May 19, 1999

CONTENTS:

query: data on the extent of illegal trade in art in the UK, Italy and generally in Europe

Destruction of Libraries: COFA, Sydney

Italy art crime booms in borderless Europe

ROME, May 13 (Reuters) - Roberto Conforti is part sleuth, part museum curator, part tough guy and genteel art lover. His job is to keep Italy's fine art within its increasingly porous borders -- whatever it takes. Theft and smuggling of artistic treasures is more rife, more lucrative and far easier than ever before because a Europe without frontiers has made for a cop's nightmare and a smart criminal's paradise. ``It's big business, second only to drugs, and it's a very tough battle to fight,'' says the diminutive Conforti, a general who heads the para-military carabinieri's (police) special investigation branch for crimes against the artistic heritage. ``Illegal trade in this sector is constantly rising and is on an international scale. The opening of frontiers has favoured its cross-border nature and crime is taking advantage of the vast freedom this allows.'' From his booklined office in one of Rome's prettiest squares, the general synchronises plans with high-ranking officers in other countries and with Interpol. Conforti and his small team are responsible for tracking the movements of Italy's artistic treasures, and since, according to the experts, more than 60 percent of the world's works of art originate from Italy, that's a tall order. Conforti reckons Italy loses around 30,000 works a year through illegal trade. Interpol officers say art trafficking is internationally the second most widespread illicit trade after drugs and is used as a front for money laundering. Thirty years ago Italian police launched a special project which has recovered some 500,000 stolen treasures. Last year they recovered two priceless Van Gogh paintings, ``L'Arlesienne'' and ``The Gardener,'' and Cezanne's ``Le Cabanon de Jourdan.'' Some 3,368 people have been arrested. Of the pieces recovered around 160,000 belong to the country's national heritage and are protected works, as well as the 326,000 archaeological pieces from clandestine digs, which are the property of the state. Some of the most important pieces recovered over the last 30 years are back where they belong and form part of an exhibition in Rome's Castel Sant'Angelo which runs until May 17, including a red chalk drawing of ``The Three Graces,'' by Rubens and fine mediaeval panels and illuminated manuscripts as well as ancient Roman sculptures.

A SMALL SQUAD AGAINST A BIG PROBLEM

SMUGGLING ACCEPTED PART OF THE ART WORLD

PILLARS OF SOCIETY

TURNING A BLIND EYE

Slander trial may give clues to art Nazis stole

PARIS - An American writer accused of slandering a prominent French Jewish art dealer will appear in court today in a case expected to shed light on the fate of Nazi-looted art in occupied France. Hector Feliciano, author of a book about the systematic confiscation of Jewish-owned art during World War II, has been accused of suggesting that the late Georges Wildenstein collaborated with the Nazis. Wildenstein's son, Daniel, along with grandsons Alec and Guy, have sued Feliciano, an art historian, for $1 million in damages, saying his 1997 book, The Lost Museum, has scared away major Jewish American clients and caused "considerable commercial damage." A decision from the three-judge panel is not expected until next month and can be appealed. Wildenstein ran the family business from 1910 until his death in 1963. He fled France in January 1941 and settled in New York. Under the anti-Jewish measures passed by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime, the gallery was handed over to Roger Dequoy, a non-Jewish employee who appears to have done business with the Nazis. Court papers show that Wildenstein remained in contact with Dequoy, who conducted business with Karl Haberstock, a Berlin-based Nazi dealer who had close contacts with Wildenstein before the war. "Finally, after more than 50 years, a corner of the veil will be lifted on the wartime art market, which flourished under the Occupation," said Antoine Comte, Feliciano's lawyer. Comte said Feliciano's book, which mentions Georges Wildenstein only in passing - focusing mainly on the fate of major Jewish-owned art collections - is based on wartime documents stored at the National Archives in Washington. The Wildensteins say Dequoy, who continued to work at the gallery for nine years after the war, was acting on his own. The Wildensteins say the book constitutes a "careless falsification, a serious and flagrant disregard for the search for the truth." Feliciano has countersued, seeking $180,000 in damages.
(c)1999 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.

What do you do with a stolen beetle?

Rare beetles worth 8 mil. yen stolen from Tokyo shop

TOKYO, April 30 (Kyodo) -- Eighty-six rare beetles valued at 8 million yen have been stolen from a pet shop in Tokyo, police said Friday. According to police, an attendant of the pet shop Waku Waku Land in Toshima Ward found that a windowpane of the shop had been broken and the displayed insects stolen, when he showed up for duty Wednesday morning.
Police quoted Waku Waku Land employees as saying they noticed nothing strange when they closed the shop around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. The stolen insects include 10 giant stag beetles, known as O-Kuwagata, valued at 2.5 million yen in total. One pair of the stolen giant stags carried a 1.1 million yen price tag. Giant flat stag beetles, known as O-Hirata Kuwagata, and three-horned Borneo beetles also were stolen, police said. The beetles came in couples for breeding, they said.

Van Gogh painting stolen from bank office

YORK, UK, ART GALLERY THEFT PAINTINGS RECOVERED AND TWO MEN CHARGED

YUGOSLAVIA - INTERNATIONAL MUSEUMS DAY AND 100TH ANNIVERSARY DAY OF FIRST HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCE AND 1899 HAGUE CONVENTION

• Belgrade: Museum of Modern Art
• Nis: Red Cross Memorial Museum - at the former World War II Concentration Camp
• Novi Sad: Museum of Vojvodina
• Leskovac: National Museum

Cross index to ICMS publications

Tiffany glass expert indicted in window theft

Amsterdam's Picasso knifeman could be serial vandal

AMSTERDAM, May 17 (Reuters) - A man who slashed a Picasso painting worth millions of dollars at Amsterdam's leading museum of modern art might have struck before, the museum director said on Monday. Sunday's knife attack on Picasso's ``Femme nue devant le jardin'' has shocked Stedelijk Museum staff because security at the museum was stepped up after a similar attack on Barnett Newman's ``Who's afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue'' in 1986. That restoration ran into millions of guilders. Stedelijk director Rudi Fuchs said Sunday's attacker, a 41-year-old psychiatric patient, is thought to have been the same person who sprayed Rembrandt's most well-known masterpiece ``The Nightwatch'' with sulphuric acid nine years ago. A museum spokeswoman said on Monday experts had yet to establish the extent of the damage to the Picasso, a reclining nude of his newly-wedded wife painted in 1956. The canvas, which was badly slashed, is conservatively valued between 10 and 12 million guilders ($4-5 million). ``The Nightwatch,'' centrepiece of the Rijksmuseum's renowned collection of 17th century Old Masters, escaped serious damage in the 1990 attack. Only the varnish was affected. Fuchs told journalists the man being held for the Picasso slashing, identified only as Paul G., was the same age and bore the same initials as the Nightwatch attacker. But police said they could not confirm it was the same man. ``We are still investigating the matter,'' a spokesman said. They said Paul G. had escaped from a psychiatric hospital near Utrecht, where he had been held since 1978 for attempting to hijack a KLM flight bound for Madrid by threatening crew with a toy gun. Meanwhile museums across the country have appealed to the culture ministry to give them authority to ban suspect visitors. Their call echoes an earlier plea in the wake of a 1997 attack on a second Barnett Newman by the same man who carved up ``Who's afraid of Red Yellow and Blue'' with a Stanley knife. Amsterdam's city council subsequently empowered the Stedelijk Museum to refuse him entry. However proposals for a discretionary ban ran out of steam amid a long-running debate over whether institutions had the right to ban members of the public from seeing what is effectively public property held in trust.
($1-2.065 Guilder)
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.

Vulnerability of art underscored by Picasso damage in Amsterdam

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - It can happen so fast, not even an alert security guard can prevent it: A vandal tosses acid at a masterpiece or unsheathes a knife and carves the canvas into ribbons. A weekend slashing attack at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, that severely damaged a Picasso valued at up to $7.5 million, stunned museum officials. The vandalism by an escaped mental patient also has curators conceding little can be done to protect artworks - short of turning galleries into glass-cased fortresses. "You can come in. You can look. And unfortunately, you can also whip out a knife and cut," said Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum. Dutch police were questioning the accused slasher, who escaped from a psychiatric clinic in Utrecht. He hopped a train to the capital, bought a ticket to the Stedelijk and allegedly used a razor knife to cut a huge, ragged hole in the middle of Picasso's "Woman Nude Before Garden," a 1956 oil on canvas. Museum and city officials reacted with outrage to Sunday afternoon's attack at the Stedelijk, which houses a world-renowned collection including five other Picassos. At the time of the attack, 2,500 visitors were passing through the gallery. It was the third time in the past 18 months that a vandal has struck the museum with disastrous results. In March, another man who described himself as schizophrenic and psychotic pleaded guilty to charges that he used a switchblade in 1997 to slash a work by American abstract impressionist Barnett Newman. Earlier in 1997, another vandal was sentenced to 10 months in prison for spraying a green dollar sign on a painting by Russian avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich. Restoration experts were able to repair those paintings, but Fuchs said he isn't sure the Picasso will be salvageable. The museum, which bought the painting in 1981 for $950,000, is insured for the damage. Dutch authorities said the 41-year-old mental patient, identified only as Paul G., was a suspect in a 1990 incident at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum in which someone threw acid on "The Night Watch," a masterpiece by Rembrandt. The man has been under the supervision of the psychiatric clinic since 1978, when he tried to hijack a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines jet from Amsterdam to Madrid using a toy gun. Passengers and crew members overpowered him and he was arrested and convicted on assault charges. Amsterdam police said that after slashing the Picasso, the man went to a newspaper office, where he boasted of his crime to a reporter. The man was arrested in the lobby. The work, which measures 51-by-64 inches, was painted in Cannes, France, in cool hues of blue and green. It depicts a naked woman reclining in a chair in front of an open window with a lush garden in the background. Picasso's model was Jacqueline Roque, his newlywed wife at the time.
c1999 Associated Press.