Let me have your comments!
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Stevan P. Layne, CPP
Steve@IFCPP.com
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Trojan Gold Will Remain in Russia
MOSCOW (AP) - The Trojan gold seized by the Red Army in Berlin at the end of World War II will remain in Russia, a museum director said Wednesday.
Russia's Constitutional Court on Tuesday struck down parts of a law that prevented the return of art plundered by the Soviet army from Nazi Germany. But it upheld articles saying Russia is not obliged to return the art to governments of ``aggressor nations'' - meaning Germany and its wartime allies.
The decision means Russia will keep the disputed gold collection, known as King Priam's Treasure, from the ancient city of Troy, said Irina Antonova, the director of the Pushkin State Fine Arts Museum, Interfax news agency reported.
The collection includes gold crowns with pendants in the shape of idols, basket-shaped gold earrings and a two-handled golden sauceboat. It has been held at the Pushkin vaults since Red Army art squads seized it in Berlin in 1945. The Pushkin displayed part of the collection in 1996, which incited demands from the German government that the collection be returned.
``We have given back to Germany nearly everything ... and received next to nothing in return,'' Interfax quoted Antonova as saying. The trove was excavated by German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in 1873. He was convinced at the time that it belonged to Priam, king of the city featured in Homer's epic poem, The Iliad. The treasure, from the ancient Greek city located in what is now northwest Turkey, has been dated to the Bronze Age at about 2500 B.C., long before Homer's time.
From: Jadran Kale jkale@public.srce.hr
Subject: http://museum-security.org/balkans.
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Zupanijski muzej, HR-22000 Sibeni From: "Soeren M. Chr. Bisgaard" s_bisgaard@hotmail.com
Subject:
Stolen Korean ceramics found
On November 16, 1998, we reported that 15 Korean ceramic pieces had been stolen on November 13, 1998 from the Koryo Museum in Kyoto, Japan.
Japanese police made an arrest of a group a thieves a few days ago and found most of the stolen items in their possesion. The police is now trying to trace the remaining items.
We thank you very much for your concern and assistance in this case, which now seem to be closed.
On behalf of the Koryo Museum,
Yours sincerely,
S. Bisgaard
e-mail address: s_bisgaard@hotmail.com
tel.: + 81 75 722 7223
fax.: + 81 75 701 1293
Looted Nazi painting turns up in Israel
BY DALYA ALBERGE ARTS CORRESPONDENT
(Times of London)
AS MUSEUMS worldwide scour the provenance of their exhibits, ensuring that none was looted from Jewish victims of the Nazis, a stolen Impressionist masterpiece has turned up in the most unexpected collection - the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Boulevard Montmartre, Spring 1897 has emerged as one of 143 important paintings owned by the Breslau businessman Max Silberberg, who died in a concentration camp, according to a Jewish Chronicle investigation. His collection is among tens of thousands of works on a missing list covering the property of Holocaust victims, although only a small percentage owned valuable art.
This Pissaro painting is being claimed by Silberberg's daughter-in-law Gerta, 85, who lives in the Midlands. She fled Germany in 1939 with her husband, Alfred, and is the only surviving relative.
Only last month, a UKPounds: 3.3-million Van Gogh, entitled L'Olivette, was set to be returned to her by German authorities in a landmark ruling: it was found to have been sold in one of hundreds of "Jew auctions" between 1933 and 1938. Silberberg was forced by the Nazis to part with his collection for next to nothing. Today that collection would, it is estimated, be worth more than UKPounds: 20 million. The value of the Pissarro, which the European Commission on Looted Art - an independent organisation representing Jewish and non-Jewish claimants - was responsible for tracing to Jerusalem, is believed to be worth some UKPounds: 5 million.
This painting's provenance is unusually clear: it was bought by an unnamed German collector in 1935 and passed through dealers and collectors: the Wildenstein Gallery (in New York in November 1953); Nathan Cohn (in New York in December 1953); and Knoedler and Co (in New York, in November 1959) - from whom John and Frances Loeb, bought it.
In 1997 Christie's auctioned the Loeb collection and 29 paintings sold for a total of $93 million (UKPounds: 59 million); the sale included a historic Cézanne portrait of his wife, which fetched $23.1 million. The Pissarro was not featured. In 1985 the Israel Museum's chairman, Teddy Kollek, a former Jerusalem mayor, had secured its donation and it arrived through a bequest two years ago on John Loeb's death.
Anne Webber, co-chair of the European Commission on Looted Art, called on the Israelis to act swiftly. But James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum, said it was conducting its own research. "We want to make sure that it is the same Pissarro, since a number of versions of the picture exist."
(Daily Telegraph London)
Museum 'will return stolen oil painting'
THE Israel Museum is ready to return a Nazi-looted painting to a surviving member of the Jewish family who owned it, it said yesterday. But it would be "weeks or months" before the investigation to establish its provenance could be completed, said James Snyder, the museum's director. Boulevard Montmartre, Spring 1897, an oil painting by Camille Pissaro, was part of a collection of 143 German and French impressionist paintings owned by Max Silberburg, a wealthy Jewish industrialist of Breslau, stolen by the Nazis in 1935.
Gerta Silberburg, his daughter-in-law who lives in Leicester, said it was valued at UKPounds: 3 million. Ohad Gozani in Tel Aviv and Victoria Combe, Religion Correspondent
Spain's Prado reopens Velazquez rooms after leaks
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's foremost art gallery, the Prado, unveiled newly restored rooms housing the works of Golden Age artist Diego de Velazquez Friday after two years of work marred by controversy and a leaking roof.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar attended the opening ceremony, part of celebrations to mark the 400th anniversary of Velazquez's birth this year.
Management at the Prado in Madrid faced stiff criticism and calls for their resignation earlier this year after rain water leaked through a hole in the roof during the restoration works and left a puddle near some of Velazquez's paintings.
The renovation was ordered after another leak four years ago which cost the job of the museum's director at the time. The repaired rooms will house a permanent collection of Velazquez's masterpieces, including ``Las Meninas'' and ``Los Borrachos.''
From: riskmgmt@lava.net
Subject: Art Inventory Software
Dear Museum Security Network:
We are looking into software specifically designed for inventoring collections. We are making a proposal that will include up to 4900 pieces representing 1300 artists of different media. We envision the task to include photographic documentation, inventory, damage assessment, and conservation recommendations.
The last work performed on these pieces is over 18 years old, is manual, and not computer compatable.
Anyone aware of any user friendly software that fits this need ?
R.Rogers 1-(808) 521-6264 (rogers@lava.net)
A van Gogh went; The missing $82 million painting
By Edward J. Sozanski
INQUIRER ART CRITIC
NEW YORK - The world's most expensive painting has disappeared, and no one in the international art world seems to know where it is.
The missing masterpiece is a Vincent van Gogh portrait of Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, a homeopathic physician who ministered to the artist in the last weeks of his life. The 1890 work is considered to be van Gogh's last important portrait subject.
The first public acknowledgment of the art's disappearance came when New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art tried to locate the picture for its current show and failed. The museum's exhibition catalog duly noted the art's MIA status with the simple words, "present location unknown."
Joseph J. Rishel, curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, also began searching for the painting. Rishel would love to put Dr. Gachet's melancholy visage in the exhibition of van Gogh portraits he is helping to organize for three American museums next year, including his own.
But Rishel hasn't been able to find the work either. And unless he gets extraordinarily lucky in a hurry, Dr. Gachet will not grace the walls of his or either of the other museums.
Dr. Gachet became an international celebrity in 1990 when a rich Japanese corporate executive bought his portrait at Christie's auction house in New York for $82.5 million, the largest sum ever paid for a painting.
Ryoei Saito, an aggressive businessman nicknamed "wild fellow," purchased the work in 1990. At that same auction he also picked up a Renoir for $78.1 million. It was a bold move for the honorary chairman of Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Co., his country's second-largest producer of paper.
He brought the painting back to acclaim only to stash it in a warehouse after looking at it once, he said.
That year the Tokyo newspaper Daily Yomiuri reported that Saito was Japan's largest taxpayer, paying the government about $24 million. He estimated his personal wealth at $770 million. Shortly after paying his debt, Saito told friends that the Gachet portrait and the Renoir should be burned at his cremation so his heirs could avoid hundreds of billions of yen in inheritance tax.
Six years later, disgraced by a bribery scandal that left his company in debt, Saito died at the age of 79 from a stroke. It is not certain that anyone has seen the van Gogh since.
In fact, the portrait - one of two that van Gogh is known to have painted of the physician - has been out of the public eye for much of its life. The piece left the artist's family for a private collection in Copenhagen in 1897, reports Cynthia Saltzman in her book Portrait of Dr. Gachet, a history of the storied canvas from its creation to Saito's death in 1996.
The painting didn't enter the public domain until 1911, when it was acquired by the Stadel Art Institute in Frankfurt. There it remained until 1937, when it was confiscated as part of the Hitler regime's assiduous campaign of vacuuming up art from collections all over Europe.
The painting passed through the hands of Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, who sold it to German banker-collector Franz Koenigs. He immediately sold to collectors Siegfried and Lola Kramarsky.
The Kramarskys were German Jews who fled to New York in 1941, bringing the Gachet portrait with them. It hung in their Manhattan apartment, but they made it available to scholars and exhibitions, until 1984 when, with Siegfried long dead, it was lent to the Metropolitan Museum. It remained on view there until 1990, when the Kramarsky children decided to take advantage of the booming art market and sell it at auction.
Was it theirs to sell? The Nazis, in effect, stole the canvas from the Stadel Institute, a private foundation, breaking the chain of legal ownership. But the Christie's gavel went down nonetheless. When the Metropolitan Museum began gathering paintings for its current show, the hunt for Dr. Gachet began. The fruitless search left the Metropolitan feeling "fairly certain" that the painting had changed hands again.
"We tried to borrow it for our Dr. Gachet show, but we couldn't find the owner," a Metropolitan Museum spokesman said. "We don't even know who sold it."
It wasn't Daishowa Paper Company, said Iwao Sakamoto, the firm's spokesman.
"First of all, the painting belonged to Mr. Saito and not the company. So we're not quite sure where it is now. But we heard that they sold the painting to somebody else. There's no fact in the rumor that he brought the painting to his coffin. Somebody owns that painting."
Kiminori Saito, Ryoei Saito's son and now chairman of the company, declined to comment. But a subsidiary of Daishowa Paper sold Saito's Renoir shortly after his death for $50 million to help repay debts. Saito's threat to burn the painting with his body were criticized at the time, then regarded as a joke. "He didn't mean it literally. It's just that he appreciates the pictures that much," said Tokyo art dealer Hideto Kobayashi, who bid on the paintings for Saito.
Joke or no, the Metropolitan and Philadelphia art museums aren't the only ones scratching their institutional heads over the whereabouts of Portrait of Dr. Gachet. A spokeswoman for the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the artist's "mother church," said curators there can't clarify the question of the painting's whereabouts. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, whose huge endowment would permit it to purchase an $82.5 million picture, doesn't have a clue either. "I don't know where it is, and I don't know who does know," director John Walsh said.
The Gachet portrait has gone so deeply underground that even a Japanese art dealer familiar with the international market could only guess as to where the painting might be and who has custody. The dealer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, thinks the portrait is still in Tokyo, acquired as collateral by one of the financial institutions from whom Saito had borrowed money. If a bank or other financial institution controlled the Gachet portrait, he continued, it would be extremely cautious in offering it for sale.
"Japanese banks are very conservative, so they wouldn't admit that they controlled a painting or that they wanted to sell it," he said. "They would be afraid of making any mistake [because] they might be criticized by their board of directors." Whoever does own the missing van Gogh should have been happy to have it in the Metropolitan Museum exhibition, which shows that "our understanding of van Gogh is still evolving," said Saltzman, the art historian who wrote the painting's "biography." "To write a history of artists, it's important to see their paintings, particularly those of this caliber," she continued. "It would be thrilling and instructive to see the painting again. . . . It's one of the paintings that contributes to our understanding of van Gogh as a very intellectual artist."
Saltzman characterized the Dr. Gachet situation as "a real loss to scholarship, at least at this moment when it's not accessible, because it could have been seen with the other version of the portrait. "It's a sad commentary that it has become so valuable as a commodity that its value as a work of art has been eclipsed."
( This article contains information from the Knight Ridder News Service.The Gachet collection, in New York.)
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