October 22, 2000
CONTENTS:
- Art collection may contain stolen items
( Would-be National Gallery donor an innocent victim whose collection of Chinese antiquities was assembled from unscrupulous vendors)
- Unesco canvasses Japan to sign the 1970 Convention
(International organisation's 30th birthday marks time to encourage cooperation on preventing illict imports)
- Man Vonvicted Of Defacing Painting
- Art gang holds £12m Turners to ransom
(negotiations with a middleman acting for Serbian gangsters)
Art collection may contain stolen items
(Would-be National Gallery donor an innocent victim whose collection of Chinese antiquities was assembled from unscrupulous vendors, KIM HONEY finds)
Friday, October 20, 2000
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/gam/Art/20001020/UCOLLM.html
There may be some fakes and stolen artifacts among a $20-million collection of Chinese antiquities that Toronto philanthropist Joey Tanenbaum offered to the National Gallery of Canada, an expert in Chinese art says.
That could be the reason the deal was recently called off, said Victor Topper, a Toronto art collector turned dealer who examined Mr. Tanenbaum's collection of Chinese and Middle Eastern antiquities about three years ago. "When Mr. Tanenbaum acquired them, he would have had no knowledge at all that something was wrong," said the owner of the Topper Gallery in Toronto, which specializes in Asian art. "He relied on other people, and that's the whole point. He is the innocent victim here at the end."
Chinese art is a bit of a hot potato lately, particularly since a Beijing museum, a state enterprise, bought three bronze sculptures that were auctioned off in Hong Kong after Sotheby's refused to hand them over. The works of art were stolen by French and British soldiers 140 years ago.
Mr. Tanenbaum said his collection was assembled in Hong Kong in 1985, 12 years before the Chinese assumed rule of the former British colony. He has since stopped collecting Chinese artifacts because, he said, the Chinese government has a strict policy that forbids the export of anything more than 200 years old. When Mr. Topper saw the collection two or three years ago, he said, it never occurred to him that any of it might be suspect. He has changed his mind as the issue has become prominent.
"If [the Chinese government] came and saw the collection, they would say, 'This was stolen.' The problem is, it probably was. What I mean by that is by tomb robbers. The tomb robbers would sell it to a secondary party; the secondary party would sell it to a third party, and the third party ended up selling it to the man who assembled it for Mr. Tanenbaum."
He said some items from Mr. Tanenbaum's collection of Chinese antiquities are relics buried with members of the nobility: bronze money trees to ensure good fortune, earthenware vessels that held water or wine to provide sustenance, and ceramic tiles featuring ferocious beasts to scare off anyone who might plunder the tomb.
And, Mr. Topper added, Chinese artisans have made some superb copies of relics found when tombs are opened. "These are artisans that take pride in fooling people."
When Mr. Tanenbaum was asked whether he thought some of his pieces might have been stolen or even faked, he said Emily Sano, the director of the renowned Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, spent four hours examining the collection and found nothing amiss.
"She came to me and kissed me and said, 'Mr. Tanenbaum, there isn't one piece that is wrong in that collection.'"
Ms. Sano said she and a curator looked at about 150 pieces from Mr. Tanenbaum's collection about two years ago at the National Gallery's behest. She said it was of "uniformly high quality," but she did not investigate its provenance. "We took a look at a portion of items. Believe me, we did not look at 1,600 pieces." Mr. Tanenbaum offered the collection to the National Gallery first because of a personal friendship with director Pierre Théberge, but would not say why he decided to rescind his offer.
"It was just that they couldn't meet certain conditions that we required of them initially." Mr. Tanenbaum did say the offer was dependent on the museum taking the whole collection.
But Mr. Théberge said, "We must be more and more and more careful. Many, many countries in Europe, also in Africa and Asia, now have very strict laws against export of objects that did not exist 25 years ago."
The Toronto developer and his wife, Toby, have a history of philanthropy. They have a gallery of Byzantine art named after themselves at the Royal Ontario Museum, as well as a sculpture atrium at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Mr. Tanenbaum said the Israel Museum is interested in the Chinese collection, but he hasn't made up his mind what to do with it.
Unesco canvasses Japan to sign the 1970 Convention
International organisation's 30th birthday marks time to encourage cooperation on preventing illict imports
By Fiona Wilson
TOKYO. Unesco is encouraging more States, including Japan, to sign up to the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, which is coming up to its 30th anniversary on 15 November.
Lyndel Prott, director of the International Standards Section of Unesco's Cultural Heritage Division made a trip to Japan earlier in the year in a bid to promote the signing of the Convention. She said, "Any major art trading State acts as a focus for illicit goods, so it is very important for us to get such nations to sign up."
Ninety-one States are party to the Convention but Switzerland, the UK and Japan, all major centres for the art trade, have yet to follow. "We find that countries with the most to lose, such as China and Cambodia, sign up, but countries with well developed art markets have been reluctant." says Ms Prott. In 1989 Japan deposited with Unesco a fund called "The Japanese Trust Fund for the Preservation of the World Cultural Heritage" which contributes largely to projects across Asia. The Angkor Wat complex in Cambodia has been a significant beneficiary. "Maybe in the early days, Japan saw no benefit to signing the Convention", says Ms Prott. "Now Japan funds a number of conservation programmes in the Asian region. It has projects in countries such as Cambodia that are subject to illicit traffic, so it can see at first hand the damage that is being done by art theft. Japan is also a significant power in the Asian art market, so of course we would like them to sign up. We would also like Thailand to sign since it is also an important art market."
A spokesman at the Japanese Foreign Ministry said that the government was considering the possibility but had yet to reach a final conclusion: "We feel it is very important to join in the international effort to prevent any illegal traffic in cultural properties. Signing a Convention like this cuts into the work of several government departments, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Ministry of Industry, so there will have to be a consultation process. However, we are trying hard."
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=3553
Man Vonvicted Of Defacing Painting
NEW YORK (AP) - A man who smeared white paint on a painting of the Virgin Mary decorated with elephant dung and pornographic cutouts was convicted of criminal mischief.
Dennis Heiner, 73, faces up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine after Friday's conviction. He is to be sentenced Nov. 1.
Heiner was arrested last December at the Brooklyn Museum of Art after he defaced ``The Holy Virgin Mary,'' which was part of the British ``Sensation'' exhibit. The work had angered Catholic groups and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Defense attorneys said Heiner was exercising free speech, but prosecutors alleged he was trying to destroy the painting.
Heiner told the jury that as a Catholic, he saw the painting as a continuation of centuries-old slurs against Mary by critics of Jesus. He said he told himself, ``You're not going to go into the new millennium without saying something.''
Experts have cleaned up the painting, though a curator testified that a white film remains.
Art gang holds £12m Turners to ransom
Tom Robbins
THE Tate gallery entered into secret negotiations with a middleman acting for Serbian gangsters holding two British masterpieces to ransom. According to Geoffrey Robinson, the former paymaster general, the gallery has already given "a small amount of money" to the intermediary in an attempt to secure the return of the paintings - a move that will provoke criticism in the art world for appearing to capitulate to extortion.
Investigators believe the gangsters have realised that the paintings, by Turner, are so well known that they would be impossible to sell. Instead, they are trying to negotiate a deal to return the paintings to their owner.
Robinson's revelations about the missing Turners are made in his new book The Unconventional Minister. He became involved with the saga when he struck a deal between the insurers, who paid out for the paintings, and the Tate, which could not use the money in case the works turned up unharmed.
The artworks, worth more than £12m each, were seized from the Schirn Kunsthalle, a Frankfurt gallery, in 1994 while on loan from the Tate. Thieves broke into the gallery and tied up and gagged a security guard while the paintings were snatched from the walls.
Robinson said the go-between for the criminals, a German, recently asked the Tate for more money, prompting concern among art experts that thieves will see that crime does pay.
"Nobody wants to create a ransom situation - there must never be any trade on that basis," said Sir Thomas Ingilby, president of the Council for Prevention of Art Theft. "It would be very unusual indeed for a gallery to pay out to a gang, as they are well aware of the precedent they would create."
Charles Hill, risk manager for the AXA Nordstern art insurer and the former Scotland Yard officer in charge of the initial investigation, said: "You should never pay a ransom, although rewards are a necessary tool in getting works of art back."
The twin paintings are Shade and Darkness - the Evening of the Deluge; and Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) - the Morning after the Deluge - Moses Writing the Book of Genesis. They were painted in 1843 and are considered masterpieces of European romanticism and key examples of Turner's late style. Several photographs of the paintings have been sent to representatives of the Tate and its insurers. One shows the works with a recent newspaper to prove they are unharmed.
Although Robinson was praised for his role in the deal, many are furious at his revelations, fearing they could jeopardise the recovery of the paintings. "He is very, very naughty - talking about recovery is extremely dangerous," said one prominent insurer.
The Tate last week refused to comment on the recovery of the paintings.
(Sunday Times, London)