January 21, 2000
CONTENTS:
- Re: Web Site to List Artworks Lost to the Nazis Registry should speed up process of restoring valuables previously owned by Jewish victims
- Jailed Muslim leader 'innocent victim' (Smuggling antiquities from Egypt)
- 'Bizarre' Group Seeks Ransom for Indian Pottery ('Liberation Army' Claims It Robbed Museum; Security system bypassed)
- British police find two stolen paintings worth $1.6 million
From: "David Shillingford" DavidSALRNY@worldnet.att.net
Subject: Re: Web Site to List Artworks Lost to the Nazis Registry should speed up process of restoring valuables previously owned by Jewish victims.
Ton,
below is a letter from Sarah Jackson in response to the article by Carol Williams in the LA Times - I think your readers would be interested in it and it may spark some comment?......
David
I read with interest Carol Williams's article on the expansion of the database to be created by the Coordination Office of the Federal States for the Return of Cultural Property. The Art Loss Register welcomes this long overdue initiative which is complementary to its own project to identify 1933-1945 era looted art.
The ALR operates on a pro bono basis as far as World War II claims from private individuals are concerned. Unlike its database of 'current' thefts which operates as a commercial concern, the ALR offers its services free of charge to claimants who wish to register works of art confiscated between 1933 and 1945. Volume losses from museums will be added at cost. The ALR has since June 1998, in conjunction with the Commission for Art Recovery of the WJC, devoted full time staff and considerable research effort to adding WWII claims to its database and claimants have been notified of items the ALR has traced through dealers and auctioneers. There is no registration fee for World War II claims and nor does the ALR charge a recovery fee when it identifies the current whereabouts of a missing work. A claimant recovering a work may contribute to the project if they wish, but is under no obligation to do so.
Trained art historians are used to register the losses rather than having claimants register direct themselves so the ALR can ensure that the item records are both accurate and uniquely identifiable.
As Carol Williams article rightly points out, war era loot as well as objects stolen more recently continue to surface on the world's art market. Any claims reported to the Art Loss Register will be searched for permanently against 400,000 forthcoming auction house lots per annum. The minimal administration fee of £20.00/US$50.00 (with discounts available for volume searching) should not deter an individual or art dealer acting in good faith from searching the database to enquire whether an item is registered. In fact, enquiries from the art trade have increased by 400% for the first quarter of 1999 compared to the same period in 1998. The ALR receives an increasing number of searches because those making enquiries against the database know that the items will be searched against the entire archive of 100,000 identifiable items, both stolen and looted.
The Art Loss Register has been invited to join the vetting committee of Europe's largest art fair at Maastricht in March 2000 which will entail checking title for 4,000 items before they can be sold. Four other great European fairs are likely to follow their example..
The Art Loss Register has offered the Coordination Office of the Federal States for the Return of Cultural Property the opportunity to incorporate their item data in the ALR database so that they can benefit from this wide ranging search service.
Sarah Jackson
Historic Claims Director - Art Loss Register
David Shillingford
d_j_s@bigfoot.com
Tel : 212 262 4831
Fax: 212 202-3722
Cell: 917 553 7990
UK: 171 235 3393
Web: http://www.artloss.com
Jailed Muslim leader 'innocent victim'
Date: 19/01/2000
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0001/19/text/national14.html
By ANDREW CLENNELL and AFP
The spiritual leader of Australia's Muslims has reportedly been sentenced to a year's jail in Egypt for smuggling antiquities. However, the former personal assistant to the mufti, Tajeddine Hamed el Hilaly, claimed in Sydney yesterday that he believed the leader had been an innocent victim of trying to help the wrong people. The Lebanese Muslim Association in Sydney yesterday said it still hoped - through some sort of appeal process - that the mufti would be able to make it to Mecca at the end of next month for the annual pilgrimage, even if the reports that he had been jailed were true. Agence France-Presse reported yesterday that the mufti had been jailed by a Qena court after being found to have conspired a year ago with an Egyptian priest, Nassef Elias Michael, his son Bassem Michael and other Egyptians to buy archaeological artefacts and conduct digs in isolated spots. It was alleged the mufti had planned to export the articles in his luggage and sell them outside Egypt and that he paid his accomplices $A192,000.
Four other men were condemned to hard labour for life for killing a policeman who surprised them conducting an illegal dig. Last March, members of the Muslim community who did not wish to be identified told the Herald the mufti's side of the story - that early last year he did a favour for the son of an old friend, a former politician in Cairo, by introducing him into the import-export trade. In Cairo the young man boasted about his business connections in Australia and the mufti, and made some unsuitable friends, one of whom promised to make him a millionaire. He introduced the young man to a third party who was supposedly in possession of a stolen precious object worth millions of dollars if sold outside the country. The young man agreed to buy the object - thought to be a precious stone - for about $70,000. But at the agreed rendez-vous in the desert he was robbed of the $70,000 and murdered.
The police caught the gang, who said the murdered man had boasted of his links to the mufti. The mufti had said at the time he was merely a witness in the case and returned to Egypt voluntarily to assist. The former personal assistant to the mufti and a member of the executive of the Lebanese Muslim Association, Mr Keysar Trad, said his leader was in good spirits when he saw him off at the airport last Wednesday and the association was shocked by the report of the court decision.
"We understand he gave some references for people and these people turned out to be unworthy of his confidence," Mr Trad said. "We can't bring ourselves to believe he had any involvement which deserved [such] a sentence.
"We are all sad about this."
A spokesman for the Australian Consulate in Cairo said he had not been able to confirm the agency report last night.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0001/19/text/national14.html
'Bizarre' Group Seeks Ransom for Indian Pottery
'Liberation Army' Claims It Robbed Museum
Jan. 19, 2000
By Randy Dotinga
http://www.apbnews.com/newscenter/breakingnews/2000/01/19/poway0119_01.html
SAN DIEGO (APBnews.com) -- In a bizarre twist to a burglary case, a "liberation army" is claiming responsibility for stealing several rare and valuable pieces of Native American pottery from an exhibit at an anthropological museum. Police don't know what to make of an unsigned ransom letter sent to the media by the so-called Poway Liberation Army, named after an upper-middle-class suburb of San Diego known more for its horse farms than resistance to authority. The organization has never been heard from before. "It's a lead that we'll look into," said San Diego police Sgt. Joe Wood.
Ten rare pieces taken
Early in the morning of Jan. 10, the Museum of Man in San Diego's historic Balboa Park was robbed of 10 pieces of Indian pottery. The stolen pieces were to be part of "The Magic of Mata Ortiz," an exhibit that had not yet opened. Nine of the pieces were created by relatives of Nampeyo, a well-known Indian artist. The 10th piece was made by Maria Martinez, another pottery artist, around 1915. Museum officials were not immediately available for comment today about the theft or the value of the stolen pottery. The break-in was the first in the museum's 85-year history. The museum features anthropological exhibits, with an emphasis on Native American works. Its tower is a centerpiece of Balboa Park, considered one of the country's pre-eminent urban parks. Security system bypassed
A window near the exhibit room was broken, Wood said, allowing access to the museum. It was not clear how the suspect or suspects bypassed the museum's security system. Many pieces of pottery and other valuable items were left behind, although footprints revealed that the suspect or suspects moved around the museum, Wood said. He added that it was not a rushed crime. "My impression would be that it was planned and done in such a way that it showed some sophistication." The museum's pottery exhibit opened Sunday on schedule. Newspaper received letter
The letter claiming responsibility arrived at the offices of the North County Times on Tuesday, according to a report published on the newspaper's front page today. The newspaper serves the northern suburbs of San Diego, including Poway. The two-page letter did not include any evidence to suggest that its writer actually is in possession of the stolen pottery. "There's nothing showing proof that they were successful in their theft," Wood said. The letter states that it was also sent to two television stations, another daily newspaper and an alternative weekly newspaper. The letter is written in dramatic and academic language, using words such as "mercantilistic," "gerrymandering" and "jurisdictional umbilical cord." Wants city to forfeit neighborhoods
The letter writer demands that the city of San Diego forfeit the neighborhoods at its northeastern edges and give them to the adjoining city of Poway. The letter also refers to San Diego's "great tentacle of empire" in its northern reaches. San Diego, the nation's sixth-largest city, sprawls over 324 square miles, making it bigger than New York City, which clocks in at 308 square miles. Driving from the northern to southern edges of the city can take 45 minutes. The letter blasts the city of Poway's use of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, saying it "poses as an indigenous police force ... but are really no better than an army of occupation, permanently garrisoned within the city walls." Sheriff's department baffled
Despite the overheated tone of the letter, there has been no public debate or controversy over the autonomy of the northern reaches of San Diego. Officials at the FBI, the San Diego Police Department and the county sheriff's department said they have never heard of the Poway Liberation Army. "How we're tied in with the theft of artifacts in a San Diego museum is beyond me," said sheriff's Detective Bob Bishop, who is based in Poway. "We don't have any crackpot groups. The Poway Liberation Army just seems so bizarre. This is the first I've heard of it."
Randy Dotinga is an APBnews.com West Coast correspondent (rdotinga@aol.com).
http://www.apbnews.com/newscenter/breakingnews/2000/01/19/poway0119_01.html
British police find two stolen paintings worth $1.6 million
LONDON (January 20, 2000 1:06 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Authorities have recovered two John Constable paintings worth $1.6 million that were stolen from a museum room thought to be secure. Police said Thursday that three men were arrested as they tried to sell the paintings at a west London hotel the previous day. The paintings, which were small studies for larger works, were stolen in November 1998 from London's Victoria and Albert Museum. The works, "Dedham Lock and Mill," dated some time between 1810 and 1815, and "Sketch for Valley Farm," executed around 1835, were painted near the birthplace of the great English landscape painter on the border of rural Suffolk county in eastern England. Police made the arrests after a tip-off and a search of a house in east London. The suspects were being questioned at a west London police station.
more:
3 QUIZZED ON ART RAID
TWO stolen oil sketches by landscape master John Constable were found yesterday by undercover police. Officers arrested three men, including one with a loaded gun, who tried to sell the small, pounds 1million paintings at a hotel. The Constables vanished from a secure room at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. They were last seen in August 1998. V&A chief Dr Alan Borg said of the find: "We are delighted. These are two very important pieces of our artistic heritage." Police were quizzing the three men, aged 34 to 37, after arresting them at a west London hotel.
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Thursday 12 November 1998 Message about the theft:
Two Constables are stolen from V&A Museum
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
TWO oils by John Constable worth GBP.800,000 are believed to have been stolen from the Victoria & Albert Museum, which has the largest collection by the artist in the world. The small paintings have vanished from a supposedly secure room, to which the public have no access, at the museum's main site in South Kensington, London. Dr Alan Borg, director of the museum, said that police were informed yesterday after a search through more than one million items in the Prints and Drawings Study Room failed to locate them. They had last been seen in August when they had been logged in a routine audit of the prints and drawings department's holding. The works are two oil sketches, Dedham Lock and Mill (c 1810-1815) and Sketch for Valley Farm (c 1835) painted near his birthplace on the Suffolk-Essex borders as studies for much larger paintings. Their disappearance is a security disaster for the V&A. Dr Borg said yesterday that the study room was a "restricted access area". Only staff and accredited visitors such as researchers were allowed into the room. The theft of art and antiques - estimated at GBP.3 billion worldwide last year - has become a huge criminal industry. But thefts from Britain's national museums, which have expensive security precautions, and particularly from restricted areas, is relatively rare. Dr Borg would not comment on speculation that the theft may have been the work of an insider. He said that fire escapes made the area less secure than was ideal.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000540194043784&rtmo=aTTu9CBJ&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/98/11/12/ncon12.html