February 9, 1998

CONTENTS:

- Police set up art network to fight UKPounds500m thefts

- Art worth UKPounds1bn listed as missing

- Museums slammed over art stolen during World War II

- Dutch Jewish art ``was plundered twice'

- theft from Palenque museum

Crime wave has put Antiques Roadshow among most popular shows in jail, says Stewart Tendler

Police set up art network to fight UKPounds500m thefts

POLICE are setting up a network of officers specialising in art and antiques to combat annual losses of UKPounds500 million in stolen paintings, furniture and jewellery. Britain has the world's largest trade in antiques and arts. Thieves educate themselves on the subject in prison, where the BBC's Antiques Roadshow is one of the most popular television programmes. The plan will ensure that specialist detectives are appointed in each of the 43 forces in England and Wales to gather intelligence on art and antique robberies, and to act as a link between police, dealers and owners. They will brief crime squads carrying out investigations, and work with analysts at the National Criminal Intelligence Service who check the international markets. The final details of the plan are to be agreed by chief constables later this month, amid growing calls from the trade for greater police activity. Dealers are already arguing that police will have to do more. At the moment, there are fewer than a dozen detectives who specialise in fighting art and antique thefts. Scotland Yard once had a special squad of 15 officers, but it now has one sergeant and two constables, who are often seconded to other work. Sussex Police, who cover the Brighton antiques markets, have recently closed their specialist team. The new specialists will attend briefings in May on the arts and antiques world before starting operations in June. They will work within intelligence units, looking for patterns or suspects, and passing on files for operational detectives and other forces. At the same time, dealers have agreed to introduce a code of due diligence, under which they will agree to give police more information about doubtful deals. The code will require dealers to check and confirm the identities and addresses of vendors, and pass catalogues to police so that lots can be checked against registers of stolen property. Auctioneers will provide details of vendors who try to introduce paintings or furniture to auctions at the last minute. Eventually the policy could be used against crooked dealers, who would be challenged in court on whether they abided by the code. Mark Dalrymple, chairman of the Council for the Prevention of Art Theft and a member of a leading firm of loss adjusters, said that the police network was welcomed by the arts trade, but there was concern that it might not be enough. The network was a "big jump forward", but many dealers would like detective squads set up as well, he said. There was concern that the intelligence officers would be bureaucrats trapped behind their desks. Charles Hill, who ran the Yard's Arts and Antiques Squad and now works as a specialist investigator, said that police could no longer rely on an ordinary officer to deal with the problem, and that detectives had to be specialists. Investigations into art thefts could lead to arrests for other crimes. Phil Saunders, editor of Trace magazine, which publishes details of thefts each month, said that annual losses were now at least UKPounds500 million. A million items were stolen annually and many owners did not realise the full value, nor keep proper details.
(Times of London)

Art worth UKPounds1bn listed as missing

WORKS of art worth more than UKPounds1 billion are listed in the files of the Art Loss Register in London as being missing. They include 349 Picassos, 250 works by Marc Chagall and 175 by Salvador Dali. The register keeps an eye on what is put on sale at auction houses and checks them against items reported as missing. Others on the list include 51 Hockneys, 269 works by Miró, 121 Rembrandts and 112 Renoirs. In 1993 thieves in Frankfurt stole paintings estimated to be worth UKPounds34 million, including two Turners that were on loan from the Tate. In Britain the list of missing masterpieces includes Still Life by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Oudry, worth UKPounds5 million, which was taken from Houghton Hall, Norfolk, the home of the Marquess of Cholmondley, in 1990. Another UKPounds5 million masterpiece is Titian's Rest on the Flight into Egypt, which was stolen from Longleat in Wiltshire in 1995. The latest issue of Trace magazine, which publicises stolen art and antique treasures, includes a Louis XVI ormolu mantel clock stolen from a London gallery, and a Regency book cabinet taken from a house in the capital. Some of the raids involve scores of items. Trace lists 61 antiques taken in a robbery in the West End last year which included seven clocks, Italian and French bronze sculptures and jade and ivory carvings, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Museums slammed over art stolen during World War II

NEW YORK, Feb 9 (Reuters) - U.S. Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, who next week plans to introduce legislation regarding art stolen during World War II, on Sunday accused museums around the world of relying on ``legal fictions'' to keep such art. D'Amato did not elaborate on the proposal, but said, ``It's a very comprehensive bill that will move us forward in this area. It will have international ramifications.'' The New York Republican, who heads the Senate Banking Committee, helped force Swiss banks to establish a fund for Holocaust survivors after allegations the Swiss used its neutrality to profit from the war. ``I don't think the great galleries ... that now hold this artwork, are interested in finding a quick ... settlement of these claims,'' D'Amato said at a conference on Holocaust issues held at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. The World Jewish Congress (WJC), which is investigating the whereabouts of artwork looted during the war, said the Nazis stole about 100,000 pieces of art from Jews and others in France alone. Over 55,000 works have never been returned to their rightful owners. Israel Singer, WJC Secretary General, wants U.S. museums to document what artwork was stolen and what efforts have been made to return it. ``Hopefully, in the next week we will get some announcements from the 220 museums in this country to voluntarily do an audit, together with the WJC commission on art,'' he said. A source familiar with D'Amato's legislation said it would seek to establish a method to determine the origin of disputed art ``certainly in this country.'' The source added the bill also would say that artworks with ``dubious'' origins be given back to the rightful owners. If no heirs or claimants can be found and the work was stolen from Jewish families, he added it should go back to the Jewish people, though he did not say how that would be done. What role the United States might play in persuading or forcing museums outside its jurisdiction to return art was not clear but the Manhattan District Attorney recently stopped New York's Museum of Modern Art from returning two paintings by Egon Schiele to the Leopold Museum in Vienna until the ownership was investigated. The Clinton administration is in the early stages of developing a policy on stolen art and is planning a June conference on missing Holocaust assets like jewelry, books and manuscripts, Bennett Freeman, an official in the U.S. State Department, said. Next month, Washington will issue a second report on attempts to recover Nazi loot, according to Freeman. The State Department's first report, issued last May, included unusually harsh criticism of the United States and its Allies, saying no country did enough to save the innocent, including Jews, Gypsies, political opponents and others, from dying at the hands of the Nazis. Freeman, senior advisor to the undersecretary of state for economics, business and agricultural affairs, said the new report would provide more detail on the wartime roles of neutral and nonbelligerent countries. Those countries include Argentina, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey. The analysis will also focus on U.S. policy, efforts to curtail trade and negotiations after the war to recover assets plundered by the Nazis, he said. The role of Europe's insurers, which Congress also was expected to probe, came up several times at the conference. For example, Robert Swift, a lawyer with Kohn, Swift & Graf, who has brought a class-action suit against Swiss banks, called insurance policies the ``poor man's Swiss bank accounts,'' saying that before the war they were much more widely used than banks by those who were not wealthy.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

Dutch Jewish art ``was plundered twice''

AMSTERDAM, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Jacques and Desi Goudstikker's fairytale existence became a nightmare when Nazi German troops marched into the Netherlands in May 1940. Before the war, the wealthy Jewish pair divided their time between a fashionable house on Amsterdam's Herengracht, or Gentlemen's Canal, and a country retreat on the banks of the Amstel river. They threw lavish concert parties at a medieval castle outside Utrecht, boasting performances by Pablo Casals and the entire Dutch concert orchestra. And they owned one of Europe's most important collections of Dutch and Flemish masters and Italian renaissance art -- now the object of a tug of war between the Dutch state and Goudstikker's heirs in the United States. ``My family has suffered an injustice,'' says Goudstikker's daughter-in-law Marei von Saher-Langenbein from her home in Greenwich, Connecticut. The German-born, former Holiday On Ice star has won unprecedented support for her case from the Dutch media. ``The Goudstikker collection was plundered twice: in 1940 by (the Germans) and after the war by the Dutch state,'' writes Het Parool newspaper, voice of the Dutch resistance during the 1940-45 German occupation.

TRAGIC FLIGHT FROM THE NAZIS

DUTCH LEGAL SETTLEMENT DISPUTED

GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS

To: Museum Security Mailinglist
Subject:

theft from Palenque museum

I wonder if you could answer a question that has been nagging me for more than a year now. In summer of 1996 I visited Palenque and interviewed a local eminence gris about a recent theft from the museum. He recounted how a band of thieves had gained entry after hours, had subdued the lone security guard, and made off with a handful of the most valuable objects, including large solid-jade bars excavated at the nearby ruins. He explained that as the robbery was occurring in one building it was observed on video monitors by a second guard in the museum's adjacent building, but for some reason he did not notify authorities until the thieves had escaped. He added that security at the site had long been operated as a patronage enterprise by a local family, and hinted at corruption that may have linked them with one or another faction of rebel activity in the region, which, as you know is a hotbed of anti-government sentiment. He said a list of the stolen objects had been compiled by the authorities in Mexico City, but that no leads had emerged in the case. Can you tell me the disposition of the matter, and whether or not descriptions of these stolen antiquities have been circulated to the trade and to IFAR?
I am anxious to learn how Mexico has dealt with this, and with similar matters.
Truly yours,
Jason Edward Kaufman
US Correspondent
The Art Newspaper

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