May 5, 2001
CONTENTS:
- Imperial Palace Beijing: 12.000 visitors per hour May Day 2001
- Germany To Return Golden Coffin to Egypt
- Allies stole art as Nazism fell
- Antiquities Sales: A Rush for the Respectable
- Iraq Says Stolen Relic on Sale in London
- Ex-Sotheby's Boss Fights Antitrust Charge
- Unesco Sources: A Chronicle of Destruction
- The Art Newspaper: this week's top stories
From: "wyxhsz" hsuzhong@public2.east.cn.net
To: "Ton" securma@xs4all.nl
Subject: Imperial Palace Beijing: 12.000 visitors per hour May Day 2001
Date sent: Sat, 5 May 2001 15:59:27 +0800
CHW weekly observation of 05/03/2001:
Imperial Palace: At Least 110 Thousands Tourists Within 9 Hours Yesterday
The May Day vacation (May 1-7) is one of the two major tourism vacations in China (the other is the Spring Festival). More and more Chinese people like tourism because they are much richer than anytime before. However, many famous cultural properties are being damaged or losing their spirits because of the too many visitors. We reported last May that there were 120 thousands tourists within 8 hours in Imperial Palace on May 2. Yesterday we also spent a lot of time in the Palace, and got the information from the Palace Authority that at least 110 thousands tourists visited the Palace Museum within 9 hours. We found some improvement in the Palace. For examples, the open time was prolonged from 8 hours to 9 hours, 13 temporary ticket offices (totally 24 officers) were added, many policemen and additional sanitation workers (a worker told us that there were more than 120 people for the cleaning in total) were in duty, many temporary toilets stood at different corners. However, 110 thousands people squeezed themselves into the crowded palace, with their sweat, noise and polluted air. What a terrible situation! We believe that no one here has enough time and good mood to enjoy the ancient building and to touch the heritage, and any protecting measure is fragile facing so many people. As a site of world cultural heritage, Imperial Palace yesterday was only a crowded corridor.
See the photographs at: http://www.culturalheritagewatch.org/01/008.html
or download self-extracting archive with all photos: http://www.culturalheritagewatch.org/afbeeldingen-5mei2001/imageszipped.exe
Germany To Return Golden Coffin to Egypt
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - A museum in Germany will return an ancient, golden coffin stolen from Egypt 70 years ago, the visiting prime minister of the German State of Bavaria said Thursday. Edmund Stoiber said the coffin, which dates back to King Tutankhamun's era 3,300 years ago, will be returned to the Egyptian Museum from where it disappeared in 1931. He said the museum in Munich, which received the coffin from a Swiss collector in 1980, will not ask that Egypt reimburse it for the $91,000 spent on restoring the coffin. The head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Gaballah Ali Gaballah, welcomed the move and urged other world museums holding Egypt's ancient antiquities to return them. Gaballah told The Associated Press the coffin will be reunited with its golden lid on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Before its return, the coffin will be seen at this year's exhibition in Munich along with other ancient Egyptian pieces from Tut's era on loan from a Berlin museum and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Stoiber did not give an exact date for the coffin's return.
Allies stole art as Nazism fell
By Will Bennett
BRITISH and American troops engaged in large-scale looting of art and antiques in Germany following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945. The plundering was carried out by individuals - unlike that of the Germans, who seized valuables from Jewish families, and the Russians, ordered by Stalin to strip Germany of art. With the German regime in tatters and the Allied authorities not yet in full control, it was easy for soldiers to help themselves. In August 1945, thousands of crates of objects found in areas under British control in Germany were moved to a castle at Celle, near Brunswick. They included a valuable collection of Roman gold artefacts from Berlin. When an inventory was carried out in 1947, 32 gold pieces from the collection were missing. Homes of some of the soldiers who had been stationed at the castle were searched, but none of the items was recovered. In 1949, the remaining items were handed over to the German authorities, and the British general commanding troops in the area remarked: "The sooner this is done, the better."
An American and his wife, both officers in the US Army, were jailed for stealing $3 million of jewels belonging to Countess Margarethe of Hesse, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and 116 Old Master paintings were stolen from a Bavarian castle occupied by the US Army - 43 are still missing.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Antiquities Sales: A Rush for the Respectable
Souren Melikian International Herald Tribune
Saturday, May 5, 2001
LONDON How different everything seems when the end may be in sight. Slowly but irresistibly, restrictions surrounding the sale of "antiquities" - ancient objects dug up from their underground caches in circumstances unknown, bits of sculpture that wandered off their Middle Eastern, Greek or Roman sites - are multiplying.
One day it is a U.S. museum, the Met in New York, deciding to return to the country where it apparently surfaced (Turkey) a whole hoard of silver objects dating from the sixth and fifth century B.C. The case dragged on in the courts for years. Another day it is a New York collector having to establish in court the legitimacy of his acquisition of a fourth-century B.C. "phiale" (shallow wine bowl) from a New York dealer, which, the Italian government said, had been found in Sicily and illegally exported. The collector's "innocent buyer" defense was rejected; the phiale, which was reported by the American Art Auction magazine to have cost him $1.2 million, was returned to Italy, but the market was an even bigger loser.
To many, the subtext meant that no object acquired without a provenance traceable over several decades is safe from possible claims and the resulting nightmare.
Yet this is nothing compared with the far-reaching consequences of the memorandum of understanding signed in Washington on Jan. 19 between the governments of the United States and Italy. The memorandum invokes "the 1970 Unesco Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property to which both countries are states party," which makes it a historic turning point. "Desiring to reduce the incentive for pillage of irreplaceable archaeological material representing the Pre-Classical, Classical and Imperial Roman periods of Italy's rich cultural heritage," it stipulates that the U.S. government "shall restrict the importation into the United States of archaeological material ranging in date from approximately ninth century B.C. to approximately the fourth century A.D., including categories of stone, metal, ceramic and glass artifacts identified on a list to be promulgated by the United States government."
The list has now been promulgated, but the new mood to which the agreement points is far more important than its legal provisions. Buying antiquities that might be suspected of having been illicitly dug up recently will henceforth be seen as a huge commercial risk. Its impact extends beyond the Italian borders and is beginning to be perceptible. Put simply, anything known to have reached the market before these matters became a publicly recorded concern in 1970 acquires a new aura of relative respectability. That is already lifting some prices. Conversely, the going will gradually get stickier for other pieces.
Some museums appear to be adjusting their sights accordingly. Last week several museum acquisitions made at auction seemed well suited to the new mood.
At Christie's South Kensington, the British Museum paid a phenomenal £1.1 million ($1.6 million) for a 14.1-centimeter-long (5.6-inch) garment fitting described as "a highly important Celtic La Tene gold warrior fibula, third century B.C." No one could say for sure where the gold object was found, but Christie's carefully noted under the heading "provenance" that a U.S. collector, Thomas Flannery Jr., bought it in Chicago around 1949. First published in an Italian journal in 1960, the fibula made it to the front cover of the "Proceedings of the First International Symposium of Gallic, Celtic and Protoceltic Studies" printed in French in Rennes, France, in 1961.
The object is actually an enigma. Stylistically, the garment hook has little in common with most Celtic art. Were it not for one or two iconographic features, primarily the helmet of a design known in the Celtic parts of present-day northern Italy, its Celtic connection would not be evident. A scrolling band on the bow of the hook and the plait on a molding separating the foreparts of a lion from the head of a snarling wolf or dog are purely Hellenistic, and so is the naturalistic handling of the face. Strangely, the roaring animal heads call for comparison with the art of the Iranian nomads, a combination that would not be unusual around the Black Sea in the heavily hellenized Scythian communities. Few private collectors would have the courage to stake their money on such an odd piece. The museum, apparently unchallenged, got the object at more or less the reserve price level.
Is it pure coincidence that the acquisitions made in the same sale by a U.S. institution, which Christie's left unnamed, also had known provenances going several decades back? This seems unlikely given the laudable caution of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which was the museum in question.
A monumental "larnax" or rectangular casket in terra-cotta painted with papyrus plants some time between 1400 and 1200 B.C. cost it £97,250. This is far more than most would have expected, but the modernity of the design is extraordinary. And, not least, the piece was acquired in the late 19th century.
The museum also bought the marble head of a princely child carved around the second century B.C., when Egyptian art was becoming almost completely hellenized. Only the side lock and the impenetrable smile still owe something to the 2,500-year-old heritage. The head had a provenance, identified in the catalogue as "the property of a European lady," and cost the museum £8,225.
The choice of a "European" museum was revealing. The small late Egyptian basalt stele, only 28 centimeters high, doubled the high estimate at £56,400, despite heavy damage - the feet were chopped off and the faces hacked away in ancient times. But it was owned by an artist, Max Klarenbach, around 1900 and was reproduced in the early 19th-century "Description de l'Egypte," the first scholarly record of Egyptian antiquities published under the direction of Vivant Denon.
Fears that the markets will severely tighten up might account for the latest rush to acquire inscribed material of historical significance of a kind that will almost certainly not turn up again.
On April 23, Francois de Ricqles was conducting a sale of antiquities at Drouot-Montaigne, in Paris, where the "Reunion des Musees Nationaux" (National Museums Agency) paid large prices for items, some of them mere fragments, of scholarly interest. Using its right to substitute itself to the highest bidder, the agency bought a third millennium B.C. Babylonian tablet with a six-line cuneiform inscription - knocked down at 28,000 francs ($3,810) - two Assyrian chariot axles with cuneiform inscriptions, and an early rare Palmyrenian stele carved with a couple in sunken relief and incised with a Greek inscription (68,000 francs), to mention but a few.
Dealers themselves are taking the new mood into account. Jerome Eisenberg says that one of his reasons for founding the archaeological journal Minerva, which he funds single-handedly, was a desire to fight against archaeological looting. At Christie's, he bid enthusiastically for a terra-cotta Boeotian wine ewer of the eighth century B.C., paying £32,900, five times the high estimate. His "oenochoe" has a plus: It was seen at auction at Sotheby's as early as November 1959. fourth century A.D., including categories of stone, metal, ceramic and glass artifacts identified on a list to be promulgated by the United States government."
A day later, at a Bonham's sale where many lots failed to sell, interest in objects with recorded provenance was noticeable. Boston bought a monumental Cypriot amphora of the eighth century B.C., "formerly the property of a private collector," for £5,750. A fine Roman marble head of Eros carved in the first century could have suffered from being consigned by a dealer - Eisenberg, who candidly told me he was tired of holding it for a decade. The nose is broken and there are signs of wear. Yet, it easily climbed to £19,550. Under "provenance," a magic line read: "Ex Massarenti Collection, Palazzo Accoramboni, Rome (1897); Walters Art Gallery [the museum in] Baltimore." Who would claim that?
http://www.iht.com/
Iraq Says Stolen Relic on Sale in London
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An ancient stone head stolen from Iraq is on sale at a London exhibition, an Iraqi official said in a newspaper report on Sunday. "Interpol has notified Iraq that it found a head made of stone from a statue which dates back to the Babylonian era on sale at an exhibition in London," acting head of Iraq's Antiquities Department, Mahmoud al- Qaissi said in the Al-Ra'i weekly newspaper.
The report gave no further details.
The Babylonian period spanned nearly 2,000 years and ended in the 7th century BC.
Iraq says 4,000 antiquities went missing in the confusion that followed the 1991 Gulf War. It believes many have already been sold abroad. Another Iraqi weekly said Iraqi archaeologists have discovered a haul of artifacts dating from the Sumerian period at a site in Wassit province, 170 km (105 miles) south of Baghdad.
The collection ranged from pots to fired clay tablets, head of the excavation team Salim Younis was quoted as saying in the al-ittihad weekly newspaper. "The clay tablets...show the earlier stages of writing," Younis said. He said they dated from the third Ur dynasty and the Akkadian era, which ended about 4,200 years ago.
Pottery toys, human and animal figures, jars and cups made from pottery and copper, and inscribed cylindrical seals were also discovered.
http://news.excite.com/
Ex-Sotheby's Boss Fights Antitrust Charge
By Gail Appleson, Law Correspondent
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Sotheby's chairman A. Alfred Taubman pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges he schemed with his one-time counterpart at rival Christie's to fix commission fees charged to customers of the world's largest auction houses. Taubman, 76, the controlling shareholder of Sotheby's, pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court before U.S. District Judge George Daniels. He was indicted on Wednesday along with Sir Anthony Tennant, Christie's former chairman, for allegedly masterminding an international price-fixing conspiracy that operated between 1993 and 1999.
Tennant, 70, a British subject, has told newspapers he had no plan to come to the United States and Daniels issued a bench warrant for his arrest. ``This case will be vigorously defended, and we're going to fight it tooth and nail,'' Robert Fiske, Taubman's lawyer, told reporters after the hearing. ``Mr. Taubman has every confidence he will be acquitted.''
Daniels released the Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, real estate magnate on his own recognizance and placed no restrictions on Taubman's U.S. travel. However, he ordered Taubman to notify the government if he planned to leave the country.
If Taubman is convicted, he could be sentenced to a maximum three-year prison term. The one antitrust charge against him also carries a possible $350,000 fine that can be increased based on the loss suffered by the victims. The Justice Department said Sotheby's and Christie's control 90 percent of the world's live auctions of art, jewelry and furniture. It alleged that the two former chairmen conspired to fix commissions, instead of undercutting each other's rates. During the six-year period of the alleged scheme, the two houses charged sellers in the United States at least $400 million in commissions.
Auction houses generally accept goods on consignment from individuals and entities for sale at auctions. Sellers make payments, known as commissions, to the auction houses for their services. The commissions are a percentage of the sale price of the goods sold at auction. Sellers Lose Bargaining Tool
Before the alleged scheme started, the two houses competed primarily on the basis of commission fees because they both provided substantially the same service to sellers, the Justice Department said. However sellers lost their main bargaining tool because of the conspiracy, the government claimed. In addition to fixing commission rates, the indictment also alleged the defendants exchanged customer information in order to monitor and enforce the commission rate schedules. The federal investigation into possible price fixing by the auction houses led both Taubman and Diana Brooks, his protegee and Sotheby's former president and chief executive, to resign from their positions in February 2000. Taubman's indictment has been expected since Brooks pleaded guilty in October to violating antitrust laws and agreed to help make the case against him. Sotheby's also pleaded guilty to an antitrust charge and agreed to pay a $45 million fine. Christie's, which had been cooperating with the government, was not charged criminally. However, some 130,000 customers filed a civil suit against both auction houses over the price-fixing scheme. Last month a federal judge approved a $537 million settlement of the case. Although Taubman is fighting the criminal charges he did agree to pay $156 million of Sotheby's portion of the civil suit. He also agreed to pay another $30 million to settle a suit brought by Sotheby's stockholders who alleged their securities dropped in value because of the scheme.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/
Unesco Sources
A Chronicle of Destruction
Despite an all out international effort, the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan have been destroyed Why? True to their word, they did it: last March 9 the Taliban dynamited the Buddhas of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan. The two monumental figures, carved into the sandstone cliffs by monks 15 centuries ago, were the world's largest standing Buddhist statues, respectively 55 and 38 metres tall - a priceless heritage of the ancient silk roads.In an instant, this treasure was reduced to rubble.
Visit UNESCO's Afghan campaign website at http://www.unesco.org/opi2/afghan-crisis/index.htm
Whose Culture, Whose Treasure?
Getting stolen cultural property back to its rightful owners is not just a question of finding the goods and catching the thieves. Claude Jacques, a French expert in ancient Khmer inscriptions, spotted a stele from a Khmer temple in an antique shop in Bangkok’s River City Complex in December 1998. Jacques, a special advisor to UNESCO’s director-general at the time, told police and the item was seized.
read above reports plus much more at Unesco Sources:
http://www.unescosources.org/
From: newsletter@theartnewspaper.com
Subject: The Art Newspaper: this week's top stories
The Art Newspaper.com
http://www.theartnewspaper.com
Art world jobs: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/jobs/index.asp This week's top stories:
SMITHSONIAN TO BUY LANSDOWNE PORTRAIT OF GEORGE WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON DC. The Lansdowne portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart is about to be acquired by the Smithsonian Institution without being offered for sale to UK galleries. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=5970 THE R WORD: IS IT OR ISN’T IT AROUND THE CORNER?
NEW YORK. As the world is talking about recession, The Art Newspaper has focussed on New York. Dealers tell us what they think a slump will be like this time. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=5952 THE NAILING OF THE AUCTION HOUSES: A SOFT POLITICAL TARGET BUT LOTS OF STREET CRED FOR THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
NEW YORK. More than a year has gone by since a confession by Christie’s top executive Christopher Davidge to commission-fixing with Sotheby’s led to the resignation of Sotheby’s chairman, Adolph Alfred (Al) Taubman, and its ceo, Diana Brooks, who has since admitted to colluding with Christie’s under orders from Mr Taubman. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=5951 THE BARNES FOUNDATION: BON VOYAGE ALL OVER AGAIN?
PHILADELPHIA. The Barnes Foundation has applied to the Orphans Court of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, for permission to organise another tour of works that it owns. This time the items in question are not paintings from its galleries, but works of art and objects in offices and storage. The Art Newspaper has canvassed opinions on the Barnes's future. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=5950 UKRAINE: THE FARCICAL RUN-UP TO THE VENICE BIENNALE
KIEV. When the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture announced last year that it would fund the country’s first pavilion at the Venice Biennale this summer and that it would allocate $145,000 for the project, it unleashed a vicious mud-slinging match between two of the country’s leading contemporary curators and the artists they represent. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=5931 ZURICH LOOKS MERCEDES HEIR’S GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH
LONDON. Friedrich Christian Flick (Mick), the millionaire grandson of the war-time owner of the Mercedes motor car factories has discovered, as did his brother, Gert Rudolph (Muck) a few years ago when he offered to endow a Chair at Oxford University, that history is not forgotten. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=5930 FAUSTIAN FREAK SHOW OR ANATOMICAL ART?
BERLIN. When the actor Anthony Hopkins was asked why he wanted to star in the film “Hannibal”, he replied that “we are all fascinated by the darkness and shadows that exist insides us”. Perhaps the exhibition “Körperwelten” (Corporeal worlds) now on show in Berlin owes its success to the same fascination. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=5912 BRITISH OPPOSITION SIDES WITH GOVERNMENT ON MUSEUM ADMISSION
LONDON. The Tory party in opposition supports the British government’s resolution of the Value Added Tax (VAT) problem which effectively paves the way for free admission to all of Britain’s national museums. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=5911
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