September 24, 2000
CONTENTS:
- query: security and private collection (Renee N. Vara)
- RE: request for training video (adalberto biasiotti)
- LAWSUIT SEEKS TO BAR TERRA MUSEUM MOVE
- Art dealers to stand trial in beating
- Germany: Nazis' stolen art returned to Jews
From: rvara@chubb.com
Subject: query: security and private collection
Dear Museum Security List--
I was wondering if there are any new technologies to secure museum collections that have now been moved into the private sector of private collections. Or are there any new trends you are seeing in technology in securing collections.
Thanks,
Renee N. Vara
Fine Arts Specialist
From: adalberto biasiotti securcomp@mclink.it
Subject: request for training video
Some time ago ICOM Switzerland made a nice 15 minutes slides presentation, with supporting text and audio cassette. I have used it extensively, now reversed on VHS tape.
Best regards from Adalberto Biasiotti
LAWSUIT SEEKS TO BAR TERRA MUSEUM MOVE
By Robert Becker
A Cook County Circuit judge Friday entered a temporary order barring the widow of philanthropist Daniel Terra from taking steps to close his namesake Michigan Avenue art museum and move the Terra Foundation to Washington, D.C. The move came amid allegations of mismanagement leveled against Judith Terra and other directors of the foundation, including former U.S. Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), contained in a lawsuit filed Friday by two other museum foundation directors, Ron Gidwitz, former CEO of Helene Curtis, and Dean Buntrock, a former head of Waste Management Inc.
In an emergency court hearing before Circuit Court Judge Dorothy Kirie Kinnaird, lawyers from the office of Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan told the judge they planned to intervene in the case, citing the allegations of mismanagement of a $450 million foundation that operates the museum, which has a renowned collection of American art. The lawsuit alleges that Judith Terra planned to meet with the foundation's board of directors in Giverny, France, to oust Buntrock from the board as part of a scheme to shutter the museum and relocate the foundation to Washington.
"The pattern of waste and mismanagement at Terra Museum is a conscious effort ... to cause the failure of the Terra Museum in Chicago to justify closing (it) and moving Terra Foundation from Chicago to Washington, D.C.," the complaint alleges. The suit says Judith Terra is pushing to move the foundation there to "obtain a prominent place in social circles in Washington, D.C.," where she lives.
Terra and foundation director Paul Hayes Tucker, also a defendant in the suit, have engaged in merger talks with the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, according to the suit.
Judith Terra could not be reached for comment.
Terry Grimm, an attorney representing the foundation, said while his client agreed not to hold the board meeting over the weekend, he questioned the charges in the suit. "It's easy to plead things and sometimes harder to prove them," Grimm said.
But Assistant Atty. Gen. Floyd Perkins, who heads the charitable trusts division in Ryan's office, said the attorney general wants to intervene because of the size of the charitable organization and the seriousness of the allegations. "It's important to the people of the State of Illinois and the attorney general to make sure that charity here in Chicago is protected," Perkins said.
Attorneys for Buntrock and Gidwitz contend Judith Terra and her supporters have one goal in mind. "There seems to be a plan or scheme being put together to remove Mr. Buntrock as a director and officer because of his complaints and objections to the particular improper--and we believe illegal--actions that have taken place," said attorney William Quinlan. Quinlan charged that Terra and other top foundation officials "have not acted pursuant to their fiduciary responsibilities."
Daniel Terra established the Terra Foundation in December 1978 with the intention of providing a Chicago museum that would exhibit collections of American art, as well as expand the artistic horizons of the public through educational programs. Terra Museum of American Art opened in Evanston in 1980, and in 1987 it moved to its current location on North Michigan Avenue. With 19th Century and early 20th Century American paintings by artists such as Winslow Homer and Mary Cassatt, its collection is valued at more than $100 million. In 1992, the foundation expanded its museum properties, building the Musee Americain in Giverny, France, dedicated to American impressionist artists who were influenced by Claude Monet. Daniel Terra died of a stroke in 1996, leaving the foundation $125 million.
Under a prenuptial agreement that she signed prior to her 1986 marriage to Daniel Terra, Judith was to receive $7.1 million in cash and other assets. But according to the suit, Judith "embarked on a scheme" to claim $43 million of the $125 million from the foundation. In 1998, she set out to seize control of the foundation board, launching a scheme to close the museum in Chicago and move the foundation to Washington, the suit charges.
Terra "believes that if she is able to move a foundation as large as Terra Foundation to Washington, D.C., she would be able to establish herself ... as a large benefactor of the arts, thereby placing herself in the elite social circles of Washington, D.C.," the suit says. To that end, Judith began "stacking" the foundation board with loyalists, it says.
In the meantime, the suit alleges that Judith Terra also treated the collection of the foundation "as if it were her own personal property." She ordered art from the collection in Giverny sent to her personal residence, the suit says. It also charges that Judith Terra and her supporters acted in a manner that "threatened the continued viability" of the museum. Specifically, the suit cites mismanagement at the museum resulting in the loss of almost half the employees as well as running off top security employees, thereby jeopardizing the safety of the collection.
The alleged mismanagement has sparked the ire of one important board member, Maggie Daley, wife of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. In a March 2 letter included in the complaint, Daley wrote to museum director John Neff complaining about the shoddy treatment of several key employees.
"It distressed me to see people treated in such a manner," Daley wrote.
All parties return to court Monday afternoon.
Art dealers to stand trial in beating
Doubts raised about prosecution's case in attack on man trying to sell artifacts By Tom Kertscher of the Journal Sentinel staff Last Updated: Sept. 22, 2000 Two art dealers facing conspiracy charges over stolen million-dollar artifacts were ordered Friday to stand trial in the beating of a Shorewood man who had tried to sell the ancient instruments for one of the dealers.
Mafia-like details about the beating emerged during the Milwaukee County Circuit Court hearing, which was punctuated by winks between defendants and a lighthearted exchange about an Armani suit.
But the hearing also revealed possible weaknesses in the district attorney's case in the beating, which is separate from the federal conspiracy charges that the dealers face over possession of the stolen items. Circuit Commissioner Audrey Brooks ruled that there was enough evidence to put art dealers Marilyn Karos of Whitefish Bay and Richard O'Hara of Chicago on trial in the beating. But even Brooks seemed to raise doubts about the district attorney's case.
Referring to the testimony of James Kosi, a key witness who struck a plea bargain with prosecutors, Brooks said, "I'm not sure the state got the benefit of what its bargain was."
Karos, 59, and O'Hara, 58, could go on trial in the beating by the end of the year, said Assistant District Attorney Kevin Shomin. Authorities allege that Karos, the proprietor of an art gallery inside her $400,000 N. Shore Drive home, had obtained three 16th century astrolabes - instruments that were used in navigation - and a 17th century armillary sphere, an astronomical instrument. Each is valued at at least $1 million, according to the FBI.
The four items were among those stolen in a burglary of the Osservatorio Astronomica di Roma, a museum in Rome, in May 1984. It is not known how Karos obtained the items, but Zakria El-Shafei, a 34-year-old Shorewood resident, testified Friday that Karos hired him to sell them for her. El-Shafei said that after Karos demanded he return the items, she invited him to her home in November 1997, where three men who were waiting in her basement beat him.
"Give them the stuff or they (will) kill you," Karos had said, according to El-Shafei's testimony. A masked man carrying an aluminum baseball bat then struck him four or five times, El-Shafei said, as all three men demanded that he return "the stuff." He testified that the stolen items were the only ones of Karos' that he had in his possession at the time.
When the beating started, El-Shafei said, Karos exclaimed to the men, "Why are you doing this? You didn't tell me you were going to be doing anything like this." But she also did not try to stop the assault and did not call police, El-Shafei said.
But Kosi, the key prosecution witness, said the incident was meant only to scare El-Shafei into returning the items and that O'Hara was kept away from El-Shafei.
Kosi, 52, of Chicago, testified that O'Hara had asked him to come to Karos' home to "stand in the corner and look scary" as they tried to persuade El-Shafei to return the artifacts. O'Hara "told me there was this guy who was robbing (Karos) blind," Kosi testified.
Kosi is charged with false imprisonment and battery in the incident. But he is being prosecuted separately and, in exchange for his testimony, is to get the false imprisonment count dropped. O'Hara twice turned around to give a wink to Kosi during Friday's court proceedings. During his testimony, Kosi referred admiringly to O'Hara's Armani suit, but O'Hara's attorney, Allan Ackerman of Chicago, objected, saying the suit was not made by Armani.
Kosi testified that he had not seen O'Hara wearing a mask or carrying a bat at Karos' house. Kosi said that he and another man not charged in the incident who also questioned El-Shafei about returning the items had kept O'Hara out of the room while they were with El-Shafei.
El-Shafei testified that he could not identify the masked man.
Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sept. 23, 2000.
Nazis' stolen art returned to Jews
Peter Watson
MORE than 80 paintings looted by the Nazis are to be returned to their rightful owners by the German government in a ground-breaking change of policy. Two of the most important works will be handed over tomorrow in a ceremony at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. The German government has decided that the restitution of looted works should no longer require time-consuming and costly legal processes, and that the heirs have a moral right to have their art returned.
A number of the works - all part of a collection amassed in the 1930s by Gustav Kirstein, a German Jewish publisher - will be sold on behalf of their new owners at auction by Sotheby's in London, some as early as next month. The Kirstein paintings constititute what could be the first wave of hundreds of pieces to be returned. Germany has so far identified nearly 1,500 works in 101 museums and 50 government offices that were confiscated but whose rightful owners have not yet been traced.
At tomorrow's ceremony, Michael Naumann, the culture minister, will give back The Walchensee on St John's Eve, by Lovis Corinth, on show in Hanover since the 1960s, and probably Max Klinger's The Lute Player, which has been in Leipzig. Thekla Stein Nordwind, one of Kirstein's surviving heirs, and Ronald Lauder, son of Estée Lauder, founder of the cosmetics house, will accept the paintings. Kirstein died in 1934, leaving a wife, Clara, and two daughters, Marianne and Gabrielle. Her daughters escaped abroad, but Clara committed suicide in 1939. Her late husband's collection was subsequently dispersed through forced sales. There are five surviving Kirstein heirs, four in America and one in Germany. Later this week the Corinth will go on a world tour organised by Sotheby's before returning to London, where it will be auctioned on October 18. It is expected to fetch GBP.250,000- GBP.350,000.
Swiss police have warned of a surge in support for neo-Nazis and skinhead groups. The news came on the eve of a referendum today to decide whether the number of foreigners allowed to live in the country should be reduced. A police report claims 700 Swiss skinheads are joining forces with Germans and Austrians. If urgent measures were not taken, a "charismatic führer" would rise up to unite them, it says.
http://www.lostart.de: The German government's list of unclaimed looted art
_____________________________________________________