http://museum-security.org/
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September 5, 1999
CONTENTS:
- Eccentric 'gentleman' thief jailed over UKP:2m art racket (a retired English teacher who found companionship in the criminal underworld began a jail sentence yesterday for his part in a UKP:2 million stolen art and antiques racket)
- Re: storage of old records and recording tapes (David Wexler)
- Seminar on disaster preparedness (The Massachusetts Cultural Resources Disaster Planning)
- Heirs sell art once looted by Nazis to casino mogul (When the Seattle Art Museum returned Henri Matisse's "Odalisque" to the family who lost it to the Nazis, one heir of collector Paul Rosenberg said she was happy "his children are finally coming home." Not for long)
- Spain opens global war on treasure hunters (SPAIN has launched a legal and diplomatic offensive to claim the thousands of wrecked Spanish galleons that lie undisturbed in seas across the world)
- Sotheby's sold fakes for years ( international auction house, has admitted selling fake furniture after a Sunday Times investigation established that it has been trading bogus antiques for years. The two most senior executives in the furniture department have already resigned)
Eccentric 'gentleman' thief jailed over UKP:2m art racket
BY SUSIE STEINER
A RETIRED English teacher who found companionship in the criminal underworld began a jail sentence yesterday for his part in a UKP:2 million stolen art and antiques racket.
Richard Lucas, 67, an Oxford graduate, teamed up with an unemployed middleman, Thomas Atkinson, to sell artefacts stolen from museums, libraries, National Trust houses, galleries and private collectors. The pair were supplied by a burglary gang, which operated in London and the South East for more than ten years, plundering of paintings, first editions, illustrated plates and antiques worth UKP:2.1 million. Yesterday Blackfriars Crown Court jailed Lucas for four years and Atkinson for six years.
Judge Monro Davies told the men: "But for your arrests, my view is that you would have continued in this particular conspiracy." The judge said Lucas was far from an innocent dupe, but was "an eccentric with a difference" who assuaged his loneliness through crimine.
Atkinson, 47, of Kilburn, North London, had studied art and antiques and probably met Lucas at an auction. He provided Lucas with a link to a ring of burglars, who carried out at least 27 raids on institutions such as the London Library, Fenton House museum in Hampstead and the libraries of London clubs. Detective Sergeant Jed Hodgson, who led the investigation, said: "Lucas is a hoarder who wanted to have the items wrapped around him. His house was so full of books and antiques you could barely walk through it. He still doesn't see himself as a criminal. He sees himself as an art expert." Lucas was also interested in making money, although details of his profits have not been disclosed pending a further financial hearing. He put his loot into unit trusts, PEPs and off-shore accounts. Lucas and Atkinson are thought to have handled more than UKP:1 million of the total of UKP:2.1 million stolen by the gang. Property worth UKP:700,000 has been recovered but the rest has been lost through auction sales.
Rare antiquarian books dating from 1568 were mostly broken up for their illustrated plates, which are thought to have ended up in America and Japan. Among the gravest losses to the London Library was a UKP:100,000 set of maps, called Civitates Orbis Terrarum, by the 16th century Dutch cartographer Ortelius. Alan Bell, librarian at the London Library, said: "It's a very beautiful atlas and very important in the history of cartography. "Our fear is that it has long been split up to make individual plates and sold abroad." Lucas, who used to teach English at Romford College, admitted handling books worth UKP:126,000 himself. Ninety were found stacked in his flat. Twelve had been stolen from the London Library. The pensioner was an unlikely suspect. He was an eccentric who led a cloistered life in a rented flat in Hampstead.
"He was well respected in the community," said Sergeant Hodgson. "He was a lover of books and fine art. We got information that he was not all he might be. We started to check him out." Through careful surveillance of Lucas, the police found a number of premises connected to him across the capital and in the West Country. Searches of these in September 1996 recovered stolen property worth more than UKP:549,000. There was enough to fill two lorries. In Lucas's cluttered and ramshackle home, a notebook was found containing details of the stolen property and where he had obtained it. This led police, in November 1996, to a man called Leslie Mason, a driver who admitted involvement in the burglaries. He gave a valuable insight into the burglary gang's modus operandi. "The gang would gather information from cleaners, doormen and builders who had legitimate reasons to be on the premises," Sergeant Hodgson said. "Loose conversations in pubs would give valuable inside information. They would plot these premises and carry out reconnaissance to establish how to disable alarm systems. "It has also been suggested that they had a BT employee who was able to disable alarm systems, though this individual has never been identified." Police brought four alleged burglars and three alleged handlers connected to the gang to trial separately but all were acquitted owing to a lack of evidence. Another handler, Michael Mimnagh, was convicted at Blackfriars Crown Court last month and sentenced to two years in jail.
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html?999
From: David Wexler david@hollywoodvaults.com
Organization: Hollywood Vaults Inc
Subject: Re: storage of old records and recording tapes
I am writing on behalf of the Museo de Culturas Populares in Mexico City. They have a big collection of old records and recording tapes that contain invaluable music of the different ethnic groups in this country. We would like to know how to keep them in storage and what kind of special care should be taken to conserve them adecuately. I hope that by means of this fantastic web you run we can get some advice.
Best wishes
Magdalena Morales Media of this nature should be stored COLD and DRY. Here at the vault we store audio materials at 45 degrees F. at 25% HR. For magnetic media the DRY part of the storage requirement is most important. Moisture gets into the binder and causes it to fail and you have oxide flaking off onto the heads and transports of your decks. Lots of information and links on the topic can be found at http://www.hollywoodvaults.com Best of luck.
`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` ``````````````` David Wexler, President - HOLLYWOOD VAULTS Inc
Preservation-Quality Storage for Film, Tape & Digital Media
742 Seward Street, Hollywood, California 90038 USA
Phone: 323/461-6464, Fax: 323/461-6479 E-mail: mailto:david@hollywoodvaults.com
Web: http://www.hollywoodvaults.com ``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
(ConsDisList)
From: Gregor Trinkaus-Randall gregor.trinkaus-randall@state.ma.us
Subject: Seminar on disaster preparedness
The Massachusetts Cultural Resources Disaster Planning and Mitigation Task Force is presenting a one day seminar/conference on "Protecting Cultural Resources in a Disaster on September 21, 1999 at the Isaac Winslow Hourse in Marshfield, MA (9:30 - 3:00).
Speakers will include Ed Thomas, FEMA; Judy Mcdonough, Massachusetts Historic Commission; Joe Mzazzeo, National Park Service; Arthur Dutil, Stockbridge; David Vallee, National Weather Service; and Richard Wilcox, Stockbridge Police Department. Registration requests (with a $5 check made out to the Historic Winslow Houe Association) should be sent to
Joan Foster
Project Impact Committee
Selectmen's Office
Marshfield Town Hall
870 Moraine Street
Marshfield, MA 02050.
Late registrations to Amanda Orsted at 508-820-1447.
Recognizing that cultural resources are usually at the bottom of the list, even if they make it to the radar screen, in the event of a community-wide, regional, or state-wide disaster (Catastrophic one), the Task Force has been working with the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, municipalities, and a number of other state, local, and non-profit organizations to develop institutional disaster plans and to educate and inform municipal emergency coordinators on the need to protect cultural resources in the event of a disaster. A similar forum was held in Stockbridge, MA last November and has been extremely successful in getting institutions and the municipality to work together.
Gregor Trinkaus-Randall
Preservation Specialist
Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners
648 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02215-2070
617-267-9400, 800-952-7403 (in-state)
Fax: 617-421-9833
Heirs sell art once looted by Nazis to casino mogul
Saturday, September 4, 1999
By REGINA HACKETT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER ART CRITIC
When the Seattle Art Museum returned Henri Matisse's "Odalisque" to the family who lost it to the Nazis, one heir of collector Paul Rosenberg said she was happy "his children are finally coming home."
Not for long.
Just two months later, that particular child found itself up for adoption. The heirs of French gallery owner and collector Rosenberg have sold Matisse's 1928 oil painting to casino mogul Steve Wynn, owner of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.
Alan Feldman, spokesman for the Bellagio, confirmed the painting is on view in the hotel's gallery. Asked how much Wynn paid for the painting, he said, "We don't discuss from whom we buy paintings, to whom we sell them or any of the prices paid in any transaction." The painting is valued at more than $2 million. Confiscated by the Nazis from Rosenberg in 1941, the painting turned up at New York's Knoedler Gallery in 1954. The gallery sold it to Seattle collectors Virginia and Prentice Bloedel without telling them about the Rosenberg connection, says museum spokeswoman Linda Williams. The Bloedels hung it in their living room until donating it to the Seattle Art Museum in 1991. The location of the painting came to light after it was listed as "whereabouts unknown" in Hector Feliciano's 1995 book, "The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art." Rosenberg heirs sued the museum in 1998 to get the painting back. The museum agreed to return the painting after receiving a report on the painting's provenance by the Holocaust Art Restitution Project of B'nai B'rith, which investigates Jewish cultural losses during World War II. The lawsuit was the first against an American museum concerning ownership of art looted by Nazis during World War II. When the museum agreed to return the painting, Elaine Rosenberg told The New York Times she was happy for her deceased father-in-law. "His children are finally coming home," she said. Wynn's Bellagio is home to a notable collection of impressionist and post-impressionist painting, from Monet to Matisse, as well as contemporary work from Robert Rauschenberg, Dale Chihuly and Roy Lichtenstein. The collection is valued at $300 million. Mimi Gates, director of the Seattle Art Museum, said the Rosenbergs weren't interested in working out a deal letting the museum retain the painting. "It belongs to them; they can do with it as they choose," she said. The museum is suing the Knoedler Gallery, contending it sold the painting to the Bloedels under false pretenses. Knoedler Gallery attorneys deny the gallery is liable.
P-I art critic Regina Hackett can be reached at 206-448-8332 or reginahackett@seattle-pi.com
http://www.seattlep-i.com/local/arts04.shtml
Spain opens global war on treasure hunters
By Justin Webster in Barcelona
SPAIN has launched a legal and diplomatic offensive to claim the thousands of wrecked Spanish galleons that lie undisturbed in seas across the world. The Spanish government, under pressure from experts claiming that Spain's cultural heritage is at stake - not to mention thousands of tons of gold and silver worth millions of pounds - is to claim that all wrecked Spanish ships are state property, and that it will fight treasure hunters in the courts. Spain scored its first victory in July when a judge in America ruled that two frigates, the Juno and La Galga, lost off the coast of Virginia in 1802, belong to Spain and not to the treasure hunter who found them. "Just because someone finds a wreck, it does not mean he is the owner," a Spanish foreign ministry spokesman said last week. "Any Spanish galleon found in future will be reclaimed by the Spanish authorities." More than 3,000 galleons were lost at sea as far away as Japan between 1500 and the early 19th century. Most are to be found on the former gold shipment route between Spain and its New World discoveries in America. Mel Fisher, the doyen of American treasure hunters who died last year, is thought to have made UKP:300 million out of the wreck of the Atocha, a galleon he salvaged in 1985 in the Caribbean. Spain has outlawed commercial salvage in its own waters and has, until now, made no effort to find the wrecks itself. However, the ministry of culture is considering the purchase of a ship capable of deep water archeaological research. Experts complain that vast sums are spent on buying or renting artefacts found by private treasure hunters. They say it would be cheaper for the Spanish to mount their own salvage operations, especially as the main source of material for locating ships with valuable cargoes is Spain's own Archive of the Indies, in Seville. Earlier this year Madrid's naval museum bought 1,000 pieces salvaged from the San Diego, a 17th-century galleon, for UKP:3.2 million at Sotheby's; they were part of a haul recovered by Franck Goddio, the American salvage specialist. The Spanish government also had to rent pieces from another galleon, Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas (found near the Bahamas by Robert Marx, another leading treasure hunter), to mount an exhibition on the discovery of America at the Seville Expo in 1992. "There are plenty of Spanish companies which could make use of tax breaks for cultural sponsorship to fund expeditions," said Juan Manuel Gracia, president of the Association for the Salvage of Spanish Galleons, founded four years ago to lobby for action. Mr Gracia supplied some of the legal research that helped win the court case in the United States, but he said it is unlikely that the same ploy can be repeated with countries such as Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Both countries have been eager to sign up commercial partners in recent years to look for treasure. In 1994 the Dominican Republic struck a deal with an American company to recover galleon treasure and archaeological remains from the Silver Banks, where nearly 600 ships went down. Last week a Canadian company, Visa Gold Exploration, began deep water searches near Cuba, after completing negotiations with Fidel Castro's government. In countries where a legal offensive is likely to fail, the ministry of culture is working on promoting bilateral conventions to secure some Spanish rights over its lost ships, and argues that the methods of private companies, which sometimes include dynamiting the wrecks, cannot be trusted. A priority closer to home is to draw up a list of projects to recover treasures lost in unexploited Spanish waters. Claudio Bonifacio, an Italian who has spent 11 years researching Spanish and Portuguese archives for private clients, estimates from documentary evidence that there are 563 shipwrecks in the Bay of Cadiz. Nearly two hundred of them were en route from America, with a total cargo of 6,000 tons of silver and 650 tons of gold. Experts are sceptical, however, that government-backed schemes will be effective in a notoriously cut-throat and high-risk business. "If they are serious about doing something they will have to involve the big commercial players," said Nigel Pickford, author of Atlas of Shipwrecks and Treasure, and adviser to investors in salvage schemes. "It is not something governments have ever done."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Sotheby's sold fakes for years
Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Christopher Owen
SOTHEBY'S, the international auction house, has admitted selling fake furniture after a Sunday Times investigation established that it has been trading bogus antiques for years. The two most senior executives in the furniture department have already resigned after four "Georgian" chairs that sold for UKP:1.3m were exposed as forgeries. It has now emerged that two other wealthy clients have also bought "period" furniture at Sotheby's which was counterfeit. An "18th century" Carlton House desk sold for about UKP:80,000, a pair of "Regency" torchères (tall stands for holding candelabra) for UKP:44,000 and a pair of "George III" jardinières for UKP:16,000 are among the bogus goods sold at auction to unsuspecting buyers in recent years.
"The trade has been pointing out for years the suspicious items of furniture that have been turning up in Sotheby's," said Michael Hogg, a London antiques dealer. "Given the period of time and the number of suspect goods, I think the trade and the public have a right to know what was going on. They should now go back over every lot sold by any suspect sources, contact the purchasers and look at them again." Graham Child, who was a Sotheby's director and senior specialist, has admitted failing to spot the fake Georgian chairs, but would not comment on other forgeries offered to buyers.
"Who doesn't have some problems at some juncture?" said Child, 52, who was with the company for 21 years. "People can get things wrong. Nobody is as pure as the driven snow. I have left Sotheby's, I am carrying on my life and I would really rather not comment on what has gone on in the past."
Dealers claim that there has been a pattern of suspect items sold at Sotheby's during the 1990s which they believe originate from at least two sources. Bonhams, another London auctioneer, said it had raised concerns with Sotheby's two years ago involving one supplier. Several of London's most respected dealers have also complained to the company about the amount of suspect furniture sold in its New Bond Street saleroom.
The controversy over fake antiques at the world-famous auction house has flared up after the sale of two pairs of chairs said to come from St Giles's House in Wimborne, Dorset, the seat of the Earl of Shaftesbury. They are now known to be fakes and do not come from St Giles's House.
The first pair were bought in 1994 for UKP:463,500 by Herbert Black, a Canadian scrap metal merchant millionaire. The second pair fetched a world record price of UKP:837,500 when they were sold two years later. Dealers were staggered that Sotheby's had failed to spot the fakes, with one expert claiming it was the "equivalent of the British Museum misreading the Elgin Marbles". Alan Rubin, 50, who runs an antiques business in Mayfair, however, last week confirmed it was not an isolated incident and said there had been a "pattern" of suspect furniture on sale at the auction house in recent years.
Rubin himself bought a Carlton House desk for UKP:78,500 from Sotheby's that was claimed to be 18th century. Two years later, in 1996, he bought a rare pair of "George III" painted jardinières. Both "lots" were fakes.
"I found out when I saw another item offered at Sotheby's which was in the same style," he said. "It was confirmed to me that all these pieces had come from the same source. I went back to my gallery and took the desk to pieces. It took four hours to examine in detail - a very brilliant fake, but no question. I was refunded by Sotheby's for both lots."
John Hill, 52, another antiques dealer, bought a pair of painted torchères, which were described as Regency in the Sotheby's catalogue. "We were certain they were fakes and were fully refunded," he said last week.These fakes have come to light only because they were bought by experts. A third set of chairs said to come from St Giles's House are still in circulation after concerns were raised about their authenticity when they were offered for sale at Sotheby's in July 1997.
Hammered: desk and table were offered at top prices despite their disputed provenance Child was suspended immediately after the July furniture sale, at which three lots were withdrawn because of doubts about their authenticity. On the same day, Sotheby's issued a writ against the supplier of the fake chairs. It is claimed Sotheby's was contacted more than two years ago about one suspect dealer named Cooks of Marlborough, whose director, Catherine Wilson Cook, supplied the forged St Giles's chairs.
Bonhams was concerned that a genuine table it sold to Cooks for UKP:15,500 was later offered at Sotheby's at four times the price with newly added extending leaves. "If people buy from reputable dealers and auction houses and an object turns out to be not what it purports to be, the buyer will get his or her money back. This is what happened in all of these instances," said a Sotheby's spokesman. "However, we do not feel we are alone in having to deal with fake furniture. As one of the market leaders, the actions we have taken are intended to counteract the activities of those individuals attempting to trade fraudulently."
Both Child and his colleague, Joseph Friedman, have been cleared by the company of any wrongdoing.
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/
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