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July 6, 1999
CONTENTS:
- Re: search for eight missing Faberge eggs (Steve Keller)
- Tax rule forces owners to put art on display
- Arson damage to art, gallery totals $200,000 (Automatic sprinklers put out the flames but not before they ruin all but the most costly porcelains)
- Treasures take a beating in Parliament
- New Whodunit-Style Cairo Exhibit to Trace Stolen, Recovered Treasure Heritage
- Stolen Sculptures Found Buried In Santa Fe Yard
- Kosovo Library Ban Lifted
- 10,000 Mexican Artifacts Recovered
- Return all our stolen works of art first, Russia tells Germany
From: IntlArtCop@aol.com
Subject: Re: search for eight missing Faberge eggs
In a message dated 7/2/99 1:37:30 AM, securma@xs4all.nl writes:
Renowned art historian and author, Dr. Geza von Habsburg, has partnered with the world's e-commerce leader, QVC, to launch a nationwide egg hunt to locate the eight missing Faberge eggs from the Imperial Easter Egg collection. The Imperial Easter Eggs are worth millions of dollars -- with the last egg selling for $5.6 MM in Geneva, Switzerland in 1994. Dr. von Habsburg and QVC are asking the American public to submit photographs of any artifact that they believe to be from the House of Faberge for Dr. von Habsburg's evaluation. This egg hunt has been organized to correspond with QVC's currently running exhibit, ``The Fine Art of Faberge: A Private Collection of Inspirations,'' of which Dr. von Habsburg is the guest curator.
Boy, would I like to get my hands on that list! Just send some stranger a list, with photos, of your privately owned art.
Send along the house key and burglar alarm code, too.
Steve Keller
Tax rule forces owners to put art on display
By Joe Murphy, Political Editor (Daily Telegraph London)
THE Government is to organise exhibitions across Britain so that 20,000 works of art kept in private houses and whose owners benefit from tax relief can be seen by the public. A new scheme this week will effectively close a loophole by which some private owners have failed to honour promises to put their collections on show in return for exemption from tax. It will mean that thousands of paintings, sculptures and historic artefacts will be seen for the first time on public display. Owners are allowed to defer inheritance tax if they promise the Inland Revenue that they will let the public view their works. The idea was introduced more than a century ago to prevent fine art being sold abroad by families facing heavy death duties. It has often proved impossible for scholars and enthusiasts to make appointments to view some of the finest works. Sometimes, appointments have to be made through solicitors, and owners have been accused of insisting on antisocial hours. About 56,000 works of art are now granted exemption from inheritance tax on condition that they are shown to the public. Of these, 36,000 are on permanent display at stately homes or museums. But some 20,900 are in private homes, where many owners are reluctant to invite the public. Last year, following complaints that the rules were being flouted, the Government decided all works must be on display for at least 25 days a year. Many owners said this was impossible because their homes were unsuitable for visitors. Alan Howarth, the arts minister, will announce this week that the Government will organise special art exhibitions at galleries and museums to meet their objections. Even the insurance bill for protecting the art against theft or fire will be met by the Government, so that owners will have no excuses for not putting their works on show. Mr Howarth will announce the plans during a visit to a prototype exhibition being staged at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, where 130 tax-exempt works are on show, including some by Turner, Stubbs, Gainsborough and Constable. A Culture Department official said the exhibitions would make thousands of works of similar quality freely available to everyone for the first time and would help owners meet their pledges to the Inland Revenue. "We are not threatening or cajoling owners but we think this will meet their concerns that are keeping these priceless works out of the public gaze." The exhibition at the Fitzwilliam features works of art from around the East Anglia region. These include watercolours by Turner, Ship and Iceberg and Sunset - a Mackerel Shoal, an oil painting by Constable of his wife and children, and hunting scenes by Stubbs. Other exhibits in the show are Draped Figure, a 1942 sculpture by Henry Moore, a 1645 first edition of poetry by Milton, and a Chippendale mahogany armchair.
(The Oregonian) Arson damage to art, gallery totals $200,000
Automatic sprinklers put out the flames but not before they ruin all but the most costly porcelains
An early morning arson Wednesday left a Northwest Portland art gallery with $200,000 in damages and gutted plans for July's First Thursday. Instead of showcasing contemporary Asian art for the monthly evening gallery walk, the Silk Road Gallery owners were salvaging soot-smeared porcelain, water-soaked antique furniture and charred paintings. "Lots of fine arts have been damaged," said Joseph Keller, co-owner of the gallery, which opened in October 1997. Three automatic sprinklers quickly extinguished the fire before firefighters arrived but not before charring scroll paintings and burning out frames near the gallery entrance. The water left 150-year-old cabinets warped and discolored but slid over oil paintings, which were protected as if they wore raincoats. But the smoke and fire were the artwork's main enemies, producing sooty oil paintings and ceramics. Damaged artwork accounted for $190,000 of the total loss. The building on Northwest 10th Avenue and Flanders Street sustained minimal damage. Investigators are continuing to look into the case, said Neil Heesacker, a Portland Fire Bureau spokesman. Firefighters responding after neighbors called 9-1-1 arrived to find sprinklers had put out the fire. The blaze began after "a burning device was thrown through the window," Heesacker said. Investigators would not comment further. "We just don't know who did it at this time," Heesacker said. Wei Guo, a co-owner, had no idea why someone would target his gallery. "I just don't know if there is any political motive," he said Thursday, referring to recent tensions involving spy activity between the United States and China. Cleaning the gallery's suite, located inside the Hanna Andersson building, and surviving artwork is expected to cost more than $40,000. Keller said the most precious porcelain antiques sustained no damage because they were stored in the safe. Guo said he hopes to restore the business in time for August's First Thursday. The gallery specializes in contemporary Chinese art and features work mostly from local and regional artists. "We had a beautiful gallery with everything displayed with class," Guo said.
Treasures take a beating in Parliament
By HENRY LUDSKI (Sunday Times South Africa)
The theft of a treasured diamond ring from Parliament has enraged the art community and raised fears about the security of the balance of a R20-million family collection left in the state's hands 80 years ago. Valuable books and paintings - including part of the collection - have also been damaged by the recent flooding of Parliament's basement library.
The collection, which includes 7 000 books and 300 paintings, was bequeathed to the South African government by diamond magnate Sidney Mendelssohn in 1917. It is the second most important collection of Africana books in the country - after that of the South African Library - and is estimated to be worth more than R20-million. Parliament has been taking stock of what remains of the collection - and what may have been stolen from the library after a spate of thefts over the years.
The ring, worth at least R200 000, pushes the value of goods stolen from Parliament in five years to more than R1-million and raises security concerns at the complex. It also casts doubt on whether Parliament should be a custodian of national treasures. On Friday afternoon, several days after the ring disappeared, Sindiso Mfenyana, the secretary to Parliament, said it had "not been established whether the theft had actually taken place". Mfenyana said in a statement: "The police have been contacted and are investigating."
Mfenyana and library head Albert Ntunja refused to be interviewed. However, Ntunja confirmed that hundreds of books - many of them taken out by MPs under previous governments - were outstanding and that Parliament had begun levying fines. Items from the Mendelssohn collection have been stolen from Parliament before - 10 paintings from the collection were reported stolen three years ago.
Ten years ago, five albums of watercolours by renowned artist Thomas Bowler were stolen but later recovered. Piet Westra, retired director of the South African Library, said he had tried for more than a decade to convince Parliament to move the collection to a more secure institution. "I offered to house the collection at the library - it would have remained the property of Parliament and they would still have had access to it - but nothing ever came of it. I'm extremely worried about the future of the collection," he said. Ellison Kahn, a retired law professor at Wits University and Mendelssohn's great-nephew, expressed regret at the thefts. He said: "I'm very sorry the collection's not being looked after the way he [Mendelssohn] would have liked it to be. It's a great pity that this had to happen."
Frans Basson, a spokesman for the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, said the department had committed a "substantial percentage" of its budget to upgrading its museum facilities.
Sunday, July 4, 1999 New Whodunit-Style Cairo Exhibit to Trace Stolen, Recovered Treasure Heritage
Opening later this year, the Egyptian Museum's 'Lost and Found' show will document the loss and rediscovery of various priceless artifacts. By DONNA BRYSON, Associated Press
CAIRO--Papyrus records show Ramses III's foreman professed innocence when he was accused of stealing a chest belonging to the pharaoh. Some 3,000 years later, archeologists uncovered evidence of his guilt--the gold-plated box was buried under the foreman's home. The tale is itself evidence, say national museum curators who have worked with police to assemble a new exhibit tracing the loss and recovery of ancient treasures. The Ramses chest proves Egyptian art has had a powerful allure for generations. The "Lost and Found" exhibit is due to open later this year at the Egyptian Museum. Museum director Mohammed Shimy said the underlying theme of the exhibit is Egypt's determination to protect its heritage, and its gratitude for international help in that campaign. "These pieces are very important, because they are part of our civilization," Shimy said. "If we lose our civilization, we lose ourselves." Many of the 155 items in the exhibit were recovered with the help of sharp-eyed experts abroad and foreign police agencies linked by Interpol, as well as by Egypt's own Tourist Police. White-uniformed Tourist Police officers are ubiquitous at the pyramids and other sites, and their department is responsible for recovering stolen antiquities. A 1993 law effectively bars individuals from owning any Egyptian artifact more than 100 years old or more recent pieces judged of historical importance. Egyptians who registered private collections with the government within six months of the law's passage were allowed to keep them, but they cannot sell them or transfer them outside their families. The law transformed owners into caretakers. Unregistered antiquities can be confiscated. The sale within Egypt or smuggling abroad of antiquities can bring jail terms of up to 15 years. "It's a very strict, very severe law, because we want to protect our heritage," said Gen. Abdel Khalek Tahawi, head of the Tourist Police. He sees the "Lost and Found" exhibit, which he is co-sponsoring, as a way of sensitizing the public. "If people realize how important it is to protect our heritage, they will help the police in doing our job," he said. A three-foot-high pink granite head of the god Amun-re that dominates one wall of the "Lost and Found" gallery is there thanks to a French Egyptologist. The expert was suspicious when he saw the head, dating from the 19th dynasty (1307-1196 BC), for sale in Paris several years ago. He alerted Egyptian authorities, who determined it had been taken from the country illegally and arranged for its return. It may never be clear how something as large as the Amun-re head was spirited out of Egypt. The first steps of its journey to Paris may have been similar to those of an even larger "Lost and Found" treasure: a 2 1/2-ton sandstone bust. A gang of thieves had carted the bust--broken into the head, the headdress in two pieces and a fragment of beard--on camelback from a Nubian temple. They were caught in the desert outside Cairo with their booty transferred from camel to truck and cloaked in blankets. "Since we have no inscription, we can only say it is a royal head," said Hassan Said, a curator at the Egyptian Museum. The giant royal head is one of many exhibit pieces ripped out of context by thieves. Much of their history and identities are lost, even though the pieces themselves have been found. One was dubbed the mystery statue when it was unearthed in 1997 by a farmer working his land near the Nile Delta town of Zagazig. The ancient sculptor worked in limestone with astounding detail, delicately carving fingernails, jewelry, hair woven into a braid. A woman sits in a high-backed chair surrounded by four children. Because it was unrelated to the ruins near where it was found, Egyptologists believe the woman-and-children group was buried for safekeeping at Zagazig after being stolen from elsewhere by an ancient grave robber or a modern thief. A delicate, jeweled amulet and two beautiful daggers are no mystery. They came from just upstairs in the museum. Three years ago, an unemployed Egyptian hid under a display case until closing time, then opened cases to remove the daggers, jewelry and other items from perhaps the most famous of the Egyptian Museum's collections: the three-millennium-old Tutankhamen tomb treasures. The thief was caught as he tried to sneak out of the museum the next morning. The audacious but unsuccessful attempt led to the firing of the museum director and $3 million worth of security improvements at the pink neoclassical building that houses more than 100,000 artifacts. "Lost and found the same day," say captions on photographs of the amulet and daggers in the ground-floor gallery where the new exhibit is housed. The pieces themselves remain carefully guarded upstairs with the rest of the trove unearthed in 1922 by British archeologist Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings, outside the southern Egyptian city of Luxor.
Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved
Stolen Sculptures Found Buried In Santa Fe Yard
The Associated Press
SANTA FE --Police have unearthed seven sculptures stolen from a Santa Fe art gallery last fall in the front yard of a mobile home. The sculptures, bronze statues of young boys playing various games, are valued near $60,000, police Sgt. Gary Johnson said. Police found the sculptures Friday morning after acting on a tip. It took them three hours to exhume the statues from under six feet of dirt and rocks. Johnson said resident Kalven Romero was questioned by investigators and admitted burying the sculptures. Romero, 35, was not arrested but is considered a suspect in the theft, Johnson said. Romero told police he bought the sculptures at the Santa Fe Flea Market last year for a little less than $400. He said he buried the artwork to protect them from being stolen. "I figured they were hot," Romero said. "Who would sell something that beautiful for so cheap?" The reason Romero didn't inform police, he said, was because he wanted to keep the sculptures and eventually display them. The bronze statues, all by artist David Ginston, were stolen Sept. 11 from the Houshang Gallery where they were bolted to the ground in front of the building. Johnson said once the investigation is complete, the district attorney's office will decide whether any charges should be filed. The sculptures will be returned to the gallery, he said.
AP-WS-07-03-99 1509EDT
Kosovo Library Ban Lifted
By JIM HEINTZ Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - The new director of Kosovo's National and University Library walks the halls carefully - not because of the library's rule of silence, but for fear of setting off booby traps. ``Yes, of course I'm very worried,'' Mehmet Gerguri says, but a few minutes later he begins prowling through unexplored rooms, warning those who follow not to touch any books, no matter how enticing they might look. Gerguri's fear of finding instruments of death in an institute of learning isn't unreasonable: The Yugoslav army used the library as a headquarters during this spring's war, apparently believing NATO would not risk international disgrace by bombing a cultural institution. But Gerguri's eagerness to explore, despite the prospect of booby traps laid by a vengeful withdrawing army, also has a reason: Albanians had been barred from entering the library since 1990, part of the Serbian crackdown when the province's autonomy was revoked. As Kosovo's people still suffer with their memories of ethnic massacres, reclaiming cultural institutions such as the library are small but meaningful moves, helping them find hope amid trauma. Gerguri said his love of books sustained him during the years of increasing oppression. He was among the ethnic Albanian staff fired from the library in 1990. From then until this week he had no job, but devoted himself to collecting books with hopes of someday donating them. ``I did nothing for a job, but I always worked for the library,'' said Gerguri. The self-styled parallel Kosovo government named him director in 1997, but he claimed the post only this week. Nehat Krasniqi, a specialist in antique manuscripts, shook his head both in awe at being back and in dismay at the abuse the books have suffered. ``It's nine years that I've been away from these books,'' Krasniqi said. If the army left no booby traps - and there are still suspicions because the keys to some rooms can't be found - it left clear signs of spite. Books lie on damp floors in huge piles as if armloads were dropped from shoulder height. Atop one pile were copies of Gerguri's own doctoral dissertation. The drawers of the card catalog that had been in the library's rotunda were strewn in a jumble in a remote basement room. Hacked-off wires protrude from walls, the remains of equipment that apparently was stolen. The antique books that Krasniqi longed to see again were stacked in direct line with a southern window, exposed to full, paper-wrecking sunlight. At least those books are still there. During the ban, witnesses saw truckloads of books being hauled to a paper-recycling plant, said Gerguri, who estimates that as many as 100,000 of the 600,000 books have been destroyed. The library also holds eerie traces of another war. About 40 families of Serbs who fled the war in Croatia were given shelter in some of the library's chambers. They left behind signs of anger and resentment: bullets and a military knife, lock-picking equipment and, in one room, a sink spigot that appeared to have been on for days. Even when Albanians could use the library, its architecture inspired ethnic tension. Many Serbs called its white-domed skylights a nettling echo of the traditional white caps worn by many ethnic Albanians. But Gerguri said he sees other meanings in the skylights he hopes will be a metaphoric guide as Kosovo rebuilds. ``They bring light to every corner,'' he said. ``Nowhere can you be in the dark.''
10,000 Mexican Artifacts Recovered
PALENQUE, Mexico (AP) - More than 10,000 artifacts looted from archaeological sites around Mexico have been recovered by the government over the past year, an official said Tuesday. The pieces were seized by the federal attorney general's office or turned over abroad to Mexican consulates and embassies, said Teresa Franco y Gonzalez, director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History. ``The fact that more than 10,000 objects from different cultures have been recovered says that there is a real pillage in various archaeological zones of the country,'' she said while attending a meeting on the Maya being held in this southern city, which is famous for its ruins. She said nearly all the looting occurs in areas that are not set up for tourism.
Return all our stolen works of art first, Russia tells Germany
By Marcus Warren in Moscow
MOSCOW has issued a defiant riposte to demands that it return art treasures it seized during the Second World War by publishing a catalogue of works of art looted from Russian museums and palaces by Hitler's army. The first three volumes to appear are historic documents in their own right, but they are also designed as a counterblast to calls from Germany and Jewish groups for Russia to surrender its spoils of war to their owners. When the 50 or so volumes are completed, Russia will be able to argue its case in the international controversy over looted art with a list, as exhaustive as possible, of every icon, painting and objet d'art to disappear in the war. The foreword says: "The West and, especially, Germany prefers to keep silent over Russia's cultural losses. They would not acknowledge our rights of compensation for the irreplaceable losses. Without a catalogue it is impossible to discuss the problems of restitution on just and civilised grounds." The first volume contains an inventory of the losses from the Catherine Palace, outside St Petersburg, including its priceless Amber Room, dismantled by the Germans and last seen in Königsberg in 1945. Also listed are the palace's other contents, right down to spittoons, cushions and Walter Scott novels from the study of Tsar Alexander I, all of which curators failed to rescue before the German arrival. The other volumes to be published so far document historical archives plundered by the invaders and paintings from Moscow's Tretyakov gallery, which disappeared from Soviet embassies in Eastern Europe. The ravages inflicted on the Soviet Union by Hitler's invasion have not been forgotten by Russians, even those born long after the war. But there has never been any serious attempt to quantify what was taken. Viktor Petrakov of the Russian Ministry of Culture said: "What we have done is a major achievement, but it should have been done 20 or 30 years ago." After sending the catalogues to museums, libraries and auction houses abroad, as well as Interpol, officials hope that some of the treasures listed may eventually be restored to Russia. However, officials admit that the catalogue will never do justice to the full scale of Russia's losses. The Germans did not just empty museums of exhibits, they removed inventories as well, making it impossible to know exactly what is missing. The catalogue's foreword notes: "A whole stratum of Russian national culture has disappeared forever without leaving a trace."
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