An art smuggler has told a jury how he smuggled a $1m (£700,000) sculpture out of Egypt, and allegedly sold it on to a New York art dealer. Jonathan Tokeley-Parry said he smuggled the sculpture of the head of Amenhotep III - who died in 1375 BC - out of Egypt by dipping it in plastic and painting it black to make it look like a cheap tourist souvenir.
Testifying for the US government in court against Manhattan dealer Frederick Schultz, Mr Tokeley-Parry said he sold the item in 1992 to Manhattan dealer Frederick Schultz for $915,000 (£648,000). Mr Tokeley-Parry told the district court in Manhattan he had paid around $7,000 (£5,000), thinking it was worth up to $50,000 (£35,000).
"It was more than I'd ever paid for a piece, but for a piece of this quality it was an extraordinarily low price," he said. Mr Tokeley-Parry said he smuggled items out of Egypt because the Egyptian government had created a prohibition against the trading of art objects by declaring that all antiquities belonged to the government. In 1997, he was convicted by a British court of smuggling, and spent three years in prison. Mr Schultz allegedly resold the head for $1.2m (£850,000) to a London art collector.
His lawyer, Linda Imes, told the jury Mr Schultz had been unaware that the object was a stolen antiquity. Giving evidence, Mr Tokeley-Parry portrayed the antiquities business in Egypt and England as a cloak-and-dagger affair. Dealers fought to obtain valuable pieces, and were prepared to punish those they felt had snubbed them, he said. He said he had been warned by dealers that if they did not get the objects they desired, "they would make it impossible for me, and I'd be arrested".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Santa Fe gallery hands over rare altarpiece
By: Kurt Christopher
(Santa Fe-AP) -- A Santa Fe art gallery turned over a rare 16th century Peruvian altar piece Tuesday that had been listed as stolen to federal agents.
The agents and a U.S. Embassy official in Peru have said the altarpiece was stolen from a church in a remote village in January 2002. The piece was turned over to agents of the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the Ron Messick Fine Arts gallery made arrangements with the government to deliver it to a Santa Fe law office. The carved altarpiece from Challapampa is a depiction of a pair of winged saints with cherubs overhead. It is said to have been done by 16th Century South American artists Bernardo Bitti and Pedro de Vargas.
Authorities would not reveal details of how the piece was recovered because the case is part of a federal grand jury investigation in New York. The grand jury is expected to convene this week in New York.
http://kobtv.com/
Treasures should remain where they belong
I used to frequent a Chinese restaurant. So, when I went there recently for the first time in a long time, the proprietress, who knew me, suggested that I take home a lao jiu liquor jar.
Even without the liquor, the earthenware, solidly made and about 40-centimeters tall, was quite heavy. There was a homely quality about the pattern of vertical stripes on the jar's gently sloping section. I thought I could use it as a vase at home. Carrying the jar, I went to an antique fair under way at a nearby shrine. A great variety of antiques were on sale at dozens of open-air stalls. A tour of these stalls with the earthenware was more tiring than I had expected. So I put it down by the shrine's torii gate and rested. People came over as if to assess the jar's value, but they quickly realized it was not for sale and went away. Surely, the jar might have looked like an article for sale. It then struck me that one or more of the antiques on sale nearby might have been made in the same place as my newly acquired earthenware. The train of thought took me further to ponder the whereabouts of the treasures that disappeared from the National Museum in Baghdad. A remark by a Turkish museum director echoed in my ears: ``A stone is heavy where it has always existed.''
This is said to be a local maxim, and the museum chief quoted it in answer to a question about the artworks and other items of value that were spirited away to Western Europe in the past. The official was saying in effect that things of value arbitrarily removed should be restored to their original places because they look their best there. Late last year, famous museums of art and of natural history in the United States and Europe issued a statement saying they would not return possessions acquired from abroad. To justify their stand, they asserted that they were serving not just the citizens of a single country but people all over the world. This is an argument not everyone would easily accept. If the museums mean to say that they are the best custodians of the treasures from abroad, it sounds like what U.S. and European officials might like to say: ``We are bringing democracy to your country. So don't grumble.''
Getting back to the lao jiu jar, I took it home by the subway and put a bunch of Japanese irises in it. Several green blades, shooting straight from the bunch, made an excellent contrast with the jar's black-gleaming exterior, telling me that ``a stone does not lose its weight if a proper procedure is followed in removing it from the original place.''
--The Asahi Shimbun, May 7(IHT/Asahi: May 8,2003)
IRAQ
Nimrud Gold treasures “safe”
Dr Donny George gives the first detailed assessment of the looting to The Art Newspaper
By Martin Bailey
The Art Newspaper: It was the public galleries of the museum which were looted first. On the eve of the war, how many objects remained on display?
Dr Donny George: We had moved out thousands of objects from the showcases, everything we could.
TAN: How many were you unable to move?
DG: There were something like a hundred which were either too heavy or too fragile - but among them were some very important pieces.
TAN: Presumably the vast majority of the 170,000 items in the collection were therefore in the vaults. How much was lost from the vaults?
DG: We have only looked through a hole and shone a torchlight into the vaults. We don’t yet know what is missing, but a lot of the objects are still there.
TAN: Was it a small or a large proportion of the collection which was looted in the vaults?
DG: I don’t know. From the traces of what I have seen it could be a small percentage of the 170,000 objects. We will have to check our registers to see exactly what is missing.
TAN: What about the gold treasures of Nimrud? A year ago The Art Newspaper was told that they were in a vault of the central bank. Has the bank vault been looted?
DG: I believe the Nimrud gold is safe. We have sent someone with Ambassador John Limbert, who is one of the assistants of General Jay Garner. Ambassador Limbert is responsible for culture. They tried to get into these vaults, but the central bank building had been bombed and they could not reach them. We believe that nobody reached the gold treasures.
TAN: What was in the vaults? Along with Nimrud gold, had the museum’s gold coin collection been taken there? And what else should be in the central bank?
DG: A lot.
TAN: Were there thousands or tens of thousands of museum objects in the central bank vault?
DG: Thousands.
TAN: What else from the museum collection had been removed for safety just before war?
DG: We also took thousands of manuscripts to another place.
TAN: So you had another hiding place, in addition to the central bank?
DG: Yes. We tried to save portable objects, by putting some things here and some there. We did our best to protect the collection.
TAN: And what about the museum records? The meaning of objects comes from knowing where they were excavated.
DG: A lot of our paper records are safe. Most of the computerised data we had backed up.
TAN: Outsiders were shocked that the museum appeared to have been vandalised. Were objects deliberately smashed?
DG: My theory is that there were two groups of people. Those who first entered the museum knew what they wanted and they took some very important material. We found glass cutters they had left and they did not touch gypsum replicas. The vandalism came later, but perhaps it was planned to cover up the initial looting. They smashed a lot of material. We had some very important Roman statues from Hatra - they were smashed and the heads taken away.
TAN: But was the damage caused by people looking for valuables, rather than deliberate?
DG: Yes, it was people looking for valuables, at least in the galleries and the vaults. But as for what happened in our offices, that was deliberate vandalism.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/
US customs agents claim some success in Iraq search
United States customs officials say they have recovered some of the antiquities looted from the Iraqi National Nuseum in Baghdad.
Seven hundred artifacts and almost 40-thousand manuscripts have been located by teams of agents from the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agents are in Iraq, working with the US military to hunt down priceless Iraqi treasures missing since Saddam Hussein's regime was driven from Baghdad last month. A statement released in Washington says some of the recovered items have been voluntarily returned, in response to offers of rewards and amnesty.
Other items have been found in hidden vaults, stored for safekeeping before the war.