality, not quantity. Just take a painting (or even icon) 100 years old, and it still looks more or less top quality. Whereas we are getting more and more badly prepared canvases or panels only 10-20 years old and already damaged. Education, education, that is the word!

Noah: There has been a recent debate about how much cleaning should be done on Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece. Would you like to comment?

Riikka: I am not very familiar with this case, but general rule I try to follow as much as I can is "less is more”, as I guess every conservator thinks. Making sure that piece of art will be there for next generations is the most important, not restoring it so that it looks like new. And this doesn’t mean treating the object only; it includes taking care of the surroundings as well. Cleaning is always a bit risky, especially when using detergents or solvents or new methods that haven’t been in use for long.

ARCA Masters Program graduate Olivia Sladen (class of 2009) was interviewed by Noah Charney for Suite 101 about her work in provenance research.

And you can read Noah Charney's commentary on The Ghent Altarpiece in this week's issue of The New Yorker.

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

Noah Charney, Founding Director of ARCA, will be teaching "Art Crime and Its History” in Amelia this summer for ARCA’s Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies.

Mr. Charney is the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Art Crime. Recently a Visiting Lecturer at Yale University, he is currently Adjunct Professor of Art History at the American University of Rome. He is the editor of ARCA’s first book, Art & Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World (Praeger 2009). In addition, Mr. Charney published a novel, The Art Thief (Atria, 2007), and a nonfiction book, Stealing The Mystic Lamb: The Incredible True History of the World’s Most Frequently Stolen Masterpiece (PublicAffairs, 2010).

ARCA blog: Welcome to the ARCA blog, Noah. How would you describe your course to the readers who are applying to this program?

Noah: Our program is unique, the first in the world to offer courses of study in the unusual topic of art crime and cultural heritage protection. It has received quite a bit of attention, even though it was only founded in 2009. That same year a New York Times feature article introduced the program to the world, and we’ve grown and solidified since then. What I love about our program is that it embraces the inherent interdisciplinary nature of the study of art crime, which involves art history, archaeology, law, criminology, police and security studies, even conservation. We bring in world-renowned professors in an unusual format—each comes for two weeks over the summer to teach an intensive, 25 hour course in their area of expertise. As a result you get 10 amazing professors, plus numerous guided field trips and guest speakers, plus our international Conference on the Study of Art Crime at the heart of the program. Our unusual format, fitting over 250 lecture hours (the equivalent in hours to a year-long European Masters Program) into the three summer months allows adult professionals to take the program, or students during the summer between full-time programs. As a result we’ve had post-graduate students and professionals, ages 22 to 65, ranging from students to conservators to curators to investigators to lawyers and so on—a diverse and international group. The program does a great job of offering both academic/historical courses, like mine, with practical professional courses, like the course on “Art Policing and Investigation.”

My course is a complete history of art crime, and an introduction to the field of study. It really paves the way for the rest of the program, and provides an anecdotal history—we examine around 60 case studies carefully chosen because they each illustrate a point or phenomenon related to art crime. The stories are great, too, vivid and fun, which makes the lessons easier to remember. My goal is for my students to remember the dynamic stories that I teach, and thereby remember the lessons vicariously—if I’m doing my job well, students should not have to study, but be sufficiently drawn in during class to absorb all of the lessons without feeling like they’re having to “work.”

ARCA blog: You’ve taught this course many times over the past few years, in New Haven and Amelia, how has it changed over the last few years? Do you find yourself having to overcome any common misconceptions students may bring with them to class on the first day?

Noah: I feel like I’m an actor performing a play that I’m really passionate about once a year—I think I always get better at teaching the material, and it comes more easily. A key for me is never reading a lesson from notes. I think that’s about the most boring thing a professor can do. I much prefer teaching with just the barest outlines, which gives classes a sense of energy and freshness. I’ve taught this course at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and I’ve honed my selection of case studies to 60 cases that really tell the entire history, and future, of art crime. I’m working on an academic book covering the subject, as we speak.

One thing I’m pleased with is that since ARCA was founded, students and journalists have been largely educated about art crime in a way that was not the case beforehand. That is not to say that this is ARCA’s doing, but we’ve helped bring issues and facts to the fore, so that journalists and students are versed in the correct facts and phenomena about art crime from the start. This is really a great improvement and shows that hard work and education outreach has paid off.

ARCA blog: You’ve taught this course over a semester and also compressed over two weeks. How would you advise your summer graduate students to prepare for this class?

Noah: The two-week “executive training” version of the course has largely the same presentation of case studies, but with a bit more story-telling and a bit less collective group discussion, simply for time constraints (a semester-long course is normally 40 hours, and a postgraduate level course in our program is 25). We also have less reading during the course. I’m a big fan of relatively little homework, provided my students are focused and participate in class. But we assign some books to be read in advance of the program, so that all of our students arrive with shared material which can be used as a point of departure. We assign ARCA’s first book, Art & Crime (Praeger 2009), The Medici Conspiracy by Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini (PublicAffairs 2004), a choice between The Lost Masters by Pittaway and Harclerode or The Rape of Europa by Nicholas, and my new book, Stealing the Mystic Lamb (PublicAffairs 2010). That may sound like a lot, but we have almost no assigned reading during the summer, so students can concentrate on enjoying and learning from the great lecturers we bring to them—and can relax with some wine and prosciutto as they spend their summer in Umbria.

ARCA blog: Will you be including the story of “Stealing the Mystic Lamb” in your course this year?

Noah: Well, I’m always shy about assigning my own books to students, but all teachers do it—and it helps to have this central point from which to depart. Since this book will be assigned to students ahead of time, we’ll discuss it and use it as the spine, or through-line of the course. Pretty much anything bad that can happen to a work of art has happened to The Ghent Altarpiece, as my book explores, so it’s an ideal lens through which to study the history of art crime, collecting, and the power of art that reaches far beyond the art world and into international politics, war, and faith.

Photo by Liisa van Vliet of Noah Charney recently speaking at The Courtauld Institute in London.

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

On her trip to Budapest earlier this month, ARCA’s Director of Public and Institutional Relations, Colette Loll Marvin, toured the facility of Tondo, Inc., a firm specializing in complex painting analysis that contributes to attributions and forgery research. Tondo’s Chief Executive Officer Zsófia Végvári led Marvin through a series of complex tests used to determine the authenticity of a suspected Picasso painting recently discovered by a buyer in the Middle East. The testing can tell the age of the inorganic components, which will be used, along with the judgements of art historians, to make a determination of the authenticity, Végvári told Marvin.

Végvári founded Tondo in 1998. For the past 10 years, Tondo has provided services to cultural institutions and art collectors with an arsenal of mobile, high-tech equipment for analyzing art works. The Complex Painting Analysis Method (CPAM) combined five techniques to help authenticate paintings.

“So far art historians have used only subjective methods to define oil paintings,” said Végvári in a follow-up email. “By using the CPAM methods we offer objective applications instead of these subjective methods. On the auction market, pictures by famous painters change owners for a high price. These highly valuable paintings have been investigated with objective technologies such as X-ray, XRF, and luminescence examinations in a few cases only. However, most of the results do not increase the credibility of the auction market, but facilitate the restoration phase. After investigating the hidden layer and the metal-content of the painting, we can tell whether or not it was repainted in the past. The CPAM offers so- called 'genetic fingerprint' conditions of paintings based on physical and chemical investigations.”

According to Tondo, the technologies used in the Complex Painting Analysis Method: multispectral photography; X-Ray; microscopy; X-ray Fluorescence - Spectroscopy (XRF) examination; and a 3D white light scanner.

With multispectral photography, Tondo uses a normal light at an angle to the painting to examine brush strokes, crackling, and the artist’s signature, Végvári explained. An infrared light can reveal the underdrawing in a painting, she said. “Some pigments, such as lead white or artificial ultramarine, become transparent on infrared shoot,” Végvári explained. "It is clearly seen where different pigments were used."

Ultraviolet light can detect later restorations that appear darker than the aged original varnish layers. “It’s possible to identify any retouchings on top of an aged varnish, since oil paint and newer varnish do not fluoresce under ultraviolet light,” Végvári explained.

“A low radiation x-ray is one of the most important part of our investigation methods,” Végvári said. “X-ray can give information about an artist’s painting techniques, pigments, and under-paintings. The x-ray technique primarily records the structural elements of a painting as it shows the pigment characterizations. An x-ray can also reveal a painting hidden underneath the visible painting.”

According to Végvári, microscopy can give an amazing amount of information about a painting’s structure, based on cross sectional analysis or pigment sampling. In an invasive technology, a sample is cut from the canvas of 1-2 millimeters to show the layers of paint colors and varnish. The cross sectional analysis presents information about the repainted areas and colors as the chronology of the artist’s working methods, including restoration work. Inside of the layers most of the grains of the pigments can be identified. The pigments sampling helps to identify the age of the paint layer based on the size, characterisation, and the components of the pigment grains.

An X-ray Fluorescence - Spectroscopy (XRF) examination can identify most of the pigments used in paint, Végvári explained, and can be compared to known materials and palettes used during certain historical periods and geographical areas. The XRF spectroscopy can date objects and can reveal forged works when the chemical compounds of the paints do not match the alleged date of the artwork. For example, Végvári said, titanium white would not be in a painting in 1912. Titanium white was not available as an artist's pigment until 1924.

"The combination of XRF and microscopy allows 'diagnosing' an artists’ palette," Végvári said. "It is extremely important to make special database about colors used by each artist."

The three-dimensional surface of the artworks can be recorded with the accuracy of microns with a 3D white light scanner manufactured by Breuckmann GMBH in Germany. With this investigation method, according to Végvári, the condition of the paintings, and the distortion of the support or the brushstrokes can be examined in 3D digital data. "This technology also offers a special 3D fingerprint of the artworks," Végvári said. "It is a special 'mark' for the painting while the status of the surface is captured. The 3D information cannot be forged; so the artwork can be identified over time."

ARCA is accepting applications for the 2011 Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies until January 3, 2011. ARCA's blog will be interviewing instructors in December and today spotlights a returning lecturer.

New Zealand Judge Arthur Tompkins’ relationship with ARCA began in 2009 when he travelled to Amelia for the first of a two-part presentation at the International Art Crime Conference to discuss the possible pathway to creating an International Art Crime Tribunal. Last summer, in addition to presenting the second part of his proposal for the Tribunal at ARCA’s annual conference, Judge Tompkins taught a course, Art in War, at ARCA’s Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies. He is returning to teach the same course again in Italy in July 2011.

Judge Tompkins has been a District Court Judge in New Zealand for nearly 14 years. His appointment as a Judge, in 1997, followed 10 years in private practice in Auckland as a commercial barrister. He gained his Bachelor’s degree in Law from Canterbury University, in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1983, and subsequently graduated Masters in Law, with First Class Honours, from Cambridge University, England, in 1984. He has taught the Law of Evidence, and presented at numerous conferences and workshops on a variety of topics, including expert evidence, the intersect between law and science in the Courtroom, and most extensively in relation to forensic DNA and forensic DNA Databanks, in New Zealand, China, England, Ireland, France and Mauritius. He is an Honorary Member of Interpol’s DNA Monitoring Expert Group.

ARCA blog: Judge Tompkins, welcome to ARCA’s blog. First, we’d like to start off with an easy question – what brings you away from your court in New Zealand to travel halfway around the world to teach Art in War to graduate students? It can’t all be about the pizza and gelato.

Judge Tompkins: The pizza and the gelato – and especially the latter – is certainly a part of it! How I came to be involved with ARCA is a serendipitous tale of chance meetings, leading to contact with Noah Charney in relation to the chapter that I wrote for the Art and Crime volume he edited. Then, when I visited Amelia in July 2009 for the Conference, Noah offered me the chance to return to Amelia to teach. I made a considered decision (it took me, I seem to recall, less than a second to decide!) to leap at the opportunity both to develop the course, and then to escape the New Zealand winter for the summer in Umbria amid the company of a wonderful group of enthusiastic staff and students.

But perhaps most importantly, the course I teach allows me to combine on a longstanding interest in history (from my distant youth I have three-quarters of a BA majoring in European History, which some day I might just get around to finishing) with the work I have done with Interpol and others concerning the cross-border operation of the criminal law, and my interest in the way, over the years, public international law has developed and matured. I am not an art historian, so I leave that side of things to others!

ARCA blog: Have there been any recent events in the past six months that have refined your concept of an International Art Crime Tribunal?

It is not so much something that has happened, as what has not happened. In my paper to the ARCA Conference in 2009, I talked about, in relation to confronting the many issues raised by art crime, there being islands of excellence amid a sea of indifference. And I think that is still accurate – there are many people in many different places doing great work, including of course ARCA. But realistically they are islands, and there are lots of bridges still to build between them. It is happening, slowly – the availability now on the internet of the Jeu de Paume records left behind by the ERR is one recent example – but I still believe that a single bright focus would bring numerous benefits, not least of which would be the continued development of the durable and lasting culture of interdisciplinary scholarship that ARCA has done so much to reinvigorate and foster.

ARCA blog: In your course, what are some of the areas that you focus on and what do you find the most challenging?

Part of the challenge for both me and the students is that, in the first two days of the course, we cover a little over 3000 years of history – starting with the taking of the Stele of Hammurabi following the sack of Babylon in 1160 BCE, right through to the looting of the Iraqi National Museum and Library in 2003. On the way we stop off at, among many other things, the Thirty Years’ War and, inevitably, both the Napoleonic era and the Second World War. Because I seek to examine, with the students, the various art crimes we look at in their historical context, it is often challenging to summarise major historical events in a very short time – World War I in two paragraphs, anyone? Inevitably, I have many favourite parts of the course, but a couple stand out as particularly interesting. The story of the carrying of a large part of the Palatine Library over the Alps in 1622, on the backs of 200 mules who each wore a silver collar inscribed in Latin is an evocative image. The Vatican Library was closed for renovations this year, but next year I will arrange a reader’s pass to visit and, I hope, inspect some of the volumes, most of which are still in Rome. The astounding heroism of Rose Valland, who worked at the Jeu de Paume on behalf of the French Resistance for four tumultuous years during World War II, recording and identifying the numerous looted art shipments to Germany, to ensure that the Resistance did not inadvertently blow the trains up is a remarkable tale of sustained courage. And, in the second half of the course, presenting the sometimes complex subject of the public international law of treaties and the like presents its own challenges! Using actual examples, like the shelling of Dubrovnik by the Yugoslavian forces and the prosecution and conviction of two senior officers in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, helps bring the international criminal law to life in a real and tangible way – especially as Dubrovnik is not all that far from Italy, just across the Adriatic Sea.

Julia Brennan is a renowned art conservator specializing in textiles. In an interview with Noah Charney, Julia discusses her international adventures in conservation, the ARCA Postgraduate Program in the Study of Art Crime, and the cleaning of The Ghent Altarpiece.

ARCA Trustee Erik Nemeth (www.culturalsecurity.org and www.artworldintel.com) has forwarded on a summary of his thoughtful panel presentation at the American Society of Criminology annual meeting. The presentation, "Cultural Intelligence: data sources on the motivation and means for trafficking" crystallizes I think the systemic nature of the illicit trade in antiquities, and the need for further rigorous examination of the trade across the relevant disciplines. His summary follows:

The annual multibillion-dollar illicit market in movable cultural property motivates looting in developing nations. As demonstrated from Latin America in the midst of the Cold War era to South-central Asia in the post-Cold War period, organized crime may take advantage of limited security in “source nations” by recruiting locals to loot. In African nations, the corruption extends into the public sector with bribes to customs officers and collusion with staff of cultural ministries. On a transnational level, the risk that revenues from trafficking may fund insurgencies and terrorist groups has alerted law enforcement agencies to the implications for international security. The degree of the security threat posed by looting ultimately depends on the market value of the artworks and the intersections with trafficking in weapons and narcotics. Quantitative analysis of the market value and mapping the trafficking networks illustrate the potential of specialized “art intelligence” to enable countermeasures to mitigate, and optimally forestall, threats to cultural identity.

The traditionally clandestine nature of the art market poses challenges to assessing looting and trafficking in developing nations. In the absence of direct information on transactions in ource nations,sales at auction provide a sense of the market value and trade volume of antiquities and primitive art. Auction houses openly publish results of auctions and enable access to sales archives through web sites. On-line access to sales archives creates a substantive pool of data on hammer prices from auctions around the world. Sales archives also contain detailed descriptions of the artworks. The description that accompanies an auction lot can identify the geographic origin of the artwork. Data mining of sales archives for hammer price and origin enables analysis of market value by source nation. The analysis assesses relative market value and, thereby, contributes to an assessment of relative risks of looting across developing nations.

Any threat of looting has serious implications for the cultural identity of local communities, but the market value that motivates looting has implications for the severity and extent of the threat. Large demand in market nations and high market value increases the scale of looting and the range of parties with vested interest. A large market for artworks from a particular source nation increases the likelihood that organized crime will invest in developing trafficking networks and in recruiting locals to loot. As the involvement of organized crime increases, the opportunities for corruption within government also increase. An assessment of the relative risk of looting informs policy on the protection of cultural patrimony. With an understanding of the magnitudes of risk facing different source nations, market nations can strategically focus resources to engage actors in the art market and local governments.

Kim Alderman, a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and a student in ARCA’s Class of 2010 postgraduate program in International Art Crime Studies, presented at the Antiquities Trafficking panel at the American Society of Criminologists Conference in San Francisco in mid-November.

Alderman, who studied art history and archaeology at the University of Maryland at College Park, provided an abstract of her presentation on her blog, Cultural Property and Archaeology Law Blog, and we followed up via email with some questions of our own.

ARCA Blog: Do you believe that organized crime has fueled the illicit antiquities trade since the early 1960s?

Alderman: “Whether organized crime is connected to the illicit antiquities trade depends on how you define “organized crime.” The broad definition of organized crime is three or more people, engaged in a pattern of illegal conduct, for the purpose of obtaining material gains. If you use this definition, then it is correct to say that organized crime is involved in the illicit antiquities trade. From subsistence looters to tombaroli to smugglers, there are always people working in concert to excavate and move illicit antiquities. If you are talking only about mobsters or the mafia, then there is less evidence to support the alleged connection. As to the claim that the involvement began in the 1960s, I suspect this originated with allegations of the mafia’s entry into art theft during that decade, and was later extended by imprecise language to the illicit antiquities trade. There has certainly been increasingly organized subversion in the illicit antiquities trade since then, although whether the 1960s served as a temporal starting point for such organization remains to be seen.”

ARCA Blog: Is the illicit antiquities trade linked to money laundering, extortion, the drug and arms trades, terrorism and even slavery?

Alderman: “Claims that the illicit antiquities trade is connected with money laundering, extortion, the drug and arms trades, terrorism, and slavery, should be taken individually. The purchasing of illicit art and antiquities has long been a way to take cash gained from criminal activities and convert it to the ownership of goods, thereby concealing the source of the funds. Extortion would be more an issue for stolen artwork, and I have not observed a link between it and antiquities. As to terrorism, there are discrete instances of terrorist groups unearthing and exporting antiquities in their local regions, but these instances serve as indicators of a potential connection – not hard evidence. Finally, as to the alleged connection between illicit antiquities and the drug and arms trades or slavery, Eastern European mafias have been accused of trafficking in “everything from antiquities to humans.”

ARCA Blog: Thank you, Kim.

Readers can follow Kim Alderman at http://www.culturalpropertylaw.net.

By Catherine Schofield Sezgin

Last weekend ARCA's Director of Public and Institutional Relations, Colette Loll Marvin, lectured on "Curating Crime" to a group of students in the Arts Management program at the International Business School of Budapest.

Ms. Marvin spoke about several recent museum exhibitions dedicated to the subject of art crime, specifically forgery. Marvin has been conducting research for a documentary on the famed Hungarian forger Elmyr de Hory (1906-1976) who was arguably the most prolific forger of the twentieth century.

De Hory operated primarily in Europe and the United States for three decades and is alleged to have circulated hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of paintings into the art market, according to Marvin. Unable to find success in selling his own original works, Marvin said, De Hory turned his talents and Beaux Arts training towards the crafting of fake paintings in the style of Modigliani, Picasso, Matisse, Dufy, Vlamink and other Impressionist and Modernist masters.

“Fakes and forgeries were once the dirty little secret of the art world,” Marvin said. “No gallery, museum or auction house is entirely free from the embarrassment of a costly error of misattribution or faulty provenance. Duped museums can feel slightly vindicated, however, as there is a growing public fascination in these costly mistakes, as witnessed by the record crowds visiting exhibits dedicated to fakes, mistakes and misattributions.”

The latest exhibit, "Fakes, Forgeries and Mysteries" opened this weekend at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Detroit and examines 58 artworks from paintings to decorative arts in the museum's collection whose artist attribution and authenticity have changed since being donated or purchased by the institution.

Professor Jeff Taylor, an American art historian currently completing the doctoral program at Central European University on the subject of the historical evolution of the Hungarian art market, invited Marvin to speak to the class after being asked to serve as a Humanities advisor to her film project.

"Colette's presentation served as the ideal exclamation point to this section of the semester which had been focusing on the problems of the art market, particularly fakes, plunder, and restitution,” Taylor said. “I think the students got a full appreciation for how much these issues are being widely discussed, both in the many recent exhibitions which were shown, but also in terms of Colette's documentary project on Elmyr de Hory, and that seemed to generate a lot of interest among them in the ARCA Postgraduate program."

The Arts Management program at the International Business School of Budapest is a recently added program and boasts a curriculum designed to produce students that are well versed in the business aspects of the art market.

Ms. Marvin also gave a presentation to the undergraduate class about ARCA's Postgraduate Certificate in International Art Crime Studies.

ARCA’s courses include “Art Crime and Its History” by Noah Charney, founding director of ARCA; “Art in War” by Judge Arthur Tompkins of New Zealand; “Art Policing and Investigation” by Richard Ellis, former director of Scotland Yard Arts and Antiques Unit; and “Museums, Security, and Art Protection” taught in 2010 by Anthony Amore, Security Director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

ARCA’s Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies has taken place in Italy in the medieval town of Amelia in Umbria from June through August for the past two years and is accepting applications through January 3 for the 2011 program.

In addition, ARCA’s third annual International Art Crime Conference is scheduled for July 9th and 10 next summer in Amelia. Papers for the conference will be accepted in the spring.

Art Crime in Hungary

On November 5 1983, thieves robbed the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest and stole paintings by Raphael (Esterhazy Madonna and Portrait of a Young Man); Giorgione (Self-portrait), Tintoretto (Portrait of a Gentleman and Portrait of a Gentlewoman), and Tiepolo (Madonna and the Saints and Rest on the Flight into Egypt). All of the works, including Raphael’s Esterhazy Madonna, also known as Virgin and Child with St. John the Baptist, were recovered two months later by the Italian Carabinieri in an abandoned Greek Monastery near Aigio in northeast Greece. Operation Budapest was a joint investigation between the Italian Carabinieri, the Hungarian police, and the Greek Police.

The Old Gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest has a collection of 3,000 Old Master Paintings from the 13th to the 18th centuries, with more than 700 acquired from the Esterhazy estate, a noble family of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Inadequate physical maintenance may have made the museum vulnerable to thieves. A visitor to the Budapest museum in the 1980s described the 1906 building housing the collection as “in a sorry state” with “various roofs leaking and many of its masterpieces draped in sheets of polythene to protect them when rain fell.” The museum had been bombed in World War II and the construction of an underground railway may have damaged the building’s structure.

According to the Commission for Art Recovery, about 20 percent of all Western art in Europe was looted during the war. During World War II, the Hungarian government, a Nazi ally, confiscated art owned by Jews. The Hungarian government participated in the 1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets and agreed to work to identify Nazi-era looted art and opening museum archives for provenance research. However, the Jewish Claims Conference and World Jewish Restitution Organization claims that Hungary has disregarded the principles and not returned art looted from Holocaust victims.

The family of Baron Mar Lipot Herzog, a wealthy patron of the arts, who lived in Budapest and died in 1934, has sought restitution from Hungary with no success, according to a recent article by Judy Dempsey in the New York Times.

Hungary to Sell Communist Relics

Artdaily.org today published an article by Pablo Gorondi of the Associated Press about an upcoming auction in Budapest of the sale of 230 communist-era relics, including a life-size bust of former Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin.

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

German forgers may have used the records of a long-dead Jewish art dealer as provenance for as many as 35 second-tier French and German expressionist paintings sold through auction houses in Cologne and London which may have defrauded art collectors of more than 15 million Euros over the past two decades.

The alleged forgery activities of a German couple and their extended family and friends are detailed in a report in Der Spiegel with additional analysis by Mark Durney at Art Theft Central in October. Although only one painting has been confirmed as a fake, according to Der Spiegel, all of the paintings from two fictitious collections that claim to have been purchased through the same art dealer in Germany in the 1920 are now suspect. Many of the paintings are stamped with a fraudulent sticker trying to identify the artworks as from the Galerie Flechtheim.

Provenance of these suspected paintings may have been lifted from sales and exhibition catalogues from a Dusseldorf art gallery owned by the Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim who fled Nazi Germany when his business was confiscated in 1933. Der Spiegel reported that parts of his collection and documents from his business were lost. Flechtheim, who died in London in 1937, represented Pablo Picasso, George Braque, Paul Klee, George Grosz, and Max Beckmann and other painters in the 1920s who were later deemed by Nazi officials to have produced “degenerate art”. Galerie Alfred Flechtheim held exhibitions of works by André Durain, Juan Gris, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, and Paul Cézanne in 1929; and Edzard Dietz, August Renoir, Fernand Léger, Max Beckmann in 1928. A 1926 portrait of Alfred Flechtheim by Otto Dix hangs in the Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (see image above).

Flechtheim’s heirs have tired to recover about 100 paintings by artists such as Picasso, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, and Vincent van Gogh from German and American museums. In July 2010, the Fleichtheim heirs claimed a portrait of the actress Tilla Durieux by Oskar Kokoschka from the Museum Ludwig in Cologne (Zeit Online, translated, “He Was His Own Best Client Client,” July 8, 2010). Flechtheim’s gallery was taken over by the Nazis in 1933. Alex Vömel, the new ‘owner’, sold the Durieux portrait from Flechtheim’s private collection in 1934 for a price below the 1931 insurance value, according to the heirs’ lawyer, who also claim that there’s no record that Flechtheim received any proceeds from the sale.

In another litigation news, the heirs of George Grosz are pursuing the restitution of paintings they claim Grosz left on consignment with Flechtheim before Grosz also fled Germany in 1933.

ARCA warmly invites those in the Bay area to join us for some free drinks, nibbles, and lively discussion about art crime and cultural heritage protection. This is an excellent opportunity to meet ARCA staff, volunteers, and experts and professionals in the field of art crime. We look forward to seeing you there!

For further information email Joni Fincham, Managing Director director@artcrime.info