By Howard Reich Tribune arts critic
July 14, 2002
Seeking to increase pressure on European nations that are refusing to turn over looted Holocaust-era art and other property, Congress on Tuesday plans to spotlight the stories of people thwarted by restitution policies abroad. The hearing--the first such session in three years and the first including the Bush administration's newly appointed chief of Holocaust issues, Randolph Bell--comes at a time of increasing revelations about inconsistent and intractable policies in countries that have passed restitution laws but rarely enforce them. In one such case, to be considered during Tuesday's hearing, the Tribune has uncovered new documentation bolstering the claim of Peter Edward Glaser of Massachusetts that he is the rightful owner of a collection of priceless Arabian artifacts given to him in 1936. During the 13 years that Glaser has fought for restitution, the Czech courts and the Naprstkovo Museum in Prague, which currently holds the collection, have asserted that Glaser lacks proof. But the papers that Glaser has presented, including an inventory he made when he stored the collection for safekeeping at the Jewish Museum in Prague, in 1948, match precisely a document located by the Tribune in the archives of the same museum. This yellowed, two-page inventory--woven into a decades-old, hardbound volume--confirms that the Jewish Museum received from Glaser the same 99 items he has said he deposited there. "With all of these documents, Glaser now has a very strong case," said Michaela Hajkova, curator of the Jewish Museum in Prague. "He should not give up, because he has excellent documents." Glaser, 78, will submit written testimony for the upcoming hearing, which will feature approximately a dozen claimants and their spokesmen, representing thousands of claims that have been unanswered. The focus will be placed squarely on European governments most resistant to restitution, including the Czech Republic, Poland and Croatia, said U.S. Rep. Ben Cardin (D.-Md.), who will lead the hearing. "We're going to say to them: `If you expect to join NATO, if you expect to be recognized as a full partner in the international community, here is what you have to do,'" said Cardin, insisting that the nations must start returning Nazi-looted art that later was nationalized by the communist governments.
Letter sent to Czech official
Last year, Cardin and three colleagues, including Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), sent a letter on the subject to Czech Deputy Prime Minister Pavel Rychetsky, "to express our ongoing concern about discrimination against American citizens in the Czech Republic's property restitution and compensation laws." Yet cases like Glaser's have not moved forward since then, prompting the forthcoming hearing, which is being organized by the Helsinki Commission, an independent agency of the United States. Previous, smaller-scale hearings took place in 1996 and '99. Glaser's case epitomizes the frustrations that Holocaust survivors face in attempting to obtain property--even when they have documentation. He received the Arabian collection of ancient ceremonial objects as a gift from his grandfather, who in turn had received the items from his brother, the famous explorer and Arabist Eduard Glaser. But after the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, in 1938, Glaser and his parents fled to England, leaving their possessions behind. Upon returning to Czechoslovakia in 1945, after fighting in Europe with the Free Czechoslovak Army under the British flag, Glaser discovered that his Arabian collection had been looted. He located it in a museum in Zatec, which promptly returned it to him, but he was forced to give it up again when the communists rose to power. As a Jew and a Czech national who had fought alongside the British, Glaser said he had double reason to fear for his life, so he escaped anew, banned by law from taking his property. He stored his art collection with the Jewish Museum. In a letter to Glaser dated June 15, 1948, Jewish Museum director Walter Sojka reaffirmed that the objects "will remain your property and, therefore, we shall release them to you whenever so requested." Once communism fell, Glaser began filing claims for the collection but was informed by officials of the Naprstkovo Museum that it owned the collection since 1975. Glaser sued in the Czech Republic, but lost. At the time, he lacked one indispensable document that has been collecting dust in the archives of the Jewish Museum. Penned by an unnamed staff member of the Jewish Museum, the handwritten list details 99 items deposited by Glaser, and it squares with Glaser's own list of 99 items that he submitted to the museum in 1948. "I believe this document proves beyond doubt that the collection is mine," Glaser said when informed by the Tribune of the existence of the museum's inventory. The director of the Naprstkovo Museum, when informed by the Tribune of the existence of the Jewish Museum document, acknowledged that the Naprstkovo Museum obtained the collection from the Jewish Museum. But she added that the document is not relevant to "the Glaser collection," which is now in storage in the Naprstkovo Museum's Libechov Castle, an hour outside Prague. "The Jewish Museum ceded the collection that is in the Naprstkovo Museum," said Dr. Jana Souckova, Naprstkovo Museum director. "We have documents that say that the Jewish Museum ceded the collection to the Naprstkovo Museum, so the Naprstkovo Museum owns it.
"There is no doubt about this."
The Jewish Museum handed the objects to the Naprstkovo Museum in 1975, when the communists were in power and nationalized the Jewish Museum, renaming it the State Jewish Museum. At the time, the government of Czechoslovakia routinely moved art objects around the country, placing them in particular museums according to category or genre, with Glaser's collection going to the Naprstkovo Museum. Glaser's case has proven typical of restitution battles in Central and Eastern Europe, where governments and institutions find ways to finesse restitution laws, research has shown.
Case of Lyons resident
Three months after Gerald McDonald, a Vietnam veteran living in Lyons, Ill., was identified by the Tribune as heir to an art collection looted by the Nazis from his great-great-uncle, Holocaust victim Emil Freund, the Czech Culture Ministry blocked restitution. The ministry declared the most valuable items in the Freund collection "national cultural treasures" that could not be sold or moved outside the country, preventing McDonald from attaining full ownership. The Jewish Museum in May filed suit in Prague against the Czech Culture Ministry on behalf of McDonald, but experiences like McDonald's abound. "There have been many cases in my district, but the one that was the most egregious was a woman whose father owned property in Romania that was confiscated during World War II under the Aryan property laws," said Cardin, referring to the case of Jacqueline Waldman. "She had clear title, there was no question that the property belonged to her father, it was clearly identifiable and it was being occupied by the Romanian government. "She took her claim to court, won on three occasions, and in each one the Romanian government refused to comply with the court order." It took years of battling with Romanian authorities by Cardin, American Ambassador James Rosapepe and others before Waldman prevailed. Glaser's view on the conflicts is articulated in written testimony for this week's hearing. "I am just one of a large number of people whose property was taken over by the Nazis and subsequently Communists," writes Glaser, who lost 36 relatives in the Nazi death camps. "This is a true bonanza for those people who own property of Jews whose bodies went up into smoke." http://www.chicagotribune.com/
The art detective
The police have all but given up trying to tackle serious art theft, says Charles Hill, a former policeman who made headlines recently when he used his criminal contacts in a bid to trace two stolen Old Masters worth £10 million. Interview by Colin Gleadell
Charles Hill is not used to publicity, especially unwanted publicity. But last month, the former police officer, now a freelance art detective, found himself unexpectedly on the news pages as the mastermind of an ingenious, if so far unsuccessful, ploy to recover two Old Master paintings valued at £10 million. Titian's Rest on the Flight to Egypt had been stolen from Longleat House in Wiltshire, the home of the Marquess of Bath, in 1995. Jean-Baptiste Oudry's The White Duck had been taken from the Marquess of Cholmondeley's Houghton Hall in Norfolk in 1992. All attempts to retrieve them had failed. As a last resort, Hill had asked convicted art crook David Duddin, now on parole, to use his underworld contacts to trace the paintings. "Of course, that wasn't supposed to happen," an embarrassed Hill told me when we met. "Duddin leaked the story to the press. I was dismayed. But he is still on the job." As a policeman, Hill was involved in "covert" operations. He was a plain-clothes man who could talk to art world academics and the criminal fraternity on equal terms. These days, he is still "covert" - so much so that the thought of having his picture in the newspaper appalls him. But anyone seeing his round, convivial face framed by broad, tortoiseshell spectacles and curly brown hair that belies his 55 years of age would not peg him as your archetypal policeman. He is, he jokes, "a bit of a split personality". At once a hard man who relishes the scent of danger and served as a paratrooper in Vietnam (his father was a US Air Force officer) before spending 20 years in the Metropolitan Police (his mother is English), there is also something of the gentle aesthete about him. At university he studied history and theology, and would sit enthralled in front of Kenneth Clark's cultural television marathon Civilisation. "My favourite periods in art history are the 17th and 18th centuries," he says. His wife is the niece of Ireland's most famous living painter, Louis le Brocquy. Hill is clearly a man who loves his work - "It's the only thing I'm interested in. I'll do it till I drop." And, clearly, it keeps him busy. Apart from recovering art, he works as a security adviser to the Historic Houses Association (whence his grand contacts), and is investigating a number of art fraud cases, especially fakes. "There's much more money changing hands for fakes than for stolen art," he says. So why, if he loved his work so much, did he leave the police force in 1997? He could hardly have been classified as an under-achiever. As a key member of the Art and Antiques Squad in New Scotland Yard during the mid-1990s, he contributed to some of the great art theft recoveries of the time. In 1993 there was Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, Goya's Portrait of Dona Antonia Zarate and other paintings stolen from the home of Sir Alfred and Lady Beit in Ireland by Dublin gangster Martin Cahill, known as "the General". In 1994, he was closely involved in the recovery of Edvard Munch's The Scream, lifted through a window from the National Gallery in Oslo. And in 1996, he worked with Czech and German authorities on the recovery of a hoard of paintings and statues stolen in Moravia and Bohemia that included Lucas Cranach's The Old Fool from the National Gallery in Prague. The answer is that art crime had become too big, too international and too specialised for a local police force. "Specialisation lost favour five or six years ago and has never returned," says Hill. "The Metropolitan Police began to ask, 'What does all this have to do with policing in London? How does it service the community?' " There was also a growing culture of fear of police corruption which led to structural reform and increased bureaucracy. "It left us with very little flexibility. The management was terrified of informants corrupting police officers." This made it more difficult for officers such as Hill to work underground, talking to criminals face to face. Then there was the small matter of the cost of running a dedicated art and antiques squad. The case of John Drewe, who doctored the Tate Gallery's archives to validate fake paintings by his accomplice, John Myatt, cost the taxpayer millions.
In spite of the huge publicity which the case generated when it finally concluded in 1999, the cost is thought to have been resented by the senior Scotland Yard officers, who questioned the significance of the case to the general public. The depleted art and antiques squad is now described as a "unit" with only one detective. There is no surveillance team. With the displacement of specialised police officers throughout the country, the onus of research, documentation and retrieval is falling on the private sector. And, increasingly, the private sector is being serviced by former police detectives such as Hill. Malcolm Kenwood of the West Sussex police now works with the Art Loss Register, the world's largest database on stolen art. Richard Ellis of New Scotland Yard and Jim Hill from Thames Valley Police work with Trace magazine, part of the Invaluable Group, an art information service specialising in the protection and retrieval of stolen art and antiques. For Charles Hill, leaving the police force has given him the freedom to follow his own interests in his own way. As far as stolen masterpieces are concerned, he says: "I'm more interested in recovering the art than capturing the criminals." It's the kind of thinking that might seem foreign to most policemen. But Hill is still a policeman at heart. Unconventional perhaps, but, as he insists, operating within the bounds of the law. In seeking the help of David Duddin he is not, he explains, advertising for the return of the Titian and the Oudry and offering a reward with "no questions asked". "Whatever we do," he says, "has to be reasonable and completely legal." The process, which involves close contact with the criminal underworld, is delicate and can be time-consuming. "People are terrified of talking because of the fear of jail," says Hill. "Sometimes the work feels like a lot of plodding." But sooner or later, given the right contacts and handling, he believes these paintings can be retrieved. "Art thieves are not sophisticated. They won't destroy the paintings. "But masterpieces like these are of limited use to them. They don't understand that they are unsaleable - and not open to ransom." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Guardians with a cross to bear
The Irish Examiner 13 Jul 2002
By Cormac O'Keeffe
THE Tullylough Cross could have been lost forever to the Irish nation. The 9th century metal processional cross was stolen from a crannóg near Tullylough in Co Roscommon in the late 1980s. Soon afterwards, experts in the National Museum became aware of the theft of the unique object and attempts to sell it abroad. It turned up in the Getty Museum in Malibu, California, and the sellers were looking for $1.75m. The National Museum took civil proceedings against the people who had found the object and secured its return. In 1991, one of the finders, Joseph Mulvey, was fined £10 (12.70) for failing to report its discovery. Since its return, State conservationists have been working tirelessly to restore it. "It was in its constituent parts, so we had to reassemble it, clean it and restore it," said Rolly Read, head of conservation at the National Museum.
He said the importance of the object lay in the belief that the stone crosses dotted around the country were first modelled on a metal form. "This is the first time we've found a processional cross that the other crosses were based on. It was gilded in silver and gold. Now, it looks like it was made from bronze." Mr Read was loathe to put a value on the cross, now it has been restored, but said it was worth much more than the asking price in the Getty Museum. The cross, just under four feet long, will go on display in the coming months in the treasury of the National Museum in Kildare House, along with the nation's other priceless treasures. "It will go along with the Ardagh Chalice, Derrynaflan (horde) and the Tara Brooch. It's big league stuff and it looks amazing." The recovery of the Tullylough Cross was a great success for the National Museum. But the case highlights the problem of the looting of sites by people for selfish gain.
The disappearance of the Tullylough Cross occurred during the height of archaeological theft in Ireland following an upsurge in metal detection. Organised criminal gangs, often using metal detection associations as fronts, raided national monuments and sold their objects abroad, mainly in Britain. But their days were numbered. In the 1980s, the Derrynaflan horde - containing early Christian liturgical objects - was taken from a site in Co Tipperary. Subsequent cases resulted in a supreme court ruling which said that under the Constitution these objects were the property of the State. In 1994 the National Monuments Amendments Act was introduced, which made it illegal not to report the discovery of an object of antiquity and to possess it, thereby including both the person stealing the goods and those who received them. The act also prohibited digging for archaeological objects and the use of metal detectors for such a purpose without a licence. Anyone convicted on indictment under the act faces a minimum of five years in jail and/or 10,270 fine. "There was a fall-off after 1994 of the looting of sites," said Ned Kelly, head of the Irish antiquities division of the National Museum and expert on the area. However, in recent times, there are signs of the re-emergence of the problem. "There are new groups of people and individuals targeting sites with a view to removing valuable objects for sale," said Mr Kelly. There are some 250,000 sites protected under the register of national monuments, many hiding important and valuable items, such as coins, bracelets, crosses and stone carvings. "We have the biggest number of monuments in western Europe," said Mr Kelly. "We view this as extremely serious, because not only are they taking the object, but the looting is also detrimental to information. "When you remove an object, you take it out of its context. Say, if it is coins, that might date the site. A site without it's archaeological content is of little use." He said unlike the 1980s and early 1990s, no one would now be unaware it was against the law to dig for antiquities. He said the crime was now more covert and that thieves were using the internet to sell their objects. "There are certain parts of the internet, like private chat rooms, that we have been excluded from, that we believe they are using." He said a number of important pieces still missing, including a sheelagh- na-gig erotic stone carving taken from Kiltinan, Co Tipperary, in 1990 and a stone head taken from Dingle peninsula in the mid 1990s.. He said the museum had wide contacts with dealers and museums here and abroad and monitored what was on sale. He also said the setting up of a dedicated art and antiques unit in the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation was a major development in addressing the problem. With so many sites in the country he said it is impossible to guard them all. So instead they target the thieves in conjunction with the NBCI. "This is a democratic issue. This is the people's heritage and it is being ripped off by unscrupulous, selfish, self- serving people," said Mr Kelly http://www.online.ie/
US to return Pharaoh's mummy to Egypt
A priceless mummy thought to be the remains of the Pharaoh, Rameses the First, is to be returned to Egypt from a museum in the United States. The BBC reports the move is part of a new and successful Egyptian campaign to track down missing or stolen antiquities. The remains of Rameses the First were taken from Egypt without consent 143 years ago, when trade in antiquities was rife. After a short spell in Canada it was sold to a museum and university in Atlanta, Georgia, where it has remained ever since. It was only after the establishment of a new bureau in Egypt, set up to track stolen relics, that its whereabouts come to light. The Government in Egypt, who for years has called for the return of exhibits asked the museum in Georgia to hand it back.
After months of negotiations they finally agreed.
The mummy of Rameses the First, who ruled in 14th century BC, is the latest priceless relic to be returned to Egypt from the United States. http://abc.net.au/
For your eyes only: the art of the obsessive
ben macintyre The criminal art connoisseur is a familiar figure in fiction and film, the crooked aesthete who steals the most valuable artworks for private delectation in his own secret bunker. Dr No strokes his Persian cat, with the stolen Goya portrait of Wellington behind him on the wall, and lights up another cigar. When Batman breaks into Penguin’s lair, the walls are festooned with stolen art. The image of the criminal mastermind surrounded by Old Masters is a popular myth, but there is another mysterious figure in the art world who is today removing great works from circulation and hiding them away as securely as if they were in Dr No’s study. This week saw the sale of The Massacre of the Innocents, by Rubens, for a staggering £49.5 million. It is highly unlikely that we will ever know who bought it, or where it resides, for anonymity is now the rule rather then the exception in sales of valuable art. The ownership and whereabouts of the four most expensive paintings in the world are all unknown: Van Gogh’s Doctor Gachet went to Japan after it was sold in 1990 for $82.5 million, but after the death of its buyer it was sold on, to a person and place unknown. Van Gogh’s Self Portrait with a Beard and Renoir’s Au Moulin de la Galette, numbers three and four on the list of Big Buys, have also vanished into unidentified private hands. Undoubtedly some of those who spend such fabulous sums on artworks are genuine art lovers, fired by purely aesthetic motives: the desire, selfish but familiar to genuine connoisseurs, not just to witness beauty, but to possess it. Yet for others a hugely valuable painting may be little more than a commodity useful for tax purposes, obtained principally for profit, mounted in strict privacy if exhibited at all, or else stashed in a bank vault. It is the policy of both Sotheby’s and Christie’s to conceal the identity of buyers for 15 years, and the increasing trend towards anonymous purchase is gradually removing one of the most intriguing aspects of the art market: its link with personality.
When J.P. Morgan, the American financier and connoisseur, went on one of his pharaonic buying sprees, the market charged after him. When Andrew Lloyd-Webber loudly informed the world that he was buying Victorian pictures and blazing a trail through the market, the prices doubled. Individual buyers had the power to create trends, and renew interest, in specific sorts of art. When the buying is anonymous we know only that a painting is considered a valuable investment by wealthy people. The aesthetic is virtually drained out of the transaction; the sale of a Van Gogh becomes merely an expression of market forces, as impersonal as a rise in a particular stock. Why, then, do individual millionaires desire to enjoy something in secrecy? J.P. Morgan amassed his astonishing art collection as an extension of his roaring hubris. He wanted to be seen buying the most valuable things by the widest possible audience. But modern anonymous buyers operate on the principal that if you’ve got it, hide it, or share it only with other billionaires. The rich are different, and perhaps it is merely the fact of being able to have what others cannot that explains the private pleasure of unacknowledged ownership. Certainly this was the case in the only verifiable example of a real-life Dr No figure. In 1876, Agnew’s art gallery in Bond Street sold Gainsborough’s portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire for 10,100 guineas, then the highest price ever paid for a portrait. Two weeks later it was stolen by Adam Worth, a sophisticated conman and safecracker, who broke into the gallery with the help of his giant butler, and extracted the painting from its frame. For the next 25 years Worth carried the painting with him in a false-bottomed trunk, returning it only when he knew his death was imminent. He never showed it to anyone, but he allowed others in the criminal fraternity to know that he had it. He took the painting because he could, and possession of it became a part of his private self-image.
Art theft experts believe that at least some of the artworks stolen every year, many of which are too valuable and recognisable to be sold, are taken for similar purposes: as a form of currency and kudos. Most art thieves, of course, are far less discerning, if that is the right word: of the 280 stolen Picassos, say, or the 250 missing Mirós, the vast majority have almost certainly been either destroyed or packed away in basements. There is very little evidence to suggest that artworks are being filched to order. The Art Loss Register identifies 115,000 lost or stolen artworks and antiques, but there is no equivalent list of the works of art that have been sold to anonymous buyers, to then vanish from sight. It may be that the new owner of the Rubens will one day make himself known; if the buyer is philanthropic, then the painting may even become part of a collection open to the public. The indications, however, are that the owner, and the painting, will remain invisible, for ever. We all covet beauty in some way: some are lucky enough to buy it, others are wicked enough to steal it, but the entire point of art is to display rather than conceal it. That is why painters paint. The story of the Rubens offers a strangely distorted mirror image of art in a monied age. For years The Massacre of the Innocents hung obscurely in an Austrian monastery; its owner did not like it, and no one had worked out who had painted it. The work was priceless because no one had put a price on it, but it could be seen by anyone. Today it hangs behind a curtain in an unknown place, and it is no longer priceless; many admire it, several want it, but only one person has the right to look at it. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
Stolen, or not?
Egyptians claim artifact in Virginia museum is stolen
BY ROY PROCTOR TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Jul 12, 2002
(VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS) Return that "stolen artifact" or face "legal action," an Egyptian government official has warned the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Hold on there, the South's largest art museum has countered.
Where's your proof?
Certainly not in the one-paragraph "Dear Sir/Madam" letter faxed June 17 from Cairo to the Virginia Museum director's office by Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, an agency of Egypt's Ministry of Culture. The object at issue: A 34¼- inch by 63½-inch section of a granite relief that depicts scenes involving royal figures and gods. It was created in ancient Egypt's Late Period (4th-3rd century B.C.).
Art in question
The wall sculpture is a 34 1/4 - inch by 63 1/2 - inch section of a granite relief created during ancient Egypt's Late Period (4th-3rd century B.C.) The artifact hangs in the Virginia Museums of Fine Arts classical court and was purchased by the museum in 1963.
The imposing wall sculpture, now in the Virginia Museum's classical court, has been in the museum's collections since 1963, when it was purchased from New York's now-defunct Heeramaneck Gallery with an undisclosed amount from the museum's Williams Fund. "It has come to the attention of the Supreme Council of Antiquities that the pink granite block representing the head of the god Hopi on display in your museum is a stolen artifact," Hawass wrote. "The SCA has evidence that it was stolen from the Temple of Behbit el-Hagara (Middle Delta)." Citing its use as catalog illustration no. 13 when the Virginia Museum loaned it to an Egyptian show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1988, Hawass goes on to say that the "stolen artifact has been recorded as no. 46/A in the Egyptian court since 1990." "Therefore," he concludes, "we strongly request that you act in good faith and return the stolen block to Egypt. Failure to comply will result in legal action." The letter ended up on the desk of Kathleen Schrader, who rides herd over 18,000 works of art - including about 190 ancient Egyptian objects - as the Virginia Museum's associate director for collections management. "We've just asked Dr. Hawass for more information, but haven't heard back yet," she said yesterday. "We didn't know anything about this until we got the letter. He says it's been listed in an Egyptian court since 1990, but we can't trace it. We don't know what the evidence consists of."
Schrader is mystified in other ways as well.
Hawass was a guest lecturer for the museum's "Splendors of Ancient Egypt" blockbuster in 1999, toured the museum's Egyptian collection and didn't mention a possible theft, she said. She acknowledges that the museum's object was no. 13 in the 1988 Brooklyn Museum of Art catalog. "In the letter, he refers to the head of Hopi, but that's not what our piece represents," she said. "It's not a head. And it's believed to represent the god Khonsu. Egyptologists feel that, whoever he is, he's not Hopi. "Part of the difficulty with this is that we're talking about a temple that's 2,400 years old and was excavated without any archaeological record. I'm not sure it's known when it was excavated." Schrader said that the New York-based Art Loss Register has tried in vain to find any claim in the United States that the relief is stolen. She also acknowledges that the Virginia Museum knows nothing of the sculpture's history before its 1963 purchase. "That's not unusual for that time period," she said. "A lot of antiquities changed hands in 1950s and '60s without additional provenance. That's because there wasn't the awareness then as now of the trade in stolen antiquities." Schrader does not rule out the possibility that the museum might receive evidence so compelling that it would have no ethical choice but to return the relief to Egypt. But the museum's not building that packing crate just yet. http://www.timesdispatch.com/
France tries 16 people for pillaging art from chateaux
MONTBRISON, France - Sixteen people accused of belonging to a network trafficking in millions of dollars in art objects pillaged from chateaux — including one belonging to a former French president — went on trial this week.
It took two years of work by police in France, Belgium and the Netherlands to break up the ring that allegedly pillaged hundreds of chateaux between 1998 and 2000. Prosecutor Gilbert Emery asked for prison sentences ranging from two to 14 years for the 16 suspects. The trial, held in the town of Montbrison near the southeastern city of Lyon, opened Monday and both sides were pleading their cases Tuesday. The court will deliver its verdict July 24. The prosecution alleges the so-called chateaux gang stole art objects, paintings and statues worth 15 million to 30 million euros (dollars). The objects were often stored in nearby Saint Etienne, then delivered by truck to Belgium for resale to less than scrupulous art merchants. A Dutch art dealer, Cornelius Martens, was suspected of having mounted the ring that used gypsies to carry out the thefts. The prosecutor sought a 14- year prison term for Martens as well as a 100,000-euro (nearly 100,000-dollar) fine and a demand that he be banned from French territory. Martens has pleaded innocent. The prosecutor sought a five- year prison term for an Italian suspected of driving the stolen objects to Belgium. Mario Cipoletti was arrested in November 2000 in Tarare, in the Rhone region, in a truck filled with objects stolen from chateaux around France. Most of the other defendants allegedly made up the ring of thieves, broken up after being tracked by police in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. A chateau owned by former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the Chateau de La Varvasse, located in the Auvergne region of central France, was among those visited by thieves. A total of 22 art objects worth 100,000 euros (dollars) vanished in August 1998, said lawyer Yves Dousset. The noted chateau-turned-museum Vaux le Vicomte, built by Louis XIV's finance minister, lost an imposing equestrian statue of the king to the gang, the prosecution alleges. The daily France-Soir reported that a year after the arrests, reports of thefts at chateaux and stately homes around France dropped to 382, compared to 641 a year earlier. http://story.news.yahoo.com/ The Art Newspaper.com
This week's top stories:
RECENTLY DISCOVERED RUBENS BECOMES MOST EXPENSIVE OLD MASTER PAINTING EVER SOLD
LONDON. A completely unknown painting by Peter Paul Rubens, The Massacre of the Innocents made auction history last night when it sold at Sotheby’s, London for the quite astonishing figure of £49.5 million or US $76.73. This makes it the third most expensive painting ever to have been sold and more than doubles the record for an old master. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9761
RARE MICHELANGO DISCOVERED
NEW YORK. A 43 x 25.4 cm (17 1/2 x 10 inches) drawing in black chalk, brush and brown wash of a menorah (the Hebrew seven-light candlestick) by Michelangelo has been discovered by Sir Timothy Clifford, the director of the National Galleries of Scotland, while inspecting a box of light fixture designs by unknown artists in the collection of Italian drawings belonging to the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9760
MUSEUMS WORRY ABOUT JURY INSTRUCTIONS IN ANTIQUITIES CONVICTION CASE
NEW YORK. Since a prominent art dealer was convicted here in February for dealing in stolen Egyptian antiquities, museum lawyers have been pondering with some dismay the judge’s instructions to the jury in the case. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9759
EXCITING NEW ART SPACE OR YET ANOTHER CAFÉ?
GATESHEAD. The parallels between London’s Tate Modern and Gateshead’s BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art are strong: both are housed in reconditioned 20th-century industrial buildings; each is positioned on an insalubrious bank of a river which was once a vital means of commercial transport; and each has a new bridge leading almost to the entrance. Then there are the differences: the Gateshead Millennium Bridge never wobbled and Tate Modern has a collection. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9758
PURCHASE POWER COLLAPSE
LONDON. The National Gallery is slashing its spending on acquisitions from government grant in aid to zero in the current financial year, the Tate has already introduced such a cut, and the British Museum is allocating only £100,000 for all ten of its collecting departments. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9753
THE BEGINNING OF THE END?
BERNE. Switzerland, a country which lies at the heart of the global trade in illicitly excavated artefacts and looted art, is moving towards ratification of the 1970 Unesco convention designed to stem the illegal trade in archaeological goods and stolen works of art. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9752
SOTHEBY’S AND CHRISTIE’S TAKE 23% OF FRENCH MARKET SHARE