August 29, 2000

CONTENTS:

Wall Street Journal

Comment: Shelby White's nomination to the government's Cultural Property Advisory Committee

"Feet of Clay"

Lizard Fossil Sells Big at Auction

The fossil, a 7-inch lizard with a 10-inch wingspan called Icarosaurus siefkeri, is the oldest airborne vertebrate known to scientists. The fossil proved to scientists that vertebrates attempted flight 10 million years earlier than anyone had suspected.
It had been studied for more than 30 years at the American Museum of Natural History, and there was hope Sunday that it would be returned. The unidentified man who purchased it Sunday called himself a friend of the museum who wished to see it back in the museum's care.
Alfred Siekfer discovered the fossil when he was 17 years old, but now in failing health at 56, he decide to sell it for the quick cash.
Mark Goodwin, a vertebrate paleontologist and principal scientist at the Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley, called the sale of the fossil a ``highly unethical event that will only increase commercialization and encourage the theft of fossils from museums.''
The Apollo 11 handle had been fixed to the outside of the command module that guided astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins into the moon's orbit in 1969.
It was sold by Charles Barnes, a former radiation safety officer at NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center who performed tests on it in the 1970s. Barnes kept the handle in a safe after leaving NASA and performed periodic tests on it for the administration to test for radiation leakage.
• The Office of Inspector General for NASA announced earlier this month that it would investigate plans by Butterfields to sell a 18 1/2 inch long silver handle. By the time the auction took place a deal of sorts had been struck.
  ``Because the NASA inquiry is continuing there is an additional conditional of sale that should NASA decide that the item should be returned to them, we will certainly return funds to the buyer,'' said Butterfields spokesman Levi Morgan. Other items sold at the simultaneous natural history and science auctions from Butterfields' San Francisco and Los Angeles offices included a six-inch iron meteorite which brought $51,750 and a five-million-year-old giant saber-toothed tiger skull which sold for $31,625.
  On the Net:
  http://www.butterfields.com/
  

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  Woman Seeks Return of Art Seized by Nazis

  Court: A West L.A. woman sues, demanding that Austria turn over six Gustav Klimt paintings that were taken from her family in 1939.

  By HENRY WEINSTEIN, Times Legal Affairs Writer
  A West Los Angeles woman sued the Austrian government in federal court here this week, seeking to recover six paintings by Gustav Klimt that she alleges have been improperly held ever since Austrian Nazis seized them from her uncle in 1939. The paintings being sought by Maria Altmann, 84, are in the government-run Austrian Gallery in Vienna and are worth about $150 million, according to an Austrian art expert in New York. One of the works, a full-length gold painting of Altmann's deceased aunt, the prominent art collector Adele Bloch-Bauer, is considered one of Klimt's two best-known paintings and is valued at $50 million to $60 million. "Since the revelation two years ago that these paintings were illegally withheld from Mrs. Altmann after [World War II], we have attempted to negotiate with the Austrian government for their return," said Altmann's attorney, E. Randol Schoenberg of Los Angeles. "But all our efforts were rebuffed and we were given no other option but to file a lawsuit." Werner Brandstetter, the Austrian consul general in Los Angeles, said that a special commission set up by the Education and Culture Ministry in Austria had concluded that although the Altmanns were entitled to recover some pieces of art, they did not have a valid claim to the Bloch-Bauer portrait or the other five paintings at issue in the suit.
  According to the Austrians, Bloch-Bauer, who died in 1925, had requested in her will that her husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, give the Klimt paintings to the Austrian Gallery after his death. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer had been Klimt's patron and had displayed the six paintings in a special room dedicated to his wife in their palatial home after she died. Altmann asserts that Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer--an Austrian sugar magnate, who fled from Austria when the Nazis took over the country and died in 1945 in Zurich--specified in his will that his substantial estate would be divided among two nieces and a nephew. Of the three, only Altmann is still living. "All of his possessions had been taken away from him by the Nazis," Altmann said. "His intention was that my brother, sister and I would inherit whatever was recovered after the war." When Bloch-Bauer fled Austria in 1938, the Nazis seized his house and vast art collection. Some of his 19th century paintings were sent to Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering, one of Hitler's chief aides. A Nazi lawyer, Erich Fuhrer, traded the most valuable portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer and a landscape called Apple Tree 1 to the Austrian Gallery in return for another painting the family donated to the museum in 1936. Three of the four other paintings now at issue, including a second portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, were sold and Fuhrer kept one for himself. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer received no compensation for the expropriated artwork or his large home. After the war ended, the Austrian government declared that all transactions motivated by discriminatory ideology were null and void, but that did not help Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's heirs. Two years ago, the Austrian government enacted a statute specifically providing for the restitution of art objects looted during the Nazi era. The Altmann family has recovered some pieces, including valuable porcelains, as a part of that process. But the most valuable works were not returned, Schoenberg said. "I would give the Austrian government an A-plus for enacting the law but a C-minus for implementing it," said Jane Kallir, co-director of the St. Etienne Gallery in New York. The Austrian Gallery, which is a co-defendant in the lawsuit, cited Adele Bloch-Bauer's will when it first declined to relinquish the paintings in 1947. A lawyer hired by Bloch-Bauer's heirs had doubts about the government's interpretation of the will but agreed to it so that the Austrian Gallery and Austria's Federal Monument Office would not oppose the return of other artworks to the heirs, according to the lawsuit.
  Altmann's suit contends that the provision of Adele Bloch-Bauer's will being relied on by the Austrian government was simply a request to her husband and certainly not legally binding. The suit is buttressed on that point by an opinion from an Austrian legal scholar. "My uncle certainly would have wanted us to inherit his property and never would have donated anything to Austria after the way he had been treated," Altmann said Friday. Schoenberg said that he initially planned to file the suit in an Austrian court but decided not to because of a requirement that a plaintiff post a very substantial bond at the start of the suit. He said that, given the value of the paintings at issue, the amount of the bond would have exceeded Altmann's net worth. Filing the suit in a U.S. court is appropriate because Altmann lives here and because the Austrian government conducts business and owns property in Los Angeles, he said. It is likely, however, that the Austrian government will challenge the jurisdiction of a U.S. court to consider the case, given that it involves paintings in Austria and a will that was prepared in Zurich. Altmann's suit marks the latest chapter in the legal and political battle of Austrian Holocaust survivors and their heirs to gain compensation for various wrongs. In January, a federal judge in New York approved a $40-million settlement of a class-action lawsuit against Bank Austria, which formally apologized on behalf of subsidiaries that looted assets from Jewish account holders during World War II. In July, the Austrian Parliament passed a bill to compensate victims of Nazi forced labor during World War II. The measure, however, does not provide any compensation for individuals whose assets were "Aryanized" during the Nazi era.
  

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  Collectors: FBI probing pilfering of Hall artifacts

  THE Baseball Hall of Fame used to be more like a Haul of Fame. Security at the Cooperstown shrine now is extremely tight, but apparently that was not always the case.
  According to a recent story by Michael O'Keeffe and Bill Madden in the New York Daily News, a number of valuable and almost irreplaceable artifacts were stolen from the hall in the 1970s, and some of them -- including baseballs signed by five U.S. presidents, Joe DiMaggio caps and historic documents -- have made their way onto the sports memorabilia market.
  full story: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/hotnews/stories/26/Pcollectors.dtl
  

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  Museums in crisis

  Tuesday August 29, 2000
  Britain's regional museum service is facing a "catastrophe" of underfunding, falling visitor numbers and deteriorating collections, an investigation by the Guardian reveals today. Hundreds of museums could close without investment from the government and the local authorities that are largely responsible for regional collections. Funding from central government to the museum service has fallen by 15% in real terms since 1997, and hundreds of museums around the country are sacking staff, cutting opening hours and seeing treasures kept in inadequate storage crumble because of a lack of funding. "It is an absolutely catastrophic situation," said David Barrie, director of Art Fund, an independent charity to which museums are increasingly turning in desperation. While outright closures are still rare, many museums are making cutbacks that reveal an ailing service. "It's death by a thousand cuts," Mr Barrie said. "Taken individually these cuts in museums all over the country might seem disastrous but they could add up to a national catastrophe." Five area museum councils contacted by the Guardian - Yorkshire and Humberside, the north-west, west and east midlands, eastern region and the south-east - all reported budget cuts and falling staff numbers in their area and a slight fall in visitor numbers. "Some museums are going to close," forecast Maurice Davies, deputy director of the museum service.
  

  Glasgow galleries crave renaissance

  Heritage: City lacks cash to preserve renowned collection

  Gerard Seenan
  Tuesday August 29, 2000
  In store rooms across the city, the careful touch of the Renaissance masters is flaking. Cracks appear on 15th century canvas, and first aid maintenance is the best that can be applied. Alongside lie other works, gradually deteriorating. No one is certain of the extent of the malaise. Only one point is irrefutable: it cannot continue like this. The wealth that once made Glasgow the second city of the empire has slipped away. Its legacy, however, remains: one of the great city collections of Europe, with eight main museums and galleries bulging with 1.5m objects. But from Old Masters to rusting armour the problem is constant: how to preserve and utilise the collection when inadequate funding has brought it to crisis point. "Of all the cities in Europe, Glasgow was the one that led the way in changing its international standing and perception through tourism based on museums," said Neil McGregor, director of the National Gallery in London. "If Glasgow is in crisis now, what does this bode for the rest of Britain's municipal museums - and tourism?" Polly Smith, the city's senior conservator, admits she has no idea what state many of the 3,500 canvases are in. The results of a survey now under way may make uncomfortable reading. Ms Smith is Glasgow's only fine art conservator, and she does what she euphemistically calls "prioritising". A blunter phrase is fire-fighting. Renaissance works by Montagna, Pessellino and Dossi are deteriorating. It takes weeks, sometimes months, to conserve a painting. The decay of other paintings comes to light from time to time. When the Tate in London asked to borrow three paintings by William Blake, staff were shocked by their condition. "With a reduced staff, the quantity of work we carry out has to be reduced," said Ms Smith. "I can prioritise and save important paintings, with first aid treatment, from deteriorating irrevocably. But say if a painting is on display with a discoloured varnish, the public is not seeing what the artist intended. "There are also problems with maintenance.
  With more resources we could properly assess and deal with the needs of the collection." The problem does not lie merely with conservation. A report by city councillors on council museums has shown that Glasgow spends only 10% of what it should on museum education; staffing levels are less than half those in national museums; and curatorial work has been cut to the bone. There is little appetite for blaming the council, however. With huge problems in housing, education and social work to be tackled, it is no surprise that the museum budget is squeezed. "If we go on for another couple of years like this, we will be in very grave danger of losing some of the collection," said John Lynch, vice convenor of Glasgow's culture and leisure committee. The councillors' report can see only three ways out of problem: to ask the Scottish executive for an extra GBP.2.2m; to transfer some museums - notably the Burrell collection, jewel in the city's year of culture crown - to a trust, although this would still leave a big hole in funding; or to seek national help, developing a partnership between central and local government. "It's something that has to be addressed imminently," said Chris Mason, the councillor who chaired the report group. In 1986, when Liverpool reached the depths of its troubles and Margaret Thatcher abolished Merseyside council, the new Liverpool city council gave its museums up to national control, and they have thrived. Liverpool has a collection on a par with Glasgow's, but it has 40 conservators compared with Glasgow's 13. The National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside is about to spend GBP.34m improving three museums; Glasgow's entire budget for the year is GBP.16m. But this is unlikely to be the solution for Glasgow. "It would be washing our hands of the situation," said Mr Lynch. "Glaswegians feel an affinity with their art collection; there is little to be gained from breaking that bond.
  What we want to do is encourage the socially excluded to use the museums by making them aware of their ownership." The Scottish executive, too, has no desire to take responsibility for Glasgow's problems. Ministers are aware of the crisis, but money will not flow in immediately. The national cultural strategy was published last week, and an audit of all Scotland's museums has been ordered. The city council has requested an urgent meeting with the Scottish executive. Dr McGregor said: "In Germany, France and Italy, museums are funded by arrangements between local and national governments. Perhaps that is the model for Glasgow. "What we have to realise, though, is that we cannot continue to be so blasé with our national heritage. We need to decide now how we are going to maintain it -and how we are going to pay for it."

  Local museums facing a slow death by a thousand budget cuts

  Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent
  Tuesday August 29, 2000
  There is a crisis in the Leicester museum service this week, of passionate interest to the museum community if not - on the face of it - to many people outside. The city has already closed one museum and lost some of its most senior museum staff. From September 1 its smaller museums will cut opening times by two hours, and the main museum by half an hour. The collection care and exhibitions budgets have been cut by over 50%, funds for education stand at a tiny GBP.8,000. "It is an absolutely catastrophic situation, and the most depressing thing is that it's not a freak. It's an extreme but typical example of what's happening all over the country," says David Barrie, director of the Art Fund, an independent charity to which desperate museums are turning in increasing numbers to plug some of their funding gaps.
  The crisis in the British regional museum service is exemplified by the dilemma of the director of a once nationally admired museum service, who is trying to find more cuts in a service already slashed to the bone - the budget has been cut by 15 % in real terms since 1997. National figures show a landslip which is threatening to become an avalanche of jobs lost, hours cut, treasures crumbling and, ultimately, museums closing. "Some museums are going to close," says Maurice Davies, deputy director of the Museums Association. "There is a strong public expectation that when things go into a museum they are going to stay there for ever, on display to the people. That is not going to be true." Mr Davies's is one of many voices warning against complacency. Studies show that even those who do not visit museums value them and expect them always to be there. But without considerably more vocal public support for museums to give them political clout in local and national funding debates, the handful of museums which have already closed will be the tip of the iceberg. "It's not just us, it's all over the country, but that's not much comfort in our situation," says Margaret Warhurst, director of the Norton Priory museum in Runcorn, which is struggling to cope with a 20% local authority grant cut. "It is very hard to see free admission being talked about for the huge national museums in London when our local residents, in an area which is 16th on the national deprivation index, still have to pay to come into our museum. We will survive this year by hook or crook.
  read on at:
  http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,360320,00.html
  

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  From: Florence POINSARD florence.poinsard@libertysurf.fr
  To: securma@museum-security.org
  Subject:

  Art et Crime, Prix AKROPOLIS, Ministry of Interior, France

  Thank you to give information about the book I published in 1999:
  "Art et Crime, la criminalité du monde artistique, sa répression" Editor: Presses Universitaires de France.
  This book reveived "Prix Akropolis" decerned by Ministry of Interior, France for the year 2000.
  For further information: http://www.puf.com/dossiers/criminalite.htm My e-mail : GHG@ifrance.com

  Art et crime, la criminalité du monde artistique, sa répression,

  par Ghislaine GUILLOTREAU
  Le trafics des biens culturels est une activité criminelle en pleine expansion, très internationale, qui rapporte aux malfaiteurs un milliard de dollars par an - leur seconde source de profit derrière les stupéfiants. Fontières perméables, nouveaux marchés, nouveaux clients : tout cela a encouragé le vol, le pillage des oeuvres d'arts, les escroqueries et contrefaçons faites à partir d'elles. Mais jamais on avait rapproché en un livre le crime « artistique » des méthodes et textes s'intéressant à sa répression. C'est désormais chose faite : des sommets de l'esthétique aux marigots de « l'art-business », du monde virtuel d'Internet à l'univers souterrain des nécropoles mayas, du confort feutré des banques genevoises aux bars louches fréquentés par les mafieux, voici un ouvrage informé et sans concessions sur les mille et une facettes de la criminalité propre au monde de l'art.
  Le commissaire principal Ghislaine Guillotreau est secrétaire général adjoint de la Fédération internationale des fonctionnaires supérieurs de police ; organisatrice à l'UNESCO, en 1995, d'un colloque internatonal sur le thème « Art et criminalité », elle est secrétaire général de l'INAC, association internationale anti-contrefaçon en matière de propriété intellectuelle.
  

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