Hello,
A note concerning e-bay items was posted on the Museum Security Network's mailinglist. It may be of interest to you.
Peruvian artworks from Churches
Have you noticed the extremely expensive Peruvian religious icons (17th-18th cent) appearing on eBay in the last few days? Following hard on the heels of the thefts in Peru last year, this looks suspicious. With 6 days and 6 hours to go, and no bids yet, there is "an important 18th C Peruvian Santo-Virgen 4'8"", item #151353673, asking price $13,500.00, location San Francisco. This is the second or third church piece, all in the $4,000 to $14,000 asking range, all from Peru. The seller is probably honest, and I'm probably fantisizing this whole thing, but seeing all of these church pieces being auctioned on the eBay "peruvian" site, where the average item goes for $5-$100, you have to take note! The seller's email address is listed as jeddyant@aol.com. The activity seems to dovetail with the story about the stolen church property from Peru.
Regards,
Jonathan Sazonoff
Pres., Saz Productions Inc.
http://www.saztv.com
Contributing US Ed.
Museum Security Network
http://www.museum-security.org/saz.html
Many of you have have either met my father Will Anderson, heard me talk about him, or seen some of his Colditz paintings and you have been kind enough to ask after his health from time to time. He died peacefully in Blackheath London on 27th August aged 94 after a very full life. Margaret my sister had managed to take him onto the Heath to see the eclipse a few days before much to his great His funeral will be on Monday 6th Sept in Blackheath. The Times devoted their entire obituary page to him on Saturday 4th September.
This can be read at :
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk:80/news/pages/tim/99/09/04/timobiobi02001.html?999
Best wishes
Antony Anderson
Speak of the world's art treasures, and thoughts turn to Italy's Sistine Chapel, France's Louvre and Amsterdam's van Gogh Museum. Now, if organizers of an exhibition touring the country have their way, thoughts someday also will go to Poland. The exhibition "Land of the Winged Horsemen: Art in Poland, 1572-1764" opened in Baltimore in March and is now showing at The Art Institute of Chicago, where it runs through Monday. It will open at the Huntsville Museum of Art in Alabama on Sept. 25 before traveling to California and Oklahoma and then returning to Poland for a final viewing at The Royal Castle in Warsaw. The exhibition brings together about 150 works of art - ceramics, glass, furniture, weapons, metalwork, paintings and textiles - from museums, churches and public institutions in Poland. Many have never been shown outside their homeland. Also shown are items relating to Poland's elected monarchy and its nobility - a silver-gilt crown of fake jewels, a king's throne, a Turkish-style coffee set, tapestries and more. And there is religion art. Coffin plates (which included a portrait of the deceased, usually nailed to a coffin), chalices, a gilded velvet Torah curtain, two 18th-century Hanukkah lamps and exquisite oil paintings are among the items. The exhibition takes its name from the Husaria - a Polish heavy cavalry regiment whose winged armor made a rushing sound as the horsemen rode into battle. The armor, featured in the exhibition, is made of hammered steel and brass, adorned with feathers and leopard skin. Ian Wardropper, curator of European decorative arts and sculptures at The Art Institute, believes the exhibition refutes the myth that Poland is a country without great art. "People can see it was a grand and noble country that fully participated in all the artistic and literary movements of Europe and had its own distinctive culture," he said. "It was just so overrun by battles throughout its history and has lost so much of its art and culture. ... But when one can assemble it in an exhibition such as this ... it's quite impressive." The myth has been long in the making. In the catalog accompanying the exhibition, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann writes, "The prejudice that Poles lack art and possess little culture was already established at the time represented by the objects in the exhibition." He adds that most American museums, universities and publications have until now effectively ignored Poland. Indeed, this exhibition might have featured many more art treasures had it not been for the thefts and destruction invaders have inflicted upon Poland over the years - from the Swedes in the 17th century to the Nazis in the 20th century. Churches, often purveyors of art in many countries, were not spared from the pillaging, and art belonging to Polish Jews fared even worse, "having been annihilated during the Nazi occupation," the catalog notes. "Very few items of Jewish art have survived," Wardropper said. "Catholic art has definitely survived better, but even there it, too, was subject to looting and destruction." The religion art that has survived to be in this exhibition, however, is impressive - "dazzling," as Wardropper describes it. "Many churches and monasteries in Poland are still veritable museums of ancient art," the catalog notes. Featured in the exhibition are several objects that have been recovered only in recent years, including a sculpture of Christ on the cross carved in about 1758 and stolen from a church in 1946. The sculpture, by Johann Georg Pinsel, was missing for 40 years but found in 1990 in another church. Wardropper's hope that the exhibition will help conquer the ignorance many people have of Poland's culture is shared by the country's president, Aleksander Kwasniewski. In a message in the catalog, Kwasniewski writes, "Our past, more than a millennium old, remains, generally speaking, unknown and obscure." But the exhibition, he concludes, "will help the Poles become better understood in America." The exhibition will run at the Huntsville Museum of Art, Sept. 25-Nov. 28, and then the San Diego Museum of Art from Dec. 18, 1999-Feb. 27, 2000. It goes to The Philbrook Museum of Art, in Tulsa, Okla., March 25, 2000-June 18, 2000, before heading to The Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland next summer.
Copyright © 1999 Nando Media Copyright © 1999 Associated Press
http://www2.nando.net/noframes/story/0,2107,89653-141843-968416-0,00.html
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.--
CAIRO, Egypt (September 6, 1999 12:44 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) -
In London, they are mounting a show to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the star exhibit in the British Museum. In Egypt, they are mourning the loss of the stone which revolutionized archaeology. "It's part of your national heritage. It's something that was left to you by your great-great-grandfathers," said Gaballah Ali Gaballah, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. Gaballah says Egypt dearly wants the Rosetta back. But, under international law, it does not have a case. A U.N. agreement of 1971 provides for the return of objects that were stolen and exported after that date. The Rosetta clearly predates the accord, which Britain has never signed, and Gaballah declines to accuse the British of theft. The Rosetta was discovered in August 1799 in a town of the same name located 35 miles northeast of Alexandria. French troops stumbled on it as they recycled for their own fortifications the blocks at the site of an old Egyptian fort. Their officer recognized its trilingual inscription could be important and sent it to Cairo, where Napoleon had it deposited at the French Institute. When the French surrendered to the British in Egypt two years later, they handed over the Rosetta. It was shipped to the British Museum. Gaballah says that, although Egypt lacks a legal case, its moral case is unassailable. Everything about the slab of black basalt is Egyptian. It was inscribed by the priests of Memphis, a town south of Cairo, as a homage to King Ptolemy Epiphanes to mark his accession to the Egyptian throne. The text is written in hieroglyphics, a second ancient Egyptian language called demotic, and Greek - which was the official language of Egypt in 196 B.C. Working from the Greek inscription, the decipherers cracked the code of Pharaonic hieroglyphics. "The beginning of Egyptology is due to the Rosetta Stone," said Abdul-Halim Noureddin, head of Cairo University's Egyptology department. To soothe Egyptian feelings, Noureddin suggests that Britain lend it back for a monthlong exhibition. In the meantime, Cairo makes do with a copy in the Egyptian Museum.