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August 15, 1999
CONTENTS:
- APPEAL FROM YUGOSLAV CULTURAL PROTECTION EXPERTS TO BERNARD KOUCHNER
- Rainstorms soak valuable Dutch book collection
- Hunt for Nazi looted art in British messes
- Auction houses take hammering as art dries up
- Cartoon Theft No Laughing Matter
- Sotheby's chiefs quit in 'fakes' row
- Background to the Denney Case
- CCAHA Disaster Mitigation Workshop Series
- Massachusetts museums battle over Monet
From: Boylan P P.Boylan@city.ac.uk
Subject: APPEAL FROM YUGOSLAV CULTURAL PROTECTION EXPERTS TO BERNARD KOUCHNER, UN ADMINISTRATOR, KOSOVO
Just received via Vesna Marjanovic, Curator, Vojvodina Museum, Novi Sad (ICOM Yugoslavia National Committee).
Patrick Boylan
-----------------
Mr Kouchner,
We write to you on behalf of group of experts engaged in the protection of cultural and natural heritage who are deeply worried about the current events in Kosovo and Metohija. Yugoslav and world public are well acquainted with the daily merciless devastation of valuable cultural monuments, especially Serbian churches and monasteries, old city and rural buildings, archeological sites, archives, libraries, museums and graveyards, and the systematic destruction of natural heritage. The recent events convinced us that in spite of the continuous warnings and proposals for immediate urgent measures we had sent to KFOR, the UN Mission and the representative of UNESCO in Kosovo, international civilian and military authorities do not prevent the destruction of heritage. According to international conventions, it is your duty to take appropriate measures in order to assure the preservation of extremely rich, specific multicultural, multiethnic and multireligious heritage, and protection of cultural- historic, and especially architectural, monuments and sites. Furthermore, it is your duty to show due concern for the highly important natural resorts which are also centers of biodiversity of European and global significance. We hope that you will understand the professional reasons that lead us to contact you, as we had done with your predecessor, expressing our concern for the future of heritage of entire region. If the necessary measures for protection are not urgently taken, your Mission may be held responsible for not being up to its historic duty and for allowing the destruction of cultural and natural heritage of Kosovo and Metohija, an important part of Balkan and European heritage. Therefore, we appeal to you to do all that is in your power to physically protect the valuable heritage of this region.
Group of experts for protection of heritage, members of: ICOM, ICROM, ICOMOS, IUCN, Europa Nostra / Serbia Nostra, professional associations of art historians, conservators, architects, town planners, archivists and other organizations.
Belgrade, August 12th 1999. Contact address: E - mail address: mediateka@f.bg.ac.yu museumv@EUnet.yu
Rainstorms soak valuable Dutch book collection
ROTTERDAM, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Rainstorms lashing the southern Netherlands on Tuesday flooded underground storage depots at a Rotterdam museum, soaking one of the country's most valuable book collections. ``It's a unique collection of 19th century auction catalogues, the second biggest art history collection in the Netherlands,'' a spokesman for the Boijmans van Beuningen museum said. ``The books were literally cast afloat,'' he added. He said the entire collection had been transferred to industrial walk-in fridges at a local factory to prevent the paper from going mouldy and would later be freeze-dried. Paper restorers are still assessing the extent of the damage, he said. In the freeze-drying process ice becomes water vapour without first melting to form water, affording little opportunity for bacteria and mould to gain hold. Meteorologists said over 55 millimetres of rain fell in Rotterdam over a five hour period early on Tuesday morning. Various streets, basement flats and tunnels were flooded, particularly in the northern part of the city, emergency services said.
Hunt for Nazi looted art in British messes
By Andrew Gilligan, Defence Correspondent
(Daily Telegraph London)
+++++++++++++++
Nazi looted art [Nov '98] - The Holocaust Educational Trust
http://www.artloss.com/loot.htm
Documenting Nazi Plunder of European Art [Nov '97] - National Archives and Records Administration
http://www.nara.gov/research/assets/research/naziplun.html +++++++++++++++
OFFICERS' messes, air-force bases and garrisons across Britain are being scoured for looted Nazi art - carried off as trophies by Second World War troops - after Holocaust campaigners appealed to the Ministry of Defence to return it to its rightful owners. The Defence Secretary, George Robertson, ordered the hunt after a report from the Holocaust Educational Trust said that British and Allied troops indulged in "booty collection" of art taken by the Nazis, carrying off works originally seized from Jewish families and then held by prominent Nazis. "The occupation forces were quite cavalier about what they did with looted art, some lining their walls with it," said a spokesman for the trust, which has been at the forefront of campaigns to return Nazi gold seized during the war. "We would like to find out whether there are some missing pieces still tucked away in the corner of an officers' mess or a general's office." Even the most senior officers were not immune to the collecting impulse, the report says. The British Commander in Chief, Gen Sir Sholto Douglas, took works including a Rembrandt from the collection of the Nazi arms manufacturers Krupp, which he re-framed before removing in his private train. A senior air marshal is reputed to have asked the occupying authorities for pictures for his houses in Germany, because he "did not like" the ones he had. Even King George VI had to be warned by the Foreign Office that he risked accusations of looting when he attempted to "rescue" parts of the Duke of Brunswick's art collection. The British played an important role in preventing many treasures from being destroyed by the Nazis. Up to 6,500 Old Masters were collected by the Germans at a mine in Austria with the intention that they should be blown up in the event of defeat, but agents of the British Special Operations Executive helped to thwart the plan. Some troops acted less commendably, however. "Allied soldiers took what they wanted in a number of cases," said Brendan Pittaway, the co-author of a new book on the subject, The Lost Masters. "Individual generals would go to the Monuments and Fine Arts Archive and say, 'I'm looking for something to brighten up my office, I think that painting would do the trick'. " Although ostensibly on temporary loan, some paintings were never recovered - one American general was found to have hoarded several priceless works in his garage. Interest in the issue of looted Nazi artworks was sparked last year when the descendants of Paul Rosenberg, a Jewish art dealer, sued the Seattle Art Museum for the return of a valuable Matisse which they said had been stolen from him by the Nazis. The painting is alleged to have been sold on to the museum by a reputable firm of New York art dealers. After the Seattle case, the chief British museums and galleries decided to go through their own collections to see if they included any suspect artworks among them. Sharon Page, company secretary of the Tate Gallery, said: "We have curators going through our works to check their provenance and see if there are any suspicious gaps in the Thirties and Forties, and we will publish a list of those whose history raises questions we are unable to resolve." One Jewish family has already approached the Tate with a claim for one of its paintings, Griffier's View of Hampton Court Palace, valued at up to UKP.200,000. The investigations into the Armed Forces' vast holdings involve asking the commander of every air station and Army base in the country whether he or she has any potentially suspect works. Investigators may also visit the home bases of units which served in Germany at the end of the war, or their successors. "We are concerned to make sure that we are not holding any looted artworks," a ministry spokesman said. "We are looking at all the bases and garrisons, but there are no results announced yet of any discoveries."
Auction houses take hammering as art dries up
By Catherine Milner, Arts Correspondent
(Daily Telegraph London)
THE world's leading auction houses are under pressure because they are running out of antiques to sell. Sotheby's Holdings, owner of the international auction house, has reported a 19 per cent drop in its income from $27.3 million (UKP.17 million) to $22.2 million (UKP.14 million) in the first half of this year. The company attributes some of the shortfall to the fact that it has been investing heavily in an Internet site, but insiders are now watching keenly for Christie's figures, which are to be released this week. Other auction houses affected by the market fluctuation include , which has lost three directors and four top staff this year, and Phillips, which is "consolidating" its operations by closing 10 of its 21 regional auction houses. Tony Barry, UK regional director for Phillips, said: "We've decided we should concentrate on a relatively small number of outlets. We've moved from the mid to the upper market instead of the relatively low market lots." Although Mr Barry stressed that people are still coming to the traditional auction houses to buy goods because of the "expert" advice they get, other evidence suggests that the auctioneers are simply running out of items to sell. Robert Lacey, author of the book Sotheby's, said: "In the years since the war we have seen a proliferation of museums and art galleries, and the National Trust's preservation of stately homes and the growth of the heritage industry have stabilised the nobility, so they don't have to sell off their stuff so much. All the Renaissance treasures are now locked up in museums." Charles Beddington, who was head of Christie's Old Masters department for 12 years and is now one of London's leading picture dealers, said: "There is not anything like as much good quality as there was 20 years ago." He cited a single sale held by Christie's in 1973 that contained Titian's The Death of Actaeon (bought by the National Gallery for 1.5 million) as well as two paintings by Boucher, four by Fragonard, a Panini painting and another by Velázquez. Today, he said, no sale would contain a list of such seamless quality, although "second division" paintings are now much the same price. Other markets - toys, clothes, cartoon stills and other collectibles -have grown so much that in September a small cardboard ticket to a baseball game is estimated to sell at Sotheby's for $10,000 (UKP.6,300). The other problem, Mr Beddington pointed out, is that rich Americans will often snap up the best art works and, rather than leave them to a relative, will bequeath them to a museum or art foundation, from which they will never surface again. David Ekserdjian, editor of the art magazine Apollo, remembered how 20 years ago it was possible to walk down the Charing Cross Road in London and pick up Renaissance sketches for 1 each. He recalled a friend who bought one only to discover later that it was by a pupil of Raphael's. "In those days people didn't know what they were buying - now, if you went to Sotheby's or Christie's with something like that it would probably fetch 100,000." In addition to the dearth of quality antiques at the top end of the market, there is a steady erosion of material available to the auction houses at the bottom end - thanks to the Internet. The American research company Jupiter Communications forecasts that Internet auctions will generate $1.9 billion (UKP.1.2 billion) in revenue by 2002 and that 6.5 million people will be shopping by online auction. One of the reasons he cites for the success of on-screen sales is that many people are reluctant to pay the 10 or 15 per cent seller's premium to offload items demanded by traditional auction houses. Internet sites such as Ebay charge in the region of two per cent. In order to pre-empt their clients defecting to the Internet, Sotheby's has joined forces with Amazon, the largest retail unit on the Web, to create what it calls a marketplace of "unparallelled reach and quality". Christie's is rumoured to be forging a similar deal with the Disney Corporation and says that it has taken on an extra 30 staff to cope with launching and monitoring the Internet site, which it hopes to be online in September.
Cartoon Theft No Laughing Matter
NEW YORK (AP) - Stolen animation cells of the Grinch showed up for auction on the eBay Web site and two teen-age clerks at an art gallery were arrested Friday, police said. The Web service cooperated with the investigation, which involved a detective posing as a buyer and offering $1,500 for the image of the Dr. Seuss character creeping toward a Christmas tree. Morales Stroud, 18, and Angela Rodriguez, 20, both of New York, were arrested on charges of grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. They could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison if convicted. Police arrested the couple after arranging to pay the winning bid. The cells were among $100,000 worth of stolen animated images reported missing from the gallery, which police didn't identify. Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Batman and Garfield were included. Officials at eBay told police it was the first time anyone was arrested on charges of stealing artwork offered for sale on the giant auction site, said Lt. Chris Malinowski, commanding officer of the police force's 4-year-old Computer Crimes Unit.
Sotheby's chiefs quit in 'fakes' row
John Harlow and Maeve Sheehan
(Times of London) TWO senior executives have quit Sotheby's in the middle of a UKP.1.7m row over "fake" Georgian chairs sold to a Canadian millionaire. The Canadian bought two chairs at auction in London in 1994, believing they came from a house near Bath dating back to George II. They are now thought to be recent reproductions. Graham Tangye Child, head of the furniture department at Sotheby's in London, was first suspended by the company, of which he was a director, and then, last week, announced his resignation. A second executive has also left abruptly. The loss of Child is an embarrassing blow to Soth-eby's, which this weekend said he left because his department had been "reorganised". He is a world expert on 18th-century furniture and the author of a renowned book about mirrors that sells on the second-hand market for more than UKP.100. He was behind many of the firm's recent sales coups over its bitter rival, Christies, including the return to Westminster Abbey of a velvet footstool used at the coronation of George IV in 1821. He has also, however, been involved in some of the firm's tenser public moments. He withdrew a Regency library table on the day of sale after a reader of Country Life recognised it as stolen from his home. In 1989 his judgment was challenged by other experts when he branded a UKP.500,000 commode as Chippendale, a decision still questioned by some of his peers. Last week, Child, 52, said he was saddened to have left Sotheby's without telling old friends, but would be happy to spend the summer in his garden. He declined to say whether he had wrongly identified the chairs, or if he was taking responsibility for someone else's decision. It is, however, a huge embarrassment for the auction house. Sotheby's has now issued a writ in the High Court against Cook of Marlborough, which supplied the chairs for auction in 1994. The firm has also started proceedings over two further chairs it sold in 1996, possibly to the same Canadian. The four together were valued at UKP.1.7m. Sotheby's is suing Catherine Wilson-Cook, a director of the antique shop in Savernake Forest, Marlborough, over alleged deceit and misrepresentation. Last week a spokesman for the shop said that that Wilson-Cook was unavailable for comment.
Background to the Denney Case
(Read full story at: http://museum-security.org/denny) An Englishman dies domiciled in Spain: does Spanish Law or English Law govern the succession to his estate?
Anthony Denney was an Englishman who had lived in Spain for many years. He died in 1990 and his Spanish will made his second wife Celia Mercedes Royde-Smith universal legatee, without prejudice to the rights that the children of his first marriage might have under his national law. The question was, were his children entitled to inherit part of the estate as obligatory heirs under Spanish Law? It took nine years to find out the answer. Anthony Denney's three children by his first marriage challenged the widow's claim to the estate in the Spanish Courts, claiming that under Spanish Law part belonged to them. Their grounds were that because English Private International Law refers to the law of Spain and Article 12.2 of the Spanish Civil Code accepted the renvoi, or reference back from English Law, therefore Spanish Law gave them compulsory rights to a part of the estate. However, Article 12.2 of the Civil Code is ambiguous and there were no judgments from the Supreme Court to provide guidance on how it should be interpreted. It should have been merely a matter of obtaining a definitive judgment on a point of law, but a major complicating factor proved to be the question of the ownership of Denney's collection of modern art, which had been lent by him to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1970. Shortly after Denney's death, the DMA was instructed to transfer the loan collection to the Museum of Modern Art in Toulouse in letters signed Anthony Denney, later discovered to be forged. Transport costs and insurance were paid for by the City of Toulouse. In 1993 the City formally accepted the collection as a gift from Denney's widow, even though officials knew that it had not been declared to the Spanish Tax Authorities and that Denney's children by his first marriage had lodged an inheritance claim in the Spanish Courts. The widow denied that the children had any right to bring their inheritance claim before the Spanish Courts and also argued that the case should not be heard without the Mayor of Toulouse being present , because the City, which she claimed were now owners of the collection, would be affected by the outcome. The Mayor of Toulouse, for his part, announced that the litigation in Spain was a private matter in which neither the City, nor the State nor the Regional Council were in any way involved.
A statement on behalf of Anthony Denney's children following the decision of the Spanish Supreme Court of 21 May 1999:
On 21st May 1999 the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that: "the succession of Mr. John Anthony Denney deceased is governed by his national law, that is, by English law, which recognises the freedom to make a will for its nationals and, as a consequence the Chamber must proceed to reject the claim, revoking the ruling of first instance." Anthony Denney's three children by his first marriage accept this decision. The assets of the estate now pass in their entirety to Ms. Celia Mercedes Royde-Smith in her capacity as unique and universal legatee. They consider that the litigation was very necessary and, although the case went against them, they hope that the resulting clarification of the law will benefit others. They believe the Denney case represents an exceptionally interesting example of the Conflict of Laws, meriting close study not only by Private International Lawyers but by experts in the field of Art and Law. They draw attention to the important guiding principles enunciated in the Supreme Court's decision : namely, that renvoi should be applied flexibly and not automatically and should be subject to conditions and limitations, such as to preserve "unity of succession" and to ensure a "harmony of solutions". They hope that the application of these principles will now result in consistent interpretation of the Civil Code in matters of succession, wherever foreign nationality and domicile in Spain are factors to be considered. The Spanish Supreme Court cites the Adams case (1987), which resolves ambiguity in Article 12.2 of the Spanish Civil Code by applying the unity of succession principle to the Spanish property of a testator domiciled in England, as evidence of a new reluctance by English Courts to apply renvoi. The case certainly provides a clear example of judicial reasoning and anticipates the principles so recently enunciated by the Supreme Court, but it does not appear to cover the situation where the testator has a Spanish domicile. If harmonious solutions are to be achieved in the future, the question of whether any break in the unity of succession can arise if the testator is domiciled in Spain may need most careful study in the context of both the Denney and Adams decisions. A number of issues concerning the security of art loans have been raised by the case, with the result that some museums have already tightened up their loan processes to reduce risks. "Lessons from the Denney Collection", recently published by the Institute of Art and Law, records the background to the case and in particular the unauthorised removal of Anthony Denney's collection of modern art from the Dallas Museum of Art following his death and its subsequent donation to the City of Toulouse. It is hoped the paper will be widely disseminated and encourage a lively debate on the security of art loans to museums and will lead to the development of an International Art Loans Register accessible via the Internet. They wish to thank : the Tate Gallery, Dallas Museum of Art, French Institute London, National Trust, Royal Academy, Rendcomb College and the Haute Garonne Archives and many other institutions and individuals, without whose help the significant facts relating to Anthony Denney's vanished art collection could never have been established ; Toulousains for their hospitality : La Dépêche du Midi for balanced press reporting and Le Satiricon for its witty and satirical article "Art and Bad Manners", which summed up the municipal art politics of Toulouse by saying that "the City found itself the happy recipient of an unwritten will". Now that the case is over, Anthony Denney's children and grandchildren are free to enjoy the rich "virtual inheritance" he bequeathed them : not least, his creative inspiration, many happy memories of him and the truly amazing story of his disappearing art collection.
From: CCAHA CCAHA@CCAHA.ORG
Subject: CCAHA Disaster Mitigation Workshop Series
The Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) is offering three emergency preparedness workshops that focus on mitigation strategies. The workshops are designed to help institutions reduce the possibility of disaster and prevent, or limit, potential damage to collections. The workshops are made possible through the generous funding of The William Penn Foundation. The workshops are intended for staff who are involved in collections care activities or have responsibility for the safety of collections such as librarians, archivists, curators, collections managers, stewards of historic house museums, site and facilities managers, and security and safety staff. All of the workshops will be held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA.
Be Prepared... Conducting a Vulnerability Assessment
Tuesday, October 19, 1999 Registration Deadline: October 8 In this workshop, participants will learn how to conduct a vulnerability analysis and risk assessment so that they will be able to evaluate the types of emergencies that might affect their institution and its collections. This evaluation will help the institution develop effective strategies to minimize the likelihood of a disaster. A crisis communications expert will also address public relations strategies for emergency situations.
Be Prepared... Fire Protection and Suppression
Thursday, November 4, 1999 Registration Deadline: October 25 Critical to the selection of an appropriate fire protection and suppression system is the assessment and analysis of the hazards and risks faced by a collection. This workshop will focus on the need to review current fire protection procedures and systems in historic and cultural institutions. The goal of the workshop will be to equip participants with up-to-date information to make informed decisions on fire prevention. Be Prepared... Assessing Health and Safety Risks
Thursday, December 2, 1999 Registration Deadline: November 19 This workshop will alert participants to the health and safety risks present at the time of an emergency, including air quality, fire safety, electrical hazards, structural instability, chemical and biological hazards (mold, lead, asbestos, contaminated water and soil), pests, and those hazards inherent in collections themselves (arsenic, formaldehyde). The workshop will also address an institution's legal obligations to staff and visitors in regard to health and safety, and the psychological stresses faced by those in an emergency situation.
For more information about these workshops and registration information, please contact:
Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) Preservation Services Office
Tel.: 215.545.0613 Fax: 215.735.9313
E-mail: ccaha@ccaha.org
World Wide Web site: http://www.ccaha.org
Massachusetts museums battle over Monet
BOSTON, Aug. 13 (Reuters) - The gritty mill city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, is battling the Museum of Fine Arts Boston over a 17-piece, multimillion-dollar art collection that includes Claude Monet's ``Field of Poppies Near Giverny.'' The dispute, headed for a hearing on Monday in Suffolk Superior Court, is rooted in a noble gesture. Upon his death in 1911, the Rev. William Wolcott bequeathed his art collection for the betterment of the people of his native Lawrence. But since Wolcott's death, the works have been housed at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Trustees of the collection, which also includes two paintings by 19th-century French painter Camille Pissarro, want it back so they can sell the most valuable pieces and establish a trust to fund art education programmes in Lawrence. ``We certainly need to sell the more valuable ones in order to carry out the intent of ... Rev. Wolcott,'' said Thomas Caffrey, one of the trustees. But the MFA, which sued the collection's trustees last year to stop them from selling the works, insisted Wolcott never intended for the art to be sold. Tim Shea, chief of Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly's public protection bureau, said, ``We don't think that the will is being satisfied now.'' In a court filing in the MFA suit, Reilly's office asked the court to determine what should be done with the art to best satisfy Wolcott's wishes, Shea said. In his will, Wolcott wrote that his bequest was intended ``to create and gratify a public taste for fine art, particularly among the people of the city of Lawrence.'' Wolcott wanted the paintings to be housed in a suitable gallery in Lawrence, once such a facility was built. In the meantime, the paintings were to be offered to the MFA for exhibition, according to court papers. The paintings have been housed at the MFA since 1912. Some are in storage there. A suitable museum has not been built in Lawrence since Wolcott's death, and his trustees doubt that one ever will be. The works aren't doing the city of Lawrence much good at the MFA, and proceeds from their sale could be put to better use to boost the downtrodden image of Wolcott's hometown, Caffrey said. ``Lawrence is an old mill city, and it needs a shot in the arm to change its perception in the eyes of the public,'' he said. Trustees said the works have been appraised at between $5.7 million and $7.6 million. But based on auction prices, the Monet alone could be worth much more.
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