July 3, 1998

CONTENTS:

- Effort is set to find art Nazis stole

- interested in a position as security officer/ advisor

- Searching for Art Stolen During WWII by Nazi War Criminals

- organize an international meeting to compare experiences and methodologies. Please suggest names of distinguished speakers and subjects of lectures

- Barriers for Historic Houses

- Art Theft Inquiry

- Surviving a Disaster

- ARREST - Theft of Antique Snuff Bottles

- fireproof paint

- Bronze, 6-Foot-Tall 'Hey Girl' Stolen From Sculpture Garden

- Vigilance pays as Tenafly treasure turns up

- Man accused of illegally profiting by sale of Cincinnati school art

- California fires (Steve Keller)

Effort is set to find art Nazis stole

WASHINGTON -- The United States and 38 other nations announced a drive yesterday to identify art stolen from Holocaust victims and to compensate their heirs. The session at the Holocaust Memorial Museum marked a new chapter in uncovering the misdeeds of the Germans and their collaborators in World War II a half-century after six million Jews and other victims of the Nazis perished. The search will also deal with unpaid life- and property-insurance claims. Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, who has led inquiries into the theft of gold, told representatives of nations participating in the drive that there was a risk of reviving latent anti-Semitism. But, he said, "this can be a healing process, which can strengthen each of our countries and bring this century to a close on a high note of justice." In a related development, five survivors of Nazi concentration camps sued the Swiss central bank in a U.S. District Court here Monday to try to recover plundered gold accepted by Switzerland during World War II. The class action seeks compensatory and punitive damages from the Swiss National Bank, which, like the better-known private Swiss banks, accepted Nazi deposits. Paul T. Gallagher, a lawyer for five survivors, said the suit was the first against the Swiss National Bank. "It is a lawsuit against a branch of the Swiss government that during World War II was headed by individuals who had very close ties to Nazi Germany and who, as a result, enabled Nazi Germany to obtain assets that permitted them to prolong World War II," he said. In early June, the Association of Art Museum Directors recommended that American art museums check their collections to determine if any works were stolen during the war and to set up a worldwide database for tracking. "By adopting the report, America's museums place themselves on record as committed to acting swiftly and proactively," Philippe de Montebello, director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, said after the meeting in Worcester, Mass. The Museum of Modern Art in New York recently stopped prosecutors from seizing two Egon Schiele paintings on loan from the Leopold Foundation of Vienna. Two families claim the works were plundered from relatives during the Nazi era.
1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.

Searching for Art Stolen During WWII by Nazi War Criminals

Barriers for Historic Houses

Art Theft Inquiry

Surviving a Disaster

ARREST - Theft of Antique Snuff Bottles

fireproof paint

Missing and Missed

Bronze, 6-Foot-Tall 'Hey Girl' Stolen From Sculpture Garden

Stolen: One six-foot-tall sculpture wearing high heels. Answers to "Hey Girl." Friendly. Valued at $10,000. If someone has seen her, please let owner-sculptor Robert Cole know. Someone -- or ones -- snatched the bronze-plated figure from the public sculpture garden at 741 Seventh St. NW on June 9. Although the 120-pound work was fastened to a concrete base with two bolts, the perpetrators succeeded in uprooting it. "I never expected anyone to steal a sculpture," said Cole, who is experiencing his first bit of personal vandalism after living in Washington for the last decade. He suspects that of the five pieces currently in the space, "Hey Girl" was targeted for her relative lightness, lack of more bolts and what he calls her "perky" appeal. A group of artists who call themselves D.C. Unite founded the sculpture garden last October. It has a rotating roster of seven spaces. The lot is owned by the federal government, but the D.C. Commission for the Arts and Humanities kicks in funds for the garden's maintenance and other costs. Unfortunately for Cole, there is no insurance for the works in the garden.
Although the lot is up for sale, D.C. Unite remains enthusiastic about putting on shows. The space lures a regular lunch-crowd attendance. "We may have a limited time there, but it's attracted a lot of energy," said Cole, who works full time as an artist, designing sculptures as well as furniture for local restaurants and bars including Republic Gardens. In case the thief is thinking of selling off pieces of "Hey Girl's" metal, Cole says there is only $300 worth of bronze in the hand-hammered piece. "I thought about going to scrap yards and I couldn't do it," he said. Because the sculpture was stolen on the night that the Washington Capitals lost the Stanley Cup, Cole has theorized that gloating out-of-town fans might have had a bit of fun with her. Cole has high hopes for the return of "Hey Girl," pointing out that a sculpture stolen in Alexandria was recovered two years after the theft. This one sour incident has not detracted from his commitment to the park. Said Cole, "I'm not going to let this stop me. I'm going to put another sculpture in." One with more bolts.
If anyone has information, please call Cole at 202-387-3568.

Vigilance pays as Tenafly treasure turns up

For 17 years, New York art dealer Walt Reed kept vigil, waiting for Harvey Dunn's "The Garden Party" to appear on an auction block somewhere in the world. The painting, created by the famed illustrator soon after he moved to Tenafly in 1919, was stolen from the borough's municipal center in 1981. Investigators turned up no clues, and many assumed it was gone for good. But Reed, a lover of Dunn's work, never gave up, keeping an eye out for the painting as he scanned auction catalogs from the United States and abroad. Last month, his persistence finally paid off. The long-lost painting, which depicts a pastoral 19th century lawn party, was Lot No. 93 in a June 16 auction of European and American paintings on Manhattan's Upper East Side. "I was astounded," Reed said Wednesday. "We get catalogs from a lot of auctioneers, but when it arrived, the painting jumped out at me." Reed said he immediately called Tenafly police, who directed him to New York City police. Investigators confirmed it was the stolen painting, and the work, worth as much as $30,000, was removed from the auction. Authorities are trying to find out where the painting was all these years, and how it ended up at Phillips International Auctioneers. Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney, would confirm only that the painting is in safekeeping and that no one has been charged in the theft. Reed's discovery, a blend of luck and persistence, has elated art lovers, who consider the painting important, and Tenafly residents, who consider Dunn one of the town's greatest residents. But Alasdair Nichol, head of paintings for Phillips, an esteemed London-based auction house, said he was despondent that such a promising sale ended up in a police evidence locker. "I've been in this business 12 years, and this is only the second or third time this has happened to me," Nichol said. "It's disappointing, especially from the respect that the painting would have done very well at auction. There was a great deal of interest in it. . . . But it's fortunate that the painting will return to its owners." Whether it will go back to the current owners or return to the walls of the Tenafly library remains to be seen. Despite the borough's seemingly clear-cut ownership of Dunn's painting, borough historian Virginia Mosley said she and others are concerned Tenafly may have a difficult time wresting "The Garden Party" from its current owners. Nichol would not name them, but said they have strenuously asserted that they obtained "The Garden Party" legally. "We don't want to speak about this case until the painting is safely back in the property of Tenafly," Mosley said. "The final steps toward ownership have not been resolved. We can only hope this turns out well." Dunn's wife, Johanne "Tulla" Dunn, gave "The Garden Party" to Tenafly soon after the artist's death in 1952, Mosley said. It was among several Dunn works donated to the borough and school district. Tenafly meant a lot to Dunn, apparently. He was a member of the school board and the Planning Board, and even made an unsuccessful mayoral bid in 1931. Long on display at the local library, "The Garden Party" was moved to an activities room in February 1981 to protect it during restoration of the library, Mosley said. No one noticed the 2-by-3-foot canvas was missing for two months, reports from that time state. Anna Kisluk, director of the Art Loss Register, which maintains a database of more than 100,000 stolen paintings and antiquities, said "The Garden Party" represents the garden variety of stolen art. "Most of the stuff that's stolen is not what you might call masterpieces, and in many cases we've dealt with, it's your basic burglar, not a Cary Grant, a debonaire, suave art thief," Kisluk said. "Usually it's a crime of opportunity, a burglary where they'll take the VCR, the jewelry, and the painting on the wall," Kisluk said. "Sometimes they're very stupid. But even thieves know that art has value." Although Dunn is not a household name, he was one of the most famous illustrators of his day, and his works regularly sell for $25,000 or more. Born in South Dakota in 1884, Dunn grew up on a pioneer farm before studying at the Chicago Art Institute, and later, with American luminaries such as Howard Pyle and N. C. Wyeth in Chadds Ford, Pa. In 1915, he established the Leonia School of Illustration in Leonia, but his work there was interrupted when he was hired as a combat artist for the government during World War I. His paintings from the front were often gut-wrenching and emotion-laden, said Joe Stuart, former curator of the South Dakota Art Museum, where many of the artist's works are displayed. "He had the ability to make heroic characters that were very popular with the public," Stuart said. "His work was quite powerful." In 1919, Dunn moved to Tenafly, where he lived until his death. In the studio he built next to his home, Dunn created paintings that appeared regularly in popular magazines including Scribner's, Collier's, and The Saturday Evening Post. It was in the last that "The Garden Party" appeared Aug. 7, 1920, accompanying a serialized novel by Stewart Edward White titled "The Rose Dawn," Reed said. "This is a pretty important piece," said Roger Reed, Walt's son and a partner at their SoHo art dealership, Illustration House. "The use of color is very sophisticated and it has a lot of Dunn's typical touches and a great composition. It's rendered very beautifully with choppy brush strokes."
Copyright 1998 Bergen Record Corp.

Man accused of illegally profiting by sale of Cincinnati school art

California fires (Steve Keller)