PARIS (AP) - When French customs officers sifted through the luggage of two suspicious train passengers, they were looking for the usual cache of smuggled goods - drugs, arms or cash. Instead, they came across more than 100 bronze necklaces, bracelets, Etruscan busts and Roman vases, with some pieces dating as far back as the 8th century B.C. They were stuffed at the bottom of large suitcases, clumsily wrapped in old newspapers. The collection was formally handed over to France's museum authority on Wednesday after spending nearly a decade winding through the legal system. Some pieces will be added to the permanent collections at the capital's famed Louvre Museum, said Alain Cadiou, France's customs director. ``When I first took this job, I never imagined that seized objects would make their way to the Louvre,'' Cadiou said during a ceremony in Paris. Two Italian brothers traveling on the overnight Milan-Brussels train on Jan. 10, 1992, caught the eye of customs officers. One said he was going to London for vacation but had no luggage. ``We were very surprised. At first we thought the objects had little value because they were so roughly packed,'' said Laurent Paul, one of the officers who made the seizure near Thionville, in eastern France. He was told they were acquired at a flea market and were replicas. Paul doubted the claim and confiscated the entire collection. Among the works were bronze pieces - including necklaces, hair pins, bracelets and spear tips with intricately carved geometric motifs - that had been looted from the tombs of warriors and princesses in the region of Basilicata, in southern Italy. French customs officials had offered to hand over the collection to Italy, but the Italian authorities declined. The decision likely reflected a surplus of similar objects in Italy and the complicated judicial process it could have entailed, said Alain Pasquier, curator of the Roman, Etruscan and Greek section of the Louvre. Pasquier estimated the works date from between the 7th and 8th centuries B.C. One of several thick children's bracelets still carries traces of bone inside it - remnants from the tomb. The collection also included bowls and vases from other periods and other locations. One rare piece was a bronze bowl from the island of Sardinia that still had its lid - an unusual find. One of the vases, made of baked clay at an Athens workshop in the 4th century B.C., was singled out for its exceptional size. Five Etruscan busts were probably molded around the 3rd century B.C., officials said.
The most valuable work in the collection was estimated at $11,000.
The Italian brothers smuggling the art were put on trial and fined. It was unclear how they had acquired the pieces. Cadiou, the customs chief, said his officers last year seized a total of 893 works of art. Among the biggest catches was a pastoral painting by Camille Pissarro, entitled ``La Brule des champs.'' It was handed over to the Orsay Museum in Paris.
Man Stole Rare Items at Yale, Police Say
December 7, 2001 By YILU ZHAO
NEW HAVEN, Dec. 4 - It was a summer job, and the duties for Benjamin W. Johnson were simple: to move boxes of documents at Yale University's rare books library. But the treasure of half a million rare books and several million manuscripts housed at the university's Beinecke library proved to be too much temptation for Mr. Johnson, a 21-year-old University of Wisconsin student, according to the Yale police. Now he stands charged with stealing about 50 items worth more than $1.5 million from the library, including a letter from George Washington to French General Rochambeau, documents signed by Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and more than a dozen early editions of famous novels, such as "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain.
Mr. Johnson, a junior, confessed to the thefts, the police said, and is facing criminal charges in New Haven on 12 counts of first degree larceny, 11 counts of criminal mischief and last week was charged with damaging unique items. The confession came in October, after an autographs dealer grew suspicious after he sold her Washington's signature, the police said. But Mr. Johnson has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and remains in Connecticut on $50,000 bond. Word of a confession has stunned and puzzled Mr. Johnson's college friends and acquaintances, who described him as a somewhat reclusive student from Hamden, Conn., who was intelligent and studious. They also say that if he took the items, they doubt it was caused by the lure of money, even though the police say Mr. Johnson admitted that he had $52,000 in his bank account, mostly from selling the documents. "He was timid, but he was nice to everyone, and everyone liked him," said Michael Johannes, a sophomore.
But Mr. Johnson's roommate at the University of Wisconsin, Aaron Lawrence, said that he had seven books on money laundering. And the police in Madison, Wisc., reported finding books on picking locks, cracking safes and circumventing security alarms in Mr. Johnson's dorm room. Catherine Barnes, a Philadelphia dealer of autographs who said she bought the Washington signature from Mr. Johnson, called him "cold and calculating." For one thing, she said, the original documents, which are more valuable but would make any crime easy to trace, were not sold. Instead, the signatures were cut out with razor blades from letters and documents. Ms. Barnes bought a Washington signature from Mr. Johnson for $3,750 after an e-mail correspondence, but when she received a signature that she said was in "mint condition," she grew suspicious. Few documents from private collectors are preserved so well because signs of wear inevitably register after a few exchanges. So when Mr. Johnson offered to sell more signatures that were in similar condition to her, she said, she alerted authorities. Mr. Johnson's father, Peter W. Johnson, a manager at Yale, father refused to comment on the case yesterday. Messages left for the son were not returned.
Yale has installed strict security systems to protect items in its Beinecke library from theft or damage by patrons, but security against staff was lax, workers said. "We were unsupervised most of the time," said Eric Gilde, a Yale sophomore who worked at Beinecke. Yale has not retrieved all of the signatures sold by Mr. Johnson, but the police said they had found some of the intact documents. The mutilated items can be repaired for future research, but something intangible has been lost, some professors say. "Not to have the documents in their original forms is painful," said John Demos, a historian of Colonial America who has taught at Yale for decades. "I feel stricken that an old thing having been preserved for more than 200 years has been mangled in this way."
In reply to a question of mr. Fr. Roelants du Vivier (PRL-FDF-MCC, liberals in the Walloon provinces) about the ratification of the 1970 UNESCO Convention about the illicit trade in cultural objects, Belgium's Interior Minister Antoine Duquesne has assured the Belgian Senate on November 21, 2001 that his colleague of Justice will do his utmost to submit the Convention for approval to the Belgian Cabinet before the end of this year.
Mr. Roelants du Vivier complained that around 400 international treaties are waiting for ratification, some of them have been there for two or three decades. This can damage Belgium's credibility.
Restitution to Congo
Vice minister Eddy Boutmans (Agalev, the Greens in Belgium) has stated, that restitution of African art objects, which at present are in the possession of Belgian museums, should become possible. His statement comes in the aftermath of a discussion about Belgium's involvement in the murder of Patrick Lumumba in February 1961. Newly appointed director Guido Gryseels of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren is in principle not against restitution. He pointed however to the fact, that during the last three years onethird of the collections of museums in Kinshasa has been stolen. In practice therefore, it will be difficult to make restitution an immediate priority. In his opinion restitution should be limited to certain individual objects, which have a great emotional and political value. More important immediate priorities are the digitalisation of the collections of museums like the one in Tervuren, greater access for African colleagues to the Tervuren databank and sustainability of management of collections in Africa. The Tervuren museum supports a number of projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoir, Kenya and the Comoros. From: Andrea.Rascher@bak.admin.ch To: securma@xs4all.nl Subject:
Swiss Government passed New Draft regarding Law on Transfer of Cultural Objects
Dr. iur. Andrea F. G. Raschèr
Bundesamt für Kultur - Office Fédéral de la Culture - Ufficio Federale della Cultura - Federal Office of Culture
Leiter Recht und Internationales Chef Droit et Affaires Internationales Capo Diritto e Affari Internazionali Head Legal and International Affairs
Hallwylstrasse 15 CH 3003 Bern
Tel. +41 31 322 86 08 Fax +41 31 324 85 87 mailto http://www.kultur-schweiz.admin.ch/arkgt
Bill Requires Native Remains To Be Returned
For decades, U.S. universities and museums have possessed artifacts taken from Native American gravesites, but a new law could make them return the items to the tribes, 10News reports. In San Diego County, much of the back country looks just as it did hundreds of years ago when Native Americans occupied the area. When the indigenous groups were moved out of the hills and valleys, they lost more than their land, according to Steve Banegas of the Barona Band of Mission Indians. Instead of being in graveyards, remains of the Native Americans are in museums or universities, he said. "It became like a treasure hunt. The more artifacts you could find, the more you could attach your name to," Banegas said. "To this day, there's still a lot of that old way of thinking. They feel they have exclusive rights to disturb; pretty much take what they want."
Banegas told 10News that the issue has been on the minds of Native Americans for more than 100 years. Gov. Gray Davis has newly signed a bill that would order the return of many of those artifacts and remains, 10News reported. The bill had been in the books, but too many legal loopholes existed. David Baron, of Barona Government Affairs, explained that the bill requires institutions to return the remains and artifacts by January 2003. The institutions will have to turn the artifacts over to a commission that will catalog them and then turn them over to the appropriate tribes. Already, the remains of five ancestors were returned to the Barona cemetery. "I know where my grandparents are buried, I assume you know where your grandparents are buried, but we have Native Americans who knew where their grandparents were but don't know where they are right now," Baron said. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/
Sotheby's Ex-Chairman Found Guilty of Price Fixing
By Paul Thomasch
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Sotheby's chairman A. Alfred Taubman was found guilty on Wednesday of conspiring with the former head of rival Christie's to fix commission fees in a multimillion dollar scam that shook the art world. The jury of eight men and four women deliberated for less than two days in the complicated case before convicting Taubman of hatching an international price fixing conspiracy in the 1990s with Anthony Tennant, the former chairman of rival auction house Christie's.
Flanked by a team of lawyers, dressed in a three-piece gray suit and listening with the help of a wireless hearing aid, the Detroit real estate magnate sat stone still in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan while the unanimous verdict was read. When Taubman, 76, left the courthouse a short time later, he appeared shaken and declined to make a statement as he was ushered into a black Range Rover. Taubman, who is still the largest shareholder in Sotheby's, will be sentenced on April 2 next year and faces up to three years in prison as well as heavy fines. ``We are of course very disappointed in the verdict, but we're going to review our options and decide what to do next,'' said Taubman's attorney Robert Fiske. He declined to say whether he planned to appeal. Tennant, a resident of Britain, could not be extradited for the three-week trial. Both Taubman and Tennant have said they are not guilty of the charges. The case rocked the rarefied world of art auctions with accusations of deceit, backstabbing and shady dealmaking between the two houses, which together control about 90 percent of the world's live auctions of art, jewelry and furniture.
DUMB AND HUNGRY
The prosecution's case hinged on the testimony of two former executives of the venerable auction houses, which have roots dating back to the 18th century. Diana ``Dede'' Brooks, the former chief executive of Sotheby's and once considered the most powerful woman in the art industry, testified that Taubman ordered her to collude with former Christie's chief executive Christopher Davidge to set the commissions the houses charged customers to sell their art. When the scheme started to unravel, she testified, her boss showed her a newspaper picture of herself and said she would ''look good in stripes.'' Taubman's lawyers countered by arguing that Brooks, who oversaw the sale of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' estate, bullied her boss and never told him about the price fixing scheme they accused her of arranging with Davidge in the backseat of a limousine at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport. They also tried to discredit Brooks by charging that she was cooperating in the case against her former boss in hopes of avoiding a three-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy last year. Such charges failed to win over jurors, who said they believed the testimony of Brooks and were convinced her boss hatched the scheme during 12 secret meetings in the early and mid-1990s with Tennant, his counterpart at Christie's. ``I actually believed Dede. I thought she was telling the truth,'' Mike D'Angelo, a 51-year old postal employee who served as foreman of the jury, told reporters outside the courtroom. D'Angelo also said the New York jury was not persuaded by the so-called ``dumb and hungry'' defense which arose from testimony that Taubman would sometimes doze off during board meetings and was more interested in his lunch menu than the financial details of art auctions.
``I don't care if you fall asleep,'' he said. ``You're there and you know what's going on.''
Another juror, Jeff Goodwin, a 42-year-old restaurant co-owner, said: ``Even if he was sleeping during the meetings, he was certainly aware of what was happening.'' Goodwin also said the jury was persuaded by Judge George Daniels' instructions that in conspiracy cases the agreement is the crime rather than the success or failure of the plot. Sotheby's previously 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 for the scheme that operated between 1993 and 1999. During that period, the two houses charged sellers in the United States at least $400 million in commissions.
From: "Torkil D. Koch" tdk@profort.com To: securma@museum-security.org Subject:
Product information (wireless object protection).
Date sent: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 15:59:20 +0100
Profort in Denmark (http://www.profort.com) presents Piccoloâ wireless object protection.
Piccoloâ is a wireless alarm system for art objects in museums and galleries.
Invisible and flexible object protection: The detectors are small and can be placed behind, e.g., a painting. Piccoloâ comes with a variety of detectors, for example a seismic detector and an infrared detector with the dimensions of not more than 54 x 35 x 15 mm, 25 grams, with a battery life time of 5 years! The Picollo supervised-wireless system has proven to be ideal for permanent or temporary exhibits. It has the flexibility to adapt to any type of exhibit and can be operational in minutes. The alarm receiver pick up the wireless signals from detectors located up to 75 meters away. The alarm receiver network is connected to the central unit, which is controlled by a regular PC. The incoming alarms will be logged and displayed on the PC monitor. It will instantly notify monitoring personnel that a violation has occurred. A portable transmitter can send emergency signals, for example from a museum shop, by depressing a button. The simple and user friendly software offers many options: It is used to install and maintain the system, and to receive and log alarms from detectors and alarm receivers, enabling you to review the system log at all times. You can monitor the Piccoloâ system, for instance: correct detector installation, jamming of RF signal, receiver conditions for RF signal, battery voltage in detectors etc.
The Piccoloâ software is flexible and offers many options: connection/disconnection of individual detectors or groups of detectors, adjustment of detector sensitivity, configuration of sound and relay outputs on alarms receivers, connection to external alarm bell, forwarding of alarms to mobile phone, configuration of user names and user rights, logging of alarms and changes to configuration etc.
Yours faithfully, Profort as Torkil D. Koch Salg & Marketing Tlf.:7023 3600