Damage estimated at more than £250,000 has been caused by an arson attack on a railway museum. One of five irreplaceable railway carriages dating back to 1950 was destroyed in the attack at the Downpatrick Railway Museum, in Co Down, Northern Ireland. Police said the fire was started in one of the railway carriages and quickly spread to the canopy over the platform and through the station building. Edwin Gray, of the Railway Museum, said: "The fire was started in one of five carriages and it has been completely destroyed and the station gutted. "We are very distressed. This is a voluntary organisation and the amount of man hours put in by our members in restoring rolling stock and the station is immense - it is very much a labour of love. "Our members are all down here looking around and are all feeling very sad and upset." He said the Downpatrick station, dating back to 1870 - and which had been derelict from 1950 until the museum took it over in 1985 and renovated it - was insured. However, the destroyed 1950 carriage had not been insured because they could not afford the premiums, he said, but even if it had been a replacement would be impossible to find. Mr Gray estimated that the damage would cost at least £250,000 and praised the fire service for preventing the damage being even worse. "It was only the swift action of the fire service which prevented the fire spreading through all five carriages."
Do you remember?
December 31, 1999 theft of Cezanne painting:
A warning....
Theft happened during the very noisy celebrations of New Year....
Did all of you museum people take the needed precautions this year?
Ton Cremers
Cezanne Painting Stolen in Oxford
January 1, 2000....................
OXFORD, England (AP) - Art thieves broke into an Oxford museum and made off with a painting by the French artist Paul Cezanne early Saturday, authorities said. The thieves broke through the glass roof of the Ashmolean Museum, housing one of Britain's finest art collections, and grabbed the painting valued at about $3.2 million, before escaping unnoticed, the museum's director Roger Hobby told the British Broadcasting Corp. He said the theft probably happened around 1:30 a.m. while the streets of Oxford were crowded with noisy millennium revelers. ``Officers are currently liaising with museum staff to ascertain exactly what has happened,'' said a spokesman for Thames Valley Police, speaking with a customary policy of anonymity. The museum, in a 17th-century building, houses paintings by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Pablo Picasso. The stolen Cezanne work, ``Auvers-Sur- Oise,'' was painted between 1879 and 1882. Last month, another Cezanne painting - stolen from a Massachusetts' home in 1978 and recovered last October - was sold at a Sotheby's auction in London for $30 million.
Japan Fire Destroys Old Lacquer Relics
Associated Press
TOKYO - A fire in northern Japan destroyed thousands of priceless artifacts, including the world's oldest-known lacquer relics, officials said Sunday. Some 80,000 artifacts excavated over a three- year period - many dating back to the prehistoric Jomon Period - were stored in an archaeology office in the town of Minamikayabe, said Chiharu Abe, a spokesman for the excavation team. The cause of the Saturday evening fire was under investigation. Among the losses were examples of ancient Japanese lacquerware made 9,000 years ago in the early Jomon period and believed to be the oldest of its kind, Abe said. The fire also destroyed a 6,500-year-old clay imprint of a child's foot and 3,000-year-old lacquered kettle, he said. The relics, which had been excavated nearby, were stored in the building for safekeeping while archaeologists studied them. Minamikayabe is located on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido, about 425 miles northeast of Tokyo.
http://www.bradenton.com/
Looting Arizona's History
Lee Allen Tucson, Arizona 26 Dec 2002, 06:29 UTC
Across the American Southwest, thieves are stealing pieces of history. "Archaeological looting is the destruction of our cultural heritage," says Ann Howard, manager with the Arizona State Parks Department and one of those trying to ensure the safety of more than 60,000 ancient sites in the state. "There's cultural sites out there that consist of archaeological sites, historical sites and tribal sites. These are being destroyed rapidly by both inadvertent damage and purposeful damage by looters, people who know what they're doing," she says. "Unfortunately these cultural resources are irreplaceable or non-renewable, so we're rapidly losing our cultural heritage and once it's destroyed, it's gone. Forever." Her co- worker, Mary Estes, directs several hundred volunteers who are working to stop this destruction. "The program is called the Arizona State Site Steward Program and we currently have around 700 members. Because this was one of the first stewardship programs developed in the United States, one of the oldest ones at this point in time, it is a role model for many other states and countries wishing to develop similar programs," she says. "The chief objective of the program is to assist with cultural resource management by site monitoring and reporting any damage such as illegal collecting or looting at these sites." That illegal collecting and looting' is part of a global criminal network. Ann Howard says the sale of antiquities amounts to a 4 and a half billion dollar a year business. "Unfortunately there is a black market or a market in general for antiquities, and as long as people are willing to buy these artifacts and cultural remains, then it'll continue to be a problem that sites get looted and these artifacts and even human remains get removed and taken away from sites."
The industry thrives in the American southwest, with its millions of hectares of unpopulated countryside and thousands of diverse historical sites. Allen Dart has been an Arizona archaeologist for over 30 years. "There's a lot of open desert and archeological sites are so visible, so people, even those with untrained eyes, can see large concentrations of artifacts or remnants of architectural features or rock art sites fairly easily," he says. "And some of the more unscrupulous ones will damage these sites to collect artifacts or rock art panels for sale." Mr. Dart says the choice of which items to take depends on the interest and initiative of the collector, and how much a particular artifact will sell for on the Internet. "The ones who do it for gain are very often looking for whole pots, especially the ones with painted designs and they will focus on areas with complete pots. The most common areas where you find those on archaeological sites are in burials and prehistoric buildings that have been burned where you can sometimes find whole vessels in there." As head of Arizona's Public Archaeology Program, Ann Howard sees the same sort of desecration. "Nice artifacts, like axes and stuff, are quite often in with burials, human remains, which means these remains are being destroyed and desecrated," she says. "So they're tearing up all of the archaeological site just to get to a few pieces that to them have monetary value." "I've seen whole lots dug up with holes all over the site where they were looking for burials," says Todd Bostwick, principal archaelogist for the city of Phoenix. He says he has a hard time keeping up with reports of vandalism and theft. "The bones are just thrown aside because they're not interested in the skeletons, they're only interested in the objects buried with the skeletons." He says arrowheads, pottery, and jewelry are popular items for thieves to dig up and carry off. Taking a petroglyph off a rock wall requires a hammer and chisel. "It's hard to move rock art, very destructive to try and re-locate it and it's not really an object to transport and sell easily." There are laws, both federal and state, against taking or destroying artifacts. But successful prosecution often depends on catching perpetrators in the act, a difficult task, and fines, when they're imposed, are minimal. Archaeologist Allen Dart says enforcement and education are both necessary. "The only way to really combat this is to educate the public about how destructive it is and to those who don't care about that aspect, to bolster law enforcement activities to stop them from doing it."
Researchers suggest that anyone with artifacts in their possession consider donating them to museums - to help citizens of today learn more about the citizens of yesterday.
http://www.voanews.com/
Stolen Hassam painting returned to Thaxters
NEW YORK - "It was at sunset in autumn that we were set ashore on that loneliest, lovely rock, where the lighthouse looked down on us like some tall, black-capped giant, and filled me with awe and wonder." More than a century after Celia Thaxter depicted her childhood home in poetry and prose, a stolen Childe Hassam painting that captured it on canvas has been returned to her family. The writer and artist met on the Isles of Shoals, a cluster of islands off the coast of New Hampshire, in the late 1800s. Thaxter, whose father was the lighthouse keeper on White Island when she was a child, later attracted members of Boston’s literary and artistic societies to her family’s hotel on Appledore Island each summer. Hassam, one of the foremost American impressionists, maintained a studio on Appledore, and his paintings of the islands make up about 10 percent of his nearly 4,000 works. Among them was "White Island Lighthouse," a watercolor he inscribed to his friend Thaxter in 1886. For the next 99 years, the painting remained the cherished property of Thaxter’s family. But in June 1985, it was stolen from her granddaughter’s home in Kittery, Maine. Rosamond Thaxter reported the theft to police and hired a private investigator, but died four years later at age 94 without seeing the painting again. The theft also was reported to the International Foundation for Art Research, a nonprofit organization that researches and authenticates works of art. The group’s database later was taken over by the Art Loss Register, which has expanded it to include more than 100,000 stolen and missing items.
Employees who search it more than 300,000 times a year have helped recover about 1,000 items since 1991. The most frequent searches involve comparing items from auction catalogues to the database files, but the register also responds to inquires from dealers, collectors and museums interested in verifying the authenticity of items before purchase. In April 2002, a call from a dealer in Massachusetts turned up the first trace of "White Island Lighthouse" in 17 years. Officials at the Art Loss Register in New York won’t divulge the dealer’s name, or where he got the painting. The FBI investigated but made no arrests. Meanwhile, the painting has been delivered to a cousin of Rosamond Thaxter, Jonathan Hubbard, who lives outside Chicago. Hubbard, Celia Thaxter’s great-great-grandson, said he was shocked and delighted the painting was found after so many years. He remembered seeing it at his cousin’s home when he visited Kittery as a child but only later realized its historical significance. "Celia Thaxter was the lighthouse keeper’s daughter, and she grew up on this tiny rocky island with basically just a lighthouse. As she described it, she had a wonderful childhood and developed a real appreciation of nature," he said. "The fact that this painting arose out of a trip over to the island that Childe Hassam made with Celia Thaxter, and the fact that it was personally inscribed to her, gives it an extra meaning, because Hassam recognized how important this island setting had been for his good friend." Hubbard won’t say much about how the painting disappeared, except that Rosamond Thaxter was an invalid by then and had round-the- clock nursing care. He also won’t say where the painting is now out of fear that it will be stolen again.
Another Hassam painting, "Jug of Roses," that was stolen from Rosamond Thaxter has not be recovered. The owner of Boston’s Vose Galleries, which specializes in American Impressionism, estimates that "White Island Lighthouse" would bring about $60,000 at auction. "It’s a desirable subject, especially because it was given to Celia Thaxter," said Bill Vose, the fifth generation of his family to run the gallery. Hassam’s largest oil paintings are worth up to $5 million, he said. Meanwhile, the subject of the Thaxter painting could use some cash. The granite and brick lighthouse has suffered from the constant pounding of wind, salt and water. The Coast Guard maintains the light and signal, but says the state is responsible for the tower, which has become cracked with age. Officials estimate it needs $250,000 in repairs. Though Thaxter and her family often went months without seeing anyone from the mainland, she found comfort in the lighthouse. "High above, the lighthouse rays streamed out into the humid dark, and the cottage windows were ruddy from the glow within," she wrote in her book, "Among the Isles of Shoals." "I felt so much a part of the Lord’s universe, I was no more afraid of the dark than the wave or the winds."
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On the Net:
Art Loss Register, http://www.artloss.com
http://www.seacoastonline.com/
Art And Evil
David Wolpe
In 1937, 43 German planes bombed the tiny Spanish town of Guernica in the Basque region. The slaughter was horrific. Three years later in Paris, the Nazis stormed into the studio of Pablo Picasso to inventory his assets. One of them saw a photograph of the painting “Guernica” that had become world famous. The Nazi soldier pointed to the photograph and asked, “Did you do this?”
“No” answered Picasso, “you did.”
Theodor Adorno famously proclaimed that poetry could not be written after Auschwitz. Yet for those who were born after the war, it is through literature, art, poetry, even music that we begin to grapple with the Shoah. Even those who committed evil, as the story of Picasso suggests, may sometimes be brought to a deeper understanding of their own evil by the artistic depiction of suffering. Some have made a religion of art; it is a discredited creed. One can be an art lover, or a great artist, and a contemptible human being. But art, literature and music can deepen our understanding of the world if we seek it in not salvation but understanding. Remember that Bezalel, the great artist of the Bible, was “filled with the spirit of God.”
http://www.thejewishweek.com/
High art floored by low morals
GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN
FOR 15 months, the newest addition to the burgeoning Guggenheim museum stable did valiant battle with the strip joints and gambling dens that put Las Vegas on the map. As Las Vegas tried to shake off its image as America’s Sin City, the Guggenheim hoped to appeal to those with more on their mind than making a quick buck or ogling women in various stages of undress. Based in the Venetian Resort- Hotel-Casino, it managed to pull in nearly a million visitors since its opening. But high art and low moral values made strange bedfellows and Vegas has recently been discovering that family values may be all very well for Disney, but they don’t guarantee success for a resort that built its success on adult entertainment. Now the strip joints and casinos are booming again and the Guggenheim Las Vegas is to close its doors on 5 January for an indefinite period. The closure, coupled with financial problems facing the parent museum in New York, has thrown into doubt the organisation’s ability to launch a satellite operation in Scotland. A site in Leith has been earmarked and a nautical design drawn up by the Edinburgh architect, Jamie MacFarlane. The intention had been to pair the building with a European Gallery of Contemporary Art, transforming the face of the waterfront. Forth Ports, which has held talks with the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York City, must now wait to discover if the Vegas closure will have a knock-on effect elsewhere in the organisation. Guggenheim officials regard the Vegas experiment as a disappointment but point to a nationwide slump in tourism since the attacks of 11 September. Neil Cantor, the director of finance for the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art in Las Vegas, claimed that museums were among the most vulnerable to the changes which had taken place.
"[Visitors] come in for a quick, three-day hit; they want to gamble, they want to eat and then they want to go home. The [US] east coast and European travellers are only starting to come back now," he said. Officials in New York say that attendance at the museum there is down 25 per cent this year, and corporate sponsorship has fallen also. As a result, the budget is expected to be cut by about £4 million next year and two major exhibitions have been postponed. One solution being considered to the problems in Las Vegas is to pitch the exhibits at a more populist level. The first couple of shows featured masterpieces from the Guggenheim, Hermitage and Kunsthistorisches collections, but if the next exhibition does go ahead it will feature exclusively American art. The working title is American Pop Icons. Guggenheim officials said they were not sure whether Vegas employees would be laid off or would be reassigned to the much smaller Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, also located in the Venetian, which will remain open. Each museum employs about 90 people. The Guggenheim Las Vegas opened in September, 2001, with The Art of the Motorcycle and is currently staging a 39-painting exhibition called Art Through the Ages. The Venetian president, Robert Goldstein, said in a recent statement that nearly a million people had visited the museums since they opened. Lisa Dennison, the Guggenheim deputy director, said: "We are working on securing funding for our next exhibitions. Until we are in a state where we have the right show and the right sponsorship, it will remain closed." Staffing levels at the Guggenheim have been slashed as the organisation attempted to cut costs, down to 181 full-time positions from 339 in November last year. It was rescued by a last-minute infusion of £7.5 million from its main benefactor, Peter Lewis, the head of an Ohio car insurance firm.
The closure of the Los Angeles operation is the latest in a series of belt-tightening measures, which saw the closure of Guggenheim’s SoHo branch last year. The Guggenheim Foundation’s plush offices near Grand Central station also closed and plans to open a Guggenheim internet site displaying work from its own collections and from those of the Hermitage State Museum in St Petersburg, Russia, and the Kunsthistorisches museum in Vienna, have come to nothing, despite an injection of £12.5 million. The closure of the Las Vegas operation does not necessarily spell the end for Scottish hopes. The Guggenheim’s satellite museums in Berlin and Bilbao remain profitable and negotiations are continuing for a £75 million Guggenheim museum in Rio de Janeiro.
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/
A break-in last month at the Antique Center of Wallingford on South Orchard Street initially reads like any other burglary listed in any police blotter.
But the value of the items taken from the store, one of more than a half-dozen antiques shops in the Center Street corridor alone, was more than $5,000, with the thief or thieves possibly having what police Lt. Mark Mikulski called "a discerning eye." But while an otherwise nondescript burglary from a small family shop does not draw the attention of a stolen Picasso or a heist from a European museum, the theft of artwork, antiques and artifacts of historic, religious and cultural importance has become something of a specialty. "Those items from Wallingford could be anywhere in the world by now," said R. Scudder Smith, editor and publisher of Antiques and the Arts Weekly, a 35-year-old publication based in Newtown with more than 20,000 subscribers worldwide. "We publish every week, and in about 50 percent of our issues, we run reports and descriptions of items that have been stolen." Smith's paper has run notices for stolen paintings, antiques and even gates and sculptures from older cemeteries. Smith said most of the thefts he hears of are from private homes, rather than shops or museums. And he said the thieves generally know what they are looking for. "Very few are by chance," he said. "If someone breaks in, generally they know what they want. You will find the television, stereo and some CDs left alone. But a Tiffany lamp is missing. "The thieves are knowledgeable. Very few people take such things and only find out later that they are valuable."
A ‘major problem’
The FBI has compiled a list of 188 art and artifact thefts from around the world in 2002 that it terms "major." "Art theft is a major problem, but I don't think anyone can quantify it in terms of X billions or Y billions of dollars," said Sharon Flescher, executive director of the International Foundation of Art Research in New York City. "Partly because no one really knows what the amount really is, partly because not all of it is reported, and partly because we don't know what the market value of all that really is." In April 2000, Stratford police had what they believe was likely a local crime by someone who may not have been a professional - or else did not know what to do with his merchandise once he had it. The items taken included swords, a Union Army uniform and battle flags from the Civil War that were kept at the Clocktower Museum at Coe Park. The swords were returned about three weeks later. The uniform was found by Shelton police and returned the following February. A soldier's cap and a 7-foot pair of horns from a Texas longhorn still are missing. "I don't think a professional would have returned the swords a few days later by just dumping them in the park in the rain," said Lt. Kenneth Bakalar of the Stratford Police Department. "This probably wasn't an organized ring. We think it was local talent, or rather lack of talent."
Special Agent Linda Vizy, spokeswoman for the FBI's Philadelphia Division, said people who steal from museums or solicit such goods tend to have some sort of background with the objects stolen. "They're people who really know what they want, such as a specific type of pottery for a collection," Vizy said. "Most of the thefts are internal -- about 80 percent are by people who were trusted. And they are rarely crimes of violence." More than a half dozen federal laws give the FBI jurisdiction over stolen art and antiquities, including those regulating interstate commerce, interstate transportation of stolen property and those specifically dealing with the theft of major artworks or trafficking in Native American remains or cultural items.
Motive varies
The bureau has cracked a number of high-profile art cases in the last decade, including the recovery of a piece of pre-Columbian battle armor from Peru recovered in 1997; the recovery in Brazil last year of two Norman Rockwell paintings stolen from a Minneapolis museum in 1978; and the arrest of three men in 2001 for numerous counts of fraud and theft connected with Civil War relics and memorabilia.
Vizy said they see all kinds of motives.
"Some are greed: 'I need the money,'" she said. "One case we had recently ..was just a sheer love of Civil War artifacts." Flescher said that to her knowledge the Los Angeles Police Department is the only municipal department that has a unit dedicated to art and antique theft. Trooper Roger Beaupre of the Connecticut state police said such crimes come under the auspices of their eastern, central and western major crimes squads. Unlike the movies, where every department has so-called specialists to track objets d'art, troopers rely on old-fashioned detective work and shoe leather. "These cases are handled exactly like other investigations," Beaupre said. "Our detectives educate themselves on the items that were stolen, their value on the market." Beaupre said the primary goal is to determine who would want an unusual item - where the market is and where those items could be fenced. "The market is international," he said. "But if you are looking for stolen car motors, you go to mechanic shops. Like anything else, people within a certain circle know who would be interested in accumulating items such as stolen paintings. Detectives "will reach out to people with expertise across the nation. We work with local, national and international agencies." Mikulski said anything that is easily identifiable through serial numbers or other characteristics goes out on national computer databanks. Wallingford detectives have visited major auctions in places such as Massachusetts, where missing items have been known to turn up, and their detectives also can readily find experts within the field to assist them. Bakalar said Stratford routinely sends detectives out on "pawn shop detail" to do the same thing.
The FBI's Vizy said the bureau has agents with extensive background in the field, though any agent could find him or herself working an art-theft case simultaneously with a bank robbery or anything else. Law enforcement routinely consults with his publication, Smith said. "We don't run any notice on a missing item that does not have a police case number attached to it," he said. The chances of recovery at auctions are relatively slim, and some items wind up unnoticed and unclaimed in police property rooms, Smith said. Others can just disappear into the market. "If there is something not highly identifiable, like an old picture or a Tiffany lamp, someone can go to a dealer and concoct a story that a relative left it to him," Smith said. "We had one dealer recently who recovered several items when a man came into him and wanted to sell him a lot of things. The dealer asked for his name, address and (license plate number), and he fled. "Some dealers don't always have the integrity that they should. But most, if they have an item from an unknown source that turns out to be hot, they'll turn it back in. They don't want to be involved with it." Flescher said the next issue of her organization's quarterly journal will contain articles involving the recent theft of two Jackson Pollock paintings from New York City, as well as two Van Goghs from a museum in Amsterdam. She said that, in any case, chances for recovery and the length of time required are as varied as the items and taken and the motives of the thieves. Flescher said modern computer databases, such as the ones referred to by Mikulski, have changed the market for stolen artwork dramatically.
"They're too easily identifiable, and if they cost a lot, a buyer will do a lot of research," she said. "It's easier to sell less expensive works by lesser-known artists in general." If every theft were reported to databases, the sale of even minor works would be virtually impossible, she said. Middletown Press 2002
http://www.zwire.com/
Museum probe far too soon
Rosemary Sorensen, arts editor 30dec02
A PROBE of the National Museum's "political correctness" is premature, Brisbane historian Kay Saunders says.
Dr Saunders, who was on the consultative taskforce for the museum before it opened in Canberra 18 months ago, said she believed the review was ideologically driven. "It's all too soon," she said. "Normally you'd wait for about five or seven years for a review such as this. "The complaints have been . . . about the First Australians Gallery, and I'm at a loss to know why it's a problem." A Melbourne newspaper reported last week that Victorian academic John Carroll would head a panel to assess whether the museum was too politically correct. Disquiet at some exhibitions has been led by museum council member David Barnett. In an internal memo, Mr Barnett said the stolen children exhibit was a "victim episode" and the museum honoured bushrangers and protesters instead of nation-builders and mocked the death of former prime minister Harold Holt. Museum council chairman Tony Staley said he "rejected entirely" the suggestion that the review was a government attempt to politicise the museum. "It's nonsense," the former Liberal Party president said. "It's timely and . . . very normal. People shouldn't get over-excited by it; it's a sensible thing to do." Museum director Dawn Casey – whose contract was recently renewed for one year instead of the expected three – said she hoped the review panel would open the debate to a wide range of expertise. "There has been a small number of people who have been highly critical of the museum, but this review needs to be open and transparent," Ms Casey said.
http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/