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June 21, 2001

CONTENTS:




- French Legation Museum Robbed
- Thousands of sacred works fall prey to art thieves
- LUCIAN FREUD POSTER CAMPAIGN, PRESS STATEMENT
- SCHEDULE ICMS (International Committee on Museum Security) IN BARCELONA
- RE: museum-world approaches to sprinkler systems

French Legation Museum Robbed

A burglar is on the run with an antique clock in hand. The clock along with a crucifix was stolen over the weekend from the French Legation Museum. The thief broke in through a window. The people who operate the museum are hoping the antiques will turn up in a pawnshop or the burglar will be caught.

Thousands of sacred works fall prey to art thieves

BY DALYA ALBERGE, ARTS CORRESPONDENT
CRUCIFIXES, church carvings and other sacred objects have become the preferred booty across Europe of thieves and traffickers in works of art. New research shows that in Italy alone more than 88,000 objects have been stolen from religious institutions over the past 20 years, while the Czech Republic has lost 40,000 objects since 1986. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) is alarmed by the scale of the problem, revealed in itsreport, Looting in Europe, published yesterday. Manus Brinkman, the secretary-general of ICOM, which represents 16,000 collections in 147 countries, said that objects of spiritual and historical significance were being routinely plundered “to feed the illicit traffic in cultural property and end up adorning the interiors of private houses”. The fourth in a series of similar studies on theft in Cambodia, Africa and Latin America, the latest report focuses on France, Hungary, Italy and the Czech Republic. “In spite of strict national legislation and specialised police departments, the looting continues,” Mr Brinkman said. “The figures speak for themselves.” The most dramatic Italian thefts include a Madonna and Child by Giovanni Bellini, the 15th- century master who inspired Titian and others, which was stolen in 1993 from the Church of Santa Maria dell’Orto in Venice. Such is the rarity of Bellini that another Madonna and Child by him sold for £826,500 at Christie’s in London in 1996. Italy’s most-wanted list includes a 12th-century crucifix that was taken in the early 1990s from the Church of S Giovanni Maggiore in Naples, and an entire 17th-century altar — a monumental sculpted marble piece — which disappeared from another church in Naples. France has had more than 330 major cases of theft and vandalism in the past 20 years. Historic statuettes have been wrenched from larger structures, while thieves have walked off with rare tapestries and elaborately-carved lecterns. A 1681 ivory sculpture of Christ on the Cross was taken in 1991 from the cathedral at Tours and in 1992, 17th-century carved wooden angels were removed from the church of Saint-Vivien in Rouen.
Among 219 works which Hungary has lost since 1997 is a stone sculpture of a lion dating from the 13th century. It was stolen last year from the remains of a Benedictine abbey and church in Vertesszentkereszt, in spite of locked doors and protective iron railings. In 1996, thieves helped themselves to a 17th-century wooden sculpture, Christ of Mercy, from the Treasury of the Franciscan Monastery, Szeged. Losses suffered by the Czech Republic include a 1650s crucifix stolen in 1992 from the Church of St Procope, Letovice, and a 1730s sculpture, Baptism of Christ, taken in 1996 from the Church of St John the Evangelist, Bestvina. The ICOM report — funded in part by Unesco — is distributed to museums, customs authorities, police forces and the art world as “a reminder to potential buyers that they should exercise the greatest vigilance”. After Looting at Angkor was published in 1993, several of the items reproduced were identified and returned. Among them was an 11th-century Khmer head, which had been sold in 1993 in London — an important centre for the illicit trade — and which was eventually returned to Phnom Penh in 1996.
The Art Loss Register in London, which liaises with the art world and the police in tracking down stolen works, welcomed the report. Alexandra Smith, the register’s operations manager, said that the figures were staggering. “There is a huge smuggling aspect that has to be looked at,” she said. “A lot comes to London or America.” On average thieves sold the works for less than 10 per cent of their market value: “But that’s still better than nothing for the thief,” she added.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/

LUCIAN FREUD POSTER CAMPAIGN

PRESS STATEMENT

On 27 May l988, Lucian Freud's Portrait of Francis Bacon was stolen from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, where it was on show in an exhibition of Lucian Freud's work. The exhibition had been organised by the British Council, and had previously been shown at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Hayward Gallery, London.
In June 2002, Tate Britain will present a major retrospective of Lucian Freud, which will subsequently tour to Spain and the USA. The lost portrait of Francis Bacon, which has disappeared without trace, is one of the key works of Freud's early career and would be be a signal omission from this important exhibition covering the entire span of Freud's career. The British Council is leading a compaign aimed at its recovery, in collaboration with the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz and Tate, which owns the stolen portrait.
The campaign consists of advertising the lost portrait throughout Berlin on a poster devised by Lucian Freud and offering a reward of up to £100,000 for information leading to its recovery. The Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, will hold a Press Conference at midday on Friday 22 June to announce the start of the poster campaign. Andrea Rose, Director of Visual Arts at the British Council, Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate, and Peter-Klaus Schuster, Director of the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, will address the Press Conference.
Lucian Freud was born in Berlin in December 1922, the son of the architect Ernst Freud, the youngest son of the psycho-analyst Sigmund Freud. Immediately before the family left Berlin in l933, following Hitler's rise to power, they lived in an apartment in Matthäikirchplatz in the Tiergarten district, close to the site now occupied by the Neue Nationalgalerie, designed by Mies van der Rohe and opened in 1968. Sigmund Freud emigrated to London from Vienna in l938. Lucian Freud became a naturalised British subject in l939.
Bacon and Freud became friends in the l940s, and Bacon painted a portrait of Freud in l951 - his first portrait of an identified person - using a snapshot of Franz Kafka as his point of departure. Freud's portrait of Bacon was painted soon after, and bought for the nation in l952 by the Tate Gallery. Robert Hughes, in the catalogue of the exhibition from which the portrait was stolen, writes of the portrait:
'A small picture, about the size of a shorthand note-pad, and one whose extreme compression makes it even more compact in memory; one remembers it as a miniature. The thought of 'miniature', with its gothic overtones, was affirmed by the surface: tight, exact, meticulous ... there seemed to be something Flemish about the even light, the pallor of the flesh, and the uniform cast of the artist's attention. One did not need to know it was the head of a living artist to sense that Freud had caught a kind of visual truth, at once sharply focused and evasively inward, that rarely showed itself in painting before the 20th century ... Here the fluent continuity of Ingres' form-world seems to have been refracted through the detailed spikiness of northern Renaissance art, but in no antiquarian way: Bacon's pear-shaped face has the silent intensity of a grenade in the millisecond before it goes off.'
Lucian Freud comments: 'Would the person who holds the painting kindly consider allowing me to show it in my exhibition at the Tate next June? '
Included in the press pack are:
Black and white photograph of Lucian Freud's Portrait of Francis Bacon, l952
Daniel Farson's photograph of Freud and Bacon together in Bacon's studio 1953
'WANTED' poster to be distributed in Berlin from 22 June 2001

For further details please contact:

Andrea Rose          Nigel Semmens
Director of Visual Arts          Director Press and Public Relations
The British Council          The British Council
11 Portland Place          10 Spring Gardens
London W1B 1EJ          London SW1A 2BN
Tel: +44 (0)20 7389 3055         Tel: +44 (0)20 7389 4939
Fax: +44 (0)20 7389 3101         Fax: +44 (0)20 7389 4971
email: andrea.rose@britishcouncil.org         email: nigel.semmens@britishcouncil.org

Date sent: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 16:17:48 +0200
From: Günther Dembski guenther.dembski@khm.at
Subject:

SCHEDULE ICMS (International Committee on Museum Security) IN BARCELONA

ICOM BARCELONA 2001 ICMS Sessions, July 2 - 5
Program Sunday 01 July
15:00 Board meeting
Monday, 02 July 2001
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya Palau Nacional. Parc de Montjuic
9:00 - 9:30 Inscription and information
9:30 - 11 Business meeting; elections
11:00 - 11:30 Coffebreak
11:30 - 14:30 First working session:
Jongsok Kim The protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict in Korean War (1950-1953)
Pavel Jirasek Return of Cultural Objects
Genevieve Ravaux: The data base of works of art loans from the national collections in France (in French language)
Jose Maria Arenillas: Organización de la seguridad privada en España en materia de museos.
Henry Berner: Security systems for music instruments
Francisco de la Fuente: Optimización de recursos humanos en la vigilancia de exposiciones.

14:30 Lunch
15:00 - 16:00 ICMS Board Meeting
16:00 - 17,30 Second working session,
Wilbur Faulk The case of the missing Van Gogh
Serge Leroux Guarding and remote survaillance
Alain Raisson Security in Sacred Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro


Tuesday, 03 July 2001
Palau de Congressos (room PC7)
Av. Reina Maria Cristina, s/n, 08004 Barcelona


9:00 - 13,30 Joint working session with ICMS and ICAMT, "Security, Old Buildings, New Buildings, and the Architects"
(11-11,30 Coffee Break)
Günther Dembski Installing security in old buildings *)
Markus Spinnler Security planning and the architects*)
Hans Jürgen Harras New Security Systems in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin *)
16,00 Visit to the Museu Episcopal de Vic (Departure at 16:00 from Palau de Congressos



Wednesday, 04 July 2001
9:00 - 12:30 1.- Special visit to the Museum Picasso
2.- "Casa Milà" de Gaudí (La Pedrera) actual sede de la Sala de Exposiciones de la Caja Cataluna (Departure at 8:30 from Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya)
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya
Palau Nacional. Parc de Montjuic
13:00 - 14:30 Third session:
Bo Borg Transparent Storage in Boxholm, Sweden
Michael John The requirement of the unthinkable - Building measures in exhibition halls without elimination of the art objects
Alain Raisson Security in Sacred Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro
Jordi Bachs Nebot Sistema de gestión integrado de seguridad de museos.
Pavel Jirasek ICMS annual 2002 meeting in Czechia
14:30 Lunch
16:00 - 17:30 ICMS Business meeting:
17,30 Visit to the Museu Frederic Marès, Placa de Sant Iu, 5-6, Barcelona


List of Speaker and Titles - Please note that the paper should be 10 - 20 (not more!!) minutes. *) Means: At the common session with ICAMT and DEMHIST

From: Tom Dixon tom.dixon@ngv.vic.gov.au
Subject:

RE: museum-world approaches to sprinkler systems

Date sent: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 14:53:41 +1000
From: "Ron Haddaway" rhaddaway@ARTBMA.ORG
Subject: museum-world approaches to sprinkler systems
We are investigating the latest museum-world approaches to sprinkler systems. Although
The BMA has sprinklers in non-art areas, i.e. loading dock, we may consider sprinkling art
areas in the future. I myself am not a big fan of sprinklers in art areas, however, I might
consider some of the new fogging systems. What I would like to know is;

If your institution has sprinklers in galleries and/or storage areas:

a) what kind do you have? are they in all galleries, permanent collection and temporary exhibition spaces?
b) have you had any problems, failures?
c) have you lost any potential loans due to lenders' anti-sprinkler policies?
d) does your conservation department have any strategies?
Personally, I'm not a big fan of dead visitors, dead staff, destroyed buildings and what the fire guys have to do to put out a fire ten or twenty minutes after it gets going. We have wet pipe sprinklers every place except in two storage areas where gas can be effective. Given the choice between wet and burnt items, plus all the rest of it, we have chosen wet things. Wet we can deal with- burnt to the ground, we're out of business.
Problems and failures: We had one head go off and it made a mess. We were very lucky that damage was minimal. We think the head had been hit with a ladder or whatever and cracked and just spontaneously failed some time later. A guard happened to be standing there watching when it went off and we also had it on video.
Loss of loans: We had a situation a number of years ago when a conservation colleague at the National Gallery in Washington banned loans of their collection to institutions such as ours with wet pipe systems. We negotiated a compromise and put plexi vitrines with low reflection glass fronts over their paintings. I might add, we had the equivalent of three or four 747's full of people in the upper floors of our gallery at a time and if a fire broke out and wasn't controlled very quickly, we risked literally hundreds of casualties. I sleep better with a wet pipe system than without it.
Conservation strategies: Be prepared for large numbers of wet items- this is also the most likely scenario in case of storm damage, leaking pipes, stuffed up toilets and lots of other disasters.
There was quite a lot of discussion of the pro's and con's of various systems a few years back on the Museum Security list- I'd urge you to review it. I don't think much has changed. In our new building and our renovation of our existing building, we will stay with wet pipe sprinkers and use them every where except in two small storage areas where we can use gas systems.
You are buying something that, if you are lucky, is going to sit for years doing absolutely nothing. If and when, years and years from now, you need it to spring into action and absolutely perfectly work- if it fails, you risk losing your collections, your building and perhaps lives. Wet pipe systems have a 100+ year track record of working and all other systems have substantially increased risk of failure. It is probably the public servant in me, but personally, I'm not willing to sign the paper that says I will take responsibility for some other system that might not work when its needed.
Thomas Dixon
Chief Conservator
National Gallery of Victoria
Melbourne Australia