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October 18, 2012

Kunsthal Rotterdam Art Heist: Conferring with Charley Hill, former Scotland Yard art detective and undercover agent

By Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief

Charley Hill, former Scotland Yard art detective (who helped to recover "The Scream") and private investigator, shared his expertise and opinion with the ARCA Blog on the Rotterdam art heist at the Kunsthal art gallery on October 16, 2012.

ARCA Blog: The space at the 20-year-old Kunsthal Rotterdam shows temporary exhibitions and has no permanent collection. Rotterdam Police have said that the Kunsthal had a very good technological security system but no on-site guards. Did this make the Triton Foundation's collection vulnerable to theft? After all, the exhibit featured paintings by artists known to fetch high prices at highly publicized auctions.
Mr. Hill: If a museum is to show works of great art, it cannot be Fort Knox, nor a high security prison. So whatever the security at a museum, and the state of its alarm system, it will be vulnerable to attack. The best system is a combination of locks, bolts, strengthened glass, CCTV (seeing someone walking around with a balaclava on should be a clue that all is not well, if anyone is watching the monitor) and alarms with good human resources managing them 24 hours a day. That is expensive, and most museums cannot afford that combination, but they should always aspire to it and try to achieve it as best they can, particularly when they have other people's art treasures on loan for an exhibition.
ARCA Blog: This month in Santa Monica, California, a private collector, Jeffrey Gundlach, recovered stolen art valued around $2 million after offering a reward. However, other paintings from art heists -- Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1972, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, and the Van Gogh Museum in 2002 have never been recovered. What are the chances of seeing these seven stolen works taken from the Triton Foundation while on display at the Kunsthal?
Mr. Hill: These stolen works of art are likely to turn up again because they were stolen in an intelligent way, probably little damaged. But overall, stealing masterpieces is the most stupid thing a thief or thieves can do. They are not readily realisable as cash assets. They are unsaleable on the open market. The values attributed to them, and I read in the Independent this morning here in London that a figure for all of the stolen pictures was put at £250 million. What nonsense.
I also read that they were for some secret collector and his secret collection. More stuff and nonsense. In my experience the only Captain Nemo or Dr. No character I have ever met who collected stolen works of art is George Ortiz of Geneva. He used to show anyone his superb collection of looted antiquities, and every one of his friends and enemies knows what he has got. His main friends are the city fathers of Geneva who are set to inherit it all, and his enemies begin with Lord Renfrew, the famous Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge University. Jules Verne and Ian Fleming (actually, Cubby Broccoli) invented all of that secret collector nonsense. These pictures will turn up in drugs raids and other searches over time, unless the police in Rotterdam get a good tip off soon and hit the place where they are stashed now.
ARCA Blog: The Santa Monica Police and Pasadena police in California were able to recover the stolen paintings from the Jeffrey Gundlach collection at a car stereo business and at a nearby residence. One of the paintings was recovered in Glendale during what appeared to be a sale preview. In the Gundlach robbery, the thieves also stole a Porsche and watches. This robbery is more focused on the art.
Mr. Hill: My view is that this theft was particularly well organised, done quickly and in the almost certain knowledge that the thieves and what they stole would be long gone by the time the police arrived. Also, the thieves were apparently not opportunists such as the two with a ladder at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam some years ago who smashed a window and took the two pictures nearest the broken glass, nor were they Balkan bandits with machine pistols like the ones who hit the Munch Museum in 2004, or the Buhrle Collection in Zurich a few years ago.
The closest pattern I know is of Irish Traveller raids on art in the 1980s through 2010. The pattern in Rotterdam the night before last was closer to that. See the art crimes of The General as he called himself, Martin Cahill of Dublin. Interestingly, one of Cahill's gang, George Mitchell, known as The Penguin, lives close to Rotterdam where he works in commodities with his Colombian, Russian, Dutch, Brit, Irish and other friends. I wonder if he has a part to play in this? He could do something about getting those pictures back, I'm sure, if any good Dutch police officer not in his pay asked him for some help.
Readers may read about Charley Hill's undercover work to recovery Edvard Munch's Scream stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo in 1994 in Edward Dolnick's book The Rescue Artist. The exploits of Dublin criminal Martin Cahill are told in Mathew Hart's book The Irish Game.

We emailed a few questions to Mr. Hill that he thought we should address to our readers in the hopes of generating a thoughtful discussion:
What about the Serbian gangs who had been involved in the theft of the two Turners from the Tate Gallery which had been on loan to Frankfurt (as documented in Sandy Nairne's book Art Theft and The Case of the Stolen Turners)? Do you think the paintings, if taken by someone like that Irish gangs, would be shipped into Britain? If you were to steal these paintings from Rotterdam, what country would you ship them to?

October 17, 2012

Rotterdam Art Heist: What is the Triton Foundation?

Book cover for a volume Yale Press
 is publishing this December
by Lynda Albertson, ARCA CEO

The Triton Collection was built over twenty years by Rotterdam oil and shipping magnate Willem Cordia and his wife Marijke van der Laan.  The collection includes approximately 250 paintings, drawings and pieces of sculpture.  The core of the collection consists of Western art dating from 1870 to 1970 and is reputed to be one of the 200 most important private collections in the world.

An entrepreneur and investor, Willem Cordia served as an officer with the Holland-America Line and later became a strategic investment developer and port magnate in Rotterdam.  His wife’s family was well known in the Dutch shipping world, making their fortune in the worldwide transport of dry bulk cargo like ore, coal and grain.  At the time of his death, Cordia's wealth was estimated at  € 330 million.

The Triton Collection was bequeathed to the Dutch Foundation Triton at the time of Cordia’s death.  Starting with the goal of making the collection and new acquisitions more accessible to the general public, the foundation’s overseers have loaned works from the collection to museums and temporary exhibitions.  Artworks from the collection have been loaned to international art museums such as the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, the Seoul Museum of Art and locally within the Netherlands to the Van Gogh Museum as well as the Hague Municipal Museum.

The Triton Collection focuses on innovators in modern art and includes artworks by Bonnard, Braque, Cézanne, De Kooning, Dufy, Fontana, Freud, Giacometti, Kelly, Klein, Manzoni, Modigliani, Mondrian, Monet, Picabia, Picasso, Stella, Uecker, Van Dongen, Van Gogh, and Vuillard.

From 2006 to 2011, Peter van Beveren served as curator of the Triton Foundation.  The Collection is now curated by Marlies Cordia-Roeloffs, daughter of Willem Cordia and his wife Marijke van der Laan.  The exhibit on loan to the Kunsthal Rotterdam from 7 October 2012 to 20 January 2013 included more than 150 artworks selected from over 100 different artists from the vanguard, the avant-garde of western art history.  Many of the works were on display for the first time publicly.

Between the evening of the 15th and the morning of the 16th of October 2012, the following seven paintings were stolen from the exhibition:

•           Pablo Picasso : Tête d'Arlequin (1971)
•           Henri Matisse : La Liseuse and Blanc et Jaune (1919)
•           Claude Monet : Waterloo Bridge, London (1901)
•           Claude Monet: Charing Cross Bridge, London (1901)
•           Paul Gauguin : Femme devant une fenêtre ouverte, dite la Fiancée (1888)
•           Meijer de Haan : Autoportrait (circa 1889-1891)
•           Lucian Freud : Woman with Eyes Closed (2002)

Rotterdam Art Heist: The Day After

by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief

Questions remain the day after seven stolen paintings estimated to be worth "tens of millions" remain missing from the Kunsthal art gallery when yesterday morning the 20-year-old building's "state of the art" security system alerted private security, then the Rotterdam police, that the contemporary art space had been robbed.  A Picasso, two Monets, a Gauguin, a Matissee -- five of the paintings were attributed to artists favored by thieves for their fame and perceived value -- plus another by Lucien Freud (famous contemporary artist) and Meijer de Haan (1852-1895), whose name may not be as recognizable but the Dutch artist's paintings are in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena (Meyer de Haan painted with Gauguin in Brittany).

Here are links to CBS News (video and text) on the heist and speculation as to whether or not it was an inside job because, as discussed by Chris Marinello of The Art Loss Register, the theft "just went too smoothly".   In the later segment, CBS News correspondent John Miller, a former FBI deputy director, describes art thieves not as sophisticated urbanites (see Pierce Brosnan in The Thomas Crown Affair) but "knuckleheads" who put a lot of time into taking the paintings but will either seek assistance in selling the paintings that usually involves undercover agents, or will try to ransom the paintings back to the insurance company, or will keep the paintings for years as a 'get out of jail card'.

The question after an art heist is more overwhelmingly not who took the paintings but when or if they will ever be recovered.  Listing the stolen paintings into the database of The Art Loss Register, with the media, and other law enforcement agencies is meant to stop the sale of the works through legitimate art dealers and auction houses.

In Kate Connolly's piece yesterday in The Guardian ("Rotterdam art thieves take valuable paintings in dawn heist"), "security experts speculated that the thieves might have taken advantage of Rotterdam's port -- one of the largest in the world -- to swiftly move the paintings abroad" and that the paintings could have been "stolen to order" or held for ransom.

According to the Associated Press (published online here with the Winnipeg Free Press), Dutch police are following up on "15 tips from the public", "studying video surveillance images", and have "focused their attention on a rear door that thieves most likely used to get into the gallery before snatching the paintings."

Here DutchNews.nl reports that the Kunsthal reopened Wednesday and replaced the spaces formerly occupied by the stolen paintings with works from the Triton Foundation (and notes that journalists outnumbered visitors inside the museum).

The Journal of Art Crime, Fall 2012: Columnist David Gill on "Fragmented Pots, Attributions and the Role of the Academic" in Context Matters

In the Fall 2012 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, columnist David Gill writes on "Fragmented Pots, Attributions and the Role of the Academic" in Context Matters:
In January 2012 the Italian government announced the return of some 40 archaeological fragments from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  The fragments had been bequeathed by a deceased American collector ("riconducibili alla collezione privata di un cittadino americano, deceduto").  The following day, the Italian journalist Fabio Isman reported, in Il Messaggero, that the anonymous collector was, in fact, Dietrich von Bothmer (Isman 2012).  Isman was able to add that some of these 40 fragments were part of objects that had already been returned to Italy from North American collections, or from objects that had been seized by the Carabinieri.  Bothmer had himself indicated that he "always gave fragments of mine when they would fit another vase in the collection" (Nørskov 2002:31). 
The Italian report specifically added the information that some of the fragments came from the Onesimos cup, returned by the J. Paul Getty Museum and now on display in the Villa Giulia in Rome (Sgubini 1999; Godart and De Caro 2007:78-79, no. 10); see Gill and Chippindale 2006: 312).  The first parts of the cup were acquired in 1983 from "the European art market" (Walsh 1984: 246, no. 73, inv. 83.AE.362).  At the time, it has been presented to the Museum, accession number 84.AE.8:" its acquisition was reported the following year (Walsh 1985: 169, no. 20, inv. 84.AE.80; see Williams 1991).  Further fragments, from the "European art market", were added in 1985 (Walsh 1986: 191, no. 47, inv. 85.AE.385.1-2).  It is significant that Dyfri Williams, who published the "Getty" cup, noted that he was shown photographs of "a rim fragment, made up of three pieces" in November 1990.  He does not specify who owned the pieces.  Subsequent research has shown that the fragments were derived from Galerie Nefer (owned by Frida Tchacos-Nussberger), and the Hydra Gallery (Gill and Chippindale 2006: 312).
David Gill teaches at University Campus Suffolk, Ipswich, England.  He is a former Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome and was a member of the Department of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.  He has published widely on archaeological ethics with Christopher Chippindale.  He has recently completed a history of British archaeological work in Greece prior to the First World War.

You may read Dr. Gill's Context Matters by subscribing to The Journal of Art Crime through the ARCA website.

October 16, 2012

Experts opine professional thieves may have stolen seven paintings from Rottendam gallery for ransom or to be sold later on the black market for a fraction of their worth

Monet's "Charing Cross Bridge, London" 1901/AP
On October 7, Kunsthal Rotterdam, a showcase of temporary exhibitions, opened "Avante Garde" to celebrate the art gallery's 20 anniversary and to display for the first time in public 150 works collected by Willem and Marijke Cordia-Van der Laan.  Just nine days later, the Kunsthal's alarm system went off shortly after 3 a.m., alerting the exhibition hall's private security detail.  Security personnel arriving by car noticed that seven paintings were missing and informed the Dutch police who began their investigation -- sending in a forensics team to fingerprint the area and collect any physical evidence, interviewing potential witnesses in the area, and reviewing security camera footage.

Monet's "Waterloo Bridge, London" 1901/AP
Within hours, Dutch police and museum officials released the names of the stolen artwork: Pablo Picasso's "Tete d'Arlequin"/"Harlequin Head" (1971); Claude Monet's "Waterloo Bridge, London" (1901) and "Charing Cross Bridge, London" (1901); Henri Matisse's 'La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune'/"Reading Girl in White and Yellow" (1919); Paul Gauguin's 'Femme devant une fenêtre ouverte, dite la Fiancée'/"Girl in Front of Open Window"/(1898); Meyer de Haan's 'Autoportrait'/"Self-Portrait"/ (circa 1890); and Lucian Freud's "Woman with Eyes Closed" (2002). (The images of the paintings here were provided by the Rottendam police to the Associated Press and made available through Spiegel Online).

Gauguin's "Girl in Front of Open Window" 1898
According to security consultant Ton Cremers, the high visibility of the art through the art gallery windows was more of a vulnerability than the lack of night time security guards who could have been taken hostage.  Noah Charney, founder of ARCA, writes that the paintings were likely stolen for ransom.  Chris Marinello of the Art Loss Registry also speculates that the paintings would be ransomed or sold for a fraction of their worth.  Retired Scotland Yard art detective and private investigator Charley Hill believes that the thieves were professionals.

The Kunsthal gallery, normally closed on Mondays, remained closed on Tuesday for the police investigation but planned to reopen on Wednesday.

Picasso's "Harlequin Head" 1971
Spiegel Online offers a photo gallery of the crime scene and the stolen artworks.

Matisse's 1919 "Reading Girl in White and Yellow"
Meyer de Haan's "Self-Portrait" c. 1890


Press conference on Rotterdam art heist

Lucien Freud's "Woman with Eyes Closed"
Journalist Niels Rigter of metronieuws.nl in The Netherlands pointed to the press conference on today's art heist in which seven paintings were stolen from the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam.

Mr. Rigter forwarded to the ARCA blog the link to the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Police's website and the two press releases on this art theft:

http://www.politie-rotterdam-rijnmond.nl/over-ons/actueel/detail.aspx?id=1
Police show pictures of stolen Kunsthal paintings

http://www.politie-rotterdam-rijnmond.nl/over-ons/actueel/detail.aspx?id=2
Police investigating burglary at the Kunsthal

Here on metronieuws.nl museum officials announce that the Kunsthal will reopen on Wednesday, that no security guards were on site at night, and that the paintings were insured.

 Henri Mattise's La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune
 painting before theft.  Photo credit Reuters




Two hooks on the wall mark the place where
 the stolen Henri Mattise's La Liseuse en Blanc
 et Jaune 
painting was hanging.
Photo credit Reuters

Early morning art theft at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam

CNN: "An investigator searches the Rotterdam Kunsthal
 museum after a pre-dawn break-in on October 16, 2012.
  Photo by AFP/Getting Images".
By Lynda Albertson, ARCA CEO

Limited news coming out on the theft early this morning at the Kunsthal, an art gallery in Rotterdam.  Police are reviewing videotape footage from the museum and are asking for any possible witnesses to the crime to please contact them.

According to Ben Brumfield reporting for CNN ("Famous modern art stolen from museum in the Netherlands") with a contribution from Journalist Dominique Van Heerden:
The Kunsthal's alarm system went off shortly after 3 a.m. local time, alerting the exhibition hall's private security detail.  When security staffers arrived by car, they saw that the paintings were missing, Rotterdam police spokesman Roland Ekkers said.  They informed police, who started an investigation.
The Association Press via NPR ("Picasso, Matisse, Monets Stolen from Dutch Museum") reports:
Seven paintings by artists including Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet were stolen ... The theft at the Kunsthal museum is one of the largest in years in the Netherlands, and is a stunning blow for the private Triton Foundation collection, which was being exhibited publicly as a group for the first time.
The stolen works were Picasso's 1971 "Harlequin Head"; Monet's 1901 "Waterloo Bridge, London" and "Charing Cross Bridge, London"; Henri Matisse's 1919 "Reading Girl in White and Yellow"; Paul Gaugin's 1898 "Girl in Front of Open Window"; Meyer de Haan's "Self-Portrait," around 1890, and Lucian Freud's 2002 work "Women with Eyes Closed".
The museum's director Emily Ansenk had been in Istanbul, Turkey, on business but was returning Tuesday.
The Kunsthal (above, photo provided by Kunsthal) was
designed by Rem Koolhaas/Office for Metropolitan Architecture
Part of the twentieth anniversary celebrating the Kunsthal art gallery, the exhibition ‘Avant-Gardes' (which opened October 7) displayed works from the Triton Foundation assembled by the now deceased shipping industrialist, Willem Cordia and his wife Marijk Cordia-Van der Laan.   According to ARTnews the Triton Foundation collection belongs to the global top 200 most important collections.

Through the Kunsthal website, Willem van Hassel, Chairman of the Board, wrote in "Theft in the Kunsthal":
Due to the theft which occurred in the Kunsthal Rotterdam last night, the Kunsthal is closed to the public today. All contacts with the press run through the Information Department of the police (+31 10 - 274 8107). Concerning the ongoing investigation, no further statements will be made until further notice.
Reporter Charles Onians for AFP ("Picasso, Monet, Matisse stolen from Dutch museum") reports that Rotterdam police are collecting forensic evidence at the scene of the art heist and describes the robbery as "well-prepared" in a quiet area of the Rotterdam museum park.  The AFP lists the seven stolen paintings:
Pablo Picasso's "Tete d'Arlequin"
Henri Matisse's "La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune"
Claude Monet's "Waterloo Bridge, London" and "Charing Cross, London"
Paul Gaugin's "Femme Devant une Fenetre Ouverte, dite La Fiancee"
Meyer de Haan's "Autoportrait"
Lucian Freud's "Woman with Eyes Closed".

The Journal of Art Crime, Fall 2012: "Planning Revenge: Art Crime and Charles Frederick Goldie" by Penelope Jackson

In the Fall 2012 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, Penelope Jackson writes about "Planning Revenge: Art Crime and Charles Frederick Goldie":
Charles Frederick Goldie is one of New Zealand's best-loved artists.  His portraits of Maori have been the victims of theft, vandalism, and forgery for decades.  Goldie's portraits remain highly prized and valuable.  This article highlights and gives an overview of the art crime that Goldie's oeuvre attracts, and offers some explanations behind what has become a catalogue of illegal practice.
Penelope Jackson is the Director of the Tauranga Art Gallery Toi Tauranga, New Zealand.  She holds an M. Phil (University of Queensland) in Art History and an MA (Hons) in Art History (University of Auckland).  The author of Edward Bullmore: A Surrealist Odyssey (2008) and The Brown Years: Nigel Brown (2009), she has contributed to The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography and journals including Art New Zealand, Art Monthly Australia, Studies in Travel Writing and Katherine Mansfield Studies.

You may read this article by subscribing to The Journal of Art Crime through the ARCA website.

October 15, 2012

"Fingerprinting Objects for the Control of Illegal Trafficking" by Dr. W. (Bill) Wei in The Journal of Art Crime, Fall 2012

In the Fall 2012 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, Dr. W. (Bill) Wei writes on "Fingerprinting Objects for the Control of Illegal Trafficking":
One of the main problems in the fight against the illegal trafficking of objects of cultural heritage is their irrefutable identification. Provenances, photographs, expert testimonials and other written documents can always be fabricated or forged. This makes it difficult for customs officials, law enforcement agencies, and hoest buyers and sellers to determine if an objects has been illegally acquired. An excellent solution to this problem has been provided by a recently completed European project, FINGaRtPRINT. It makes use of the non-contact measurement of the micro-roughness of an object at a location selected by the owner. The micro-roughness can be measured on a scale of less than a micrometer (thousandth of a millimeter), that, is, less than the size of a pigment particle. At that scale, the roughness is unique and can thus serve as an identifying "fingerprint" of the object. It is not forgeable, assuming that a criminal even knows where on the object it was taken. The fingerprint can thus serve as a key component of an "object passport" which can be used to control the sale and purchase of objects. While some optimization work is necessary, the major obstacle to the successful application of the FINGaRtPRINT system is the long process is required for the development and acceptance of international laws for illegal trafficking. The partners of the FINGaRtPRINT project are therefore looking to private investors, collectors, and museums to develop an international fingerprint/passport system in order to accelerate this law making process.
Bill Wei is a senior conservation scientist for the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage.  He has a B. S. E. in Mechanical Engineering (Princeton University, USA 1977), and a Ph.D. in Materials Science (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA 1983).  Dr. Wei was initiator and head of the FINGaRtPRINT project and is coordinator of the ICOM-CC Working Group Legal Issues in Conservation.  His research includes the effect of aging and treatments on the appearance and perception of objects of cultural heritage, and the effect of vibrations on their condition.

You may read this article by subscribing to The Journal of Art Crime through the ARCA website.

October 12, 2012

The Journal of Art Crime, Fall 2012: "Repatriation via the Art Market: A New Type of Recovery, New Trends Coming from China" by Johanna Devlin

In the Fall 2012 electric edition of The Journal of Art Crime, Johanna Devlin writes on "Repatriation via the Art Market: A New Type of Recovery, New Trends Coming from China":
The aim of this study is to highlight new trends in the art market and the different ways in which issues concerning ownership of cultural objects have been revealed. In investigating the reasons behind the repatriation of Chinese art via the art market and analyzing its impacts on the art market, this paper will try to uncover what lies behind this new type of recovery.
Ms. Devlin is a graduate of the ARCA Post-Graduate Certificate Program and King's College London. she has worked at Christie's and has studied in China.  She is currently based in Paris.

Here's a link to ARCA's website and information regarding subscribing to The Journal of Art Crime.