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June 17, 2014

The Knoedler Case: NYT's Cohen questions how art dealers weren't suspicious when artist signature was misspelled

Journalist Patricia Cohen in her June 11 article in The New York Times, "Note to Forgers: Don't Forget to Spell Check", says the misspelled artist signature was a clue:
When angry collectors started suing Knoedler & Company for selling dozens of multimillion-dollar forgeries, the gallery’s former president, Ann Freedman, insisted that she and her colleagues had had no reason to think that any of the paintings were counterfeit. “If Ann Freedman had any questions about these works, she and her husband would not have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in them,” her lawyer, Nicholas A. Gravante Jr., said of the paintings attributed to modern masters like Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. Now, newly released documents in a continuing civil case show that at least one of the works bought in 2000 by Ms. Freedman herself contained a prominent clue that something was awry. The artist’s signature was spelled incorrectly: Pollok instead of Pollock.
You can finish reading Ms. Cohen's article online for The New York Times.

Attorney James C. Moore will discuss the Knoedler case ("The Fall of the House of Knoedler: Fakes, Deception and Naiveté") on June 28 at ARCA's Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Art Crime Conference in Amelia.

History of Art Crime: Fabio Isman's 1992 reporting of the discovery of Caravaggio's "The Taking of Christ" in Dublin

The National Gallery of Ireland's "The Taking of Christ"
Caravaggio, 1602
by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

Jonathan Harr's The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece (Random House, New York, 2005) -- includes the story of how Fabio Isman, an Italian journalist who regularly attends ARCA's Art Crime Conference in Amelia (and a key advisor to ARCA), broke the news that a restorer at the National Gallery of Ireland, Sergio Benedetti, had found Caravaggio's "The Taking of Christ" (1602) at the residence of the Society of Jesus in Dublin.

Harr recounts how in 1992, Isman, an investigative journalist with Rome's daily newspaper Il Messaggero, heard from scholar Sir Denis Mahon that another Caravaggio masterpiece had been found. Mahon would did not specify the work or the location, but Isman persisted in ferreting out the information by calling 'one Caravaggio scholar after another' and chancing upon 'a Caravaggio show with no Caravaggios except for The Supper at Emmaus, which Dublin had somehow managed to get on loan from London.'

This book describes how scholars hunt for authenticity through archives and publications, the differences between record keeping in Britain and Italy, and the competition amongst researchers. A perfect warmup to ARCA's Conference June 27-29 in Amelia.

ARCA Lecturer Dorit Straus Elected to Board of Directors for AXA Art

Art insurance specialist AXA Art announced last week the election of fine art insurance expert Dorit Straus to its Board of Directors:
Ms. Straus is an accomplished professional with a successful career in providing solutions on art and insurance matters, globally. She is widely recognized for her expertise in insurance and risk transfer needs of museums and cultural institutions, auction houses, galleries and private collectors. She has broad proficiency in legal issues relating to confiscation, repatriation and provenance.... For over 30 years, Dorit Straus has been an important contributor to the fine art insurance industry. She has authored commentary on the implications of art theft on the insurance industry and on insuring art. She currently serves on the faculty of ARCA (the Association for Research on Crimes Against Art) teaching a course on art crime and insurance in Amelia, Italy.
Ms. Straus will teach "Insurance Claims and the Art Trade" in July. She also recently joined Chris Marinello at Art Recovery International.

June 16, 2014

Monday, June 16, 2014 - ,,, No comments

Art or crime? Palais de Tokyo exhibits graffiti artists who have been arrested for their works

Artdaily.org's Hugo Vitrani (who is identified as a "curator") has written here about the graffiti exhibit, LASCO PROJECT #3, at the Palais de Tokyo, pointing to both the awards and the arrest records of some of the artists:
Successions of black windows, balconies, shadows, satellite dishes: Evol (b. 1970, lives and works in Berlin) highjacks urban space with his stencils of miniature housing projects, placing the peripheral, the invisible, at the heart of cities and institutions. His installation work was awarded the Prix Arte/ Slick in 2010. His scattering of buildings in ruins is a pointed comment on the failure of an architectural and political utopia. Arrested by the police’s anti-graffiti task force in 2012, Cokney (b. 1985, lives and works in Paris) was tried and was fined over 200,000 euro for his illegal paintings on trains and subway cars, a decision which he contested. This incident, and the publicity it received, compelled the artist to eschew the secrecy and clandestinity typically associated with graffiti art, paradoxically allowing him to own up to—and even lay claim—to his work. A celebrated tattoo artist, Cokney worked at Seen (NYC) before setting up at Hand In Glove (Paris). In his installation at the Palais de Tokyo, Cokney combines paintings with the estimates, complaints and reports generated during his trial, thus emphasizing that the police archives and the judicial examination of his work constitute an integral part of his production. More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/70804/Palais-de-Tokyo-in-Paris-brings-together-the-works-of-various-graffiti-and-street-artists#.U58cPJSwKwI[/url] Copyright © artdaily.org
In 2012, Fernanda Hinke wrote in Underground Paris about another exhibit on graffiti culture, including an explanation about urbex -- the creation of "artistic interventions" in abandoned spaces or places forbidden to the public such as the Mines of Paris.

Related topics: Caitlin Willis wrote about graffiti in contemporary Rome in The Journal of Art Crime; Harvard's Robert Darnton spoke about graffiti at the Getty in 2011; and this post discussed the exhibit at the Geffen in 2011.

June 12, 2014

Report from ARCA Amelia '14: Inside the lecture hall, Dick Ellis on art investigations and Tom Flynn on the art market; outside: students explore Narni and Amelia

by Paula Carretero, ARCA '14 Intern

Friday, June 30th marked the official start of the 2014 Graduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection, with the arrival of the students to Italy. Students managed to arrive and find their way from Rome to Amelia after navigating the occasionally chaotic Italian transport infrastructure. The bus strike going on that day for sure made it interesting for the students, but everyone arrived safely to the welcome cocktail at La Locanda del Conte Nitto , one of the restaurants in town that, friendly as always, took in all the ARCA students as a welcome to the start of the summer. Over the weekend, students started exploring the city and guided tours were organized during which some of the city’s most wonderful corners were discovered. Among them, students walked into the centro storico of the town, wandering through the medieval streets and exploring some wonderful places: such as the Duomo, the Roman cisterns, and the Teatro Sociale
"Interns in the Cisterns" by Camille Knop

Week one of classes started with Dr. Tom Flynn, a RICS-Accredited Art Market and Art Appraisal lecturer at Kingston University in London.  His course in this year's program was “The International Art Market and Associated Risk.” Though the first half of the week, students explored the history and evolution of the art market; how early collections were gathered in the Cabinets of curiosities (also known as Kunstkabinett, Kunstkammer, Wunderkammer, Cabinets of Wonder, and wonder-rooms); the mechanisms of auctions houses, dealers and collectors; and issues on the value of art. The vast experience of Dr. Flynn, and the relaxed atmosphere in class, helped in creating interesting debates that were enriched by the multiple backgrounds of students from all over the world.

Dick Ellis took over the second half of the week with the course on “Art Policing, Protection and Investigating.” The founder of Scotland Yard’s Art & Antiquities squad introduced the students to the world of art theft, covert operations, money laundering using art, and the mechanism of organized crime as well as thieves motivations to steal art. By the end of the week, students were blown away by the vast experience of Professor Ellis and his generosity in sharing his wisdom with the class.

View from the top of Narni (Photo by 
ARCA Intern Camille Knop)
After this first week full of activities, and with the students’ heads full of plenty of new and valuable knowledge, a well-deserved weekend break arrived. Some of the students, using their remaining energy, took part in a trip to Narni on Saturday, a nearby town. The students enjoyed discovering and walking around the medieval-like streets of the town and went to visit some of the most important monuments like Rocca Albornoz, a 14th century fortress that became the home of popes and cardinals. In Subterranean Narni, the guided tour included the old convent of San Domenico, ancient Roman water tanks, prison cells used during the Inquisition, and 12th century frescoes in a medieval church (here's a link to an article on archaeologist Robert Nini who discovered the former Benedictine abbey in 1979 through an entrance from an old man's garden).

The ones who stayed in Amelia did not miss the chance to explore in their own way. Some of them went to the movie club organized at Chiostro Boccarini each weekend and started getting to know and interact with the Amerini, the citizens of Amelia, to confirm that they are as friendly as their reputation says. Finally, and to help fight the hot temperatures that are starting to arrive, some of the students spent some time hanging out around the pool house and recovering energy for the upcoming weeks. Summer has just arrived and courses are just beginning, but many other adventures are yet to come.

June 9, 2014

Art or Crime: Performance artist Deborah De Robertis re-enacts Courbet's "L'origine du monde" in Musee d'Orsay

Performance artist Deborah De Robertis in Musée d'Orsay
(Luxemburger Wort, screenshot of YouTube video)
by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

As reported by Luxemburger Wort last week in "Luxembourg artist flashes Paris museum-goers", performance artist Deborah De Robertis exposed her female genitalia in front of Gustave Courbet's L'origine du monde (1866) in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris on May 29:
Dressed in a gold sequin dress, the artist walked into the museum on May 29, sat down below the painting and spread her legs to reveal her vagina in a reflection of the artwork, which shows a woman's genitals and abdomen under the title The Origin of the World. A museum guard alerted police who took De Robertis into custody for indecent exposure. However, the prosecution decided not to press charges and the Luxembourg artist was released. Speaking to wort.lu, De Robertis explained that her performance was not simply an act of exhibitionism, but a reflected action, creating a new tableau in play with the original artwork. An invitation to the performance, distributed to a limited number of people, said that De Robertis aims to destabilise power relations, as well as reflecting on relationships between men and women, and artists and control over their work.
The video De Robertis posted on YouTube shows the performance artist somberly performing while two security guards engage with the artist and a supportive -- as evidenced by their clapping -- audience. Museum officials are shown to be clearing the room while the artist performs.

Here another video shows the new gallery at the Musée d'Orsay dedicated to the larger paintings by Gustave Courbet -- and a close up of the controversial L'origine du monde which entered the French national collection in 1995. It was originally in the collection of Khalil-Bey, an Ottoman diplomat and art collector. Last year, the foremost Courbet scholar claimed to have found the "face" of "L'Origine du Monde".

Art Crime with Judge Arthur Tompkins on New Zealand's National Radio: The 1961 Theft of Francisco de Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington

Francisco de Goya, The Duke of Wellington, 1812-1814
oil on mahogany, 64.3 x 52.4 cm
Judge Arthur Tompkins, who teaches "Art in War" for ARCA's certificate program, appears monthly with Kim Hill on New Zealand's National public radio. This month, he discusses the 1961 theft from the National Gallery of London of Francisco de Goya's Duke of Ellington. Previous shows covered the Four Horses of San Marcos and the Ghent Altarpiece.

Judge Tompkins talks about the myth of the theft, the suspected "real" thief, and the legislation that followed.

Here's a link to the painting at the National Gallery of London where you can find it on display in Room 39.

And here's a direct link to the broadcast.

Art Detective: the website designed to identify works of art in UK public collections

Here's a link to a website with an intriguing name ("Art Detective") by the Public Catalogue Foundation at The University of Glasgow who's mission is to identify works of art in art collections in the United Kingdom:
Art Detective aims to improve knowledge of the UK’s public art collection. It is a free-to-use online network that connects public art collections with members of the public and providers of specialist knowledge. Art Detective Launched in March 2014, Art Detective comprises a digital network built on top of the Public Catalogue Foundation’s (PCF) existing art object database. Art Detective is accessed through the Your Paintings website and the PCF website.
www.LostArt.de posted about Art Detective here

June 8, 2014

ARCA's 2014 Writer in Residence: Forensic Archaeologist Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis writing about the Symes-Michaelides archive

Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis
Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis will be ARCA's 2014 Writer in Residence in Amelia, Italy from June 27th through August 9, 2014.

Each year, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art honors distinguished and emerging writers, specializing in art crime and cultural heritage preservation, by inviting them to spend a portion of their summer with us working on a book or manuscript project. Designed to promote critical and reflective writing, the Amelia Writer in Residence Program reflects ARCA’s belief that the basis for any critical and comprehensive writing involves the opportunity for contemplation, research, collaboration and support.

Christos Tsirogiannis, a Greek forensic archaeologist, studied archaeology and history of art in the University of Athens. He worked for the Greek Ministry of Culture from 1994 to 2008, excavating throughout Greece and recording antiquities in private hands. He voluntarily cooperated with the Greek police Art Squad on a daily basis (August 2004 – December 2008). He was a member of the Greek Task Force Team that repatriated looted, smuggled and stolen antiquities from the Getty Museum, the Shelby White/Leon Levy collection, the Jean-David Cahn AG galleries, and others. Since 2007, Tsirogiannis has been identifying antiquities in museums, galleries, auction houses, private collections and museums, depicted in the confiscated Medici, Becchina and Symes-Michaelides archives, notifying public prosecutor Dr. Paolo Giorgio Ferri and the Greek authorities. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, on the international illicit antiquities network viewed through the Robin Symes–Christos Michaelides archive.

Dr. Tsirogiannis explained his work, Unravelling the hidden market of illicit antiquities: The Robin Symes–Christos Michaelides network and its international implications:
This study is the first academic approach to an immense and incriminating body of material: the confiscated photographic archive of Robin Symes and Christos Michaelides, the top antiquities dealers in the world until 1999. I show how this archive interacts with the archives previously confiscated from the dealers Giacomo Medici and Gianfranco Becchina. Forensic research by Italian and Greek police authorities on those archives first proved that - from at least 1972 until 2006 - the antiquities market was based largely on looted and smuggled objects, controlled by an international network of looters, middlemen, dealers, auction houses, conservators, academics, museums and private collectors. During the last seven years, this situation has worsened, despite the convictions of Symes, Medici, Becchina and multiple repatriations of their looted and smuggled antiquities from North American museums, collectors and dealers to Italy. My PhD tackled this most recent period. 
The project of demonstrating the involvement of reputable institutions, companies and individuals in the illicit antiquities trade, as well as the corruption of the art market, is by its nature interdisciplinary; its results are important for the fields of archaeology, art history, criminology, politics and law. I brought to the PhD a unique combination of an academic background in archaeology and extensive work experience in the field. Following my undergraduate degree, I was employed for several years by the Greek ministry of Culture as an archaeologist before receiving an invitation to work on the exposure of the international illicit antiquities network with the Greek Police Art Squad. My specific interest in Symes-Michaelides comes from the fact that I participated in the police raid on their home on Schinousa, from where the archive was seized, and I was later the sole investigator of the contents, working as forensic archaeologist at the Greek Ministry of Justice. 
The PhD began with a historical review, and then surveyed the main members of the international illicit antiquities network (ch. 1). I systematically catalogued the contents of the Symes-Michaelides archive (ch. 2) and then outlined, with examples, the ways in which Symes traded with Medici and Becchina (ch. 3). The central chapter documents ways in which academics from reputable institutions were involved in ‘laundering’ this illicit material, via publications then used by museums and auction houses (ch. 4). In the last main chapter, I presented and analyzed a series of hitherto undiscovered cases of illicit antiquities in the antiquities market, mainly in auction houses since 2007. My conclusion drew out the wider picture (implications) from the network’s activities and suggested solutions towards different attitudes in antiquities trading, as well as fighting the antiquities trafficking. 
The project I would be concerned with as Writer-in-Residence this summer, therefore, is the transformation of the completed PhD into a book. As well as editing the text, I need to update the story of some individual case studies, and my description of the ways in which protagonists are selling artifacts. The PhD was about 77,000 words, plus three appendices of transcripts etc. and bibliography; I expect that the book would be c.100,000 words all told. I am currently putting together a book proposal to send to publishers in the next month; I hope that by July I would have a sense of what the publisher requires by way of editing and expansion. 
The ARCA Writer-in-Residence also offers me a rare opportunity to check the publications of auction houses, galleries, museums and private collections kept in libraries in Rome. These publications have proved valuable to forensic archaeologists Maurizio Pellegrini and Daniela Rizzo in the identification of dozens of antiquities from the same archives (Medici, Becchina, Symes) for the Italian state during the period 1995-2008. No library in Europe has a complete series of auction house -- and gallery -- publications, but I expect to add to my own catalogue from a systematic check in Rome, due to the recent successful repatriation claims of the Italian state.
 Dr. Tsirogiannis will also teach "Unravelling the Hidden Market of Illicit Antiquities: Lessons from Greece and Italy".

June 7, 2014

Marc Balcells reviews Robert Bevan's "The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War" in the Spring 2014 issue of The Journal of Art Crime

Marc Balcells, a criminologist and an associate editor for The Journal of Art Crime, reviews Robert Bevan's 2006 book, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War (Reaktion Books) in the Spring 2014 issue:
I was drawn to Robert Bevan’s book after conducting a literature review for an article I was working on. After reading the sections I was interested in, I left the book nearby, as I was eager to read the entirety of its contents the sooner the better. Bevan, former editor of the magazine Building design, chronicles and deeply analyzes along the 240 pages of the book (divided in seven chapters) several cases of architectonical destruction and how it has an impact in obliterating not only an ethnic group but also what they represent. 
Chapter one sets the tone for the chapters that follow: in an introductory, broader approach if compared to the rest of the chapters, which are more specific and deal with particular issues of cultural heritage destruction, the author explains how architecture achieves a totemic status with a meaning that needs to be destroyed in order to ensure the eradication of a particular ethnic group. It is interesting to see how the author delineates the history of architectonical destruction, and for the readers interested in the legislation related to destruction of cultural heritage, it is also briefly described in this chapter. 
Chapter two talks about cultural cleansing: the author looks for similarities and differences between kristallnacht and the beginning of the treatment of the Jewish by the Nazi regime, and the Balkan wars. The genocide of the Armenians, another important one of the twentieth century, is explained in order to highlight the need not only to eradicate the individuals but also its collective memory and identity.
You may finish reading this review in the Spring 2014 issue of ARCA's Journal of Art Crime by subscribing through the website or ordering a printed copy through Amazon.com.