ABOUT 2,000 antiques, valued at UKPounds:2 million and all suspected
stolen, will be on view to the public today in the latest police
"roadshow" organised under the anti-burglary Operation Bumblebee.
About 1,000 of the items were discovered in a single raid on a house
in Maidstone, Kent. These include a blue and white floral pattern
ceramic clock, thought to be 100 years old and worth an estimated
UKPounds:20,000, and a vintage clock in a blue and silver casing
worth between UKPounds:5,000 and UKPounds:15,000.
Two distinctive silver pheasants were identified as stolen at the
roadshow yesterday by an elderly woman, who also found a silver
cigarette box that had been given to her husband by the late Shah of
Iran.
The roadshow will be open today from 10am to 6pm at the Arnhem Suite,
Fairfield Halls, Croydon. Anyone recognising the items but unable to
attend Croydon should call police on 0171 230 2836.
This week one of the most important gallerys in Germany was re-opened. Newspapers reported very enthusiastic about it. Here is a summary of a very long article. I mention mainly the technical changes because I think this is the most interesting part for MSN-subscribers.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung, 23. July 1998 Munchen
It's probably very rare that 71 million DM had been spent that
discreetly like at the complete renovation of the 'Alte Pinakothek'
in Munich. Who walks after the 4 years of renovation through the
famous building could ask himself whether anything has changed at all.
Most of the paintings are at the same place they have been before the
building was closed. The architecture had not been changed. One could
think the money only could have been bedded into the walls note by
note, and indeed, a lot of the money spent is hidden whithin the most
sensitive layers of wall directly behind the paintings.
To be able to fight mechanical or chemical attacks against artworks
which have a bad tradition especially in the 'Alte Pinakothek' they
used a 'capacitive alarmsystem', which was developed by American
Security experts and adapted and perfected for the special purposes of
a gallery. Now the paintings are not connected singularly to the
alarmsystem anymore but the whole wall becomes a nearly frightening
sense organ which sensitivity can be strengthened or lessened,
depending on the requirements.
The new length of material are not fixed directly to the massive wall
anymore but stretched on thin cardboards of plaster. Behind those
cardboards there is a continuous diaphragm of pieces of metal. The
electronical sensitized deep layer registers and localizes precisely
every movement which interferes with the security area of the
paintings, which are individually changeable. If something forces it's
way into this electronical protective shield - and even if it is only
an arm which want's to show something - there will be the usual alarm
which everybody in the meantime is used to. Now, in the first days
after the re-opening when the system is tested by visitors for the
first time there for sure will be a whole days gallery-concert with
alarm bells ringing and security guards running all day long.
But the new security system does not only put on alert to the place
where it is. At the moment of fault it starts to trail the culprit.
Each ceiling of the rooms carries hidden video cameras which overlook
every room. At the slightest movement one of the cameras zooms the
place of the deed and reports directly to the controlling monitors at
the security center at the basement. From there the countermeasure
will be organized. And because nearly all paintings except a few giant
altarpieces are protected by bullet proof glass against hammering,
knife thrust or acid the main pieces of the gallery at least can be
protected against pathological art-assassins.
There are other big advantages which not only benefit the art works
but the visitors as well, like powerful air condition, an automatic
illumination which gets brighter as soon as the sun disappears and
vice versa, a new cafeteria plus Museum shop of course and so on.
A quotation from the 'Sueddeutsche Zeitung' describes the change in
the old gallery like this: "It looks like even this hermeneutic closed
up stronghold of tradition is going to open up slowly to the blessings
of capitalistic culture-commercialization."
The minister for cultural affairs of Bavaria called it a "important
piece of Bavarian culture" at the re-opening (I guess he talked
about the building, main artworks are by Rubens, Rembrandt,
Tintoretto, Tizian etc.)
LYON, France-Jean-Marie Chauvet, the French government archaeological
official who discovered the oldest known prehistoric cave paintings,
has been vindicated after more than three years of legal wrangling.
An investigating magistrate here concluded this week that government
papers stating that Chauvet was on official assignment when he
stumbled upon the caves in December 1994 were backdated, as Chauvet
has long claimed. Three senior Ministry of Culture officials have been
charged with falsifying the documents.
Chauvet, who was an employee of the regional Ministry of Culture, has
insisted that he was on Christmas vacation in the mountainous Ardeche
region of southeast France when he discovered a half-mile labyrinth of
caves containing paintings and etchings of rhinos, horses, woolly
mammoths and wild cats. The accomplished depictions date to the Upper
Paleolithic period more than 30,000 years ago, studies later revealed.
Chauvet took photographs and made a videotape, which the Ministry of
Culture used at a news conference to announce the find. The ministry
also distributed the images via a photo agency and on the Internet,
maintaining that Chauvet was officially working when he found the
prehistoric treasure and therefore not entitled to any royalties or
reprint rights. Government officials offered the "temporary
authorization for archaeological prospecting," dated Dec. 14, 1994, as
proof.
Chauvet challenged the government's assertion. And this week,
investigating magistrate Gilbert Emery concluded the document had been
forged. He indicted Patrice Beghain, the regional director of cultural
affairs in the southeast Rhone-Alpes region at the time of the
discovery, and Jean-Pierre Daugas, the regional archaeological
curator, on charges of forging documents. Maryvonne de Saint-Pulgent,
a former head of the Ministry of Culture's heritage department, was
charged with complicity.
They will be tried later this year, and if found guilty, could be
sentenced from six months to three years in prison.
"They flip-flopped," said Jean-Robert N'Guyen Phung, Chauvet's
attorney, of the three government officials. "First, they insisted the
paper was authentic. Then they admitted that it was false but said
that they forged it for good reason: so Mr. Chauvet could be
reimbursed for the expenses he incurred while exploring the cave. This
was a grotesque argument. Mr. Chauvet only had $800 in expenses."
The government earned thousands of dollars in royalties on Chauvet's
images, N'Guyen Phung said.
N'Guyen Phung does not expect the three government officials will
serve jail time. "And that's not why Mr. Chauvet filed charges," he
said, adding "There's a moral question. We want these political
appointees who live privileged lives to stop treating the little
people as peasants."
Once the criminal trial has concluded, N'Guyen Phung expects to press
civil charges.
"It is inconceivable that [Chauvet] can't benefit financially from
the books that he helped write, the images he made that have been
distributed all over the world, and the archaeological park that will
be built on the site," the lawyer said.
The government plans to appoint a mediator in the next few months to
settle monetary compensation from past sales of Chauvet's images.
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
A SYDNEY painter has admitted faking hundreds of pictures that were
passed off by a dealer as the works of prominent impressionist and
contemporary artists. Private collectors paid hundreds of thousands of
pounds for them, and even leading auction houses have been taken in.
William Blundell, 52, who works in an attic overlooking Sydney
harbour, has specialised for 20 years in what he calls "innuendoes",
copying the work of painters from Picasso to Jackson Pollock. So
prolific has his output been that the Australian art market is said to
be "awash" with his paintings.
They were sold by Germaine Curvers, a Belgian dealer who emigrated to
Australia nearly 50 years ago. As she lay dying of breast cancer last
year, she is reported to have said that her only regret was that she
had not charged more for her Blundells.
Curvers, 71, summoned Blundell to her deathbed and made him executor
and a beneficiary of her will, leaving nothing to her husband John and
their son.
John Curvers is now contesting Blundell's application for probate on
the grounds that his wife was of unsound mind. The ensuing court
hearing has brought the full scale of her fraud to light, destroying
the value of her estate in the process as it turns out to consist
almost entirely of Blundell fakes.
The court has seen Blundell inspect hundreds of works which, to the
untrained eye, appeared to be great art. Virtually all, Blundell
confessed cheerfully, were painted by him.
"There's no doubt I did it," he said proudly of a charcoal drawing
purporting to be the work of Brett Whiteley, one of Australia's most
highly priced painters.
His analysis was confirmed by Stuart Purves, the owner of Australian
Galleries, the country's oldest art dealer. Of a Blundell "Picasso",
Purves told the court: "It's hopeless. It's appalling. It's
kindergarten." He described a "Jackson Pollock" as "nothing short of a
joke".
Blundell agreed with Purves. He said he had never intended his
paintings to be sold as originals and believed them to be obvious
copies. He seemed surprised that so many people had taken his work
seriously.
Nevertheless, they did. "There are a lot of Blundell Whiteleys in
private collections," said a leading curator.
A Sydney doctor paid about UKPounds:12,000 for six Whiteley nudes
that were valued by one dealer at UKPounds:34,000. The paintings are
all Blundells, and worthless.
Nobody knows how many Blundells have found their way into the
catalogues of top auction houses, but experts are convinced his work
makes a regular appearance. Last week Phillips Australia was forced to
withdraw another Whiteley nude valued at UKPounds:4,000 after
suggestions it was by Blundell.
Sotheby's said last week it would investigate any paintings brought
in by buyers concerned about their authenticity following publicity
about the court case. Sotheby's and Christie's have insurance that
covers buyers in such circumstances for five years after purchase.
Art collectors are not the only ones who are worried. The Australian
National Gallery in Canberra recently paid UKPounds:1m for a small
Picasso that is now attracting suspicion.
Few of the great names of 19th and 20th-century art have escaped
Blundell's imitation. He developed his skill with the unwitting help
of Barry Pearce, a senior curator at the Art Gallery of New South
Wales, who recalls Blundell asking him for advice on the quality of
the faked paintings. "I gave him technical advice on the colour, brush
strokes and light," Pearce said.
Blundell also studied the methods of Tom Keating, the British forger
who admitted to faking works by Goya, Rembrandt and Constable.
However, Blundell said he had given away many of his paintings to
friends and sold others to Curvers for "a few bucks". "It seems she
has been selling my paintings as though they were the real thing," he
said. "I had no idea."
FRANKFURT, Germany (Reuters) - German Jewish leader Ignatz Bubis
Friday urged Moscow and Washington to open more of their archives to
help find missing receipts for gold the Nazis looted from Holocaust
victims and banks in occupied countries.
He was speaking after an official report, compiled by Germany's
Federal Archive with help from the Bundesbank, concluded that the
missing documents had disappeared without trace and may have been
destroyed as late as the 1970s.
Bubis praised German archivists for doing their best to track down 26
missing files of receipts of dental gold pulled from exterminated
Jews, coins and jewelry as well as 50 books of gold accounts from the
Nazis' central bank, the Reichsbank.
But he urged Bonn to press the last surviving German officials, who
had been responsible for the documents after World War Two, to provide
a full account of what happened.
``If at all, there's a still chance of finding them in Russia and
America because they are the two countries that haven't opened all of
their archives,'' Bubis told Reuters in an interview.
``Are there still people who were in a position of responsibility
back then with whom we can speak today?'' Bubis asked. ``What
disappeared when and who was responsible? There are still some of
these people around who can answer questions.''
The report, which Reuters obtained this week, was commissioned after
Washington asked Bonn to reveal more about the Nazis' wartime gold
trade.
``I am disappointed that it didn't shed more light on what happened
and because the Allies have withheld documents for 50 years. It is
important that we do not stop at this report but draw conclusions from
it that one can use to research further,'' he said.
German archivists also said they had not given up hope of finding
lost documents, an official close to the investigation said on
Friday.
The German report said archives in Moscow containing records from the
postwar Soviet occupying authorities in Germany could hold some
answers. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said
U.S. archives could be combed again.
German files confiscated by the U.S. Allied administration at the end
of the war were handed back in 1948 to Bank Deutscher Laender,
forerunner to the Bundesbank central bank, for safekeeping.
The lost documents include 26 folders known as the Melmer files after
the SS officer responsible for tallying up how much gold was plundered
from Jews exterminated in concentration camps, including dental gold
primitively melted into bars.
The report said 50 Reichsbank or Nazi central bank ledgers had also
gone missing with accounts for victims gold and gold plundered from
banks in Nazi-occupied countries. Experts say the U.S. authorities did
not make copies of the Melmer files, but microfilmed a fraction of the
Reichsbank ledgers.
If found, the accounts could provide a basis for Holocaust victims'
claims for damages against German and Swiss banks. Without them claims
could be doomed to fail, Bubis said.
``With near certainty it (the report) will not mean a lot for the
victims,'' Bubis said.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
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Though I am sure that the Daily Telegraph story is correctly
transcribed, I am afraid that there is in fact no "guarantee" in the
(English) Culture Secretary's announcement. Chris Smith, the Minister
who made the reported announcement has no standing at all in the other
three kingdoms of the UK - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, all
of which now have admission charges at some national museums, and the
announced additional funding does not apply to any of these three
countries, nor to the significant number of "charging" national
museums in England that are funded through other ministries, notably
Defence.
More substantially, without new legislation (which has not been
announced) the Minister does not have the legal power to force even
those national museums funded by his own ministry to drop admission
charges. Most of the current trustees, who have to power to accept or
reject the minister's proposals and wishes, were appointed by the last
government, as were most of the current directors, and it is very
widely believed that a philosophical stance that was strongly
pro-admission charges was seen as an important pre-requisite for both
trustee and senior staff (especially director) appointments in many
cases.
Those who have been such strong advocates of admission charges as a
matter of principle would therefore have to make very public
climb-downs before they could voluntarily agree to the implement the
Minister's proposals. Indeed, only last night the director of one of
the largest national museums explicitly refused to confirm that the
minister's proposals would be implemented.
Patrick Boylan
