July 14, 2000

2001 National Conference on Cultural Property Protection

Ton Cremers
Museum Security Network

Dear Mr. Cremers,
I write to inform you and your readers that the 2001 National Conference on Cultural Property Protection web site is now on-line. The address is: http://natconf.si.edu.
We currently feature a link to your web site. Would it be possible for your web site to provide a link to our web site again this year?
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Reddish-Hill,
Writer-Editor
P.S. I initially wrote to your site's mailing list. Unfortunately, my email address features an auto-replay function. I am now receiving numerous emails from your site in return!

Smithsonian Institution
Office of Protection Services
National Conference of Cultural
Property Protection

Send reply to: "Hugh O'Mara" hugho@earthlink.net
From: "Hugh O'Mara" hugho@earthlink.net
To: securma@xs4all.nl
Subject:

Quito theft, Getty provenance

Date sent: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 05:54:46 -0700

Hello Ton:
Besides being interested in art theft, looted art and all the other issues at MSN, I have various projects I work on. One is historical and concerns Quito, Ecuador. I happened to take a look at yesterday's (July 12, 200) edition of Diario Hoy. I note sadly that there was a theft at the museum part of the Church of San Diego. A number of paintings were taken and, worse, may have been cut into pieces. According to the article, Interpol has been contacted and is on the case.
Re the Getty provenance research that has been published at the Getty website - I have taken a look and note that while many have gaps in provenance that would indicate a possible link to theft by the Nazi's others do not necessarily. Examples from the latter may have no verifiable history at all until very recently (post WWII).
Just a note to clarify.
Hugh
http://home.earthlink.net/~hugho

Date sent: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 10:44:05 -0500
From: Jonathan Sazonoff saz@kwom.com
Send reply to: saz@kwom.com
Organization: SAZ PRODUCTIONS, INC.
To: securma@xs4all.nl
Subject:

Austria's Stolen Art Listings Now On-Line

Dear Subscribers,
We just got a note of interest from the Austrian Ministry of the Interior (BMI). The Austrian government is now posting images of stolen artworks on their web site.
http://www.bmi.gv.at/Kriminalpolizei/
Gestolene Kunstgegenstande:
http://www.bmi.gv.at/Kriminalpolizei/GruppeD/II_10/Kultur/k00_uebersicht.html
This is a most welcome trend for government law enforcement to list stolen works of art on line.
Hope you find this material of interest.
Regards,
Jonathan Sazonoff
Saz Productions, Inc.
http://www.saztv.com
Contributing US Ed.
Museum Security Network
http://www.museum-security.org/saz.html

Web Site Can't Find Art Owners

By LISA LIPMAN, Associated Press Writer
BOSTON (AP) - The Museum of Fine Arts had hoped the Internet might aid its effort to return seven paintings that may have been looted by the Nazis during the Holocaust to their rightful owners.
So far, the idea hasn't worked.
Though the Boston museum's Web site has logged more than 20,000 hits since pictures of the paintings were posted April 10, no one has helped the museum trace their history, or provenance.
``There are a lot of people visiting the site, which is great, but much of the things people were e-mailing us about were paintings we don't have,'' said Kelly Gifford, a museum spokeswoman.
The museum is among several across the country - including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and The Art Institute of Chicago - that have posted hundreds of paintings with incomplete histories on their Web sites. None have reported any success in filling in the blanks.
Approximately 600,000 works of art may have been stolen from the Jews by the Nazis, according to experts from the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States. The World Jewish Congress has estimated that 200 of the nation's 750 art museums may hold ``suspicious'' art.
Alan Ronkin, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston, said he did not think four months was enough time to judge the Internet's effectiveness for the museums.
``Some of these issues have been unresolved since the '40s,'' Ronkin said.
The Museum of Fine Arts has decided to abandon using the Internet in its investigation of the seven paintings, Gifford said, but it still plans to eventually post all 15,000 items from its European collection on the Web site.
``It's not going to be what we originally thought, but it is a great educational tool,'' Gifford said.
Anna Kisluck, director of the New York-based Art Loss Register, said posting paintings on museum Web sites is still a worthwhile pursuit.
``Museums want to get information to fill these gaps, and the Internet is one way of doing it,'' she said. ``They're not just pinning their hopes on this, and saying, 'We'll plaster it up here on our site and hope that someone tells us something.' They're doing their own research. But this is just something extra - a good-faith effort on their part.''
- On the Web:
Boston museum: http://www.mfa.org
Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://www.metmuseum.org
J. Paul Getty Museum: http://www.getty.edu
The Art Institute of Chicago: http://www.artic.edu
Art Loss Register: http://www.artloss.com

July 14, 2000

CONTENTS:

2001 National Conference on Cultural Property Protection

Quito theft, Getty provenance

Austria's Stolen Art Listings Now On-Line

Web Site Can't Find Art Owners