January 19, 2001
CONTENTS:
- Police arrest employee in Ontario legislature art theft
- FBI Returns Stolen Objects to Greece
- The Art Newspaper: This week's top stories
- Payout for painting sold to escape Nazis
- U.S. MISHANDLED NAZI LOOT OF HOLOCAUST, PANEL SAYS
Police arrest employee in Ontario legislature art theft
THE ARTS REPORT - CBC Radio Police have recovered three paintings stolen from the Ontario legislature over the Christmas holiday. TORONTO - It appears the theft of art from the Ontario legislature was an inside job after all. Speaker Gary Carr announced yesterday that an employee at the legislative assembly has been charged in connection with the theft of three paintings over the Christmas holiday. Carr had earlier speculated it might have been a professional job, because he said the thieves knew what to look for. Toronto police say they've recovered the three paintings and are continuing the investigation.
http://www.infoculture.cbc.ca/
FBI Returns Stolen Objects to Greece
NEW YORK (AP) - Nearly 300 ancient objects stolen from a Greek museum a decade ago have been returned to Greek officials, the FBI (news - web sites) said. The objects, valued at more than $2 million, were stolen in April 1990 from the Archaeology Museum in Corinth, 50 miles southwest of Athens. The heist involved at least four men who burst into the museum, beat a guard, took 284 objects on display and loaded them onto trucks before disappearing. The objects were recovered in 1999 when the FBI, acting on a tip that the items had been consigned for auction at Christie's, discovered them hidden in fish crates at a storage area in Miami. The antiquities, which were being held in New York, were returned Thursday to the museum. The stolen objects include such rare pieces as a 5th century B.C. marble head of a young man known as a Kouros; a small marble statue of the god Pan; and 13 sculpted marble heads dating back to the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Two men, arrested near Athens last year, are currently on trial for the theft. Two others are being tried in absentia and are believed to be in Venezuela.
From: newsletter@theartnewspaper.com
Subject: The Art Newspaper: This week's top stories
The Art Newspaper.com
http://www.theartnewspaper.com
PETROL TANKERS NO LONGER ALLOWED INTO THE VENICE LAGOON
VENICE. From 15 January ships above 500 tonnes with inadequate security systems (ie. a double hull) are no longer allowed to enter the Venice lagoon. This prohibition is particularly aimed at petrol tankers which are potentially extremely polluting.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=4400
MARLBOROUGH WINS SUIT AGAINST SCHWITTERS ESTATE
OSLO. The Marlborough Gallery has won almost $2.4m from the Kurt Schwitters estate after four years' litigation, in a case that the gallery claims may have implications in the suit opposing it and the Bacon estate.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=4399
EARTHQUAKE IN PALACE
NAPLES. In 1992, the Neapolitan contemporary art dealer, Lucio Amelio bequeathed his very fine collection ( shown in 1987 in the Grand Palais in Paris: from Tony Cragg to Mario Merz, from Mimmo Paladino to Richard Long) to the great Bourbon palace of Caserta outside Naples. He wanted to commemorate the earthquake of 23 November 1980, hence the name of the present display, "Terrae Motus".
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=4397
NO GO FOR GEHRY'S MODENA PROJECT
MODENA. Frank Gehry's plan for the Porta di San Agostino in Modena, central Italy, will not be carried out. The architect of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao has abandoned work on the project, complaining of an "impossible context in which to work", and discouraged by the "unacceptable state of affairs".
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=4396
BIGGEST GIFT TO FRENCH MUSEUMS IN 50 YEARS
PARIS. The museums of France are about to be enriched by a collection described by Françoise Cachin, director of the Musées de France, as "the most handsome donation to the French public collections in the past 50 years". The collection was acquired over the past twenty years, in Switzerland, England and the United States.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=4395
ARTISTS STRIKE IN SINGAPORE IN PROTEST AGAINST CENSORSHIP
SINGAPORE. Singapore's government, aware that its brand of tropical Calvinism bodes ill for its ambitions as a regional centre, has loosened the strings somewhat and alternative arts groups do at least exist. But the antipathy by many in the establishment to any citizen's movement not directly controlled by it showed itself recently in the reaction to "No Art Day" or "NAD" on 29 December.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=4391
Anna Somers Cocks, Editor
contact@theartnewspaper.com
The Art Newspaper
70 South Lambeth Road London SW8 1RL UK
tel +44(0)207 735 3331 fax +44(0)207 735 3332
http://www.theartnewspaper.com
Payout for painting sold to escape Nazis
By Marie Woolf, Chief Political Correspondent 19 January 2001
A family that fled from Nazi Germany during the Second World War is to receive £125,000 in compensation from the Government because a painting they sold for food ended up in the Tate gallery. Alan Howarth, the Minister for the Arts, announced yesterday that an ex gratia payment would be made to the original owners of the View of Hampton Court Palace (1710), by Jan Griffier the Elder, "in recognition of the loss".
Full story:
U.S. MISHANDLED NAZI LOOT OF HOLOCAUST, PANEL SAYS
By Ron Grossman and William Neikirk, Tribune Staff Writers. Ron Grossman reported from Chicago and William Neikirk...
Art and other valuables stolen by the Nazis from Holocaust victims was not returned to survivors or their families because the U.S. made crucial mistakes while pursuing other priorities after World War II, a presidential commission has found. Those errors included a decision by U.S. authorities to allow countries that had done the looting to participate in restitution. In its final report, presented to President Clinton on Tuesday in Washington, the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the U.S. said the issue of Nazi looting was put on "the back burner" in 1945 and that "the interests of individual Holocaust victims suffered," with some still not compensated for what they lost more than half a century ago. The commission, whose mandate expires with Saturday's change of administrations, recommended that Congress establish a foundation to continue working on the issue. Responding to criticism that it failed to make World War II-era documents available to families searching for missing art, the commission also said it would resume its effort to publish those records. In December, the Tribune reported that the commission had suspended work on a project to produce a computer- searchable database from thousands of pages of documents stored in the National Archives. Such a database would provide help in determining to what extent Nazi-looted art found its way into American collections. "We are losing survivors at a rapid rate," said Ken Klothen, executive director of the commission, explaining why the database will be posted on the Web in April, before it is completed. "The commission appreciates the work of the Tribune in ensuring that the commission will get the ... information out to the public by the database," said Chicago attorney William Singer, a member of the commission. In recent years, seven major American museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, have returned art looted from Holocaust victims or made financial settlements with their heirs. Several other museums are evaluating similar claims. In its report, the commission said American museums have agreed to more rigorous standards for researching their collections and publishing lists of their holdings that were in Europe during the war and could have been looted. "The idea here is to let the chips fall where they may," Singer said at a news conference. "No one is making any judgment that any of the works will be restituted." The Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the U.S. was established by Congress in 1998. At the time, U.S. officials were pressuring European nations to settle claims outstanding since the Nazi era, such as Swiss bank accounts of Holocaust victims and slave laborers exploited by German industry. Then-Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) sponsored the creation of the commission to answer foreign critics who charged that the U.S. was quick to point a finger. During the final battles of World War II, U.S. forces captured enormous stores of artworks, jewelry and gold that had been plundered by the Germans in Nazi-occupied Europe. In the years immediately after the war, U.S. authorities undertook the considerable task of returning that loot. "The fundamental finding of the commission is that the United States performed in an unprecedented and exemplary fashion," the commission said in Tuesday's report. "But the needs of individual victims were often neglected." Among reasons cited by the commission for why the American effort sometimes came up short was that works of art were returned by U.S. authorities to the countries where they had been looted--not to individual victims--for logistic reasons and in accordance with international law. But the U.S. failed to monitor the European governments to ensure that the works were returned to families. "Even when property was returned to individual owners or their heirs," the commission found, "it was often only after protracted, expensive and insensitive administrative proceedings that yielded settlements far less than the full value of the assets concerned." Also, the commission found, U.S. military and civilian authorities made some questionable choices of allies for their restitution efforts. "German and Austrian officials, some of whom served in the previous Nazi regime, were entrusted with restitution responsibilities." Many Germans with looted properties reasoned that the U.S. eventually would tire of the effort to see property restored to its true owners and simply stalled for time and did not register their looted materials with the authorities. Moreover, U.S . regulations put the burden on Holocaust victims to identify and find their property, a nearly impossible task when former concentration camp inmates were hard-pressed simply to survive. "Not surprisingly, many Germans who `owned' property that migh t have been looted hesitated before acceding to claims brought against `their' property," the commission's report notes. In a few cases, GIs helped themselves to looted assets at collection centers where paintings, gold and jewelry were being gathered. The commission's report found that security at those centers was sometimes slack, and military authorities were overwhelmed with the volume of art and other valuables under their protection. "Because property control officers did not always take d etailed inventories," the commission found, "it was impossible for them to determine the extent of theft." In one spectacular example of American looting cited by the commission, U.S. troops captured a train in 1945 loaded with gold and other valuab les the Germans had taken from Hungarian Jews. An American general requisitioned some of that material, fine carpets and silver candlesticks, to furnish his headquarters. The commission also noted that, as of 1946, the State Department began alerting American museums and auction houses that stolen art was being brought into the country, but that those warnings might not have been effective. Singer said the commission regretted not being able to further investigate the role of the private art mar ket. "We would have liked to pursue these issues but didn't because time ran out," Singer said, adding that the question of how American dealers might have contributed to the problem was a "pregnant and justifiable one." Lucille Roussin, a former researcher for the commission, contends the role of American galleries and auction houses was not probed because of political reasons. She was assigned to probe an underground trade route by which art stolen in Nazi- occupied Europe was smuggled into neutral countries, like Switzerland, and then shipped to Latin America and the U.S. But when she wanted to look into what happened to that material once it reached this country, she was told that question was too hot for the commission to tackle. "I was repeatedly frustrated in my attempts to investigate imports by museums and galleries into the U.S. after World War II," said Roussin, formerly a deputy director of research for the commission and now a lawyer in New York.
http://chicagotribune.com/