| securma | |||||
| the museum security network | |||||
| join the mailinglist | scroll down | reports of cultural property incidents | |||
A FORMER employee of the Royal College of Surgeons has been arrested by police investigating allegations of theft and illegal burying of body parts used by a sculptor. He was held five days after Anthony-Noel Kelly, whose alleged use of body parts to make sculptures led to the investigation. Mr Kelly, 41, a cousin of the Duke of Norfolk and a teacher at the Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture, is on police bail after being held by detectives from Scotland Yard's organised crime group on April 2. Two addresses were raided and a number of body parts, believed to be up to 30, were allegedly recovered. Scotland Yard confirmed the second arrest yesterday, and that the man was released on police bail to return in four weeks. It is understood that he is a former employee of the college and not a surgeon. The college, based in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, is a world-renowned centre of learning and training for surgeons. It sets academic standards for surgeons in England and its facilities include a museum. No one from the Royal College was available to comment last night. The focus of the Scotland Yard investigation into the allegations against Mr Kelly is whether there have been infringements, by theft or illegal burying, of the 1994 Anatomy Act. This made it a criminal offence to use bodies donated to medical establishments for any purpose other than medical research. It also stipulated that most remains can be retained for three years but must then be given a proper burial. Her Majesty's Inspector of Anatomy, Dr Laurence Martin, a Department of Health official who oversees medical establishments covered by the Act, including the Royal College, began his own investigation after reading a newspaper article in January about Mr Kelly's work. The Department of Health said that Dr Martin wrote to hospitals and medical schools, where bodies were likely to be kept, asking them to check their records. Dr Martin also alerted Scotland Yard, which began its own inquiry, leading to the arrest and bailing of Mr Kelly, a former butcher and abattoir worker. A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "Following a request from HM Inspectorate of Anatomy, officers from the organised crime group are investigating allegations of theft and burying bodies without consent." The artist emerged briefly from his studios in Clapham, south west London, yesterday. Looking bewildered and nervous, he said: "The police are following their investigation and I am helping them as much as I can. I have not been charged with anything yet and I am not sure exactly what I will be charged with. I will be talking more fully once the whole thing is over." Mr Kelly is sculpture tutor at the Institute of Architecture and insists that his work immortalises the dead. His exhibition of work based on human parts at the Contemporary Arts Fair in Islington in January led to controversy and publicity, which was brought to the attention of Dr Martin.
Cupids, fountains, busts, urns and statues are being ripped out of country estates and exported. Italy leads the market for religious objects, the United States for anything historic. Thieves use hydraulic lifting gear, and on one occasion even a helicopter, to remove the massive artifacts.
Last week a pair of gigantic 200-year-old lead sphinxes were stolen soon after a 4ft-high marble statue of a Roman fertility goddess disappeared from a garden in Ascot. Among those whose gardens have been robbed are Lord Carrington, the former Foreign Secretary, Sir Thomas Ingilby, of Ripley Castle, North Yorks and Government minister Lord Inglewood, who lives near Penrith.
Police say a countrywide network of criminals with an organised market employs local gangs of small-time crooks, paid on commission, to do the relatively straightforward work of stealing. The gangs work roughly and with no regard for the value of their booty.
They have ripped statues off plinths, leaving plaster feet behind, or dismembered figures for easier carrying, dropping the odd limb as they make their hasty departure. No practical problems deter them. In York an almost life-sized lead statue of Mercury, stolen from a National Trust property, was lifted over a 13ft brick wall.
Thieves breaking into country estates have used the owners' tractors to remove their haul. In Scotland, burglars reached a remote property by river, taking away two sizeable urns and a stone eagle by boat. Colin Norvell-Read, news editor of Trace - the monthly magazine devoted to recovering stolen art and antiques - said that this year there had been an explosion in garden statuary theft.
"People living in isolated, rural properties have became accustomed to locking up and protecting their houses but they have forgotten about objects outside, which are now being removed, whizzed out of the country and never seen again. "We are urging people to make full and detailed inventories of what they own so that we know what we are looking for and can identify objects which are found."
This summer Harrogate police found a cache of garden statuary, hidden behind hundreds of pieces of furniture in a warehouse. In the garden of the same property, a huge bronze statue of an Indian with a dog, weighing about a third of a ton, was found buried. "The stuff had been missing for a few years," said Det Con Mark Hall.
"The thieves were presumably sitting on it until records were wiped off the computers. One of the methods they use is to drive up a wagon with a mound of sand on the back and park alongside a statue on a plinth, then topple the statue off on to the sand and drive away. Some of the stuff gets returned to its owners but much is hidden away until a decent interval has elapsed and then exported."
Lord Carrington, who collects contemporary statuary in his landscaped garden in Buckinghamshire, has been burgled. "We had a bronze bust stolen in the summer which was recovered - and then stolen again three months later," he said.
"The morning we came down and found it had been stolen for a second time, we discovered that a rather Modigliani-like head, made of hardened porcelain, had been dislodged. It was very securely gummed down and the thieves had obviously been disturbed or they would have pinched that as well. Now we've had everything alarmed and wired."
When Sir Thomas Ingilby lost two wrought iron garden urns which had been in the family since 1840, he founded the Stately Homes Hotline which co-ordinates details of thefts from around 500 stately homes throughout the country.
Sir Thomas said that everyone was now being urged to make detailed records of their garden ornaments. "And they are realising they have to alarm everything. It doesn't matter if it's screwed down. If someone wants to steal it, they will go to extraordinary lengths to get it away.
"But the problem remains: when an alarm goes off, who is going to go out at 2.30am to a remote part of the garden and what will undoubtedly be a gang of people armed with things like crowbars?"
copyright SECURMA The Netherlands
copyright SECURMA The Netherlands
Auctioneers join police to fight art fraud
By Doug Morrison
POLICE are joining forces with auctioneers to combat use of public auctions for money laundering and the sale of stolen works of art.
This Friday 150 insurers and auctioneers will assemble at New Scotland Yard in a bid to stamp out what has become one of the most serious big money criminal activities after drugs. Police and ISVA, the professional society for auctioneers, want auction houses to adopt a code of due diligence to identify suspicious buyers and sellers before a sale.
Dodgy dealers using fictitious names and cash instead of traceable cheques have free rein in the auction rooms. Detective Chief Inspector Charles Hill of the Metropolitan Police said: "Auction rooms are cash-intensive and are seen by criminals as ideal outlets for converting stolen commodities into cash."
The Council for the Prevention of Art Theft estimates £500m of art and antiquities are stolen in Britain every year, much of it ending up in salerooms.
Britain is also an outlet for global art crime, worth more than £2bn a year. This month the Art Loss Register recovered two important paintings stolen from Italy which appeared for sale in London.
copyright SECURMA The Netherlands
By John Steele, Crime Correspondent
AN antiques dealer murdered in a suspected robbery told police two
months ago that she was being followed.
Carolanne Jackson, found bound, beaten and strangled at the weekend,
was followed to her cottage in February and saw a prowler outside the
front door. Miss Jackson, 50, had also been burgled and had reported
other incidents to police. Detectives believe that she was targeted in
a robbery on Friday night and probably followed into her home by her
killer as she unloaded her car after a holiday. It is suspected that
the February incident could have been a "dry run" by raiders, or a
failed attempt when she did not open the door.
Police are also investigating the theory that she was was beaten into
giving information about the "substantial" safe in her home, Apple
Tree Cottage at Wooburn Green, near High Wycombe, Bucks. Police cannot
yet say if she had been deliberately strangled - there was no ligature
- or had put up a struggle. Her Rolex watch and an amount of jewellery
were taken. Her body was found in the kitchen, clothed, and her hands
and feet were bound with household items from the cottage.
Det Supt Alan Partridge said the safe was locked when police arrived
and he was unable to say whether it had been opened during the
robbery. Miss Jackson's insurers will be asked for any information
which might indicate what she had in the safe.
Miss Jackson, a slightly disabled woman dogged by ill health
throughout her life, enjoyed a "reasonable living" from the business
Kings Chase Antiques, which she ran from home.
Police want to talk to anyone who saw strange people or cars passing
through Berghers Hill, the main street near her home, on Friday night
or in recent days and weeks. Her killer or killers may have parked and
walked to the cottage.
Mr Partridge said there were some similarities but "distinct
dissimilarities" between Miss Partridge's death and the murder two
years ago of 50-year-old Janet Brown. She was found naked, handcuffed
and beaten about the head at her home in Radnage, 20 miles from
Wooburn Green. Mr Partridge said that although he would keep an open
mind, there were no strong links.
Detectives will also study a raid on a shop, Cheswell Antiques, owned
by a couple also called Jackson in Wargrave, Berks, three weeks ago.
Brian and Joan Jackson were handcuffed and robbed of £80,000-worth of
jewellery by two men.
Initial reports that the body of Miss Jackson was discovered by her
son were discounted by police who said she was single with no
children.
copyright SECURMA The Netherlands
Wherein the nature of blazing stars is enquired into; with an historical account of all the comets which have apppeared form the beginning of the world unto this present year M.DC.LXXXIII, expressing the place in the heavens, where they were seen, their motion, forms, duration; and the remarkable events which have followed in the world, so far as they have been by learned men observed. As also two sermons occasioned by the late blazing stars [...] Boston: Printed by S. G[reen] for S[ewell] and sold by J[oseph] Browning, 1683. pp 144, [2pp. blank], [viii], 38, [ii], 32. 142 X 90 mm. Bound with two sermons (2A-2E8) with separate title-pages: (1) Heaven's Alarm to the World. Or a Sermon, wherein is shewed, That Fearful Sights and Signs in Heaven, are the presages of Great Calamities at Hand [...] The Second Impression [...] 1682. And (2) The Latter Sign Discoursed of, in a Sermon Preached at teh Lecture of Boston in New England, August 31, 1682. Bound in full calf with strong hinges and joints but lacking front end-paper. There is some slight annotation to the first title-page. Overall a good copy.
Signatures: 1A-1K8, 2A-2E8. A1(a blank) is missing; slight chipping to fore-edge of 1C2 and 2E8 (not affecting text); small stain at tail edge of leaf beginning at 1D1, ending at 1K8, reappearing at 2C2 and ending on 2D3; errata slip mounted on verso of 1K7. Beinecke's copy lacks A1 and errata slip; Beinecke's copy also includes 6 engraved plates that are not here present and show no signs of ever having been present.
For more information, of if you can help, contact:
John Lord's Books
Stouffville, Ontario
Canada
Thanks,
Deanna
Deanna Ramsay, Bookseller
14083 Leslie St. 1-905-841-7817
Aurora, Ontario fax 1-905-841-0877
Canada L4G 7C5
http://web.idirect.com/~booktrak/
copyright SECURMA The Netherlands
April 13, 1997
Theft during opening hours. Sunday April 13. A Pieter Balten (1525-1598) painting of a farm was stolen in the Bredius Museum, The Hague, The Netherlands. The teft took place during opening hours. Value of the painting DGL. 100.000 - 150.000 (USD. 75.000.00). At the moment the theft took place it was very crowded in the museum.
copyright SECURMA The Netherlands
April 14, 1997
In the first ICMS Newsletter February 1997 (publication for the members of the International Committee on Museum Security) is a short article by Alain Raisson about a new form of theft in French museums. Characteristics of this form of theft: speed, violence, at night. A gang of about 10 persons force the entrance door of a park, crash through doors of museum, smash showcases and leave with their loot before the police arrives. Apart from the theft considerable damage is caused. According to Mr. Raisson possible solutions are the earliest detection and mechanical reinforcement of doors and windows. The *Topkapi* years are over. The development of electronic devices has created a new form of theft from museums. Criminals do not act smartly and subtle, but with increasing force. In The Netherlands there were several occasions in which glass walls of museums were smashed (Stedelijk Museum, Kroller Muller Museum), or windows were broken with a lot of violence (Rembrandt Museum). Burglars know that is it quite impossible to make your way into a museum without being spotted by camera's or other electronic devices (The Oslo Burglars who stole *The Scream* did not mind to be filmed). The only way to success is: act fast and use a lot of violence. They know that they will almost always be detected and are aware of the importance to keep the time between the start of their actions and the get-away extremely limited. There is this theory called INCI-DET-A-R (Incident Detection Alarm Response). As long as time between the start of criminal actions is shorter than the time between detection and response criminals will not bother anymore to work in silence (like in the Topkapi movie), but work with lots of violence: like in Munich a couple of years ago when showcases were smashed and a large collection of antique watches was stolen. My prediction is that this sort of actions will not only increase but even become worse. The past months there were two examples of theft in bright daylight and using (or threathening to use) violence: The theft of the Picasso Painting in London (see: http://museum-security.org/artcrime2.html#19) and the theft from a museum in Kiew (http://museum-security.org/artcrime3.html#6) where three masked men held workers at gunpoint and took the paintings off the wall while the museum was open during the middle of the day. In a way all electronic devices have created a new task for security managers. Early detection offers the possibility to react quickly. Now we must make sure that there is not only early detection but we must also make sure that criminals need a long time to get into our buildings and when they are inside they must need a long time to get the *loot*. However when this is achieved the next problem has been created: if it is hard to get in at night why bother?? just buy a ticket when the museum is open, bring a gun and get whatever you want. A whole bunch of measures are needed to prevent our museums against future crime. We cannot expect art crime to diminish just because we have sophisticated electronic devices. Do not forget: the trade in stolen art is only second after the trade in illegal drugs. There is a lot of money involved and criminals will adjust to our protective systems. Reflect on it: what can you expect if you have a system that takes care of early detection and it is hard to get into your building? What can you expect and what can you do against future violent incidents?
Something else: it is a *public secret* that insurance companies are willing to pay ransom for stolen art. One way to prevent art from being stolen is to make sure there is no profit in it. My advice, strange it may seem, is not to insure art (and at the same time take care of state-of-the-art registration procedures). This may be the subject for a future article.
Ton Cremers
copyright SECURMA The Netherlands
Turin Shroud survives blaze linked to mafia
ITALIAN magistrates fear the Turin Shroud, rescued from a blaze which
engulfed a Renaissance cathedral yesterday, may have been the latest
target of a campaign of "cultural terrorism" by the mafia against the
Italian state, writes Renato Pezzini, in Turin.
The shroud, one of the holiest relics of Roman Catholicism, was
carried to safety from the blazing cathedral in the early hours of
yesterday morning. Italy greeted the rescue as a miracle.
The piece of cloth, imprinted with an image of a man's body that many
believe is the figure of Christ, is normally kept in the Guarini
chapel, which was completely destroyed.
"It's intact, saved by an act of God," said Cardinal Giovanni
Saldarini, the Archbishop of Turin. As firefighters fought for seven
hours to bring the blaze under control, onlookers wept, fearing that
the shroud, revered as Christ's burial cloth, had been burnt.
The chapel had been undergoing restoration and the shroud was moved a
few days ago to an alcove behind the main altar of the cathedral, from
where it was rescued by a fireman who smashed its container with an
axe.
On Friday night a reception for Kofi Annan, the United Nations
secretary-general, was held at the Royal Palace next to the cathedral.
Investigators suspect that a mafia arsonist may have used this as
cover for planting an incendiary bomb aimed at the shroud.
This is the second time in just over a year that a historic Italian
building has been burnt. In January 1996 Venice's La Fenice opera
house was wrecked in a blaze which magistrates believe may have been
started by the mafia.
The mob is thought to have been behind at least two other attacks on
cultural targets over the past four years as it attempts to persuade
the government to slacken a crackdown on organised crime. A car bomb
killed five people and destroyed much of the Uffizi Gallery in
Florence four years ago and the Basilica of St John Lateran, the
Pope's church in Rome, was bombed.
It was not clear last night what other treasures in Turin were at
risk. Officials said part of a valuable collection of pictures,
antique furniture and carpets had been saved from the blaze.
Franco Bassanini, minister for public works, estimated the damage at
tens of millions of pounds.
copyright SECURMA The Netherlands
Revealed: looted Nazi pictures went to British museums
by John Harlow, Arts Correspondent
MANY well-known paintings on display in British museums or held by
private collectors were plundered by the Nazis, according to hitherto
unpublished documents being studied at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Fischer archive, a list of 10,000 "degenerate" works confiscated
and then sold by the Nazis, is causing international tension as the
original owners identify their belongings and attempt to claim them.
Recent changes in British law mean that many paintings, including
Edvard Munch's The Sick Girl, which hangs in the Tate Gallery, could
be returned to Germans who lost them in the 1930s.
The issue has been compared to the controversy over Jewish assets
seized by the Nazis and subsequently deposited in Swiss bank accounts.
The settlement of outstanding claims was delayed for 50 years, when
mislaid or forgotten documents began to appear. The Fischer list,
recently donated to the V & A by the widow of the London art dealer
Harry Fischer, allows historians to identify for the first time
paintings by Van Gogh, Franz Marc and Cézanne which were seized by
Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering a collection which vanished in 1945.
The two-volume list reveals the lucrative commercial links forged by
the Nazis with neutral countries such as Switzerland. It also sheds an
unflattering light on London art dealers who fought for a share of the
loot in the weeks before Britain declared war on Germany.
Hitler, an amateur painter, decided to "cleanse" Germany of the
disturbing images created by painters such as Pablo Picasso and Marc
Chagall. Paintings were first confiscated from Jewish collectors and
placed in museums, but were later taken from the museums and destroyed
in public burnings or placed in travelling exhibitions which people
were expected to mock.
In 1939, as war loomed, the Nazis decided to sell thousands of the
paintings by auction in Switzerland. P D Colnaghi, a leading London
dealer, wanted to stage the auction and told the Nazis that he was the
only prominent English dealer never to have offered "degenerate" art
for sale in his gallery in Old Bond Street. He lost out to the Swiss
dealer Fischer.
British and American dealers attended the sale in June 1939 but many
refused to bid on moral grounds, driving prices down. A Brussels
banker paid a few pounds for Picasso's Acrobat and Young Harlequin,
which fetched £21m at Christie's, London, in 1988.
Full details of the sale and the fate of the stolen paintings are now
emerging thanks to a donation by the London branch of the Fischer
family and detective work by Andreas Hueneke, an academic who is
attempting to trace scores of paintings and prints on behalf of German
museums.
Hueneke said yesterday that he had only begun to scrutinise the
Fischer list, but had already identified several important works in
Britain. These include the Tate's Munch, two paintings by Emil Nolde
that were recently displayed on loan at the Whitechapel Gallery in
east London, and works by Paul Klee and Otto Dix in private
collections.
"Many were taken by the Nazis from museums in east Germany where,
after the war, the communists were scarcely more interested in them,"
he said. "Since reunification a federal foundation has been set up to
bring them home." He admitted that the fund could not compete with
affluent private collectors and said it was relying on moral pressure.
"We do not expect preferential treatment but we hope that some museums
selling on our works will look kindly upon us," he said.
The Tate received The Sick Girl as a donation in 1939 from Thomas
Olsen, a Norwegian philanthropist whose agent, according to the
Fischer catalogue, bought it for 1,000 Swiss francs, then the
equivalent of £47. Today it is worth millions.
Simon Wilson, a Tate spokesman, said that he was "taken aback" when he
learnt of the painting's troubled history. "It is one of the most
popular works in the collection and very significant in the history of
art," he said.
"Obviously the sales were as legitimate as anything under the Nazis
but I do understand the German museums' desire to get paintings back.
"Until the 1992 Museums and Galleries Act, that would have been
impossible, but then we were given the unwelcome freedom to dispose of
our collections. I cannot see us letting The Sick Girl go but future
loans are not out of the question."
Last winter more than 75,000 people visited the Whitechapel Gallery to
see its Emil Nolde exhibition, including two paintings Masks 3 and
Still Life with Madonna both of which had been sold to Scandinavian
art collectors for £57 and £14 (at 1939 prices) respectively. Nolde
was an early member of the Nazi party, but this did not protect him
when his pictures were described as too turbulent for the Third Reich.
Jill Lloyd, who arranged the current Tate exhibition of paintings by
Lovis Corinth, another artist denounced by the Nazis, said she had
asked to borrow some without realising they were on the Fischer list.
One painting was in Basle, but the Swiss claimed it was too fragile to
travel.
"The Nazis tied themselves in knots over degenerate art, deciding, for
example, in one Corinth painting that the sky was decadent but the
ground beneath was okay," she said.
"We were fortunate they did not saw it in half. Ironically, the sales
probably ensured that many paintings were not destroyed in the war."
The Nazi purges were organised by Adolf Ziegler, president of the
Reich Culture Chamber, who described works by Cézanne and Gauguin as
"the crippled products of madness, impertinence and lack of talent".
His own paintings, which once sold for thousands of pounds to party
leaders, are today almost worthless.
Goering, though, had a keen eye for modern art. He visited the
Nationalgalerie in Berlin and reserved his chosen paintings months
before they were officially sold, paying what he regarded as a fair
price of abound £25,000 (in 1939 prices) for Van Gogh's Daubigny's
Garden, Lovers and Cornfield, Franz Marc's Tower of Blue Horses and
three works by Munch. If recovered, these paintings together would
today fetch at least £80m.
Sue Barber, a V & A curator overseeing the Fischer work, said staff
had hardly begun to compare the list with paintings in major
collections around the world. "This is just the first of many
shockwaves that may come out of the archive."
copyright SECURMA The Netherlands