As usual, the magazine includes all the latest stolen alerts, many with colour illustrations, and any rewards posted.
NEWS. ˜Saudi Prince" jewel thief strikes in London; Trace provides due diligence checks for Sothebys.com; new DNA powder marking system unveiled, list of Trace's latest recoveries.
MAP THEFT. Sarah Jane Checkland reports on the increasing theft of maps from museums and archives all over the globe
GARDEN SECURITY SPECIAL. One in seven gardens will be targeted by thieves this summer. Alexander Rich of Aon Artscope advises on how to deter the pests and John Leaver cultivates the best garden security products
SECURING YOUR STATELY HOME. Crooks tend to see country houses as soft targets, with lax security protecting an abundance of portable treasures. Catherine Park of the British Security Industry Association reports on modern security measures for historic homes
PRIVATE EYE. David Fanning interviews Robert Spiel, FBI investigator turned private detective, who specialises in art theft cases
Subject: Re: Elia article (Digging Up Dirt; An antiquities case unearths corruption)
Recardo J. Elia's article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, June 19, and your newsletter, June 24 ( http://www.museum-security.org/02/075.html#4 ), was, as the trailer said, his opinion. You also published a much more balanced article by Donna Bryson from the Globe and Mail the following day ( http://www.museum-security.org/02/076.html#1 ).
Those who read Elia's account of the antiquities trade should be aware that he has his own agenda as a professional archaeologist. Painting all dealers as "sleazy" with his broad brush and attempting to discredit all dealers and collectors of antiquities is Elia's way of staking his group's sole claim to the territory.
Many of the objects in the trade have a long collection history. Those objects were not "smuggled and looted". The laws against the buying and selling of certain antiquities are a modern phenomenon. What we perceive as "looting" today was the forefront of archaeology a century ago. Cultural sites have been menaced with looting and destruction since time immemorial, but we now have international laws for their protection. Collectors, dealers and museums need fear the risk of search and seizure only if they have broken those laws. Isolated incidents of deception or wrongdoing do not make a trend, nor is collecting illegal. Rather than generally encouraging looting, as Elia suggests, art dealer organizations were instrumental in establishing the Art Loss Registry to help track these very objects.
Elia has also said the "private collecting of unprovenanced antiquities is widely regarded as selfish and destructive rather than as a safeguarding of ancient art" and mentions "the trade's cavalier disregard for cultural heritage". One of the most significant occurrences in the reconstruction of the history of the New World has been made not by archaeologists but by linguists who discovered how to read and translate the hieroglyphic writing of the Maya. They have given us hundreds of years of detailed Mayan history as recorded on their monuments and written on their ceramics. The linguists responsible for this breakthrough have made a point of thanking the many collectors and dealers who made their "unprovenanced" objects available for study, and condemning those archaeologists ' obstructive attitude that held these objects had no scientific value. (Breaking the Maya Code by Michael D. Coe, Thames & Hudson, 1992) Great breakthroughs are seldom the result of tunnel vision. Elia's account appears to be more a case of grandstanding rather than imparting information.
Ramona Morris
Mask of Sorrow
Hand it over, say Island aboriginals, but British Museum is unmoved
Jack Knox Times Colonist (Victoria) Monday, July 08, 2002
Maybe Vancouver Island's aboriginals should go over to England and swipe the Crown Jewels.
That would give them some leverage, something to swap for the Kwakwaka'wakw mask buried somewhere deep in the bowels of the venerable British Museum in London.
As it is, the museum isn't budging, refusing to return an artifact the Kwakwaka'wakw argue is central to their culture.
Not that the 19th century ceremonial mask means that much to the Brits. After all, they've got it stuck in the basement somewhere, down with the canning jars and camping supplies. But they do care about the Elgin Marbles, and the Ethiopian Ark of the Covenant carvings, and all the other bits and friezes whose return is now being demanded by their homelands. If the British Museum gave the mask back, it would have to give a lot of stuff back. And that would run counter to the museum's mission of displaying the wonder of the world's cultures to the millions of people who pass through its doors each year. So the museum remains the last holdout, the only institution on Earth to flat out refuse to return to the Kwakwaka'wakw one of the objects reluctantly surrendered under Canada's notorious anti-potlatch law. It's a story that goes back to the 1880s, when Ottawa was intent on assimilating Indians into white society. It saw the potlatch, with its pageantry and rituals handed down from generation to generation, as integral to native culture -- and therefore a pothole on the road to progress -- so banned the ceremony. Ottawa can claim its intent was pure, but so did Hitler, Mao and Stalin when they tried to crush religion. In 1921, a Kwakwaka'wakw man named Dan Cranmer held a potlatch on Village Island, way off between the mainland coast and northeastern Vancouver Island, far -- he thought -- from the prying eyes of the Indian agent and the police. But 45 people got busted and were charged with such crimes as dancing and receiving gifts. About half of them did two to three months at Oakalla. Twenty-two others had their sentences suspended -- on the condition that their entire tribes turn over their potlatch paraphernalia, which they did.
The masks, whistles, rattles and other confiscated goods were eventually scattered all over the place. Many pieces landed in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and what is now the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. Some objects made their way to the University of B.C. George Heye of New York bought 33 items, which wound up in the National Museum of the American Indian, now merged with the Smithsonian Institution. Some stuff simply disappeared. But after the potlatch law fell off the books in 1951, the Kwakwaka'wakw began campaigning for the return of their treasures. Gradually, the artifacts began to trickle home. In the 1970s, the National Museum of Man returned much of what has become known as the Potlatch Collection, now displayed in the U'Mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay and the Kwakiutl Museum in Cape Mudge on Quadra Island. The Royal Ontario Museum turned over its artifacts in 1988, while the National Museum of the American Indian began its repatriation process by surrendering nine items in 1994. Only the British Museum, holder of that single transformation mask -- a crest that opens up to reveal a human head -- balked. In a 1996 letter to the U'Mista Cultural Society, the London institution turned down a request to return the object, citing the British Museum Act of 1963, which specifically prohibits it from giving up its artifacts. The British Museum is no more anxious to give up the mask today than it was in 1996. The museum's director says his duty is clear. "My job is to preserve the collection we have, not to remove objects," said Dr. Robert Anderson in a telephone interview from London last week. "My job is also to arrange for the presentation of world cultures to the five million people a year who come here."
And he repeated the convenient truth that the British Museum Act won't let him turn over the mask. "I would in fact be breaking British law." That doesn't sit well with the U'Mista centre's Andrea Sanborn: "If it's against their law to return it, it's against our law for them to have it." She says there's a paper trail showing the mask should never have been sold in the first place. "That property was supposed to be held by the Canadian government," she said. "Basically, they're in possession of stolen property." Not according to Anderson: "The object we have is legally, without question, the property of the British Museum." Legally, but how about morally? There was a give-up-the-crucifix-or-we'll-shoot-the-Pope manner to the way in which the potlatch paraphernalia was turned over back in 1922. The British Museum's answer to that dilemma is found in its policy on repatriation, which admits that the legal argument against its retention of certain antiquities "is seen by some to be an insufficient answer to the political, ethical, cultural and religious arguments raised.
"Only by demonstrating the public and cultural benefits of the retention of its collections, rather than simply legal title to them, can the museum provide a full social and moral justification for maintaining its collections in its care," the policy states. Therefore, the museum promises to enhance its role as a world-class institution of global relevance, and to "emphasize and develop the unique opportunity it offers to its worldwide audience to explore individual cultures and the connections between them and promote a vision of culture, citizenship and identity that extends beyond national borders." Very noble. Very convenient. It still leaves them with the mask -- in the basement, though they say they'll dig it out for anyone with a legitimate reason to view it. It's not as though the British Museum doesn't have plenty of other native Canadian artifacts obtained free of duress. Its Gallery of North America contains more than 5,000 items related to Canadian aboriginal heritage, including many from the West Coast. Capt. James Cook, who explored the B.C. shoreline in 1779, brought back basketry hats and a mask in the shape of a gull that was worn during potlatches. From Capt. George Vancouver came aboriginal weaponry, jewelry and regalia. Who would miss a mask? But, at the risk of repetition, this isn't just about the mask. It's also about the Elgin Marbles, the 2,500- year-old frieze taken from the Parthenon in 1799, and coveted by the Greeks ever since. It's about those 10 Ark of the Covenant carvings, sacred to Ethiopia's 25-million member Orthodox Church, but stolen by British soldiers in the 19th century. And on and on. Besides, if the Haida can't get their dead guy back, how can the Kwakwaka'wakw expect their mask? That's right, the Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands are still trying to negotiate the return of human remains stored at the British Museum. But that doesn't mean the Kwakwaka'wakw are giving up. "We've worked for almost 80 years to bring that potlatch collection back intact, as it was when it was taken from us," says Sanborn. "It belongs to our people." http://canada.com/
Subject: hvac in museums
From: "Hemmes, Barend" Barend.Hemmes@dhv.nl
I would like to bring under your attention a patented configuration for ventilating/dehumidification and cooling
The dutch TNO institute calculated that on a yearly base 35% of the cooling energy could be saved.
In simple dehumidifyers a saving of 50% can be obtained by using an extra heatexchanger
all information about the system you can find on the site www.hemmes.info
perhaps you give me a reply
kind regards, ing.B.J.M.Hemmes Amersfoort Holland