September 28, 1998

CONTENTS:

Christie's 'should stop Scott sale' (BY STEPHEN FARRELL )

Author creates a storm over auction of polar artefacts ( BY STEPHEN FARRELL)

UKPounds1m Picasso painting lost in Swissair crash (Daily Telegraph)

A PICASSO painting thought to be worth almost UKPounds1 million was among an extensive cargo of valuables lost in the Swissair plane crash off Nova Scotia two weeks ago, the airline said yesterday. The picture, Le Peintre, was being transported as general cargo by a Swiss arts shipment agency, though the sender and receiver were not identified. The airline said it was presumed that the work would not have survived the impact when the New York-Geneva flight went down five miles off the Canadian coast, killing all 229 passengers and crew. One other work of art was listed on the cargo manifest, but without further details to indicate its nature. Goods declared as valuables included a large consignment of banknotes being sent from one American bank to another. The value of the cash was not disclosed, though it weighed 110lb. The American-built MD 11 aircraft was also carrying 2.2lb of diamonds, 10lb of jewellery and more than 4lb of watches. Searches are continuing for bodies, parts of the aircraft and freight. Crash investigators hope that the cockpit voice recorder recovered by divers at the weekend will provide critical evidence of what happened to the aircraft in its final six minutes.

Captain Scott's belongings may go back to his Antarctic hut (Times of London)

AN HISTORIC candle lantern and other artefacts taken from Captain Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton's South Pole expedition huts were yesterday withdrawn from a Christie's auction, hours after historians voiced concern over their sale. Their owner, a retired New Zealand Air Force Wing Commander, John Claydon, pulled lots 210-214 from the Exploration and Travel sale and donated them to the Scott Polar Research Institute after the author Jeff Rubin wrote to The Times saying the sale damaged the continent's cultural heritage. Last night Christie's handed them over to Dr John Heap, executive director of the Institute. They will be sent back to New Zealand, which controls the Ross Dependency and may ultimately be put back in the Scott and Shackleton huts. The controversial objects, estimated to fetch UKPounds13,000, included a candle lantern from Shackleton's Cape Royds hut on his 1907-09 expedition; leather sledge straps from Captain Scott's 1902-04 Discovery Expedition Hut at Hut Point; a brass coat-hook from Scott's Cape Evans cubicle on his final, doomed 1910-1913 expedition and a glass beaker, crucible and bottles from Dr Edward Adrian Wilson's cubicle on the same trip. Wing Commander Claydon, 80, one of the first New Zealanders to go to the South Pole, removed them in 1957 while running air support for the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic expedition. Two years later the 1959 Antarctic Treaty was passed protecting the sites and banning the removal of objects. He said that he had left them in his garage for 40 years until he decided to get rid of them, and that money from the sale was "intended to go back to the Antarctic." But yesterday, after discussions with Christie's, Dr Heap and other experts, he agreed to donate them to the Institute and said the auction house had waived its usual penalty for items withdrawn late. "In view of the hoo-hah it was decided to withdraw them. I suggested that they should go to the Antarctic Heritage Trust in the UK. They can send them back to New Zealand or they can go back to the huts. I left it entirely in their hands. I certainly have no wish to see them again." Both Wing Commander Claydon and Christie's insisted he was the rightful owner because the items came into his possession before the 1959 Treaty. Wing Commander Claydon, who retired in 1973 and now lives comfortably in Christchurch, pointed out that his visit to Antarctica was during an era when the huts were left open to the elements and many expeditions removed objects left by the explorers who passed before them. "The huts were abandoned," he said. "The British made no attempt whatsoever to preserve them. Hundreds and hundreds of Americans and New Zealanders went down there and everyone took a few things. The bits and pieces I picked up were of no consequence. There was nothing special about it. Everything was very different then." As he visited Christie's to remove the artefacts Dr Heap welcomed the move. He said: "I think this is a victory for common sense in an uncommon situation. Wing Commander Claydon has said all along that the proceeds of the sale would go to Antarctic Heritage and the legal rights of ownership on either side are arguable but the important issue is that one should not make money from such objects." Mr Rubin, whose letter initiated the withdrawal, greeted the decision with delight, saying that an auction would have sent the wrong message to the increasing numbers of tourists now visiting Antarctica. He said that the Hut Point, Cape Evans and Cape Royds buildings were still surrounded by piles of tins with 90-year-old labels and skeletons of dogs.

Sri Lanka acts to protect ancient sites

COLOMBO, Sept 10 (Reuters) - A rash of thefts and vandalism at Sri Lanka's archaeological and religious sites has prompted a crack down on offenders, a top Archaeology Department official said on Thursday. ``With the trend of thefts on the rise we had to do something to curb it,'' Siran Deraniyagala, director-general of the department, told reporters. Police earlier this week arrested an army major and others for stealing an ancient bronze statue from a temple and trying to sell it. Deraniyagala said under newly amended laws a person found guilty of destroying an archaeological site or stealing antiques faced a prison sentence of two to five years and/or a minimum fine of 50,000 rupees ($763). The offence earlier carried a sentence of one year in prison and/or a 1,000 rupee fine. Predominately Buddhist Sri Lanka has some 100,000 movable antiquities and more than 1,000 archaeological sites dating back five centuries BC.
($1 - 65.5 rupees)
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited

High court case on Dutch art stolen from Germany

STOLEN PAINTINGS FROM WWII

Flight 111

Photius

Boston museum battles town over Monet, other paintings

Rembrandt's nude attacker is sent to jail (London, 09.19.1998)

Teacher's gamble on lost Renoir may net UKPounds:50,000 (Times of London)

Monet, Sisley Paintings Stolen In Nice Museum

Masked robbers take paintings from museum

[Fire Safe Heritage]: Fire Damages Arkansas State House

Conman 'altered Tate archives in complex fraud' (Times of London)

A HIGHLY intelligent confidence trickster tampered with archives in the Tate Gallery in order to authenticate forged paintings by modern masters which he sold for thousands of pounds on the international art market, a court was told yesterday. John Drewe, 50, from Reigate, Surrey, was alleged to have paid an impoverished but talented artist UKPounds: 250 a time to produce paintings in the style of celebrated 20th century artists such as Marc Chagall, Graham Sutherland, Ben Nicholson and Alberto Giacometti. He then gained access to the Tate's archives by donating UKPounds: 20,000 to the gallery and was able to alter records of the artists' works to make the paintings appear genuine, before selling them to dealers in London and abroad. One fake Nicholson fetched $175,000 (UKPounds: 107,000) in the United States. Opening the case for the prosecution, John Bevan, QC, told Southwark Crown Court that Mr Drewe masterminded the fraud between 1987 and 1996 and in doing so undermined the reputation of the artists concerned, as well as the integrity of national archive material. Explaining that many modern abstract works were easy to imitate, he said: "As a nation we are fortunate to possess a valuable collection of works of all kinds, a tiny minority of which is so well known and valuable that their authorship is without question. The vast majority, including paintings by modern artists, particularly if they are abstract, can be copied or imitated by a skilled hand. If that is done deliberately to deceive then it requires considerable expertise to distinguish between genuine works and fraudulent imitations." He added: "It was into this world of 20th-century artists and authors that John Drewe stepped in the late 1980s. He realised that if works by famous 20th-century artists could be faked and archive material corrupted, he could sell worthless paintings for large sums of money. "The damage inflicted was and is considerable. His prime motive was to make money, although the effort he put in suggests intellectual delight in fooling people and contempt for experts." Mr Bevan told the court that John Myatt, who painted the fakes, had admitted his part in the frauds and repaid UKPounds: 18,000 of the money he had made. Mr Drewe, he alleged, recruited three acquaintances unwittingly to sell the fake paintings through auctioneers such as Christie's and Sotheby's and to dealers. That prevented his face becoming too familiar as he flooded the art market with previously unseen works. Clive Bellman, a former air-conditioning salesman and a neighbour of Mr Drewe, agreed to work for him when he told him that he was a nuclear physicist who needed to sell paintings in order to buy archive material from Russia to disprove the revisionist theory of the Holocaust. As well as tampering with national archives in the Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum, Mr Drewe also wrote to the families of the artists to try to trick them into authenticating works. He also tricked an order of Roman Catholic priests into equipping him with fake documents for paintings. In order to authenticate a painting, documents such as letters from the artist, sales records and gallery catalogues are used. Mr Drewe became expert at forging all these. Detectives discovered that even Mr Drewe's name was fake - he was born John Richard Cockett. "Little else about him is verifiable," Mr Bevan told the court. Daniel Stoakes, 52, a nurse from Exeter who allegedly posed as the owner of several of the paintings, is also on trial. He is pleading not guilty to a joint charge with Mr Drewe of conspiracy to defraud. Mr Drewe is pleading not guilty to six other charges, including theft, forgery and false accounting.
The case continues.

Dealing with legacy of Nazi art thefts (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

The Nazis, in addition to their other well-known qualities, had an insatiable appetite for artworks owned by other people. In France alone, during World War II, they seized nearly 100,000 works of art from private collectors, public museums and commercial galleries. Hector Feliciano, an author and cultural correspondent, has studied the matter closely. He estimates that about 20% of the stolen artworks, 20,000 in all, are still floating about, pretty much undocumented. Many are in famous museums or galleries, or in private hands. Feliciano -- whose book, "The Lost Museum," came as something of a bombshell when it appeared in 1997 -- will speak on "Anatomy of a Pillage: Looting of Art by the Nazis" at 6:15 tonight at the Milwaukee Art Museum. In a telephone interview, he noted that among the looters-in-chief were the heads of the German state, Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering, whose collecting instincts led them to skim the cream off Europe's artistic legacy during the years of occupation, 1940 through 1945. Goering was a voluptuary whose tastes demanded that he own the best of everything. (In one much-publicized instance, he paid a fortune for a bogus Vermeer, concocted by a Dutch forger.) Hitler, an Austrian, was setting aside works for a new museum in his hometown, Linz. In any event, confiscation or forced purchase at low prices was the rule in France, Holland and Belgium, while destruction was all too often the fate of Russia's heritage. Many famous dealers, including Paul Rosenberg, lost their inventories along with their archives. Feliciano said the Nazis frequently bartered looted artworks that they disliked -- in particular, modernist paintings and sculptures that they labeled "degenerate" -- for the Old Masters they coveted. They often used art dealers in Switzerland as intermediaries. The result is that today, 53 years after Hitler's death in the rubble of Berlin, issues of provenance and ownership are still provoking argument around the world. Most recently, troubling questions have arisen about a Degas in Chicago and a Matisse in Seattle. As Feliciano sees it, it is far better to arrive at a negotiated settlement than to let the matter of title go to the courts. Legal fees can be punishing, while delays can prevent artworks from being shown for years. An amicable arrangement is a superior solution. This is precisely what occurred recently in Chicago, where the heirs to the owners of a contested Degas landscape agreed to accept half of the work's appraised value in return for letting it stay at the Art Institute. They will share credit for the gift with a local donor. "The looting of art would never have happened the way it did if it were not for the interest Hitler and Goering had in art," Feliciano said. "First they stored it in castles, museums and warehouses. Then when the bombing started, they put it in mines and mine shafts." Americans, too, played a part in this sorry story. Some U.S. soldiers and officers looted an art depot that had been set up by the Germans in Munich. "Military officers could send boxes to the U.S. without having to go through customs," Feliciano said. Ironically, the best tools available to historians who are researching looted artworks are the inventories made by the Nazis themselves. In the case of the Matisse -- formerly owned by Rosenberg -- that was found at the Seattle Art Museum, the museum has brought in a third party, the New York art gallery from which it bought the painting. Such matters can become very tangled, indeed. Feliciano's interest in artworks taken by the Nazis grew out of his work as a cultural writer in Paris for the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. A native of Puerto Rico, he lived for 18 years in Paris, researching lost paintings and writing his pioneering book. Now a resident of New York City, he plans to focus tonight's slide-illustrated lecture on the collections of five distinguished European families. Feliciano will attend a pre-lecture reception at 5:30 p.m. Copies of his book will be available for purchase and signing. Feliciano's Milwaukee appearance is being sponsored by the Fine Arts Society, an art-museum support group that focuses its activities on works created before 1900.