May 26, 2003

CONTENTS:




- Korea: Police round up museum burglar
- Japan: Most sites of disgraced archaeologist discredited
- Two accused of stealing bear from Naperville's art project
- Difficulties arise when art has been pilfered by Nazis
- Parthenon Marbles: Artist says British Museum does not know left from right
- Beware of the garden crooks
- Cree want 'spiritual' meteorite returned
- AFGHANISTAN: Trade in anitquities is big business
- Looted Nok Terracotta in Bonham's sale
IRAQ
- UN SECURITY COUNCIL PROHIBITS ALL TRADE IN IRAQI CULTURAL PROPERTY ILLEGALLY REMOVED SINCE 1990

Korea: Police round up museum burglar

The police rounded up a 31-year-old man in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province Saturday, who is charged with conspiring in the May 15 robbery of the Gongju National Museum, officials said yesterday. The suspect, whose family name is Lim, is accused of attempting to smuggle the stolen exhibits that include a National Treasure dating back to the Baekje dynasty (37 B.C.-A.D. 660).
According to the police reports, Lim testified that he offered to trade the stolen items with a local buyer a day after the robbery but was refused. The police assume that Lim hid the stolen exhibits after failing to find an interested buyer and are searching for more evidence. Lim was escorted to an investigation team's headquarters in Gongju, South Chungcheong Province, for further questioning. The police were also seeking arrest warrants for a 36 year-old and a 44 year-old man rounded up earlier in the day, labeling them as the prime suspects in the robbery.
According to police, the younger man, whose family name is Oh, testified that he carried out the robbery in an effort to pay off his debts and planned the crime with the older suspect Hwang, who he first met at a state prison in Cheongsong, Gyeonggi Province earlier this month. After the robbery the two suspects allegedly drove off to Busan through the Gyeongbu Expressway, with Hwang disembarking with the stolen items near Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province. Hwang is denying the allegations.
In the first burglary of a national museum in the nation's history, the thieves walked away with four exhibits, including a gilt-bronze Boddhisattava dated back to the seventh century of the Baekje dynasty, which is designated as a National Treasure. The three other artifacts are the celadon or porcelain vessels from the Goryeo (918-1392) and Joseon (1392-1910) dynasties.
(thkim@heraldm.com)

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/

_

Most sites of disgraced archaeologist discredited

Sunday, May 25, 2003 at 01:06 JST

TOKYO — A special panel of the Japanese Archaeological Association on Saturday discredited the sites disgraced archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura helped excavate and claimed dated back to the early and middle Paleolithic period after finding fabrications at 162 sites in nine prefectures.
The special committee's findings settle the issue from an academic perspective. (Kyodo News)

http://www.japantoday.com/

Two accused of stealing bear from Naperville's art project

By Stacy St. Clair Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted May 26, 2003

As unbearable as it may seem, crimes against Naperville's summer art project have begun.
Two Northwest suburban men were arrested Sunday after police say they swiped a bear sculpture from the city's annual animal parade. The bear, named Ursa Major, has since been returned to her coveted spot at the intersection of Chicago Avenue and Washington Street. Authorities were investigating the bear's disappearance around 2:30 a.m. Sunday when they saw the suspects drive past the crime scene, according to police reports. Officers caught up with the vehicle at Hillside Road and Webster Street where Ursa, who is sponsored by Hawthorne Credit Union, was recovered, police said. Authorities later charged 21-year-old Jonathan P. Jacoby of 1550 Marshall Drive in Des Plaines with theft and illegal transportation of alcohol. Both are misdemeanors. His passenger, 22-year-old Arthur R. Gallegos of 1198 Maple Lane in Elk Grove Village, faces the same misdemeanor charges.
Crimes against the animals featured in the United Way's public art parade have become a summer ritual in Naperville. Last year, several horses in the "Carousel of Fun" had their tails snapped of. The damage inflicted in 2002, however, was no where near that of two years ago in the parade's inaugural season. Several baby giraffes had their heads bashed in or were decapitated. A Naperville man was sentenced to a year's probation in 2001 and ordered to pay $925 after he pleaded guilty to attacking "Charity," a baby giraffe on Jefferson Street, and knocking her head off.

http://www.dailyherald.com/

Difficulties arise when art has been pilfered by Nazis

By Anne-Marie O'Connor
Los Angeles Times

Sunday, May 25, 2003 - THEY are works of art that defined European drawing rooms, that lent elegance to family milestones such as births, weddings and deaths. But the art was also a mute witness to other mortal dramas: the arrival of Nazi troops who pulled paintings off walls and sent their owners to die in Adolf Hitler's concentration camps.
Today the heirs of these stolen paintings are coming forward in record numbers, sending ripples throughout the art world.
Prudent art-auction houses and dealers are turning increasingly to Holocaust art theft experts such as Sarah Jackson of the Art Loss Register in London -- who made a two-day swing through Los Angeles last week -- to avoid representing art whose tainted past could render it difficult to sell, or trigger an international public relations disaster. Jackson, an art historian, said the issue of provenance, the record of an artwork's ownership, is being redefined by the Holocaust claims, including several high-profile cases by heirs in California. "In the past, provenance was important to establish value. Today, provenance is taking center stage because of liability," Jackson told a roomful of lawyers, customs officials, professional mediators and plaintiffs in Holocaust art cases, at the Beverly Hills Bar Association. "The law is changing slowly, but remorselessly, in favor of the victim. Once there is a known Holocaust survivor of a known work of art, it becomes virtually unsalable.
"For commercial art dealers, the choice is stark, because the buyers will choose an alternative that is not a tainted work of art."
Jackson is the historic claims director of the Art Loss Register, the world's largest private international database for looted or lost art, collectibles and antiquities. The register traces provenance for those in the art trade to law enforcement. Behind many Holocaust art claims, she said, lie deep personal losses and family tragedies, and many families pursue artworks in part to piece together a world forever lost to them. "They want tangible links to lives that were decimated," she said. "Some of the stories you hear are very difficult." The Art Loss Register began its Holocaust division five years ago, when such claims began to increase. Today it gets several inquiries a week concerning art that disappeared during World War II. The register posts claims free of charge for works lost in the Holocaust. It charges $50 for a search certificate for collectors, dealers and museums -- a document that can help them demonstrate that they made a good-faith effort to avoid acquiring or selling tainted art.
Jackson's expert sleuthing determined that a University of California, Berkeley, law student, Thomas C. Bennigson, was the heir of the original owner of a valuable Picasso painting -- "Femme en Blanc" (Woman in White) -- that a Chicago socialite recently tried to sell.
To establish the painting's history, Jackson pored over an old letter, a diary and a photograph of the painting that showed it hanging in a neo-Classical 1930s foyer. She determined that the true owner was a woman who had left it with a Parisian art dealer for safekeeping when she fled Germany. It was stolen by the Nazis when the art dealer's home was looted. In December 2001, a French art dealer who was considering acquiring the painting contacted the Art Loss Register about the Picasso.
In 2002, the register notified Marilynn Alsdorf, who had purchased the painting with her husband in 1975 from the Stephen Hahn Gallery in New York for $357,000. Within months the register located Bennigson. Alsdorf entered into settlement talks, but after the talks foundered late in 2002, Bennigson filed suit in Los Angeles federal court. The case is unresolved. In another case, Jackson was able to track down the heirs and the history of a valuable Dutch marine painting by Ludolf Backhuysen, "A Man-O-War and Other Ships Off the Dutch Coast," leading to compensation for its theft so the Detroit Institute of the Arts could acquire it in good faith in 2002.
Often, Jackson said, extensive records exist on works of art, though finding them can be difficult. "The amazing thing is that the Nazis were incredible bureaucrats and the paper trail is pretty astonishing," she said. One reason for the upsurge in claims, experts say, is the tremendous increase in the value of art and the subsequent higher profile of lost works. Perhaps the best-known Southern California case involves Maria Altmann of West Los Angeles, who values her six lost paintings by Gustav Klimt at $150 million. Her attorney, Randol Schoenberg, refers to one of them, "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I," as the "Austrian Mona Lisa."
Altmann, 87, sought for years to arbitrate with Austria over the paintings, which are owned by its national museum, before filing a case against that country in U.S. federal court. Now, the Austrian government, which says U.S. courts have no jurisdiction on the issue, has asked for a stay as it prepares to petition for review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Altmann says she would be content with financial restitution and removal of the paintings to the American museums of her choice.
"The 'Portrait of Adele' should be in a museum," said Altmann, who was present at the bar association presentation. "It should be seen by the public and by the world. But I don't want it in Austria. It's the whole idea of the injustice."
Altmann's long battle to regain control of her family's artwork, says Jackson, signals the complexity of the process.
Establishing that a work of art has been looted, she said, is only the beginning. Particularly as paintings have increased in value, their current owners are willing to spend time and money in legal procedures that can exhaust the resources and the life spans of elderly claimants.
"It is a traumatic process to pursue a picture," she said. "You've got to be quite courageous to do it."

http://www.timesstar.com/

Parthenon Marbles: Artist says British Museum does not know left from right

Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent
Monday May 26, 2003
The Guardian

There are several ways of looking at the troubled history of the Parthenon marbles. The argument now is over whether the British Museum knows its elbow from its armpit. As international controversy rumbles on over future of the marbles, the new bones of contention are in a shattered fragment of a 2,441-year-old arm.
Fragment 331 came to the British Museum almost two centuries ago, as part of the Elgin marbles. The museum believes it is a left arm, probably part of the depiction of the goddess Iris. Richard Divers, a graphic designer and art director, claims it is a right arm, possibly from the great central section of the west pediment, which was hacked out of the monument not by Lord Elgin, but by the Christians who converted the temple to a church 1,500 years ago.
If he is right, the museum has been labelling and displaying the arm wrongly for at least a century. The museum says he is wrong but has agreed to bring a cast of the arm from a museum store so that it can be examined from all angles. The museum will also see if the piece matches the figure of Iris. The whole argument turns on an armpit.
"It cannot be a left arm," Mr Divers said. "Down is not the same as up, however much you want it to be." Curator Peter Higgs said: "We have had a close look at the piece and still believe that it is a left arm. There is an area that must be armpit that was not easy to see while the sculpture was on show in the display case. This seems to clearly make it a left arm."
"That is not an armpit," Mr Divers said. "They have mistaken the little depression between the tendons behind the arm for the armpit itself. It is a right arm. It won't fit the figure of Iris because it doesn't come from that figure."
Mr Divers gave his drawings of the fragment to the British School in Athens, which gave them to an expert on the sculptures, archaeologist Olga Palagia, who found his suggestion plausible.
A vital key to the puzzle of the marbles is a watercolour by French artist Jacques Carrey in 1674, before the explosion in 1687 which shattered the artwork.
Mr Divers believes the arm could be a fragment of a sculpture of the goddess Athena, to whom the temple and the city were dedicated.
Mr Higgs still insists the museum label on the fragment is correct. But he said an international project was being considered, to scan in three dimensions all the known and possible fragments from the Parthenon, so the puzzle might at last be fitted together.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Beware of the garden crooks

May 26, 2003 13:18

Everyone loves the summer – and that includes crooks. JON WELCH discovers why not everything in the garden is rosy.
SUMMER is just round the corner, and for many of us that means a chance to finally get out and enjoy our gardens.
But we're not the only ones who'll be taking advantage of the good weather. Summer is also a boom time for crooks who are finding ever more lucrative booty in people's gardens. TV programmes such as Ground Force, Home Front in the Garden and The City Gardener are encouraging us to lavish more attention and money on our gardens, and that's good news for the thieves. Furniture, patio heaters, lawnmowers, urns, statues, specimen plants – even garden gnomes – you name it, they'll take it.
As summer approaches, garden centres are busier than ever, stately homes and their grounds are open to the public, and it's open season for green-fingered thieves. There are more than 1.2 million thefts from outside people's homes each year, according to recent British Crime Survey figures.
And as the trade in garden and architectural antiques has expanded, so too has the amount stolen from gardens.
While some of the thefts are being carried out by professional gangs, others are the work of rather less hardened criminals – pranksters returning home from a night's drinking. For some reason they think items stolen from someone's garden will make ideal trophies.
"People think it's funny at the time, but it's not funny for the people whose property is taken," said Pc Ian Norman of Norfolk police. Public gardens have also fallen victim to thieves, who have stolen statues, plants and other ornaments.
Many public gardens will now open by appointment only as owners believe that taking down names and addresses will reduce the risk of theft.
One couple, Colin and Linda Warburton, had their entire garden stolen from the grounds of their home near Bristol in 2000. Thieves uprooted 4ft high trees and shrubbery, chiselled out cemented ornaments like a bird table, sundial and benches, and even took a pond complete with dozens of carp and goldfish.
Elsewhere, an award-winning garden in Nottingham was decimated after being stripped of scores of plants, 25 garden gnomes, a Greek urn and five wall-mounted squirrels.
In Cardiff, thieves removed an entire front garden of plants, shrubs, flowers and lawn, while in Kent a man was beaten up by a gang who used a Land Rover to ram-raid his garage to steal a £1,000 lawnmower. Some larger items may be stolen to order and shipped abroad, but the pattern of theft has changed in the last few years, according to Thornton Kay, a partner in Salvo. His company operates a website to help police and the architectural salvage trade recover stolen garden antiques, sculpture and statuary.
It has helped recover items from abroad as well as at home. For example, a stolen sundial listed on its website was recently returned by a resident in the US who had bought it.
Mr Kay, a former architectural salvage dealer, explained: "In the early 1990s high quality garden statuary, expensive items worth thousands of pounds, was being stolen from country houses. "But there's been a shift away from that type of item towards the less easily identifiable items such as garden troughs, millstones and other items which are mass produced."
Even when stolen items are recovered, it is often difficult to place them with their original owners. Thieves sell the stolen items on at antiques fairs, pushing them on through the legitimate trade. They will generally be selling the goods on the peripheries of these events rather than within them, he explained.

"Some unscrupulous international dealers will buy stolen items and take them to Europe, Ireland and America."
Other stolen pieces would be sold off at car boot sales or other informal events where there are no questions asked, he added.
Salvo Theft Alerts lists stolen garden items on its website, accompanied by a photograph of the item, when and from which area it was stolen along with a crime reference number and police contact. This enables those in the trade to identify stolen pieces that they are offered and report it to the police, who can then follow it up.
UK and overseas police forces have used the website to help recover around 200 stolen architectural and garden antiques, with the total value of goods recovered in the region of £3 million. However, it is not an easy crime to solve. "Quite often police won't arrest because they cannot prove the person who has the item stole it, if they claim they bought it in good faith." So, aside from the obvious security measures like not leaving items out, or taking more vigilant measures by chaining statues and urns down, how can people protect their property?
"Our advice is to go into your garden and photograph things such as stone troughs and other large items which have been mass-produced. It is also worth putting some sort of identifying mark on it, such as a small scratch, and photographing that. At least then if it is stolen, it can be positively identified."
Damage, scratches, coloration defects, weathering and repairs are all possible ways to identify an item.
He also notes that garden theft is not as prevalent as it might seem and warns against scaremongering.
"In my experience the most common garden theft is of washing from washing lines. Insurance companies scare people into thinking that they are going to be done over, to encourage them to buy more policies."
How can people be sure they are not buying stolen goods from a dealer?
"The chances of you going into a yard and being offered something that has been stolen are slim. But ask the dealer where the item came from. The question I always ask is, 'Did you buy it direct from somebody's house or did someone offer it to you?'"
"Don't buy any item if you have the slightest suspicion that it has been stolen."

http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/

Cree want 'spiritual' meteorite returned

Kathy Walker The Edmonton Journal Monday, May 26, 2003

EDMONTON - Cree people call it Papamihaw Asiniy or flying rock, and revere it as a sacred being with immeasurable spiritual worth.
It's a 145-kilogram, iron meteorite that sits on display beside an old buffalo head in a gallery at the Provincial Museum in Edmonton. Some visitors see the profile of a native face in its pitted, reddish-hued surface. When Stuart Steinhauer visits the museum, all he sees are the iron clamps around the rock. He wants them removed. Steinhauer, spokesman for Blue Quills First Nation College on the Saddle Lake reserve, says native people want the rock returned to its original landing place, a mound overlooking Iron Creek, near Hardisty, about 240 kilometres southeast of Edmonton. "It's a spiritual being, it's not a dead object," he says. The college regards the artifact as a vital aspect of its community life because Cree people traditionally travelled to pay homage to the rock. "It has a duty to help Cree people and other indigenous people with their entire livelihood," Steinhauer says. Narcisse Blood, chair of the Mookakin Foundation, which oversees the repatriation of sacred objects on the Blood reserve, supports the college's efforts.
"I'm glad there's an organization like Blue Quills," Blood says. If it gets the rock back, "it's good for everybody." Ron Mussieux, curator of geology at the Provincial Museum, thinks the asteroid fragment should remain at the museum. The meteorite, the third largest in Canada, is "probably the best meteorite in Canada to show its scientific features," Mussieux says. "I like to think there's other value to it besides the native, spiritual aspect." History shows that the spiritual aspect of the rock was paramount to Plains people.
"From a religious standpoint of the Cree people, it was very significant," says Hugh Dempsey, historian and author of Big Bear: The Man and His People. "They left offerings for it in hope of a good buffalo hunt." Lt.-Gen. Sir William F. Butler, a British officer commissioned to study the Canadian northwest, noted that "no tribe or portion of a tribe would pass in the vicinity without paying a visit to the great medicine" rock. "The old medicine men declared that its removal would lead to great misfortunes, and that war, disease and death of buffalo would afflict the tribes."
Despite the warnings, local missionaries loaded the rock onto the back of a cart and shipped it to a mission near Smoky Lake, about 135 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, in 1866. Dempsey says taking the rock would be akin to snatching the Declaration of Independence from Americans.
"There would be a tremendous sense of loss," says Dempsey. "They saw it as their protector of evils in the world." By 1886, the meteorite was being studied at Victoria University in Cobourg, Ont. It eventually landed in an obscure corner of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where it stayed until 1973, when it was returned to Alberta. All three evils did befall the native people occupying the land in and around where the rock had rested: In 1869, war between the Plains Cree and Blackfoot escalated, with more than 400 people dying; the ravages of smallpox claimed the lives of 3,500 native people the following year; and that winter, hundreds died of starvation when the buffalo failed to come north.
"The interesting thing is that the prediction did come true, which makes one wonder," Dempsey says. Steinhauer believes returning the rock to its original landing place will bring about an economic revival for native people.
"Imagine a strong, self-supporting Cree economy without welfare," said Steinhauer. "I think getting the rock back into the spiritual cycle, as long as it's in our hands operating with us, for us, it'll be a huge step forward." Although not as optimistic about what the rock could accomplish if returned, Gerry Conaty, senior curator of ethnology at the Glenbow Museum, said, "Basically, if sacred ceremonial objects can be used in ceremony, they should be returned." Conaty says the provincial First Nations Sacred Ceremonial Objects Repatriation Act passed in 2000 stipulates as much.
The Glenbow has already repatriated a number of sacred objects.
While the Provincial Museum has yet to repatriate any items, it has sacred bundles on long-term loan to Blackfoot communities, and has been consulting with First Nations about the rock since last fall, says Dr. Bruce McGillivray, museum director. "The elders are sharing with us their perspectives on the manitou stone's history, significance, and how best to care for it." Dempsey worries that with no individual owner, security may be an issue if the rock is returned to its original location. "It would be too much temptation," says Dempsey. "Collectors would likely steal it, break it up, and sell the parts." Conaty, who has negotiated the repatriation of numerous sacred artifacts, says he's never heard of any one of them being stolen or sold.
"These aren't normal things we're talking about," says Conaty. "People don't take these things on lightly." Steinhauer says the rock, although it doesn't belong to anyone, would be treated with the utmost respect by native people, because: "We belong to it."

kwalker@thejournal.canwest.com
http://www.canada.com/

AFGHANISTAN: Trade in anitquities is big business

26/05/2003 21:39:42 | Asia Pacific Programs The rebuiding of Afghanistan cuts across all areas of society. This week, the first repairs at the war-ravaged National Museum in the capital, Kabul, were finally completed, as part of an international effort to rebuild the museum. The majority of the museum's collection was stolen or looted during the Afghan civil war in the 1990's and the illegal trading and smuggling of antiques is continuing at a rapid rate. The Afghan Government and the United Nations says the illicit traffic of cultural items is big business and is worth more than the illegal drugs trade.

Transcript:

WILLIAMS: There were many many rockets that hit the summer palace and there were mines put out in different places as well. The summer palace was at the begining of the 19th century the Gerrman embassy and before that it was the Queen's palace.

LANNIN: Rebuilding the war damaged Babur's Gardens, a 16th century park in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Afghanistan's rich cultural heritage which includes Buddhist, Greek, Hindu, Persian, and Muslim periods, is at risk after years of war and the plundering of historical sites. The country's minister for information and culture, Sayed Makhdoom Raheen, has been at the forefront of efforts to crack down on the illicit trade in antiques, which he says is the most serious problem facing the country. Last month, a local official in central Logar province, who has been assisting the ministry in its efforts to stop the illegal business, was shot in the foot and kidnapped by antique smugglers. He was later released but is in fear for his life, as is the minister. Jim Williams, senior cultural specialist from UNESCO, the UN's cultural agency says criminal cartels are involved in the trade.

WILLIAMS: To say who it is is difficult. But the network involved is very organised and very widespread. The excavations itself are carried out by villagers who not employed but pushed into digging on a percentage basis of what they find

LANNIN: So do you have evidence that it is linked to the opium trade or is it the same kind of people involved in the opium trade are involved in the smuggling of cultural arifacts?

WILLIAMS: Its the same kind of people involved. To say that they are exactly the same is to say alot ..but its the same network and the foreigners invovled seem to be the same as well. I LANNIN: llegal excavations are unearthing historic sites before they are officially discovered, and AFghanistan lacks the resources to protect what is left. Last July, an ancient city was discovered in Logar, after smugglers were caught near the Pakistani border with 24 Buddhist relics. Most antiquities are taken to Pakistan and end up in antique shops or are sold to private collectors there or overseas. Nancy Hatch Dupree is one of the most well known cultural experts on Afghanistan and wrote the guidebook to the national museum in Kabul. She help set up the Society for the Protection of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage which buys back stolen artifacts.

DUPREE: They are very big and they are very heavy and you do not get these things through custom without a network knowing about it and those networks are paid off.

LANNIN: These networks are very well established in PAkistan?

DUPREE: Very well established and the Pakistani government knows it and they try every once in a while to do something about it. Then you know corruption and bribery goes all the way up to very high levels

LANNIN: Some of the worst looting took place at the National Museum during the Afghan civil war. 70 per cent of the Museum's vast collection, which covered early Buddhist art to modern artifacts , was looted or destroyed because of its isolated location in the war damaged suburb of Darul-aman. Nancy Hatch Dupree says some items are still on the market.

DUPREE: There's one piece which has been floating around here for four or five years ...which I'm lusting over, I want it very badly and I've seen it twice because they offered it to me for a million. It's a big piece with lots of figures in it. It comes from the museum, I''ve seen it I've examined it and I know its genuine. They wanted a million and I offered them 15 thousand. Well they laughed at me and dispapeared. Then they told me that it was going to go out of the country ... this is where your network starts ... to the Soviet Union and from the Soviet Union its going to go to Europe.

LANNIN: Afghanistan has appealed for the return of its antiquities and it's signing international agreements outlawing the trade in cultural items. Late last year, Japan, one of the major markets for Buddhist art, signed the UN Convention banning the illegal traffic of antiquities. Jim Williams from UNESCO says moral pressure may also work.

WILLIAMS: Legally there are instruments ..somethings could be taken back in that way. Now there are other ways as well ... simply by publishing and we are trying to do this now with ICOM a book on missing objects from Afghanistan. ICOM has done this recently for Cambodia and it's been very successful because when you publish a picture of the missing object with its exact description some collectors seeing they have a missing object will return it

LANNIN: But Nancy Hatch Dupree says the return of items by dealers or collectors is few and far between.

DUPREE: Every once in a while collectors decide that they want South American objects and then they decide they want South Asian objects. They are voracious so I put the blame on the collectors who have no sense.

Transcripts from programs "AM", "The World Today", "PM", the "7:30 Report" and "Lateline" are created by an independent transcription service. The ABC does not warrant the accuracy of the transcripts. ABC Online users are advised to listen to the audio provided on this page to verify the accuracy of the transcripts.


http://www.goasiapacific.com/

From: Michel van Rijn info@michelvanrijn.com
To: jhaas@butterfields.com
Copies to: President.obasanjo@nigeriagov.org

Subject: Looted Nok Terracotta in Bonham's sale

Bonhams & Butterfield

Ref: sale 7437E
Lotnumber 5001, Nok Terra Cotta Janus Head

Expert in charge: Mr. Jim Haas

Dear Mr. Haas
Your upcoming sale June 9 2003 includes a looted Nok terracotta from Nigeria. As the expert in charge you know of course that there are strict laws AGAINST dealing in looted and pillaged terracotta's from Nigeria. I just wondered how you rhyme this with your sale. I have also emailed the Nigerian President, his Excellency General Olusegun Aremu Okikiola Obasanjo, the international council of museums Icom and the Museum Security Network to bring this crime against the Nigerian people to their attention. (It™s extremely painful for the Nigerian people, as lot number 5001 comprises a looted sacred ancestor grave gift)
Michel van Rijn
Lot 5001 - Nok Terra Cotta Janus Head
Estimate: $1500 - $2000

Reality...
http://icom.museum/redlist/indexRedList.html
National and international legislation protecting these objects:   - Nigerian Prohibition Law on non-exportation of antiquities, Government decrees of 1974 and 1979 (National Commission for Museums and Monuments Decree N° 77, 1979).
UNESCO Convention of 1970 on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, ratified by Nigeria on 24 January 1972, in force on 24 April 1972.
http://icom.museum/redlist/english/page01.htm

On 12 May ICOM (International Council of Museums) released its Red List which catalogues African antiquities under imminent threat of looting or theft. The list was drawn up at the AFRICOM-sponsored Workshop on the Protection of the African Cultural Heritage held in Amsterdam in October 1997 and contains eight categories of material, three of which are exclusively Nigerian, and one partly so. That nearly 50 per cent of the Red List is comprised of Nigerian material is a timely reminder of the depredations which that country continues to suffer.
In recent times, the illicit trade in antiquities first began to worry Nigerians during the 1970s and as a result in 1972 Nigeria ratified the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. In 1977 the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) was established to implement the National Commission for Museums and Monuments Decree no. 77 which, among other things, forbids any person unauthorized by the NCMM to buy or sell antiquities (jegede 1996, 128-31). During the 1980s, however, the looting continued and museums were increasingly targeted. In 1987 nine objects were stolen from the National Museum at Jos. Things deteriorated still further during the 1990s when it is estimated that 429 objects were stolen from 33 museums or institutions nationwide (Adeseri 1999b). The Red List reveals that between April 1993 and November 1994, for instance, 40 objects were stolen from the Ife museum while a few years later staff at the Owe Museum were viciously attacked and one was killed. 13 statues were removed from the National Museum of Esie in 1993 and a further 21 in 1995.
http://www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/IARC/cwoc/issue6/Redalert.htm


IRAQ

From: P Boylan P.Boylan@city.ac.uk

Subject: UN SECURITY COUNCIL PROHIBITS ALL TRADE IN IRAQI CULTURAL PROPERTY ILLEGALLY REMOVED SINCE 1990

The UN Security Council Resolution 1483 which approved new post-war arrangements in Iraq (adopted by a 14-0 vote on 22 May 2003) imposes a world-wide ban on trade in or transfer of Iraqi cultural property illegally removed since 6 August 1990.

Clause 7 of the Resolution states that [the Security Council]:

"7. Decides that all Member States shall take appropriate steps to facilitate the safe return to Iraqi institutions of Iraqi cultural property and other items of archaeological, historical, cultural, rare scientific, and religious importance illegally removed from the Iraq National Museum, the National Library, and other locations in Iraq since the adoption of resolution 661 (1990) of 6 August 1990, including by establishing a prohibition on trade in or transfer of such items and items with respect to which reasonable suspicion exists that they have been illegally removed, and calls upon the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, Interpol, and other international organizations, as appropriate, to assist in the implementation of this paragraph;"

Clause 6 of the Resolution also calls for action to implement previous Security Council resolutions demanding the return of Kuwaiti cultural property, including the National Archives of Kuwait, illegally removed to Iraq in 1990.

The reference in clause 7 to ..."other locations in Iraq" is particularly important, since under the country's Antiquities Acts 1936 - 1975 all movable antiquities over 100 years old have legal protection wherever they are located within the country - not just those in museum collections. The law also provides for close regulation of exports, archaeological excavations and chance archaeological finds, and all newly discovered antiquities etc. have been the legal property of the State since the days of the British Mandate in the 1920s.

ANY antiquity discovered in, or removed without authority from, Iraq since shortly after the end of World War I are likely to be National property, and anything on the international art or antiquities market is likely to be clandestine and illegal. Consequently all transactions in such material since 6th August 1990 are likely to be affected by the new Security Council resolution, and subject to the Security Council's requirement, binding on all States, that such material be returned.

The full text of the 7 page Security Council resolution in .pdf format is now available on the UN web site at:
http://ods-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N03/368/53/PDF/N0336853.pdf?OpenElement
An English translation of the Antiquities Acts 1936-1975 can be downloaded from my "Heritage in Peril" section of Culture & Development on the World Bank-based Development Gateway at: http://developmentgateway.ord/download/181160/Iraq-Antiquities-Law.rtf/rtf

Patrick Boylan
(City University London)