Art gallery wins NT$3.6 million suit over fake painting
By Irene Lin STAFF REPORTER
A Taipei art gallery has won a suit for the recovery of the NT$3.6 million it paid for a fake oil painting purported to be the work of noted Chinese painter Wu Guan Zhong. The Taipei District Court recently determined that a painting sold to the Chuanchinchai Gallery in Taipei was a fake and requested that the man who sold the painting to the gallery give the money for the sale back. The dispute began in November 1999 when a broker approached the gallery. Bringing with him a collection of Wu's paintings, the man offered the gallery the "original" of A Night on the Sea by the painter for NT$3.6 million. Wu, a leading figure in the development of 20th- century Chinese painting, is one of the few Chinese artists to establish a reputation both in China and the West. His paintings are often a synthesis of traditional Chinese and Western techniques. However, the gallery eventually discovered its copy was a fake and that the original is now owned by Kenwei Trading Corp in Singapore. The gallery took the case to the Taipei District Court last year. At the trial, the defendant argued that he had sold the original and that the gallery might have switched the original with a fake. However, the gallery presented to the court an authorized statement by the 82- year-old painter confirming that the original painting is owned by the Kenwei Trading Corp in Singapore. Moreover, the general manger of the Singapore company came to Taiwan and testified in early July that the copy was very different from the original it owns. The court ruled that the man must pay NT$ 3.6 million to the gallery, but he is still allowed to appeal his case to the Taiwan High Court. http://www.taipeitimes.com/ From: IntlArtCop@aol.com Subject:
Re: Ongoing security
Clifford wrote:
It is my opinion that any time there is a contract for security services, there must be a legally enforceable clause that third party security services can not be unilaterally stopped by the third party, but disputes must be taken to arbitration or Court in a very expedited fashion, and also a government watch-dog organization to take over the continuation of the security services during the resolution period if the third-party vendor refuses.
I doubt that such a law would be possible. We can't get the courts or legislatures to agree on many things. I'd personally like to authorize CIA hit squads to seek out squirrely little teenage hackers who spread Code Red worms and Melissa viruses (kidding) but we can't seem to get lawmakers to see this as much more than a misdemeanor when it comes to punishment. And as for the courts stepping in to take over while the dispute is resolved, the dispute would be resolved before the court's attention could be had in most cases. The solution according to the courts is to pay any disputed money then go to court or arbitration and recover. Where do we draw the line? Do such disputes also involve hospitals? Nuclear power plants? Banks? Should it cover electrical brown outs to museums in California? (For the benefit of our non-US readers, California for a variety of reasons has an electricity shortage that caused service disruptions).
Actually the mechanism exists, in the U.S. at least, for a court injunction but it is not a workable solution.
But I agree that planning for service outages of any type is good. You should have a disaster plan and you should have contingency plans for every possible disruption. But most musems barely plan for the big problems let alone the less likely problems.
In sixteen years of full time consulting and four previous years of part time consulting I have had only one museum agree to install two simultaneous security systems. That museum has a larger, more expansive PC-based system that monitors the entire building and a smaller Radionics based system that provides enough "spot" motion detection within art- bearing areas to catch a burglar. Neither system is interconnected and each uses a different central station. That way the alarm tech from one system can be an art thief and not have the ability to interfere with the other system. I can keep the smaller system running on batteries for a week while the PC fails in a day. One central station or one service provider can go out of business and the other provides, at worst, fair protection. But unfortunately most museums won't opt for the extra cost of such planning let alone the ongoing extra service and monitoring costs.
The solution would be for your contingency planning to include having on file the phone number of an alternate central station service you can switch to and an alternate service provider who can service your system. In addition, you need an arrangement, pre- negotiated, with a local manpower provider willing to provide contract guards in a walk out or manpower disruption. You need the ability to accommodate your guards in an emergency that requires them to stay overnight in the museum like a major snow storm, etc. When I was in Chicago, if we anticipated a winter storm, we immediately made hotel reservations for our supervisors and managers who had to stay at the museum throughout the emergency. You need to stay on top of every possible situation.
I routinely write into my specs the requirements that the contractor provide spare parts for the systems I design but in almost every instance these critical spare parts are "value engineered" out of the spec to save money. I think every museum needs on hand a spare server, back-up software, a spare operator terminal, and a complete spare alarm control panel, as a minimum. I was just at a design meeting for a major new museum in California and they asked for a spare server and two operator terminals with hot standby in their control room. How refreshing!
I have one client who is still, to my knowledge at least, using an Apple IIe as a primary alarm system computer. It was installed in about 1984 when an Apple IIe was a "hot" machine (12 Megahertz, I think, with whopping hard drive capacity equal to ten diskettes). I'm sure they will replace it when the system fails and they are forced to staff the building overnight by an army of guards. On the other hand, a new system "front end"--an Apple IIe-- can be purchased at any garage sale for $10 so they may be the smart ones! (By the way, the computer was so reliable that in the first 12 or 13 years it was never down due to any failure). I have another client with a security system that is orphaned and spare parts are no longer available. They know they will need to do something but just can't seem to get moving on requesting the funding. The other museum with this system is upgrading so the first museum wants to buy their spare parts so they can keep running while they continue to procrastinate. So you see, planning for emergencies and problems is just not as good a solution in some museums as it is in others. Your job is to educate your management on why you need to plan for emergencies of all types. I'm taking the time to write this long reply to encourage you to use these examples to your benefit and advantage.
In the case of Mosler, I have been a fan of Mosler for years and am very sorry to see them go. They were generally very good and while I had a problem with them on one recent project, I had enough clout with them (because they didn't want to lose my referrals) that they always came through, at least until the end. Most other companies we deal with should be half as good as Mosler was.
In all these years, I have specified only three systems that were proprietary in nature, i.e., were sold and serviced only by one service provider. All three were Mosler systems. One time I actually specified a different system and Mosler convinced the client to use their branded system instead of the one I specified. In that case I specified a Northern System and Mosler generously offered to install their Comsec system (a high quality, more powerful system) as a partial donation to the institution in exchange for promotional consideration. In one instance the client asked for a Mosler system by name and in the other I specified Mosler, or equal, for valid reasons and we ended up with the Mosler product. In every other job I have specified systems that can be serviced by multiple service providers in that market.
My point is that while I felt the Mosler Comsec system was tremendously powerful and high quality, I was and still am very very concerned about any system that has only one parts and service option. Mosler systems can be serviced only by Mosler. Andover Controls systems recently added multiple service providers in some markets but are still quite proprietary. Simplex until recently could be serviced only by Simplex. etc. This is not to the client's advantage in my opinion and when a dispute occurs with the company, or the price rises too high for the museum to afford service, the client has no options.
On nearly every job I design we have this issue with vendors. I currently will not allow-- except on public jobs where there are procurement regulations that require open bidding-- bids for "equals" that cannot be serviced by multiple service providers in that market. I do not specify many Lenel or Neural Concepts systems, for example, both excellent products, in my opinion because they rarely have enough competing service providers in a market to comfort me as to what happens if the sole provider goes out of business or there is a dispute. I learned this the hard way. When I was Director of Security at the Art Institute of Chicago the last contract I negotiated back in 1985 was for service of our proprietary Honeywell system. We were paying $196 PER DAY back then for our service contract because we had no other option for service on that system.
I'm also very concerned about younger companies being gobbled up by the big guys. Even older companies like Westinghouse sold their security division to Honeywell. Several good systems over the years became extinct. If a company has 500 systems on the street and goes under, it is not likely anyone will make parts for it or pick up the slack on service. But if a company like Software House (owned by Sensormatic) were to go under, I'm fairly certain someone would step in and provide parts and service. They represent, I would guess, 15% to 20% of the US access control market.
I am often asked why I don't specify the same product for all of the museums I work for and the answer is that after sale support is more important than installation. If it isn't installed right we won't pay for it. But if we pay for it and there is any of a variety of problems that can easily occur in the best of jobs, if we are married to the service provider for parts and service, we are in trouble. Since the market and the availability of service providers varies from New York to Tacoma, we select systems that are less likely to be affected by company failures or disputes. On the other hand, we favor certain products and avoid certain other good products because we are conservative and don't experiment with our clients. The stakes are just too high when a company like Mosler folds. Most of our past work with Mosler has been in installing Software House, Northern Computers and Radionics systems so for these clients the loss of Mosler is not a big deal as they can go to any of several competitors in their city who will be pleased to take over service for their readily available systems.
I also consider the affect that acquisitions will have on a product. Remember BetaMax? It was a superior technology but it was discontinued. Because something is good doesn't make it the best choice. About 18 years ago I was hired to do a job for my friend Frank Duley when he was at a museum in New England. Frank liked a specific system and I liked a different system. The donor of the money to build the museum happened to like a system he had at his office building. I had a dilemma. I had to win both of them over. Frank eventually agreed that the Northern Computers system was best for him so we had to convince the donor of this. I did a financial study of the other system and predicted that they would be acquired by someone and this would cause problems. The job of convincing the donor of this was difficult because this guy was a Billionaire and financial predictions were HIS area of expertise, not mine. But we showed that we were right and he let us buy the Northern system. Within the year the system he wanted had been purchased twice and the technology wrapped into the product line of another competitor. Northern went twelve more years before being bought out by anyone and then the product was so superior that is was continued in their product line. The dealer network was so good that the service network also was not changed. My point is that you have to select your system based on considerations other than a flashy brochure or features that look cool. That may vary from city to city or region to region. But assume the very worst will happen and plan for it. If this means buying a system that is not quite the latest or greatest when the museum down the street has a flashier system than you do, then I guess he wins. You need to go for more than flash. You need long term reliability of both the system and the manufacturer. The winner will not be declared for about five years when the true results of planning are in. And selecting the tried and true product doesn't mean it won't catch a burglar.
We are seeing this now in digital CCTV. We are still not recommending digital recording for clients with limited budgets. Last year over 100 digital CCTV recording firms entered the marketplace with about 80 variations on the technology and no industry standard. Ninety- nine of those will be orphaned systems, will be acquired by other companies, etc. One saleswoman has the gall to tell me that she predicts that conventional VCR's will not be available for replacement or service within two years. Yea, right. And my grade school Weekly Reader told me we'd be using cars that fly and would be talking on picture phones, too. There is a far greater chance that you will buy a digital product today that is not selected as the industry standard and thus becomes an expensive paperweight than their is that your VCR can't be fixed during its expected life. If digital is so "hot" why hasn't Philips (one of the largest companies in the world) entered the market? So the lesson here is to not buy into products and technologies because they are cool unless you can afford to replace them before you are ready and are willing to stand by your decision as a manager.
This is why one of the things we do is keep a daily watch on all of the security companies that trade publically so we can try to predict where the product lines and technologies are headed. Keeping track of non-public firms is more difficult. We learned of the Mosler impending failure perhaps a month ago and advised one client who was about to sign a contract with them to request financial data before proceeding.
It is very hard to predict where technology will go. And in this business climate companies come and go. When we bid a job two years ago in Orlando we had five bidders on the bid list. By the time bids were received, all five companies were owned by the same company, and a company that did not exist in this market when the bids were issued was awarded the contract after we re-issued the spec to them and asked for a bid. The security market is in turmoil.
Don't look to the government or the courts to protect you. You, as security director, have the big office and get the big pay because you are capable of anticipating problems like this and writing a contingency plan to deal with it.
I hope this long reply was not boring and will be useful to someone.
Steve Keller Museum Security Consultant From: Clifford Scheiner cjscheiner@pol.net Subject:
OngoingSecurity 2
Another wrinkle in computer based security comes to mind - the ever increasing push by software companies to "rent" their software rather than sell it outright. Microsoft is best known for this, (and their .net program is geared to have clients totally at the mercy of the Microsoft organization)but any software that is obtained through an ASP (Application Service Provider) can be switched off by the vendor at their whim. I have read stories of software which has been "revoked" by the vendor because the vendor had a billing dispute with the client or did not like what the client was doing with the software (e.g. using it in tandem with other software obtained from a different vendor!) or because the client wanted to customize the software. The UCITA law which is being pushed by the software industry will increase the amount of software, including common programs for word processing and spread sheets and data bases, that will be avaialble under time limited license only.
C.J. Scheiner
Pharaonic Limestone Tablet in Egypt
By SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press Writer
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Nearly six decades after it was smuggled out of the country, Egyptian officials brought home a Pharaonic limestone tablet that had been on display at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The tablet, which dates back to 1300 B.C., was the second ancient artifact to be returned to Egypt in eight days. The Metropolitan Museum presented it to the Egyptian Embassy in New York in April. Mahmoud Allam, Egypt's consul-general in New York, accompanied the tablet back to Cairo on Saturday. ``This is an achievement for Egypt. I was overjoyed when I received the tablet in New York,'' Allam told reporters at the airport. ``The Met played an important role in retrieving it.'' The tablet portrays the wife of King Seti I breast-feeding her newborn child. Engraved under the carved drawing is the word ``milk'' and the name of the 19th dynasty Pharaoh Seti I in hieroglyphic, the ancient Egyptian language. The Metropolitan Museum acquired the tablet, which is 181/2 inches high and 121/2 inches wide, from the private collection of a man who said he inherited it from his father, according to Allam. The tablet was stolen from a temple in Mit Rahina, a town in Giza south of the capital Cairo, said Gaballah Ali Gaballah, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. The remains of the temple of Seti I were uncovered in Mit Rahina some 60 years ago. ``Egypt will continue its efforts in cooperation with all international organizations to retrieve its antiquities abroad,'' Gaballah said. On July 28, antiquities officials celebrated the return of a sculpture of a pharaonic queen's head that was smuggled to Britain as a cheap souvenir almost a decade ago. They believe the gray granite sculpture may be that of queen Nefertari, who lived between 1300 B.C. and 1250 B.C. She was the principal wife of pharaoh Ramses II. On July 16, a Manhattan art dealer, Frederick Schultz, was accused of peddling antiquities pillaged from Egypt, including a pharaoh bust with an asking price of $2.5 million. He has been charged with conspiring to receive and possess stolen property. If convicted he faces up to five years in prison. Gaballah said last week that Egypt is closely following the Schultz case, as the man could be the lead to the biggest bust in years. Limited funds to monitor vast historical sites and the spread of storage areas around the country make it hard for Egyptian officials to keep check on antiquities. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010805/wl/egypt_tablet_1.html