December 15, 2000
CONTENTS:
- query: standard safety procedures
- More than a hundred pieces of art missing from Newfoundland's permanent collection
- The Lie became Great, The Forgery of Ancient Eastern Cultures (order information)
- An end to plunder
- Call for legal action on museum 'blight'
- Treasure hunters race to find Nazi loot of priceless amber
- Press release. Department for Culture, Media and Sport London, UK
From: scottsmith@chubb.com
Subject: query: standard safety procedures
I am looking for help in locating any standard operating procedures or safety procedures relative to employee safety when involved in hanging artwork on walls. If anyone has any employee safety guidelines relative to the hazards involved with this activity and the best practices to control them, I would appreciate a copy.
Thanks,
ScottSmith@chubb.com
More than a hundred pieces of art missing from Newfoundland's permanent collection
THE ARTS REPORT - CBC Radio
Dozens of piece of art are missing from Newfoundland's permanent art collection.
ST. JOHN'S - More than $100,000 worth of paintings and sculptures is missing from the Newfoundland government's permanent art collection. Elizabeth Marshall is the province's auditor general. She says she couldn't locate more than a hundred pieces of art when she checked the province's inventory.
That news comes as a shock to Sylvia Bendza, executive director of Visual Artists Newfoundland and Labrador: "I just thought the work was stolen. I couldn't believe this was happening here in this province. But after reading the auditor general's report, I just realize there is a lot of turmoil."
Sandra Kelly, the minister responsible for the collection, says she's certain the art has not been stolen and will turn up.
The Newfoundland government has invested $1.5 million in its annual art buying program since 1982.
http://infoculture.cbc.ca/archives/visart/visart_12132000_newfart.phtml
December 10 I informed you about the new publication:
The Lie became Great, The Forgery of Ancient Eastern Cultures
Order information for this book:
STYX Publications
POBox 2659
9704 CR Groningen
THE NETHERLANDS
Phone: +31 50 5717502
Fax: +31 50 5733325
styxnl@compuserve.com
Price in Dutch Guilders: 250,00
USD: 100,00
more: http://museum-security.org/00/218.html#4
An end to plunder
Looting in war has an ancient lineage and a classical purpose. In an age before regular salaries, plundering was part of soldiers' potential pay packet. Indeed, much of the reason you went to war was for what you could steal from your neighbours. Consequently, the Romans plundered Greek cities. Napoleon's army plundered Egypt, and it seemed everybody plundered and replundered Europe before, during and after the Second World War. An estimated 220,000 works of art worth perhaps $90 billion (U.S.) today changed hands over this period. It is this latter act that continues to resound not only in the art world, but in international law. A major part of the exchanges came as the result of the systematic looting of European art, particularly any art in Jewish hands, by the Nazis. If it was degenerate -- that is, modern -- art, it was confiscated, then sold cheaply on the international art market. If it was of a more classical origin, it was often destined for public and private collections in Germany. After the war, Russian "trophy brigades" were created to seize art as compensation for wartime damage done by the Nazis and others. American, British and Canadian soldiers also did their share of "liberating." While a fraction of the stolen property was returned to its original owners after the end of the war, much of the remainder is still unaccounted for or is being kept in Russia as booty. All of which would be simply a curiosity if it weren't for what has been an increasing cry to return all plundered Nazi-era art to its lawful owners. In that end, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada are following the lead of museums elsewhere in the world and putting on their Web sites art work in their collections whose ownership during the 1933-45 period is clouded. The Montreal Museum of Fine Art returned the Marriage Feast at Cana to the government of Hungary last year. Similar high-profile returns have recently occurred in the United States. The question is, what principle should govern the return -- particularly when the current owners had no connection to the original looting? After the Second World War, it was argued that, when plunder was taken during "wars of aggression," it should be returned. Now it seems as though the principle of unjust plunder is being expanded to include ill-gotten gains of various types and at various times. North American natives want museums to return artifacts "acquired" by anthropologists and collectors. Cambodians want the return of items stolen from temples in the 1980s. Turkey wants the return of the gold of Troy, and Greece the Elgin Marbles. While some would argue that these other claims belong in a different category because the racist nature of Nazi plundering was sui generis,there is something bracing about the notion that a theft is a theft no matter when it occurred and no matter the circumstances. Removing plunder's traditional justification thus becomes part of a larger trend toward international normative justice. This argues that war or domestic chaos shouldn't allow for acts that would be forbidden during peacetime. A world code of human conduct is good, and a kind of globalization that few would argue with. Nonetheless, criminalizing all plundering clearly leads to the much more complicated question of not just stolen art but conquered lands. In an age of native land claims, Canadians look on the museums' efforts to return stolen Second World War art with more than passing interest. How well they do it may well be a guideline for our much more complicated national negotiations to come.
Toronto Globe and Mail
Call for legal action on museum 'blight'
BY DALYA ALBERGE, ARTS CORRESPONDENT
THE fiasco over the £100 million modernisation of the British Museum should lead to prosecutions, an inquiry was told last night. Camden councillors claimed that they had been deliberately misled over the design of the new Great Court, which they said had blighted the views of surrounding properties. They had been assured four years ago that the views would not be harmed, councillors insisted. The councillors were concerned that there was one planning law for national museums breaching their designs and another for enforcing the "man in the street" and his roof garden extension. Anne Swain, a Labour councillor, said that the building work might not have complied with planning legislation. She called for "enforcement action, prosecution or both". There was further anger that cheaper French stone had been used on the south portico of the quandrangle around the historic Round Reading Room, instead of the Portland stone specified by the lottery grant. Stephen Hocking, a Tory councillor, said: "We gave permission for one kind of stone and something else has been built." With a listed building of such prominence, he added, "we expect them to get things right. A closer colour match could surely have been achieved. We were very clear when we said Portland. As a result, this has been compromised." The portico was to have been built with 2,000 tonnes of Portland stone from Dorset to blend in with its surroundings. Instead, the museum was supplied with Anstrude Roche Clair from France.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-51917,00.html
Treasure hunters race to find Nazi loot of priceless amber
Rival German and Czech teams are digging through an old silver mine on their border in a race to find the reputed hiding place of Nazi loot including the famous Amber Room. The search for the collection of jewel-encrusted panels that make up the Amber Room has been a great postwar quest. Described as the largest piece of jewellery ever created, the room vanished in 1945 after being stolen by Hitler's forces from Catherine the Great's palace near Leningrad, now St Petersburg. The German treasure hunters are burrowing under the Czech border in an effort to overtake their competitors, who launched their expedition first. The two teams are convinced the Amber Room lies in the 800-year-old Nicolai Stollen mine, along with other loot including gold bullion. The rival expeditions both believe that the loot - maybe more than $A4 billion worth - is located just inside Czech territory. Mr Helmut Gaensel, who heads the Czech mission, began his search a decade ago. Mr Peter Haustein, mayor of the nearby Saxon town of Deutschneudorf, organised a rival mission. Mr Haustein, who said he had German Government backing, is being assisted by survivors of an SS unit. "They confirmed that, in a secret mission, they hid sealed boxes of valuables there," he said. The Amber Room consisted of hand- crafted panels made of six tonnes of amber, decorated with diamonds, emeralds and rubies. It was built in 1711 as Frederick I's study at Konigsberg Castle in East Prussia. Five years later it was given to Peter the Great by Frederick's son Frederick-William. It was later installed in Catherine's palace at Tsarskoye Selo. Hitler ordered his invading forces in Russia to retrieve the panels and they were taken to Konigsberg. In 1945 Erich Koch, the governor of East Prussia, fearing they would fall into Russian hands, had them loaded into trucks. They were never seen again.
The Telegraph, London
Press release
Department for Culture, Media and Sport 2-4
Cockspur Street London SW1Y 5DH
http://www.culture.gov.uk
318/2000 14 December 2000
ARTS MINISTER ALAN HOWARTH PLACES TEMPORARY
EXPORT BARS ON A PAINTING BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS DE TROY
AND TWO GOTHIC CARVED IVORY PANELS
Arts Minister Alan Howarth has placed a temporary bar on the export of two ivory panels depicting the Annunciation, and a painting by Jean-François de Troy entitled Le Retour du Bal. This will provide a last chance to raise the money to keep these important works in the United Kingdom. The Minister's ruling follows the recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art that the export decisions be deferred. This reflects the outstanding aesthetic quality of the works, the importance of the panels for the study of Gothic ivory carvings, and the painting's significance as a skilful example of the French tableaux de mode style. The deferrals will enable purchase offers to be made, at or above the following recommended prices: - Le Retour du Bal, by Jean-François de Troy,1735, deferred until after 13 March 2001; recommended price £3,559,859. - A Pair of Ivory Panels depicting the Annunciation, c.1300 deferred until after 13 March 2001; recommended price £294,956.25. In each case, the deferral period could be extended until after 13 June 2001 if there is a serious intention to raise funds with a view to making an offer to purchase. Anyone interested in making an offer to purchase any of the items should contact the owner's agent through: The Secretary The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art Department for Culture, Media and Sport 2-4 Cockspur Street London SW1Y 5DH Notes to Editors A painting in oil, Le Retour du Bal, 1735, by Jean-François de Troy, 81.9x 64.8cms. This recently rediscovered work is the pendant to La Toilette pour le Bal in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Both paintings were exhibited at the 1737 Paris Salon, when the present painting was called Un déshabillé de Bal. They were commissioned by Louis XV's Foreign Minister, Germain-Louis de Chauvelin (1685-1762) who, however, as a result of his political disgrace, never took possession of them. In 1769 both paintings were in the sale of the wine merchant, Salomon-Pierre Prousteau. It was during Prousteau's ownership that they were engraved by Jacques-Firmin Beauvarlet. From 1723 until his move to Rome in 1738 to take up the post of director of the Académie de France à Rome, de Troy painted a number of small scale scenes of social life among the higher reaches of Parisian society, which his contemporary, the collector Mariette, called tableaux de mode. Le Retour du Bal is typical of the genre in its inclusion of a "gallant" episode. The scene revolves around a young woman being helped by her maid to remove her cloak. As her shoulder is bared, she looks over it to meet the gaze of an admirer. Holding his mask in one hand, he appears to have just unmasked himself, but as his right hand placed on his heart shows, he has in fact just unmasked his feelings. The young woman has already laid aside her more elaborate mask on the table that stands between them, a wager perhaps on who will make the next move and what it will be - as the ambiguous gesture of her left hand suggests, the viewer is invited to guess whether she will reveal or conceal. Highlights on the woman's red dress both enliven the surface of the picture and suggest the dangers in her dalliance. De Troy's tableaux de mode, in their depiction of a cultured and wealthy society at ease, are a distinct and important sub-genre belonging to a moment of supreme skill, increasing self-confidence and great inventiveness in French art. Within that sub-genre Le Retour du Bal must have been seen by the artist as especially successful since he chose to include it among his exhibits at the 1737 Salon, the first to have been held since 1725, and, as it turned out, the first of the regular Salons to be held during the 18th century. The only such work in a British public collection (aside from two sketches in the Wallace Collection) is The Faithful Governess (1723) in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A pair of Ivory Panels forming the Annunciation , c.1300, each figure 7 in. 20 cms. high These high reliefs of the Angel Gabriel and the Annunciate Virgin are carved integrally with their backgrounds and set under gabled trefoil arches. Both figures retain extensive traces of gilding in the hair and the original decorative patterning around the borders of the draperies. The style of the ivories points clearly to a date at the end of the 13th century, probably around 1300. Derived from such monumental prototypes as the cathedral sculptures on the west façade of Reims after 1250, this style had spread throughout Europe by the end of the century. Certain elements, such as the tall plain lancet windows in the background of the carving, might suggest an English origin and the facial type and draperies of the Virgin can be parallelled in English ivories such as the Salting diptych in the Victoria and Albert Museum. There can be no doubt however that a good number of French ivories were also imported into England in the Late Middle Ages. A pen and wash drawing in the Skinner Journals records the existence of the panels in Somerset in the early 19th century. In addition to this drawing, the author of the journals, the antiquary the Rev. John Skinner, recounted in his journal for 29 September 1818 how he visited an old man in Ilchester to enquire about a Roman gold coin and found out that 'he also retains an antique of a different description; namely, the Angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary; it is cut exceedingly well in Ivory; the drapery inimitable, but the countenances of the figures rather too riant; of this also I made a sketch; and another of the old house, facing the street on the opposite side of the way, where the old gentleman found it in the wainscot, he was pulling down over the fireplace: it probably [sic] the work of the Priory Monks'. Skinner would here be referring to either the Dominican friary founded before 1261 or the Augustinian nunnery founded before 1281, both now destroyed. It was subsequently recorded in a list held at Luton Hoo that the ivories were 'acquired in 1880 at West Coker in Somerset from the collection of a Mr Moore, who had many years previously acquired (them) in the neighbourhood'. Probably shortly before entering the Wernher Collection the ivories were mounted within a neo-gothic wooden frame which is not now with them. The collection of Sir Julius Wernher (1850-1912) was at first displayed at Bath House, Piccadilly, and passed to his widow Alice, Lady Wernher, subsequently Lady Ludlow (1862-1945), and then to their son Sir Harold Wernher (1893-1973), who moved it to Luton Hoo in 1946. The ivory panels, together with the rest of the collection passed down through the family by descent until responsibility for the latter's administration became the business of the Trustees of the Wernher Foundation. They were sold at Christie's in London on 5 July 2000. Gothic ivory carvings of the first quality rarely come on to the market and very few have a provenance which can be traced beyond the middle of the nineteenth century. The historic interest of the provenance is compounded by the panels' presence for over a hundred years in the Wernher Collection, probably the most important private collection of medieval and later antiquities formed in Britain.