April 1, 2001
CONTENTS:
- "Holy Smokes, The House is on Fire!" (Workshop on fire recovery)
- Art Loss Register Tracks Looted WWII Pieces
- U.N., in Shift, Moves to Save Art for Afghans
- Taliban's blown-up Buddhas 'on sale in Pakistan'
- World wakes up to sleeping Buddha
From: Jayne Holt holt.jayne@nmnh.si.edu
Subject: Workshop on fire recovery
"Holy Smokes, The House is on Fire!"
Washington Conservation Guild
The tens of thousands of dollars necessary for a sprinkler system in your historic dwelling was never available. Then the call comes in early one morning: a wing of the house is on fire! What will the next 24 hours bring? The WCG is once again offering our unique and popular disaster workshop, formerly known as "Burn, Baby, Burn". This year we are focusing on fire recovery in historic houses. We will set up a 12 x 12 room to recreate an interior of an historic house and set it on fire. To add to the realism, no sprinklers will be used during suppression. After the fire has been extinguished and the room has cooled, participants will be responsible for developing a plan of attack and salvaging what's left. This is a one day workshop that runs from 8:30am to 4:30pm and will include lectures on the nature of fires and fire suppression systems, methods of developing disaster recovery plans and real life experiences in disaster recovery in the wake of a fire. The afternoon session will focus on experiencing the aftermath of a fire. This will be a wet, dirty, smelly and psychologically action packed several hours. Participants are therefore asked to wear comfortable clothing and shoes they don't mind getting wet. Many participants in the past have brought clean dry clothes to change into at the end of the day. This workshop is ideal for anyone responsible for the care of historic collections. The workshop takes place at the National Institute of Standards and Technology just north of Washington, DC. Registration for WCG members is $150 and for non-WCG members, $180. Registration for non-members includes a one year membership in WCG.
For more information and registration forms, see http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/wcg/
You may also request forms through the mail by calling Jayne Holt at 301-238-6699.
Art Loss Register Tracks Looted WWII Pieces
By Caroline McDonald
A database used to recover stolen artwork and other treasures, as well as expose fraud against the insurance industry, is helping Holocaust survivors track down stolen World War II treasures. The Art Loss Register offers its services free of charge to Holocaust survivors and has two full-time employees dedicated to the search. Locating looted art has become a priority for private collectors, museums and libraries that had paintings, art objects, furniture and books seized during World War II. It is estimated that anywhere from 75,000 to 300,000 items still remain at large. So far hundreds of items have been identified with the ALR database, which lists more than 100,000 stolen items. "What the Art Loss Register does is a unique and very important service," said Constance Lowenthal, consultant to and former director of the Commission for Art Recovery of the World Jewish Congress. "The register’s monitoring of auction sales is an indispensable part of any claimant’s efforts to locate the art that was taken long ago." The search for items stolen and looted during World War II has intensified because of the involvement of survivors’ families who are trying to "regain something of the life that was demolished by the Nazis," she said. "Many of those who survived the war simply wanted to put it all behind them, but their heirs have a different sense of outrage on behalf of the parents and the aunts and uncles."
Although the number of items recovered may seem low, Ms. Lowenthal points out that the slow and painstaking search has just begun. "This is a field that is just being pioneered, although that seems amazing after 60 years," she said. "There were no computers and very poor photography of art. All of the tools that make it possible to find things today were not in place." Sarah Jackson, historic claims director in ALR’s London office, has for three years devoted both her time and that of her assistant to recovering seized artworks. She researches the items in question and then adds them to ALR’s database. Ms. Jackson’s search varies from one day to the next and can range from extensive photographs and documentation to simple oral descriptions. "Yesterday I was trying to find the whereabouts of some people in Berlin who may have moved into a flat that was possibly confiscated from a Jewish owner," she said. "I wanted to find out what happened to an apartment where a work of art was once hanging." Her research involves talking to art experts, searching through exhibition catalogues and photo archives. "We look at auction catalogues from the 1930s with so-called forced sales, particularly in Germany where Jewish collectors were forced to part with their collections in order to raise the funds to emigrate," she said. "It’s very mixed." Within the past few years several valuable paintings were located in museum collections in the United States. "The Art Institute of Chicago was the first, and somewhat of a test case, where a claim was made against a museum," said David Shillingford, director of marketing and operations for ALR in New York. The museum and heirs came to an agreement to display the art with a note about its history, and the heirs were compensated, he said. Other paintings were recovered from art museums in Seattle and North Carolina. Until the database was begun in 1991 there was no unified source to locate stolen art, artifacts, antiques, jewelry or other unique items, ALR said. That meant that a painting stolen in the United States could be sold to an unsuspecting buyer somewhere else in the world. It also meant that the insurance industry had little help in the way of researching claims or uncovering fraud. One recovery of note was made in September 1997, when the ALR received a search request from a Florida dealer who was considering the purchase of a painting. An ALR database search resulted in a match with Edourd Manet’s "Peaches" (1880), valued at $1.5 million, which had been registered with the ALR soon after its 1977 theft in New York City. At the time of the theft, the work was co-insured by Sun Insurance of New York (now Fireman’s Fund McGee Marine Underwriters) and Northwestern National Insurance (now Highland’s Insurance). The work was seized by the FBI and after a lengthy investigation the painting was released to the insurers, who sold it back to the family from whom the work was stolen. The painting is now part of a Manet still life exhibition at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Recently ALR expanded its claims services by forming an alliance with Insurance Services Office, Inc., headquartered in New York. "Insurers became involved because art was being stolen and very little was recovered," said David Shillingford, director of marketing and operations for the Art Loss Register. "It was difficult to investigate theft at an international level, which had to happen, as art was moving across borders," he said. "Police databases weren’t talking to one another and the information on police databases doesn’t really have the kind of information you need to recover stolen art." ISO forwards information to ALR on claims for lost or stolen works of art, antiques and other valuables from its "ClaimSearch" system--a database made up of 220 million records of property, liability and auto claims filed with insurers. The system checks for patterns of fraud in real time across lines of insurance and types of claims. A common question asked of Mr. Shillingford is why anyone would steal a well-known painting, which can’t be easily sold because of its notoriety in the art world. "The theory behind some thefts is that they can get an insurance company to pay a ransom for a very valuable piece of artwork in the same way that ransoms are paid for hostages," he explained. "But insurance companies should not pay ransoms for these kinds of items because it just encourages theft." And why does well-known art continue to be stolen, even as "ransoms" are discouraged? "If you compare a $50 million painting with $50 million bills in a bank, the painting is likely to be easier to steal," he said. "It might be harder to fence, but it’s so much easier to steal." One of ALR’s objectives is to discourage art theft by making stolen art harder to sell, "which makes it harder to realize any reward for the crime and therefore deters the crime," Mr. Shillingford said. "The rationale behind a crime is that the criminal needs to balance out the risk with the reward. To deter, you have to change that balance by decreasing the reward or increasing the risk. Checking the second-hand art market does both." As a result, he said, fewer stolen works are showing up in auction catalogues, and previously stolen artworks are more likely to be returned. A good example is a small group of paintings stolen nearly 20 years ago from the Museum of Fine Arts in San Francisco. "Last year they were left on the doorstep of an auction house in New York," Mr. Shillingford said. "Whoever had them either became a good person, or decided that the longer they held onto them, the higher the risk."
http://www.nunews.com/
U.N., in Shift, Moves to Save Art for Afghans
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
As recently as last year, Afghans, including members of the ruling Taliban, were imploring outsiders to help protect the country's cultural heritage by taking away portable items for safekeeping, scholars say. But international cultural organizations and Western archeologists blocked their removal out of a longstanding concern for keeping artifacts in their historical settings.Then came the Taliban's decision to destroy religious images, even those in museums, saying they were an offense to Islam. The shattering of the giant Buddhist statues in Bamiyan finally focused the world's attention on what has been lost in AVishakha Desai, senior vice president and director of the galleries at the Asia Society in New York, said: "There are a lot of collectors who are now saying that what the archaeologists have insisted — that you never can remove anything from a country — has just been thrown out the window." But the issue is more complex, she said. "What the whole Afghanistan question has done for all of us in the museum world is show that simplistic questions about cultural patrimony do not work," said Ms. Desai. "One has to begin to raise questions about how something is going to be preserved in the best possible way, and at the same time take into consideration what is the situation on the ground." For Mr. Barry, the lesson is clear: "We can be a little too dogmatic with the notion of keeping things in a country regardless of the conditions." In Afghanistan, he said, not only material artifacts have been lost but also a unique repository of knowledge about a distinctive civilization blending eastern Asian and Mediterranean influences that developed along the old trade routes that cross the country. For example, the early Greco-Afghan kingdoms that arose in the region after the breakup of the empire of Alexander the Great around the middle of the third century B.C. produced an extraordinary culturally Greek city known now as Ay Khanum, near the northeastern finger of Afghanistan that reaches toward China. The ruins of the city was not discovered until the 1960's, just after the Afghan government terminated a 1922 agreement under which French and Afghan teams were excavating and splitting the treasures between the Kabul Museum and the Musée Guimet, a leading Asian art collection in Paris. Troves of essentially Greek-style gold and silver coins bearing the images of kings and gods all went to Kabul. "When I saw the Kabul Museum in 1994," Mr. Barry said, "all the coins were gone." As time passed Buddhist kingdoms arose. "The Buddhist art of China, Korea and Japan is inconceivable without evidence provided by the Afghan workshops," Mr. Barry said. "Which means that the destruction of the evidence is not only an aesthetic crime, but also a scientific crime as ghastly as destroying paleontological evidence for certain steps in the formation of humanity itself." "The consequences for Buddhists are appalling," he said. "But it is important for Westerners, too, because we were just beginning to research the profound influence of Buddhism on our own civilization through western Asia." Because little of value has been removed from Afghanistan for safekeeping elsewhere, he said, "there are now black holes in history." "To me, to have been able to move these things under Unesco auspices could have saved these pieces and ultimately allowed for their return to a civilized Afghanistan again," he said. "Now what is destroyed is destroyed, irrevocably. Whatever survives of Afghanistan's artistic heritage survives in foreign collections."
http://www.nytimes.com/
Taliban's blown-up Buddhas 'on sale in Pakistan'
By Christina Lamb, Diplomatic Correspondent
RELICS of the Bamiyan Buddhas, the 2,000-year-old statues that were blown up by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers last month, have gone on sale in the Pakistani frontier town of Peshawar. At least 10 truckloads of pieces were driven into the tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan last week and approaches are currently being made to dealers. Believed to be the world's tallest standing Buddhas, the 170ft and 120ft statues were hewn into a cliff face in the Bamiyan valley in central Afghanistan where they stood for centuries, admired by traders on the Silk Route and tourists who could climb up through one of the statues and look out through the eyes. Last month, however, they were declared idolatrous by Mullah Omar, the reclusive, one- eyed leader of the Taliban, who ordered his ministry for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice to destroy all statues. The move came in an apparent response to the imposition of new United Nations sanctions on his regime and the closure of the Taliban office in New York. Soldiers from the hardline Islamic movement defied world opinion and desperate pleas from the UN by blasting the statues with tank shells and rockets. Large parts of the colossal statues were reduced to rubble. The remainder has now been put on sale by intermediaries for the Taliban. One of those contacted was George Bristow, the owner of Artique in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, a leading British dealer in Pakistani and Afghan artefacts, who was approached by one of his regular buyers in Peshawar. He said: "They tell me that there are many recognisable pieces and that some can be put back together. Some pieces are very smashed but there are also many things still complete. The Taliban blew up the biggest statues to show the world they meant business but there were other pieces and they are selling off the rest." Among the complete artefacts offered to Mr Bristow was a Gandhara Buddha of almost human height in black schist (crystalline rock) and parts of friezes. Mr Bristow, who visited the Bamiyan Buddhas years ago and described them as "phenomenal" has contacted the Victoria and Albert Museum to see if it would be interested, but he believes a Japanese buyer has already moved in. He described having to deal in this manner as "a double-edged sword". He said: "If you buy you're supporting an organisation which behaves in the most extreme fashion. But on the other hand perhaps we should save these archaeological treasures." Traders in the bazaar in Peshawar are eager to acquire bits of the Buddhas to sell to tourists, believing that they would be prized in the same way as pieces of the Berlin Wall. A spokesman for Unesco, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, said it would frown on any museum paying the Taliban for a relic of something they had deliberately destroyed. He said: "The Taliban have committed a crime against culture. The last thing that should happen is for them to be rewarded for it."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
World wakes up to sleeping Buddha
By B. Muralidhar Reddy
ISLAMABAD, MARCH 30. People all over the world who were grieved over the destruction of the giant-sized Bamiyan Buddha statues, including the tallest one there, have something to cheer about. Tajikistan, a neighbour of Afghanistan, has discovered a 5th century A.D. statue of a sleeping Buddha, built during the period of emperor Kanishka. Archaeologists of the former Soviet Union stumbled upon the statue 35 years ago. It is expected to be on display in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, in August.
According to a report in the Pakistani English daily, The Nation, Mr. Ahmed Rashid, an authority on the Taliban, has said that after the recent destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, the Tajikistan Buddha - 14 metres long - would be the largest ancient Buddha statue in Central Asia.
Mr. Rashid quoted Mr. Hiroshi Takahashi, a former Japanese and now a U.N. diplomat in Dushanbe, as saying that ``this Buddha is a most remarkable discovery for the Bhuddist world and the cultural heritage of mankind. There will be many in Japan and other countries who will be enormously interested in coming to see this Buddha.''
The report said that the Tajikistan Buddha was first excavated in 1996 from a vast Buddhist monastery complex in Ajina Tepa in southern Tajikistan. Ajina Tepa was on the ancient Silk Route connecting China with Europe and Central Asia with the Indian seaports.
``Some 300 km north of Bamiyan, Ajina Tepa was part of the widespread Bhuddist renaissance and culture in Central Asia and Xinjiang under the Kushan kings. The Kushans descended from a branch of the Chinese Yuehchih tribes that first invaded Central Asia around 140 A.D.,'' Mr. Rashid said.
The report said the erstwhile Soviet Union chose not to publicise the discovery of the giant Buddha as they did not want the Tajiks to demonstrate their pre-Islamic and Islamic archaeological collections. Bringing the Buddha to light has been the lifetime task of Dr. Babamulloev Saidmurad, the newly appointed Director of Tajikistan's Museum of National Antiquities. The museum will officially open in August.
Dr. Saidmurad has been quoted as saying that Buddha was in 100 pieces stored in boxes in the basement of the museum and it had to be put together like a huge jigsaw.
``Smaller Buddhist statues and murals were shipped (by the Soviets) to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and hidden away in its vaults,'' Dr. Saidmurad said. But the Tajik Buddha ``was too big to move'' and hence was buried in the basement of the museum. The statue was reconstructed over a period of six months.
``The Buddha lies on his side, his face showing absolute serenity reflecting the nearness of achieving nirvana in the last moments before his death. Around the base of the sleeping Buddha and on the walls of monastery were more than one thousand paintings in bright colours depicting the life of the Buddha, many of which were sent to the Hermitage,'' the report said.
When the new museum is thrown open to public, also on display would be remarkable artifacts of Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. Shiva and Parvati sitting on a cow is one such fifth century artifact.
``The statue is the largest artifact to date showing the initial spread of Hinduism into Central Asia and that it was able to coexist with Zorastrianism and Buddhism.''
The report said Greek and Roman civilisation would also be evident when the museum opens. ``Early Kushan culture was heavily influenced by the Greeks who invaded Central Asia under Alexander the Great in 329 A.D. Central Asia was then ruled by the Sogdians, whom the Tajiks consider as their ancestors.''
http://www.indiaserver.com/