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MESSAGES November 15, 1997

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Dealer sentenced; hope lives for art deal

By Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff, 11/14/97

DEDHAM - William P. Youngworth III, who contends that he can help gain the return of artwork stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, was sentenced yesterday to 2 to 3 years in state prison for possession of a stolen motor vehicle. The sentence, well below the 14- to 15-year term recommended by the prosecution, was light enough for Youngworth's lawyer to declare that it could lead to restarting negotiations with federal authorities for return of the 13 paintings, sketches and other objects of art before the end of the year. ''If all could be put in order, I'd say we're in a position that it could be a very merry Christmas,'' said attorney Martin K. Leppo of Randolph following yesterday's sentencing, when asked by reporters if a breakthrough might come soon. However, Leppo acknowledged, Youngworth must get over several important hurdles in the coming weeks for the negotiations to succeed. They include: Federal authorities would have to agree to provide Youngworth and his associate, Myles J. Connor Jr., with immunity from any prosecution for possible involvement in the theft of the art and its return. Similar immunity, he said, must also be provided to any ''caretakers'' who have possession of the art. US Attorney Donald K. Stern declined to comment on Leppo's request yesterday. However, others, who asked not to be identified, said they were encouraged that Leppo was not pressing for federal authorities to ask Massachusetts to drop the stolen vehicle sentence against Youngworth, or to reduce or drop a sentence Connor is serving on an unrelated charge. One source familiar with the negotiations said yesterday that it was likely authorities would seek the return of one of the less valued artworks stolen in the heist, such as one of several sketches by Edgar Degas, before agreeing to immunity for Youngworth or Connor. During the summer, Youngworth had asked that federal authorities persuade Norfolk County prosecutors to delay or even drop the charges related to the stolen vehicle case so a deal could be reached on the stolen artworks. However, Stern, whose office is leading the investigation into the 1990 theft from the museum, rejected that demand and the negotiations between the federal authorities and Youngworth broke down. Joan Norris, spokeswoman for the Gardner, had no comment on Leppo's remarks, nor on yesterday's sentencing. The state Supreme Judicial Court must reject an appeal by Norfolk District Attorney Jeffrey A. Locke, who wants the court to reinstate a habitual offender indictment against Youngworth. That indictment would put the former Randolph antiques dealer behind bars for 15 years on the stolen vehicle charge. The decision is up to the SJC because on Wednesday, Norfolk Superior Court Judge Isaac Borenstein threw out the habitual offender charge, saying insufficient evidence had been presented to the Norfolk County grand jury last November to issue the indictment. Locke's office filed an emergency appeal to have Borenstein's order overturned. A single SJC judge will probably conduct the appeal hearing by next Wednesday. Borenstein maintained that Locke's office, while showing that Youngworth had been sentenced to more than three years in prison for two prior offenses, had failed to document whether he actually served the time in jail for the crimes. Yesterday, before sentencing Youngworth to prison for 2 to 3 years, Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Butler said she would stay that sentence for a week to allow for the appeal hearing. Youngworth has stated that if he was sentenced to 15 years in prison under the habitual offender statute, he would cease all cooperation for return of the paintings. In court yesterday, Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Kim S. Gainsboro said that, regardless of the habitual offender law, Youngworth should be sentenced to 14-15 years in prison for possession of the stolen van because of his prior criminal record. Unfurling the rap sheet for the 38-year-old Youngworth, she said it included seven convictions for receiving stolen property as well as others for illegal possession of a handgun, possession of illegal narcotics, and numerous driving violations. She also said Youngworth had been found guilty of illegal possession of a firearm, and served a year in jail under the alias of Mark Hagan. ''He is a habitual criminal,'' Gainsboro said of Youngworth. She added that while the jury that convicted him of the latest offense had not been told why he had a stolen van in his possession, a police report stated that it was going to be used in the armed robbery of a Brighton antique rug dealer. However, Butler rejected Gainsboro's request for a longer prison sentence, stating that the recommended term for such an offense is 20 to 30 months in prison.

This story ran on page A34 of the Boston Globe on 11/14/97. © Copyright 1997 Globe Newspaper Company.

(L.A.Times)

In Italy, History Depletes Itself


Inadequate funds and the squeeze of visitors threaten the ruins of Pompeii. Ideas for saving them and the nation's other cultural treasures include turning to corporate sponsors.

By RICHARD BOUDREAUX, Times Staff Writer

POMPEII, Italy--Guido Barone doesn't make the rules here, so he can only wince at the latest assault on this ancient Roman city--by an army of backpacks. Squeezing into Pompeii's fragile ruins on the backs of tourists, they scrape precious wall paintings as their bearers pivot recklessly in overcrowded spaces. "You cannot force people to leave those things outside," Barone says in dismay amid a traffic jam in the House of the Vettii. A part-time comic actor, he finds little amusement guiding visitors through Pompeii, the city buried by the fiery eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79 and dug up over the last 2 1/2 centuries. He has worked here 26 years, long enough to see rain, dust, sunlight, vandals and weeds erase much of what Vesuvius had preserved intact. The backpacks, which arrive each day by the thousands, are not just a new threat to the world's oldest archeological dig. They are a measure of Italians' booming interest in their cultural wealth--a fascination the country's leaders are trying to cultivate in order to save the most battered treasures. Their proposals are radical for Italy. They include private sponsorship for monuments such as Pompeii, an idea that spawns visions of Disney-like theme parks with Roman togas and ads for Fiat. A debate pitting American-style capitalism against traditional Italian state custody is just starting, but there's an urgency to it. According to the New York-based World Monuments Fund, no other nation has such a trove of endangered churches, castles, palaces, museums, ancient forums and archeological unearthings. And few other nations are experiencing such a rush by their people to see what's still standing. Unfortunately, says Antonio Paolucci, the artistic superintendent of Florence, "the erosion of our cultural patrimony is happening much faster than the growth in our political awareness" of the loss. Italy's dubious blessing is a wealth too vast for the state to protect. The government lists 57,000 "major" monuments spread among every city and the smallest of towns. In a nation that resembles a sprawling outdoor museum, it's small wonder that an average of 96 art objects are reported stolen from church or state custody every day. In the last four years, Mafia bombs have damaged the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and two art-rich churches in Rome. Fires have swept through La Fenice, the 18th century opera house in Venice, and the chapel that housed the Shroud of Turin. Faulty restoration has brought down the roof of the cathedral in Noto, the jewel of Sicilian Baroque architecture. If all that were not enough, earthquakes have been shaking hill towns across Umbria and the Marches for weeks this autumn, toppling medieval bell towers and cracking scores of early Renaissance frescoes, including some in the badly damaged Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. A String of Reformers at the Culture Ministry The same four years have brought a string of reformers to Italy's Ministry of Culture. They have revalued what is being lost and coaxed the Treasury to spend more for preservation. Museums closed for years are being reopened and visiting hours extended to make antiquity more accessible--and potentially profitable. Italians are responding en masse. The 33 largest museums reported a 20% increase in visitors last summer. That does not count the smallish but exquisite Borghese Gallery, which has been filled to capacity since it reopened in June after 14 years of repairs. It still requires booking more than a week in advance. Nor does it count Pompeii, which is drawing more than 2 million visitors this year, up from 1.3 million in 1993. Many of the visitors are foreign, of course, but no one doubts that the renaissance is Italian. Arguing that antiquity is "our petroleum," independent preservation groups such as Archeoclub and ItaliaNostra have gained tens of thousands of members. Private funds to shore up public monuments are starting to flow from banks, elementary schools and other sponsors. Italians are opening guidebooks and becoming tourists at home. "Every stone tells a story," marvels Antonio Durante, 57, a Roman venturing into the ancient Forum for only the second time. "These stories connect us to the great civilizations of our past." "All of a sudden, Italians realize they have a tremendous amount of treasures, which must be seen before it's too late," sociologist Franco Ferrarotti says. "Part of this is a quest for social status--going to a museum just to say you were there. But there is also a feeling that we can find national unity and identity--a badge of distinction in the world--only in terms of our artistic patrimony." Whether this grass-roots enthusiasm can be harnessed to save Italy's monuments is about to be tested on Pompeii--the most visited, underfunded and threatened of them all. Profit Motive Taboo for Postwar Parties A novelty of the experiment is the profit motive--a taboo for the postwar Christian Democrats and Communists who shaped Italy's statist cultural policies. A law taking effect this month gives Pompeii autonomy from the bureaucracy in Rome, allowing the ruined city to keep all its tourist income and seek private investment. Culture Minister Walter Veltroni, a former Communist, has warned Italian industrialists that Pompeii will "die a second death" unless they pitch in. The new law permits the industrialists to finance restoration in Pompeii by "adopting" city blocks for up to three years in exchange for tax breaks and commercial rights to use any image on the premises. If the remedy works, Veltroni says, it will be extended to other museums and monuments across Italy, breaking up a system of management notoriously inept, negligent, corrupt and user-unfriendly. Pompeii has suffered the worst of all that. For starters, there are few nearby hotels and no place to check valuables, which explains all the backpacks. The setup is confusing, with no maps or explanatory material. Visitors, who often outnumber the ghosts of Pompeii's 15,000 ancient inhabitants, share six toilets and dodge packs of wild dogs; the adjacent modern city has no kennel. Two-thirds of ancient Pompeii--110 of its 163 acres--have been unearthed. Tall weeds cover many blocks, and squatters plant vegetables on the unexcavated parts. All but 35 acres are closed to visitors--to protect the people from collapsing walls but also to help 150 guards protect the ruins from graffiti artists and souvenir hunters. Pompeii still offers the most revealing look at everyday urban life in the ancient world. For the $7 entry fee, a visitor can see temples, baths, the forum, an amphitheater, a brothel, private mansions and hundreds of simpler houses--many with their original mosaic floors and wall paintings. Archeologists have even preserved some Pompeians, down to their anguished dying expressions, in the form of eerie plaster body casts. "It's like being on a movie set," says Marco Paccosi, a 36-year-old schoolteacher. "With a little bit of fantasizing, you can easily travel back to that time." Two Plaster Cadavers Decapitated at Pompeii Life in today's Pompeii often resembles a film noir. One weekend last spring, someone entered a closed excavation site and decapitated two plaster cadavers. The field archeologist suspects vandals, but Pompeii's superintendent, Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, says he took the Mafia-style gesture as a "warning" from one of his many enemies. Guzzo's predecessor, removed nearly three years ago, has been under investigation for excavations that were imaginary except in cost. Guards once locked out tourists to protest Guzzo's stricter regime; he demands that they show up on time and not sleep on the job. The biggest problem is simply that too much of Pompeii has been dug up and not properly shielded from the elements. A walk through the ruins with a veteran guide like Barone is an exercise in imagining ancient treasures lost to modern neglect. "Fifteen years ago this was a beautiful piece; every detail was absolutely clear," the ponytailed Neapolitan recalls, pointing the tip of his tartan umbrella at a still-life painting now faded beyond recognition. Turning to another blur in the same Vettii courtyard, he says: "We used to tell tourists, 'If you want to know what kind of flowers they planted in their garden, look at this fresco.' " Now the painted flowers are gone too. Across the yard, in the adorably frescoed Room of the Cupids, Barone's umbrella points at the ceiling, built of cheap reinforced concrete in the 1960s and already crumbling. A camera flash goes off, and more tourists muscle in. Two elderly guards, engrossed in discussion with each other, ignore the unruly crowd. A stray dog wanders in and curls up in the atrium. Surveying the chaos, Barone ventures a prediction: "The next eruption of Vesuvius will save Pompeii!" In his spacious office at the edge of the ruins, Guzzo lights his pipe and ponders his mission. Pompeii's superintendent has won worldwide applause from fellow archeologists, but he talks like a man under siege. "The area [of Pompeii] now open to the public is half what was open in the 1950s," the 53-year-old Roman says. "At this rate, by 2040, we'll be reduced to half of that, and so on. . . . This is the death of Pompeii. Death will not come with one shock, as in an earthquake. But slowly and surely it will come--unless we do something to reverse the trend." His plan is to stop new excavations and pour resources into protecting and cataloging what has been dug up. "We must stop the walls from crumbling, freeze the deterioration so we can hand this ancient city to our children," Guzzo says. "That's No. 1." A minimal once-over repair, he estimates, will cost $310 million and take 10 years. Until now, his annual budget has been $3.1 million, one-third of what Pompeii earned in ticket sales and sent to Rome. The new, autonomous status will give Pompeii its full box- office take and maybe some extra income from better management, but it will not be nearly enough. Can Pompeii raise the rest from private sponsors? The answer is not clear, but Giovanni Losavio, vice president of ItaliaNostra, warns that it should not even try. "Private adoption is a dangerous idea," he argues. "It allows the state to flee its responsibility to take care of such treasures as Pompeii, whatever the cost." Allowing images from Pompeii to be used commercially, he adds, "would somehow degrade those images." Fiat, the Italian auto maker, has voiced interest in "adopting" a block in Pompeii, but only if it sees a clear profit. Many entrepreneurs wonder whether a Pompeian fresco in an ad logo is worth a multimillion-dollar investment--especially in the many blocks devoid of well-known images.
Debate on Letting Firms In On Tourism There is debate on broadening the new law to let business-people profit from Pompeii tourism by taking over the blocks they restore and turning them into entertainment concessions, featuring the likes of Pompeian wine parties and mock slave auctions. Veltroni, the culture minister, encouraged this kind of imaginative thinking last spring when he suggested using computers to make virtual reproductions of those haunting body casts and "create a kind of Jurassic Pompeii." Guzzo has joined the traditionalists in resisting such fun and games as premature. "He would hate to see $100 million spent on a huge virtual Pompeii when the real Pompeii is falling apart," says a foreigner who advises him. Instead, the man struggling to save the ancient city has a more modest vision: a small visitors center where tourists entering the ruins could first get a helpful orientation from an archeologist--and check their backpacks.
* * *

(Times of London, Nov.15,1997)

Sotheby's shares drop by 6% after art auction 'flop'

BY TUNKU VARADARAJAN

THE value of shares in Sotheby's, the auction house, fell by 6 per cent since its auction of the collection of Evelyn Sharp flopped badly on Wednesday night.
Arnold Kaufman, editor of The Outlook, a New York-based investment newsletter, said this was "a significant fall". He said: "When a company has a disappointing auction, the unfavourable news can trigger a fall in the value of its shares. This could have happened here. It could also mean that the art market is weakening generally." Yet the day before the Sotheby's auction, Christie's its arch-rival, had one of the "auctions of the century" when it sold the Ganz collection for a record $206 million (£121 million). There was no evidence at Christie's that the general interest of buyers was waning. Elizabeth Easton, Curator for European Painting and Sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, said: "The difference between Christie's and Sotheby's has never been as apparent as it is now. Whereas the Ganz collection would have overshadowed anything, it is a shame that all Sotheby's had to offer was the Sharp collection." The latter, by common consent in the New York art world, was a collection of second-division paintings by first-division artists. Its sale, expected to reap at least $57 million, raised a comparatively paltry $41.2 million. Although Sotheby's has denied angrily that it has made a substantial loss, the house did make a pre-auction guarantee to the estate of Evelyn Sharp, believed to be much closer to the minimum estimate of $57 million than to the final sum.

Renoir's 'Bather' fetches $20.9 million
04:31 a.m. Nov 14, 1997 Eastern

NEW YORK, Nov 13 (Reuters)

- A Renoir painting of a woman bathing sold for $20.9 million, twice what auctioneers had expected, at Sotheby's auction house on Thursday night. The 1888 ``Baigneuse'' (''The Bather''), from Pierre Auguste Renoir's bathers series, sold to an anonymous private collector in a two-day sale of Impressionist and Modern art that totaled $155.9 million. The highest-priced Renoir remains ``Au Moulin de La Galette,'' which Sotheby's sold for $78.1 million in 1990. Another 1888 Renoir painting, ``La Coiffure,'' sold for $8.8 million to an another anonymous private collector on Thursday. A separate section of the auction that contained 10 paintings by Paul Cezanne from the collection of French industrialist Auguste Pellerin, sold for $19.2 million. Auctioneers had hoped the collection would realise more than $23 million. Pellerin, who died in 1929, once assembled what is thought to be the greatest Cezanne collection ever, with more than 100 works. The most expensive Cezanne was ``Moderne Olympia'' (Modern Olympian), which sold for $5.9 million, just below estimates. Another version of this painting, which is also known as ``The Pasha,'' hangs in the Musee d'Orsay.

Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited.




> From: BHGBert@aol.com
> Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 23:30:22 -0500 (EST)
> To: securma@museum-security.org
> Subject:

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you...
> I am a regular visitor and find your site extremely interesting--
> and valuable. For example, the issues surrounding the Everglade
> Park facilities
> are entirely ignored by our local press. Thank you for bringing
> these
> issues to my attention.
> Could I ask you to please review the link for November 10? It
> doesn't seem to be working.
> Best Regards
> Bert R. Saper

Hello Bert,
Thank you for your nice compliment and feedback. The needed corrections have been made and the November 10 link is okay and running.
Regards,
Ton Cremers

From: MediaNPCA@aol.com
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 16:36:09 -0500 (EST)
Subject:

NPCA News Release:

NPCA Urges Yellowstone to Postpone Road Closings

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 14, 1997
CONTACT: Kathy Westra, (202) 223-6722, ext. 121 -or- (301) 587-3807 (weekend)

NPCA URGES YELLOWSTONE TO POSTPONE ROAD CLOSINGS


Group Contends More Information Is Needed Before New Winter Policy Is Implemented
Washington, D.C. -- The nation's leading national park advocacy group has endorsed waiting until the winter of 1998-99 to close a 14-mile section of road through the Hayden Valley in Yellowstone National Park. According to the National Parks and Conservation Association (NPCA), the delay is necessary so that more objective, scientifically valid information can be obtained about the winter movement of bison through the park on roads groomed for snowmobiles. A delay also would allow communities near the park that depend on income from inter tourism to prepare for any planned closures. According to NPCA, the proposed interim winter use alternative Announced today for Yellowstone makes assumptions about the impacts of road grooming on the park's bison that are not based on adequate research. "Unless we know more about how grooming the park's roads for snowmobiles affects the bison, any proposed road closure will just lead to more uninformed and acrimonious debate," said Mark Peterson, Rocky Mountain Regional Director for NPCA. The preferred alternative set forth in the environmental assessment Released today is the result of a court settlement imposed in a suit brought by the Biodiversity Legal Foundation and Fund for Animals. It calls for closure of the stretch of road from South Canyon Drive to Fishing Bridge junction beginning January 10, 1998. The groups sought closure of Yellowstone's roads during the winter season to reduce the movement of bison out of the park. Since 1972, park roads have been groomed for winter use by snowmobiles and snowcoaches. "A far better plan would be the second alternative offered by the National Park Service," said NPCA's Peterson. That alternative calls for the 14-mile stretch of road to stay open during the winter of 1997-98 while park researchers collect data on the numbers of bison and snowmobiles using the road. Closure of the road would be delayed until the winter of 1998-99, so that comparisons of bison movement in the area can be made. "Winter use of Yellowstone National Park is a great concern of NPCA," Peterson said. "We are interested not only in protecting the park's bison and other resources, but in making sure that all those who visit the park during the winter can experience its majesty and solitude." Peterson noted that Yellowstone may need to rethink its winter use policies, but that "it makes no sense to make management decisions without the baseline information needed to give them credibility." Peterson also called for additional research to identify areas of conflict between snowmobilers and other park users. Once this information is available, "the Park Service could consider limiting the hours during which snowmobiles can be used, and perhaps requiring snowmobilers to certify that their machines meet `best available technology' standards for emissions and noise," Peterson said. There will be a 30-day public comment period for the environmental assessment released today. After evaluating public comment, the Park Service must announce a "record of decision" on one of several alternatives by January 10. NPS may choose one of the road closure alternatives presented in the assessment, a combination of alternatives, or could choose to continue winter recreational uses on currently groomed road segments in the park. The process of developing a permanent Yellowstone winter use plan will begin next spring. The National Parks and Conservation Association is America's only private nonprofit citizen organization dedicated solely to preserving, protecting, 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
>.
From:

ARTISTpres@aol.com

Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 16:07:05 -0500 (EST)
To: securma@museum-security.org
Subject:

NYC still persecuting street artists despite federal ruling


Why Does New York City Still Illegally Arrest, Harass and Persecute Street Artists? The Answer Is B.I.D.s (Business Improvement Districts)
By Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion;, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." -The First Amendment
"A picture is worth a thousand words." Ancient Chinese saying
[note: the legal issues discussed in this document involve artists who sell their own paintings, photographs and limited edition prints on the public section of city streets and should not be confused with the issue of grafitti.]
Imagine standing on a city street viewing a sidewalk display of paintings and discussing them with the artist. Suddenly, two vans and a police car pull up. Twenty armed, bulletproof-vested plainclothes cops jump out, surround the artist, place them in handcuffs, confiscate all of the paintings and push the artist into the van. When you ask what the problem is the police tell you it's a "quality of life" operation, just shut up and keep walking. Is this happening in China or Iraq? No, it's just a typical day in New York City, the artist persecution capital of the world.
Orchestrated by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, New York is undergoing a transformation in which image has become the key factor in all governmental decisions. Achieving the public perception of "quality of life", (though not necessarily the reality) is the goal of City Hall's policies. Unfortunately, it's not the average person's life quality the Giuliani administration wants to improve.
Corporations and real estate interests, which provide most of the funds for election campaigns and receive hundreds of millions of dollars in unjustified tax-write offs, are viewed by this administration as the rightful proprietors of the City's public sidewalks, parks and streets. These business interests view displays of art or street culture of any kind as a blemish disfiguring the exclusive image and market value of their property.
In order to exert total control over the public space adjacent to their properties, New York City's business leaders have formed unelected and unaccountable shadow governments or B.I.D.'s (Business Improvement Districts) to run key areas of the City. B.I.D.s are authorized to assess special taxes (more than $50 million last year), have their own police and sanitation services (often paid less than the minimum wage) and are establishing a self-administered court system in which to try "quality of life" offenders more "efficiently".
The Fifth Avenue and Times Square B.I.D.s, which dominate the entire B.I.D. scheme, already operate a Community Court on 54th Street to handle "quality of life" crimes committed within their territory. Convicted defendants, or those coerced into pleading guilty, are put to work within the B.I.D. doing "community service" which generally consists of cleaning the streets for the B.I.D. Some B.I.D.s began sponsoring homeless outreach programs after being accused of "hiring goon squads" to force homeless people off the street [see 1995 City Council Investigation on B.I.D.s]. Distinctions between businesses, the police, social services and an impartial criminal justice system blur as they become one continuous business enterprise. Many of the B.I.D.s are managed by former high ranking New York City police officials, providing the B.I.D.s with a unique level of access to Police Department resources and personel.
Sidewalk art displays have been described by B.I.D. directors as magnets for prostitution, three-card-monte gangs and pickpockets. The reality is that the B.I.D.s own high-priced stores, hotels and theatres catering to tourists are what attracts these activities.
In the art and free speech capital of the world artists are being demonized as "parasites" in order to justify ruthlessly eliminating them from the streets. Previous to this policy, sidewalk art displays were viewed as a cultural asset. New York City actually advertised the presence of street artists in travel magazines. The police were instructed not to arrest artists and that a visual artist selling his or her own art didn't require a license, based on First Amendment freedom of speech.
Beginning in the late 1980's the City's B.I.D.s, led by the Fifth Avenue Association, mounted a lobbying effort aimed at eliminating all street vending. In 1993 artists' displays were unofficially recategorized as general vending and a license suddenly became a requirement. Since the City Council had previously frozen the total number of vending licenses at the 853 then in effect (none of which were in the hands of artists) a license was, to quote legal briefs the City filed in Federal Court, "impossible for artists to obtain". Artists throughout the City began to be systematically handcuffed and arrested and have their art confiscated for the "crime" of not having a license.
Fearing that an independent-minded judge might find such an unreasonable licensing requirement for First Amendment protected expression unconstitutional, the City meticulously avoided prosecuting a single artists' case in Criminal Court. None of the more than 500 artists arrested since 1993 have ever had a trial or been found guilty of committing a crime. While never convicted, artists rarely recovered their confiscated paintings, which the City illegally sold at a monthly Police Department auction or destroyed.
In 1994, members of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) filed a Federal lawsuit accusing Mayor Giuliani and the City of violating their right to freedom of expression. In response, five of the most powerful B.I.D.s filed an amicus brief in Federal Court declaring visual art to be unworthy of First Amendment protection.
The 30 page brief, signed by The Fifth Avenue Association, The Alliance For Downtown New York, The Madison Avenue B.I.D., The Grand Central Partnership, The 34th Street Partnership and the SoHo Alliance claimed, "The sale of artwork does not involve communication of thoughts or ideas" and warned of, "the dangers of allowing visual art full First Amendment protection". It went on to state, "An artists' freedom of expression is not compromised by regulating his ability to merchandise his artwork", and, "..the sale of paintings and other artwork does not reach this high level of expression (guaranteeing First Amendment protection)..." Ironically, more than 95% of the City's art galleries and museums are located within the areas controlled by The Fifth Avenue Association, The Madison Avenue B.I.D.. and the SoHo Alliance.
The agenda behind harassing street artists is not that the B.I.D.s dislike art but that they view artists' freedom of speech as a legal obstacle in the overall process of cleansing and controling their territory. By restricting constitutionally protected activities they hope to wipe out all street culture and non-corporate expression, leaving themselves a monopoly on expression in public spaces.
Although the Giuliani administration claims that public safety and the preservation of a visually uncluttered environment are the justification for restricting artists the same administration spent much of the past four years developing its controversial Street Furniture Initiative. This exclusive twenty year contract with a French based multi-national corporation involves constructing thousands of advertising kiosks on sidewalks throughout New York City. These sidewalk-congesting kiosks will feature flashing lights, moving digital texts and huge eye-level billboards, creating new hazards for pedestrians and drivers while bringing the City billions in ad revenue. Not surprisingly, B.I.D. members will be the prime clients for these expensive new ad spaces.
To avoid negative press about their practice of blatantly violating the Constitution, City officials have made a concerted effort to suppress media coverage about the street artist issue. They routinely deny that any arrests are made or art confiscated despite the existence of extensive court records and hundreds of photographs and videotapes. Reporters researching this issue have been told that access to Police Department sources would be permanently blocked if they continued to cover the artists' story. Protest signs and petitions have been confiscated from artist activists and artists have been arrested simply for handing out literature or photographs documenting the arrests.
At the same time that the City was perpetrating its crackdown on artists, corporations such as Nike, Disney, Sony, Macys, Phillip Morris, Planet Hollywood and Chase Manhattan were given unprecedented use of city streets and parks to promote their corporate image and their latest products. In arguments before the 2nd Circuit Federal Appeals Court, lawyers for the City claimed that, "protection of business interests" was a prime reason for preventing artists from showing art on the street. In fact, that is their only reason. Freedom of expression in the hands of the general public is seen by many business interests as a threat. If the average person is allowed to use the City's public spaces to communicate, post a leaflet, advocate a cause, advertise or sell their artwork it threatens the business communities monopoly on these activities. Although politicians and corporations pay lip service to free enterprise, freedom of speech and equal opportunity, they are actively trying to deny these same rights to the general public.
New York City based corporations and real estate interests associated with the B.I.D.s contribute hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the City's art museums, parks and cultural institutions. The C.E.O.'s of these companies sit on (and usually control) the boards of the art museums. This kind of cultural investment provides a unique public relations opportunity for companies routinely accused of polluting the environment, mistreating employees, engaging in political corruption or selling products which cause disease and death. Many of these business interests are the same people behind the artist arrests, anti-free speech and privatization of public space agendas. While they and the elected officials they control condemn human rights abuses in China, Iraq or Cuba, they promote similarly repressive policies applied to their fellow citizens in the U.S. under the guise of "quality of life".
The First Amendment protects those who may not have money, attorneys or friendly politicians to speak for them. It is the average person's sole defense against government repression. Any attempt by government or its corporate sponsors to suppress this right must be denounced and resisted as if our lives and freedom depended on it, because in fact, they do.
Although concerns about crime and sidewalk congestion have a legitimate place in governmental decisions, real quality of life depends on keeping our most basic human right intact and unabridged: freedom of speech. __
The Court Case On October 10th, 1996 The 2nd Circuit Federal Appeals Court issued a sweeping ruling in favor of the street artists. That decision overturned a lower court's ruling that fully supported the City's artist arrest policy. On June 3rd, 1997 The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Mayor Giuliani's appeal of the 2nd Circuit's street artist decision bringing the case to its conclusion.] The following are selected quotes from the 2nd Circuit decision which is now the law in New York: [cite as Bery et al v. City of New York / Lederman et al v. City of New York #95-9089].
"The City apparently looks upon visual art as mere "merchandise" lacking in communicative concepts or ideas. Both the court and the City demonstrate an unduly restricted view of the First Amendment and of visual art itself. Such myopic vision not only overlooks case law central to First Amendment jurisprudence but fundamentally misperceives the essence of visual communication and artistic expression. Visual art is as wide ranging in its depiction of ideas, concepts and emotions as any book, treatise, pamphlet or other writing, and is similarly entitled to full First Amendment protection. Indeed, written language is far more constricting because of its many variants--English, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Wolof, Guarani, etc.--among and within each group and because some within each language group are illiterate and cannot comprehend their own written language. The ideas and concepts embodied in visual art have the power to transcend these language limitations and reach beyond a particular language group to both the educated and the illiterate. As the Supreme Court has reminded us, visual images are "a primitive but effective way of communicating ideas ... a shortcut from mind to mind... The City further argues that appellants are free to display their artwork publicly without a license, they simply cannot sell it. These arguments must fail. The sale of protected materials is also protected. See Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Pub. Co., 486 U.S. 750, 756 n. 5 & 768, 108 S.Ct. 2138, 100 L.Ed.2d 771 (1988). "It is well settled that a speaker's rights are not lost merely because compensation is received; a speaker is no less a speaker because he or she is paid to speak...
Furthermore, the street marketing is in fact a part of the message of appellants' art. As they note in their submissions to the court, they believe that art should be available to the public. Anyone, not just the wealthy, should be able to view it and to buy it. Artists are part of the "real" world; they struggle to make a living and interact with their environments. The sale of art in public places conveys these messages. The district court seems to have equated the visual expression involved in these cases with the crafts of the jeweler, the potter and the silversmith who seek to sell their work. While these objects may at times have expressive content, paintings, photographs, prints and sculptures, such as those appellants seek to display and sell in public areas of the City, always communicate some idea or concept to those who view it, and as such are entitled to full First Amendment protection... The license requirement as it relates to appellants, however, which effectively bars them from displaying or selling their art on the streets, is too sweeping to pass constitutional muster. See, e.g., Cincinnati v. Discovery Network, Inc., 507 U.S. 410, 429-30, 113 S.Ct. 1505, 123 L.Ed.2d 99 (1993). The district court's failure to properly analyze the questions of narrow tailoring and alternative channels was an abuse of discretion that led to an incorrect result... The ordinance is a de facto bar preventing visual artists from exhibiting and selling their art in public areas in New York. The total number of licenses outstanding at any given time is a low 853. Those fortunate enough to possess one of these permits may automatically renew it annually which, of course, means that late-comers like appellants have little hope of securing a license in the foreseeable future. In addition to this all-but-impenetrable barrier, a 500-to-5000 person waiting list makes appellants' prospects of securing a license apparently nonexistent, a fact conceded at oral argument... The City may enforce narrowly designed restrictions as to where appellants may exhibit their works in order to keep the sidewalks free of congestion and to ensure free and safe public passage on the streets, but it cannot bar an entire category of expression to accomplish this accepted objective when more narrowly drawn regulations will suffice. The City points to nothing on this record concerning its need to ensure street safety and lack of congestion that would justify the imposition of the instant prohibitive interdiction barring the display and sale of visual art on the City streets...
Displaying art on the street has a different expressive purpose than gallery or museum shows; it reaches people who might not choose to go into a gallery or museum or who might feel excluded or alienated from these forums. The public display and sale of artwork is a form of communication between the artist and the public not possible in the enclosed, separated spaces of galleries and museums.
Appellants are interested in attracting and communicating with the man or woman on the street who may never have been to a gallery and indeed who might never have thought before of possessing a piece of art until induced to do so on seeing appellants' works. The sidewalks of the City must be available for appellants to reach their public audience. The City has thus failed to meet the requirement of demonstrating alternative channels for appellants' expression. On the basis of this record before us, the City's requirement that appellants be licensed in order to sell their artwork in public spaces constitutes an unconstitutional infringement of their First Amendment rights. The district court abused its discretion in denying the preliminary injunction. Finally, we note that the district court was similarly incorrect in its rejection of appellants' argument under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The requirement that appellants' art cannot be sold or distributed in public areas without a general vendors license, while written material may be sold and distributed without a license, must fall for the same reasons outlined above. Since the ordinance does impermissibly impinge on a fundamental right, the district court incorrectly dismissed the equal protection argument under a rational basis test. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is reversed. "
After Winning the Court Case Most observers believed that the arrests, confiscations and illegal campaign of harassment would stop after the City lost the case. Instead, the City's illegal actions have continued right up to the present day. Artists throughout the City are still routinely threatened with arrest and confiscation of their art by police officers who admit they are responding to demands by Business Improvement Districts and landlords to get rid of the artists. Hundreds of summonses have been issued to artists in SoHo, in midtown and around Central Park, most of which continue to be dismissed. Art work is still being illegally confiscated by local precincts and by the Peddler Task Force. The N.Y.P.D. responds to organized street artist resistance by deploying large contingents of twenty to thirty uniformed and plainclothes police officers. These swat-like teams close off streets and sidewalks and swoop down on the artists, who counter with immediate demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience. The outcome of this struggle involves more than just the rights and livelihoods of street artists. If the City and the business institutions that are driving its policy succeed in ridding the streets of artists, every American's right to free expression will have been abridged. The following are a few of the previous court cases which helped establish visual art as a form of First Amendment protected expression.

Piarowski v. Illinois Community College, 759 F.2d 625, 628 (7th Cir.) -"The freedom of speech and of the press protected by the First Amendment has been interpreted to embrace purely artistic as well as political expression.". cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1007 (1985). Serra v. United States Gen. Servs. Admin., 847 F.2d 1045, 1048 (2d Cir.1988)"...artistic expression constitutes speech for First Amendment purposes...".

Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 404 (1989)"We have long recognized that its protection [the First Amendment's] does not end at the spoken or written word."

414 Theater Corp. v. Murphy, 499 F.2d 1155 (2d Cir. 1974), [A case that corresponds to the licensing issue in this case.] "The forced discontinuance of a first amendment right pending a protracted license determination is itself a prior restraint, and involves irreparable injury to the public's as well as the appellee's first amendment rights." People v. Milbry, 530 N.Y.S.2d 928, 929 (N.Y. Crim. Ct. 1988) "Pictorial artwork, as a form of self-expression, is certainly covered by the guarantee of freedom of speech contained in both Federal and New York State Constitutions."

People v. Lessin Rodriguez, 94NO58171 N.Y.Crim.Ct. 8/8/94 [a case of an unlicensed general vending charge against a fine artist] "...because it's not a crime...it is dismissed. The First Amendment protects it." People v. Krebs 282 N.Y.S. 2d. 996 "Purpose and the thrust of the peddler license ordinance...was not intended to strike down First Amendment rights or subject proper exercise of free speech to municipal regulations or police dictation." ["Speech" need not be in the form of words to be protected nor does it need to be "political" or even have a specific message.] Hurley v. Irish-American Gay and Lesbian Bisexual Group, No. 94-749, 1995 WL 360192 (S. Ct. June 19, 1995) The Constitution looks beyond written or spoken words as mediums of expression...as some of these examples show, a narrow, succinctly articulable message is not a condition of constitutional protection, which if confined to expressions conveying a "particularized message" would never reach the unquestionably shielded painting of Jackson Pollack, music of Arnold Schonberg or Jabberwocky verse of Lewis Carroll". [Selling the tangible manifestations of speech in no way invalidates its First Amendment protection.]
Virginia State Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748, 761 (1976) "Speech is protected even though it is a form that is sold for profit, and even though it may involve a solicitation to purchase or otherwise pay or contribute money." United States v. National Treasury Employees Union No. 93-1170, 1995 WL 68442 (S. Ct. February 22, 1995) A ban on receiving honoraria, "...unquestionably imposes a significant burden on expressive activity...The honoraria ban imposes the kind of burden that abridges speech under the First Amendment." Joseph Burstyn, Inc, v. Wilson 343 U.S. 495 (1952) "That books, newspapers and magazines are published and sold for profit does not prevent them from being a form of expression whose liberty is safeguarded by the First Amendment."

[Public streets are an appropriate forum for First Amendment protected activities and have consistently been found to be the traditional locale of free expression.]

See: Burson, 112 S. Ct. at 1850 ("Quintessential public forums" are "parks, streets, and sidewalks."); Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 481 (1988) (residential street is a public forum); United States v. Grace, 461 U.S. 171, 176 (1983) (public sidewalks forming perimeter of the Supreme Court grounds are public forum for First Amendment purposes).

Loper v. New York City Police Dep't, 999 F.2d 699, 704 (2d Cir. 1993), The sidewalks of New York City constitute a public forum because they "...fall into the category of public property traditionally held open to the public for expressive activity."

Hague v. C.I.O., 307 U.S. 496 (1939) "Whenever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public...Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunites, rights and liberties of citizens. The privilege of a citizen of the United States to use the streets and parks for communication...must not, in the guise of regulation, be abridged or denied."
Therefore, one must conclude that whatever exemptions, privileges or special considerations given other First Amendment protected materials being displayed, sold or given away on New York City streets must be similarly afforded artists and their fine art. It can hardly be constitutional or rational to arbitrarily deny First Amendment protection to one expressive medium (visual fine art), while granting it to another medium (books, baseball cards, used magazines and postcards, i.e. written art is exempted from the licensing requirement).
During the course of our lawsuit we discovered that in 1982, the original wording of the licensing exemption for book vendors in the N.Y.C. Vending Ordinance was clearly and conspicuously attributed to the First Amendment and free speech. In subsequent editions of the law, the City Council's lawyers removed all mention of free speech as a way of denying artists and other protected individuals the same exemption. Here's the original wording which is only to be found in 1982 editions:
"Local Laws of the City of New York For The Year 1982. #33 section 1: Legislative declaration. The council hereby finds and declares that it is consistent with the principles of free speech and freedom of the press to eliminate as many restrictions on the vending of written matter as is consistent with the public health, safety and welfare."
Contact #'s Robert Lederman is president of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) For information, to make a donation or to join A.R.T.I.S.T. call: (718) 369-2111 or (212) 561-0877 e-mail ARTISTpres@aol.com or visit our web site:
http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html

Photos and videos of arrests, art confiscations and demonstrations are available for publication. We welcome all artists to join us in the street and to help protect First Amendment rights.
Other contact numbers: Fifth Avenue Association (212) 736-7900 Fifth Avenue B.I.D. (212 ) 265-1310 Times Square B.I.D. (212) 768-1560 Madison Ave. B.I.D. (212) 861-2055 Alliance for Downtown N.Y. (212) 566-6700 Grand Central Partnership (212) 818-1777 N.Y.C. Corporation Counsel (attorneys representing the City) (212) 788-0303 Mayor Giuliani's press office 212 788-2958 Peddler Task Force (212) 760-8305 Wayne Cross and Brett Goodman (attorneys

Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 10:45:35 -0700
From:

stuart denenberg <stuartd@dnai.com>

Organization: verification technologies
To: Museum Security Mailinglist <securma@xs4all.nl
>
Subject:

A remarkable recovery!

Dear MSN subscribers,
As inventor of ISIS,and Chairman of Verification Technologies, Inc. (www.verification.com), I want to share a recent triumph of our ground-breaking identification service. Norman and Dorothy Lien, collectors in California, were told by their appraiser that two small gouaches by Eugene Galien-Laloue, French late 19th -early 20th century, were in fact photoreproductions touched up with gouache, and the touch-ups were not done by the artist. As friends and clients, the Liens agreed to bring the pieces to ISIS headquarters in San Francisco's Union Square--where, together, we examined and recorded the works. Under high magnification in the patented ISIS method, we printed out increasingly large magnifications of the photo-dot process, the ungainly and obvious touch-up in gouache, and of most interest--the area where the "signature" of the artist went from light to dark as a function of the shading of the photographic process! We then marched over to a notary public who notarized my testimony regarding the process of ISIS examination of the two fakes, and the testimony of Mr. Lien, who saw the process himself. Armed with the notarized images, notarized testimony, and the name of Albert Benamou, Director of the Association of French Foundries and Director of the Musée de la Defense in Paris, as well as the name of a policeman in the art squad in Paris, they called the seller. At first, on telephone, she said "c'est impossible!" but when confronted with the evidence, and in the context of known authorities as observers in Paris, she admitted that indeed the two pieces were not genuine. A check in the amount of $14,000 was written to the delight of the Liens--who returned to San Francisco, invited my wife and myself out to the Ritz for a celebratory dinner--and authorized me to tell this tale to the world. This is the first account of a remarkable success using the ISIS process! We are hoping to find interested parties to cooperate in developing the marketing and customizing the technology for a wide variety of objects. The Ansel Adams family has already ISIS-registered many of its own personal images by Ansel Adams. Interested parties may call Stuart Denenberg, Chairman, at 415-788-8411; or respond by e-mail to stuartd@verification.com.

Respectfully submitted November 15, 1997 by Stuart Denenberg, Chairman and founder, Verification Technologies, Incorporated/257 Grant Avenue/San Francisco, CA 94108.