January 13, 2001

Classic art is famously phony

South Florida man faces federal fraud charges

DAVID GREEN
dgreen@herald.com

The ads in the art magazines touted ``A Highly Important Art Auction.'' But brochures from the Pompano Beach auction house immediately raised high-brow eyebrows: a Picasso painting for a minuscule $40,000; the artist Winslow Homer's first name misspelled. A South Florida man has now been charged with masterminding one of the biggest art frauds in recent memory. And one of the clumsiest. Each of the 294 paintings and sculptures that Dewey Lane Moore tried to auction off in 1996 was fake, according to those familiar with the case. Moore, 69, was charged with mail fraud. He is expected to plead guilty in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, those close to the case said Tuesday. The accusations against Moore mark the culmination of one of the more bizarre cases of forgery to hit the art world. ``It was pretty bad,'' chuckled Gilbert Edelson, vice president of the New York-based Art Dealer's Association of America -- and the person who originally called the FBI in South Florida to report Moore. ``One day I opened the pages of some very distinguished art magazines, and there were these pictures [advertising the auction]. They were obvious fakes. You just don't often see that.'' The alleged scheme began in 1995, when Moore approached an auction house in Delray Beach. The West Palm Beach man requested they handle the sale of his extensive collection of artwork -- paintings like Mother and Child by Pablo Picasso; Poppy by Georgia O'Keeffe; the sculpture The Bird by Brancusi. The gallery took six paintings from the collection and examined them more closely. One was an oil portrait of a woman by the 19th- Century French artist Marie Laurencin. But the painter's technique was not quite what the gallery expected. And her signature looked off. ``We returned the paintings,'' recalled George Martin, director of Arthur James Galleries. ``As far as we were concerned, they were all fakes.'' That conclusion did not deter Moore, authorities said. He carted his collection to a Pompano Beach auction house. There, at C.B. Charles Galleries Inc., he encountered a warmer reception. The gallery agreed to put his collection on the block. It printed up hundreds of brochures featuring photos of the artworks and mailed them to art connoisseurs around the country. ``We're shocking the art world,'' gallery owner C.B. Charles announced to The New York Times. He wasn't exaggerating. The brochure included a picture of Brancusi's Bird -- in wood. The artist is not known to have sculpted any of his bird series in wood, experts say. And a famous painting by Gustav Klimt looked oddly small. And Winslow Homer's first name was spelled ``Windslow.'' Across the country, jaws dropped -- in auction houses, art galleries, art history departments. Several artists whose work was supposedly part of Moore's collection flatly denied the paintings in the brochure were theirs. Forgeries crop up occasionally in the art world, experts say. But rarely, they insist, on such a grand scale. Calls from outraged skeptics poured into the FBI. Eventually agents pulled the plug on Moore's auction. ``We stopped him before he could sell any of his paintings,'' said FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela. Agents seized all 294 of Moore's art works. As the scale of the alleged fraud sent shock waves through the art world, the gallery owner insisted the paintings were authentic. So did Moore. He told agents he had picked them up at flea markets around the country over the years. Eventually, he admitted one of the paintings -- Sleeping Maiden by the Latin American painter Francisco Zuniga -- was a fraud, according to court documents. He could not be reached for comment. His lawyer, David Bogenschutz, would only say, ``We have an agreement set with the government based on a long series of negotiations. That will resolve this case.'' Charles' gallery has long since closed down. Moore's collection is in federal custody. And art critics remain stunned. ``This was unusual,'' mused Edelson, of the art dealer's association. ``Highly, highly unusual.''
http://www.herald.com/

How France Lost the Auction Market Battle

Souren Melikian International Herald Tribune
Saturday, January 13, 2001
PARIS High civil servants in France, so eager to preserve their nation's cultural heritage, do not seem to have given much thought to the staggering art-market brain drain the country has suffered over the past four decades. Nor indeed has anyone else in France, where the media have never raised the issue. Had they done so, those civil servants cast in the mold of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, who run public affairs, could not have failed to note that this is precisely the period when France lost the battle to Britain and the United States. They might have woken up to the catastrophic nature of their country's auction system, built on money and cronyism. To be an auctioneer you had to buy, for an undisclosed amount, your charge de commissaire-priseur (auctioneer's tenure) as in the good old pre- Revolutionary days. That could be done only if you personally knew a guy willing to retire and sell his. And, to keep it all among friends, the seal of approval had to be given by a small committee of auctioneers. The Ministry of Justice then formally endorsed the nomination. Of all the restrictive, corporatist French systems, this was the most obnoxious. The price France paid was that the brightest of its citizens who dreamed of living in the world of art and auctions went over to the English auction houses. Ironically, their contribution was an important factor in the irresistible ascent of Sotheby's and Christie's. The civil servants might have asked themselves what drove men of the caliber of Michel Strauss, son of the well-known collector Jules Strauss, to join Sotheby's in 1963, where he built up the Impressionist and Modern department into a world power.
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From: "Shaun Davis" kybandit@tcnet.net
Subject:

Museum Security Independent Study

I am a student at Eastern Kentucky University in the Assets Protection Program. I am doing a research paper for and Independent Study (APS 455), and I was needing some help on the subject. Like some ideas as to where i can get some information about the types of security systems in museums and any publications that I can get and use for sources in the paper. I need enough information for about 20 pages and charts and tables would also be a great help. Anything that you can help me with would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely
Shaun Davis
Phone # 606-528-5045
Box 779 Oak Ridge Church Rd.
Corbin, KY 40701

From: newsletter@theartnewspaper.com
Subject:

The Art Newspaper, This week's top stories

The Art Newspaper.com

This week's top stories: (++Abbreviated++)

GERMANY BUYS MOST OF BERGGRUEN COLLECTION FOR $100 MILLION
BERLIN. The federal government of Germany and the State of Berlin have bought a large part of the Modern masters collection from former dealer Heinz Berggruen (see article) for DM240 million, half of the $200 million asking price. The money from central government, DM100 million, will be paid in ten yearly instalments, starting this year.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=4350

CHARIOT OF FIRE AT THE HERMITAGE
ST PETERSBURG. Just after midnight on New Year's Eve a firework display lit up the sky on Palace Square, but stray rockets launched by what authorities say were "hooligans" started a fire on the wood and metal scaffolding encasing the Chariot of Glory on top of the Arch of the General Staff Building which is part of the State Hermitage Museum and just across from the Winter Palace.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=4334

MORE ON THE JAKARTA ART FRAUD
JAKARTA. Sources in Indonesia say they've stumbled upon the apparent inspiration for the attempted auction by Batavia & Amana, a previously unknown auctioneer, of over 100 artworks attributed to the likes of Degas and Picasso, with supposed provenances from old rubber plantations and neglected colonial estates (see article).
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=4275

INTERNET AUCTIONS: YAHOO! BANS SALE OF NAZI MEMORABILIA
LONDON. Yahoo! denies it, but a ruling by a French court has forced the company to back- track on its previous policy concerning the sale of Nazi relics over its auction site. The company has just announced that it will no longer sell any race-hate items - including Nazi or Ku Klux Klan memorabilia - on any of its sites.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=4274

Anna Somers Cocks, Editor
contact@theartnewspaper.com
The Art Newspaper
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http://www.theartnewspaper.com

Hussars rode to the rescue of lost masterpiece

FROM RICHARD OWEN IN ROME
A 17TH-CENTURY masterpiece from an important Italian collection, thought to have been destroyed in Berlin during the Second World War, was saved by British troops, it emerged this week. The Battle of Constantine, by Johannes Lingelbach, which will shortly go back on public display, was one of 26 paintings loaned in 1908 to the Italian Embassy in Berlin by the Italian National Museum of Art at Palazzo Barberini. The works were reported to have gone up in flames during Allied bombing of the embassy in 1944. But Rossella Vodret, curator of the Palazzo Barberini's 17th-century collection, said the gallery had launched a determined effort with government help to trace some of the lost paintings. The effort is part of a drive to re- establish the gallery as a cultural treasure house to rival the restored Villa Borghese. Last year the museum restored gems such as Raphael 's portrait of his mistress, La Fornarina, and Hans Holbein's portrait of Henry VIII. Mario Bondioli Osio, a former Italian Ambassador who now heads the government committee for the recovery of works of art, said it had sent detailed descriptions to all art galleries in Germany, and "miraculously" they had started to turn up. The Lingelbach painting, which measures 140cm by 218cm, depicts the victory of Emperor Constantine over his rival Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge in Rome in 312, a key moment in Co nstantine's decision to convert Rome - and hence the Western world - to Christianity. Signor Bondioli Osio said it had been discovered - mislabelled - at the castle of Schloss Gifhorn, near Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony. But Major Patrick Beresford, regimental secretary of the King's Own Hussars in Winchester, said inquiries showed its saviours were the 11th Hussars, the first British regiment to enter Berlin as the Nazi regime collapsed. "The Russians were in Berlin in force and there was an awful lot of looting and burning going on," Major Beresford said. "It seems the canvas had not been destroyed in 1944 after all. The same may be true of others." The Hussars took the huge canvas into safe keeping and it later went with them to Osnabruck, where they had it restored in 1948. Major Beresford said the painting, which hung in the regimental mess, followed the Hussars when they moved to Wesendorf. But in 1953 the regiment transferred to Malaya. Signora Vodret said it was not clear how the painting got from Wesendorf to Schloss Gifhorn, which is now a museum. Lingelbach (1622-1674) was born in Germany but lived in The Netherlands, and spent six years in Rome. Signora Vodret said he was one of the most gifted and original Italianate painters, and the battle scene was an undoubted masterpiece. Lingelbach, whose works are displayed at the National Gallery in London, the Getty Museum and other world collections, was noted for his fine draughtsmanship and use of colour. Restoration of the painting had revealed a clear signature by the artist.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/