PARIS: A French court yesterday ruled against British pop star Elton John, saying his claims that a Parisian art dealer sold him fake statues were without merit. The court ruled that the singer had not unveiled "the slightest serious evidence" that would suggest that the four groups of statues he bought from art dealer Jean Renoncourt in 1996 were not authentic. John paid 360,000 dollars (BD136,080) for statues of the Greek gods bearing the signature of 18th century Italian sculptor Luigi Grossi, which he later displayed in the orangery at his country home in Britain.
In 2001, John asked art expert Simon Yates to assess the works for insurance purposes, and Yates raised doubts about their authenticity, saying they dated from the 20th century and calling into question the quality of the marble used. But the Paris court ruled that the allegations made by Yates were not sufficient proof to punish Renoncourt.
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/
Thief Steals Velvet Elvis Painting; Takes It On Tour
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- A thief who stole a restaurant owner's prized velvet painting of Elvis Presley is apparently sending the owner ransom notes informing him of the painting's travels, according to a Local 6 News report.
Dave Morrison, who has one of the largest collections of Elvis memorabilia outside Graceleand, said he purchased the velvet Elvis painting at a roadside stand around 10 years ago and hung it in his restaurant. Recently, "The King" left the building.
Soon after the theft, picture envelopes began arriving at the restaurant showing that the velvet Elvis was alive and on tour. Investigators believe that the "Elvis-Napper" has a computer and that he can't correctly spell the King's name. The postmark from the latest post card is from New Iberia, La., near the birthplace of the Delta Blues. Morrison doesn't mind the globe trotting, just as long as the thief remembers to return the painting, according to the report.
http://www.local6.com/
IRAQ:
Loss Estimates Are Cut on Iraqi Artifacts, but Questions Remain
By ALAN RIDING
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 30 — Even though many irreplaceable antiquities were looted from the National Museum of Iraq during the chaotic fall of Baghdad last month, museum officials and American investigators now say the losses seem to be less severe than originally thought.
Col. Matthew F. Bogdanos, a Marine reservist who is investigating the looting and is stationed at the museum, said museum officials had given him a list of 29 artifacts that were definitely missing. But since then, 4 items — ivory objects from the eighth century B.C. — had been traced. "Twenty-five pieces is not the same as 170,000," said Colonel Bogdanos, who in civilian life is an assistant Manhattan district attorney. There is no doubt that major treasures have been stolen. These include a lyre from the Sumerian city of Ur, bearing the gold-encased head of a bull, dated 2400 B.C.; a Sumerian marble head of a woman from Warka dated 3000 B.C.; a white limestone votive bowl with detailed engravings, also from Warka and dated 3000 B.C.; a life-size statue representing King Entemena from Ur, dated 2430 B.C.; a large ivory relief representing the Assyrian god Ashur; and the head of a marble statue of Apollo, a Roman copy of a fourth century B.C. Greek original.
Even if the damage may not be as widespread as originally reported, there is still no clear answer to the most important question: just how much has been taken? "I don't know exactly," said Jabbir Khalil, chairman of the State Board of Antiquities. John Limbert, an American diplomat who is a senior adviser in the new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq, concurred. "How bad was it?" he asked. "We just don't know yet." While many museum officials watched in horror as mobs and perhaps organized gangs rampaged through the museum's 18 galleries, seized objects on display, tore open steel cases, smashed statues and broke into storage vaults, officials now discount the first reports that the museum's entire collection of 170,000 objects had been lost. Some valuable objects were placed for safekeeping in the vaults of the Central Bank before the war; the bank was bombed and is in ruins, but officials say its vaults may have survived.
Other objects were placed in the museum's own underground vaults; only when power was restored this week could curators begin assessing what was lost. Even in some of the looted galleries, a few stone statues are intact. Still more encouragingly, several hundred small objects — including a priceless statue of an Assyrian king from the ninth century B.C. — have been returned to the museum, in some cases by people who said they had taken the treasures to keep them out of the wrong hands. In addition, a steel case containing 465 small objects was confiscated by soldiers of the Iraqi National Congress and returned to the museum. But some items that have been handed back to the museum are copies. "One of the storerooms that was looted contained almost entirely documented authenticated copies," Colonel Bogdanos said. "I got six items today. They were all from the gift shop." The difficulty in determining what is missing is compounded by the lack of a master list of the museum's collection. Although inventories survive, they were compiled department by department and not computerized. And in some cases, they are not complete. Nor is there a clear consensus about how much of the looting was organized. As evidence of a planned assault, museum officials say they found keys and glass-cutters. One official said he saw two "European looking" men enter the museum with the mob, point to various treasures and leave.
"Behind the looting there were wicked hands," Mr. Khalil said. "They took precious pieces and left less valuable ones." For Mr. Limbert, the case is undecided. "One theory is that this was done by people who knew which were the best pieces and came equipped to get them," he said. "I'm told 27 pieces were taken from the actual galleries. But the other theory is that this was a smash-and-grab operation, mostly by people from the neighborhood. What supports this is that a lot of very good pieces have been returned. If you like conspiracy theories, you can go on forever here." Antiquities experts, foreign museums and governments have mobilized to block traffic in smuggled treasures. At a meeting in London on Tuesday, representatives of some of the world's leading museums vowed to work to rebuild Iraq's plundered cultural institutions. Donny George, the research director of the Baghdad museum, said he was convinced that a significant part of the looting was organized.
Officials at the National Museum, whose scholars and scientists are widely respected, dismissed the idea that the museum was targeted as another symbol of Mr. Hussein's rule. They conceded, however, that particularly in recent years, the government had supported the work of the museum, which reopened in 2000 for the first time since the 1991 gulf war. Colonel Bogdanos said that some Iraqis returned looted objects to him, rather than to the museum itself, which was identified with Mr. Hussein. "It has been a challenge to us that the Iraq museum is closely identified with both the prior regime and its Baathist Party," he said. "Everyone says this looting was anger at the regime." Supporting that thesis is the destruction of numerous other cultural institutions where nothing but furniture and computers were stolen. The National Center of Books and Archives, also known as the National Library, was destroyed by fire, although Mr. Limbert said he had heard that 90 percent of its books and documents had been removed for safekeeping. The Awgaf or Religious Endowment Library, however, was burned, and it lost 6,500 Islamic manuscripts. The Central Library of Baghdad University and the Science Academy were also looted and destroyed by fire. One piece of good news is that 50,000 Islamic and Arab manuscripts, dating back 14 centuries, were saved from the Saddam House of Manuscripts. Osama Nassir al-Naqsa Bandy, the director-general of manuscripts in the Ministry of Culture, had his entire collection removed to a safe place one week before the war began in March. He also took 150 boxes of books and catalogs from the library of the National Museum for safekeeping. "The House of Manuscripts was attacked by saboteurs who took all the installations and furniture but everything important was gone," he said. "The library of the museum was bricked up and it also escaped vandalism."
Colonel Bogdanos said he had visited the hiding place of the manuscripts and books and was satisfied they were well protected by the local community. "We had planned to bring them to the museum, but community members were insistent it would be a mistake," he said. "I was assured they were safe where they were. We took an inventory of the locked cases and left." Word of what happened to regional museums is only just reaching Baghdad. Mr. Khalil, who is responsible for all national antiquities museums, said he had been told that the museums in Nimrud, Ashur, Hadra, Samarra and Nineveh had not been looted, but that serious damage, including looting of storerooms, was done to the museum in Mosul in northern Iraq. "We were about to open a new museum in Tikrit, but it was bombed," he added. Information is also just trickling into Baghdad about the situation at the 32 excavation sites operated by the National Museum. Hanna A. Khaliq, general director of excavations, said the sites had been well protected from looters until the beginning of the wars. She said that she had so far heard from nine sites. In five — Mosul, Kirkuk, Nadjaf, Baa-Kuba and Ashnuna — buildings linked to the sites were looted, but she had no detailed information of the extent of the theft of recently found objects.
Ms. Khaliq said that it was hard to work because her department's entire fleet of 40 new cars as well as trucks had been stolen. At the museum itself, where administration offices were vandalized, Mr. Khalil said the staff needed material assistance, from cars to laboratory equipment for restoration. "We have the people, but they have nothing to work with," he added. The Iraqi cultural officials cannot help looking back to April 8 and 9, when their appeals for American military protection of the museum went unheeded. In conversation after conversation, the subject resurfaces, invariably with a bitter reminder that American forces were already protecting the nearby Ministry of Oil.
"I asked some soldiers why they did not stop the looting," Mr. Naqsa Bandy recalled. "They said, `This is not our duty.' " Mr. Khalil said his experience was similar. "The U.S. forces and tanks were near the museum," he said. "They could have done as they did at the Ministry of Oil. Why didn't they? I don't know. We asked them. They said they were in the middle of a war." The American response since then has been to try to fix what has been broken.
http://www.nytimes.com/
US Experts Call on International Community to Find Iraq's Historic Treasures Barbara Schoetzau
New York 30 Apr 2003, 18:13 UTC
Listen to Barbara Schoetzau's report (RealAudio) http://www.voanews.com/mediastore/Schoetzau_Iraqi_Culture_30april03.ram Schoetzau report - Download 579k (RealAudio) http://www.voanews.com/mediastore/Schoetzau_Iraqi_Culture_30april03.rm U.S.
Art historians, archeologists, and cultural institutions are joining global efforts to help Iraq recover and restore the treasures of ancient civilization that were plundered by thieves, antiquity traffickers and mobs in the aftermath of the recent conflict in Iraq. Evidence indicates much of the initial looting of Iraqi antiquities was part of organized criminal efforts to steal and sell the priceless artifacts on the international art market.
Bonnie Burnham, the head of the New York-based World Monument Fund, said many of Iraq's cultural sites were being looted even before the recent conflict in Iraq. "We knew this was happening because of small pieces from the sites that were coming out and turning up on the international market," she said. As a result of an amnesty, many minor items have already been returned. But experts say it may be years before the most valuable antiquities surface. "The way the antiquities market works, it will not all move this week," said Ellen Herscher, chairwoman of the cultural property committee of the Archeological Institute of America. "The professional smugglers, the traffickers, they are not going to bring it in this week. They are going to sit on it. In the art trade they can sit on it for decades, until all the fuss dies down and until it is not so hot. Eventually, perhaps decades, it will emerge."
International laws make trafficking in antiquities illegal, and global art-theft registers help customs officials and international specialists identify trafficked art and artifacts. But experts like Ellen Herscher say there is a limit to what can be recovered as long as a market of high-end collectors is available. "Certainly, as long as there is a demand, somehow people will get around the laws and try to supply that demand," she said. "So a lot of the effort that we have made to discourage is on the demand side. Just trying to stop it at the source is not adequate. Unless the people who buy these things are discouraged, someone is always going to find away to get around the laws." Along with UNESCO, U.S. museums and universities are pooling their resources to create an authoritative inventory of Iraqi antiquities and art. But some experts fear that the heightened sense of concern over the thefts is diverting attention from sites that are now in need of safeguarding. Especially important, says Bonnie Burnham of the World Monument Fund, are two significant Assyrian sites known for their carvings, Nineveh and Nimrud, and neglected sites in the northern Kurdish-dominated area of Iraq. Ms. Burnham said attention also needs to be given to the quality of restoration at Iraqi cultural sites. Too often, she says, such efforts do more harm than good. "It could be the result of repairing buildings that have experienced some damage, but using the wrong kind of approaches and the wrong materials," she said. "Very important buildings, ancient houses, could be lost completely in the reconstruction process because something nearby could be damaged and they are just bulldozed. That kind of thing happens everywhere." Ms. Burnham says American cultural institutions can play a major role in lending their expertise and financial support to reconstruction efforts. By helping Iraq retrieve its antiquities and rebuild its cultural sites, Bonnie Burnham believes Americans can also contribute to the Iraq's economic recovery. "They are the other great resource the county has apart from its oil. We find it very ironic, we in the cultural world, that such pains were taken to protect the oil fields and nothing was done to protect the cultural heritage," she commented. "Now as the country is rebuilt those will be the great assets. Many, many people will want to go to Iraq who have never been there. The country has not been accessible, certainly not to Americans, in my adult lifetime." Ms. Burnham says U.S. museums are offering to lend Iraqi museums objects from their own Middle Eastern collections until the institutions are able to replenish their own holdings. Such gestures, she says, can serve as powerful diplomatic tools to create good will between Americans and Iraqis.
http://www.voanews.com/
Of 2,000 Treasures Stolen in Gulf War of 1991, Only 12 Have Been Recovered
By MARTIN GOTTLIEB with BARRY MEIER
LONDON, April 30 — After a rampage of looting of museums in Iraq in the wake of the Persian Gulf war of 1991, American and British archaeologists compiled a list of more than 2,000 stolen objects, a sad catalog of losses to the history of civilization. Eleven years later, experts say, no more than half a dozen of the pieces have been tracked down.
Many others are presumed to have been traded away through a thriving international market in antiquities. The poor record of returning artifacts lost after the gulf war suggests the daunting obstacles that museum officials and police investigators face as they commit to finding items recently sacked from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad and other sites. The plunder from 1991 added fuel to a global industry of scavengers, shippers and traders, who funneled stolen items from Iraq into the hands of private collectors overseas. While reputable dealers and owners insist they work hard to identify and avoid illicit goods, eager buyers continue to demand rare items, and the market flourishes.
"Sometimes we feel we are fighting a war we have already lost," said Manus Brinkman, secretary general of the International Council of Museums in Paris, one of many museum officials engaged in current recovery efforts. The booty from the National Museum includes invaluable one-of-a- kind treasures as well as thousands of artifacts of everyday ancient life. John Curtis, who heads the British Museum's Near East department, said here Tuesday that paper records and microfilm were strewn about in a way that will take the staff "months if not years to sort out."
Museum curators and law enforcement officials say that the disarray and loss of documents will make it especially difficult to recoup the artifacts. To show that an item has been stolen, experts require papers tracing it to an ancient site or museum. Many Iraqi objects lost in the 1991 looting were removed from sites and understaffed museums that had no careful recording in photographs and catalogs. "These cases can be a nightmare," said Tony Russell, a former detective sergeant with Scotland Yard's art squad, who is now with the James Mintz Group, an investigative agency. Stolen artifacts often disappear for years before emerging for sale. Other factors add to the difficulties: the ease with which material can slip through customs, the meager numbers of police assigned to art theft, and the circuitous trails of ownership in the world of trading.
More than 10,000 identified archaeological sites in Iraq hold remnants of Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian and other seminal cultures dating as far back as 10,000 years. A law adopted in the 1930's in Iraq makes it illegal to remove artifacts from the country without state permission. Archaeologists and dealers say that relatively few ancient pieces came out before the gulf war.
In the waning days of the fighting, 9 of 13 regional museums were ransacked. Experts believe that the early sprees were spontaneous, without participation by professional thieves. Subsequently, a system of organized smuggling developed. Collectors, dealers and law enforcement officials said that they frequently heard that Saddam Hussein's son Uday had a role in the trafficking. In some areas of the countryside, Saddam Hussein, weakened after his rout by allied troops in the war, ceded some control to local leaders. McGuire Gibson, a professor of archaeology at the University of Chicago, said there were reports that these leaders would accept payments from intermediaries to allow ancient sites to be pillaged, often with small armies of local people digging for little compensation. From the sites, law enforcement sources said, items often made their way to Amman, Jordan, a major trafficking point with an active bazaar and a few powerful dealers. One dealer named by several people in the trade was Ghassan Rihani, the former head of the Jordanian Antiquities Association. A wealthy Kuwaiti charged in a lawsuit that Mr. Rihani, who died in 2001, had sold items that were stolen from him by Iraqi soldiers during Iraq's 1991 occupation of Kuwait.
Mr. Rihani's son, Tamim, insisted in an interview that his father dealt only in legitimate artifacts. >From Jordan and other regional trade centers in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and Syria, the goods often passed through Switzerland. Laws there are more favorable than in many other countries to buyers, who say they bought objects without knowing that they were stolen. In London, dealers' stalls and showrooms were flooded by the mid-1990's with small tablets dating back 3,500 years or more, inscribed with cuneiform characters portraying daily life. Before placing an antiquity on the market, dealers often tried to have them authenticated by experts, not to learn where they came from but to guard against fakes. Some archaeologists decline to participate in this verification, saying they are reluctant to assist a market that they believe only encourages smuggling. One expert who validates authenticity is Wilfred Lambert, emeritus professor of the history of Assyria at the University of Birmingham in England. In a telephone interview, Professor Lambert estimated he had evaluated several hundred items from the region, working for several London dealers. He said that in a marketplace filled with copies and fakes, his role is limited to identifying the age and culture of objects and ascertaining that they are genuine. Professor Lambert said that he does not offer to verify how an object came on the market. "I don't necessarily know where it comes from or how long it's been coming," he said. The dealers, he continued, "don't themselves, I suspect, very often."
"If I come across something that is clearly stolen I say so," he said, adding it had happened only once. Today on eBay, the Internet auction site, it is easy to find a dozen or more auctions offering fragments of cuneiform writing and small cylindrical carved stones that were used to make seals, with final prices that don't top $100. EBay recently posted a notice that cautions sellers against trafficking in Iraqi booty. The Howard Nowes gallery in New York is typical of dozens of dealers. It advertises Iraqi amulets and cylinder seals for prices in the hundreds of dollars. Mr. Nowes said in an interview that he did not buy ancient items from people who walked in off the street. His Iraqi pieces, he said, came from the collection of a doctor on the East Side. "A dealer has to be very careful, do due diligence if you're in it for the long run," he said. Mr. Nowes, like most dealers, said he demanded written assurances that items were not stolen and had been in the owner's possession for a substantial period of time. But he admitted there was often little other than good faith for backup. So far there have been only unconfirmed reports of recently looted objects being offered for sale in the West. Antiquities experts said the most valuable artifacts taken from the Baghdad museum were too well known to be offered publicly for sale. They fear, however, that such items might disappear into obscure private collections far removed from the museum world, or worse, be melted down for their ore. More commonplace jars, vases and tablets will surely make their way toward the market, authorities predicted. They warned that traders might try to sell in the coming six months, while museums are working to compile a catalog of the newly looted items. In a rare display of unity, dealers are joining with archaeologists and curators to declare they will try to stop any trade in Iraqi objects.
An account of a prominent case in which an artifact was successfully returned to Iraq illustrates how unlikely such episodes are, however. In 1995 Shlomo Moussaieff, a prominent London collector, paid about $15,000 to buy a relief taken from the site of the spectacular seventh- century palace at Nineveh. In a telephone interview, Mr. Moussaieff said he bought the slab, which shows slaves pulling a boat, in a warehouse in the free port at the airport in Geneva, Switzerland, where much art commerce is conducted. According to court documents, the seller was Nabil Asfar, a well-known Lebanese dealer, apparently based in Brussels. Mr. Moussaieff took the relief to England and then applied for an export license to ship it to Israel. He sent a picture to the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, to see if curators there wanted to display it, according to newspaper accounts quoting his lawyer. The museum sent the picture for validation to John Malcolm Russell, an expert on Nineveh and now a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art. Professor Russell said that he was soon shown pictures of two other fragments from the relief. He warned museum authorities that all of them had been stolen since he had seen the slab intact at Nineveh in 1989. English authorities reviewing Mr. Moussaieff's export request contacted experts at the British Museum, who recognized the relief from an article by Professor Russell. Scotland Yard alerted Iraqi authorities.
A suit brought by Iraq was settled when Mr. Moussaieff returned the relief and was reimbursed by the Baghdad government. Mr. Moussaieff maintained that he was unaware the piece had been stolen. Professor Russell said he still did not know what had happened to the other pieces that he had been asked to examine, nor at least 10 other important stolen pieces he had identified. "They all just disappeared," he said. Constance Lowenthal, a consultant on art ownership disputes who is based in New York, said that police and customs officials are going to have to study Iraq's extraordinarily rich and long history. "They are going to have to learn to recognize things from all the civilizations of Mesopotamia," she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/
U.N. cultural organization urges Security Council to ban import of looted Iraqi artifacts
By EDITH M. LEDERER The Associated Press 4/30/03 7:28 PM
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. cultural organization urged the Security Council on Wednesday to adopt a resolution requiring all countries to ban the import of thousands of artifacts looted from Iraqi museums.
UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura said 97 countries are parties to the 1970 convention against illegal trafficking of cultural goods, but a U.N. resolution would be legally binding on all 191 U.N. member states. "If there is a new Security Council resolution ... demanding all countries to introduce an embargo on importation of Iraqi cultural goods, that would be a very important step forward," he told a news conference. In trying to recover antiquities stolen from Iraq's national museum in Baghdad and other cultural sites, Matsuura said it is "very crucial" to keep the stolen goods from leaving Iraq and to prevent them from getting to potential buyers in other countries. Matsuura met with Secretary-General Kofi Annan late Wednesday to discuss the thefts and seek his support for a U.N. resolution. Immediately after the massive looting, Annan appealed for the return of the historic artifacts and backed international efforts to prevent trade in stolen Iraqi objects, saying "their loss is a wound inflicted on all humankind."
At a meeting in London on Tuesday, the world's top curators said antiquities are still being smuggled out of the country three weeks after Baghdad fell and urged U.S. authorities to tighten border controls. The UNESCO chief said stolen goods have been confiscated in Jordan, the United States and other countries. The curators said professional thieves appear to have slipped in among the bands of looters in Iraqi museums -- but Matsuura said the looters took advantage of the professionals. "My impression is these lootings have been done by well organized bandits and gangs," the UNESCO chief said. "Many Iraqi civilians joined them to loot other goods." Earlier this week, however, U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of coalition forces in Iraq, said the looting in Baghdad did not appear to be the work of organized thieves. One of the major problems is that nobody knows precisely what was stolen so it is "very, very urgent to establish a database" of Iraq's cultural treasures, Franks said. UNESCO is currently negotiating with U.S. officials to send a small mission of experts to Baghdad and other cultural sites in Iraq in early May to help prepare a database, Matsuura said. "We are waiting for a reply."
He noted that the market in stolen antiquities amounts to $5 billion a year, second only to drugs. "What is crucial is to mobilize international efforts ... to recover what has been stolen," he said.
http://www.nj.com/
Iraqi National Museum anticipates opening of some exhibits
By MAUREEN FAN Knight Ridder Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi National Museum, ransacked by looters who destroyed and carried off priceless cultural artifacts, may reopen at least partially in a few months, officials said Wednesday.
Repairing the damage at the museum, at least enough for a "soft" opening of some of the museum's exhibits, would be a much-needed symbol of the country's future as well as its past, and a point of pride, officials said. Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III of the 3rd Infantry Division said the museum might be ready for public visitors in as little as two or three months, although it will take as long as a year to clean up the damage wrought to the museum's records and many of its exhibits. "Our goal is to try to get it up, get it open to the people as quickly as we can," Blount said. Some of the museum's missing treasures have been returned by Iraqis who said they took the items to protect them from further damage. "Not all the people were looters. Some people broke in and now say we will not tell you our name or address, but we took these items to keep them safe and we will bring them back," said Jabir Khalil, director general of the state antiquities department and head of the museum. "These people are called clean hands."
But the "dirty hands" who did the most damage knew exactly what they were looking for, taking only specific items and leaving behind air conditioners, furniture and other valuables. "The staff is going to estimate which finds are missing and how many … but we need time to work," Khalil said in a short interview from the museum's administrative offices. "We will try to open soon, but it takes weeks and weeks." Iraqis have also been walking up to soldiers and giving them artifacts in the street, Blount said in a briefing at the Republican Palace.
"A lot of people are working toward getting those things back and with some degree of success," Blount said. "There are a lot of agencies that are stepping forward to help, and we're providing the security and some of the heavy lifting." Coalition forces were blamed for not keeping a closer watch on the museum in the first place, and Blount admitted that the military had not anticipated looting "on this scale." But Blount said only 10 to 15 percent of the museum's artifacts were stolen, with most of the treasures packed away in vaults and in storage by museum officials anticipating bombing. Khalil downplayed the value of many of the returned objects and said the damage will take years to repair, a view echoed by Blount. "They're going at it slowly, and they are tying to reassemble everything," Blount said. "There's literally just … thousands of thousands of desk drawers and filing cabinets of files and pictures dumped on the floor."