- Searching for Speakers for the MAAM annual conference
- stolen painting
- Sotheby's cuts antiquity sales over 'smuggling' (Sotheby's Moving Sales to New York)
- Shrine threatened by flooding
- Marking (barcoding latest information)
- Library disaster videos
- Bulldozers threaten Matisse villa
 
 
 
From: Eniyan@aol.com
Date sent: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 21:03:50 -0400 (EDT)
To: securma@xs4all.nl
Subject: Searching for Speakers for the MAAM annual conference
 
The Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums will be having their conference in Rochester, NY November 13-16 and I am looking for speakers for a session I am trying to plan on how to get proffessional staff and support staff to work together. This would of course include security staff and maintenance. I
was wondering if there was anyone out there who has had success in revamping their security/mantenance staff to work better with Registrars/Curators. I was hoping to tackle the issues of staff morale and how that affects security. Please feel free to contact me or if your not in the area please
post your experiences to the list to share with others.
 
Thanks in advance,
 
Vivian C.R. James
Assistant Registrar
The Newark Museum
49 Washington Street
PO box 540
Newark, NJ 07101
973-596-6668
973-596-6666-f
Eniyan@aol.com
---------------------
 
From: Damien McCune <damien.mccune@csfb.com>
To: <securma@xs4all.nl>
Subject: stolen painting
Date sent: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 12:54:15 -0400
 
Recently a painting that my family owns was stolen while on display in a antique/art store. We have a picture of it at
http://www.sonic.net/~pooh/ saying that it was stolen. I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of information on recovering stolen artwork. We have a hired an investigator and the police are following up the various leads, but it was in a small town and I doubt they have much experience with this type of case.
Thank you very much.
Damien McCune
(212)325-2407
 
 
From: Museum Security Network (securma@xs4all.nl>
To: Damien McCune <damien.mccune@csfb.com>
Subject: Re: stolen painting
Send reply to: securma@xs4all.nl
Date sent: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 20:17:19
 
Hello Damien McCune
Information about reporting and recovering stolen art is available at: http://museum-security.org/organisa.html
I will forward your message to the Museum Security Mailinglist.
Please be so kind as to inform me about future developments.
Lots of success in recovering your picture.
Regards,
Ton Cremers
----------------
 
(Times of London)
Sotheby's cuts antiquity sales over 'smuggling'
 
BY STEPHEN FARRELL AND DALYA ALBERGE
SOTHEBY'S is to end regular antiquities sales in London. The decision comes five months after allegations that the firm sold artefacts that had been smuggled into Britain.
Now the world's oldest auction house will hold only occasional sales in London from collections of unquestioned provenance. All other sales will go to New York.
Two of Sotheby's leading London experts, Oliver Forge, head of antiquities, and Brendan Lynch, head of the Islamic and Indian department, left the company this week in the wake of the decision.
Sotheby's move has been prompted by increasing concern among archaeologists that the £100 million international antiquities market encourages looting and the illicit excavation of religious sites in such countries as India, Italy and Egypt.
A far-reaching internal review of Sotheby's international dealings and auction-room practices was announced in February by Diana Brooks, its New York-based chief executive. Her decision came after disclosures by Peter Watson in Sotheby's: Inside Story, which was serialised in The Times.
He and investigators from the Channel 4 Dispatches programme secretly filmed Indian dealers boasting that they smuggled artefacts removed from religious sites that later appeared in Sotheby's catalogues. There was no evidence that Sotheby's knew the source of the items.
The investigators also videotaped Roeland Kollewijn, Sotheby's Milan Old Masters expert, offering to smuggle a 19th-century portrait to London. He later resigned.
The internal review is expected to report in the autumn, but a Sotheby's spokesman confirmed last night that the withdrawal from London was part of a continuous process. He said: "It has always been Sotheby's policy to be sensitive to issues of patrimony and heritage. In response, however, to recently expressed concerns on these issues, Sotheby's is making modifications in its Indian and its Antiquities departments. We will continue to hold certain single-owner sales in London, when appropriate, but will be concentrating our regular various sales in New York, which is already the largest marketplace in these fields."
The spokesman added that Mr Lynch and Mr Forge, both with Sotheby's for more than 15 years, had "decided to leave in the light of the modifications. They left on good terms."
Christie's yesterday confirmed that it would continue to hold its June and November sales. A spokesman said: "The market is fine, and there are still a lot of major European collections out there."
The Sotheby's move was welcomed by Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, the Cambridge archaeologist and Master of Jesus College who in February called for the auction house to abandon its antiquities sales and has campaigned against the worldwide looting of historic sites.
"Such a move will do much to restore the standing of the London market," he said.
Peter Watson said: "They have done the right thing. The evidence we had spoke for itself, and I am pleased that they have acknowledged that."
--------------
 
Shrine threatened by flooding
Friars are praying that global warming will not
wreck their medieval priory, reports Ruth Gledhill
 
FRIARS at the Carmelite priory at Aylesford, Kent, say the medieval shrine is in danger of collapsing because of global warming.
The priory, visited by 200,000 pilgrims a year, is being undermined by tidal flooding from the Medway, a tributary of the Thames. The threat is particularly galling because not only have the friars spent years developing an environmentally friendly way of life to counter global warming, but local industries are also "green".
The friars, who try to set an example by travelling on public transport rather than in cars and by eschewing aerosols and other environmentally damaging products, have written a prayer for God "to heal our planet", in the hope that disaster might be averted.
But recognising that material assistance is also needed, they are seeking private and public funding to bolster the sagging walls of their 13th-century Pilgrims' Hall.
Father Wilfrid McGreal, the sub-prior and shrine director, said that about £300,000 had to be found. "We are getting more high tides than before and a lot of surges in the Medway. The river has changed course and the bank that used to protect the Pilgrims' Hall has been eroded.
"Our hypothesis is that global warming is the cause. Until recently, we would have one flood in 40 years. Last winter alone we had five, with the river spilling out into the courtyard. One was on Christmas Eve, when we managed to sandbag the building just in time for midnight Mass.
"A building that has lasted 600 years with no ill effects has in the last ten started to lean in on itself. If something is not done, it is in danger of collapsing."
People from many denominations are still using the hall for conferences and retreats. But if structural work is not carried out soon it will have to be closed. The hall, built as a medieval hospice for pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, is the oldest building in the priory's Great Courtyard.
Carmelites founded the priory in 1242 on arriving in England from the Holy Land, living as hermits on land donated by the crusader Richard de Grey. They were expelled at the Reformation and the building had several owners over the centuries. The friars bought it in 1949 and restored it as one of Britain's most popular retreat centres.
The response to their plight by English Heritage and the Environment Department has been sympathetic and the friars are seeking National Lottery cash. But public funding will have to be topped up by money raised themselves.
The soprano Ann Liebeck, who has found "great peace" on visits to Aylesford, is performing two benefit concerts in London for the priory next week, at Blackheath and Wigmore Hall.
• The priory is in danger from more than weather. As Father McGreal took a service yesterday, a thief tried to make off with the donations box. He was tackled by two sixth-form boys on a day retreat.
In the spirit of forgiveness for which the friars are known, Father McGreal did not inform police but merely made an entry in the priory's incident book.
-------------
 
Date: 17 Jul 97
From: Helena Jaeschke <mrshjaeschke@msn.com>
Subject: Marking
 
I now have a few more details on Alpha Dots (for applying PIN
numbers to objects in microdot form in a clear lacquer). Apparently
the Science Museum in London is using them. They are available from
Alpha Science
2 Stroud Wood Business Centre
Frogmore
St Albans
Herts AL2 2YY
UK
+44 727 875959
Fax: +44 727 875550
tnutter@netconuk.co.uk
 
I have also seen a brief mention of a DNA labelling system being
developed by Bob Child of the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff and
Valentine Walsh, via her company Validart, +44 171 261 1691
 
Hope this helps,
Helena Jaeschke
-----------
 
Date: 16 Jul 97
From: Gary Saretzky <saretzky@rci.rutgers.edu>
Subject: Library disaster videos
 
Peter D. Verheyen <pdverhey@dreamscape.com> writes
>I'm in the process of putting together the curriculum for a
>"disaster" preparedness workshop and simulation (library setting)
>and was wondering whether anyone knew of any videos which might
>exist on the subject.
I have used the BiblioPrep video, "Library and Archival
Disaster-Preparedness and Recovery" (1986) to good effect in
workshops I've taught. There are some problems with it that should
be explained by the instructor.
Gary D. Saretzky
Coordinator, Public History Internship Program
Rutgers University and Archivist, Monmouth County
New Jersey
-----------
 
(Sunday Times)
Bulldozers threaten Matisse villa
by John Harlow
 
IT IS the birthplace of modern art. But the Corsican villa where Henri Matisse invented fauvism, the forerunner of this century's most controversial painting styles, could soon be demolished and replaced with a hotel.
Plans to destroy the historic landmark have provoked outrage among conservationists, whose campaign to stop the project is being led by Hilary Spurling, a British art historian.
For more than a century the Villa La Rocca has nestled inconspicuously in the smart residential quarter of Ajaccio, ignored by town planners. Spurling suspects it was her identification of it as a key to understanding Matisse that prompted the interest of property developers.
"I was the first to identify the villa as the place where Matisse said he had the first inklings of fauvism ­ until two years ago it was respected only as the first of the seaside villas in the town ­ so I feel I must help save it."
Spurling, who is writing a biography of Matisse to be published next year, has joined a handful of British expatriates and local middle-class protesters in their attempts to frustrate a scheme to replace the villa with a six-floor hotel.
Matisse, who was born in northern France, spent six months at La Rocca on his honeymoon in 1898. It was an extraordinary time for the struggling young artist. Not only did his bride, the formidable Amelie Parayre, shake him out of an artistic dead end, but the intense Mediterranean sunlight excited him into reproducing the rich colours that marked out his individualistic, influential style.
He rarely strayed more than a short distance from the villa near the seafront, which at that time was being colonised by the British as a cheap alternative to the French Riviera. In a burst of creativity, Matisse produced 50 paintings, mostly views from the villa shot through with the violent reds, yellows and blues that would characterise the bright new style of the artists dubbed les fauves ­ wild beasts. Fauvism deeply influenced Pablo Picasso in his first steps towards cubism.
Christian Arthaud, assistant curator at the Matisse Museum in Nice, where the artist lived in later years, said the villa was extremely important, but only a few people appreciated it.
"It gave birth to the energy we see in Matisse's paintings, and many more that followed," he said. "Years later Matisse referred to the Villa La Rocca as the place where he did some of his best work."
Yet the Corsicans seem slightly baffled about opposition to the plans to "clean up" the site.
Nicole Spinosi, head of the town council's mission for culture, said: "It has been unoccupied for years and nobody seemed to care until a builder bought it and got planning permission to build a holiday complex. Then, suddenly, there was a lot of fuss."
The builder is Jean Dominique Malandri, whose company, Diamant Construction, has already replaced an 18th-century mansion once occupied by Napoleon's mother with an office block, a 17th-century seminary with a car park, and a 16th-century wall with a hotel. Malandri also sits on the town council's planning committee.
Claude Robertson-Forcioli, who is married to a Scots-born photographer living in Ajaccio, said developers must be stopped before they destroyed the town's historic centre. But she admitted that, even with the international pressure being created by Spurling, it would be difficult to save the villa.
"Marc Angeli, the mayor of Ajaccio, used to be in favour of protecting the heritage of the island, which is under assault from many developers, but two years ago his kitchen was blown up by a bomb and since then he has been very quiet," she said.
The protesters, who include the artist's grandson and Prince Charles Napoleon, the great-great-nephew of the French emperor ­ who was born on the island ­ have lost their first appeal to a local tribunal. But the prefect of the island, who reports directly to the government in Paris, has offered them some encouragement by saying he wants to reopen the case.
-------------