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- Tape reveals brutal antiques robbery

- UNESCO to add Pompeii to special protected list

- QUERY: halon gas systems

- World Heritage News

- QUESTIONABLE COLLECTION MFA pre-Columbian exhibit faces acquisition queries

- Notification of theft - Historical Society of PA

- Statement Of United States Attorney Donald K. Stern and FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge Barry Mawn Regarding the Gardner Museum Stolen Art

- UN warns of new Pompeii calamity

- Gamble cost the Getty Trust $400m

- Park's Initiative Meaningless Without Montana's Agreement (Yellowstone National Park)

- Guatemala moving to reclaim art

- US says chips aren't from Rembrandts

Tape reveals brutal antiques robbery

BY SIMON DE BRUXELLES

A WOMAN found unconscious on the floor of her antiques and jewellery shop was told by doctors that she had suffered a brain haemorrhage. The true reason for her collapse emerged only after her son, who flew back from the United States to be at her bedside, viewed the film from the shop's security camera. She had been attacked and robbed. Joan Kiely, 59, from Plymouth, remembered nothing about the incident. Four days later, her son Declan, 29, an academic who works in America, decided to check the security video from the shop's closed-circuit television camera. Mr Kiely said he could see "a man come into the shop, get my mother's attention and then step forward and clobber her with some sort of cosh. There was no sound on the video but I could almost feel the explosive force with which he hit her. "Then he went behind the counter and you can see him taking various things. I was horrified. I could not believe my eyes and I had to watch it twice before I could take it in. My mother was born in that shop and it is lucky she did not die there." Mr Kiely was enjoying Thanksgiving with his American wife and her family in New Hampshire when he was told his mother was ill. His mother, who is divorced, was found unconscious by a watch repairer who had assumed that she had collapsed and hit her head against the wall. He called an ambulance but the police were not informed. Mrs Kiely is still recovering from her head injuries in hospital. Police are trying to find out what was stolen. Detective Constable Jerry Rogers said: "We are still working on enhancing the video and we hope to be able to release an image from it." The attacker is described as clean-shaven, white and of medium build, with dark hair.
Copyright 1997 The Times Newspapers Limited.

UNESCO to add Pompeii to special protected list

By Jude Webber

NAPLES, Italy, Dec 3 (Reuters) - The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO will announce on Thursday new sites to be added to its list of exceptional world treasures to guarantee them special protection for posterity, a spokeswoman said. One of the stars of the list of 46 candidates being studied by UNESCO's World Heritage Committee at a week-long meeting in the southern Italian city of Naples is the nearby ancient Roman site of Pompeii, destroyed by a volcanic eruption in AD 79. ``Pompeii is going to be chosen for sure,'' one UNESCO source told Reuters. Representatives from the 21 countries which belong to UNESCO's World Heritage Committee will hold a news conference on Thursday to announce which sites have been selected. The list of candidates includes the ancient Chinese city of Ping Yao, the fortified city of Carcassonne in southern France, the historic centre of Riga in Latvia and Lumbini in Nepal, which is hailed as the birthplace of Buddha. Barcelona's modernist Palau de la Musica Catalana concert hall, Morocco's eighth-century Medina of Tetouan and Britain's Greenwich Royal Observatory and park also being considered. Among natural sites put forward is Mount Kenya national park and the Sundarban Wildlife Sanctuaries in Bangladesh. Entry on the list of sites of ``outstanding universal value'' confers international protection under the 1972 World Heritage Convention, signed by 152 nations, said Minja Yang, director of information at UNESCO's World Heritage Centre. She said inclusion on the list would not necessarily guarantee any cash from UNESCO, as its $3.5 million annual World Heritage Fund contributed by the 152 convention signatories and voluntary donations goes primarily to Third World countries who lack the resources or knowhow to protect their jewels. But she added: ``(A listing) will act as a catalyst in terms of investment from the private sector and within (the site's) own national government.'' ``It is a recognition on the part of the national government of the priority it attaches to the site's protection...to pass it on to future generations,'' Yang said. The UNESCO list already includes 506 natural and cultural wonders such as the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty in the United States, Axum in Ethiopia, the Acropolis in Greece, the Taj Mahal in India, Cambodia's Angkor temple complex, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and Cuba's capital city, Havana. It also names the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima and Auschwitz. ``It isn't just pretty sites as such, they have to be a memorial of humanity,'' Yang said. Candidates are nominated by their national governments. ``For a site to be included on the World Heritage List, it isn't good enough for it just to be fantastic,'' she said. ``There has to be a proper management plan and legal protection.'' The UNESCO source said 44 of the 46 candidate sites had been recommended by an inner working group before the World Heritage Committee meeting met to give its final say. The archaeological area and monuments of Bagan in Burma, consisting of nearly 3,000 temples, monasteries and tombs dating from the 11th century was not recommended due to the lack of laws and a management plan, the source said. The status of Kenya's Sibiloi National Park, which contains the Turkana Basin where the fossilised remains of homo sapiens were found, was unclear. The meeting, which began on Monday and ends on Saturday, has also been discussing listed sites deemed to be ``in danger'' -- including Jerusalem's Old City and the Yellowstone and Everglades parks in the United States -- and what can be done.

Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited

Date sent: Wed, 03 Dec 1997 22:37:50 -0600
To: securma@museum-security.org
From: Scott Field scott@parkives.com
Subject:

halon gas systems

Please help!!

I am a restoration architect working on a museum, and I'm having a hard time finding information concerning halon gas fire suppression systems. The museum in question installed an expensive Halon system in an isolated part of their basement storage, about 10 years ago. I hear that Halon today is not a preferred option, because of possible environment concerns and it's inherent danger to building occupants if they are trapped in any Halon-supplied room when it goes off.
My specific questions are:

1. What are the environmental concerns for Halon?
2. What are the solutions for those concerns?
3. Is it true that Halon's availability for this purpose is being phased out?

Any additional info would greatly help!
sincerely,
Scott Field, AIA/ Parkinson Field Associates, Austin, TX

From: owner-whnews@unesco.org
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 18:12:00 +0100

World Heritage News -- WHNEWS 14.12 (3 December 1997)
Sender: owner-whnews@unesco.org
Precedence: bulk

News:

* WORLD HERITAGE COMMITTEE INSCRIBES 3 NEW SITES ON LIST OF WORLD HERITAGE IN DANGER
* GROUNDBREAKING SURVEY OF THE PEKING MAN SITE HOLDS PROMISE OF NEW DISCOVERIES
* WORKSHOP / CONFERENCE : THE LHASA VALLEY TIBET AUTONOMOUS REGION, CHINA : HISTORY, CONSERVATION & FUTURE
Announcements:
* WORLD HERITAGE WEB PAGES FOR NAPLES MEETING
* NEW BOOK: HERITAGE HABITAT, A SOURCE BOOK FOR THE URBAN CONSERVATION MOVEMENT IN ASIA AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC

For the latest information on World Heritage, consult the UNESCO World Heritage Centre WWW pages at http://www.unesco.org/whc/welcome.htm.

From: W_Robinson@globe.com
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 16:30:27 -0500
Subject: one more time

QUESTIONABLE COLLECTION

MFA pre-Columbian exhibit faces acquisition queries

By John Yemma and Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff, 12/04/97

YAXHA, Guatemala - A thousand or more years ago in the jungles of central America, Mayan inhabitants of cities such as Yaxha buried their revered leaders within massive pyramids, adorning the bodies with precious jade and placing prized polychrome pottery beside them. Starting tomorrow, the public can see fine Mayan jade, pottery and burial urns in a new permanent exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts - a collection that has provoked scorn among some archeologists, protests from government officials in Central America and ethical questions about the museum's acquisition policies. Many of the pre-Columbian objects, a gift of MFA trustee Landon T. Clay, came to Boston after having been looted from graves and illegally exported, according to Guatemalan officials and archeologists who specialize in Mayan objects. ''They are pages ripped out of the history book of our nation,'' Guatemala's vice minister of culture, Carlos Enrique Zea Flores, said recently as he showed a Globe reporter archeological sites in remote parts of northern Guatemala that have been targeted repeatedly by looters. The Mayan artifacts are not the only controversial items in the exhibition. A companion gallery of ancient African art includes two terra cotta figures from the west African country of Mali loaned to the MFA by William E. Teel, a member of the museum's board of overseers. Archeologists say these figures, which are estimated to be between 400-700 years old, came from the area around Djenne, which has been extensively looted, sometimes by entire villages hired by intermediaries for antiquities dealers in Belgium and France. At least since 1969, Mali has banned the export of such items. Susan K. McIntosh, a Rice University anthropologist and expert in Mali archeology, said after seeing a photo of one of the terra cotta figures, a ram or pregnant ewe, that its implications are ''devastating.'' That is because, she said, it is in a style unknown to archeologists, and therefore likely to have been looted from a recently excavated site unknown to scholars. Malcolm Rogers, director of the MFA, said that Teel would not disclose- even to the museum - how and when he obtained the figures. Rogers added that he had ''no qualms'' about exhibiting them or other pieces in the gallery. He also insisted that the MFA, through ''lavish due diligence,'' was content that it had acquired all of the Mayan items legally and ethically almost a decade ago. Archeologists are unsure of the exact site from which the Mayan objects were exhumed, though several suggested they bear the markings of the Tintal or Nakbe complexes in Guatemala's Mirador River basin, where heavy looting has occurred. Stripped to its basics, this is a dispute between archeologists, who abhor the removal of ancient artifacts, and museums, which have trucked them home with impunity for centuries. But the debate in recent years has shifted onto a different stage: Its new players include developing countries seeking to protect their patrimony, strict new laws and international conventions designed to prevent the widespread looting that has plagued countries like Guatemala and Mali, and activist archeologists willing to help developing countries locate looted items. So extensive has the grave robbery in Guatemala and Mali been in recent years that the United States enacted emergency import restrictions on antiquities from those two countries - for Guatemala in 1989 and Mali in 1993. Mali's emergency declaration was directly related to the plundering of terra cotta figures from the Djenne area. ''The museum is opening a new gallery to present material that was so heavily looted that the US government had to step in. What does that say?'' asked Ricardo Elia, an archeologist at Boston University. Elia, among others, believes there is mutual benefit for wealthy collectors and museums, on the one hand, and the looters who funnel objects to them. MFA officials said they are confident the pieces from Guatemala, which Clay donated in 1988, entered the United States before the import restrictions took effect and before a 1983 law that bound the United States to the provisions of a 1970 UNESCO convention aimed at stopping the international trafficking in looted artifacts. However, the museum rejected a Globe request to review import documents on the Guatemalan and Malian items and either would not or could not provide specific information about ownership of the pieces before they came into the United States. Moreover, museum correspondence obtained by the Globe suggests that the MFA's lawyers disregarded Guatemalan law and the MFA subsequently misrepresented some facts in rejecting a Guatemalan demand that it return the Mayan objects. For instance, Weld S. Henshaw, of Choate, Hall & Stewart, the MFA's longtime attorney who conducted a 1987 legal inquiry before Clay's donation was accepted, admitted this week that he had been unaware of a 1947 Guatemala law prohibiting the export of such artifacts without a permit. Yesterday, however, Henshaw said that he was aware in 1987 of another Guatemalan law requiring export permits, and that the artifacts were exported without a permit. He said he made a judgment that the MFA was entitled to accept them because the Guatemalan government had up until then raised no objection to their being in the United States. Guatemalan officials, preoccupied at the time with a civil war, have said that they were unaware then that the collection was even in the United States. Asked whether his second explanation was more damning than his first recollection, Henshaw said: ''Maybe it's more damning, but it's correct.'' With pre-Columbian art fetching record prices at auction houses like Sotheby's - one gold piece sold there last week for $563,500 - the incentive to continue plundering the ancient world's monuments and burial grounds remains strong, say experts familiar with the widespread looting that goes on, almost with impunity, in developing countries.

Underzealous checking

In an interview last week, Brent Benjamin, the MFA's deputy director for curatorial affairs who is overseeing the exhibition, acknowledged that museum acquisition of such items ''is potentially a contributing factor'' in the looting. The MFA, by most estimates, is not alone in underzealously checking the origin of some of the antiquities that it claims to have acquired legally. Amid the current competition for antiquities, some other museums ask virtually no questions of benefactors. Still others, including Harvard's museums, are so concerned about the questionable backgrounds of many pieces that they rarely entertain any offer from prospective donors. Nor is the issue of Clay's 1988 bequest, known in the antiquities trade as the ''November Collection,'' a new one. Until now, however, it has been played out privately - in 1989 correspondence from Boston University archeologist Clemency Chase Coggins expressing concern that Clay's gift was tainted; and in former MFA director Alan Shestack's written assurances, to her and to the Guatemalan government, that the museum, Clay and the previous owner of the artifacts, John B. Fulling, had acted honorably and lawfully. In a May 25, 1989, letter, for instance, Shestack assured Coggins that the collection was not ''exported from its country of origin or anyplace else in violation of that country's laws.'' Nor, he said, had it come from any ''recent'' destruction of any archeological site. Shestack's assurances were drawn from Henshaw's 1987 research. But Henshaw said yesterday that he was aware at the time that Guatemalan law expressly forbade the export of archeological artifacts without a permit. In addition, Fulling acknowledged that he never obtained export permits. In defending the Clay acquisition, Shestack wrote that Choate, Hall & Stewart had employed the International Foundation for Art Research, a clearinghouse for stolen art reports, to see if the items had been reported as looted. ''This resulted in a completely clear record,'' Shestack wrote Coggins. In his letter to Marta Regina de Fahsen, Guatemala's vice minister of culture in 1990, Shestack said, ''The IFAR search was entirely negative.'' But Constance Lowenthal, IFAR's director, said recently that IFAR registers only objects that can be specifically identified. Archeological treasures that come out of the ground seldom fit that category, she said, unless a dealer or collector has reported them stolen. ''You cannot describe what you never saw,'' said Lowenthal. She said it was inappropriate for the MFA to suggest that a simple records check by IFAR would make the acquisition legally defensible. Shestack, who left the MFA in 1994 and is now deputy director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, said through a family member that he would not discuss the issue. Clay, through the museum, said he would have no comment. Fulling said he bought the artifacts from Guatemalan dealers in the 1970s, and had no idea how recently they had been excavated. He said he ceased importing the items ''some years ago'' when the US Customs Service asked him to stop, apparently, he said, after complaints from Guatemalan authorities. Under Guatemalan law both then and now, archeological items exported without a permit automatically become Guatemalan government property. And US courts, most recently in a 1993 case in which Guatemala recovered looted Mayan items, have sometimes ruled that a national patrimony law like Guatemala's can trigger the use of a US criminal statute, the National Stolen Property Act. Henshaw, while acknowledging that his 1987 review was ''probably not perfect,'' asserted that Guatemala's failure to file any claim at all except for a single 1989 letter leaves the museum on firm legal and ethical ground in claiming the collection. Guatemalan officials, however, said they were unaware of the contents of the November collection until seeing a list in 1988 at the time of the museum's accession. ''I didn't know anything about it,'' said de Fahsen, the Guatemalan cultural affairs official. ''But when they wrote down where they belonged - from the Peten in Guatemala - that was the moment I knew I could do something.'' De Fahsen said after Shestack rebuffed her request for the pieces she forwarded the matter to her foreign ministry. Political instability prevented further followup, she said. ''It's a complicated situation,'' Benjamin said of Clay's gift. ''You've got a very valuable trustee, a generous trustee who's given works of art and financial support to the museum for a very long period of time.'' At the same time, he added, these sorts of antiquities ''are notorious for having been robbed from graves, for having been stolen and all that kind of stuff.'' Benjamin acknowledged that the museum might not make the same decision about accepting such pieces today, saying ''the standard for these things changes.''

History lost forever

Items from both the Clay and Teel collections have been shown before - in small exhibit areas of the museum and in exhibits at museums in other cities. This, however, is the first time that they have been organized into a permanent gallery, which includes African, pre-Columbian and Oceanic art. In addition to the two terra cotta figures from Mali, Teel has also loaned valuable Nigerian artifacts, some up to 2,500 years old. Nigeria has also experienced widespread looting; even its museums have been pillaged because of civil strife. McIntosh, the Rice University anthropologist and member of a presidential committee on cultural property, said dealers sometimes pay to equip entire villages in Mali with pickaxes and shovels to destroy burial sites in search of a few valuable items. McIntosh led one archeological excavation near Djenne in 1981 that produced significant findings that the area had been settled about 200 B.C. and urbanized by 500 A.D. But with the dramatic increase in the looting of other sites over the last two decades, she said, ''there is no chance for understanding how these objects functioned in ancient societies. When you see an entire grave, undisturbed, all the people with their possessions in context, you understand who the person was who owned these objects. You can really tell the story of humanity only through this kind of information, seen in context.'' But with countless archeological sites looted, she said, ''So much of this history of this part of West Africa will be lost forever.'' Coggins, the BU archeologist and Mayan specialist, made much the same point about Clay's collection: ''Every single object in there represents incalculable loss to our knowledge of the Mayans. Without the context in which the pieces were found they are useless. They are just a monument to the ego of the collector and the museum. It is nothing else. It is just a disastrous loss.'' ''They are important to our identity'' Looting goes back as far as civilization. All empires have plundered the treasures of weak nations. What is different today is that developing nations are beginning to make serious efforts to recover their cultural patrimony. The government of Guatemala, for example, plans to dispatch an envoy as early as next week to examine the MFA exhibition, much of which will bear museum labels noting their origin in Guatemala. Zea Flores, the Guatemalan cultural official, said his country intends to seek the return of the objects. Preoccupied with economic and civil crises until recently, nations like Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico have been monitoring auctions and museum exhibits in North America and Europe, often with the aid of sympathetic archeologists. The minister of culture of Honduras, Rodolfo Pastor, has been pressing Harvard for the return of an object known as the Peccary Skull, a pig skull etched with fine Mayan images that was unearthed in the Honduran city of Copan late in the 19th century. The piece was brought to Harvard with the permission of the Honduran government at the time. ''One hundred years ago we didn't know the value of these things,'' Pastor said. ''But now they are important to our identity and culture.'' However, MFA officials a decade ago and today contend that whatever the provenance of these ancient artifacts, they are safer in the museums of North America and Europe than in Guatemala and Mali. In his 1990 letter rejecting Guatemala's claim to the November Collection, Shestack noted that ''Boston is a major cultural center of the United States'' and ''the collection is in a place of honor and safety where, over time, it can provide the public with tangible evidence of the great beauty of Mayan art and an appreciation of the extraordinary high level of Mayan civilization of so many years ago.'' Even some of archeologists critical of the MFA - Coggins included - agree that Guatemala, which is still recovering from a 36-year civil war that long hobbled its efforts to protect, much less recover, its cultural artifacts, is ill-equipped to safeguard its treasures. This is obvious from a tour of the National Museum of Archeology in Guatemala City, which has a tiny staff and is poorly policed. But that is not the point, say Pastor and Zea Flores. Both say that it is up to Guatemala to deal with such problems, not the MFA. ''Regarding the argument that things are better off in a place of honor in Boston, it is worse than chauvinistic, it is condescending,'' said Pastor. ''It supposes that being in Boston honors us and honors ancient art. Why should that be such an honor?'' Yemma reported from Guatemala and Robinson from Boston.

This article and related links are available on Globe Online at http://www.boston.com. The keywords are looted art.
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 12/04/97.

SIDEBAR:

IN THE UNDERWORLD OF THE LOOTERS, A GROWING VIOLENCE

YAXHA, Guatemala - Two months ago, a murderous band of looters slipped through the dense jungle that surrounds this abandoned Mayan city and removed a massive stone monument from its 1,500-year-old resting place at the base of a sacred pyramid. Using a small tree, the bandits levered the monument into a pickup truck and made off with it, leaving behind the bullet-riddled body of a confederate - shot to death in an apparent falling out among thieves. Last year, an armed raiding party held up Yaxha workers and robbed them of eight polychrome pots. ''You can see how violent they are,'' said Wolfgang Wurster, a German archeologist who has been working at the Yaxha dig. ''The looters assaulted an ongoing excavation. This is unheard of.'' Operating in the same underworld as drug traffickers and gun-runners, looters are a plague on the Mayan sites in Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and Belize as well as in Africa, Southeast Asia and other parts of the developing world. ''These people are the mafia,'' said Guatemala's vice minister for culture, Carlos Enrique Zea Flores, as he examined the site of the missing monument at Yaxha late last month. Archeologists describe jungle ruins throughout the Mayan region that are scarred with looters' trenches, riddled with hastily dug holes and strewn with the shards of discarded pottery. ''The scale of the plundering would amaze you,'' said Richard Hansen, a UCLA researcher who has been documenting the looting in Guatemala's Mirador River basin. ''It is a hard-core, mafia-style operation. Tons of this stuff get smuggled out to Europe every year.'' The most sought-after pieces are codex-style ceramics, such as the pots on display in the new ancient Americas gallery of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, said Hansen. Looters might get $200 to $500 for a single vessel; collectors will pay more than $100,000 for such pieces. This, he says, makes the illegal traffic in Mayan treasures a $10 million-a-month business. As with drug money, looters' money fuels corruption - bribes to police, government officials and customs agents. Even some archeologists are known to be involved in looting operations. The Honduras minister of culture, Rodolfo Pastor, said he and Zea know of at least one archeologist who regularly smuggles items out of the country; so far they have failed to stop him. Most of the pieces that leave, however, are the product of rings of locals working for warlords who also may be marijuana growers, noted Ian Graham, an archeologist with Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. Graham, who has been working in Guatemala's Peten region since 1957, said the threat of violence from looters is a growing danger to archeologists. Looting of archeological sites is directly driven by the demand for these artifacts by collectors in the United States, Europe and Japan, according to an official with the United Nations agency in charge of protecting the world's cultural heritage. ''The price of these pieces keeps rising, and the amount of damage from these sites is increasing all the time,'' said Lyndel Prott of the cultural property division of UNESCO in Paris. ''It is difficult to believe there is no connection.'' Prott describes how antiquities dealers follow a code of confidentiality that makes it impossible to trace pieces back to suppliers. In this country, importation of looted treasures is prohibited under a 1983 federal law that obligates the United States to a UNESCO convention. Most items that eventually make it to the United States are either smuggled in or routed first to nations such as Britain that do not recognize the UNESCO convention. By now, the 1,500-year-old Yaxha monument to the priest-kings who ruled the Mayan jungles almost certainly has been sliced into pieces and sold to antiquities dealers. Soon it may be acquired by a connoiseur, who in turn may one day donate it to a museum - and get a federal tax deduction for doing so.

JOHN YEMMA

This story ran on page A28 of the Boston Globe on 12/04/97.
NOTE: For those of you with access to the Internet, you can check out the article, along with photos and related links, at http://www.boston.com. Enter the keywords: "looted art" in the box at the top of the homepage.

From: Kfrohli690@aol.com
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 09:53:59 -0500 (EST)
To: securma@museum-security.org
Subject:

Notification of theft - Historical Society of PA

Following is the official press release regarding the theft. Please feel free to contact me for more information. Photographs are available in .jpg or hard copy format for four of the five items. ---- "The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Philadelphia Police Department are requesting the assistance of the public in locating five artifacts missing from The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA.

Three Civil War ceremonial swords with their scabbards, a circa 1812 sword and scabbard and flintlock rifle dating from about 1780 were discovered missing from the collection on November 4, 19997. During an inventory check of a locked storage area in the building, staff noticed that these pieces had been removed. Four of the items had recently been displayed in the Historical Society's exhibition "Finding Philadelphia's Past: Visions and Revisions." This exhibition closed in July of this year.

The items discovered missing are the ceremonial swords and scabbards presented to Major General David Bell Birney of the Tenth Army Corps, Major General George Gordon Meade and Major General Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, all Union officers. The circa 1812 sword belonged to Isaac D. Barnard, a major with the 14th Infantry during the War of 1812. The long barreled rifle was manufactured by Isaac Haines of Lancaster, PA. It is estimated that these five missing pieces are valued at a total of approximately $600,000.

The Historical Society is offering a reward for the recovery of the items. Anyone having information regarding these artifacts is requested to call 215-732-6200 ext. 235. A description of the artifacts follows.

Presentation Sword and Scabbard of Major General David Bell Birney of the Tenth Army Corps
Date: 1862
Photograph/s: available
Description: A highly decorated sword and scabbard. Its handle has a cast knuckle bow with floral design. Main inscription on scabbard: "Gen. D.B. Birney / October, 1862 / From his Fellow Citizens of / Philadelphia." "DBB" in script on counter guard. Other inscriptions include "Bailey & Co/PHILAD" on the blade near the hilt and "E PLURIBUS UNUM" on the blade. It is made of steel, gold, silver, silver gilt, enamel, diamonds, amethysts. The sword is 40 3/4"and the scabbard is 35 3/8". Publications: Bazelon, Bruce S., ed. Swords from Public Collections in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: With New Information Regarding Swordmakers of the Philadelphia Area. Lincoln, RI: Mowbray, 1987, p.37.
Presentation Sword and Scabbard of General George Gordon Meade
Date: 1864
Photograph/s: available
Description: A highly decorated sword and scabbard made of steel, gold, silver, silver gilt, enamel, diamonds, amethysts. The main inscription says,"THE CITY / OF PHILADELPHIA / TO / MAJOR GENERAL/ Geo. G. Meade / February 22nd / 1864." Other engraving on the sword are depictions of pole arms, flags, floral designs and a Civil War battle scene, "E. Pluribus Unum," "W / CLAUBERG / SOLINGEN"; "In grateful / Acknowledgment / of the deliverance of / Pennsylvania from / Rebel invasion by the / matchless valor of / the Army which helped [or held] / to signal victory on / the memorable field / of / Gettysburg / July 3rd 1863" Counter guard on sword is decorated with 30 diamonds (or rhinestones) to form two stars and the letter "M" on a blue enamel shield. Other designs include an eagle clutching a snake, flags, wreaths, swords and pole arms. The length of the sword is 41" and the scabbard is 35 1/8th".
Presentation Sword and Scabbard of Major General Andrew Atkinson Humphreys
Date: 1861-1865
Photograph/s: available
Description: Decorated sword and scabbard with three dimensional eagle figure on the pommel, mother of pearl grip. The main inscription reads:"Presented to / Major General / A. A. Humphreys U.S.A. / by his fellow citizens of Philadelphia / 1865." Additional inscriptions read: "W / CLAUBERG / SOLINGEN" "IRON : PROOF" "E PLURIBUS UNUM" Also listed on the scabbard are many of the battles that Humphreys fought in beginning with "Yorktown, / April 5th to May 4th 1862" and ending with " The Surrender of Lee / April 9, 1865." The sword measures 40" and the scabbard is 33 1/2" Publications: Bazelon, Bruce S., ed. Swords from Public Collections in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: With New Information Regarding Swordmakers of the Philadelphia Area. Lincoln, RI: Mowbray, 1987, p.39.
Circa 1812 Sword and Scabbard
Date: circa 1812
Photograph: none available
Description: A sword made of steel, brass, leather and brass wire. It is inscribed as follows: "Isaac D. Barnard / Major, 14th INFANTRY U.S.A. WAR 1812. / SENATOR U.S. 1827 / Presented to the PA Historical Society by his grand nephew / William P. Sharpless." It has military items, floral and leaf designs on both sides of the blade. The sword measures 40" and the scabbard 35 1/2".
Long Rifle
Date: c. 1780
Photograph/s: available
Description: a rifle with flint lock, decorative brass mountings, and full stock of curly maple wood. Bas-relief designs are carved throughout the wood surface. Engraved on the rifle are "JH" and "Lue." It measures 59 1/3 inches total length

Any information you may be able to provide leading to the recovery of these items would be greatly appreciated. All assistance and information no matter how seemingly insignificant is important to our efforts to recover these stolen historic objects. If you have such information, or if someone attempts to sell any of these items to you, please notify immediately:

Kristen Froehlich
Artifact Collections Manager
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
1300 Locust Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 732-6200, ext. 235"

(US-ATTORNEY'S-OFFICE)

Statement Of United States Attorney Donald K. Stern and FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge Barry Mawn Regarding the Gardner Museum Stolen Art

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 4, 1997-- For several months now, it has been widely reported that certain individuals claim that they can broker the return of the art stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 18, 1990. We have made clear that there have been no substantive discussions concerning so called "conditions" or "demands" and there would be none, unless and until specific and concrete evidence was presented which demonstrates that those claims are legitimate. Since that time, we have been provided with photographs and paint chips which purport to be photographs and paint chips of two Rembrandt paintings stolen from the Museum. The production of these items was also widely reported. The FBI and the Gardner Museum have reviewed these materials. That review leads to the conclusion that the photographs were not taken of the stolen art, but rather are photographs of photographs or of a print. Furthermore, the paint chips are significantly different from known paint chips of the Rembrandts stolen from the Museum. In sum, both the photographs and paint chips are not what they purport to be. The U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI will continue to pursue any information concerning the theft or the location of the stolen art. The investigation is active and continuing. The Gardner's analysis of the photographs was conducted by the Gardner's Chief Conservator, Barbara Mangum. The Gardner's analysis of the paint chips was conducted by Susan Buck, Principal of Historic Paint Services, and Eugene Farrell, Senior Conservation Scientist at the Straus Center for Conservation at Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum, under the supervision of the Gardner's Chief Conservator Barbara Mangum.
CONTACT: U.S. Attorney's Office Amy Rindskopf, 617/223-9445

UN warns of new Pompeii calamity

FROM RICHARD OWEN IN ROME

The saved sites
BRITISH and Italian archaeologists yesterday welcomed a decision by Unesco to make Pompeii a World Heritage site as "the last chance to rescue Pompeii from complete disintegration". A Unesco meeting in Naples added ten Italian archaeological and artistic attractions to its list of 500 specially protected "World Heritage" sites, including Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Greek Temples at Agrigento. The listing does not bring extra cash to the sites, but draws world attention to their plight. Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, director of the British School at Rome, who heads the team of British archaeologists at Pompeii, in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, said the move showed that Unesco and the Italian Government had at last "recognised the gravity of crisis at Pompeii" and the need for international collaboration to save it. He said the ruins had suffered from "years of accumulated neglect". "Pompeii was perfectly preserved when it was first discovered under a layer of ash in 1748," he said. "But exposure to the elements, faulty restoration methods, vandalism and mismanagement have all done damage. It should be on Unesco's list of sites in peril as well. In 50 years, Pompeii will consist of piles of rubble and woodland." Pompeii was buried in a 20ft deep covering of volcanic ash in AD79, when Mount Vesuvius erupted. Two thousand of its 20,000 inhabitants (many had already fled as Vesuvius rumbled) perished while trying to escape and many of the bodies were perfectly preserved where they fell. The buried houses, shops and taverns remained just as they had been until 18th-century excavations began to bring to light the streets, household goods, wall paintings, wine jars, amorous graffiti and political slogans of a bustling 1st-century Roman coastal town frozen in time. "Pompeii is dying a slow but sure death," said Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, the Superintendent of Archaeology at Pompeii, who was won praise for his efficency and honesty since his appointment last year. "If we leave things as they are, Pompeii will be gone in 30 or 40 years. There will be nothing for our grandchildren to see." Some of Pompeii's problems are due to the influence of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia and although there are 150 guards on the payroll, looting is rife. Frescoes were hacked out of the House of the Gladiators in 1977, since when at least another 600 items have disappeared. But the main problem is the sheer number of visitors. Two million tourists a year flock to Pompeii, with lax supervision. Mosaic floors are being ruined not only by weeds which grow unchecked in the cracks, but also by being trampled underfoot. Wall frescoes, such as the celebrated erotic paintings in the House of the Vettii, are fast being eroded through handling by visitors, rain and rising damp, direct sunlight, and well-meant but counter-productive attempts in the past to clean them with a petrol and wax mixture. Professor Wallace-Hadrill says much of what has been excavated has still not been published, and could be "brought to peoples homes through computer technology". "For that matter we could reconstruct a kind of Disneyland Pompeii for tourists, to save the real thing," he said. Walter Veltroni, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture, has introduced a new law giving the Pompeii administration greater autonomy and allowing it to keep and spend its tickets sales, which bring in �6 million a year. But Professor Guzzo said Pompeii needed at least �200 million for a rescue effort, "�40 million more than the entire Ministry of Culture budget for museums and archaeological sites".

The saved sites

On the new Unesco list were Sardinia's nuraghi, mortarless, conical stone fortress-houses from the second millennium BC; ancient Roman hunting lodges with mosaic floors near Enna, Sicily; and the 18th-century royal palace in Caserta. Sites elsewhere in the world included China's ancient cities of Lijiang and Ping Yao and the classical gardens of Suzho; St Peter of the Rock, a fortress castle in Santiago de Cuba; the historic hearts of Tallinn in Estonia, and Riga in Latvia; and Lumbini, Nepal, the birthplace of Buddha.
Copyright 1997 The Times Newspapers Limited.

Gamble cost the Getty Trust $400m

FROM GILES WHITTELL IN LOS ANGELES

ONE of the world's richest art endowments, the Getty Trust, has admitted losing nearly $400 million (�240 million) in a single year because of a bad guess on the way the stock market would go. Fearing a market plunge in the 1995-96 financial year, the fund's trustees invested heavily in complex stock-index options designed to pay off if share prices fell. When they roared ahead instead, the defence mechanism cost the trust $397.2 million. The revelation of this backfire in over-cautious investment tactics comes days before the opening of a vast new $1 billion Getty museum and art institute on nearly 600 acres overlooking Los Angeles. The new Getty Centre's original budget of $360 million has ballooned over the ten years it has taken to design and build. Combined with costly recent art-buying sprees and the investment losses announced in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, the huge construction project has eroded the trust's image of having limitless wealth. Founded with the $1.2 billion oil fortune left by J. Paul Getty on his death in 1976, the trust rode out successive bull markets in the 1980s and early 1990s to stand at over $4 billion by mid-1995. Then John Whitehead, a trustee and former investment banker, advised "hedging" against a market crash. The strategy was implemented by three Wall Street banks including one, Goldman Sachs and Co, at which Mr Whitehead had been co-chairman. When it failed it cost the trust a dollar for every dollar its portfolio gained during the 1995-96 market surge. Mr Whitehead this week defended his tactics, likening them to buying a life insurance policy without actually wanting to die. But, when one of his successors was asked if such a tactic would be tried again, he said: "Not in my lifetime."
Copyright 1997 The Times Newspapers Limited.

From: MediaNPCA MediaNPCA@aol.com
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 17:05:06 EST
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 5, 1997
CONTACT: Jerome Uher, (202) 223-6722, ext. 122 or Mark Peterson, (970) 493-2545

PARK WATCHDOG QUESTIONS YELLOWSTONE ANNOUNCEMENT OF BISON POLICY

Park's Initiative Meaningless Without Montana's Agreement

Washington, D.C. -- Yellowstone National Park's strategy for managing its bison herd this winter will do little to prevent the intentional slaughter of the animals, says the nation's largest park advocacy group. Yellowstone Superintendent Michael Finley today announced the park's decision on animal management under the Interim Bison Management Plan for this winter. Finley announced measures aimed �to reduce the number of bison that are killed,� but the National Parks and Conservation Association warned that a repeat of last year's slaughter depends more on Montana's plans than on measures the park takes on its own. �The State of Montana can still shoot any bison that leave Yellowstone, no matter what the Park Service does,� said Mark Peterson, NPCA Rocky Mountain Regional Director. �The federal agencies involved have reached a consensus on how they would like to manage the herd, but there is still no agreement with state officials. There's no indication Montana won�t go right ahead with the zero tolerance policy that wiped out nearly 1,100 bison last year.� Montana has defended its policy toward Yellowstone's bison by claiming that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) would sanction Montana's cattle industry if bison were allowed in the state. Some Yellowstone bison, as well as elk and other wildlife, carry brucellosis, a bacterial disease that can cause cattle to abort. APHIS has determined that Yellowstone's intentions to allow untested low-risk bison on public lands in the West Yellowstone area this winter will not jeopardize Montana's brucellosis class-free status. However, Montana may still object to Yellowstone's plan, claiming that other states may refuse Montana cattle over brucellosis fears. �The bison kill problem will not be solved until suitable public lands outside the park are found where bison can graze without being shot,� said Peterson. NPCA has endorsed a land exchange deal being negotiated by the U.S. Forest Service and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation with the Royal Teton Ranch, a prime migration corridor just outside the north entrance to Yellowstone.. The exchange would provide a route for bison leaving the park to reach safe grazing lands. The National Parks and Conservation Association (NPCA) is America's only private nonprofit citizen organization dedicated solely to protecting, preserving, and enhancing the U.S. National Park System. An association of "Citizens Protecting America's Parks," NPCA was founded in 1919 and today has nearly 500,000 members. A library of national park information, including fact sheets, congressional testimony, position statements, press releases and media alerts, can be found on NPCA's World Wide Web site at http://www.npca.org

Guatemala moving to reclaim art

US financing emissary's visit to MFA to probe new pre-Columbian collection

By Walter V. Robinson and John Yemma, Globe Staff, Globe Correspondent, 12/05/97

Guatemala's impoverished government said yesterday it will begin efforts to reclaim Mayan antiquities that are the centerpiece of a major new exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with a visit tomorrow by a Guatemalan emissary that will be paid for by the US government. A day after the Globe reported that the MFA's lawyer disregarded evidence that many of the items were illegally exported from Guatemala, art law specialists criticized the museum for not doing a more thorough review before accepting a pre-Columbian collection from Landon T. Clay, an MFA director. ''Even a routine inquiry should have included a check with experts in the field of pre-Columbian art and with the country, Guatemala, where the objects originated,'' Lloyd P. Goldenberg, one of those specialists, said. ''If the MFA or its counsel had taken those reasonable steps, undoubtedly red flags would have been raised.'' The exhibit of African, Oceanic and pre-Columbian art, including more than 100 Mayan treasures, opens today. MFA director Malcolm Rogers said yesterday that he remains confident that all of the pre-Columbian objects are legally in the United States, though he refused to address specific questions about their acquisition. At a briefing yesterday, Rogers said all of the museum-owned objects ''are legal and appropriate for ownership and display in this country.'' He also said all the pre-Columbian pieces entered the United States before a 1983 law intended to stop the trafficking of looted artifacts. In Guatemala City, the US Embassy's cultural affairs officer, Alberto Fernandez, said the United States Information Agency was offering its full support to Guatemala in its investigation. Last spring, the USIA organized and funded a symposium in Antigua on the subject of stolen Mayan relics. Rogers, meanwhile, again refused to comment on how and when five African antiquities, on loan from William E. Teel, a member of the museum's board of the overseers, left Mali and Nigeria and arrived in this country. Specialists in Malian archeology have said that two of the figures, from the Djenne area of Mali, were almost certainly looted from gravesites. The Globe reported yesterday that Weld S. Henshaw, an attorney at Choate, Hall & Stewart who represents the museum, admitted that he was aware of, but disregarded, Guatemalan laws restricting exports of archeological artifacts when he did a 1987 legal review of Clay's proposed donation. The Mayan antiquities were purchased in Guatemala by collector John B. Fulling. When Clay proposed buying the collection and donating it to the MFA, the museum made the donation conditional on what Rogers called Henshaw's ''lavish'' inquiry. But although Henshaw's client was the MFA, he acknowledged Clay ended up footing the law firm's substantial legal bill for a report that found nothing amiss with the collection. Henshaw and Rogers said the payment arrangement was proper. Goldenberg, one of a number of lawyers who believe museums need to be more vigilant, said it is apparent to him that the MFA did not even meet standards for reasonable due diligence before acquiring the Clay collection, much less the ''lavish'' diligence cited by Rogers in an interview with the Globe. ''This case is a perfect illustration of how even a limited due-diligence would have turned up the fact that these items likely had been looted,'' Goldenberg said. Goldenberg also said he believes the museum, its law firm and the donor appeared to avoid finding evidence that might raise questions about the origin of the artifacts. ''The museum, the ultimate beneficiary, doesn't want to hear of any evil, so it has its law firm prepare a legal justification for the donation. And the law firm, even though it is supposed to protect the museum and knew that Guatemalan statutes had been violated, decided to say it had found no evil,'' he said. Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum, which is also exhibiting African artifacts loaned by Teel, follows a policy of full disclosure for all acquired items, notifying cultural affairs officials and museum directors in foreign countries and publishing information about the items, Fogg director James Cuno said. Cuno said the Fogg follows the same procedure for loaned items. With the Teel pieces, which are tied to an academic program at the university, Cuno said, ''we felt confident that these were legally exported.'' Cuno said most museums use either the early '70s or 1983 as cutoff dates on antiquities that trigger a request for documentation of their origin. Those dates are significant because they are tied to a United Nations convention designed to stop the trafficking in looted objects. The UNESCO convention was drafted in 1970; in 1983 Congress passed a law obligating the United States to observe provisions of the convention. Guatemala's vice minister of culture, Carlos Enrique Zea Flores, said that his government is making a big effort to recover items of cultural patrimony, including Mayan pieces. Globe Correspondent Jared Kotler contributed to this report from Guatemala City.

US says chips aren't from Rembrandts

Paint analysis sets back hopes for return of Gardner pieces

By Stephen Kurkjian and Patricia Nealon, Globe Staff, 12/05/97

Hopes for the quick return of art stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum - and the claims of two men who say they can broker it - crumbled yesterday after tiny paint chips and photographs were found not to be evidence of two stolen Rembrandts. In a statement released late yesterday, US Attorney Donald K. Stern, and Barry Mawn, head of the FBI's Boston office, said extensive tests revealed that ''in sum, both the photographs and paint chips are not what they purport to be.'' A separate statement by the Gardner Museum echoed that conclusion. ''We have conclusively determined that the paint chips were not authentic'' and had not come from either of the two stolen Rembrandts, according to the statement. Though the government's investigation is ''active and continuing,'' the analysis results dim the prospect that the two Rembrandts and 11 other pieces, stolen March 18, 1990, in the biggest art theft in modern history, might soon be returned. But sources familiar with the investigation remained cautious. One official declined to elaborate on whether the two men, convicted art thief Myles J. Connor Jr. of Milton and Randolph antiques dealer William Youngworth III, had sought to pull off a ruse for the $5 million reward. ''We'll only go as far as the statement, and no further,'' the official said. Connor and Youngworth, both in prison for unrelated crimes, have contended for months that together they could broker the return of the art - if federal authorities met their demands. The paint chips and the photographs, purportedly of Rembrandt's ''Storm on the Sea of Galilee'' and ''A Lady and Gentleman in Black,'' had been turned over by the Boston Herald to authorities in early October. The Herald had reported that it obtained the material from intermediaries for Youngworth and Connor. Attorney Martin Leppo, who represents both men, said he had not spoken to his clients about the government's statement and declined to comment. The Herald also would not answer questions or make a statement. At the time they surfaced, the photographs and paint chips appeared to be powerful evidence that Youngworth and Connor indeed had access to the Gardner artwork. But it wasn't the first time. In late August, the Herald published a front-page story describing how one of its reporters, Tom Mashberg, was taken to a warehouse and given a glimpse of a painting, which appeared to be Rembrandt's ''Storm on the Sea of Galilee.'' Youngworth later told the Globe he had arranged the viewing, but he would not give details or describe his relationship with those in possession of the paintings. He did, however, outline his demands. In exchange for the art, Youngworth wanted state stolen-auto charges against him resolved in his favor, and freedom for Connor, who is serving a federal sentence for transporting stolen goods. Both men wanted the $5 million reward. But their discussions with federal authorities seeking to recover the art have been stalled for months. Youngworth subsequently was convicted and ordered to serve a two- to three-year sentence. Since then, each side accuses the other of bargaining in bad faith. Youngworth will not offer proof he had access to the art, and authorities refuse to negotiate without it. Since the theft, the FBI has fruitlessly pursued hundreds of leads. Despite his demands, authorities and Gardner officials hoped that Youngworth could help them crack the case. When the photos and paint chips were handed over, the FBI's Washington laboratory and the Gardner's staff conservators spent countless hours analyzing them. They found that the photographs were not of the actual stolen paintings, according to Stern and Mawn's statement yesterday. Instead, they said, they are snapshots of another photograph, or of prints of the paintings. Tests on the paint chips showed they were ''significantly different'' when compared with tests on authentic chips from the Rembrandts, according to the statement. Sources said the comparison was made with paint chips that spilled from the Rembrandt canvases as the thieves cut them from their frames. Stern and Gardner officials declined to answer technical questions, such as how the paint chips and photographs were tested. One official said that conservators from Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum had assisted, and the results were not completed until Wednesday. In mid-October, before it handed over the paint chips and photos, the Herald asked Chicago art expert Walter C. McCrone to analyze them. He announced them ''100 percent unadulterated Rembrandt.'' Last night, McCrone said he stood by the results of his analysis, but said the method used by federal authorities and the Gardner Museum was ''much more authoritative.'' ''I wish I had had the real things to compare with what had been given to me,'' McCrone said. ''Obviously, it is much more credible for the analysis to be done that way.'' McCrone said that neither the Gardner nor the FBI had asked him to review their analysis or shared their findings. When the Herald published McCrone's positive analysis in October, other art specialists advised caution. They said that the chips could have come from paintings by countless others who studied with Rembrandt in northern Europe during the 17th century.

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