Subject: Theft Redouté, Les Liliacées, from University Library Utrecht
Dear all,
In the night of 20 – 21 March thieves have broken into the library of Plant Systematics of Utrecht University Library. The following item has been stolen:
Redouté, Pierre Joseph, Les Liliacées (Paris : Didot Jeune, 1802-1816.) 8 vols. (Bibliographical reference : Stafleu/Cowan no. 8747 en Nissen, Botanische Buchillustration, no. 1597)
This eight-volume work (in folio) contains 486 stipple engraved plates printed in colours and finished by hand. The work was in good condition.
The theft was carefully planned. No other books are missing. It is clear that the thieves were after the Redouté. And although it is nearly impossible to prevent these kinds of thefts, again steps have been made by the University Library to ensure the safety of its collections. This announcement is, of course, also meant as a warning: please keep a close eye on your collections. Hans Mulder Curator of printed books Utrecht University Library Tel. : +31.30.2536634 E-mail: h.mulder@library.uu.nl From: "Tom Meighan" tmeighan@vanartgallery.bc.ca
Subject: Trouble
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 11:16:44 -0700
I am having a lot of problems around the gallery with skateboarders, mountain bikes, etc etc, which also attract various other problems such as drug use. This is causing us serious security and safety concerns as they skateboard and cycle down the cafe steps, on the plaza and generally anywhere else they can.
I have used security staff but as you all know this is not very cost effective and I am now looking at other various ideas such as fences, handrails etc. We thought of speed bumps also, but as well as not looking good I feel that they would use them as jumping obstacles.
I am looking for ideas which others may be using, to help eradicate this problem once and for all. Please contact me with your thoughts.
Cheers
Tom Meighan Security and Visitor Services Manager Vancouver Art Gallery tmeighan@vanartgallery.bc.ca
tel: (604) 662-4713
Afghanistan: Art Finds Refuge In Switzerland While Awaiting Return Home
By Charles Recknagel
Afghanistan's National Museum in Kabul is in ruins, with most of its artifacts destroyed by the Taliban or looted during factional fighting. But some of the museum's archaeological and historical treasures have been preserved, thanks to individuals who smuggled them out of the country to safety. Some of the rescued artifacts are now housed in a small village in the Swiss Alps until they can be returned home.
Prague, 23 April 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Twenty-three years of war have seen Afghanistan's archaeological and artistic heritage subjected to every attack imaginable.
Throughout the conflicts, which include the 1979 to 1989 Soviet-Afghan war and decades of subsequent factional fighting, pilferers have taken advantage of the chaos to loot archaeological sites and museums. "The New York Times" recently reported that, by some estimates, 70 percent of the collection at the National Museum in Kabul was plundered for sale on the international market. Most recently, during the Taliban era, the destruction of many forms of art became the goal of the country's rulers themselves. The fundamentalist militia regarded depictions of human and animal forms as blasphemous attempts to imitate God's creation, and destroyed artwork with such representations. The most famous art victims of the Taliban's five-year rule, which ended late last year, were the 1,000-year-old giant Buddhas in Afghanistan's central Bamiyan Province. But the militia also ransacked the remaining collections in Kabul's National Museum, which had spanned thousands of years -- from the artifacts of early cave-dwellers to artwork reflecting the country's Greek, Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic influences. Paintings in Kabul's national art gallery suffered the same fate. Still, despite the best efforts of the Taliban and of art thieves, some antiquities did survive, thanks to curators and others who risked their lives to hide artwork or send it out of the country to safety. The same people preserved crates of smashed statuary in hopes that one day the priceless works could be reassembled.
Some of the rescued artwork has found a sanctuary at an Afghan "museum-in-exile" in a small village in the Swiss Alps. The museum -- in the village of Bubendorf, near Basel -- was founded by a Swiss architect who has turned his home into a safe-haven for Afghanistan's antiquities. RFE/RL recently spoke with the museum's creator, Paul Bucherer-Dietschi, about how he became involved in the effort. Bucherer-Dietschi said he was asked to provide a safe haven for the artwork by people whom he first met in Afghanistan in the 1960s, when he was a student there. Many of his colleagues later assumed responsible posts in Afghan society and tried to use their positions to protect the country's artwork from devastation. He says the art rescuers at first hoped to export large quantities of endangered material legally from Afghanistan to Switzerland. But the effort was stymied by legal restrictions on sending art abroad, limiting rescuers to sending out what they could by stealth. "We were not able to take out [much] of this material from Kabul and from Afghanistan because we had no legal basis for their export. So, most of the material which was there and should have been rescued was destroyed by the Taliban. So, what we have here in the museum is not so much the high-value, historic archaeological antiquities, but much more items of recent Afghan history of the last 150 years." Bucherer-Dietschi says his museum now houses up to 3,000 artifacts, most smuggled out during the 1990s. By contrast, what little remains in Kabul's National Museum today is principally folk art and old guns, plus boxes of broken statuary. There are also several important collections of Afghan antiquities in Western capitals, principally in Paris, due to past foreign archaeological expeditions.
As rescued art has arrived in Bubendorf, Bucherer-Dietschi's house has been enlarged and fitted with sophisticated security and environmental controls. Financing for the project comes from the Swiss government, the Basel regional government, and from private donors.
Bucherer-Dietschi says that in its early days, the Bubendorf museum -- whose full title is the Afghanistan Museum of Switzerland -- received pledges of support from both the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and some elements of the Taliban regime in Kabul. Prior to the Taliban's collapse in November following U.S.-led bombing, the museum received visits from former Northern Alliance political head Burhanuddin Rabbani (also ex-president of Afghanistan) and from a top adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. "On the side of the Taliban, as well as the Northern Alliance side, there were Afghan patriots who did see what would happen to the Afghan cultural heritage if they did not do their best to protect it." The Taliban visits came before the militia decided during its last years in power to step up the destruction of antiquities it considered un-Islamic. Bucherer-Dietschi believes that decision was taken under the rising influence of Al-Qaeda. Today, the museum-in-exile has the backing of Afghanistan's interim government, as well as international agencies charged with reconstructing the country. Last year, the UN education and culture agency, UNESCO, designated Bucherer-Dietschi's house as a repository that could keep -- but not buy -- artifacts in trust until the National Museum in Kabul can house them again. The Kabul museum currently needs extensive renovations before it can again accommodate an art collection securely. As the Bubendorf collection awaits its return to Afghanistan, it is receiving up to 200 visitors a week, most of whom learn about its existence through word-of-mouth. The museum has no budget for publicity and is staffed by volunteers. Bucherer-Dietschi's main partner at the museum is Zemaray Hakimi, an Afghan construction engineer who has been living in Switzerland as a refugee since 1996.
Those who visit the museum find several exquisite artifacts dating back to 1,500 B.C. Among the objects on display is a 3,500-year-old stone statue of a man and a bronze object dating from the same era that was probably used to imprint bread loaves. The Bubendorf museum also houses a 14,000-volume library and serves as an informal research institute for students of Afghan culture. http://www.rferl.org/
Saga of Sotheby's fallen chief to be a book, movie
BY JENNIFER DIXON Knight Ridder Newspapers
NEW YORK - KRT NEWSFEATURES
(KRT) - A. Alfred Taubman may find greater celebrity as a convicted felon than he ever did as a multimillionaire businessman, shopping mall developer and philanthropist.
A New York writer and a Los Angeles movie producer are chronicling Taubman's fall from grace last year, when a jury in New York found him guilty of cheating the wealthy customers of his storied auction house, Sotheby's.
more: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/nation/3128397.htm
School Returns Cambodia Sculptures
Thu Apr 25, 7:13 AM ET
HONOLULU (AP) - Two ancient sculptures stolen from a temple in Cambodia during the civil unrest of the 1970s and donated to the Honolulu Academy of Arts are back in their homeland. The 9th century, 15-inch stone head of Shiva and a 12th century, 19-inch head of a demon were flown from Honolulu on Tuesday and are expected to be presented during ceremonies Friday in Phnom Penh. After reading an article in a 1996 publication on looting in the Angkor area of Cambodia and extensive research, the academy confirmed that the two sculptures were among those stolen, according to a statement. George Ellis, director of the academy, and a group of about 25 academy officials and members accompanied the artifacts on the Cambodia flight. In a letter to Ellis, Princess Norodom Buppha Devi, Cambodia's minister of culture and fine arts, expressed "profound gratitude and appreciation" for the "noble gesture" of returning the artifacts.
Art 'stolen to order' in Russia
The Hermitage in St Petersburg has been hit by thefts
Art and antiques have become the latest target for organised crime in Russia, according to the country's head of criminal police, Vladimir Gordyenko. Russian police are currently looking for 40,000 stolen works of art and among the missing works are two sculptures by 19th-Century French artist Auguste Rodin.
Also popular among art thieves are the works of early 20th Century Russian avant-garde painters such as Kasimir Malevich and Marc Chagal.
'Organised gangs
Mr Gordyenko said that works of art were increasingly being stolen to order and that organised criminal gangs were often fulfilling orders placed by rich art lovers and dealers, often from abroad. These gangs often included former museum and library employees, or even artists, he added. The alert comes only months after police recovered five stolen paintings worth £1.4m in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. The paintings, all by well-known 18th and 19th- Century Russian artists were stolen from Tashkent Fine Arts Museum in October. They were recovered in January an unrelated police raid in the Uzbek capital.
In March 2001 Jean-Leon Gerome's 1876 painting Harem Bath was stolen from one of the world's great art collections, the Hermitage in St Petersburg. http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Why precious ruins are being ruined
Lecturer warns history is being lost as nation squanders fantastic archaeological heritage
Nayla Assaf Daily Star staff
Lebanon has a far higher concentration of archaeological gems than most other countries, but a large majority remains untapped and neglected, according to Antoine Khoury Harb from the Lebanese Heritage Foundation. “Many sights which are crucial to the heritage of the region remain absolutely unknown by most Lebanese,” Harb said during a lecture given at the Lebanese American University’s (LAU) Irwin Hall on Tuesday evening. During the lecture, hosted by LAU’s Center for Lebanese Heritage, Harb brought before the 300-strong crowd a fascinating collection of slides and excavation memoirs. These attested to the presence of widely unknown temples, but also to the reality of how little is known about Lebanese heritage. “I was once removing the stones blocking the way to a stone-age tomb in the Bekaa when an old woman came at me screaming with a stick in her hand,” he recounted before the picture of the tomb.
“I told her I was an archaeologist seeking to peek through the tomb … She laughed and said: ‘That’s not a tomb. You’re not very smart, are you? That’s a chicken shack, and I thought you were out to steal my chicken.’” Harb tried to squeeze much precious information into his hour- long lecture on the country’s temples and necropolises. But the most staggering insight was in his wide collection of before-and-after slides, taken through years of field journeys exploring the archaeological history of the country. A temple transformed into a neighborhood football field, another into a garbage dump, yet another into a kitchen such were the fates of many a famous site he showed. Others attested to the plundering and scavenging of sites, which is contributing to the ruin of cultural heritage locally and worldwide. The Antelias cave, for example, was a significant world prehistoric site where remains of an early homo sapiens called “Antelian Man” were discovered. The cave was destroyed in 1893 when it was quarried.
Harb also showed pictures of the Adloun cave, a prominent prehistoric burial place enclosing precious information. Twenty years on, it is seen surrounded by cement houses with cars parked by its entrance and laundry hanging in between. “People have to understand that those sites are a wealth, not only a moral one but a financial one,” he said, alluding to the prospects they might yield if well managed. The reason behind this neglect, Harb said, is the lack of funding allocated by the government for archaeology. “They only have about 14 archaeologists to manage all the resources,” he said. “Imagine having only two archaeologists to manage an area as vast and rich as the South.” Showing the picture of Neolithic houses abandoned to soil degradation in Jbeil, Harb said with anger: “This is Jbeil, one of the most important cities in the world, and this is one of the earliest houses in the world and it’s being left to disappear.”
Jbeil’s history and significance is extraordinary to the extent that the fortress, the most locally renowned landmark, is “almost worthless in comparison to other landmarks there,” Harb said. The small port city has some of the world’s earliest cities and alphabets. Harb also showed examples of recurrent features in temples here, including the double columns at the entrance of a temple and also the triad, which symbolizes the concept of life by embodying the father, the mother and the son. Another frequent feature is the building of temples over water springs, and having water flow out of them. This is seen in scores of temples of all periods throughout Lebanon, such as Afqa and Temnine, whose facade was blown out a few years ago by scavengers searching for gold. Harb also showed Baalbek from a very new angle, highlighting the fact that the most important feature in the temples, the tri-lithon the three largest stone construction blocks in the world are virtually ignored by most visitors. Harb ended his lecture by stopping short of Tyre: He said the city, recently named as a world heritage landmark, is in such a bad state that he did not have sufficient time to even broach the subject. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/
Cambodian Archaeologists Appeal for End to Illicit Excavations
PHNOM PENH, Apr 25, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) --
Cambodian archaeologists, at a conference on Cambodian cultural heritage held here Thursday night, appealed for putting an end to the illicit excavations and looting of cultural artifacts At the conference which was hosted by the UNESCO (the U.N. Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) office in Cambodia., Dougald O'Reilly, lecturer at the faculty of archaeology of the Royal University of Fine Arts, said that they found a unique iron age cemetery at Phnom Snay in Banteay Meanchey province, northwestern Cambodia, in a scientific excavation in 2001. He said that this pre-historic archaeological site can be considered as one of the most important yet discovered in the country as it contains precious evidence enabling Cambodians to gain understanding on the origins and development of the ancient Khmer Empire. This excavation has also revealed nine pre-historic burials and over 300 artifacts including ceramic vessels, glass beads, grinding stones, iron tools and weapons, which are vital information on the pre-Angkorian civilization, he said.
He noted that unfortunately, the site has continuously suffered from a wide-scale looting and systematic illicit excavations which led to the loss of a major portion of the site and the destruction of a substantial part of culturally significant artifacts. The archaeologists at the meeting asked related departments to adopt firm and urgent measures to protect relevant archaeological sites in the country from illegal excavations. http://library.northernlight.com/