March 18, 2000
CONTENTS:
- Faking a Face
- Thieves target art galleries
- Tracking artful dodgers 10 years after the heist, culprits still on the loose
- Oscar statuettes stolen from Calif. loading dock
- Los Angeles museum to identify possible Nazi loot
- U.S.report details which Austrians got property of Holocaust victims
- Jewish group says it will not deal with Austria
- Canada rescues war masterpieces from obscurity
- Workshop/ Conference on Provenance and Due Diligence
Faking a Face
A Smuggler Disguised an Egyptian Treasure to Masquerade as a Trinket
A 10-year-old crime involving the 3,200-year-old sculpted head of a fabled Egyptian queen was recently solved by the British Museum. A sculpture of Nefertari - principal queen of Rameses II - had been disguised by smugglers to look like a cheap souvenir to get it out of Egypt in the early 1990s. British Museum scientists exposed the head to ultraviolet light, and modern modifications burst into view as glowing lines. The smuggler had changed the profile by packing tiny stones around its features. The new face was built like a mask over the ancient one, then artificially weathered. Nefertari's ancient face has been returned to Egypt. LP
Thieves target art galleries
In the last two months, nine downtown-area art galleries have been targeted by thieves who break a window, grab what they can and flee.
LYNN MOORE The Gazette
Roger Turenne got an early morning wake-up call yesterday that could give him nightmares for some time to come. The owner of a Sherbrooke St. W. art gallery was awakened about 4:45 by the heavy crunch of reinforced glass being smashed by a blunt object. Turenne recognized the sound of his shop's front window being broken because he'd heard it almost three weeks earlier when thieves broke into his gallery. Concern that Galerie Turenne would be hit again led him to spend some nights camped out in his shop. But as he came face-to-face yesterday with two criminals, Turenne felt confrontation might not be the best idea. "One man had a hammer in his hand and the other had a crowbar," he said. "I was afraid a little. I yelled loudly and they decided to leave. It could have ended in another fashion. It was an experience that I won't want to go through again, I tell you." There has been what Turenne called an epidemic of smash-and-grab thefts from art galleries in central Montreal. One of the longest-standing galleries in the city, Kastel Gallery on Greene Ave., in Westmount, was also hit this week. On Wednesday, thieves broke "what was supposed to be unbreakable glass" and made off with a work by John Little worth about $4,000, Paul Kastel said yesterday. In the last two months, nine art galleries have been targeted by thieves who employ the same method used at the Turenne and Kastel shops, Det.-Lt. Denis Bergeron of Montreal Urban Community police said. They have focused on galleries on Sherbrooke St., between Peel St. and Greene Ave., Bergeron said. He could not provide the total value of the stolen art works. Police believe that the thefts are the work of one gang, he said. They operate between 11:30 p.m. and 5 a.m., use blunt objects to break front windows, grab what they can and run. Turenne can vouch for the how quick the thieves move. "In two or three seconds, they had broken through the window and run about 60 feet into my shop," Turenne said. In the first break-in, Turenne yelled at the thieves and they ran off without taking anything. Yesterday, they grabbed one canvas, a William Roffe that had a price tag of $3,600.
Tracking artful dodgers 10 years after the heist, culprits still on the loose
By Maria Puente USA TODAY
Ten years after the most baffling art theft of all time, there are still empty spaces on the walls where paintings once hung at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
They are melancholy reminders of the museum's darkest hour -- 2 a.m. on March 18, 1990. That's when two men dressed as police officers talked their way inside, tied up security guards, and made off with 13 artworks worth up to $300 million, including priceless paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Degas. A decade later -- after many recriminations and dashed hopes, after posting a $5 million reward and pursuing 2,000 leads around the world -- the museum, its private detectives and the FBI are no closer to recovering the art or arresting the thieves. ''This is a tough one. It's the biggest whodunit I've ever worked on,'' says Tom Cassano, the FBI agent who oversees the case. But hope springs eternal. ''Let this be the year the works of art are returned,'' pleads museum director Anne Hawley, who describes the theft as a ''death in the family'' she still mourns. Artworks stolen long ago sometimes do turn up. A Cezanne still life, snatched from a Massachusetts family in 1978, was recovered in 1999. And in November, three paintings taken from the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco in 1978 were left anonymously at a New York gallery. ''The chances of recovery 20 years after a theft are much higher with art than almost any kind of property theft, so you never give up hope,'' says David Shallingford of Art Loss Register, which maintains an international database of 100,000 stolen artworks and antiques. ''Ten years isn't that long a time'' in cases like this, adds Brien O'Connor, the former assistant U.S. attorney in Boston who supervised the case from 1992-99. The Gardner is a four-story Venetian-style palace built at the turn of the century and stuffed with 3,000 artworks collected by the widow of a wealthy Boston businessman. Her will ordered that nothing in the house ever be sold or changed, so the spaces where the paintings hung are marked with brass plaques that say ''stolen.'' The artworks weren't insured for theft because the museum believed it would be too expensive. After the heist, theories abounded about who pulled it off. Some speculated it was ordered by an unscrupulous collector. Others wondered if it was the work of a drug lord. Other tips pointed to the Irish Republican Army. But no evidence was found to support these theories. Investigators thought they had a breakthrough in 1997 when an imprisoned car thief and ex-antiques dealer, William Youngworth III, offered to broker the return of the art for the reward, immunity and the release of his friend, convicted art thief Myles Connor Jr. But federal prosecutors balked at the deal. Youngworth produced paint chips he said were from one of the stolen Rembrandts, but tests showed they weren't. But the museum's private consultant, Washington-based Investigative Group International, still thinks Youngworth may know something. Last year, Larry Potts, a former FBI agent working for IGI, wrote to Youngworth, urging him to help solve the case. So far, he has not cooperated. Most investigators now believe the heist was the work of skilled thieves who thought they could easily unload the paintings. But the paintings are still too hot, because they are so recognizable and because auction houses and dealers now routinely check the Art Loss Register. Most likely, Cassano says, the thieves have stashed them, hoping for a more opportune moment. That means the paintings probably have not been destroyed. Whatever else, the museum learned some lessons: It got a better alarm system and bought insurance.
Oscar statuettes stolen from Calif. loading dock
Updated 3:30 AM ET March 17, 2000
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Several boxes of Oscar statuettes meant to be presented at the Academy Awards ceremony on March 26 are missing -- apparently stolen from a loading dock of a shipping company near Los Angeles, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences officials said Thursday. In a statement, academy officials said the Oscars were "apparently stolen" from a Roadway Express Co. loading dock in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell after being shipped by their manufacturer in Chicago. Variety reported that about 40 statuettes were missing, but that the academy would have enough to present at the Oscars ceremony. The statement added that a news conference would be held at academy headquarters Friday morning. Police spokesmen said they had no details about the apparent theft and that all comment on it was being made by the academy. An academy spokesman was not immediately available for further comment. A spokesman for Roadway Express had no comment. It was the second snafu to hit the Oscars in a month. About two weeks ago, 4,000 ballots mailed to voters in the Los Angeles area failed to be delivered and new ballots had to be mailed. The first round of ballots had been misdirected to a bulk mail office.
Reuters/Variety
Los Angeles museum to identify possible Nazi loot
Updated 7:35 PM ET March 16, 2000
By Joan Gralla
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A top Los Angeles art museum has joined the list of galleries planning to publish lists of artwork that may be among an estimated 600,000 items looted by the Nazis. J. Paul Getty museum spokeswoman Lori Starr told said Wednesday that if research into the history of its artwork suggests gaps in ownership exist, it will likely publish a list. Gaps in an artwork's history, or provenance, are not uncommon, and are simply a sign that more research is needed.The Getty museum, which has more than 400,000 works in its collection, said it expected to publish the list in about three months. U.S. museums in 1998 promised to study whether their collections have items that could have been plundered by the Nazis as part of their wholesale looting of Jewish assets, from gold to real estate to art. If a work of art was in Europe from 1933 to as late as the 1950s, art experts say it should be studied for telltale signs, such as whether it was handled by a known Nazi art dealer, or was owned by Jewish victims who might have been forced to sell their pictures or sculpture at huge discounts or abandon them when they were shipped off to concentration camps. In mid-February, the World Jewish Congress turned the heat up on museums, saying they should publicly identify which of their works might be Nazi plunder. The California institution is taking the same approach as New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which in the next few weeks plans to publish its own list of any of its works that have gaps in their provenance. Though museums, as educational institutions, have a long history of opening their archives to outside researchers, Holocaust families and heirs still face many obstacles in tracing missing heirlooms. These difficulties were illustrated in an ongoing battle over a 1912 painting, valued at some $2 million, by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele. The oil painting, called "Portrait of Wally," was loaned to New York City's Museum of Modern Art by a Viennese foundation. It was claimed by a possible heir, Henry Bondi of New Jersey, and seized last year by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Since then, however, a rival claimant has turned up, Ron Jaray of Australia, who is pressing his case for ownership in federal court, according to a Oct. 19 letter provided to Reuters by sources close to the case.
U.S.report details which Austrians got property of Holocaust victims
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (Reuters) - The World Jewish Congress (WJC) said Monday that a classified 1953 U.S. report would be published later this week naming Austrians who had been the recipients of Jewish property confiscated during the Holocaust. The head of the WJC, Israel Singer, told the Conference of European Rabbis in Bratislava that the U.S. State Department would release the report with details of the items and the names of Austrians believed to be holding them at that time. The WJC has estimated the value of the missing property listed in the report -- including real estate, securities, gold and precious stones -- at more than $10 billion. The New York-based congress won a ruling in a U.S. federal court last Friday forcing the U.S. government to declassify the report, an aide to the WJC told Reuters. The group, which has fought for restitution for victims of Nazi crimes, has been sharply critical of Austria's performance in resolving Jewish property and insurance claims. The rabbis' conference was originally scheduled to be held in Vienna but was shifted to Bratislava last month in protest against the inclusion of Joerg Haider's far-right Freedom Party in Austria's new government. Haider -- widely condemned for his remarks seen by many as attempts to play down the crimes of the Nazis who ruled in Austria from 1938 to 1945 -- has since resigned as leader of the party but said he may seek to become chancellor in the future. The government of Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel has promised to improve implementation of a law on restoring works of art that were lost or confiscated during the Holocaust to the families of the original owners. Austria has also taken steps aiming to resolve compensation for victims of Nazi slave labor and unpaid insurance claims left over from the Nazi era. The conference in Bratislava honored Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Simon Wiesenthal for his work in tracking down the perpetrators of Nazi-era war crimes.
Jewish group says it will not deal with Austria
Updated 2:41 PM ET March 16, 2000
By Joan Gralla
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A key Jewish group trying to get compensation for Holocaust victims from Germany and Austria said Thursday it will not deal directly with Austria, shunned since its government let in an anti-immigrant party. "The Claims Conference shall not negotiate with the present government of Austria," the U.S.-based group said in a statement. But the statement left the door open to using indirect talks to settle 55-year old claims that Holocaust victims who were looted by the Nazis or perished in death camps have never been adequately compensated. A source close to Holocaust issues, who declined to be named, told Reuters by telephone: "There are many permutations which we see as possible, which might include a third party dealing with Austrian institutions untouched by the Freedom Party, such as the parliament, the presidency." He declined to be named. The Jewish group's decision, which was joined by global and Austrian Jewish leaders, complicated Austria's efforts to defuse the issue. Shortly after the coalition government included the far-right Freedom Party led by Joerg Haider, Vienna promised to compensate victims of Nazi slave labor policies as quickly as possible. Haider is best known outside Austria for remarks playing down Nazi crimes. The Claims Conference renewed its call for Austria to restore looted assets and compensate people who were forced to work as slaves. Austria had around 200,000 Jews before the Nazis overran the country in March 1938. About 65,000 Austrian Jews lost their lives, the advocacy group said, adding only 135,000 were able to escape. In a 1953 report, the United States criticized Austria's restitution efforts, saying Austrian legislation unduly restricted claims, especially for so-called movables: gold, silver, jewelry, securities, bank deposits and furniture. The World Jewish Congress gave Reuters a copy of the report, which estimated Austria's Jews in 1938 owned from $750 million to $1 billion in assets, depending on whether German Reichsmarks or Austrian schillings were converted into dollars. That means that in today's currencies, Jewish victims are owed $7.5 billion to $10 billion, the WJC said.
Canada rescues war masterpieces from obscurity
Updated 6:50 PM ET March 14, 2000
By David Ljunggren
OTTAWA (Reuters) - A terrified sailor gasps as his head starts to sink beneath the evil green water. The dead march alongside the living across a crushed landscape. Workers in an arms factory battle molten metal day in and day out. After decades lying dirty and forgotten in vaults, some of the most powerful and disturbing paintings produced by Canada's official war artists are once again on display. "Canvas at War," 72 paintings, drawings and sculptures from the thousands held by Ottawa's cramped War Museum, is showing at the larger Museum of Civilization. The first thing to strike a visitor is that, while many of the paintings are virtually masterpieces, others are workmanlike at best. War Museum curator Laura Brandon, who spent a year putting the exhibition together, says that is because "Canvas of War" is not an ordinary show. Instead, she says, it reflects the comprehensive nature of Canada's contribution in both World Wars. Every battle involving Canadian troops is featured, as are works showing the air force, navy and army. "It's important not to see this as high art. It has multiple functions. It is an art collection, a documentary and is also a memorial," she told Reuters. Polish composer Henryk Gorecki's mournful Third Symphony, in part inspired by the misery of war, plays continuously in the exhibition hall. A box of tissues sits beside the visitors' book with its often emotional comments. 'WORK OF INCREDIBLE MATURITY'
The tears are testament to the works' power and Brandon is still struck by how a group of inexperienced artists managed to portray war so graphically. "These guys were incredibly young. Most of them were in their 20s and produced work of incredible maturity," she marveled during a tour of the exhibition. What "Canvas of War" does very clearly is show how the initial concept of war art quickly changed from heroic depictions of men in battle to more futuristic works and those that openly questioned the point of the conflict. Artists from Britain, Belgium and other nations were initially employed to paint Canadian troops in the First World War, often settling for glamorous action-filled paintings. Canadian artists were not sent to cover the war until 1917, but their more experimental and skeptical work catapulted the country into art's big leagues, thanks largely to artists such as A.Y. Jackson, Frederick Varley, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer and Eric Kennington. "We'd be healthier to forget (the war) and that we never can. We are forever tainted with its abortiveness and its cruel drama," wrote Varley, whose sardonic painting "For what?" featured a gravedigger standing beside a pile of corpses. Even more disturbing for authorities was Kennington's "The Victims," a futurist painting in steely metallic hues showing living and dead soldiers marching across corpses. The painting was later renamed "The Conquerors." "I am very doubtful about Eric Kennington," wrote novelist and future Canadian Governor-General John Buchan. "His whole style of work is utterly remote from and undescriptive of the Western front, and is of no use for purposes of record." Jackson, Varley, Johnston and Lismer went on to become part of the Group of Seven, leading Canadian painters whose dark and gloomy landscapes of northern Ontario -- many with broken, amputated trees -- were clearly influenced by the war. 'SMASHED-UP, BROKEN' THINGS
"I don't want to paint anything that is serene. I want to paint things which are smashed-up, broken," Jackson said. The works were first shown in 1919 to huge acclaim and marked the arrival of Canadian art on the world stage. "Canadian art before the war was small and parochial. After the war it took off. Suddenly Canadian art could be looked at and acknowledged. Without the war there would have been much slower progress," Brandon said. Despite initial enthusiasm, the art quickly faded into obscurity amid a collective wish to bury memories of a war in which one in every 11 Canadians fought and 60,000 died. But all too soon the world was again engulfed in conflict and a new generation of artists set to work, much less interested in heroic portrayals and more focused on showing what they saw as the true face of war. The group that decided which artists should go to war included Harry McCurry, a bureaucrat in charge of the National Gallery despite his lack of artistic background. He was unhappy about the choice of then-little-known painter Alex Colville. "There is a work of Colville's in the present academy exhibition and personally I think it is too dreadful for words. Our reputations will be mud with future generations if better artists are not selected," moaned McCurry. Colville went on to produce more than 400 works during the war and is now regarded as one of Canada's finest artists. Others found the stress harder to take. According to all accounts, aviation artist Miller Britain returned to Canada little better than a mental wreck. Britain, who served for two years as a bomb-aimer before turning to art, produced "Night Target, Germany," a small, dark, intense canvas depicting a bombing raid in a sky crisscrossed by searchlights and peppered by flashes of antiaircraft fire. BOMB TARGET LOOKED LIKE 'CASKET OF JEWELS'
"A German city under bombing often looked like a casket of jewels opening up in some Walt Disney film. It was terrible, it was wicked, but there was a fascinating beauty to it. My target picture looks like the real thing, they say. In fact, at the moment, I feel like putting my foot through it," he wrote. Some artists came closer to the action than they planned. Bruno Bobak once had to dive into a trench to avoid being strafed by a low-flying enemy plane. "Halfway down I could see I was falling onto a dead soldier, and when I hit him it went 'Splat,' but I was too chicken to get out," he recalled. It was after the Second World War that the Canada Council was established to provide permanent funding for the arts. "World War II helped Canadian art to the next stage by establishing cultural institutions to back it. It showed Canadian art had enough substance to be government-supported," Brandon said. But the second tranche of war art also faded from public memory after just one exhibition. Some pieces toured military bases from 1962 to 1971 before being sent to the vaults for almost 30 years. "The paintings were dirty and scratched, like neglected children," said Brandon. Many of the works on show had to be meticulously cleaned with cotton buds. The art can also be viewed at www.warmuseum.ca. The exhibition will start touring Canada next January and Brandon is hoping to find a U.S. venue as well.
Reuters/Variety
To Securma Subscribers from Sharon Flescher, Executive Director, IFAR
Workshop/ Conference on Provenance and Due Diligence: April 29th Organized by IFAR in collaboration with NYU
MSN subscribers might want to know about an all-day workshop/conference on provenance and due diligence that IFAR, the International Foundation for Art Research, is organizing in collaboration with NYU. The program addresses the artistic and legal issues involved in establishing the provenance of a work of art and in otherwise exercising due diligence in acquiring art. Particular reference will be made to art looted before and during WWII and to antiquities. The program is intended to be educational and "practical" rather than polemical. Among the topics address via case studies and panel discussions are: How do you research provenance? What resources are available? Which countries have laws resting ownership of antiquities with the government and whom do you contact in case of questions? What constitutes due diligence?
For a list of speakers and other information, please see IFAR's website: www.IFAR.org or contact IFAR (212) 391-6234 tele: (212) 391-8794 fax. Advance Registration is required. The program will be held in New York and is eligible for 8 CLE credits (continuing legal education).
IFAR, established in 1969, is a nonprofit educational and research organization dedicated to integrity in the visual arts. IFAR offers impartial and authoritative information on authenticity, ownership, theft, fraud, and other artistic, legal, and ethical issues concerning art objects. Best known for its pioneering work in art theft starting in the 1970s, IFAR also has an Art Authentication Service, which helps to resolve questions about authorship of works of art; organizes lectures and symposia; serves as an information resource, and publishes the quarterly IFAR Journal (with articles on authenticity/fakes/forgeries; art law; WWII and cultural property issues, and art theft -- including the "Stolen Art Alert" published by IFAR since 1977).
As part of its series of IFAR Evenings, IFAR is hosting another program on April 4th on "Alexander Calder: Artistic Development and Authenticity." The speaker is Alexander Rower, grandson of Calder and Director of the Alexander and Louisa Calder Foundation. For more information, please contact IFAR.