February 12, 2001
CONTENTS:
- New V&A chief faces growing hostility
- Buying Antiques Without Getting Taken
- Union fury at museum staff notice
- Anti-art forgery bill proposed
- 1948 LETTER BACKS CLAIM OF NAZI THEFT
New V&A chief faces growing hostility
BY DALYA ALBERGE, ARTS CORRESPONDENT
OPPOSITION to the choice of director of the Victoria and Albert Museum was growing yesterday after it emerged that a former colleague is claiming unfair dismissal against him at an employment tribunal. The claim centres on Mark Jones's alleged treatment of Stephen Wood, a senior curator at the National War Museum at Edinburgh Castle, one of six institutions within the National Museums of Scotland, of which Dr Jones is director. Mr Wood, who has been described as the most distinguished military historian working in Scotland, is claiming unfair dismissal and disability discrimination, having been made redundant last year after a period of work- related ill health. A stress audit was conducted at the museum last year.
More http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-82111,00.html
Buying Antiques Without Getting Taken
By Joan Cowan
Attempting to make money through buying and selling antiques can be risky business. If you are buying antiques solely as investments, you are in the wrong market. Yes, you might have watched the Antiques Road Show and seen people who unknowingly inherited or paid $10 for an item that turned out to be worth a fortune, but such occurrences are rare. Generally when things like that happen it is nothing short of pure coincidence, about as likely as winning the lottery. If, however, you buy antiques because you truly love their beauty or sense of history, then you are pursuing antiques for the right reasons. Whether you are into antiques as a hobby, a business or an investment, it is important to educate yourself before plunging into buying anything. I spent four years working for an antique dealer, where I learned about setting up sales displays for antique shows, buying at auctions and shops, restoring furniture and negotiating prices with dealers. I also learned how to spot dishonest dealers who prey on novice antique lovers. And I'm happy to tell you a few tricks of the trade. Number one is -- don't rush to eBay until you've done some homework in the real world. It's difficult enough for savvy antiquarians to get good deals when they can check out the goods in person, and negotiate face to face with the seller.
Protect yourself by learning about different styles from various time periods, and about construction techniques. Some museums and universities offer classes where you can learn a great deal about antiquing and ask specific questions. Another place to look is in trade magazines or books on antiques.
The Internet is also a great resource to learn more, look at auction schedules or chat with other antique enthusiasts. The Maine Antique Digest, Antiques and the Arts Weekly, Collectors Eye, Old Stuff, Northeast Journal of Antiques and Art, and Antique Week are some online magazines and newsletters worth your while.
Auctions are another great place to learn more about antiquing, but don't rush into buying anything at your first auction. Sit in the back and observe for a while. Auctions are designed to move quickly, and it is easy to get carried away in the excitement. Keep an eye out for items that seem to attract an unusually high or low number of bids. See if you can decipher why certain items bring in more attention and money than others, and you will begin to get a sense of the market price for various antiques.
When you do go to an auction be sure to arrive early so that you can take a close look at the merchandise. Also, don't be afraid to speak with the auctioneer or the dealers about the items you're interested in. Don Coffman, who has been in the antique business for 40 years and is the owner of Coffman's Country Antiques Market in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, has some advice on speaking with dealers at auctions and shows. Coffman suggests waiting until the second or third day of a show to speak with a dealer. Most dealers are very receptive to questions and comments, but on the first day of a show the dealer will probably be too busy and frazzled to give detailed answers. Coffman also recommends asking about the history of the piece. Find out if the person you are buying from acquired the piece from a reputable dealer.
Ask questions, but don't be antagonistic. Remember that the majority of antique dealers are in the business because they love working with and discussing antiques; they're not just out to make money.
When buying antiques through auctions, dealers or anywhere else, it's a good idea to stick with useful items that will be fairly easy to resell. Furniture, for example, is something more functional than decorative, and therefore it is more attractive to a wider array of future buyers than an 11-pound iron Scottish terrier.
It is also important to understand the difference between a restored item and a reproduction. A restored antique is an original that has been fixed up in some way. A reproduction is not an antique at all, but rather a newer piece designed to look like an antique. Be careful when buying restored pieces because a piece that has been restored too much may be worth less than the piece would be in its original, but worn down condition.
Beware of inadvertently buying a reproduction. Familiarize yourself with certain signs that may help to establish what is authentic and what has been reproduced. Some signs for spotting reproductions of wooden antiques are if newer wood is showing through worn areas, if the paint comes off in strips or if the finish looks new. Other signs include boards that are perfectly flat and level or an item that is completely painted.
Some telltale signs that furniture is a reproduction are if the legs are perfectly rounded, the feet have uneven bottoms, the back and legs of the piece are evenly worn, the doors are worn down in the wrong places, the insides of the drawers don't match, the boards on the back are high quality, there's no wear on the base of a table, the back and bottom are stained or painted or the piece contains plywood.
When looking at bed frames, there should be wear on the rope holes of the frame, the frame should not match a modern-sized mattress and normally there should be extra holes from replacing or reinforcing the mattress supports.
After you've done your homework and you're ready to buy, make sure you negotiate with the dealer for a fair price. If the dealer does not agree, be ready to give specific reasons for why your price is fair. Always get a detailed receipt that includes a description of the piece, the date the piece was made and the condition it's in. Even if you are only in the antique business for fun and not to make a huge profit, you still need to protect yourself from those who are in it to make money.
http://gay.onmoney.com/
Union fury at museum staff notice
Monday 12 February 2001
The union covering workers at the new Melbourne Museum is angry that staff learnt about the presence of Legionella bacteria in its air conditioning towers from yesterday's newspapers. The Community and Public Sector Union said yesterday the museum had mishandled news of the discovery - the latest in what it said was a long line of problems involving working conditions. Union state president Karen Batt said staff had fallen ill last week after epoxy resin being sprayed by a contractor on the museum roof entered its air- conditioning. "We had WorkCover down there two days last week because of that and the air-conditioning system was turned off twice in the past 10 days to try to deal with the fumes, yet they never thought to tell anybody that they found Legionella," she said. The discovery of the bacterium was announced by the museum in a statement on Saturday afternoon. However, a museum spokeswoman said it learnt of the Legionella on Friday morning, but then sought advice from the Department of Human Services. Meanwhile, the condition of a Melbourne Age employee who fell critically ill with legionnaires' disease last month was improving.
http://www.theage.com.au/
Anti-art forgery bill proposed
MANILA (ABS-CBN) - Art forgers will now have more reasons to be wary as President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is expected to sign into law a bill defining and penalizing the crime of art forgery.
Cebu City solon Eduardo Gullas said art forgers, including unscrupulous art dealers and gallery operators, may get up to 12 years in prison plus a fine of up to P100,000 the moment if the bill is passed.
He said the bill specifically defines the acts that would constitute art forgery which includes:
* affixing or causing to appear a usurped or forged signature or sign on any work of fine art;
* counterfeiting or imitating any original signature or sign to deceive the public or the buyer as to the authorship of a work of art;
]* selling or circulating any work of fine art bearing forged or usurped signature or signs;
* imitating or reproducing any work of fine art to deceive the public or the buyer as to the authenticity of the work
Under the bill, "work of art" refers to all original works such as paintings, sculptures, drawings and artwork produced in multiples such as graphic and photographic works and sculpture casts, except those meant for commercial mass production. The lawmaker stressed the passing of the anti- forgery bill will give the State the mandate to protect, conserve and promote the Filipinos' artistic creations and resources, thus preserving the nation's cultural heritage. He added an Art Authentication Board shall be established once the bill is put into effect. It shall be composed of five members to be appointed by the President in consultation with the National Commission for Culture and Arts. Among the board's main responsibilities are to certify as original any work of fine arts submitted for validation. It shall also accredit art galleries and dealers, and initiate the investigation and recommend the prosecution of all art forgers.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/
1948 LETTER BACKS CLAIM OF NAZI THEFT
A NEWLY UNCOVERED NOTE SHOWS HOW A COMING FEDERAL DATABASE MAY
HELP DETERMINE IF LOOTED ART IS HANGING ON MUSEUM WALLS.
By Ron Grossman, Tribune Staff Writer
A document uncovered by the Tribune may hold the key to a dispute over a 19th Century masterpiece involving Yale University, the heirs of a Jewish collector who fled Hitler's Germany, and the painting's present owner, an admitted former Nazi storm trooper. Although the work, "Le Grand Pont," or "The Bridge," by Gustave Courbet has been in the Yale University Art Gallery for 20 years, the university recently announced it had received a claim alleging the work had been stolen by the Nazis. In fact, a Tribune examination of records stored in the National Archives reveals that another claim on the Courbet was filed as early as 1948, in a letter to the U.S. occupation forces in Germany from an attorney representing Josephine Weinmann, mother of the current claimants. That claim, along with thousands of others for artworks by historical masters such as Cezanne and Rembrandt, ultimately ended up buried in U.S. government archives, where they have essentially been inaccessible for half a century. Only with the publication late last year of the final report of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the U.S. did the government announce plans to publish a database of those records that can be used to research whether Nazi-looted art is hanging on the walls of America's museums. The commission acknowledged that the Tribune's research into the archives--and compilation of hundreds of claims on significant artworks-- helped spur it to complete the database. Officials at the nation's museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, have said the information would be of inestimable value in researching works whose whereabouts during the Nazi era are unclear. This is the first demonstration of how powerful a tool the database can be in resolving disputes such as the one over the Courbet.
Dr. Herbert Schaefer, 90, who acknowledged his membership in the Nazi party and its paramilitary division, the S.A., said he bought the painting in Berlin in the late 1930s. Thomas Kline, attorney for Weinmann's heirs, upon being informed of the Tribune's discovery, said, "We hope that the revelation of this document impresses upon Yale and Dr. Schaefer that this is a sincere claim, based upon the facts. This document shows that the family made their claim promptly after World War II, and addressed it to the proper American authorities, as was required of families seeking to recover Nazi-looted art." Because American troops had recovered huge quantities of looted art, the U.S. military was a postwar clearinghouse for Holocaust victims or their heirs looking for property stolen during the Nazi era. Yale officials declined to discuss details of the Weinmanns' claim, saying that the university is investigating the matter. "We are conducting research on the question of the painting's ownership in Europe, right now," said Tom Conroy, a Yale spokesman.
The current dispute over "Le Grand Pont" is the latest in a series of episodes involving Nazi- looted art and American museums. In the past two years, seven museums, including the Art Institute, have either returned works to Holocaust victims or their heirs or made financial settlements with them. In addition to Yale, three other museums are evaluating similar claims. "Isn't it interesting that they only make a claim now, 60 years later, when there are no witnesses left?" said Schaefer, a German collector who lent the painting to Yale, speaking by phone from his home in Spain. But in her claim filed on Jan. 31, 1948, Weinmann, then living in New York, notified the American authorities that she had bought the Courbet at an auction in Berlin in the 1930s, and that when she fled Germany, she left the work with the family's secretary, who was supposed to send it abroad. "This intention, however, did not materialize," Weinmann's claim said, "because the German agencies made the shipment impossible." With her claim, Weinmann provided a photo of "Le Grand Pont." Were it not for bureaucratic indifference, the Courbet's disputed ownership history might have been available to Yale when the university agreed to house Schaefer's collection in 1981. In the 1950s, a State Department official, Ardelia Hall, created a microfilm record of all claims for Nazi-looted art received by U.S. authorities.
She intended to make that material publicly available to alert art dealers and museums to Nazi loot, which she feared was entering the American art market. Hall was a lonely crusader. Other government officials were eager to put the war behind them, and the project never materialized. Instead, the 35 rolls of microfilmed records were relegated to government archives. The first stage of the government's new database is scheduled to debut in April, though it will not be completed for some time thereafter. The Tribune, meanwhile, has created its own database from Hall's records. It includes some 2,200 claims--in letters, official forms and inventories of prewar art collections--filed from around the world by Holocaust victims and their heirs looking for paintings and sculptures looted by the Nazis, including Josephine Weinmann's report of a missing Courbet. Josephine's son, Eric Weinmann, said he remembers that his mother bought the Courbet at an auction in Berlin. The family lived in a villa with 14 bedrooms and five live-in servants, said Weinmann, a retired government attorney who lives in Washington, D.C. His father was an industrialist with interests in Czechoslovakia and Germany, he said. "The painting hung in a room with special ceiling lighting to illuminate works of art," Weinmann, 87, said in a telephone interview. "The Courbet made a special impression on me because the artist painted it with so many different shades of green--the foliage, the water." Weinmann said his family was Jewish but not religious.
They stayed on in Germany after the Nazis came to power, feeling protected by their Czech citizenship. But when Hitler made moves to take over Czechoslovakia, his mother decided it was time to leave. His father had just died. In 1939, a year after the Weinmanns left Berlin, the Nazis confiscated their villa as "alien property, " Weinmann said. Schaefer bought the Courbet around the same time- -in 1938 or 1939, he said. He declined to say from whom he bought it. In the late 1930s, Schaefer, who has lived in Spain since the 1960s, was a recent law school graduate. Nazi Party records captured by the U.S. show that in 1933, he joined the Sturmabteilung, or S.A., a paramilitary Nazi organization. Known as the Brown Shirts, the S.A. was devoted to street fighting against the party's political enemies and enforcing boycotts against Jewish-owned businesses.
"That hasn't anything to do with the painting," said Schaefer, when asked about his former political affiliation. "But it makes a good story--to make me a bad old man, or a bad young man." Shortly before the time when Schaefer said he bought the Courbet, it had been sold to someone for 17,000 reichsmarks, then the equivalent of about $6,850, records of the time showed. Historian William L. Shirer, in his book "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," reports that in the late 1930s, an average German worker was earning about $6.95 a week, or about $361 annually. Asked how a young man without family money--his father was a chauffeur--could buy an expensive artwork, he replied that he had another source of income. "I was a dealer and collector," Schaefer said. "I bought and sold works of art, keeping a few things for myself." In a postwar legal proceeding, Ingrid Gartner, his former housekeeper, testified that in 1947, Schaefer asked her to transport three paintings, including the Courbet, to Sweden. She said Schaefer asked her to take the works abroad "because of the generally insecure situation in Berlin." According to court records, she said the bus she was traveling on was stopped by British soldiers. Upon discovering the works, the soldiers confiscated them because Gartner could not show an export license. The British turned the Courbet over to the art museum in Hamburg, Germany. Schaefer contradicts Gartner's account. "This [shipment of the paintings abroad] was done by someone who was trying to steal the paintings from me," he said. Twenty years later, Schaefer brought a lawsuit to recover the Courbet, which was awarded to him by a Hamburg court. Later, he put his collection on long-term loan to Yale. When Schaefer's collection was on exhibit in 1998, a friend of Eric Weinmann's saw "Le Grand Pont," prompting the family's present claim. In still one more twist to the case, the possibility exists that another Jewish family was victimized in the wake of the Courbet's peregrinations, records of the time show. In the 1920s or '30s, "Le Grand Pont" was owned by Max Silberberg, whose collection, art historians said, was sold off at a forced sale as the Nazis often did with Jewish property. Weinmann's claim form said she bought the painting in 1932, but her son said he believes his mother might have been mistaken and actually bought the painting several years afterward. If so, she might have bought it at an auction where scholars believe the Silberberg collection was disposed of. Willi Korte, a stolen-art detective hired by the Weinmanns, said the catalog for that auction contains the cryptic notation: "from the collection of S." John Simon, the British attorney representing Silberberg's heir, also said the work once belonged to the Silberberg family.
He declined to say, however, whether his client considers herself to have a claim on "Le Grand Pont." Kline, attorney for the Weinmanns, said he hopes to discuss a settlement with Yale officials. Schaefer said he will defend his right to the work in court, even though he believes an American court would be prejudicial about his Nazi past. "The influence of propaganda is stronger in the United States," Schaefer said. "In Germany, the courts go strictly by the facts."
http://chicagotribune.com/