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November 17, 1998
CONTENTS:
- Paris museum staff keep Van Gogh-Millet show shut
- Austria forced to face Nazi theft record
- Staff warn of plans to scrap weekend and night patrols at depot,
reports Dalya Alberge (Times of London, V&A Museum)
- Report of theft of Korean ceramics (Soeren M. Chr. Bisgaard)
- Yet..yet more Sprinkler Thoughts ( Robin Rogers)
- Recovery of Stolen and Looted Works of Art - London 10 December 1998
Paris museum staff keep Van Gogh-Millet show shut
PARIS, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Staff at Paris's Musee d'Orsay art museum
voted on Sunday to continue their five-day strike against working
conditions at a sold-out exhibition of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh
and his mentor Jean-Francois Millet.
Trade union representatives dismissed management pay proposals as ``a
tip'' or as ``charity'' and said they would keep the exhibition of 85
paintings closed until at least Tuesday.
The unions have complained that long queues to reach the show and
limited space for it led to stress, conflicts and overcrowding at the
elegant Left Bank museum.
``Union representatives want (Culture Minister) Catherine Trautmann
not to let the situation fester too long,'' they said in a statement.
``Five days of strikes amount to a profit loss of three million francs
($535,000).''
Staffers have demanded a bonus of 1,600 francs ($285) for employees
dealing directly with the crush of visitors and 1,000 francs ($178)
for other workers there. They also want three days additional holiday
for all museum employees.
The ``Millet-Van Gogh'' show, opened by President Jacques Chirac in
mid-September and due to run until January, traces the influence
Millet's rural scenes had on Van Gogh's paintings of peasants, wheat
fields, churches and starry night skies.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
FEATURE - Austria forced to face Nazi theft record
By Karin Taylor
VIENNA, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Stung by international lawsuits on behalf
of Holocaust victims, Austria has asked historians to investigate its
claim that property seized from Jewish citizens by the Nazis was
returned in full after World War Two.
Austrian Nazi-era expert Brigitte Bailar-Galanda, one of a six-member
commission of historians who will probe the expropriation of Jewish
property, said the injustice suffered by Austrian Jews during the
Holocaust extended even beyond the end of the war.
``The myth that 'the Jews got it all back anyway' completely misses
reality,'' Bailer-Galanda told Reuters. ``Those responsible did as
much as they could to give back as little as possible.''
The creation of the commission follows legal action against major
Austrian companies and banks for their exploitation of Holocaust
victims' assets and labour after the annexation of the country by
Hitler's Third Reich in 1938.
Five Austrian historians and one Israeli will begin the job of
piecing together exactly how Jews were systematically stripped of
their property and why many never saw compensation after the war was
over.
Historians estimate the value of assets stolen from Austrian Jews at
between 84 billion and 217 billion schillings ($6.69 and 17.28
billion) in today's money.
NAZIS BRUTALLY LOOTED PROPERTY
In May 1938, the Nazi regime passed a law requiring Jews to register
all their possessions with a central authority. The regulation meant
Jewish assets -- from homes and businesses to personal effects -- were
up for grabs.
``People who were forced to sell their belongings were only allowed
to keep a fraction of the sum. The rest of the money was transferred
to an account to which they had restricted access,'' said
Bailer-Galanda.
The accounts themselves were soon swallowed up by further Third Reich
rulings.
Pursuing exactly how assets were looted by the Nazi state is the
easier part of the historians' task which is expected to take three to
four years.
Tracking what was taken during three months of wrecking and
plundering by Nazi thugs before the theft was institutionalised will
prove much tougher because no documents exist.
``Looting took place to a totally inconceivable extent,''
Bailer-Galanda said.
``The Nazi authorities stepped in, not out of humane reasons, but
because they thought if their party colleagues could get their hands
on so much property, the state should also cash in,'' she said.
Even household goods such as radios, electric irons, sports gear and
fur coats were confiscated. The deportation of thousands of Jews to
Nazi death camps followed.
RESTITUTION WAS HALF-HEARTED
Although the Austrian republic returned major assets after the end of
World War Two, a substantial amount of property was held back from
exiled owners or the heirs of families killed in the Holocaust.
Objects of moderate value seized by neighbours and lesser Nazi
officials are hard to trace.
``We will have difficulties with household furnishings and works of
art that are not Rembrandt,'' said Bailer-Galanda.
Austria this month approved legislation allowing art treasures
confiscated by the Nazis and quietly incorporated into national
museums after 1945 to be returned to their rightful owners.
But many paintings and antiques that are not museum exhibits may
still grace the homes of looters, their children or grandchildren,
Bailer-Galanda said.
Because so many Austrians profited from the pickings, politicians of
all parties after 1945 were not keen to relieve voters of their
recently acquired riches and actively deterred exiled Jews from
returning to stake their claims.
``Austria did everything it could to prevent exiles from coming
back,'' said Bailer-Galanda.
A persistent minority did come back to regain apartments and
businesses. A group of Jews who returned to a Vienna suburb from exile
in Shanghai were received by the local mayor, only to be told ``they
needn't think they are going to be presented with apartments or
work,'' Bailer-Galanda said.
Those who had lived and worked in rented accommodation -- and they
were the majority -- had no homes to return to at all. A law intended
to allow tenants turned out of their apartments on racial grounds to
take up residence in their former homes was never passed.
``Many exiled Austrians say they would in fact have gladly come back
if there had been a gesture of invitation,'' said Bailer-Galanda.
Among them could have been this year's Nobel Chemistry prize-winner
Walter Kohn. Kohn, whose family owned a postcard business in Vienna,
was forced to flee Austria in 1939.
The business was restored to the survivors of the Kohn family after
the end of World War Two. But a top-location shop on Vienna's elegant
Kaerntner Strasse shopping street was withheld.
Bailer-Galanda hopes the commission's work will contribute to
exploding the myth that ``Austrians were all innocent victims.''
``I hope what we dig up will have consequences, whether they are
political consequences or whether they lead to greater public
awareness,'' she said.
($1-12.56 Schilling)
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Staff warn of plans to scrap weekend and night patrols at depot,
reports Dalya Alberge (Times of London)
V&A treasures 'jeopardised by security cuts'
STAFF at the Victoria and Albert Museum have given a warning that
millions of objects are being put at risk by plans to privatise
security arrangements. It is feared that weekend and night patrols
will be scrapped at a repository housing one of the nation's most
important collections of oriental art, textiles and furniture.
The warning comes five days after the musuem admitted that two of its
Constable oil sketches, Dedham Lock and Mill and Sketch for Valley
Farm, had been stolen. Their combined value was UKPounds:800,000.
A security guard at the musuem claims that it is proposed to lay off
guards at Blythe House, a sprawling warehouse in Olympia, West London.
He said that the repository, which is almost as large as Harrods, was
shared with the British Museum and the Science Museum.
He said that last Friday, when the V&A was still searching its
premises in case the two Constables had only been mislaid, 16 guards
at the museum were told of a decision to privatise security
arrangements once the V&A took over the administration of the
repository from the British Museum in March. The V&A was already
planning similar moves for its other repositories, he said.
He alleged that the museum planned to install alarm systems at the
expense of manpower: "If there is a flood over a weekend, alarms won't
pick that up. No one will discover it until Monday morning, when it
will be too late. As 80 per cent of the objects are not even in
showcases, it would be a disaster." There had been quite a few floods
in the past that "were caught in time. It's so short-sighted, when you
see what's in there. We're appalled."
He said that the move was about cost-cutting. "They could cut an
hourly rate of UKPounds:7 or UKPounds:8 to UKPounds:4.50, doing away
with pensions and sick pay."
The repository is inside the old Post Office Savings Bank, a
Victorian building in which Lord Attenborough's Chaplin was partly
filmed. The guard said that the rooms were security-alarmed, but the
objects were on open show: a collection ranging from the largest
textile collection in Europe to Samurai swords was available for
public viewing by appointment. The guard said that, although the
British Museum had offered jobs to the guards at Great Russell
Street, staff remained dismayed at the decision.
Alan Borg, director of the V&A, confirmed yesterday that
privatisation of security was being examined and said staff were
bound to be concerned. "What we would be looking for is a service as
good, if not better, than what we currently have . . . At the moment,
there are no plans to change the nature of security cover."
He said that the museum was in the earliest stages of discussions
with various private security firms, and he dismissed the suggestion
that night and weekend patrols would go. But, asked to give an
assurance that the museum would never contemplate such a move, he
said: "There is no such thing as 'never'."
From: "Soeren M. Chr. Bisgaard" s_bisgaard@hotmail.com
Subject: Report of theft of Korean ceramics (Soeren M. Chr. Bisgaard)
Under a search of the Internet we have come across your homepage and
request you to kindly advise us on how to report and find 15 Korean
ceramic pieces stolen early in the morning on November 13, 1998 from
the Koryo Museum in Kyoto, Japan.
The 15 items are estimated to be worth 2.5 million US$. We have full
descriptions and slides that are being scanned with high resolution
into a jpeg format for swift distribution on the Internet. The
Japanese Police is of course already investigating. It seems to be the
work of a very professional team of thieves and it could possibly be a
internationally well organized Chinese or North Korean group that is
know to be operating in Japan.
Please advise us where and how to report this. Please provide e-mail,
telephone and facsimile, address etc. information to the appropriate
authorities, institutions and organizations including your own.
Thanking you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.
On behalf of the Koryo Museum,
Yours sincerely,
S. Bisgaard
e-mail address: s_bisgaard@hotmail.com
tel.: + 81 75 722 7223
fax.: + 81 75 701 1293
To: securma@museum-security.org
From: Robin Rogers riskmgmt@lava.net
Subject: Yet..yet more Sprinkler Thoughts ( Robin Rogers)
Ton: I have been reading the various message on sprinklers and
thought I might add a few thoughts. Most of the articles discuss
potential installation and specifications and similar issues. I would
like to add a few thoughts about the aftermath and being prepared for
a disaster. My focus is trying to minimize the effects of a sprinkler
system once it is activated. I investigate fires and special security
risks in facilities.
There seems to be an assumption in the other message that sprinklers
go off only when there are fires. Not so! They go off for all kinds
of reasons. We have seen a security guard changing clothes and hung
his coat on a sprinkler head. But the most common, is erotion causing
heads to fail with no warning.
Our community is adjacent the ocean. Many of the facilities still
have attics that ventilate to the outside. Salt water corodes the
soldered areas and they just fall apart. Normally a head will last 50
years or so. But weather elements seem to lower their lifespan. There
are other causes also. And occassionally, there will be material
failure although sprinklers have been quite durable is the past.
And we all get a false sense of security when our fire consultant
does our annual checks. But, look closely at the annual check. They
check the ballast, and the pumps. They check the pressure in the
system. Look at the contract, they are doing what they are suppose to
do. You just think they are doing more. It is not their fault. They
do not inspect the heads themselves.
The proceedure is: You go the the Fire Marshall and get a permit. You
test the system and return the results to the Fire Marshall after the
test. Everyone assumes the entire system is checked. But, when we
investigate after a loss and discover area failed, most of the time it
is an area that is not actually physically checked. The only way to
prevent this type failure is an eyeball to eyeball check of each head.
It will cost you more money but will safe you a heap of grief!
Sprinklers in our jurisdictions, perhaps a little older systems that
some of the new systems, allow a 3-5 minute delay before the alarm is
activated once water actually starts running. Several problems have
occurred. First, the water is now running for at least three-five
minutes when the first notice is given. Second, the security guard or
site manager forgot where the key is to shut off the system. PLEASE
TELL YOUR STAFF WHERE THE KEY IS. KEEP IT IN A GENERAL AREA and
EDUCATE YOUR STAFF WHERE IT IS AND HOW TO USE IT.
The gentleman early is correct. Sprinklers are very effective. But in
a lot of the cases we see, the water keeps running after the fire is
out. The Fire Department actually has to call plumbers to disconnect
the system because no one knows where the shut off values are or how
to operate them. EDUCATION IS THE KEY HERE EDUCATE EVERYONE LEFT
ALONE WITHIN YOUR FACILITY!
One final note: Dont throw things away just because they are wet.
There are a lot of resources in this website to help. They were very
useful to me in a recent loss.
Thanks Ton.
(riskmgmt@lava.net)
From: Antony F Anderson antonya@antonya.ace.co.uk
To: "'Ton Cremers'" securma@xs4all.nl
Subject: Recovery of Stolen and Looted Works of Art - London 10 December 1998
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 21:58:14 -0000
Recovery of Stolen and Looted Works of Art - Seminar London 10 December 1998
Details at: http://www.pipemedia.net/ial
Recent events and court cases demonstrate that the law surrounding ownership of looted and stolen works of art is murky at best. Transfer of goods from one country to another, the passage of time andFull details on Institute of Art and Law website at:
http://www.pipemedia.net/ial
Or contact IAL:
e-mail ial@pipemedia.co.uk
Tel: +44 116 255 5146
Fax +44 116 255 1782
----------------------------------------------
Programme
11.00 Chairman's Address - Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, McDonald Institute for Archeological Research
THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM
11.15 Bringing Together Works of Art and their Rightful Owners - Peter Watson
11.45 The Work of the Police in the Recovery of Stolen Art
Charles Hill, Nordstern Art Insurance
12.05 An Individual's Struggle to Reclaim Stolen Property
John Browning, Farmer
THE RESPONSE OF THE LAW
12.25 Passing of Title and Limitation Periods
Ruth Redmond-Cooper, Institute of Art and Law
1.00 Lunch
2.00 UNIDROIT and the EU Directive - Professor Norman Palmer
2.30 Resolving the Fallout from the Holocaust - Jonathan Kelly, Simmons and Simmons
PRACTICAL SOLUTION
S
3.00 Insurance: Insuring against Defective Title - Robert Read, Hiscox Underwriting
3.15 The Work of the Art Loss Register - James Emson
3.30 Tea
3.45 A Museum's Response - Andrew Burnett, British Museum
4.00 Anti-Seizure Statutes in Theory and Practice - Professor Norman Palmer
4.30 Legal Scenarios
5.15 Close
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cost: 152.75 UK POUNDS Including VAT, 50% reduction for IAL members.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact:
Institute of Art and Law
Bank Chambers
121 London Road
Leicester
LE2 0QT, UK
Tel +44 116 255 5146
Fax +44 116 255 1782
e-mail ial@pipemedia.co.uk
web site
http://www.pipemedia.net/ial
Antony Anderson
antonya@antonya.ace.co.uk
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