December 9, 2000

- Police hunt Sydney auction scene in search of stolen art
- Man's Conviction for Looting Indian Burial Site Overturned
- Art Stolen From Library
- Court rules Strasbourg Museum must return Klimt to U.S. resident
-Loot Online: Czech Government to Display Nazi Booty on Internet
- World Jewish Congress Asks France To Speed Return of Works Taken by Nazis
- Terra-Cotta Diplomacy (China - Taiwan)
- Iffyosaurus Dinosaur skeleton exposed as fake

Police hunt Sydney auction scene in search of stolen art

Police are to hunt the Sydney art auction scene in an attempt to find stolen works. Six paintings and two sculptures were taken from a Sydney gallery during its final two weeks of exhibition in late October. The pieces included a work valued at nearly $10,000. Police have appealed for public help to solve the crime, saying at the time the art was stolen the gallery was busy with visitors and workmen.
http://www.abc.net.au/arts/news/arts-8dec2000-4.htm

Man's Conviction for Looting Indian Burial Site Overturned

From Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO--A federal appeals panel has overturned Alaska's first conviction under a congressional act protecting ancient remains and burial sites from looters. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Thursday that the government must prove that people who remove ancient findings from federal lands knew the remains were an "archeological resource," or at least 100 years old. The case involves a man who discovered a 1,400-year-old skull at an eroded Indian burial site while deer hunting near Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska. Last year, Ian Lynch pleaded guilty to violating the 1979 Archeological Resources Protection Act and was sentenced to three months in jail and fined $7,500. Authorities agreed that Lynch could appeal his case before serving his sentence. The appeals panel ruled that Lynch can withdraw his plea that he illegally took a child's skull at the Warm Chuck Village and Burial Site, which contains the remains of an Alaskan native village. When sentenced, Lynch said he didn't intend to anger the native community when he found and took the skull, which was covered by moss and grass on a hillside. The appeals court said that, if authorities wish to proceed with the case, they must prove that Lynch, who worked in a supermarket, knew the "human remains he found were archeological resources and that they possessed value other than the satisfaction of his curiosity." The court said Congress intended the law to discourage looting and grave robbing by those seeking commercial gain. Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven E. Skrocki in Anchorage declined comment on whether prosecutors would try Lynch, who is not an archeologist. Mary C. Geddes, Lynch's public defender, said archeologists who examined the skull for prosecutors were unsure whether it was at least 100 years old. Only after cutting a piece from the skull and performing an in-depth analysis did they learn it was 14 centuries old. "The question at trial is whether he knew he had an archeological resource in hand," Geddes said. "The government had to cut a piece out of it and send it to the laboratory to find out."
http://www.latimes.com/news/state/20001208/t000117594.html

Art Stolen From Library

Two pieces of art hanging in the Moline Public Library, IL, have been stolen, and the library may close its gallery except when staff members are available to watch it. According to the Associated Press, the gallery will probably close about midafternoon so the evening thefts can't be repeated.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/articles/news/thisweek/20001211_17111.asp

Court rules Strasbourg Museum must return Klimt to U.S. resident

The Associated Press 12/8/00 9:44 PM
COLMAR, France (AP) -- An appeals court ruled Friday that a Strasbourg art museum must return one of its most important paintings, a watercolor by Gustav Klimt, to the heir of its original owner. The court said the Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art acquired the painting, "L'Accomplissement" (Accomplishment), for an inordinately low sum of money and should give it back to Fritz Grunwald, 82, who moved to the United States after World War II. Lawyers for Grunwald, who lives in Franklin Lakes, N.J., had argued that the painting originally belonged to Karl Grunwald, a well-known Viennese antique dealer, who shipped his valuables to France after the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938. The painting -- a stunning Art Nouveau watercolor with charcoal and gold and silver leaf -- was among his many possessions confiscated in Strasbourg during the war as the Nazis systematically plundered the nation's most valuable art collections belonging to Jews. The Klimt, considered by the Nazis as degenerate art, was sold off in the mid-1940s. It is not clear what then happened to the painting. The painting surfaced in 1959 as a gift to the city of Strasbourg by the Friends of the Strasbourg Museum. The group said it had purchased the work from Adolphe Graeser, a little-known painter who claimed he had bought it during a visit to Vienna in the 1920s. The court in the eastern French town of Colmar said that the painting changed hands for around $7,000 at a time when experts knew it was worth more than 30 times that sum.
http://www.nj.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?a0870_BC_France-PaintingRestit&&news&newsflash-international

Loot Online: Czech Government to Display Nazi Booty on Internet

P R A G U E, Czech Republic, Dec. 8 - The Czech government plans a Web site to display artwork looted by the Nazis, aiming to return thousands of objects to their original Jewish owners or heirs. The artwork is currently owned by Czech museums and art galleries and includes valuable paintings by 19th- and 20th-century European artists, according to published reports. The Web page should start this month, Pavel Jirasek of the Czech Ministry of Culture said today. Earlier this year, the Czech parliament approved a law to allow restitution of Jewish property confiscated during the country's Nazi occupation. Claims by original owners or their descendants can be filed until the end of 2002. A government commission led by Vice Premier Pavel Rychetsky has found 7,000 art objects that would be affected by the new law. Only 2,000 of them will be displayed on the Internet page in the initial stage. The most valuable ones will include pictures. Jirasek said that under the law, those eligible for restitution should claim their property from the respective gallery or museum. Disputed claims need to be settled in court, he said.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/czech001208.html

World Jewish Congress Asks France To Speed Return of Works Taken by Nazis

NEW YORK.- The World Jewish Congress has asked France to speed up the restitution of around 2,000 works of art that were taken by the nazis. The organization stated that until now only 20 works have been returned to their rightful owners. These 2,000 works include 18 Renoirs, 16 Delacroix, 11 Monets and 7 Cezannes. WJC Executive Director Elan Steinberg said, "Stolen objects should not merely be identified, they should be returned. That's a matter of simple logic and justice." The WJC recommends that in the cases where there are no living heirs, France should compensate with payment to charities that will aid Holocaust families. "At a minimum, I think they (France) have to disgorge the 100 million francs, which has to be revalued in today's currency,'' Steinberg said.
http://www.artdaily.com/

Terra-Cotta Diplomacy

Mark Landler New York Times Service
TAIPEI Seventeen fearsome warriors from mainland China are set to land here on Dec. 10. While they are 2,200 years old and made of earthenware, the statues are stirring some unease in a country that frets constantly about the possibility of being invaded by a more up-to-date Chinese army. On the surface, this exhibition of China's legendary terra-cotta warriors is a simple cultural exchange - an opportunity for people here to savor one of the great Chinese archaeological finds. In the hothouse climate of Taiwan's relations with the mainland, however, nothing is simple. Some people here view the exhibition as a not-so-subtle effort by Beijing to draw Taiwan into its orbit. Having failed so far at traditional diplomacy, they say, it is now practicing terra-cotta diplomacy. "The leadership in China thinks they can use cultural relics to entice our people," said Parris Chang, a legislator with the Democratic Progressive Party, which espouses an independent Taiwan. "Our young people are very cosmopolitan. I don't think seeing statues created in 200 B.C. will suddenly lead Taiwanese people to say, 'Gee, wouldn't it be great to be part of China.'"
more: http://www.iht.com/articles/3703.html

Iffyosaurus Dinosaur skeleton exposed as fake

Tim Radford, science editor
For 116 years it graced the halls of the National Museum of Wales at Cardiff - the fossilised skeleton of a 200m-year-old predator that once cruised the Jurassic seas. It survived the scrutiny of scientists who had known Charles Darwin, and Richard Owen, the Victorian scholar who coined the word dinosaur. It survived revolutions in palaeontology, arguments over evolution and scandals in the world of fossils. Then curators at Cardiff decided the remains of the ocean-going carnivore ichthyosaurus needed a brush up - and realised that they had been taken in. "When we stripped off five layers of paint we found it was an elaborate forgery," said Caroline Buttler, a conservator. "It was an amalgam of two types of ichthyosaurus plus a clever attempt at fake parts." Ichthyosaurs were discovered by fossil collector Mary Anning on the Dorset coast in about 1809. Cardiff's specimen was presented by a local businessman, Samuel Allen, in 1884. It will now go back on display as an example of a fake. Museum officials have dubbed it "iffyosaurus".
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4102231,00.html