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April 23, 1998

Police return UKPounds:30,000 haul of antiques to burglar;

detectives have been unable to trace the original owners.

(Daily Telegraph) By Chris Boffey and Clive Hadfield
ANTIQUES worth more than UKPounds:30,000 have been given back to a convicted burglar, who specialised in robbing churches, because detectives have been unable to trace the original owners. Edgar Perks, 47, was jailed for seven years after admitting theft and asking for 67 other offences to be considered. A raid on his home had recovered a hoard of antiques so large that a furniture van and removers had to be hired to take it away. Detectives photographed all the items and attempted to trace their origin, but despite months of inquiries, they were only able to identify 20 of the articles. Now the police have had to return the outstanding 80 items to Perks's home, despite their belief that they are stolen property. Bob Deakin, a detective with West Mercia police who helped to trap Perks, said: "The amount of furniture found in Perks's house was quite staggering. There was everything you could imagine finding inside a church. So many of the items had to be returned because they could not be identified. Many people think they should have been auctioned and the proceeds given to charity instead of being given back. But the law states that the property has to go back to Perks because we couldn't show that it had been stolen." It is estimated that the criminal trade in antiques in Britain nets UKPounds:500 million annually. Criminals enjoy considerable success because few police resources are devoted to antiques and there is no specialist national police computer to collate information. In Perks's case, he preyed on churches throughout the country, often disguised as a vicar or a woman to avoid arousing suspicion, but after his conviction there was no database to check against his haul. Of the 127,000 police officers in Britain, it understood that only five work as full-time antiques experts. Anna Tolan, who until recently was the antiques officer for Thames Valley police, said: "In one 12-month period I was able to recover UKPounds:250,000-worth of antiques from 30 separate burglaries. But they are only a fraction of what has been stolen. The support within the police forces is far from adequate to tackle the problem." Police often have to rely on Trace, a specialist magazine which features hundreds of photographs of stolen antiques and is distributed to more than 2,000 police stations and has its own database of 100,000 stolen items. Philip Saunders, the founder and editor, said: "Criminals are nowadays coming more and more into the theft of fine art and antiques mainly because they are getting away with it. They are 10 steps ahead of the law in a lot of cases." Perks, the son of a clergyman, from Ludlow, Shropshire, will be seen being arrested in Yorkshire Television's 3D documentary on ITV this Thursday. The programme exposes shortcomings in legislation and law enforcement which enable rich pickings for a growing number of thieves specialising in antiques.

Italy Wants Greek Antiquities Back

(The Associated Press) received via: Appraiserl Appraiserl@aol.com
ROME (AP) - Italy is seeking the return of priceless Greek marble artifacts from an American collector who allegedly bought them after they had been stolen from an archaeological site in Sicily.
Italian authorities claim the 2,500-year-old artifacts - two heads, three hands and three feet of the Greek goddesses Demeter and Persephone - were stolen from an archaeological site in Morgantina, in central Sicily. Greece dominated the area for three centuries before falling to Roman legions in 210 B.C. Capt. Roberto Conforti, the head of Italy's art theft squad, said the antiquities were smuggled to Switzerland in the early 1980s. They were then apparently sold to Maurice Tempelsman, the American diamond dealer and collector who still owns them, Conforti told The Associated Press. ``We have the evidence (to prove that) those pieces come from Italy,'' said Judge Silvio Raffiotta. ``And even more, they come from Sicily.'' Gus Weill, a spokesman for Tempelsman in New York, said Thursday that the merchant had bought some antiquities 18 years ago from one of the leading dealers in the world and that over the years he has lent them anonymously to museums. Weill said Tempelsman, a longtime companion of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, has heard nothing directly about the items, has not been approached by any government and is not even sure that antiquities he owns are those being sought by Italy. Conforti said the Italian Foreign Ministry in recent years has made requests to American authorities for the return of the marbles. Italy's vast art patrimony has long been plundered by thieves. Art experts point out, however, that buyers of antiquities do not necessarily know the works up for sale have been stolen.
Copyright 1997 The Associated Press.

Egyptian museum gets new security system (Reuters)

CAIRO, April 12 (Reuters) - The Egyptian Museum on Sunday put into force a new $3 million security system to protect its ancient and invaluable contents. The system, which includes video cameras, smoke sensors and metal detectors, was ordered after a 1996 robbery attempt at the museum, home to the treasures of King Tutankhamun and countless other antiquities from Egypt's rich archaeological heritage. ``The museum is now surrounded by electronic rays which can can detect weapons and burglary attempts,'' Culture Minister Farouk Hosni told reporters after inspecting the installations. He said all Egypt's cultural sites were now fully secured and that tourists could feel safe in the country. Moslem zealots attacked two tourist buses in the parking lot outside the museum in September, killing nine Germans and an Egyptian bus driver. The attackers, two brothers who denied membership in any militant group, are on death row. Members of Egypt's biggest militant group, al-Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), shot or hacked to death 58 tourists in the southern resort of Luxor in November. At the Egyptian Museum in Cairo's central Tahrir Square, visitors now enter through turnstiles enabling staff to know how many people are inside at any given time. They pass through metal detectors at the doors and X-ray machines scan their bags. Closed-circuit cameras, alarms, smoke detectors and sensors to detect movement and breaking glass have been installed throughout the sprawling sandstone edifice built in 1902. Security staff manning a computerised control room scan banks of television monitors that show every corner of the museum's interior as well as the bustling streets outside. To gain access to the control room, staff must punch in a code and use a palm-print recognition system. The authorities decided it was time to tighten up security after the 1996 lapse when a man hid in a sarcophagus in the museum overnight and broke open display cases to take more than 20 objects, including gold rings and a dagger of Tutankhamun. The man, 23-year-old Amr Sabry Mohammed, was caught as he tried to leave in the morning and was later sentenced to three years in prison. Tutankhamun was the boy-king whose tomb was found intact in 1922 by British archaeologist Howard Carter. Apart from the new security system, Hosni inspected three newly refurbished rooms that house the trove from Tutankhamun's tomb, ancient jewellery dating from 2,900 BC to Byzantine times, and pharaonic finds from the Tombs of Tanis.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

Re: student guards (Steve Keller IntlArtCop@aol.com)

Brent wrote:
"Life experience is important, but somehow it comes accross in your reply that youth lacks common sense and the ability to make rational and appropriate decisions. "
Brent:
That's not exactly what I was saying. I guess the older you get, the more you feel that younger people may not be as experienced or qualified as they might really be. And the reverse is true: The younger you are, the less you are able or willing to see the short comings in youth. When I was a "kid" of 33, I was three years into my career at the Art Institute of Chicago and probably would have agreed with you that 18 year old student guards could handle the job. Experience has changed my mind. First, let me say that if our Earth is ever invaded and I need someone to fly the federation's secret armada of high tech space ships to save mankind, my 24 year old grad student daughter will be one of the people I would nominate for the job. She grew up on Nintendo and has about as good reflexes as anyone possibly can have. Given some of the quick thinking answers she gave me when I asked why she was coming is late, I judge her as being quick thinking and resourceful. And having seen her drive a car in Washington, D.C. traffic where she goes to school. I know she has guts to back up the brains and stamina. She'd be qualified to drive getaway cars for bank robbers. If I were getting my fanny kicked by some crazy person in the lobby of a museum, who would I prefer to have come to my rescue--an 18 year old college- aged guard or some 70 year old retiree? That's an easy one. I'd go for the young kid any day. But I have gained a certain amount of life's experience over the years that allows me to get the best of the younger people in other ways. And I can prove it. I do surveys in museums where I pass myself off, among other things, as a reporter, and ask questions about what it's like to be a security officer. I play to the ego of the officer, make him feel real good, then drain the poor guy of informatation about their security. I can con younger people easier than older ones and have done so time and again for years. Yes, I can usually con the older ones to a degree, but the college kids are easier intimidated and easier conned. Student guards don't necessarily make specific mistakes at any greater rate than other-aged guards do. But they do have less of a GENERAL sense of responsibility about work than "career" guards do (who have a family to feed or who need the job in order to keep the hospital benefits in force). My 70 year olds didn't call in sick to go to the beach on the first sunny day of the Spring. They didn't call in sick on Saturday morning after a big night out at the same rate as the kids did. And it is my sense that they were often more pre-occupied with other things like their studies or their social life. Since the type of work we do doesn't generally require muscle, physical prowess, and an ability to fly spaceships to the rescue of mankind, and it does require that the officer report to work day in and day out on time and without regard to the weather or the school schedule, I prefer not to use students. You sell yourself short if you think you can't get older people to buy into your program because you are "only" 33 years old. As I noted, I was 30 when I took over the Art Institute of Chicago and the average age of the security force when I began had to have been well over 55. I know you, and I know that you can charm a 70 year old just as well as you can charm a college kid. You just are more comfortable working with younger people.
The other problem with college students as guards is the difficulty managing them. YOU may have enough time in YOUR situation to devote the extra time to keeping students challenged, getting them to report on time and not to call in sick, etc. but I never had that luxury. I don't really think you do, either. You should be using your time as a manager to manage, not to supervise. There is a difference. Student guards need more supervision--in the long run. Finally, my concerns about student guards include the perception others have of them. Many older people have difficulty taking instruction or orders from anyone, let alone a college age kid. Most of the complaints we had involved visitors who simply didn't want to comply with rules they perceived to be arbitrary. It was a fact that some of the museum contractors and trades people had trouble taking orders from female guards, and older workers had trouble taking orders from younger ones. Our largest number of complaints involved the rule requiring visitors to check oversized parcels in the coat room. We took the time to poll visitors about why they objected to the rule so much and found that they didn't object to the rule at all. They just thought the guard--whom they perceived as being below them in status--was enforcing an arbitrary rule on them and they resented it. We pre-printed a formal letter on letterhead and placed it at the guard podium. When a visitor began to complain about the parcel check rule, the guard pulled out a copy of the letter and gave it to the visitor with an apology about having to enforce the rule. The letter was signed by the President of the museum and explained why the rule was necessary. Complaints dropped by about 1000 percent. This tells me that being a guard is difficult for anyone and that perceived status of the Guard by the guarded is important. When I looked further at this I realized that certain guards didn't ever get challenged about enforcing the rules. These guards were the "mature" males who gave an appearance that was acceptable to the tpical visitor. Others got challenged by visitors, presumably because they were perceived by the visitor as being below them in status. Or, maybe I'm wrong and maybe the older guys just had life's expereince that helped them handle people better. But I don't think so. In my opinion it was the older females who dealt best with people, so if it was anything other than perceived status that drove the interaction, successful interactions would not have been more frequently limited to the older males. The last straw was when the Gardner Museum had their theft and the newspaper's had the gall to call me and ask if I thought they were negligent because they used student guards! I happened to know a bit about their situation and know that they were not negligent and that their guards were as well trained and supervised as any other guards anywhere. But obviously there was a perception by the newspaper that the museum was not doing all it could by hiring students. I'll concede that you probably do well with students in your situation and should keep them. But I don't think that in general student guards are as good as career guards are in a museum, if only in perception. But I do not feel they are immature or make bad decisions. Life's experience does benefit individual decisions but this is a broader issue and I judge students as guards in a broader sense and based on observations in many institutions.
Steve Keller

Police appeal on items taken from suspect

(Daily Telegraph London) By John Steele, Crime Correspondent
THE owners of about 35 solid silver works, ornaments and small pieces of furniture are being sought by the police after they were seized from a known burglar who tried to sell some of the articles in an auction house. Police believe that the items were stolen in a string of household burglaries in the Home Counties, where the man is known to have operated. If the losers in the burglaries cannot be traced, the suspected stolen property will have to be returned to the burglar, a suspected drug user thought to burgle to finance his drug addiction. He would then most likely escape prosecution because of lack of proof. The man is in his late 20s and has a history of committing burglaries in Surrey and Sussex. He was carrying a blue plastic crate into the auction house in south London when officers from Operation Bumblebee, the Metropolitan Police's anti-burglary force, recognised him and stopped him. His crate contained several items and a further search of his home yielded a haul of up to 35 pieces, including silver works, ornaments and pieces of furniture. The haul is likely to be worth tens of thousands of pounds in insurance value. The auction house was not connected to the burglar and has been helping police. Had he succeeded in duping the auctioneers into buying the items, many of them may never have been recovered. It is suspected, given the man's background, that the pieces came from several raids rather than a single burglary. Like a number of inner-city burglars, the arrested man is known to have travelled out of the capital to burgle homes in the Home Counties and then returned to London to dispose of the goods. One officer said: "He has not offered any real explanation of where the pieces came from. He knows it's down to us to prove they are stolen." The man has been released on police bail. He has not been charged. The pieces are typical of tens of thousands of items kept in stocks of suspected burgled property believed to be worth millions of pounds. They are held by police forces, who cannot trace their owners, and will be featured in occasional articles by The Telegraph. Anyone with information should contact Operation Bumblebee on 0171-230 3439.

Russian attacks over-restoration of Old Masters

(Times of London)
THE head of Russia's leading institute for training conservators has accused museums in the West of over-cleaning Old Masters. Unique canvases have not only been made as lifeless as full-colour book plates but images painted in different centuries have been given a uniform look, he says. "One might conclude that Veronese and Goya, Rubens and Monet worked at the same time," says Anatoli Alyoshin, of St Petersburg's Academy of Fine Arts, Russia's equivalent of the Courtauld Institute. He believes that conservators in the West have become over-reliant on science and that, because artistic training is inadequate, they cannot trust their eye. "Similar bright colours, sharp transitions from light to shade, incomprehensible similarity of textures and glass-like synthetic varnishes make the unique canvases look like 'dead' full-colour book plates," Professor Alyoshin says. Writing in the spring issue of the British quarterly journal Picture Restorer, he notes that international co-operation is "urgently needed". He points, for example, to Monet's Rouen Cathedral in Philadelphia and Goya's Majas on Balcony in the Metropolitan, New York: "They look like each other." They lose their subtleties and their sense of period, he explains. "You can't see the differences of the schools and times. They have lost their individuality." Speaking to The Times yesterday, Professor Alyoshin added: "You can't say that in Russia we don't clean paintings but we do it less than in the West and more carefully." Indeed, a number of leading British scholars admit privately that Russia boasts the best paintings in the world because of their curators' approach. John Larson, a leading conservator at the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside and former head of sculpture conservation at the Victoria and Albert Museum, agrees. He laments the tendency of museums such as the National Gallery and the Metropolitan to clean paintings "à la Bond Street - looking glossy, shiny and worth a million". "The Americans do this with everything. The paintings look as if you've got your money's worth. They clean it to distraction. The Italians are far better. They don't mind if something looks old and beaten up because it is. There's no point pretending it's not." Mr Larson adds: "We should ask that galleries and museums are more honest in the way they publish details. They are all supported by public funding. People look at paintings and no one knows what's been done to them. We owe it to the public to let them know what they're looking at." Professor Alyoshin, who has been observing practices in America and Europe for the past two years, said: "A gap exists between the restorer's scientific knowledge and his artistic and imaginative perception. Insufficient artistic training frequently means the restorer is deceived by the imperfect system of scientific analysis." For some restorers, he suggests, cleaning becomes a pretext for fulfilling professional ambitions. "I am sorry to say that, at present, when technical progress and the time-tested theory of restoration should help us to avoid a lot of old mistakes, a great number of pictures exhibited in museums or presented for sale at auction have the later strata removed and the original finishing layers partially lost." He criticises modern inpainting - "repaint limited to the boundaries of a filling" - with synthetically based pigments, which "tend to dim the consequences of this practice". This month Keith Christiansen, the Metropolitan's curator of European painting, expressed regret that in the 1960s and 1970s his museum had applied a synthetic varnish to several Old Masters: "The idea was that the synthetic varnish wouldn't yellow because it lacked organic material. Well, it didn't. It turned grey." Making matters worse, he said: "We've since discovered that the synthetic varnish cross-linked with the pigments ... meaning that removal is, if not impossible, extremely difficult." Considering that synthetic material has been applied to paintings worldwide, Professor Alyoshin's call for caution could not be more timely.

Fake Mayan carvings aim to foil thieves

(Reuters) By Fiona Ortiz
GUATEMALA CITY, April 14 (Reuters) - Thieves seeking to steal Guatemala's history slog through the swampy, lowland jungles of northern Peten province, carrying gas-fueled power saws, weapons to intimidate guards and cash to bribe them. At remote ruins in this roadless land, they saw away ancient Mayan Indian carvings and smuggle them abroad to sell to private collectors. Guatemala's Culture Ministry says looters have ransacked thousands of Mayan graves and ruined hundreds of carvings whose hieroglyphics tell the history of a people who flourished centuries before the European conquest. But the cash-strapped government, recovering from 36 years of civil war that ended in 1996, is moving slowly to protect the Mayan ruins.
``They are stealing our history and profaning sacred sites, so we have initiated a crusade to recuperate those treasures and to destroy the international market where people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for our artifacts,'' Culture Minister Augusto Vela told Reuters in an interview. Vela said army troops have been sent to Peten to guard a few of the 2,000 known Mayan ruins in the region. He also praised a year-old agreement with the United States that makes it easier for Guatemala to recover smuggled antiquities. And this month the government begins a project to copy carvings. The originals will be safely housed in a local museum while replicas will remain at the ruins to foil thieves.

COPYING THE CARVINGS

Food, beer and cigarette giant Philip Morris International Inc. announced recently it would provide $150,000 to Guatemala to copy 50 carvings known as stelae -- tall stones covered with hieroglyphics and usually a ruler's portrait. The copies, made of crushed stone and fiberglass, will be hardy enough to withstand vandalism, light enough for easy transport. Copying stelae and storing the originals in museums has helped preserve precious artifacts at other ancient Mayan cities such as Palenque in Mexico and Copan in Honduras. The project will begin with carvings from three Mayan sites of Ceibal, Dos Pilas and Aguateca, none accessible by car. They all lie near Lake Petex Batun, a few hours' journey south from Guatemala's most famous Mayan ruin, Tikal. The elaborate stelae from the three sites, which flourished from 250-900 A.D., will be moved to a visitor center in the nearby town of Sayaxche on the Pasion river. Vela said the government is seeking additional funding to build the museum. In the heyday of Dos Pilas and Ceibal, dozens of stelae stood in the cities' central plazas. In front of each upright carving, Mayan spiritual leaders sacrificed animals and human captives on round altar stones. The stunning carvings show proud, warlike rulers. At Dos Pilas, a huge stele shows the power of a king in jaguar-pelt boots, standing above the naked, trussed-up body of Jaguar Paw, the lord of a neighboring city that had been vanquished. At Ceibal a stele shows the proud profile of a king bearing an enormous, festooned scepter. Snakes tie knots around his waist, cascade off his headdress and poke out of his boots.

A MIRACLE THAT STELAE SURVIVE

It is a miracle that any stelae survive at all. The Mayans did not respect each others' art, and during wars between city states the victor would destroy the enemy's carvings. After the Mayan culture faded -- for reasons still unclear to archaeologists -- before the end of the first millennium, centuries of weather eroded the surviving carvings. Now criminals, not the elements, threaten the carvings. At Ceibal, Dos Pilas and Aguateca, guards live on monthly salaries of $115, making them susceptible to bribes. Elsewhere in Peten, guards have died trying to protect ruins. ``Last year one of our guards confronted them and they killed him. These pillagers don't respect anything,'' Vela said. At Aguateca and other sites, visitors can see rude, pale scars on the stelae where robbers have cleanly sawed off two- inch (5 cm)- thick pieces from the surface, carrying away the carvings and leaving the heavy stone behind. In Ceibal last year, robbers snatched one of three carvedcrouching monkeys that held up a famous round altar. With a bilateral cultural patrimony agreement signed in 1997 with the United States, Guatemala hopes to diminish the international market for stolen carvings. Martin Sullivan, chair of the U.S. Cultural Property Advisory Committee, said the agreement gives Guatemala a strong legal position to try to recover items that have been smuggled into the United States. Since the agreement was signed, Vela said, Guatemala has recovered 500 valuable pieces from the United States. He also hopes the accord will help Guatemala recover more than 100 Maya carvings and pottery that were put on display recently at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Vela said experts from Guatemala have concluded the pieces were smuggled out of Guatemala in violation of local laws, and Sullivan said the agreement may put pressure on museums to investigate the origin of private collections more carefully before putting them on display. Sullivan said it was better for original stelae and other Maya cultural materials to be displayed in context in the Peten rather than in a museum. ``When taken out of context it becomes more difficult to see the historical associations.'
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

From: Tammy TEVANS@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU
Subject:

Job Opening (SECURITY GUARD)

To: Secuirty Mailing List securma@XS4ALL.NL
SECURITY GUARD
$15,599 effective September 1, 1998
Georgia Museum of Art
University of Georgia
Prior experience required:
Prefer supervisory experience and art/security background
Skills required:
Excellent communication skills, inter- personal and technical problems solving skills
Computer skills required:
Operate, maintain, and trouble shoot a variety of electronic equipment

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Full-time position, reports to the Security Director, with duties as follows:
-Regulate access control to building
-Daily operation of physical security controls
-Assist in development of security plans for the protection of works of art on the premises
-Pursue and complete projects necessary to ensure the safety of persons and the security of property
-Patrol designated areas to check for vandalism, mechanical failure, fire, and theft
-Provide assistance to museum patrons by answering questions and giving directions
-Assists with recruitment, training, supervision, and evaluation of security guards
-Schedule as set by the Security Director requires flexibility, evening, weekend, and holiday work
-Performs the duties of the Security Director in his/her absence

Interested applicants should send a resume and cover letter to:
University of Georgia
Human Resources Building
Attn: Employment Department
c/o Security Guard (Full Time)
South Jackson Street
Athens, Georgia 30602-4135
All resumes received prior to Friday, May 1, 1998 will be considered. The University of Georgia is an EEO/AA Institution.

whistle blower legislation and the ASU Art Museum

The messages below are about a very specialized legal matter and seem to be far off of our list's aim. However, at the moment one of our fellow security managers, Timothy Feavel of the ASU Art Museum, feels the negative results an official may be confronted with. His director Mrs.Zeitlin has returned to work, Timothy is still at home. You can read all information about this affair (the full audit of the ASU Art Museum, Press reports, reactions by David Liston and Guenther Dembski (both ICOM Security), Steve Keller, and several other MSN subscribers) at:
http://museum-security.org/reports/02098.html
http://museum-security.org/reports/02198.html
http://museum-security.org/reports/02298.html
http://museum-security.org/reports/02398.html
Ton Cremers.
From: Carol Bernstein bernstein3@earthlink.net
Dear Colleagues,
HB2182 did get assigned to the Senate Family Services Committee, as we requested. Senator David Petersen (Chair of Family Services) called me and said that there were only three bills on his Family Services Committee Agenda for Wednesday. He said the other two bills were expected to take only a very short time, so he would hear them first. For HB2182, he said he would like me to arrange for 3 speakers (or 4 if the 4th one was short), each to speak for 5 minutes, or a total of about 16 minutes or so. I have spoken to Paulla Garcia, the whistle-blower from CPS, and we have tentatively chosen a 4 person speaker list, each to speak for 3 or 4 minutes: (1) Tim Feavel the Art Museum Security Chief from ASU (2) Lauri Rosales, just terminated from CPS (3) Amy Brown, ex-professor from NAU (4) Linda Mitchell, from Palo Verde Nuclear Power (I think) This list may change, depending on testimony offered against the bill.
Others who are prepared to speak (and may be needed) include:
(From universities)
Chris Lee from NAU
Jared Sakren from ASU
Dennis Howe from ASU
Carol Bernstein from UA
Martin Taylor from UA (pending availablitity)
(From other state employees)
Ben Benhof with CPS concerns (?)
David Gorman (pending availability - CPS concerns)
Jan Schoonover (Access)
Kim Bihn (State Prisons concerns)

Others who have agreed to come, so far, in support include:
Delores Grayam, Tucson Civil Righte Coalition
Eileen Asher, AAUP
Gene Eastin, MCCCD Board member
Maureen Mitchell, CPS
Possibly available individuals include
Gary Trevino, Game and Fish
Jane Bender
Glenn Calistead
Paulla Garcia
Senator David Petersen asked me to fax him the proposed amended language for the bill, so he could start having a legislative analyst prepare it in proper amendment format. (Senator Rusty Bowers' assistant, Merle Bianchi, who was to take care of this, was out sick). I faxed it to him at 1PM, and calling back at 2:30, I was told he was reading it. Paulla Garcia, who has his home number, said she would call him tonight and find out whether he has arranged for an analyst to draw up the amendment language.
At this point, it would be helpful to lobby each of the 7 members of the Family Services Committee, asking them to support the newly added language that we are suggesting, as an amendment. (I don't know if an amendment prepared by Senator Petersen will be ready in time.) I give below a "fact sheet" on the bill, as the bill would read if the newly amended language were incorporated. This gives some of the arguments for using the new language.
I will send each of the Committee members, tonight, the proposed language of an amended bill.
Senate Family Services Committee members
Sen. David Petersen dpeterse@azleg.state.az.us
Sen. Scott Bundgaard sbundgaa@azleg.state.az.us
Sen. Randall Gnant rgnant@azleg.state.az.us
Sen. Mary Hartley mhartley@azleg.state.az.us
Sen Sandra D. Kennedy skennedy@azleg.state.az.us
Sen. Thomas C. Patterson tpatters@azleg.state.az.us
Sen. Victor Soltero vsoltero@azleg.state.az.us
Fact Sheet for H.B. 2182
For Committee on FAMILY SERVICES
ARIZONA STATE SENATE
Phoenix, Arizona

FACT SHEET FOR H.B. 2182

state whistleblower protection act amendment

Purpose
The bill includes university employees as part the state whistleblower protection act, A.R.S. § 39-531 et seq., provisions for review of whistleblower allegations by an independent hearing board and to obtain relief from the courts in the same manner as all other state and county employees. Proposed Senate amendments clarify definitions and procedures, eliminate procedural duplications and protect employer agencies from abusive conduct by whistleblowers.
Specifically, the bill
1) repeals § 39-533, which allows universities to exempt their employees from the protections of the state whistleblower protection act by substituting an internal procedure that does not provide for an independent hearing board or court review; 2) clarifies procedures before the state personnel board or an independent hearing to make them more uniform and to eliminate duplication of hearings and the resulting costs and fees to the employee, the agency and the hearing board; 3) provides employer protection from improper or abusive conduct by whistleblower employees; 4) clarifies definitions to protect legitimate whistleblower activities where more than one individual within the agency participates in the retaliation or causes the retaliation to occur; 5) provides for reporting to upper management, not just the agency director, and for protection when reporting in the context of official proceedings or investigations; 6) eliminates procedural technicalities and clarifies times for filing complaints or to enforce rights under the act; 7) recognizes that reasonable time spent in connection with legitimate whistleblower activities is compensable as regular work time; and 8) removes fines as a penalty, but returns discretion to individual agencies to take appropriate disciplinary action against an employee who makes false accusations or an employee who commits a prohibited personnel practice

Background

The state whistleblower protection act substantially utilizes the language of the federal whistleblower protection act, 5 U.S.C. §§ 1201 et. Seq., 1221(E)(1) and 2302(B)(8), but allowed for universities to remove their employees from the protections of the act by substituting an internal procedure. These procedures do not provide for an independent and impartial review, nor the right of the employee to obtain review of the decision by the courts, unlike all other employees covered by the act.
The language of the state whistleblower protection act has been somewhat confusing to some hearing officers and has resulted in conflicting interpretations of the act, contrary to the long recognized precedents under similar whistleblower legislation throughout the country, especially where not just one individual retaliates, but where several employees may participate to bring about retaliation. For instance, if a first or second line supervisor maliciously makes false allegations, but does not technically have the authority to make the decision to terminate or otherwise take an adverse personnel action, then, consistent with the federal act, the employee should receive protection from retaliation. This has not been the interpretation in all cases decided pursuant to the act. The proposed amendments clarify this apparent confusion.
An employee who is terminated for whistleblowing activities who both appeals the employment termination and who also requests the board to review the termination pursuant to the whistleblower act has been forced by some hearing boards, specifically the personnel board, to go through two separate hearings, thereby doubling the time and costs to the employee, the agency and the hearing board, even in cases where both the employee and the agency agree that one hearing only should occur. The proposed amendments clarify the procedural steps and timelines.

Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 00:00:25 -0700
From: Carol Bernstein bernstein3@earthlink.net

Subject: HB2182

Dear Colleagues,
Sen. David Petersen spoke to Paulla Garcia tonight, and said that our amendment is being written up. He also said that as he was leaving his office today, a number of university administrators all approached him, and said that they did not object to the new amended language we were suggesting for HB2182, but that the universities MUST be taken out of the bill. They said that their "compromise proposal" would fix the problem. I understand that Sen Petersen told them he was not interested in taking the universities out of the bill.
Thus note, the university administrators are still fighting this bill tooth and nail. We may need more of our university people to testify, depending on time limits. Your lobbying on keeping the university employees in the bill is very important.
I enclose, below, a copy of one letter I sent to all members of Family Services Committee on this issue.
Dear Sen. Patterson,
HB2182 will be considered in the Family Services Committee on Wednesday, April 15.
For your information, I am sending you a copy of the letter I am sending to each member of the Family Services Committee, summarizing why university faculty and staff members do not want to go with compromise language (appended below) offered by university administrators, instead of HB2182. The reasons include:
(1) The "compromise language" offered would have an outside hearing officer chosen at the partial choice of the administration. This allows excessive input into hearing officer choice by the administration. (2) The "compromise language" indicates the hearing officer would be paid by the adminstration. This offers too much of an opportunity for pressure by the administration on the hearing officer, through monetary considerations. (3) The "compromise language" provides for a hearing officer being a person (almost by definition) with no whistle-blower experience (the only attorneys with whistle-blower experience in the state are those with, or arguing before, the State Personnel Board, and they get only about 18 cases a year). We would not want inexperienced hearing officers to hear these cases. (4) Without the state law, and there would be no proper definition of who is a whistle-blower and no definition or case law to guide the hearing officer to determine what acts were reprisals as a result of whistle-blowing (these are even current sticking points with the more experienced State Personnel Board hearing officers). (5) Most importantly, there would be an initial hearing internal to the university. This first internal hearing would be a major negative barrier and, in fact, would be unconstitutional, according to the 1997 Arizona Supreme Court decision in Augustine vs Peoria School District which stated "submission to [a] fatally biased decision-making process is itself unconstitutional injury which right of review does not cure....Petitioner is entitled to a neutral and detached judge in the first instance.....under [current law] governing boards may adjudicate cases to which they are a party and in which they have an official motive to decide the issue in a biased manner. That violates [the grievant's] right to due process of law."

By this argument, the "compromise language" forcing whistle-blowers to undergo a biased decision-making process in the first instance (one controlled or influenced by the university administration against whom they are making their whistle-blowing complaint) would be an unconstitutional injury.
By separate e-mail, I will send you a lengthy letter, which I recently received, that describes the improper internal process for one current case at the UA, the whistle-blower Regents Professor Marguerite Kay, M.D. Thus, the internal grievance process is often actually mis-used to harass faculty members, by greatly delaying justice, smearing the reputation of faculty members, and bringing up false and improper issues. Sincerely yours, Carol Bernstein, PhD President AAUP AZ Conf.

I attach, below, the university administrators' proposal for your reference. Note that the time frame, referred to at the bottom, was told to me as possibly being a year or a year and a half when I asked the House Research Analyst Debbie Mosbacher about it, but it is not specified in writing.
(Note incorrect bill number to start with).
S.B. 2182 would permit Arizona public university employees who allege to be whistle blowers harmed by retaliation the right to take their grievance to the State Personnel Board. The universities have argued that such an outcome would violate the State Constitution in as much as case law supports the contention that employees of the Arizona Board of Regents cannot be subject to a separate personnel system.
However, given the legislative concern that employees of the universities be given the opportunity to appeal to a neutral party, the universities propose the following:
) Each university's whistle blower policy would be amended to provide the following: on receipt of a whistle blower complaint from an employee by the designated university officer, the complaint would be investigated by appropriate university officers or representatives. At the conclusion of the investigation, the complainant will be provided a written summary of the results of the investigation. If the complainant is dissatisfied, he or she may file a request for a hearing after the university issues its final decision. The hearing will be conducted by an independent hearing officer, external to the university, chosen by mutual agreement of the complainant and university and whose compensation will be paid by the university. Following a hearing, the hearing officer will provide a written decision to the parties and the president. The hearing officer's decision shall be subject to further review only under A.R.S. Section 12-901. ) This new policy would apply to all whistle blower cases, except where a federal law or rule mandates an alternative procedure. ) No legislation would be enacted. The changes indicated above would be committed to in writing by each university president and accomplished by amendment to each university's personnel policies within a specified period of time.

Heirs of Fritz Gruenbaum discovered

(Die Presse, Wien)
translation: Antonia Kriks antonia.kriks@munich.netsurf.de
Since the certificate of inheritance was taken away from the family Reif the search for the real heirs of Fritz Gruenbaum starts. Rudolf Leopold found them. Who is the legitimate heir of Fritz Gruenbaum? After the certificate of inheritance which was made out in 1963 in Berlin was taken away from the family Reif, who had laid claim on the painting of Schiele "Tote Stadt III" which was confiscated in New York , the search for the real heirs starts. To put it in concrete terms, it is a search for the relatives of Elisabeth Gruenbaum, wife of Fritz Gruenbaum. Collector Rudolf Leopold says the story about this certificate of inheritance had been ,most curious right from the beginning". The first inconsistency had taken place when the family Reif applied for the certificate in Berlin but not in Vienna. Besides that one followed up the wrong assumption Fritz Gruenbaum had died after his wife. Leopold suggests that he has found the heir already but does not want to tell the name. The only one who is entitled to inherit and one knows about is Mathilde Lukacs, sister of the wife of Gruenbaum. She has died in 1979 in Vienna without descendants. Entitled to the inheritance as well would be her brothers and sisters and their descendants. Although the certificate of inheritance was taken away from family Reif it could be possible they are entitled to one third of the inheritance because the will where Gruenbaum made his wife his only heir is missing. There is only one indication of this document. If the family Reif contests the legal force of this legacy and gain their right they are entitled to one third of the inheritance. They have no right to the Schiele painting, it was sold in 1956 by Mathilde Lukacs. Perhaps the Berlin verdict makes it easier for the Supreme Court of New York to find a decision: Judge Laura Drager will only decide beginning of Mai whether the confiscation of the Schiele paintings will be reversed or not.
Copyright "Die Presse", Wien

Move to stop aboriginal art fraudsters

(Daily Telegraph London) By David Rennie in Sydney
ABORIGINAL artists are to be protected from unscrupulous imitators by a national aboriginal art logo, guaranteeing the racial origin of those responsible for "indigenous" artworks. A large number of white-owned businesses in Australia churn out pseudo-aboriginal souvenirs, while at the top end of the market famous aboriginal artists have been unmasked as imposters. The most recent fraudster to be uncovered had sold works for more than £6,000 each to collectors including the actor Paul Hogan, the Sultan of Brunei and members of the Packer media dynasty. The artist was an Indian from Calcutta who had changed his name by deed poll in 1992. The aboriginal art market is estimated to be worth £40 million a year. As well as the logo scheme, the country's leading aboriginal art administrator will encourage individual artists and communities to copyright their traditional designs. Some of the most famous, featuring coloured dots arranged in concentric circles, should be the preserve of groups living in Australia's Western Desert. But, to the anger of aboriginal activists, they are frequently printed on T-shirts, baseball caps, and mass-produced boomerangs. In addition, though it is a less frequently discussed problem, the most popular styles are often "borrowed" by aboriginal artists from different regions of the country, many of whom produce very similar dot paintings on an almost production-line basis. Fay Nelson, director of the Australia Council's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board, said yesterday: "There are too many disrespectful people doing things just for dollars."

Yeltsin reluctantly signs trophy art law -

(Reuters)
MOSCOW, April 14 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin on Tuesday signed a controversial law barring the return of art works seized from Germany but will nevertheless challenge it in the Constitutional Court, Ekho Moskvy radio quoted presidential aide Sergei Shakhrai as saying. The Kremlin leader had said he would obey an earlier court ruling and sign the law before delivering his protest. The law effectively blocks the return of art treasures seized by the Red Army during and after World War Two. However, Itar-Tass news agency later quoted Shakhrai as saying Yeltsin had still not signed the new law but would do so ``today or tomorrow.'' He could not be immediately reached for comment. The Kremlin press service said it had no information about the law. Shakhrai told the radio that Yeltsin had decided to contest the law because of what he called violations of parliamentary procedure during its approval by parliament. ``The law cannot be considered approved -- all the country saw a half-empty hall (of the State Duma lower parliament house). The results of the vote were simply falsified,'' he said. The president, keen to forge closer ties with Germany, Russia's main trading partner, initially vetoed the law despite its overwhelming approval by both houses of parliament. Overturning a presidential veto requires a two-thirds majority in both chambers. Kremlin and government officials have said television footage on the day of voting showed that not enough deputies were present in the 450-seat State Duma. ``In the very text of the law there are dozens of infringements of constitutional norms, each of which the president is also contesting,'' Shakhrai said. The Constitutional Court last week ruled that Yeltsin could not block laws approved twice by parliament. Yeltsin described the ruling as ``a slap in the face'' but said he would uphold the constitution by signing the law. Shakhrai said on Tuesday that the new law also contravened international treaties, which he said had priority over domestic legislation. Parliament and most Russians regard the art works as just compensation for losses suffered during a war in which more than 20 million Soviet citizens died. The booty art includes a rare Gutenberg bible, gold artifacts from the ancient site of Troy, a drawing by Rembrandt and paintings by Claude Monet and Henri Matisse. Russia is also seeking the return of some art seized from Soviet territory during World War Two. Yeltsin said the new law would complicate Moscow's efforts to have its own art returned.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

Heirs to stolen treasures saved by prosecutors who forgot the law

(Times of London)
FROM TUNKU VARADARAJAN IN NEW YORK
THE brother and sister of an American soldier who stole priceless art treasures from a German town in which he was stationed in 1945 have escaped a criminal trial for selling the artefacts - which they knew were stolen - because they were indicted 24 hours after the expiry of a five-year statute of limitations. The decision, by a three-judge Court of Appeals in New Orleans, means that Jack Meador and Jane Meador Cook can keep the $2.7 million (£1.65 million) they made in 1990, when they sold two items from the Quedlinburg treasure, a collection of medieval artefacts. The story began in April 1945 when a US military unit moved into the town of Quedlinburg, about 40 miles southwest of Magdeburg. The town had been undamaged by the war but the mayor, taking no chances, had hidden the town's treasures in a cave on the outskirts. The Americans were told of this, and a force of GIs was deployed to guard the cave. One of them, Lieutenant Joe Meador, was less honest than the others, and stole 12 artefacts - mainly manuscripts - which he posted in plain brown envelopes to his parents in Whitewright, a small town in Texas. One item of particular value was an illuminated ninth-century manuscript called the "Samuhel Gospels". Its binding, still the original, is jewel-and ivory-encrusted gold. Inside are pages in gold ink, and full-page paintings which are regarded as among the earliest examples of Western portraiture. According to a recent book on the theft, Meador, who returned to Whitewright to run the family hardware store, was a homosexual who used the treasures to dazzle young men. He never contemplated selling the objects, however, and his siblings inherited them in 1980. After several attempts to sell the items, the couple came into contact with John Torigian, a Huston lawyer, who set up a sale to a middleman in Switzerland. The latter then sold the two artefacts to the German authorities. On being exposed, the couple returned the other items in June 1990. Under the statute of limitations, the pair and their lawyer had to be prosecuted by March 2, 1995. The prosecutors sought, and obtained, an extension, giving them until January 3, 1996. By a monumental blunder, they sought to indict the three on January 4. In October 1996, a federal district judge in Sherman, Texas, ruled that the state could not proceed with its prosecution. On Monday the Court of Appeals upheld the judge's decision. The Meadors, however, now face problems of another sort. The Internal Revenue Service has begun an investigation into their accounts - and their failure to declare their "inheritance". The New York Times reported yesterday that they could face a huge bill for back taxes and interest.

From: John Boral b2bdirect@aol.com

Sources for cabinets and fire suppression systems

(ConsDisList)
A government organization in Kuwait has requested information as follows:
Are there any companies you would recommend that specialize in fire alarm/ sprinkler systems for libraries and archives? Are there any companies you would recommend that make a good variety of cabinets for manuscripts which have humidity control?
All answers will be forwarded to the Kuwait government.
John Boral
B2B Direct Inc.

Stolen paintings just turn up: The Grandma Moses works had been taken from a Phila.-area home.

(Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.)
By Lisa Rathke ASSOCIATED PRESS
BENNINGTON, Vt. -- Two wooden crates that arrived unexpectedly at the Bennington Museum were found to contain seven Grandma Moses paintings that were stolen 14 years ago. Where the artworks have been all this time -- and who sent them back and why -- is still a mystery. "It was someone who honestly loved them and wanted to own them and enjoy them," museum curator Deborah Federhen says. "If they wanted to sell them, they would have broken them up and not kept them as a set of seven but tried to dispose of them one by one." The brightly colored New England landscapes were stolen in 1984 from the Rose Valley, Delaware County, home of Margaret Carr shortly after the woman's death. She had bequeathed the paintings to the private Bennington Museum. The artworks -- whose combined value was estimated by the Bennington at $250,000 to $500,000 -- were not seen again until they arrived at the museum in February in good shape, still in their original, two-tone painted wooden frames. Each crate contained a cryptic computer note in bright purple ink and a hard-to-read typeface. Each note, inexplicably signed "Ring Sar," lists the names and dates of the paintings and says: "Please send the attached following for a seven-year anonymous loan" -- a reference, perhaps, to the seven-year statute of limitations for prosecuting the transportation of stolen property across state lines. The museum contacted the FBI, the Pennsylvania State Police, and an international registry of lost art in New York City. The New York gallery that handles Grandma Moses' estate helped identify the works. The State Police have reopened the investigation. But the museum's attempts to trace the shipper have been unsuccessful. The packages were sent by a shipping company from Quakertown, but the receipt contained a phony company name and a false fax number. After two months in a safe, and 14 years in a place only few know of, the paintings finally hang on the walls of the Bennington Museum. "They took the scenic route," Federhen says. Grandma Moses, born Anna Mary Robertson, took up painting in her late 70s and lived in Eagle Bridge, N.Y., near Bennington. Carr and her sister became friends with the artist and used to visit her. Grandma Moses died in 1961 at the age of 101. The seven primitive scenes of sledding and farming were painted when she was 97 to 99, Federhen says. Grandma Moses used an unusual shade of blue-green in all seven paintings -- the result of her buying paint in bulk and turning out pictures in assembly-line fashion. The frames are nicked and dirty, all signs they have been somewhere other than a museum, and there are fingerprints in the grime. But investigators won't say what they have found. Museum director Steven Miller and Federhen think "Ring Sar" must be someone who knew the terms of Carr's will. The thieves also apparently knew the paintings, because they left behind two works by Grandma Moses' son that look like the seven others. "The fact they kept them all, that they are still in their original frames, that they still have their original labels, that they are in wonderful condition means they were well taken care of by someone who really treasured them," Federhen says.
1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.

Schiele-paintings: Investigastion will take "noch another few months"

(Der Standard; translation: Antonia Kriks antonia.kriks@munich.netsurf.de)
New York - The New York Times on Thursday reported about the reactions when the certificate of inheritance was taken away from the family Reif by the court of Charlottenburg. It identified the family Reif as heirs of Fritz Grünbaum and therefore as owners of the painting Tote Stadt III which was confiscated beginning of January in New York. According to the New York Times the German decision of court was done without the family Reif knowing anything about it, but the decision would not keep the family away from doing everything to find the right arrangements for the art work. The family Reif already engaged a German lawyer who would contest the decision. The decision in their opinion is an offending against "fundamental proceedings". Over and above that Timothy Reif doubts the sister of the widow of Grünbaum, Mathilde Lucacs, really has sold the painting. According to Reif she could have been "the lawful heir, but there is no documentation about whether she really owned the painting." The examining magistrate in the office of prosecuting attorney Robert Morgenthau, Daniel Castleman, is quoted by the New York Times with the remark he would not "be sure what to make of this decision". The investigation will take "another few months". Also the date for the court decision of judge Laura Drager is not fixed. But according to information from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) this decision should be made in the beginning of Mai. The article of the New York Times also quotes the director of the Leopold Foundation, Klaus Schröder. He explained in an phone-interview with the Newspaper the whole affair had been brought to knowledge to the judge in Berlin by ORF (Austrian Radio and TV). "We had been totally surprised when we heard about the decision", Schröder says.
(APA) (c) 1998 DER STANDARD

Whistleblower, ASU Art Museum, Tim Feavel's statement

From: "Timothy A. Feavel" tfeavel@earthlink.net
Subject: This is what I sent to the AZ Senate
I'm sure each of you is already aware of my situation.
@@@@@@@@@@@
(those of you who are not can read more information about Tim Feavel's struggle at:
http://museum-security.org/reports/02098.html
http://museum-security.org/reports/02198.html
http://museum-security.org/reports/02298.html
http://museum-security.org/reports/02398.html
Ton Cremers)
@@@@@@@@@@@
So, what I would like to do is to clarify some of the facts of my case and to bring to light some of the lies or untruths that have come from the Universities in opposition to this bill and to my situation. First, let me start out by reading a statement by my director that was part of my evaluation, which was done prior to my "blowing the whistle". This will give you an understanding of how my situation was before this all began. (See attached letter from Marilyn at the bottom of this e-mail). As you can see, life was great before this all began.
It began right after I filed a claim against ASU, Motorola and McCarthy Construction for the damages done to my home. You see, Motorola and McCarthy admitted causing these damages, but they also implicated ASU in this, so I had no other choice but to include them in my claim. Once this claim was filed, I became the recipient of much retaliation at work, in the form of having my keys and access codes taken away from me and receiving numerous harassing memos and reprimands. In April of 1997, (when I first started to be retaliated against) I went to my first chain of command, the Dean. After he failed to act and the reprisals continued, I went to my next step in my chain of command, which was the Provost. Note: With your packet, I have included a copy of the letter I sent to the Provost, which is the exact copy of the one I sent to the Dean just a few weeks prior. As you can see from my letter, my complaint from the very beginning was that I was and still continue to be the recipient of reprisals for the act of "whistle blowing". Five months had gone by since I sent this letter to the Provost when he finally answered my complaint. (This was five months of working under a constant hostile environment). Five more months of listening to my Director talk about and do her improper (and many believe illegal) activities. I went to every department within ASU and no one would listen to me, much less do anything. During this time I requested twice to my Dean and the Provost to relocate me and both times the requests were denied. I finally found it necessary to go outside of ASU, to the Auditor General's office. When the Provost finally did answer my complaint, which I received at the end of September, addressing my "whistle blowing and personnel actions" in which he reports as one of them being: "your reporting alleged financial and managerial misconduct by Ms. Zeitlin to other offices within ASU." In his findings and decision, he states "I find that while you have been the recipient of several adverse personnel actions, there is no credible evidence to support your whistle blowing allegations." His letter, which I have included in your packet, misstates the conclusion found in their investigator's report. This letter does details the items of financial and managerial misconduct that I had reported, that the Provost after his supposed in-depth investigation said I could not prove, that the Auditor General in their limited investigation did prove.
In the Provost's final conclusion of his letter, he states "If you do not feel your grievance is resolved, you may submit a formal written grievance to the campus director of Human Resources within 30 days of the receipt of this letter." This letter was carbon copied to my Director, Marilyn Zeitlin. The following documents in your packet show what I did next. I filed for arbitration on October 6th, 1997, and then amended the grievance per a request from Human Resources on October 14th, 1997. It was finally sent to the American Arbitration Association by Human Resources on October 27th, 1997. My Director finally succeeded in forcing me out on medical leave without pay on December 4th, 1997, just a few weeks before Christmas. They did this by changing my job description and violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. She has further delayed the scheduling of the arbitration hearing, which is now scheduled for May 12th, 1998. (It has now been over a year since this all began). The final document in your packet is a press release that was sent out by the ASU President's office on March 3rd, 1998. Re: Report form Auditor General on ASU Art Museum. In this press release, Item # 1, the President's office states: "1. ) Allegations of retaliatory action by the University against Mr. Feavel were without merit. (Mr. Feavel has not pursued further review of this decision)". The previous documents prove that this is a total and outright lie! This is one of many lies perpetrated by ASU to cover up their actions. In conclusion, let me ask you this: Why do the Universities fear this bill so much? Why would anyone fear this bill? If you have nothing to fear and act in good faith, there is nothing to fear about this bill. But, it is obvious that the Universities want to stop this bill - Why? What do they have to fear? Their actions and activities that they conduct in secret behind closed doors? Are they afraid that those actions will be exposed to the light of day? Please support Bill HB2182. Please support the truth to be known to you, the Senators, and to the people.
Thank you,
Timothy A. Feavel
--------------------
Marilyn A. Zeitlin Date 6/3/96

Supervisor's Comments:

Tim Feavel excels in his position of leadership of the security staff of the museum. He is an outstanding leader and supervisor. He has "turned around" the attitude among security officers, whom he has taught to treat their responsibilities with pride and to identity with the museum instead of against it, as often seemed to be the attitude previous to his leadership. He is an excellent colleague, cooperating with curatorial and administrative staff to meet the challenges of running a museum. in light of the leap in museum attendance and the high level of supervising of the audience required by the Viola exhibition, Feavel has demonstrated his skill in motivating his staff and in dove-tailing security with curatorial needs. Tim has taken on oversight of the physical plant of the museum, serving as liaison with many of the workmen who perform maintenance of the building, acting as the clearing house for such crucial work. He is aware of the need to keep the building looking clean and in repair because of its role as a showcase for art. He has done a thorough audit of the security hardware system and prepared detailed recommendations for replacing the outdated system. In summary, Tim exceeds his job description by taking on responsibilities as they arise; he participates as a teacher of security staff and staff as a whole in how to deal with difficult visitors as well as standard violators and in how to meet emergencies in a facility open to a diverse public. His integrity in performance of his job is impeccable. Marilyn A. Zeitlin Date 6/3/96

From: Rooksana Omar plhm@iafrica.com
Organization: Durban Local History Museums
Subject:

Copyright laws and charges

Currently the Durban Local History Museums are reviewing the copyright legislation that governs its collection. This exercise has highlighted a number of unanswered questions for our organisation which I know other institutions deal with daily.
Firstly what do other history museums charge for the usage of images of original artifacts they hold, in books, on covers, invitations, for posters, for films, CD roms, fashion shoots,etc? Secondly do you impose a inter museum royalty fee? Thirdly, I am keen to obtain information about copyright legislation that governs museums, preferably ones used by museums to guide them.
Thank you.
Rooksana Omar
Acting Director
Local History Museums, Durban

From: W_Robinson@globe.com
Date sent: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 10:30:08 -0400

Italy calls N.Y. museum's prized collection stolen; Legal action is threatened to regain treasures

(By Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff, 04/17/98)
NEW YORK - In 1984, the Metropolitan Museum of Art used its quarterly bulletin to highlight a recent acquisition: a stunning 15-piece collection of Hellenistic silver artifacts. At the time, Met director Philippe de Montebello hailed the objects from the third century BC as ''unique'' and ''dazzling.'' Four years earlier, professional graverobber Giusseppe Mascara had a similar reaction to an extraordinary collection of silver vessels and utensils his associates illegally unearthed from the ruins of the Greek city-state of Morgantina in central Sicily, according to the Sicilian magistrate who has taken sworn testimony from Mascara. What left two men of such disparate roles in the art world so enthralled, according to the Italian government, is the same silver treasure. Since 1996, Italy has sought to convince the Met that it has proof that the 15 silver pieces were smuggled from Italy into Switzerland and sold to the Met in 1981 and 1982. But according to General Roberto Conforti, commander of the Italian national police unit that investigates the theft of Italian art and artifacts, the Met, in a letter sent to Italian authorities last August, dismissed the evidence as insufficient. It also described Mascara as not credible because of his criminal background. Conforti, in an interview in Rome earlier this month, said the Italian government will sue the Met to regain the silver. ''I am angry and bitter about this,'' he said. ''How can such a renowned museum keep such items in the face of such strong evidence?'' For its part, the museum steadfastly refuses to discuss the case and defends its acquisition policies. It will not confirm that Italy has lodged a claim. Nor, a spokesman said, will the Met release any information about past ownership of the silver, or how it was obtained. In March, the museum took an unusual step for a scholarly institution: It turned down a request by Malcolm Bell, a University of Virginia archeologist who oversees official excavations at Morgantina, to look at ancient inscriptions on two of the pieces that might point to their origin. But US Customs documents obtained by The Boston Globe, as well as other evidence disclosed by Italian officials and Bell, suggest that Italy may have a strong claim to the silver pieces. Silvio Raffiotta, the Sicilian magistrate who has conducted a decade-long investigation, said Mascara's sworn statement includes a detailed description of the most extraordinary piece unearthed at Morgantina: a silver emblem with gold leaf depicting the mythological sea monster Scylla, who inhabited a cave not far from Morgantina on the Straits of Messina. An identical emblem is the most stunning piece in the Met collection. The documents, from a 1986 Customs investigation, show that the Met bought the silver for $2.74 million in two shipments in 1981 and 1982. Listed as the agent on one form was Robert E. Hecht Jr., an antiquities dealer who had been barred from Italy for a decade in 1972 for his role in another questionable transaction involving the Met. In a telephone interview last week from his home in Paris, Hecht did not deny that the silver had been looted from Italy, and defended the trade in looted antiquities.

'Like a rerun'

For Hecht, the spotlight is nothing new. He was declared persona non grata by the Italian government after the Met paid him $1 million for a 2,500-year-old painted Greek vase, the Euphronios Krater, which allegedly was plundered from another Italian archeological site. What's more, the Met's explanation of where the silver treasure originated nearly echoes the account it offered in 1972, the year it bought the krater. In a May 7, 1986, letter to Customs, Met Vice President Ashton Hawkins asserted that the silver treasure was obtained from Nabil Asfar, a dealer in Lebanon whose family had owned it for decades. In 1972, Hecht and the Met said the krater came from another Lebanese dealer whose family had owned it for decades. ''This is like a sitcom rerun,'' said Thomas Hoving, the Met's director from 1967 to 1977, in an interview last week. It was Hoving who purchased the Euphronios vase for the museum. Though Italy eventually dropped its claim, and criminal charges against Hecht were ultimately dropped, Hoving has long since concluded that the vase was looted, as the Italians claimed. Even without Mascara's testimony, Hoving said, Hecht's involvement ''makes it almost impossible that this silver was legally obtained. Almost anything that Bob Hecht sells has recently been dug out of the ground.'' Hecht said last week that he was merely a courier for Asfar, ferrying the two silver shipments to New York. He said he could not recall whether he received any of the $2.74 million. And though he said Mascara is a ''disreputable character,'' Hecht did not take issue with Mascara's account. Asked whether the silver was smuggled out of Italy, Hecht said: ''I don't know. Only God knows. Or perhaps Mr. Asfar.'' Asfar, who faces a civil suit in London charging him with selling an ancient artifact that was plundered from a site in Iraq during the 1990s, could not be located for comment. But Raffiotta, the Sicilian magistrate, said during a visit to the partially excavated Morgantina site last month he has evidence that Hecht bought all 15 silver items in Switzerland after they were smuggled out of Italy by the looters, who are known as clandestini. As far as the Italians are concerned, the listing of Asfar as the owner is a ruse designed to deflect suspicion that the silver was looted. Raffiotta and General Conforti, in separate interviews in Sicily and Rome, expressed bewilderment that the Met would be so dismissive of Mascara's testimony, in light of the detail he provided investigators. ''The head of the clandestini, Giusseppe Mascara, at the moment these items were found, he saw them. He was able to describe them exactly to us,'' Raffiotta said. Bell, the archeologist, who first pressed the Met to consider returning the objects 11 years ago, added: ''I find it curious that the Metropolitan Museum would question the credibility of exactly the kind of person they depend upon for many of the antiquities they purchase.''

An 'M' for Met

The case of the silver hoard, as the 1984 Met bulletin calls the collection, is likely to refocus attention on the museum's history of acquiring artifacts that have no documentation of past ownership - often a warning sign that they were plundered from countries, like Italy, that bar excavation and export of archeological artifacts without government permission. Faced with estimates that up to 80 percent of antiquities now on the market have been looted, and with international conventions intended to deter looting, most museums now shy away from acquiring antiquities unless it can be documented that they were unearthed before US Senate ratification in 1972 of a UNESCO agreement designed to protect cultural property. But not the Met. Its many galleries of antiquities from ancient cultures around the world include numerous objects with placards bearing the letter ''M,'' for Met, displayed alongside to identify recent acquisitions. Ricardo J. Elia, a Boston University archeologist who has studied some Met collections, says that its newly acquired artifacts seldom have any documentation of past ownership. ''The Met is still acquiring undocumented antiquities, and they do not seem to care where they come from. And they will do anything to protect their right to buy looted material without regard for the destruction done to these archeological sites,'' Elia said. Harold Holzer, spokesman for the museum, said the Met ''always makes best-faith efforts to perform all the due diligence we can before we make an acquisition. Our curators do not buy on the illicit market.''

Plagued by looters

Rarely, however, does the country of origin have anything more than suspicion that valuable artifacts from ancient gravesites have been plundered. Thefts from museums are easily documented, but graverobbers unearth items that have never been seen before, much less recorded. For that reason, successful claims are uncommon, and dealers and buyers are sometimes emboldened by a patchwork quilt of laws and conventions that do little to deter international smuggling. Italy is often the victim. With ancient civilizations literally layered one atop another, and extraordinary medieval artworks hanging unprotected in parish churches, the country has long been plagued by looters. Morgantina is no ordinary gravesite. It was the capital of a flourishing Greek city-state that dominated central Sicily for nearly 300 years. Discovered in 1955 by a team of Princeton archeologists, it was the last remaining outpost of Hellenistic Greece in Sicily when it was overrun by Roman legions in 211 BC. And its treasures remained buried for more than two millennia - until poor Sicilian villagers discovered the utility of metal detectors in the late 1970s. Morgantina is the same site that yielded for clandestini the marble heads, hands, and feet of two Greek goddesses, which were subsequently bought by New York collector Maurice Tempelsman. The Globe reported on April 4 that Italian authorities are preparing to bring suit against Tempelsman. Raffiotta and archeologist Bell recalled that in 1980 and 1981, there was widespread talk that the clandestini had stumbled upon the silver bowls and utensils, many of them gilded, and two silver horns. One summer, Bell said, he came across a villager using heavy equipment to fill in a recently excavated area. Later, after the silver - including two silver horns - surfaced at the Met and Raffiotta began his inquest, Mascara identified that same area as the site where the silver pieces had been found. Last year, Bell and his team of archeologists re-excavated the site, and discovered numerous fragments of terra cotta pieces that are virtually identical to one of the most beautiful pieces in the Met collection, a silver Greek altar with a gilded Doric frieze. Bell said they also turned up terra cotta drinking cups and bowls similar to others pieces the Met purchased. Dietrich von Bothmer, the retired Met curator who was responsible for buying the silver treasure, concluded in the 1994 museum bulletin that the silver was produced in Taranto, which is in Italy's boot, or in Eastern Sicily - the site of Morgantina. Yet last week, von Bothmer contradicted himself, insisting all that could be said is that the silver was made somewhere in southern Italy. When von Bothmer was asked about Hecht's involvement in the silver purchase, he denied that Hecht had anything to do with it, then hung up on a Globe reporter. According to the 1986 report compiled by Customs agents, Hecht and von Bothmer were ''old friends.''

Little regard for bans

Raffiotta and Conforti also expressed suspicions about the Met's 1986 explanation about Asfar's role. Hawkins, the Met vice president, wrote to Customs that the Met was ''informed'' that the silver had been in the possession of Asfar's family since the 1940s, and that 8 of the 15 objects were sent to Switzerland in 1961, where they remained until the Met bought them in 1981. The second batch of 7 pieces was shipped from Beirut to New York in 1982, he wrote. Judge Raffiotta, however, belittled the notion that such valuable items were kept in storage in Switzerland for so many years. ''These are items so historically important, so beautiful, and so valuable that no one would have hidden them away for so long. Even the clandestini recognized their value and significance,'' Raffiotta said. With the museum mum on the issue, and Italian authorities speaking publicly about their claim, Hecht emerged as the museum's sole public advocate last week. Yet during a lengthy discourse on the antiquities market, Hecht cheerfully defended the right of museums and collectors to acquire looted artifacts. Hecht, now 79 and still a favorite of many museum curators, said he has little regard for export bans. Important archeological treasures, he insisted, are better off in the possession of collectors and museums than left in the ground as many archeologists prefer. Despite his storied run-ins with authorities, in Turkey as well as Italy, Hecht insisted he has never personally smuggled anything out of those countries. That, he said, is accomplished through bribery, or utilizing ''Signor Greasa Da Palma.'' But he said he has no problem when ''moveable'' items like Greek vases and silver objects are excavated in Italy and appear on the market in Switzerland, which has virtually no laws against contraband. ''You're innocent until proven guilty,'' Hecht said. ''So until someone proves this Euphronios vase or this silver treasure was excavated clandestinely and shows us the hole it came out of, it's as innocent as the Virgin Mary.''
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 04/17/98.

From: Appraiserl Appraiserl@aol.com
Subject:

MMA Denies Buying Stolen Silver

.c The Associated Press; By BETH GARDINER
NEW YORK (AP) - A suspected art thief's accusation that 15 looted silver artifacts are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art should not be trusted, museum officials said.
The museum responded angrily Friday to Italian authorities' accusation that the silver collection had likely been stolen from a site in Sicily and smuggled to Switzerland.
The charges, reported in the Boston Globe, were based partly on statements made by Giusseppe Mascara, an alleged art thief who told authorities his associates had unearthed the set of exquisite silver pieces linked to the ruins of the ancient city of Morgantina.
``I don't think his testimony can be taken seriously, considering who he is, what he's said he's done and what arrangements he might have to make with authorities to be looked on more favorably,'' Met spokesman Harold Holzer said. ``He's outrageous, and the comments are outrageous.''
The Globe said the museum has rebuffed Italian authorities' efforts to prove the pieces were looted. Holzer called the accusations ``speculative and inflammatory'' and said it was impossible to know where the pieces had actually originated. He said the silver utensils and vessels, which date to the third century B.C., had been publicly displayed and studied since the museum bought them for $2.74 million in 1982.
``We believe that it is impossible to tell from any description that has been advanced that these are the materials taken from that site,'' he said. ``We have seen no confirming or convincing evidence.'' Italian authorities believe they can tie the Met's 15 pieces to an ancient Greek settlement in central Sicily, the Globe reported. ``I am angry and bitter about this,'' said Capt. Roberto Conforti, the head of Italy's art theft squad. ``How can such a renowned museum keep such items in the face of such strong evidence?''
Copyright 1997 The Associated Press.

FEATURE -

Van Gogh painting mystery teases art experts

09:31 p.m Apr 18, 1998 Eastern; By Wendy Braanker
AMSTERDAM, April 19 (Reuters) - Vincent van Gogh teased and tantalised art critics during his lifetime. Now, more than 100 years after his death, experts are trying to unravel a mystery surrounding his most celebrated work, ``The Sunflowers.'' There are three versions of the famous canvas, depicting a bunch of sunflowers against a yellow-green background. One is in Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, the second in London's National Gallery and the third in the private collection of Japan's Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance. Now art historians from the Van Gogh Museum have been drafted in to rule whether the Japanese painting is a work of art worth millions of dollars or an ingenious fake.

AN ESSENTIAL BUT DIFFICULT INVESTIGATION

Rumours about the painting, which Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance bought for $39.5 million in 1987, have been circulating in the art world for some time. ``We want to carry out an investigation as soon as possible,'' curator Sjraar van Heugten told Reuters. ``But there are some logistical problems.'' The physical distance between the paintings is the main obstacle to making a comparison, van Heugten said. The canvases are also very fragile and a decision has yet to be taken on whether they can travel. ``If we do not manage to bring the paintings together, the research conditions will not be optimal,'' said van Heugten, who takes care of the Van Gogh Museum's prints and drawings. ``But we do not have any reason to doubt the authenticity of the painting.'' The Van Gogh Museum is planning to organise a symposium in London in May to bring together several art experts to consider the case of ``The Sunflowers.'' ``Among other things, the experts will look at letters written by van Gogh,'' van Heugten said. Those who discredit the Yasuda painting point out that van Gogh never wrote about this particular version of ``The Sunflowers'' in letters to his brother Theo. He gave written accounts of most of his other paintings. ``But 'The Wheatfield with Crows' never received a mention in his letters either,'' van Heugten said. ``The fact that certain paintings are referred to in van Gogh's letters is proof they are genuine, but people should not try to turn this evidence around.''

WEIGHING THE EVIDENCE

Last July, a London art newspaper said that around 100 paintings and drawings by van Gogh, including the Yasuda version of ``The Sunflowers,'' may be fake. ``Every painter of repute attracts forgeries,'' van Heugten said. ``There is a lot of money at stake.'' Doubts about the origin of the Yasuda painting have surfaced from time to time. Last year, the British art expert Geraldine Norman suggested the painting may be the work of Claude-Emille Schuffenecker, a friend of French painter Paul Gauguin. Gauguin in turn was a friend of van Gogh. According to Norman's version of events, van Gogh completed his first depiction of ``The Sunflowers'' in 1888 and made a copy the following year for Gauguin. Van Heugten said Norman had taken up an old thread. At least two other historians had cast doubts on the painting's authenticity. Norman based her arguments on the absence of any reference to the Yasuda painting in van Gogh's letters and the fact that it was not exhibited until 1901. Schuffenecker, who owned the painting at the time, had been involved in the restoration of one of the other sunflower works. Norman also noted ``The Sunflowers'' owned by Yasuda is unsigned. ``But many van Gogh paintings are unsigned,'' van Heugten said.

MUSEUM EAGER TO CLOSE THE CASE

The Van Gogh Museum says it hopes the furore around the disputed painting will come to an end soon. Van Heugten said it would be best to bring the Yasuda painting together with the other canvases of ``The Sunflowers'' to make a visual comparison. ``We could also take paint samples,'' he said, adding that infra-red, ultraviolet light and X-ray photos were other useful tools. The Van Gogh Museum may also take a close look at the canvas beneath the painting. Van Gogh bought an enormous, coarse-threaded canvas with his friend Gauguin. Van Heugten it would be easy to judge if all three versions of ``The Sunflowers'' were on the same cloth. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has more than 200 of the roughly 900 paintings van Gogh produced, many of them while he was living in France. The post-impressionist's success as a painter eluded him during his lifetime and he was supported by his brother Theo. He suffered from depression as an adult and achieved notoriety by chopping off part of his ear. In 1890, aged 37, van Gogh shot himself in the chest and died two days later. He is buried beside his brother in France.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

From: ARTISTpres ARTISTpres@aol.com
Subject:

Federal judge denies injunction to street artists

Yesterday, Federal Judge for the United States District Court Southern District of New York, Lawrence M. Mckenna, denied an injunction in Lederman et al v Giuliani. This case involves street artist-activists Robert Lederman, Knut Masco, Wei Zhang and Jack Nesbitt who have repeatedly been arrested, had their art confiscated and been issued multiple summonses while protesting against the Park Department's artist permit in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The artists asked the court to issue an injunction to stop the pattern of daily arrests while the case was being decided. Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics), the advocacy group that is also a plaintiff in the case, has been arrested 11 times since the protest began on February 24th and a total of 30 times since Mayor Giuliani first assumed office. Lederman is frequently arrested while leading protests against the Mayor or for inscribing, "Giuliani=Police State" in chalk on the sidewalk. Lederman was a plaintiff in a successful Federal lawsuit decided in 1996 that established street artists as having a full right to First Amendment protection on New York City streets.
Judge McKenna accepted virtually all of the City's arguments in his ruling, including the City's claim that the artist permit is somehow related to construction work at the Met and that Prospect Park in Brooklyn is an adequate alternative venue for artists' free speech. An appeal will be filed next week. Lederman and his attorneys are seeking amicus briefs from arts and Constitutional rights organizations.
While the arrests outside the museum were initially focused on enforcing the permit, a small army of 20-40 police guarding the artists each day have begun to make arrests on a variety of charges including the possession of protest signs and the act of making a painting. Officers on the scene claim Commissioner Stern personally orders all of the arrests by cell phone. Residents in the area have become increasingly critical of the City's use of police manpower to intimidate the artists and end the protest. Despite daily arrests the artists continue to create paintings that have become more political, and more critical of the Mayor, each day.
Robert Lederman issued this statement in connection to yesterday's ruling: "While the ruling is disappointing it will not cause us to end this protest or accept a permit. We will be in front of the Met Saturday morning as always. The Parks Department views Central Park as just another piece of real estate. Apparently, First Amendment freedom of speech is an obstacle to the full exploitation of this resource. Artists have been creating, displaying and selling art in front of the Met since it first opened, without a permit and without any problems. The reason Mayor Giuliani and the Parks Department want to force artists to get a permit now is to eventually replace the permit with competitive bidding for concessions. The permit is merely a transition from First Amendment freedom to a concession system which will result in Disney souvenir stands and more food carts replacing the artists. We are making a stand at the Met to defend free speech on public property not just to have a place to sell our art. The Parks Department already illegally requires a permit to make a speech or demonstrate. The outcome of this fight may determine the future of free speech on public streets and in parks for years to come."
For more information or a copy of the legal complaint contact: Andrew Miltenberg, attorney for the plaintiffs [office (212) 481-4242 home (212) 223-9008] or Robert Lederman (718) 369-2111 E-Mail: ARTISTpres@aol.com To read the 2nd circuit decision granting street artists full First Amendment rights and for other releases on this issue go to: http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html Mayor's Press Office 788-2958; Parks Comm. Henry Stern 360-1305; Thomas Rozinski, legal counsel Parks 360-1314; William Leurs, Pres. Met Museum 570-3900; Museum Press office 570-3951 Also see: NY Times 3/2/98 B1; Newsday 3/2/98 A7; Village Voice 2/24/98 pg 57; Newsday 2/26/98 A8; NY Times 6/3/97 B2; NY Times editorial 3/4/98; Newsday 3/16/98 pg 4. NY TIMES Metro pg 1 3/22/98 "War of the Paintbrushes"; Time Out 4/16-23/98 pg. 39 "Brush With Danger"; N.Y. Times Metro 4/18/98 "Judge Upholds Limit on Artists Selling Pictures Near Museum".
More arrests are expected this weekend. Artists will be demonstrating starting around 10 A.M.

From: "pat lagacé" kick@cyberus.ca
Subject:

Help for a story

Hi,
I am a reporter at Le Droit, a daily newspaper in Ottawa, Canada. I am currently working on a story on art theft and I need bakcground on the issue, particularly pertaining to security in a museum, during major art exhibits, such as the National Gallery of Arts of Canada's Picasso exhibit. Can anyone at your office help? Thank you.
Patrick Lagace
Hull, Quebec
819.777.7684

Dans la vie, certains ont de l'ordre et d'autres ont des idées

Missing Items; Daniel Spiegelman case.

(Jane Rodgers Siegel jrs19@columbia.edu)
*Please refer any questions about the announcement below to
*Jean Ashton, email jwa8@columbia.edu Thank you. --Jane Siegel
Dear colleagues: We have only recently discovered that a number of books, maps, autographs, and manuscripts are missing from the cache of materials recovered by the FBI from Daniel Spiegelman, who pled guilty to a felony charge in 1997 but has not yet been sentenced. (Sentencing has been scheduled for April 24.) The items were stolen from the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in 1994 and may have been sold in the United States or Europe between June 1994 and June 1995, when Spiegelman was arrested.
The list of unrecovered materials includes medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and documents, Arabic manuscripts, some Thomas Edison materials and Presidential documents, miscellaneous maps, and a large number of maps from the Blaue Atlas Major, German text edition [1669?]. More detailed information is available at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indiv/rare/missing/
If you do not have access to the Internet and prefer a list on e-mail or paper, please let us know.
Jean Ashton, Director
Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Columbia University
(212)854-2232 FAX (212)854-1365
535 West 114th Street, New York, NY 10027

Stolen statue was buried deep in garden

(Times of London) BY A CORRESPONDENT
DIGGING for clues in an English country garden proved a £360,000 revelation for detectives on the trail of stolen stately home antiques. They unearthed the 8ft bronze statue of an American Indian and his dog that had been plundered from an estate owned by the family of Guy Fawkes. It was one of a pair of figures cast in Paris in 1937 by the American sculptor Paul Manship. The other stands in Minnesota National Park. Graham Reeds, for the prosecution, told York Crown Court yesterday that Paul Tomasso, 57, an antique dealer, was "a fence for high-class, high-value garden ornaments" which were stolen over many years from grand houses throughout the North. Mr Tomasso, of Gledhow, Leeds, denies 13 offences of handling stolen goods between l985 and l996. They were said to be mostly antique urns, statues, fountains and garden furniture worth many thousands of pounds. Mr Reeds alleged that the items belonged to the High Sheriff of West Yorkshire, John Brennan, who lives at Brenaire Park in Rawdon, near Leeds; the Burton Agnes Hall Preservation Trust at Driffield, East Yorkshire; the National Trust at Temple Sowerby, near Penrith; North Yorkshire County Hall in Northallerton, from where a statue of Mercury vanished; Viscount Ingleby at Osmotherley, North Yorkshire; George Horton Fawkes, of Farnley Hall, Leeds, a descendant of Guy Fawkes; and others with country estates in the North. He said that in May l996 detectives executed a search warrant at Princess Lodge, Whixley, near York, the home of a friend of Mr Tomasso, who had been allowed to store antiques to be sold in the course of his trade. Mr Reeds said: "What they found was a revelation. They dug a hole in the garden and in that hole was the most valuable piece of outdoor sculpture imaginable. "It was an 8ft tall figure of amazing weight and you can just imagine it standing outside a museum." Indian and Dog was stolen in l989 from Farnley Hall, owned by descendants of Fawkes since the l4th century. Mr Reeds told the jury that the other casting of Indian and Dog at the National Park in Minnesota was valued at £360,000. He added: "But this one was buried at Whixley in l994 as a precautionary measure to make sure nobody found it. Such was its unique quality and worth that it would have given the game away about what Mr Tomasso was up to." Mr Tomasso is alleged to have told police that he bought the goods from Irish gypsies at a country house sale and from other unidentified people.
The trial continues.

£28m Sunflowers among 30 Van Gogh fakes, says expert

(Daily Telegraph London) By Bruce Johnston in Rome
MORE than 300 works said to be by Vincent Van Gogh were originally never recorded as being by the artist and at least 30 of them are fakes, Italy's leading expert said yesterday. Among them is a self-portrait in the Courtauld Institute in London, and a version of Sunflowers which came from a private London collection and sold at auction for a record $47 million (£28.5 million) in 1987. Antonio De Robertis, who is to publish his findings in Italy's authoritative Quadri e Sculture art review next week, told The Telegraph that his claim was based on a simple sum following three years of research. The proof, he said, lay in the 686 letters that the Post-Impressionist painter wrote to his brother Theo and in which "with the precision of a notary" he documented the bulk of his work. The only exception was during the period when Van Gogh lived with Theo in Paris for two years until 1888, when he is known to have produced 308 works. Mr De Robertis is thought to be the first person to comb through the correspondence to uncover the details of inventory. He found that the 2,125 works catalogued as being by the artist turn out to be 507 more than the number Van Gogh claimed to have painted. He also discovered that 450 works mentioned by the artist were not catalogued. In other words, they had gone missing. These two figures added to the 155 works by the young Van Gogh that have also disappeared and the artist's output rises to a staggering 2,730. Mr De Robertis said: "It was just too much. Something had to give." He has managed to account for 203 of the 507 mystery works but his findings cast a shadow over the rest. Of these, "about 200" were probably genuine, Mr De Robertis said, but 30 were "definitely" fake. William Bradford, the curator of the Courtauld responsible for the Van Gogh self-portrait, denied the picture was a fake.

Colosseum may be sold to reduce Italy's debt

(Daily Telegraph London) By Bruce Johnston in Rome
ITALY'S government, seeking new ways to reduce its debt to appease its European partners, is considering selling or leasing to the private sector the Uffizi, the Colosseum and other cultural and historic landmarks. These and others such as Rome's Fascist-built Foro Italico sports centre are included in a list of saleable state assets being prepared by a special committee in the Finance Ministry. The committee, which has been given the job of reducing Italy's vast debt - now standing at 121 per cent of GDP, or more than twice the Maastricht guideline - has dusted off a law dating to the Mussolini era which allows the state to sell property even of major artistic heritage. The committee has valued the Foro Italico, with its swimming pools, Fascist monuments, sports fields and tennis courts, at £400 million, and is looking for takers. Reports yesterday said that Giacomo Viaciago, who heads the committee, had told Romano Prodi, the Prime Minister, that the centre could be entrusted to the private sector and run as a mixed company set up by the Treasury. Mr Viaciago said: "The centre, in private hands, could earn a lot of money for everyone. This same thing could be done for the Uffizi gallery, the Roman Forum and the Colosseum, which could be transferred to a fund which could be administered by the Americans." Although it was stressed that Mr Viaciago was being "a little light-hearted", his comments have caused anger at local and national political level. The Rome council expressed annoyance at "being told nothing", while the suggestion that Italy could sell the family silver to balance its books was taken as something of a provocation by Walter Veltroni, the Deputy Prime Minister, who also holds the Fine Arts and Cultural Heritage portfolio.Mr Veltroni said: "I will consider nothing of the kind. The Colosseum is one of the principal monuments of humanity, and can only be owned by the state. It would be like selling the Pyramids in Egypt to some oil company." How much the Colosseum may be valued at is difficult to say. If one company yardstick of evaluation would be applied - that of its worth being equal to a year's turnover - it might be picked up for just £7 million, which is what it sells in tickets. However, maintenance for the building, constructed in AD 75-80 and which in its heyday could seat 45,000, could prove to be a millstone. A recent scheme to open a bookshop in one of the Colosseum's arches outside was rejected after it caused an outcry.

Italy outraged by proposal to sell Colosseum

(Times of London) FROM RICHARD OWEN IN ROME
AN OFFICIAL proposal to put the Colosseum and other ancient monuments up for sale as part of the Italian centre-left Government's privatisation programme caused uproar yesterday. Professor Giacomo Vaciago, an economist from Piacenza who heads the Ministry of Finance committee responsible for selling state-owned properties, said he had placed the Foro Italico, the Fascist-era sports complex on the Tiber which hosted the 1960 Olympics, at the top of his list of saleable assets, with a potential price tag of more than £1 billion. The complex - known in Fascist times as the Foro Mussolini - includes a stadium, an Olympic swimming pool and championship tennis courts, plus an athletics arena ringed by heroic, larger-than-life statues of muscular sportsmen. It also boasts an obelisk with the legend "Mussolini Dux" (Mussolini Duce), one of the few remaining reminders of the dictator. The sale of state properties is part of an attempt to cut Italy's huge budget deficit to meet the Maastricht criteria for the European single currency. Professor Vaciago said a 1939 law allowing the State to sell properties of "historic and artistic value" was still in force. He said the sports complex, owned by the National Olympic Committee, would benefit from private enterprise and modern management methods. "But why stop there?" he said. "The same could be said of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and the Forum and the Colosseum in Rome." He urged Romano Prodi, the centre-left Prime Minister, to consider putting the Colosseum in the hands of "American-style business managers". He said "suitable entrepreneurs" would be able to run the site efficiently, oversee its restoration and stage lucrative "events" for tourists, including latter-day versions of entertainments such as chariot races and gladiator contests. Walter Veltroni, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture, said the scheme was "out of the question". "The Colosseum is not just an Italian national treasure, it is part of the heritage of mankind," he said. "It would be like selling the Pyramids of Egypt to an oil company." He said ticket sales at the Colosseum provided the State with revenue of £1 million a month, which the Government was able to use for its programme of upgrading and reopening long-neglected museums. Under plans pushed through by Signor Veltroni since the Centre-Left came to power two years ago, private investment in the arts has been encouraged, museum opening hours have been lengthened, and long-closed art galleries, such as the Villa Borghese in Rome, have been refurbished. Claudio Strinati, Superintendent of Culture in Rome, said such moves were "more than adequate", and there was "no need for wholesale privatisation". But he told La Repubblica that he had no objection to the sale of the Foro Italico, since the artistic value of its Fascist and postwar architecture was "minimal". "We are not talking about something like the Uffizi, which was built in the 16th century and has an unrivalled art collection," he said. Professor Vaciago admitted his proposal was "perhaps a bit provocative", but he said he meant to draw attention to the need to "revitalise" Italy's cultural heritage. The sale of state-owned properties includes army barracks, airfields, warehouses, lighthouses, and coastal and agricultural land, as well as Renaissance buildings. * Sicilian overture: The gala reopening of Palermo's opera theatre, the Teatro Massimo, last night after a closure of nearly a quarter of a century was greeted by the media as a sign of the Sicilian capital's renaissance after years of neglect and Mafia control. Leoluca Orlando, the anti-Mafia mayor, said that a "wind of change" was blowing through Sicily.

Main Indexpage

April 23, 1998

CONTENTS:

- Police return UKPounds:30,000 haul of antiques to burglar; detectives have been unable to trace the original owners.(It is estimated that the criminal trade in antiques in Britain nets UKPounds:500 million annually) (Daily Telegraph)

- Italy Wants Greek Antiquities Back (The Associated Press)

- Egyptian museum gets new security system (Reuters)

- Re: student guards (Steve Keller IntlArtCop@aol.com)

- Police appeal on items taken from suspect (Daily Telegraph London)

- Russian attacks over-restoration of Old Masters (Times of London)

- Fake Mayan carvings aim to foil thieves (Reuters)

- Job Opening (SECURITY GUARD)

- whistle blower legislation and the ASU Art Museum

- Schiele Case: Heirs of Fritz Gruenbaum discovered (Die Presse, Wien)

- Move to stop aboriginal art fraudsters (Daily Telegraph London)

- Yeltsin reluctantly signs trophy art law - (Reuters)

- New York: Heirs to stolen treasures saved by prosecutors who forgot the law (Times of London)

- Sources for cabinets and fire suppression systems (ConsDisList)

- Stolen paintings just turn up: The Grandma Moses works had been taken from a Phila.-area home. (Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.)

- Schiele-paintings: Investigastion will take "noch another few months" (Der Standard; Antonia Kriks antonia.kriks@munich.netsurf.de)

- Whistleblower, ASU Art Museum, Tim Feavel's statement

- Copyright laws and charges ( Rooksana Omar plhm@iafrica.com)

- Italy calls N.Y. museum's prized collection stolen; Legal action is threatened to regain treasures (By Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff, 04/17/98)

- MMA Denies Buying Stolen Silver

- Van Gogh painting mystery teases art experts

- Federal judge denies injunction to street artists

- Help for a story ( "pat lagacé" kick@cyberus.ca)

- Missing Items; Daniel Spiegelman case. (Jane Rodgers Siegel jrs19@columbia.edu)

- Stolen statue was buried deep in garden (Times of London)

- £28m Sunflowers among 30 Van Gogh fakes, says expert (Daily Telegraph London)

- Colosseum may be sold to reduce Italy's debt (Daily Telegraph London)

- Italy outraged by proposal to sell Colosseum (Times of London)