The bronze beauty just one of many vanished treasures
By JOHN CICHOWSKI Staff Writer
When he began researching a long-ago political battle, the Passaic County historian thought he was simply writing a book about a Paterson shrine designed to honor the great men of his native city. Instead, Edward A. Smyk uncovered a disturbing, modern-day mystery: Most of the artifacts in Eastside Park's Plaza of Memories, including "Fortune," a bronze 19th century French statue worth more than $28,000, had been missing for more than a decade, and no one had ever reported them lost or stolen. "The 8-foot statue, the marble bench, and the urns at the plaza rank among Paterson's most cherished heirlooms," Smyk said, "and no one even noticed they were gone." Worse, the pieces are the latest in a series of Silk City treasures that have mysteriously disappeared over the years.
full story: http://www.bergen.com/paterson/fortune200108294.htm
Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Art
By The Associated Press,
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Peter Guber's former driver pleaded guilty to stealing a Picasso drawing and other property from the movie producer's home last year. Sammie Archer III pleaded guilty in Superior Court on Wednesday to first-degree residential burglary, grand theft by embezzlement and receiving stolen property. He was scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 28. Archer, also known as Tony Hargain, was arrested on May 3 after he allegedly tried to sell Picasso's 1937 ink-on-paper drawing ``Faune'' at Christie's auction house. Archer was arrested after a Christie's employee found the work listed as stolen on a police Web site. The drawing was valued around $100,000. Several Picasso plates, two bronze sculptures and an $80,000 Tiffany lamp also were taken from Guber's West Los Angeles estate sometime between Dec. 28-29. They are still missing. Guber was behind popular movies including ``Rain Man,'' and ``Batman.'' http://dailynews.yahoo.com/
From: Francisco de la Fuente ffuente@museothyssen.org> Subject:
RE: Infrared light at original paintings
Dear Mr. McCord:
For the question that you ask on the illumination of the exhibition rooms with infrared ligths, I want to comment that in the Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza, we take some time investigating the systems of security that can be harmful for the works of art, and in some months we will emit a report of the security and extinction systems that can damage them. Nevertheless, I will tell you that the infrared ligths in all their variations and applications, are very harmful for the colored works, because they are decolorant of the pictorical layer; for that we have them absolutely forbidden. My opinion is that it's very important that before any type of modification of the security systems, and mainly when we seek to incorporate special systems it is consulted with the restorer, because the conditions of conservation of the works of art are very critical.
Sincerely:
Francisco de la Fuente Director of Security Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum From: IntlArtCop@aol.com Subject:
Re: Infrared and paintings
You asked if active infrared used to illuminate CCTV is harmful to paintings. First, for those who my not be knowledgable with regard to the technology, let me say that active infrared sends out IR while passive infrared used in motion detectors does not send anything out. It "sees" infrared temperatures. So if it is determined that IR is a problem, this would not affect motion sensors typically used in museums. Several years ago I was asked to determine if IR used to transmit audio tour information could harm artwork. I addressed this to several prominent conservators and to some technicians involved with IR technology and was told by all that there was no evidence whatsoever that it was harmful. I did not publish the data so I have lost the sources but at the time it seemed to put the matter to rest so the sources must have been sufficiently respected to end the debate. My research was with regard to transmitting audio tour data and not CCTV illumination so there may be some considerable difference in frequency and amount of IR involved. I seriously doubt that CCTV illuminators are harmful. Decades ago microwaves were given a clean bill of health by the conservation community as was ultrasonic. Any potential for damage due to IR would probably involve light sensitivity of works on paper, etc. This is an issue best addressed to the conservation community. They know infrared, as they use it to examine artwork, and they know what frequencies of light damages works of art. My guess is that it is the UV portion of the spectrum that we should be concerned with. When you address this to conservators who essentially are scientists, make sure that you don't ask them if IR has any damaging potential. The answer is that air has damaging potential. You need to know if it has any realistic damaging potential and if that potential damage is greater than the risk of theft or damage that might occur at night in a burglary, etc. With that said, I feel that if you are asking because you want no light in galleries at night for conservation reasons, but want CCTV coverage, you might strike a balance. We are seeing some really nice color cameras that see at .3 lux for color and .003 lux in black and white. While total darkness may be the conservation goal, we security people should strive for some minimal level of night lighting that enables us to do our jobs OR funds for controls so that motion in a gallery activates lights making cameras useful OR remote switches in the security control room to activate lights when an alarm is received OR motion sensors that activate lights when someone moves thru the gallery. Everyone else in the museum gets the tools they need to do his job. So should we. By the way, there is a high cost for infrared illumination. They often run hot, they have a limited life and are expensive to replace. To illuminate the whole gallery sometimes requires a visually obtrusive illuminator or have to be mounted on a zoom, tilt and pan camera which is obtrusive.
Steve Keller
An Artist's Heirs Battle a Dealer's Ghost
NEW YORK During his lifetime the flamboyant Viennese-born art dealer Serge Sabarsky was considered an authority on German and Austrian Expressionist art. The onetime dealer for the works of the painter George Grosz, Sabarsky was acknowledged by even his competitors - perhaps especially by his competitors - as being the embodiment of Viennese charm. (+++++++++++++++++++++++++++)
For six years the Grosz estate has been pursuing a lawsuit, first filed against Sabarsky when he was elderly and ailing, then against his business, the Serge Sabarsky Gallery in New York, not in operation today. In the suit the estate claims that Sabarsky secretly acquired 440 Grosz works for himself, primarily drawings and watercolors produced in Germany in the 1910s and '20s, the period of Grosz's most valuable work. An additional 110 pieces are missing, the estate contends.
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full story: http://www.iht.com/articles/30827.html
Study: Hitler Bought Plundered Art
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer
BERN, Switzerland (AP) - Swiss art dealers sold paintings plundered from Nazi victims to Adolf Hitler and one of his top aides, a new study said Thursday.
Dozens of works, some stolen from Jews and others sold by German refugees desperate to raise cash, flowed through neutral Switzerland's art houses as World War II engulfed Europe, said an international panel of experts, which released eight volumes of material on Switzerland's conduct.
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Galerie Fischer of Lucerne, the largest auction house in Switzerland at the time, arranged barter deals for French impressionists and organized ``emigrant auctions'' in which refugees from Germany sold their possessions at cut prices because they were trying to leave Europe altogether. According to the panel, the gallery played a key role in the trade with both Hitler's ``Fuehrer Museum'' in Linz, Austria, and with Hermann Goering, one of Hitler's top aides and chief of Nazi Germany's air force.
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The most important source of paintings for Hitler was Berlin collector Julius Freund, a German Jew who died in exile in a Nazi bombing raid on London, the study said. Between 1941 and 1944, Galerie Fischer sold 152 paintings and drawings to Hitler's museum, and about half of them came from Jews fleeing Germany, the report said.
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full story: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010830/wl/switzerland_nazi_art_1.html
Stealing Goyas: They Make It Look Easy
Joseph Fitchett International Herald Tribune Saturday, September 1, 2001
PARIS The Spanish police are still puzzled by the biggest art theft in Spain's history, a smoothly timed burglary on Aug. 8 in which paintings and sculptures valued at $65 million were taken from the Madrid apartment of the country's richest woman. Among the stolen canvases were "The Swing" and "The Donkey's Fall" by Goya, Tsuguharu Foujita's "Child With Hat," Pissarro's "Landscape at Eragny," "The Temptation of St. Anthony" by Pieter Brueghel and a work by Juan Gris, the modern Spanish master. All are far too well known to be resold on any legal world market. The Spanish Ministry of Culture has said that many of the 19 works figured on an official list of national treasures, and it has called for a special effort to recover them. The police have offered a reward, hoping that underworld informers will betray the thieves. The thieves apparently had a shopping list of what they wanted to take from Spain's finest private art collection, prompting suggestions from the police that the robbery might have been "carried out to order" for a rival collector. "Maybe there's a megalomaniac somewhere who wants to contemplate paintings that he can never show publicly," an investigator said. Ransom could be a motive. Unfortunately for the works' owners, most art collections in Spain, including this one, are not insured, according to Arts Daily, a London-based Web site. The burglary has also put the media spotlight on one of Spain's most glamorous and reclusive individuals: Esther Koplowitz, 51, a billionaire socialite and businesswoman who heads the country's largest construction company, Fomentos de Construcciones y Contratas. Koplowitz almost never gives interviews, and insists that friends and colleagues avoid talking about her to the media. The daughter of a Jewish refugee from Poland, a self-made businessman who created a construction empire under Franco, Koplowitz - who uses her family name as well as her Spanish title, marquesa de Casa Penalver y de Cardenas - has joined the ranks of the super-rich thanks to the rising fortunes of her company, whose annual revenues approach $4 billion. She acquired a majority of the company's shares two years ago when she bought out her younger sister, Alicia. The Koplowitz sisters, both generally listed in the top 10 among Europe's richest women, got married at the same time in 1969, wedding wealthy Spanish bankers who were cousins, and then divorced their husbands at the same time, in 1989, for adultery. For a decade, the two sisters ran the construction conglomerate together until Esther assumed full control. Analysts credit her with a key role in expanding the company's profits in Spain and diversifying successfully into waste management and other service industries across Europe, in Asia and Latin America. Crowning her success, Vivendi International, the French group that combines utilities and entertainment, bought a quarter-stake last year in Fomentos de Construcciones y Contratas - and gave Koplowitz a seat on its board. The theft apparently has reinforced Koplowitz's fears for her privacy. Friends said she was convinced that someone she knows provided the information the thieves needed for the robbery. The nighttime break-in occurred 24 hours before the start of birthday celebrations for Koplowitz at her summer holiday retreat, leaving the burglars confident of not having their plans disrupted by unexpected family visits to her Madrid residence. Spain's finest private art collection hung in her apartment on the top floor of a modern luxury block in Madrid's affluent Chamartin neighborhood. At the time of the break-in, the apartment was being extensively redecorated while Koplowitz was on vacation outside the capital. On the night of Aug. 8, the building's security guard was lured into the street by the sound of breaking glass. The thieves overpowered and blindfolded him, disarmed the alarm system and broke through a reinforced door to enter the apartment. They rifled through the collection of canvases, which had been stacked against the walls in two rooms for protection during the redecoration. It took the burglars less than an hour to identify the paintings and sculptures they wanted. The thieves seem to have been intimately familiar with the arrangement of the apartment during the renovation. Five paintings were not reported missing immediately because they had been stored in a second room that was not checked for two days after the break-in. The police said they have questioned about 50 people who were known to have visited the building during the summer. Koplowitz has not commented publicly on the theft except to say through a spokesperson that the collection was not insured. She reportedly does not own all of the stolen works. "The Swing" by Goya and three other paintings are said to belong to her former husband, who had left them with her after their divorce so that she could continue to enjoy them. http://www.iht.com/