http://museum-security.org/
securma@museum-security.org

join the mailinglist

http://museum-security.org/

DECEMBER 7, 1997

Some museumgoers miss reason for debate

By Thomas Farragher, Globe Staff, 12/06/97

Among the ancient vases and priceless sculpture at the Boston of Museum of Fine Arts yesterday, outrage was as precious as a rare, elegant figurine. As diplomats, curators, and archeologists debated ethical questions about the museum's latest acquisition of Mayan antiquities, museum visitors fretted little about whether the objects are grave robbers' booty or the sparkling treasure of preservationists. ''They ought to stay here and people ought to be allowed to see them,'' said Elliott Stone of Boston as he examined an Olmec culture mask dating from 1150 B.C. ''I think it's sad that they were not able to protect their own culture,'' Stone said. ''We certainly wouldn't want them destroyed in a revolution. ... They're fabulous items that should be preserved in a museum.'' Two hours after the exhibit opened yesterday - amid protests from officials from Mali to Guatamala - more than 500 visitors had strolled through the redesigned Carter and Brown Galleries to see African, Oceanic, and pre-Columbian art, including about 100 Mayan treasures. Most greeted the art with enthusiasm, and the controversy surrounding it with simple, so-what shrugs. As he stood near ancient African artifacts, the acquisition of which is also in question, Steve Kauffman of Centerville turned aside questions about how the collection got to the United States. ''I think all of this stuff was stolen at one time - throughout the whole museum,'' he said. ''I do wonder how it all got here. But time has a way of burying that question. Art gets stolen from one civilization to another. I don't think it's new or surprising.'' Some visitors seemed surprised that the museum's acquisition of foreign treasure should ignite controversy at all, dismissing suggestions about illegal exportation as little more than legalisms and technicalities. MFA director Malcolm Rogers has said that all of the museum-owned objects are legal and ''appropriate for ownership and display in this country.'' He said all the pre-Columbian pieces entered the United States before 1983, the year the United States endorsed a 1970 UN convention designed to halt the trafficking of looted artifacts. A Guatemalan official called many of the pieces illegal exports and ''pages ripped out of the history book of our nation.'' Rogers has refused to comment about how and when five African antiquities, on loan from a member of the museum's board of overseers, left Mali and Nigeria and arrived in the United States. While that question gave some museum patrons pause, most said the artifacts could have no better home than the MFA. ''I remember taking an Egyptian friend of mine to see the beautiful pieces that we have of Egyptian culture,'' said Pamela McNealy of Needham. ''And her comment to the group was: `Oh, finders-keepers, eh?' But I thought that we have tried to preserve her culture and expose it to a great number of people and, for that reason, the end justifies the means.'' Among the most conflicted visitors to the MFA was David Gullette, a Simmons College English professor whose interest in Mayan art dates back 40 years. ''The question of whether the art of any ancient country belongs in that country is not an easy question to answer,'' he said. ''If the art of all these different countries were sent back to those countries, this museum would be empty - except for American art. ''I think that Egyptian art, that Greek art, and that Mayan art all belong to the people of the world. Does that mean it ought to be displayed only in countries that it came from? It's not an easy question to answer. This exhibit tells a series of not very happy stories. Unfortunately, one of them has to do with looting.''

Key Clues in Boston Art Theft Are Fakes

Crime: Experts conclude that paint chips said to be from one of missing masterpieces are not authentic. Paintings are valued at $300 million.

By ELIZABETH MEHREN, Times Staff Writer

BOSTON--The hunt for masterpieces stolen from the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum is apparently back at square one after federal officials disclosed that chips said to be taken from two of the paintings are fakes. The FBI and experts from the Gardner also dismissed as phony photographs purporting to depict two of the works that have been missing since a pair of thieves disguised as police officers broke into the Italian villa-style museum in a daring late-night heist seven years ago. The 12 works stolen from the museum are valued at $300 million, the largest art robbery in history. The announcement late Thursday that the paint chips, offered as part of an elaborate scheme to win freedom for a pair of convicted art thieves, are fakes shattered hopes of recovering the missing paintings, including two canvases by Rembrandt and one by Vermeer. "We have conclusively determined that the paint chips were not authentic," Gardner museum officials announced. The U.S. attorney here, Donald K. Stern, added that photographs billed as proof that the two missing Rembrandts were retrievable were "photographs of photographs, or of a print." Both the photographs and the paint chips "are not what they purport to be," Stern said. The flecks of paint were said to have come from Rembrandt's "Storm on the Sea of Galilee" and "A Lady and Gentleman in Black." The Boston Herald turned them over for examination by experts in October. The tabloid newspaper said it obtained the paint samples from agents acting on behalf of William Youngworth III and Myles J. Connor II, veteran art thieves whose names popped up on the government's list of suspects soon after the break-in at the Gardner. Youngworth and Connor were in prison at the time of the theft. But both implied that they could help locate the stolen paintings. In exchange, they demanded lightened sentences, immunity from prosecution on any charges stemming from the Gardner theft and $5 million in reward money. A Boston Herald reporter, Tom Mashberg, also became involved in the drama when he wrote in August that he had been taken on a late-night visit to a darkened warehouse "somewhere in the Northeast." There, Mashberg related, a canvas was unfurled to him that bore a strong resemblance to "Sea of Galilee," Rembrandt's only seascape. * * * For a time, federal agents and museum officials attempted to negotiate with Youngworth, who was not in prison when reports of the paint chips and purported photographs surfaced. Youngworth has since been convicted of receiving a stolen van and is serving a two- to three-year sentence. Connor is serving a 10-year sentence for cocaine possession. While the Herald hired its own expert, Walter C. McCrone of Chicago, who said the paint chips were almost certainly from a Rembrandt, the Gardner's chief conservator, Barbara Mangum, concluded otherwise. Tests revealed the paint chips to be "significantly different" from authentic chips from the Rembrandts, the museum found. Federal investigators and Gardner officials refused further comment. But the Herald responded with a headline that filled almost the entire front page of its Friday edition. It read: "Chips are down."

Mali presses for museum artifacts

May sue MFA to recover antiquities

By Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff, 12/06/97

The government of Mali demanded yesterday that the Boston Museum of Fine Arts disclose how one of the museum's overseers obtained valuable Malian artifacts that are part of a controversial new antiquities exhibition that many archeologists believe contains a number of objects looted from Mali and Guatemala. Mali's ambassador to the United States, Cheick Oumar Diarrah, said in a statement that his government will lodge a formal complaint with the US government and file a lawsuit against the MFA and collector William E. Teel, if needed, to seek the return of two terra cotta figures that Teel loaned for the exhibition. Guatemalan officials have declared their intention to file suit to reclaim an extensive collection of pre-Columbian art that was donated to the museum in 1988. The MFA accepted the collection even though its legal counsel conceded this week that he was aware back then that it had been exported from Guatemala in violation of Guatemalan law. The MFA has said it does not require collectors who loan items for exhibitions to disclose how they were acquired. And MFA officials have refused, as they did again yesterday, to make public any acquisition information about the two Malian figures, which are 400 to 700 years old. Susan K. McIntosh, a Rice University anthropologist and a specialist in Malian archeology, said that because the museum has refused to release such information, ''one has to assume Mr. Teel does not have proper export documentation'' and that the objects were taken illegally from Mali after 1969. McIntosh said the two figures, including a large terra cotta figure of a pregnant ewe, were not of a type discovered before Mali enacted strict bans against archeological exports in 1969. Besides, she said, outside interest in Malian objects has been aroused only since the 1980s, and the figures are from an area, Djenne, that has been heavily looted since then for the burgeoning worldwide trade in antiquities. The exhibition of artifacts from Africa, Mesoamerica, and Oceania opened yesterday. On Thursday, the Globe reported that many of the items may have been plundered and that the museum's counsel, Weld S. Henshaw, gave the MFA clearance for a donation of pre-Columbian art even though he now admits he was aware in 1987 that Guatemala banned the export of archeological objects without a permit. There were no permits issued. On Thursday, the Guatemalan government said an envoy from its Ministry of Culture, David Garcia, will visit the MFA today to examine the exhibition of objects from Guatemala, which trustee Landon T. Clay donated to the MFA in 1988. Dawn Griffin, the museum's spokeswoman, said museum officials were unavailable to comment on the Mali ambassador's statement. In his statement, the ambassador said his government is ''outraged by the insinuation that our cultural items are better safeguarded in Boston than in our museums.'' Griffin said no museum official has said anything of the sort about Mali, although many art historians hold such views. Mali's president, Alpha Oumar Konare, is himself an archeologist, and has built climate-controlled museums in several artifact-rich areas of the country. Mahamane Toure, the Mali Embassy's economic affairs officer, said in an interview that the poverty-stricken West African country can ill afford the legal costs of recovering the terra cotta figures. ''But this is very important to us and to our country,'' Toure said. ''These objects have been removed from their historical context, and that deprives us of profound knowledge about our history.'' McIntosh, the Mali expert, said it is ''virtually certain'' that the Teel items were illegally exported from Mali after that country enacted its 1969 export ban. Unless Teel has evidence to the contrary, she said, ''he is in the position of being able to make a generous gesture by voluntarily returning Mali's patrimony to that country.'' Teel, through the museum, has declined to comment. As for Clay's donated collection, MFA spokeswoman Griffin said again yesterday that the museum remains satisfied with its 1987 investigation of the prospective gift, despite Henshaw's admission. Although former MFA director Alan Shestack asserted erroneously in a 1989 letter that the museum assured itself that no country's export laws were violated with respect to the pre-Columbian items, the MFA now is focusing on US law, saying that the items were legally imported. Indeed, although other countries, like Mali and Guatemala, have long banned the export of cultural artifacts without permission, the United States does not routinely enforce such foreign laws. Only since 1983, when the United States endorsed a 1970 United Nations convention designed to stem illegal trafficking in antiquities, have most museums begun to use greater caution in acquiring antiquities. Guatemalan and Malian archeological sites have been so extensively plundered that the two countries, in 1989 and 1993, respectively, received emergency declarations banning the import of their artifacts into the United States. The more than 100 objects in Clay's collection, which he bought in 1988 and donated to the museum the same year, were exported from Guatemala between the mid-1970s and 1981. The MFA is in an awkward ethical position, saying the items were legally imported while acknowledging they were illegally exported. But US courts, as they did in a recent case involving Guatemala, have sometimes applied a US stolen property statute in such cases. MFA director Rogers has chosen to defend his predecessors: Jan Fontein for his decision to acquire Clay's collection, and Shestack for rebuffing a 1990 Guatemalan demand that it be returned. In 1989, Shestack wrote a letter rejecting evidence proffered by Clemency Chase Coggins, an expert in Mayan archeology, that the Clay items had been looted. Not long before that, Shestack wrote an article asserting that museums, by acquiring antiquities of questionable background, ''would not only be risking our reputation, but would be encouraging or at least seeming to be encouraging, or winking at, illicit activity in the international art market.''

New deal offered in Gardner art theft

Inmates insist they can arrange return

By Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff, 12/06/97

Despite test results that cast doubt on the credibility of their claims, the two men who contend they can broker the return of priceless artwork stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum are proposing a new deal: They'll tell where the stolen material is stashed if the museum will put the $5 million reward money in an escrow account. According to sources familiar with the case, the attorney for William P. Youngworth III and Myles Connor Jr. relayed the offer to Rudolph F. Pierce, the lawyer for the Gardner Museum, on Thursday. Martin K. Leppo of Randolph, who represents Youngworth and Connor, confirmed he had spoken with Pierce but declined to discuss any details of their conversation. However, Leppo said: ''I have presented and will continue to present scenarios [for the artwork's return] that I think the Gardner Museum will approve of,'' Leppo said. Pierce did not return phone calls, and the museum refused comment through a spokesman. However, a source familiar with the case disparaged the offer: ''It's absurd. They're just trying to keep their names in the paper,'' said the source, who asked not to be identified. In addition, it is uncertain whether the museum has the $5 million on hand to put into an escrow account. Meanwhile, Assistant US Attorney Brien T. O'Connor said in an interview that Youngworth recently turned down an offer of limited immunity from prosecution for the return of any of the art, which could have led to serious negotiations for all of the artwork's return. O'Connor said that about two weeks ago, Youngworth rejected a written pledge from the US attorney's office not to use in any future possible prosecution of him the fact that he had turned over a piece of the stolen artwork in order to get the negotiations started. Instead, O'Connor said, Youngworth demanded that he be provided ''transactional'' immunity, which meant he could not be prosecuted for the theft, transportation or possession of the stolen artwork, before any of the stolen pieces were returned. O'Connor said that the US attorney's office has rejected that demand because Youngworth has consistently refused to provide concrete evidence that he has access to the paintings and other pieces of art, which were stolen March 18, 1990. According to previous press reports, US Attorney Donald K. Stern's office presented evidence to a federal grand jury last month about a possible extortion attempt by Youngworth of museum officials. Youngworth convinced one museum official to give him a check for $10,000, which he needed to pay personal bills, as an indication of the museum officials' trust in him. Leppo confirmed that his discussions on Youngworth's behalf with the US attorney's office have produced ''nothing in the way of a level of satisfaction.'' As a result, sources said, Leppo had recently concentrated his attention on trying to achieve a breakthrough in talks with museum officials. The sources said that Leppo proposed that the museum agree to place the $5 million reward money in an escrow account as a sign of good faith before Youngworth and Connor provide the address of where they believe the paintings and other pieces of art were being held. If, on recovering the material, the museum determined they were the 13 pieces of art stolen from the museum and were in good condition, the museum would turn over the escrow account to Youngworth and Connor. Leppo said that he had spoken with both Youngworth and Connor in the last 48 hours and they continue to maintain that they can arrange the return of the paintings. Leppo, however, declined to reveal their reaction to Thursday's announcements by federal authorities and the Gardner Museum that raised questions about the credibility of Youngworth's and Connor's claims. However, Connor, who is in federal prison on an unrelated charge, stood by his claims in a telephone interview with WCVB-TV (Channel 5) yesterday. ''Absolutely,'' Connor said, when asked if he could arrange the artwork's return. ''If conditions are met ... delivery can be made.'' Extensive scientific testing of small chips of paint allegedly taken from two of the stolen Rembrandts show that they did not come from the paintings, according to announcements from the Gardner Museum and Stern and Barry Mawn, head of the FBI's Boston office. In addition, testing of photographs of the two Rembrandts - ''Storm on the Sea of Galilee'' and ''A Lady and Gentleman in Black'' - showed that they were not of the actual paintings, but snapshots of other photographs or of prints. Both the paint chips and photographs were turned over to the authorities in October by the Boston Herald, which said it had received them from an intermediary on behalf of Youngworth and Connor. The museum and federal officials declined to detail the tests they had done to reach their conclusions. But a conservator for Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum, who had conducted some of the analysis, said that the paint chips underwent four different scientific tests to determine if they matched in pigment and layering small pieces of the two Rembrandts that were left behind at the museum after the two paintings were cut from their frames. The conservator, who asked not to be identified, said that while the Fogg report did not make any conclusions, its findings corresponded with the conclusion stated in the museum's announcement Thursday: ''We have conclusively determined that the paint chips were not authentic'' and did not come from either of the stolen Rembrandts.

Stolen Old Masters raise cash for crime

By Tim Reid and Catherine Milner

INTERNATIONAL criminals are raising millions of pounds in loans by depositing stolen paintings in the vaults of leading banks, say art theft experts. Bankers across the world, including major London institutions, have been told to search their strongrooms, which art detectives believe could hold hundreds of stolen masterpieces. Concern is growing after figures released last week by the Art Loss Register, in London, which astonished experts by showing that 349 Picassos are missing worldwide. Five of his etchings were stolen from a London gallery in June. Detectives fear stolen art is being offered as security to banks to finance international crime, because transactions are easy. Many financial institutions have accepted works of art as collateral for loans without checking their provenance. The register, which has a list of missing works worth £1 billion, has advised London banks, including Barclays and Citibank, to have paintings checked. James Emson, the register's director, is negotiating with banks in Japan, Europe and America. "These paintings are not stolen by petty thieves, but those in the business of international crime and the ransoming of money," Mr Emson said. "It is a relatively easy way of raising large sums of money. In the past, unlike lending money for a mortgage, banks have accepted the paintings with little more security than a signature." Last year a £500,000 Old Master was brought into a London bank for valuation to secure as a loan. Suspicious staff contacted the police, who discovered that the work was stolen from a Milan gallery in 1993, a year after being sold at Christie's in London. Two paintings from the Beit collection, stolen from Sir Alfred and Lady Beit in Co Wicklow in the Irish Republic, are believed to have been used to obtain $1 million (£606,722) for Irish gangsters. Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid and Goya's Dona Antonia Zarate were later found in a Luxembourg bank after being handed to a Belgian diamond dealer in return for the money. The ALR's list of stolen works is uncomfortable reading for art insurers. In addition to the enormous number of stolen Picassos, nearly 250 works by the Russian artist Marc Chagall are missing, with 175 by Dali, 121 Rembrandts and 112 Renoirs. Missing works by the Spanish artist Joan Miró total 269, stolen paintings by the pop artist Andy Warhol number 119, and there are 51 missing by David Hockney. "So where are they?" asked Mr Emson. "Some are in private hands, but others are probably lurking in vaults in some of the great banks of the world." In Britain, outstanding national treasures still missing include the £5 million Titian, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, stolen from Longleat House, Wiltshire - home of the Marquis of Bath - in January 1995, and the two £12 million Turner paintings Shade and Darkness and Light and Colour, stolen in 1994 in Frankfurt while on loan from the Tate Gallery. British insurance companies are estimated to have paid out more than £1 billion for stolen art not recovered, and large sums are available to fund inquiries and pay rewards to informants. Charles Hill, a former member of Scotland Yard's Arts and Antiques squad and now a member of Nordstern, a leading art insurance group, said: "In the past years there has been very little diligence about authenticating works. The banks should do a lot more and dig deeper and check that the provenance and valuations are genuine. The fact is a lot of the works in the banks' vaults are fake. The worst offenders were the Swiss banks during the war, when the expertise of art and artefacts was not as good as it is now. But since the Fine Art Loss Register was set up things have got a lot better." Philip Hook, the senior expert in the Impressionist Department at Sotheby's, said: "One reason why there are 349 Picassos missing is that he was an incredibly popular and prolific artist. His entire oeuvre amounts to 30,000 - that is pictures, drawings and sculptures, that are authenticated as by Picasso. "Miró was also prolific. By contrast there are only 3,000 known Monets."

(Electronic Telegraph London)

From: MediaNPCA
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 12:49:33 EST

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 5, 1997
CONTACT: Vicki Paris, ext. 120

RESTORATION BEGINS AS EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK CELEBRATES 50TH ANNIVERSARY

Future Uncertain for Most Threatened Park

Washington, D.C. -- In the shadow of Saturda'sy celebration to rededicate Everglades National Park stands the uncertainty of whether this park will survive to celebrate 50 more years. The National Parks and Conservation Association (NPCA), the nation's largest park advocacy group, says that while citizen commitment to the park is at an all-time high and there is renewed interest at the state and federal levels, progress to restore this magnificent wetlands has not been quick enough. The restoration of the Everglades is the largest ecological rescue ever attempted, said NPCA Southeast Regional Director Don Barger. Currently the Everglades ecosystem is half of its originalsize. We cannot afford to lose any more of it or of the threatened and endangered species that live within it. Since its inception, Everglades National Park has fought a losing battle. Ironically in 1947, when President Harry Truman signed the law that created the park, he was unaware that the flood-control project started a few months earlier by the Army Corps of Engineers was already beginning to destroy the Everglades. This channeling of rivers and draining of wetlands has decimated wildlife habitat, introduced non-native water-absorbing plants like melaleuca and hydrilla, and prevented necessary fresh water from flowing through the system to keep one of the last remaining continental American coral reefs alive and healthy. This degradation has been compounded by increasing run-off pollution from agriculture and industry. Rechanneling and draining the Everglades have allowed more and more people to move to South Florida, said Barger. This has put a tremendous pressure on the area to provide more housing, new airports, and a more elaborate infrastructure. To save the Everglades, we have to look past cleaning up the water and focus on changing our approach to the entire ecosystem. Restoration efforts have begun in a number of ways. Under the Everglades Forever Act, the state is responsible for cleaning up the water quality and restoring some of the historic water flow. However, this task will not be accomplished by the state alone. It will take the efforts of state, local, and federal officials as well as citizen's groups like NPCA to improve the ecological health of South Florida and bring the Everglades back from the brink of extinction. NPCA has continuously worked to protect this unique ecosystem from destruction by helping to reintroduce the Florida panther and by working with more than 30 other environmental organizations as a member of the Everglades Coalition. We cannot continue to jeopardize this unique biological paradise, added Barger. There is only one Everglades and we must protect it.

back to general index

DECEMBER 7, 1997

CONTENTS:

- Some museumgoers miss reason for debate (museum visitors fretted little about whether the objects are grave robbers' booty or the sparkling treasure of preservationists).

- Key Clues in Boston Art Theft Are Fakes

- Mali presses for museum artifacts (May sue MFA to recover antiquities)

- New deal offered in Gardner art theft (Inmates insist they can arrange return)

- Stolen Old Masters raise cash for crime

- Future Uncertain for Most Threatened Park (Everglades National Park)