This morning I sent you an extensive report about a State audit at
the art museum at Arizona State University. I really hope all of you
did find, or will find, enough time to read this information. The
security manager at the ASU, Tim Feavel, is subscibed to our
mailinglist. I am convinced he does deserve our respect and support.
I am not able to judge if Tim had other possibilities than the action
he undertook. However it seems that the abuse of financial 'power'
finally extended to abuse of power against a courageous individual.
If you agree, please do send Tim a message at:
"Timothy A. Feavel" tim.feavel@asu.edu
Thanks for your help.
We cannot let one of our fellow security
professionals down.
Ton Cremers
NEW YORK, March 3 (Reuters) - A New York art dealer was sentenced to
28 months in prison on Tuesday and ordered to repay USD.1.9 million
to celebrity clients he admitted swindling out of valuable art works.
Todd Michael Volpe, 48, was sentenced in Manhattan Federal Court by
Judge Michael Mukasey after pleading guilty last November to
defrauding actor Jack Nicholson, singer Paul Stanley of the group
Kiss, and producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, among other
well-known clients.
At the brief sentencing, he apologized for his actions and told the
judge he had learned from his mistakes.
Volpe pleaded guilty to five counts of a 38-count mail and wire fraud
indictment, admitting he used proceeds from selling or loaning his
clients' artworks to support an extravagant lifestyle before he filed
for bankruptcy in May 1995, the U.S. Attorney's office said.
Volpe, who was partner in the Jordan-Volpe Gallery in New York, sold
clients' artwork for his personal benefit, sold stolen artworks, and
got auction houses, including Christie's, to advance him money using
clients' art as collateral, the attorney's office said.
Volpe pleaded guilty to one scheme in which he persuaded Nicholson to
provide money for an art investment fund, then sold art belonging to
the fund and spent the proceeds, losing USD.224,000 of Nicholson's
investment.
Artworks fraudulently handled by Volpe included paintings by Salvador
Dali and Andrew Wyeth as well as sculpture, vases, Tiffany lamps and
pottery, the U.S. Attorney's office said.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited
Arizona State University Art Museum Director Marilyn Zeitlin was
placed on paid administrative leave Tuesday over the possible misuse
of more than USD.275,000 in public money by the museum.
A probe of the museum by the Auditor General's Office, obtained
Monday by The Arizona Republic, accused the museum's managers of
misusing money that came to the university through federal grants,
membership drives, donations, exhibit fees, even donations to a
drop-box located near the museum door.
The audit said USD.275,131 was deposited with the ASU Foundation, a
non-profit fund-raising arm of the university, and not with the
comptroller's office, where it should have gone. Putting the money
into the foundation account allowed the museum to evade university
spending controls. Many of the expenditures would not have been
allowed if they had been deposited in the proper account.
The money was used for such things as buying alcohol and flowers, and
paying fines for parking tickets and lost library books, the audit
said.
Attorney General Grant Woods and ASU launched separate investigations
Tuesday into the audit's findings. Zeitlin is on leave pending the
outcome of the university investigation.
Lonnie Ostrom, director of the ASU Foundation, said if federal grants
were deposited at the foundation, as the audit reported, it would be a
violation of university regulations.
"We don't accept any state, local or federal money at the
foundation," Ostrom said. "If we've accepted federal grants, we've
made a mistake."
Nancy Neff, a university spokeswoman, said no one could remember a
separate audit of the art museum in recent history. It was founded in
1950.
ASU President Lattie Coor, in a prepared statement Tuesday, said,
"ASU is a public university and, as such, we take our fiduciary
responsibility very seriously. Therefore any question, such as those
raised by the auditor general in relation to the art museum, deserve
our immediate and full attention."
Coor directed Paul Ward, the university's general counsel, and Gerald
Snyder, the comptroller/treasurer, to investigate all the allegations
raised by the audit, and telephoned Woods, who agreed to conduct a
"preliminary inquiry."
If museum directors intentionally misused public money, they could be
guilty of a Class 4 felony, the audit says.
Karie Dozer, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office, said an
investigator will review the audit, probably conduct some interviews,
and determine whether there is enough evidence to warrant a full-blown
criminal investigation.
Ostrom said it is commonplace for individual departments at the
university to have accounts with the foundation. Those accounts
generally hold gifts to the university.
"Ninety-five percent of the money that is received by the university
is designated for a specific purpose, so there isn't a lot of
flexibility," Ostrom said.
Zeitlin, the museum director since 1992, is a prominent figure in the
international art world.
She was a commissioner in 1995 for the Venice Biennale, the largest
art show in the world, held every two years in Venice. She brought
some works that were displayed at the show to the ASU museum,
considered a major coup for a small, university-affiliated facility.
Before coming to ASU, she was director of the Washington Project for
the Arts in Washington, D.C.
At ASU, she had a run-in with Tim Feavel, the museum's director of
security, who brought the allegations of misdeeds to the Auditor
General's Office.
Among other charges, the audit says Zeitlin hired her son to
translate for her, apparently on a trip to Europe, and never revealed
the conflict of interest. She has been repaying the university for
another project, where her son was paid in advance for some work and
then never did it.
Zeitlin was also accused of using frequent-flier miles she earned on
ASU business for personal travel.
Feavel said Zeitlin retaliated against him after he complained about
his treatment, and about damage to his home that he said was caused by
construction at a research park owned by ASU that adjoins his home.
A private attorney hired by ASU looked into the situation last year,
and concluded that Feavel was not the victim of retaliation.
***
Martin Van Der Werf can be reached at 444-4421 or at
martin.vanderwerf@pni.com via e-mail.
If Mr. Feavel had discovered a museum official purloining a $275,000.
painting from the ASU collection, he would certainly have been
expected, actually required, to report this, and we would not be
surprised that he did. His job as Security Director is to protect the
property and assets of his museum. This is exactly what he has done by
reporting the apparent purloining of financial assets. He did not
forget that his responsibilty is to the Museum and its audience, and
not to any individual persons, even if they are his employers. Mr.
Feavel's actions should remind us of the very extensive range of what
Security Directors need to be concerned with. A museum is much more
than the art, artifacts and physical objects it has on display. The
loss of any property or resource needs to be prevented.
C.J. Scheiner
VIENNA - The bright Degas pastel of the ballerina and her clown,
''Harlequin and Colombine,'' long has been a prized possession of the
Oesterreichische Galerie Belvedere, so popular that the stately
museum even features the painting on its postcards.
But yesterday, Belvedere officials said the Degas is among thousands
of artworks in Austrian museums being studied to determine if they
were secretly acquired after the Nazis looted them from Jewish
collections in Austria and other European countries.
Vienna's 10 state museums are combing their records, and Cultural
Minister Elisabeth Gehrer pledged yesterday to find out why scores of
artworks were not returned to their Jewish owners. ''There is now a
moral obligation to exactly figure out the origin of every object,''
Gehrer said in an interview.
Documents in the US National Archives may help resolve the issue. A
confidential 1950 memorandum from the US State Department's top
postwar restitution official, obtained yesterday by The Boston Globe,
described Austria's major public auction house as the most important
European wartime ''fence'' for art plundered by the Nazis.
In the memorandum, the State Department official, Ardelia R. Hall,
said she learned during a March 1950 visit to Vienna that there were
thousands of paintings still in storage in the basement of the Vienna
auction house, the Dorotheum, that might be subject to postwar
restitution claims.
Gehrer's pledge yesterday came just two months after the Manhattan
district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, slapped a subpoena on two
Austrian paintings on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York, preventing their return to Austria, after claims surfaced that
they might have been looted from Jews. The Austrians, accusing Jewish
claimants of ''underhanded methods,'' dismissed the claims as false.
But in a country that embraced Nazi occupation in 1938, that
self-assurance in recent days has given way to chagrin, after a
series of embarrassing disclosures in Der Standard, a leading Austrian
newspaper. Among the findings: Thousands of artworks looted by the
Nazis were bought by Austrian museums and collectors during the war.
And the postwar Austrian government most often prevented rightful
owners from reclaiming them.
''It's a double crime,'' said Hubertus Czernin, who wrote the Der
Standard series.
''It's been disgusting, listening to the Austrian excuses yet
again,'' declared Henry S. Bondi, a claimant to one of the two Egon
Schiele paintings being held in New York. ''But Austria has finally
been dragged into the klieg lights, so now it's time to resolve these
issues and put them behind us.''
Marc J. Masurovsky, the research director of the Holocaust Art
Restitution Project of the National Jewish Museum in Washington, who
uncovered the documents, said the Austrian government in 1947
legalized all the wartime sales of looted arts and declared all
unclaimed works to be the property of the government and its museum
system. Now, Austrians are asking if what was legalized in 1947 is
morally right in 1998.
''After 50 years, we have to settle this matter,'' said Wilfried
Seipel, director of Austria's Kunsthistorisches Museum. ''The next
generation won't understand if we don't.'' Of the museum's more than
8,000 paintings, between 20 and 25 must be reexamined, Siepel said.
Whether self-examination will lead to restitution remains unclear.
The Austrian government has yet to decide whether it will return a
painting or pay its value if it is proved to belong to heirs of a
Jewish family. The National Jewish Museum, with its access to a
treasure trove of US archival material, has offered to assist the
Austrian government.
Under scrutiny will be the country's vast collections of porcelain,
paintings, prints, coins, and other treasures - many of them seized
from prominent Jewish collectors across Europe.
Many other artworks were returned to Austria from abroad as part of
the Allied postwar effort to recover art treasures hoarded by the
Nazis. Because the US-led effort returned those artworks to the
countries of origin, each country approached the task of restitution
differently. For years, Austria was criticized for delaying the return
of unclaimed art and other artifacts. In 1996, it finally sold several
thousand items at auction and gave the proceeds to Jewish groups.
But little was known at the time about the fate of thousands of other
looted artworks that had belonged to Austrian Jews or, Hall's memo
suggests, that were funneled through Austrian dealers during the war.
Researchers must examine how the Nazis obtained the artwork from
Austria's Jews as well as the role that the postwar Austrian
government played in preventing Jews from reclaiming them.
The Belvedere's Degas is an example of a painting acquired by the
Nazis under dubious circumstances. In a letter this week, the
Belvedere art director, Gerbert Frodl, identified the Degas as part
of an ''aryanized Jewish collection.''
Documents provided to the Globe show how many Jews, desperate to
leave Europe, ''aryanized'' their collections by selling them for a
pittance. A 1942 letter from a Nazi official concerning the Belvedere
gallery's interest in the Degas notes: ''In the possession of Mrs.
von Mendelssohn, there is a Degas available which is of great interest
to Prof. Grimschitz. ... The price ... is not expensive. Heil
Hitler!''
Also under investigation by the Belvedere staff are a Gustav Klimt
painting, ''Peasant Garden With Sunflowers'' acquired in 1939 and a
landscape by Schiele bought in 1943.
Of the 1,000 pictures the Belvedere acquired between 1938 and 1950,
about 10 percent were from former Jewish owners.
''The Germans confronted their past. The Austrians unconsciously put
it behind them,'' said Michael Krapf, who oversees the Belvedere's
Baroque collection. ''No one thought to look at how these paintings
got here.''
Postwar efforts at restitution were half-hearted, at best, historians
say. Little or no effort was made to contact heirs. Until 1985, it was
against the law for Austrian artworks to leave the country. The law
has since been amended to exclude effects belonging to Jews abroad.
Nor did Austria's museums provide help to return the paintings.
''Instead of returning to victims what was rightfully theirs, the
Austrians actively worked to frustrate claimants while seeking to
benefit the collections in public museums,'' said Willi Korte, a
Washington-based art investigator who has been researching Austrian
claims.
Said Oliver Rathkorb, a historian at the University of Vienna.
''Unfortunately, the same people who made secret lists of inventories
under the Nazis were the same people who handled restitution in
1945.''
A typical example of Austrian postwar intransigence is a 16th century
Franz Hals painting at the Kunsthistorisches Museum of a woman, her
face illuminated by a white ruff. The Flemish painting is listed as a
gift from the Baronness Clarisse de Rothschild. But the ''gift'' was
made in 1947 as part of a deal struck to allow the Rothschilds to
export other valuables from Austria.
Documents published by Der Standard show that those in charge of
Austria's valuables after the war stopped the Rothschilds from taking
this painting and another Hals out of the country in exchange for the
right to export other paintings.
''There was an immoral trade-off,'' said Seipel, the museum general
director. ''From a legal point of view, the paintings are okay, but
from a moral point of view, they don't belong to us. They belong to
the Rothschilds.''
Seipel, who says he is negotiating with the Rothschild heiress, says
that if asked to return the painting, ''We should not hesitate to do
so.''
According to records Masurovsky found in the US National Archives,
hundreds of claims made by expatriate Austrians after the war through
US armed forces were rejected by the Austrian postwar government.
Despite its embarrassment, Austria is conspicuously absent from the
number of countries that have been provoked by recent disclosures to
establish commissions to examine growing evidence of wartime
complicity with the Nazis and postwar intransigence in the face of
claims from victims of the Nazis.
Commissions are poring through archival evidence in Switzerland,
Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
Brazil, and Argentina.
In the United States, directors of major museums are seeking ways to
handle an upsurge in claims for artworks looted by the Nazis that
found their way, through unquestioning collectors, into major
American museums.
Austrian museum curators, even as they support the country's artistic
self-examination, wonder what it will unleash.
''This is not only a problem in Austria, but France, the Netherlands,
Germany, the US,'' said Seipel of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
''It's a Pandora's Box.''
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 03/05/98
Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.
As a security consultant and former security director I am an "advocate for honesty". It is my role to defend Tim's actions and give him support although I recognize that everyone involved is innocent until proven guilty. An auditors report and newspaper article are not proof of guilt. I know exactly how he must feel since I have, in the past several years, lost three real lucrative consulting contracts because I refused to change the wording in my reports to cover (serious) improprieties, some involving covered-up internal art crimes and others involving financial waste, bidding collusion, and other crimes. To me it is a bit ironic that each of my lost contracts involved government institutions and this incident involves a state institution. It makes me wonder where we are heading. I would estimate that my lost business as a result of my lost contracts was in the neighborhood of $150,000 to $200,000 since all of the institutions I was serving would have had considerable future work for me. Tim, sometimes you just have to take the hit if you think you are right. That's why you have "the big office".
In defense of the museum (and I say that somewhat tongue in cheek) "everybody does it" (if, in fact, the allegations are true). Maybe not as much or as often or as blatantly but everybody does it. If we all went to jail for frequent flier miles, I'd be doing a life term. I'm a two million miler! Maybe that's even two life terms!
When I uncovered ethics problems with my clients which led to me resign the
projects, I noticed a pattern. In every case, finding a way around the system
was institutionalized because the system didn't work. Most of the
improprieties I have found in government agencies--and I've been a consultant
12 years and worked for the government for ten in the past--resulted from a
practical need to work around the system to get anything done. This results in
disrespect for the system and further deterioration of controls until things
get out of hand.
I'm not being very articulate or detailed and I'm prevented by my ethics from
discussing details of my three previous experiences with you. If I could give
you examples you might better understand what I am trying to say.
I think that attitudes on this issue, that is, whether or not you support Tim
for his actions, will depend upon your perspective. We in security know he did
the right thing even if the allegations against the museum are proven false
since he has an obligation to report his suspicions based on probably cause. I
don't know all the details but based on what I have heard, he did nothing
wrong per se. But I'm sure that some managers outside of the security arena
might think that Tim crossed the bounds of his job. This attitude certainly
would be that of my former clients who feel that it is necessary to break the
rules in order to get anything done. And it the case of my clients, that was
certainly the case. The system had indeed failed them and they did what they
had to do to do their jobs. Unfortunately, without any controls, they went way
out in left field and their actions became totally unacceptable. Maybe that's
what happened in this case. Maybe not.
I'd like to hear the Director's side of this issue. Not that I will likely
change my mind about a security director's right to report suspicions, but
because it would be interesting to hear. I'm sure that she had a reason for
everything she did and it may even be a valid reason. Not that this makes it
right. But I have found that you don't have to be a crook to be caught up in
something like this. And there is a lesson for all of us in this.
When I found someone breaking the rules to the extent that I had to tell them
they were way off base, they usually replied that they had to work this way to
get things done and it was clear that there was a degree of truth to the
excuse. My point here is that good people do stupid things sometimes and lose
sight of the big picture. Museum administrators are no different.
Companies and institutions employ auditors and accountants and registrars and
security managers (we are all in the same role, we just work with different
areas of the asset spectrum) for a reason. More than once in my career I felt
very unpopular or unappreciated in being the bad guy by making someone obey
the rules or follow procedures. That goes with the territory. Many times I
was asked why I would, for example, make a guard show his outgoing parcel to
another guard when going off duty. (Don't you trust us?). Or why a member of
the Board of Trustees had to wear an ID card or submit to a parcel inspection.
Or why property passes or visitor sign in sheets had to be letter perfect. My
feeling is that if we don't have rules and then enforce them uniformely and
aggressively, then the system will break down. When it breaks down, bad
procedures become institutionalized and everyone begins to make their own
rules.
I'm saddened by the fact that this museum has had to suffer embarrassment of
this type and I'm sad for the personal embarrassment this must be causing the
director and staff. I sense that this is another case of good people doing
dumb things if the facts as reported by the auditors are true. And, I might
add, news reports and auditor reports don't make someone guilty of a crime.
These facts all have to be explored.
I'm leaving my office today to fly--at my own expense--halfway across the U.S.
to attend a bidders meeting on a project being bid by a government agency. It
will cost me over $1,000 to attend this meeting because the agency seeking a
consultant didn't have the sense or courtesy to advertise this a month in
advance so I could buy low cost airfares. Why should they care? They aren't
paying? Or are they? Someone will get this work and you can bet that the pre-
bid costs will be absorbed in the fees charged. I'm attending this meeting
even though I know a great deal about the job site and project and could bid
without attending. But rules are rules, and rules say every bidder must
attend. I also know that this job I am bidding is a survey project to be
conducted in a format specified by the government procurement officer who
knows little about security, not by the consultant, and I know that I could
actually do the survey, justify the appropriation, design a security system,
and produce bid documents for less money than I will have to change to do the
preliminary survey alone since I must follow the government procurement rules.
Is there any wonder that so many agencies circumvent the rules trying to work
with their limited resources?
The system needs to be re-thought. But until it is, we in security have an
obligation to do what we are paid to do and that may be unpopular.
I offer my support to all parties involved--Tim and the museum director who
may have just been doing her job in a system that encourages us to break the
rules-- and have faith that our system will work. I hold my breath. I'm never
sure that it will. But it usually does. Tim, hang in there. Remember that all
parties are innocent until proven guilty.
One final word. I have known of two other instances where the Director of
Security in a museum undertook an investigation of the museum director for
suspected criminal activity. In one case the Director of Security called the
museum's attorney, thinking he was the person to go to for support and advice.
The attorney called the museum Director and the Security Director was promptly
fired. In another, the Director of Security suspected kickbacks on a major
construction project and began his own investigation. There was evidence to
support the suspicions. The Security Director's investigation was discovered
and he got the axe.
If you go there, you will probably have to go there alone. And you'll have to
be damn good. If you win, you'll get a pat on the back followed by a
suggestion that you move on to another job since your future has been tainted.
That's just the way it is in "the big office". Sometimes it pays to discuss
your suspicions with the superior under suspicion. You can do great damage if
you are wrong and every professional deserves an opportunity to respond openly
to your suspicions and accusations. And sometimes, things are not always
clear. There are, unfortunately, gray areas. Above all, keep personal feelings
out of your investigation. If you are having conflicts with your superior
under investigation, it is best to turn your concerns over to someone else
higher up in the hierarchy and let them handle it. No matter how right you may
be, you will lose if it looks like you are out to get someone for personal
reasons or that your investigation is based on a vendetta. The rights of
someone under suspicion are always to be protected.
Steve Keller
Museum Security Consultant
22 Foxfords Chase
Ormond Beach, FL 32174
IntlArtCop@aol.com
Nothing in this letter should imply that I feel anyone is guilty of any crime
or improprietary in this incident. That is for others to decide.
I definately do not think that a discussion of this issue on this mailing list
is a waste of time. I have posted this letter as a way of indicating that it
is a much greater problem that many may think.
