John Hooper in Berlin Saturday July 21, 2001 The Guardian
Twelve stolen drawings valued at £11m are due back in Germany tomorrow, ending a journey which began when the Red Army stormed a castle north of Berlin in 1945 and reached its climax in a high-speed car chase through the streets of New York. At various stages in an adventure worthy of a Robert Ludlum novel the drawings have been in the possession of the KGB, a Japanese businessman, and an Azerbaijani champion wrestler who travels on a Chinese passport. One is a work of considerable historical significance: Albrecht Dürer's masterpiece The Women's Bathhouse, dated 1496, although experts say it was probably executed two years earlier. All 12 drawings were handed over on Thursday to George Abegg of the Bremen Kunstverein, the museum in which they hung before their disappearance. He told the New York Times that The Women's Bathhouse was the first work unconnected to a religious theme to show naked humans in various positions. The collection includes a second Dürer, Sitting Mary with Child; a Rembrandt drawing, Woman Standing with Raised Hands; two chalk landscapes by the Dutch master Jacob van Ruisdae; and an ink drawing by the French artist Jean-François Millet. Mr Abegg said one of the drawings- he did not specify which - was slightly damaged but could be easily repaired. The extraordinary story of the 12 drawings illustrates the fact that by no means all the art that went missing during the second world war was seized by the Nazis. The Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste (Coordination Office for Lost Cultural Assets) in Magdeburg has catalogued 40,000 items that disappeared from German public and private collections. Some were stolen by common criminals in the chaos of war. Others were looted by allied troops when they invaded Germany at the end of the war. Quite a few simply disappeared without anyone except the thieves knowing who had made off with them. The drawings returning to Bremen this weekend were among more than 1,500 art works moved to Karnzow castle, north of Berlin. After the Soviet army seized the castle, they vanished. But in 1993 the National Fine Arts Museum in Baku announced an exhibition which included works from the Bremen collection. They informed the German authorities, who asked for their return. US investigators said documents in Azerbaijan showed the museum had been given the drawings by the KGB. But before they could be sent home they and 180 other works were stolen. Four years later a Japanese businessman, Masatsugu Koga, walked into the German embassy in Tokyo and said he wanted a $12m ransom for their return. He said he needed a kidney transplant. The Germans refused to do business with him, and a few months later he tried again in New York - this time offering the goods to the Bremen curator and an "associate": an undercover agent of the US customs service. When he produced the drawings, he was arrested. Subsequent investigation revealed that Koga, who had been a wrestler, was in league with Aydyn Ali Ibragimov, a former member of the Azerbaijani Olympic team and Mr Ibragimov's wife, Natavan Aleskerova, a senior prosecutor. A month later Ms Aleskerova turned up at Kennedy international airport and was identified, pursued and arrested "after trying to elude a customs surveillance team in a car chase through Greenwich Village", the customs service said. The arrest led investigators to a flat in Brooklyn where the rest of the drawings and most of the works stolen in Baku were found under a bed and in a cupboard. Ms Aleskerova served 11 months. Her husband is still on the run. Koga died, aged 64, in March 1999, before he could be sentenced. It seems he really did need the kidney transplant. http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/
Report Faults Colo. Museum Storage
DENVER (AP) - Artifacts statewide are threatened with irreparable damage and archaeological work on public lands could end because Colorado museums don't meet federal storage standards, a new report says. The draft version of a report from a Colorado Council of Professional Archaeologists committee said some museums lack climate controls needed to protect fragile objects from humidity and temperature changes. Other collections have been lost or have never been completely inventoried. In some cases, the museums housing the collections don't know who owns them, the report says. ``It's obviously a huge issue, and it has been brewing for some time,'' said Mark Mitchell, a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and president of the council. ``Our collective heritage is at stake.'' Colorado museums have housed government archaeological collections for decades, but are running out of space. The museums don't have the money to upgrade storage facilities to federal standards, the report said. The museum space crunch may halt some archaeological surveys because professional archaeologists must arrange for storage space before obtaining state and federal permits to dig. ``While it's not at the point of stopping projects right now, it is headed in that direction if we don't do something,'' said Kevin Black, assistant state archaeologist. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/
Italy to keep Ethiopian monument
The obelisk's return would fulfil a longstanding promise
An ancient Ethiopian monument taken by Dictator Benito Mussolini's occupying Italian troops more than 60 years ago has been declared Italian, casting doubt on whether it will be returned to Ethiopia as promised. An official from Italy's Culture Ministry, Vittorio Sgarbi, says the Obelisk of Axum has been in Italy for 73 years and has become naturalised and Italian. "Returning the obelisk to Ethiopia would be inopportune," he said, because "at its age it would arrive broken".
full story and photographs: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1448000/1448531.stm
(This is very much contrary to promises that have been made the past few years! TC)
Museum Finds All That Glitters May Not Be Gold
By Jude Webber
LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Peru's famed gold museum, a top tourist attraction, lost its luster on Wednesday when the country's consumer protection agency said it was investigating claims that up to 85 percent of its artifacts may be fake. Ricardo Maguina, technical secretary of Peru's Consumer Protection Commission (INDECOPI), said the vast private collection was now being examined by a commission of experts from Lima's Catholic University to ascertain its authenticity. Asked how many of the glittering ceremonial daggers, pieces of jewelry and ritual ornaments may be replicas, Maguina told Reuters: ``It could be that 15 percent are original and 85 percent copies. But we are checking. These figures have to be treated with great caution.'' Some of the Museo de Oro's trove of around 20,000 artifacts -- which give visitors a glimpse into the treasures alighted upon by Spanish conquistadors when they arrived in Peru in the 16th century -- have been displayed in exhibitions round the world. Maguina said INDECOPI was tipped off by a visitor -- a Mr. Tapia -- who wrote questioning the authenticity of some of the pieces he had seen. INDECOPI conducted a preliminary three-month inquiry and has now ordered a full-scale probe. The museum, which closed its doors on Wednesday, could face a fine. Sixty percent of foreign visitors to Lima flock to see its extensive array not only of gold but also of silver, bronze, ceramics, pre-Inca mummies, weapons, ponchos and textiles, which the museum says were found in burial sites and other excavations. No one was immediately available at the museum to comment on the investigation, but Victoria Mujica de Perez-Palacio, whose father Miguel amassed the treasures, told El Comercio newspaper she thought her father had been swindled. ``I think the people who have been around my father in the last 13 years took advantage of his good faith and his blindness to buy replicas. I'm sure he doesn't know,'' the paper quoted her as saying. ``I've been back to the museum at his request, after keeping my distance for 13 years and I found a large increase in modern pieces or replicas,'' she added. Mujica de Perez-Palacio said the museum had itself detected some 2,300 imitations -- around 10 percent of the total -- over the last six months. ``The Gold Museum must meet the necessary conditions to be classed as a museum,'' INDECOPI said in a statement. ``If they are not original, all the exhibits must be cataloged according to ... three classes -- modern manufactured pieces ...; modern creations using archeological artifacts; and pieces of the archeological heritage,'' it said. Peru remains Latin America's biggest gold producer and is the eighth largest in the world. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/