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May 24, 2013

Financial Times: Emma Jacobs profiles art investigator Dick Ellis (ARCA Lecturer) in "Lessons from an old master"

Emma Jacobs interviews former Scotland Yard detective Richard Ellis in "Lessons from an old master" (Financial Times, May 23, 2013) about how he goes about recovering stolen art as a private investigator. Jacobs reports that Ellis told her that he is one his way to meet with "someone who was classified as a former terrorist" because "that is how you learn to do stuff". Jacobs relays why Ellis believes art theft is a social problem reaching beyond a personal theft because stolen art is "being used as a currency to fund criminality, arms, drugs and terrorism". You can read the full article here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b27c1392-c2cf-11e2-bbbd-00144feab7de.html#ixzz3A5hsjn6S.

May 17, 2013

Padma Kaimal, author of "Scattered Goddesses: Travels with the Yoginis" traveled to museums to study the legacy from a lost temple in South India



Kait Murphy (ARCA '11) in front of 10th
century 
Kanchipuram yogini
at the Sackler Galleries of Art in
Washington D.C. 
Kait Murphy (ARCA 2011) interviews Padma Kaimal, the Author of “Scattered Goddesses: Travels with the Yoginis” which examines the cultural history, theft, and reunion of South Indian temple sculptures.

What happens to sacred objects lost over the centuries? What stories can they tell? Does their meaning change? Padma Kaimal, professor of art and art history and Asian studies at Colgate University, dreams of reuniting 10th century goddesses from a temple in South India. She chronicles the journey of these objects and their collective meaning.  Their creation, dispersal, theft, sale, and museum acquisitions paint a colorful history that has been pieced together to explore how and why objects travel around the globe.

In Kaimal's new book, "Scattered Goddesses: Travels with the Yoginis," we can look at the storied past of most (but not all) goddesses that once graced a now-lost temple in Kanchipuram, India.

Through Kaimal’s outreach to museums and scholars around the world, 19 sculptures re-emerged from the original 64 in museums and private collections planting the beginnings of a reunion and telling the tale of their travels, theft, sale, and current locations.

Some highlights from an interview with Padma Kaimal:
KM: How did you get involved in this project? 
PK: I became involved while looking at another 8th century monument in the same region and noticed the goddesses were really important.  Starting in 2003, I emailed museums and a bunch responded and invited me to look at their files. They would email scans of their images and I started diagramming and mapping where they all were. 
KM:  What is the history of the statues? 
PK: The only information to go on for dating them is from their style and comparison to carved objects in northern Tamilnadu in the first 3 quarters of the 10th c.  Sometime between the 10th c -19th c, the temple was broken into and each of the goddesses was damaged to some degree with features hacked off like their noses and hands.  Evidence from other research shows that all other religions were afraid of this sect of Hindu tantric goddesses.  This was a secret sect so most people viewing seductive powerful women were frightened and didn’t understand their message. 
At some point in the early 20th century, seven goddess sculptures were salvaged and reassembled into a new temple.  In 1926, a poor laborer reported to a French archeologist about interesting objects he found.  This archeologist sent photos and descriptions to an art dealer back in Paris, which traced the objects directly from India to France. 
Back in Paris, France, C.T. Loo was the single most important art dealer with access to Asian art. His markets were Europe and the United States.  He had high standards for the works he acquired. He re-educated museums on what they needed to be buying in terms of high art.  He got the museums on board and changed the collections.  His goal was about the art preservation and education in addition to being a profitable businessman.  Loo was behind the French archaeologist’s research in India and he paid his travel and room and board to find art.  Also perhaps involved in the acquisition of these objects was the British director of the Madras Government museum.  He was probably aware of the extraction and was able to retain two of the objects so that they would stay in Madras (now Chennai), India.  In 1926, Loo began to sell the objects to various collectors and museums with the last one sold in 1960. 
With the dispersal of the objects, the book exposes fragments along the path and helps   connect the vectors to figure out where the objects were and ended up.  There are still two goddesses that haven’t been found and it is thought that they are in private hands somewhere.  Further research will help continue the chase.  There is theft and rescue in this story but there is no separation between the good and bad guys.  The same people were acting with motives we admire as well as those we deplore. The goddesses will always be somewhere else, even if they are some day repatriated to India.  All trace of their original home has been lost. 
KM: What is the status of the project?
PK: I am continuing to travel around to the different museums I went to for the research where the statues are located. Now some of these museums want me to return to share with their communities the stories of these objects on permanent display. But they are displayed by themselves and have lost their context. 
One of my current projects is to go to each museum and re-contextualize the objects for curators and communities and those who support their museums.  I want them to be on board and know they have amazing objects.  Since government funding is disappearing and museums rely more on local buy in, that education is important. 
Some places identify the museums as the bad guys in cultural property theft appropriation, which is an unfortunate tendency of the blame game.  Museums are the last stop and we have to think about the whole chain of transport and extraction as well as the museums themselves. How do we support the museum’s responsibility and their response to the histories? We need to support them so they take care of the objects.  We also need to convince them to tell the journey of objects in the display.  Adding photographs and describing the long road of their history are important factors in leading to a reunion. 
KM: What's next?
PK: I will continue to speak to museums as long as they want me and I would be happy to help to broker some trades to begin to reunite the objects.  Each museum has one or a few object from various sites.  It may be possible to facilitate some switches to reassemble the goddesses in an historical recreation.  When you see these goddesses with each other, it is very exciting and they mean something different together than apart.  They are variations on a theme and share the same basic physical format but with different objects in hand, seated on platforms, different hair and eyes.  When the pattern emerges, it makes clear that visualizing Shakti, feminine force/power, was the part of the intent of the artists. 
The Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art in Washington DC, have put together an exhibition on yoga as a tantric practice which will open this October 2013. Kaimal is a consultant on which sculptures might join the Sackler Gallery’s Kanchipuram yogini. The exhibition will be open October 19, 2013 through January 26, 2014. 
Details on the exhibit can be found: http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/future.asp

May 15, 2013

Scottish Museums Close Tomorrow Morning as Part of a Three-Day Strike for Better Pay & Pensions

Last month the Louvre staff protested against pickpockets (following a series of strikes in 1999 and 2009 against reductions in staff). This month, the staff of two Edinburgh museums will begin a three-day strike tomorrow for better pay and better pensions, reports The Scotsman:

THE National Museum of Scotland and National War Museum will be closed until lunchtime tomorrow as part of a three-day strike over pay and pensions. Members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union began the series of strikes yesterday with staff from the justice sector. They will be joined today by staff from the two museums which has led to the early closures. 
A museum spokesman apologised for any inconvenience caused to visitors and said all of its museums would be open as normal from Thursday. He said: “Due to anticipated industrial action this week, the National Museum of Scotland and the National War Museum will be closing at 1pm today, and will not re-open until 1.30pm on Wednesday.
“The Tower Restaurant will remain open and access will be via the Tower entrance of the National Museum of Scotland as usual. The National Museum of Flight and the National Museum of Rural Life remain open.” 
The PCS began a campaign of industrial action on March 20, the day Chancellor George Osborne announced the Budget.

Decanter.com's John Stimpfig spotlights "The Wine Forger's Handbook" by wine journalist Stuart George and ARCA Founder Noah Charney

Wine connoisseur John Stimpfig spotlights the The Wine Forger's Handbook by wine journalist Stuart George and ARCA Founder Noah Charney in Decanter.com, the online publication of the international wine magazine:
The slim volume gives a short history of forgery and fraud in the wine world, before going on to detail two short case studies covering two of the best known alleged fine wine fraudsters of recent times: Hardy Rodenstock and Rudy Kurniawan. It also functions as a guide with practical tips and a checklist of actions on how to avoid becoming a victime of counterfeit wine. The book comes at a time when collector awareness and press interest in the subject of fraud has never been higher, after series of high-profile legal cases.
The ebook The Wine Forger's Handbook was published in March and can be ordered at Amazon.com.

Here's a link to a post on the ARCA blog about the FBI's investigation into wine fraud.

May 12, 2013

The Missing Piece: Mona Lisa, Her thief, The True Story Headed to Denver Art Museum this Friday and to the Biografilm Festival in Bologna in June

The Missing Piece: Mona Lisa, Her Thief, The True Story, the documentary about the 1911 theft of Leonardo da Vinci's now famous portrait of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo from the Louvre, premiered in Los Angeles at the Beverly Hills Film Festival on Saturday, May 11.

"We were thrilled to have The Missing Piece screen at Grauman's Chinese Theater for the Beverly Hills Film Festival," Director Joe Medeiros wrote to the ARCA Blog. "We had a very enthusiastic sold-out crowd.  It was our 9th festival and one of the best so far."

Medeiros bills the film as "the true story of how and why Vincenzo Peruggia, a simple Italian immigrant, stole the Mona Lisa and nearly got away with it".

The film will screen at the Denver Art Museum at 7 p.m. this Friday (May 17):
Come to a riveting and humorous documentary film about Vincent Peruggia, the man who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911, his 84-year-old daughter who thought he did it for patriotic reasons, and the filmmaker who spent more than 30 years trying to find the truth.  Written and produced by Joe Medeiros, former head writer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, this documentary combines historical photographs, animation and interviews with Peruggia’s descendants to examine how an unassuming housepainter from Italy pulled off “the greatest little-known heist in modern time.”  The producers will be present for Q&A after the film.
The international premiere of the movie will be at the Biografilm Festival in Bologna on Saturday June 15 and Sunday June 16.

Joe Medeiros, writer/director, and
Justine Medeiros, producer. 
ARCA Alum ('11) Tanya Lervik saw the movie last July in Georgetown and reviewed the movie here.

Last October Joe Medeiros weighed in on the Isleworth Mona Lisa, positioning that the painting had not been newly discovered but around for almost a century (see the ARCA blog post here).

This documentary is available for private screenings. Here are the project's links:

Twitter@monalisastolen

Updated May 15 to include information from the director Joe Medeiros.

May 11, 2013

Boston Globe's Todd Wallack on "Prized stolen art frequently resurfaces after decades"

John Singleton Copley (1738-1815)
Painting of William Ponsonby,
Second Earl of Bessborough, 1790
The Boston Globe's Todd Wallack points to the increased chance of recovery stolen art years after the theft in "Prized stolen art frequently resurfaces after decades" (May 10, 2013).

Wallack recounts the recovery of John Singleton Copley's portrait of William Ponsonby stolen from Harvard University in 1971 at the 2006 Stair Gallerie's Auction of items from the William M. V. Kingsland Estate. Melvyn Kohn, who went by the name of Kingsland, was later discovered to have died with a private collection of stolen art. Alex Acevedo, owner of The Alexander Gallery, had purchased the unattributed painting for $85,000 then discovered it had likely belonged to Harvard and contacted the FBI.

Wallack writes:
Art detectives say long-lost works like the Copley are increasingly turning up after going missing for ­decades, thanks in large part to readily available information on the Internet or in electronic databases. The trend is feeding hopes of art fans that the prized pieces taken from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 23 years ago could eventually surface as well. 
Though the vast majority of missing artwork is never recovered, stolen items are often discovered when they change hand, sometimes many years later, when brokers and buyers research the pieces online and through databases, according to brokers and others in the business.
“We’ve got recoveries happening every week,” said ­Christopher A. Marinello, an ­attorney for the Art Loss Register of London, which maintains an international database of more than 360,000 stolen, looted, disputed, or missing works around the world, including 1,000 from Massachusetts and hundreds of pieces from ­Harvard alone.
“It’s not that unusual to find artwork that has been lost for more than a quarter of a century,” Marinello said. “The valuable pieces either are recovered right away, or they go underground for a generation.”

Two years after the Stolen Aphrodite is returned, the Getty Museum Exhibits Objects from Sicily with the cooperation of the Italian Government

About two years ago, The Getty Museum returned a Greek statue (formerly known as Aphrodite) to Sicily and appointed James Cuno as chief of the institution infamously associated with stolen antiquities. Today one of the world's richest cultural institutions is cooperating with Italian authorities. "Sicily: Art and Invention between Greece and Rome" is an exhibit in Malibu co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Assessorato dei Beni Culturali e dell'Identità Siciliana.

The Getty's website includes for the exhibit a list of objects and book edited by Claire L. Lyons, curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum and a specialist in the archaeology of Sicily, Greece, and pre-Roman Italy; Michael Bennett, the Cleveland Museum of Art's first curator of Greek and Roman Art; and Clemente Marconi, James R. McCredie professor in the History of Greek Art and Archaeology at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts.

Objects include The Mozia Charioteer, a statue discovered in 1976 on the island of Mozia, the first Phoenician colony in Sicily. The book includes an article by maria Luisa Famà on the discovery and ongoing discussion about the interpretation of this object.

May 10, 2013

Norway Celebrates 150 Anniversary of Munch's birth; BBC Broadcast Interviewed Charley Hill last February on the Successful Return of The Scream in 1994

Celebrating the 150 anniversary of the birth of Edvard Munch, the National Museum and Munch Museum in Norway will exhibit more than 200 of the artist's paintings in "Munch 150" on June 2.

Here's a link to a BBC World Service broadcast last heard in February near the anniversary of the 1994 theft of Edvard Munch's The Scream. Charley Hill, former undercover police officer for Scotland Yard's Art and Antiquities Squad (his boss was ARCA Instructor Dick Ellis), describes how he posed as Chris Roberts, a consultant with the Getty Museum to negotiate the purchase of the stolen painting. The broadcast concludes the show with the statement that three of the four convicted of the theft successfully appealed on the grounds that Mr. Hill entered Norway under a fake passport.

Here's a summary of the facts on the 1994 theft as reported by the BBC.

Theresa Veier, an art history and lawyer in Oslo, wrote for the ARCA Blog about the artist and the theft of his work more than 65 years after Edvard Munch's death.

May 8, 2013

Wednesday, May 08, 2013 - , No comments

Raintree Publishes "Treasure Hunters Great Art Thefts" by Charlotte Guillain for Juvenile Market

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, ARCA blog Editor

Raintree, an imprint of Capstone Global Library out of Chicago, has published a book in its series on Treasure Hunters introducing the subject of art theft to middle-school readers.

In "Great Art Thefts", Author Charlotte Guillain highlights the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa; the 1990 burglary of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; the theft of Edvard Munch's The Scream in 1994; and the New Year's Eve theft in 2000 of Cézanne's View of Auvers-sur-Oise fron the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The book also opens the discussion on why art is targeted by thieves and what may happen to stolen works. A timeline, glossary of terms, and websites for additional information are provided along with an index.

Special appearances include Anthony Amore, director of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Charley Hill, 'ex-police officer who tracks down stolen art'; Alf Longhurst, museum and gallery security adviser; Superintendent John Carr of Oxford Police; Dr. Christopher Brown, director of the Ashmolean Museum; and Hugo Penning, head of security at the Ashmolean Museum. I had the pleasure of advising on early drafts -- relying upon my experience of introducing my own children to art and museums through the narratives of art thefts. 

Shipwreck Exhibit to Open End of the Month in NYC

Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. (NasdaqCM: OMEX) will exhibit silver recovered from the submerged ruins of a World War II at the show "Shipwreck!" in New York City's Discovery Times Square beginning May 24.

The company's press release explains that this will be the first public showing of treasures found last year:

Silver recovered from the World War II-era SS Gairsoppa shipwreck, which lies approximately three miles deep, will be on display. This is the first public showing of some of the 1,218 silver bars (approximately 48 tons) of silver recovered to date from the Gairsoppa, which is the heaviest and deepest recovery of precious metal from a shipwreck in history. 
In addition to the Gairsoppa silver, Odyssey is expanding the SHIPWRECK! Treasure Room to include a large selection of never-before-displayed coins from both the SS Republic and the “Tortugas” shipwrecks.
OMEX reported in the fourth quarter ending December 31, 2012:
The majority of the silver recovered in 2012 from the SS Gairsoppa shipwreck was sold in the quarter with fourth quarter proceeds of $30.1 million to Odyssey ($17.8 million of this was credited in third quarter to expenses as recoupment of project costs).
A management comment notes that the company 'salvaged 48 tons of silver from a depth of more than 15,000 feet.'

In other findings, Odyssey Marine reportedly retrieved treasure from the sunken Spanish galleon Buen Jesus y Nuestra Senora del Rosario. In 2012, Odyssey Marine turned over treasure recovered from an 18th century Spanish shipwreck to Spain where it is now on display.