October 27, 2000
CONTENTS:
- IFAR Evening on the FBI
- Looted Treasures Returned to Italy
- Workshop: Safety and Health in Museums
- Heiress pleased by court ruling on Nazi-looted art
- Up to 600 works of art in galleries linked to Nazis
- Park Employees Race Against Time To Protect Archaeological Sites
- Man carried gun stolen from museum
- Heritage buffs will meet to discuss Old Silk Road
From: "Sharon Flescher" http://www.ifar.org/
Subject: IFAR Evening on the FBI
MSN readers may want to know about IFAR's (the International Foundation for Art Research) next program New York:
An IFAR Evening -- Tuesday, November 14, 2000; 6 - 8 p.m.
"The FBI's Role in Art Fraud and Theft"
Speakers: Catherine Begley, FBI, New York; Tom Cassano, FBI, Boston; and Lynne Chaffinch, FBI, Washington, D.C.
Several other FBI agents will attend. This is a rare opportunity to get an insider's look at the FBI. In addition, the Supervisory Special Agent in charge of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft will update us on the case. As with all IFAR Evenings, there will be time for audience questions, and a wine and cheese reception will follow.
IFAR, a not-for-profit educational and research organization headquartered in New York, has hosted IFAR Evenings since 1981. These are informal lectures and panels on topics related to IFAR's core areas of art authenticity, ownership, theft, and law. Several are scheduled each year. This Spring, Alexander (Sandy) Rower, Director of the Calder Foundation and grandson of Alexander Calder, spoke about Calder's artistic development and Calder "fakes." Just prior to that, H. Christopher Luce lectured on Forgeries and Copies in Chinese Paintings, and Kirk Varnedoe, Chief Curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, spoke on Art, Law, and Ethics. Last year, we hosted panels on art insurance and on U.S. taxes in relation to art. Summaries of the talks later appeared in our quarterly magazine, IFAR Journal. These informal Evenings are in addition to IFAR's conferences and symposia, the most recent being our all-day Workshop/ Conference on Provenance and Due Diligence, April 29th, which we organized in collaboration with New York University.
IFAR Evenings are offered free to IFAR supporters/Members, at reduced rate to IFAR Journal subscribers and full-time students, and at modest cost to the public. For more information, please see our Web site: or call us at (212) 391-6234 and we will mail/ fax an announcement.
Space is limited and advance reservations with payment are essential.
Sharon Flescher, Executive Director, IFAR
http://www.ifar.org/
Looted Treasures Returned to Italy
ROME (AP) - A 2,500-year-old Greek drinking cup stolen nearly two decades ago was the prize among recovered relics Italy showed off Wednesday. Italy recently regained more than 900 smuggled artifacts from the United States and European countries.
The single biggest cache - 300 amphora, vases, terra cotta statues and other objects - had been smuggled into the United States by a U.S. citizen using a pasta import company as cover, police said.
The gleaming Greek cup, which portrays a satyr clad in a lion skin, was stolen from a state storeroom in Rieti, near Rome, in the late 1980s, said Italian art theft police official Gen. Roberto Conforti. The London-based auction house Sotheby's sold it to a German buyer for about $43,000 in 1995, he said.
U.S. customs agents in Los Angeles and Atlanta helped recover the relics, he said.
Italy's Culture Ministry plans to put the artifacts on permanent display in museums in the southern and central regions of Puglia and Lazio, near the archaeological sites where they originally were found.
From: Craig Deller craig@deller.com Subject: Workshop on health and safety
Workshop: Safety and Health in Museums
Monona Rossol from Arts, Crafts and Theater Safety (ACTS)
Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum
1300 South Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, IL 60605
Friday, November 3, 2000
9:30am to 4:30pm
Ms. Rossol will cover applicable laws and standards, worker/employee obligations, strategies to make it work, basic concepts of occupational health and toxicity, precautions and hazards/ precautions for types of materials. There will be handouts on topics like mold, carpets, and after disaster. There will also be a publications list. Please feel free to XXXing your questions and concerns.
Ms. Rossol has been brought to Chicago through a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council and through financial assistance from the Chicago Area Registrars Council, the Chicago Area Conservation Group, and the Midwest Registrars Committee. A special thank you needs to be given to Elizabeth Marston of the Elgin Area Historical Society and to Pat Miller of the Illinois Heritage Association for assistance with the grant from the Illinois Humanities Council.
Ms. Rossol will start at 9:30am. We will take a 1 hour lunch break. Participants are welcome to bring their lunch. The Adler's cafe, lileo's, serves a variety of salads and sandwiches; but depending on the size of e group, I will need to know how many are interested in purchasing lunch. I might have to have it brought to the lecture hall. Also, if you need to leave early or arrive late, we can accommodate you. The goal here is to t everyone who wants to attend this workshop the ability to do so. RSVP Please call Devon Pyle-Vowles at 312-322-0821 by Wednesday, October 25th We can have late RSVPs, but not after Tuesday, October 31st
Craig Deller
President / CACG
Heiress pleased by court ruling on Nazi-looted art
BUDAPEST, Hungary (Reuters) -- Jewish-American heiress Martha Nierenberg welcomed a ruling on Tuesday for the return of paintings looted by Nazis which once belonged to her grandfather, even though the pieces cannot leave the country.
"My mother, who died at 94 in 1992, never gave up the hope that the paintings she loved so much would be returned to the family," Martha Nierenberg of Armonk, New York, told a news conference in Budapest.
On Friday, the Budapest Municipal Court ruled after a marathon trial that 10 out of the 12 paintings claimed must be returned to Nierenberg, a granddaughter of Baron Mor Lipot Herzog who collected the works.
The paintings were looted from the family by Nazi SS commander Adolf Eichmann during the persecution of Hungary's Jews in 1944.
"My mother's and my favorite was the Cranach piece, and she had photographs of all the paintings hanging around her in her New York apartment," Nierenberg said. "I'm sorry she couldn't live to see this."
Nierenberg, however, cannot take the paintings out of the country, because the artifacts are under national protection.
"I will read and study the verdict and then I'll decide what I will do with the paintings," Nierenberg said, adding she hoped her decision would also be good for Hungary and Hungarian museums.
Up to 600 works of art in galleries linked to Nazis
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
UP to 600 works of art owned by public galleries in Britain may have been stolen by Nazis from Jewish families and occupied countries, says research published yesterday. The questionable items are spread around all the leading institutions, according to figures from the National Museum Directors' Conference. More than a year ago the directors began the enormous task of checking the provenance of all objects acquired after the Second World War. In February, they published a list of 350 items for which there were gaps in provenance between 1933, when the Nazis rose to power, and 1945. The new, bigger list follows further investigation and for the first time includes 42 items held by the British Library, including a 15th-century religious miniature once part of a missal, and a Degas portrait at the Courtauld Institute Gallery.The search has barely begun. The British Library has checked 10,000 of its 80 million objects. The directors, however, have been cautious and it is expected that the gaps in the history of many "suspicious" items will be filled.
The Nazis are believed to have stolen or looted several million items, about a fifth of the world's entire known art works. But Whitehall believes that few remain in British collections and civil servants expect no more than 30 successful claims from families for the return of objects owned by forebears. No new claimants have come forward since the first list was published. The Commission for Looted Art in Europe, however, revealed yesterday that it was investigating claims from a Jewish family for three objects in an unnamed British gallery, but refused to give further details. The Government is considering legislation to make it easier to return items to dispossessed families.
(Daily Telegraph)
Park Employees Race Against Time To Protect Archaeological Sites
Two wildfires that charred nearly 23,000 acres of Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park last summer left behind at least one positive result: flames that gobbled up the lush vegetation also exposed evidence of the ancestral Pueblo Indians who lived in the area between A.D. 600 and 1300.
Park archeologists have found artifacts and depressions in the ground - and have eagerly marked each new treasure site with tiny day-glow pink flags. There were already a total of 1,388 sites before the fire, ranging from spectacular cliff dwellings to kivas - ceremonial rooms - to scattered artifacts. The archaeologists say that figure could double once they fully document the new discoveries.
A problem, however, has arisen with the findings.
"We're trying hard to balance that with the fact that right now, at this stage of the technology, we don't have a way to protect sites that are exposed to elements," park ranger Jane Anderson said.
With autumn rains already falling, 50 archaeologists and construction workers are working as quickly as they can among the ancient cliff dwellings tucked into the 52,000-acre park's canyon walls.
"It was a race against time after the fire started," archaeologist Noel Logan, who heads the project, said Wednesday. "We're looking at heavy rains and snows this winter. Unfortunately, we won't get to all the sites before then."
Bits of pottery littered blackened land along a trail to one dwelling called the Step House. In one spot is a pile of slate gray shards resembling remnants of a broken flower pot.
"This would have been a green tunnel," park ranger Will Morris said of the path. "Visitors had no idea they were walking through an archaeological site."
Full story plus photographs:
http://www.foxnews.com/national/102600/mesaverde.sml
Man carried gun stolen from museum
AURORA - The gun recovered from an armed man shot this week by an Aurora police officer was stolen from a Denver firearms and military museum in August,
authorities said Thursday.
more: http://insidedenver.com/news/1020gun6.shtml
Heritage buffs will meet to discuss Old Silk Road
The Beirut Heritage Association announced on Wednesday that its third annual conference would discuss the "Old Silk Road" that extended from China to the Eastern Mediterranean 4,000 years ago. The two-day seminar, which is co-sponsored by the Ministry of Education, UNESCO and the Arab World Institute in Paris, will be held from Nov. 2-3 at UN House.
more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/26_10_00/art11.htm