October 30, 2000

The Art Newspaper, Focus on Looted Art.

I just wanted to make you aware of our newly updated Focus on Looted Art.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/looted/lootedart.asp
| Peter Schauer |
p.schauer@theartnewspaper.com http://www.theartnewspaper.com

The Art Newspaper.com
http://www.theartnewspaper.com

This week's top stories:

J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM: BUILDING BLOCKED
LOS ANGELES. The J. Paul Getty Museum has been blocked by a judge from building renovations and additions to its villa overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=3621
THE PAINTING IN THE VERMEER
LONDON. Two 'pictures in a picture' in Vermeer's 'Young woman standing at a virginal' of around 1670 have been identified by a German art historian.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=3620
NEA GIVEN $7 MILLION INCREASE
LONDON. The US Congress has approved for 2001 a $105 million (ú72.3 million) budget, an increaseůthe first in eight yearsůof $7 million, for the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), a target of recent Republican attacks.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=3619
CANADIAN SUMMIT FOR ARTS COUNCILS
LONDON. The Canada Council for the Arts (the parliamentary body that fosters the arts and administers grants, services and awards) is to host the first world summit in Ottawa of 2,000 representatives of arts councils, policy makers and funding bodies from 30 November to 3 December.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=3617
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/

Device May Rescue Aging Masterpieces

By Rossella Lorenzi,
Discovery.com News
Oct. 27, 2000 - A team of researchers in Italy has created a new technology that allows art experts to analyze the condition of a painting in minute detail. The technology, developed at the National Research Council in Florence with Help from Florence University, permits curators to examine with a variety of disfiguring nuisances, such as infestations by insects, fungi and humidity. "This is possible by measuring a quantity called permittivity, which describes how a material responds to the electric field induced by electromagnetic radiation applied to it. The permittivity can be measured through a probe placed in contact with the material, but this technique was so far restricted only to measurements on liquid and semi-solid materials such as gels," said the team leader Roberto Olmi, who has published his research in the latest issue of the journal Measurement Science and Technology.
The new technology, completely non-intrusive and portable, allows an easy and firm contact and an absolute measurement of permittivity on solids such as plastics, glass, ceramics and wood. It relies on a probe that makes contact with the material through a retractable end: this ensures a good electric contact and reduces the risk of air gaps between the probe and the material's surface. "The technology can be very useful to curators in museums. Wood-panel paintings suffer swelling and shrinking with humidity variations. Measuring their permittivity and finding their moisture content can be [helpful in preventing] priceless artworks" from deteriorating, said Olmi.
The technology finds an even more interesting application when it comes to eradicating the problem of woodworms and their larvae, which devour not only ancient books and wood panel paintings, but also antique furniture, musical instruments, and the beams and altars of ancient churches. Microwave radiation is often used as a treatment against insect infestation, but with fragile artworks, elevated radiation can prove disastrous.
"By knowing the permittivity of a painting we can quantify how much radiation has to be applied to destroy the insects. It is a fast, non-destructive procedure. In a few words, it is the same concept of a microwave oven, but in our case, we cook woodworms," said Olmi.
The technology is still experimental and tests have been carried out on ancient wood tablets painted with colors prepared with the old masters' recipes. "This is an innovative, promising technology, and it has the great advantage of being non destructive, portable and of a fast application. It could have a key role in the conservation of artworks," said Ornella Casazza, director of the New Technologies Department of the Uffizi Gallery.

Earthquakes in the Auction World

Brokerages May Alter the Art Game

-By Souren Melikian International Herald Tribune
LONDON - Slowly, irresistibly, without so much as a whisper in the media, the art market is undergoing the most drastic transformation since the 1950s, when the auction system became the engine that has been driving it since. That system is being shaken to its foundations even if, at first glance, it would seem to prosper as an unprecedented inflationary wave sweeps across every category. In its Oct. 17 auction of 20th-century German and Austrian art, Christie's sold August Macke's ''Market in Tunis,'' done in 1914, for a record Ł2.86 million ($4.1 million). A day later, Sotheby's scored with six auction records for Germanic Expressionists. Egon Schiele's portrait of a dealer, Guido Arnot, made a staggering Ł7.15 million, and Erich Heckel's ''Dangast village landscape'' went for Ł1.21 million. Looked at closely, however, the situation has never been so unhealthy. At Christie's, 37 percent of the lots were unsold and at Sotheby's the failure rate rose to 41 percent in the session devoted to a private collector where five world records were achieved.
The reason is simple. As art resources become scarcer, auction houses fight to the death to get works for sale and give in to requests for high estimates and assorted ''reserves'' demanded by vendors. Every auction becomes a lottery. Some vendors make a killing by hitting the jackpot, others kill their goods as failure to sell is broadcast worldwide. As such mishaps multiply, the credibility of the system crumbles to dust.
As if this was not enough, the aura carefully built around the entire system over the last three decades is being tarnished by court actions in which Christie's and Sotheby's became embroiled this year. Following admissions that they had agreed on fees to be charged to potential vendors, which amounts to price-fixing under U.S. law, the top managements have undergone drastic changes. It began in December with the departure of Christopher Davidge, Christie's chief executive. In February, Sotheby's chairman, Alfred Taubman, stepped down, as did Diana Brooks, the chief executive. Both houses face punishing fines. Each is to pay $256 million to settle civil suits, with Sotheby's due to pay on top an extra $30 million to settle a stockholders' suit.
This does no good to the public image. Yet, a far more serious threat hangs over them. Managerial high-handedness toward their experts has led to the departure of some of the best people.
Sotheby's has been the worst hit. It started in 1994 with the resignation of Lucy Mitchell-Innes, director of the Contemporary Art departments worldwide, held in high regard by her peers. A year later, David Nash, worldwide director of Impressionist and Modern Masters (who is Mitchell-Innes's husband), followed suit. One of the world's great professionals in the field, he took away with him a memory stretching over more than 30 years with Sotheby's. Recently, departures have accelerated. In September 1999, Alexandre Pradere, one of the finest connoisseurs of French decorative art and Sotheby's key man in France, announced that he was leaving, and in January so did Thierry Millerand, director of European furniture worldwide. With him, Sotheby's lost one of the best known ambassadors for top French furniture in the United States.
More bad news followed in September. John Block, chairman of the jewelry department, said he was resigning after nearly 30 years. True, he had lost ground to the competition at Christie's led by Francois Curiel, who has wrested away roughly 60 percent of the market. Still, Block's departure is a nasty blow. He knows everybody who matters in his field. This month Michel Strauss, the man who built up Sotheby's as the leader in Impressionist and Modern art over the past 37 years, let it be known that he would go on Dec. 31.
Christie's too has suffered losses. Its Old Masters department has not fully recovered from the departure in 1993 of such high-caliber experts as Simon Dickinson and Ian Kennedy. Michael Findlay, who played a key role in New York 19th- and 20th-century paintings and enjoyed a strong position in Japan, from where he attracted a high volume of business, has just resigned.
In the midst of all this, a third contender sprang up out of the blue. The French businessman and owner of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Bernard Arnault, bought up Phillips. A modest third power, the London auction house suddenly looks more threatening. In September, one heard that Millerand now heads the European furniture department worldwide. Soon after, it was announced that Strauss was to be an adviser to Arnault at LVMH.
Strauss insists that this is for a project unrelated to Phillips. Even so, in the eyes of the wider public, his presence at LVMH will lend a new aura to any undertakings in Impressionist and Modern Masters that have Arnault's name attached to them. The latest news is that Simon de Pury, a former high-powered player at Sotheby's, will conduct the forthcoming sale in New York scheduled for Nov. 6.
Even as the cozy auction ''duopoly,'' Christie's-Sotheby's, is loosening up, a challenge is coming from the art brokerage and consultancy businesses established in the last few years. The earliest of all was set up in Paris in 1987 by Marc Blondeau, who in the 1970s and early 1980s was one of Sotheby's best professionals in Impressionist and Modern art. He was joined in 1994 by Etienne Breton, then head of Old Masters at Sotheby's France, and on Jan. 1 this year, by Pradere.
The sale of a striking portrait of the Comte de Turenne done by Jacques-Louis David in 1816 illustrates the assets enjoyed by art brokers in creaming the market - speed and privacy. The French owners of the portrait learned that Breton had been the underbidder on a picture by Delacroix, ''Arab Riders,'' sold at Drouot in June 1998 for 51.6 million francs ($8.6 million at the exchange rate then). They wanted a quick sale.
On seeing the painting, Breton thought of a New England museum with a small but superlative collection of 19th-century French masters. As he had hoped, Richard Rand, chief curator of European paintings, and, crucially, Michael Conforti, the director of the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, reacted enthusiastically to the discovery. The $4 million or so transaction was wrapped up within three months.
In 19th- and 20th-century painting, De Pury and Daniella Luxembourg, formerly at Sotheby's Switzerland, set up in November 1997 a Geneva-based private dealership, brokerage and consultancy operation, which has been gathering steam. In June this year they struck an alliance with the New York-based private dealership Mitchell-Innes and Nash.
A typical example of their joint ventures is the negotiation of a Cubist still life painted by Picasso in 1911. The European owner wanted to sell quickly, without any publicity. De Pury and Luxembourg thought of an East Coast collector who was approached by Nash. The deal concerning a work probably worth $2.5 million to $3.5 million was completed within four weeks. The brokerage system is taking off. Increasingly practiced by a few long-established dealers, it might yet trigger far-reaching changes in buying and selling habits and affect the entire art game.
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/SAT/IN/souren.html

A question for the ages: returning ancient remains

Science and tribes often clash if museums repatriate bones from Oregon's past without radiocarbon dating tests

By Richard L. Hill of The Oregonian staff While the clamorous legal dispute over Kennewick Man drags into its fourth year, Oregon tribes quietly are burying the remains of Native Americans that have been stored in museums.
The remains of more than 200 individuals from museum collections have been turned over to Oregon tribes in the past three years. They're among nearly 20,000 sets of remains -- out of an estimated 200,000 stored in the nation's museums and other institutions -- that either have been given to or are awaiting delivery to tribes under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
But as is the case with the legal dispute over the 9,300-year-old skeleton found in Kennewick, Wash., the repatriation process in Oregon is the source of some discord.
full story:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/00/10/sc_41skel25.frame

Glasgow collection hit by Nazi link

ONE of Britain's top art collections could hold hundreds of works looted by the Nazis, writes Phil Miller. Glasgow city council has been told there is a "real" threat to the reputation of the Burrell Collection, which houses more than 1m items including Rodin's The Thinker and works by Cézanne, Rembrandt and Degas. The report says the collection, given to the city by Sir William Burrell in 1944, could contain works of "dubious provenance" bought before and during the second world war. The city is sending experts across Europe to discover whether any of its holdings were stolen from Jewish and other victims of the Third Reich.
The fears are contained in an unpublished report to the National Museum Director's Conference, the London-based body investigating Britain's art collections for evidence of works that could have been looted. Mark O'Neill, the city's head of museums, said: "This is a grim task, but the motivation behind it is human rights."
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/10/29/stinwenws03014.html

Ł40m bequest baffles Paris art lovers

Susan Bell, Paris
WHEN an exhibition of more than 100 masterpieces opened at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris earlier this month, there was no sign of the mysterious benefactor who had given the collection, conservatively valued at Ł40m, to the French state. As museum officials mingled with the great, the good and the unashamedly curious of the art world, they politely rebuffed questions about the identity of the man whose gift, including works by Picasso, Cézanne and Matisse, has been described as one of the most generous of the last century.
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In the preface to the exhibition catalogue, Cachin cryptically describes the donor as a teacher engaged in scientific research who came to art through an association with writers and poets. He was a "man of discretion", she wrote. It was a tantalising understatement. Cachin's words started a parlour game among art connoisseurs in Paris's chattering classes that culminated last week in farce. The smart speculation was that the unnamed art lover was called Philippe Meyer.
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Last week two publications - the weekly L'Express and the provincial daily La Provence - claimed to have tracked him down to the Necker hospital in Paris, where he was said to be working as a medical researcher. Contacted by The Sunday Times, however, the 67-year-old scientist denied being the donor. He also insisted that he had "no connection with the Lazard family", although the French Who's Who shows that his father was named André and his mother had the same name as the banker's wife.
full story:
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/10/29/stifgneur02014.html