http://museum-security.org/
securma@xs4all.nl
SITE MAP
December 18, 1998
CONTENTS:
- Dawn raid nabs Lindsay painting (Sydney Morning Herald)
- La Fenice's silence is the same old song in Italy (Richard Owen)
- International Journal of Cultural Property
- SA's heritage crumbles away. National cultural treasures are
falling into wrack and ruin
- Sculpture of hope ruined by graffiti (Times of London)
- Coins of contention; Turkey battles to recover ancient trove of silver
- Hunt for stolen Birmingham photos reaches Web
- In search of Nazi plunder; Loyola professor tracks art looted
during the Holocaust
Dawn raid nabs Lindsay painting
By LES KENNEDY, Chief Police Reporter
Seventy years ago Norman Lindsay painted To the Elect as a gift for
his second wife, Rose.
The watercolour depicted the nude women and Pan-like mythical
creatures for which the artist, who retreated to the Blue Mountains,
became famous. An art dealer, Mr Tom Mathieson, estimates the
painting, measuring 60 by 70 centimetres, is worth $50,000.
But the painting and Lindsay's etching from it, valued at almost
$10,000, are missing after a smash and grab robbery at Mr Mathieson's
gallery at Ramsgate yesterday.
Detective Senior Constable Martin Hayston of Kogarah police said the
robbery at the Australian Art and Investment Gallery in Rocky Point
Road happened shortly before 4am.
The 1928 painting and etching had recently been advertised in a local
newspaper and art catalogue as being for sale.
"One of the display windows was smashed, someone has climbed in,
grabbed the painting and etching and left all within a minute,"
Constable Hayston said yesterday.
The Lindsay works were the only items stolen from among 140 art works
on sale. The thieves fled before a private security patrol arrived
within minutes to answer the alarm.
Art dealers have been asked to report anyone offering the works for
sale and Customs has been alerted in case someone tries to smuggle
them overseas. Anyone with information to assist police in locating
the works is asked to contact Kogarah Detectives on 95880499.
This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use,
copying or mirroring is prohibited.
La Fenice's silence is the same old song in Italy
FROM RICHARD OWEN IN VENICE
NEARLY three years after Venice's magnificent La Fenice opera house
was destroyed by fire, the theatre is still a ruin and the project to
restore it is at a standstill. Experts involved in the restoration now
admit that there is no prospect of the baroque 18th-century opera
house being reopened on schedule for the millennium, and some even say
it will never be rebuilt at all. "This is a very Italian scandal,"
says Professor Paolo Costa, the former rector of Venice University and
now a city councillor. "The work is being held up by legal challenges
over the rebuilding contract. But it is also a symptom of a much
deeper Italian disease - the tendency to start big construction
projects and then let them drag on for years."
Donations have poured in from well-wishers, with further funds
provided by the central and regional governments. But the initial
emergency work - removing rubble and shoring up the remaining walls of
the structure - swallowed up £10 million. According to the schedule,
the lost interior should now be rising again, with local craftsmen
lovingly recreating the rococo interior of stalls and boxes, stuccoed
walls, velvet curtains and gilded ceilings.
In fact the theatre presents a sorry sight. The decorated façade,
which was largely left intact, has been cleaned, but is hidden by
scaffolding and high wooden screens. No work has been done for nine
months.
The restoration was started by Impregilo, an Italian construction
firm owned by Fiat. But at the beginning of this year the contract
was challenged by Holzmann Romagnoli, a German-Italian consortium
which had been the runner-up in the contract race. It argued
successfully in the courts that the Impregilo bid was artificially
low.
In July, a court ordered Impregilo to stop work and hand over to its
rival. But the two firms remain locked in a legal battle over
compensation.
La Repubblica noted that the debacle was "just another nail in the
coffin of a dying city".
http://www.oup.co.uk/intjcp/
International Journal of Cultural Property
The International Journal of Cultural Property, published by OUP from
1998, is a major forum for the discussion of all questions relating to
cultural property policy, ethics, preservation, economics and law.
SA's heritage crumbles away
National cultural treasures are falling into wrack and ruin because of
an R8,8-billion shortfall in funds
MICHAEL SCHMIDT
MUCH of South Africa's cultural heritage is under threat as museums
and monuments fall apart at the seams because the Department of
Public Works cannot raise the R8,8-billion it needs to maintain its
assets.
National treasures like the 17th-century Slave Lodge in Cape Town and
the Byzantine-style synagogue in Pretoria - where President Nelson
Mandela and his co-accused appeared in the Rivonia treason trial in
1962, and where the 1977 inquest into the death of Steve Biko was held
- are falling into ruin.
The three-storey building housing the priceless archives of the
National Cultural History Museum in Pretoria has been left to fall
apart because there is no money to fix it.
The museum's collection of African artefacts, dating back 200 000
years, is under threat.
Even the Union Buildings in Pretoria have suffered rainwater leakage
in the library, though they, like the Palace of Justice in Pretoria
and The Castle in Cape Town, are one of Public Works' key renovation
projects and are undergoing a R40-million face-lift.
Other threatened buildings and exhibitions include:
The Colonial Building in Maritzburg, which was stripped of its
protective copper roof cladding by thieves;
The Old Station in Elandshoek, Mpumalanga, which was vandalised;
The Old Bellevue School in Somerset East, Eastern Cape, which has
rotten floorboards and a tree growing through a wall;
The 1902 Charlestown magistrate's court near Volksrust, Mpumalanga,
which had its corrugated iron walls and doors stolen; and
The Michaelis Collection in Cape Town, the best exhibit of Dutch and
Flemish art outside the Netherlands, which has no proper climate
control mechanism needed to preserve the paintings for future
generations. No maintenance has been done on the building for six
years. The occupational health and safety section of the Department of
Labour has called for an urgent meeting with the Department of Public
Works in an attempt to resolve the crisis.
Faiza Salie, the Department of Labour's chief health and safety
inspector, said that as many as 60 percent of the state's 200 000
buildings would probably contravene the Occupational Health and Safety
Act of 1993.
"We hear a lot about conditions that are not conducive to health and
safety, such as dangerous lifts - and we have lots of multistorey
public buildings with lifts," she said.
Sivi Gounden, deputy director-general of Public Works' accommodation,
said the department's annual emergency fund of R90-million left "very
little" (about R450) for each building. "This is crisis management. We
are handling it on a case-by-case basis, only intervening where there
is a threat to life and limb," he said.
Frans Basson, spokesman for Arts, Culture, Science and Technology
Minister Lionel Mtshali, said conditions under which national
collections were housed were viewed "in a serious light" and had "top
priority".
He said that despite a need for maintenance, no buildings were in
such a poor condition that museum collections, staff or visitors were
in danger.
But top museum staff disputed this.
"I am appalled at how our buildings have deteriorated in the last few
years," said Rocco Human, administrative head of the SA Cultural
History Museum in Cape Town.
"Public Works tells us we are on a maintenance programme but repairs
get postponed every year. Our heritage is slipping down the drain."
He said three museums - the Slave Lodge, the Koopmans de Wet House
and the Bo-Kaap Museum - were "in a terrible condition" and had not
been repaired in five years.
"There are cracks in the walls of the Slave Lodge that you can see
right through, some of the window shutters are broken and the whole
place is a fire hazard."
Glyn Balkwill, deputy director of collections for the National
Cultural History Museum, which runs nine facilities including Paul
Kruger's house, said no preventive maintenance had been done on any of
their buildings for four years.
He recently submitted a 40-page report to Public Works demanding
action. "We're very concerned about all of our buildings," he said.
Sculpture of hope ruined by graffiti
BY RUSSELL JENKINS
SUPERLAMBBANANA was said by its Japanese artist to embody the
potential and optimism of Liverpool when it was unveiled in May. The
director of the Tate Gallery called the 15-ton half lamb, half banana
sculpture a prayer for the city's future. Seven months later the
figure, which has been moved from near the Pier Head to Williamson
Square, has become of a symbol of inner city decay. Vandals have
covered it with graffiti. Names and slogans have been scrawled across
its tail and legs in black marker pen. The graffiti upset Olive
Davies, 66, who lives near by: "It is an absolute disgrace and proves
these people have no respect for anything."
SuperLambBanana is positioned in a Liverpool City Council Gold Zone,
where cleaning up graffiti is a priority. But it is feared that high
pressure water jets used by the council could damage the structure's
concrete surface. Tony Siebenthaler, of the Liverpool Architecture and
Design Trust, said: "They haven't got the right equipment so we are
working out how to clean it before it makes its next move in the new
year."
From: w_robinson@globe.com
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 08:17:54 -0500
Subject: coins
Coins of contention
Turkey battles to recover ancient trove of silver
By Anne E. Kornblut, Globe Staff, 12/13/98
BAYINDIR, Turkey - The great coin discovery of the century happened
almost by chance, rising out of a muddy field to the shouts of three
men who simply thought they struck gold.
Chasing the whir of a hand-held metal detector, three peasants had
rushed to dig a hole, kneeling in soil still wet with rain. When
hundreds of shining pieces began to appear, overflowing from a jar
lodged in the earth, they jumped up.
''We are rich!'' yelled Ibrahim Basbug. ''We are rich!''
It was, for a brief moment on April 18, 1984, a modern leprechaun
tale. But almost as quickly as the peasants could stuff the coins into
paper bags, exhuming Athenian decadrachmas buried more than 2,000
years earlier, an epic saga with remarkable twists was beginning to
unfold.
In the years that followed - as the silver slipped out of Turkey,
allegedly into the hands of smugglers and US collectors - it would
prompt a lawsuit in Boston federal court, entangling two Harvard
classmates and an eccentric billionaire, William I. Koch. Academics
would wring their hands over the fate of one of the world's premier
antiquities finds. The peasants would go to jail.
Even now, as two sides prepare for a trial that pits the Republic of
Turkey against the owners of the disputed coins, a moral dilemma
persists: Who has a rightful claim to such rare vestiges of the past?
In the shadows of the controversy is the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,
where the disputed coins were authenticated. A year ago, on another
antiquities issue, the MFA came under fire for acquiring pre-Columbian
artifacts, despite evidence they were illegally smuggled out of
Guatemala. Cornelius C. Vermeule III, curator of the MFA's classical
art department for four decades until his retirement in 1996,
encouraged Koch to buy the coins. Even after Vermeule received a
warning that Turkish authorities were looking for plundered coins, he
continued to reassure Koch that his purchase would give ''no cause for
regret.''
These days, the coins are locked in a Florida bank vault held by
Koch, an investor best known for his family's $35 billion oil company
and his 1992 America's Cup win. Rarely shy of a good court brawl - he
once took his mistress, Catherine de Castelbajac, to Boston housing
court to evict her from his Four Seasons penthouse, and last summer
sued his own brothers for $2 billion of the family share - Koch has
shown no interest in returning the treasure out of good will.
Nor does he see a need to. Along with Jonathan H. Kagan and Jeffrey
Spier - friends from Harvard and co-partners in OKS, the corporation
that bought the coins - Koch says he acted in good faith in 1984.
Furthermore, Koch added in a statement provided to the Globe last
week, his is an entirely different hoard - not the so-called ''Elmali
hoard'' plundered illegally that year.
Turkish officials have amassed evidence to the contrary, including
correspondence from foreign experts and essays by Spier himself. They
present an apparently simple case: Although some 36 civilizations
have occupied Turkish soil over time, the hoard is part of the
country's ''national heritage,'' which the United States has agreed
to respect since signing the 1970 UNESCO treaty condemning illegal
antiquities trades.
But the international community has also suffered from the loss,
according to even those who would see the hoard sent back. Ozgen
Acar, a Turkish investigative journalist who helped break the story,
says the coins ''belong to all of humanity.''
''This hoard is a very important part of a historic chain,'' Acar
said, passionately describing the Greek battle victories that might
explain the coins' burial, presumably around 465 B.C.
Ahmet Ali Senturk, a 68-year-old farmer from Bayindir, is one of the
three who discovered the coins after their 24-century interment.
Fourteen years later, Senturk is plagued by the discovery, he said
during an interview in his home. And he is baffled by the amount Koch
and his partners allegedly paid - roughly $3 million for some 1,700 of
the coins.
Seated cross-legged on a faded cushion in his mud hut, Senturk gazed
out the window in silence. Donkeys bleated outside, and as his wife,
Huriye, served cups of yogurt milk, Senturk began to talk about the
find, which brought him $80 and a year in jail.
''After that, if it was the same experience, I would leave them in
the ground,'' he said. ''I wouldn't touch it.''
It started as a lark. Two local men, Bayram Sungur and Ibrahim
Basbug, had been scouring the fields with a metal detector for days -
common sport in Anatolia, where piles of relics are unearthed
illegally every year. They were about to admit defeat when they
encountered Senturk on a village path. Senturk insisted they
demonstrate the gadget.
They piled into Senturk's yellow Fiat - the only car in the
500-resident town - and drove down the hillside to an open farming
strip. Basbug got out and waved the machine in the direction of the
ground. It buzzed right away.
The men assumed it was a fluke. But when the detector kept responding
to the site - and none other - they began to dig the soil with their
hands.
And there, just inches beneath the surface, were the coins - ''big,
small, many,'' Senturk recalled. ''Ibrahim was shouting, `We are rich!
We are rich!' And I said, let's go to the police. If we give it to
them, they will give us a percentage.''
Basbug kissed his friend on the cheek with excitement. ''Nobody will
hear about it,'' he told Senturk. ''It will be quiet. Even the
roosters in Istanbul won't be heard.''
Senturk drove to Basbug's house, where they stayed up until dawn,
counting and washing off some 1,900 coins. The next day, Basbug and
Sungur drove to the port city of Antalya to get them appraised,
Senturk said. When two pieces sold for about $200 each, they began to
realize what they had; Basbug and Sungur flew to Istanbul, tracking
down a well-connected smuggler, Fuat Aydiner, in the Grand Bazaar, to
unload the rest.
But the discoverers' fortunes soon began to reverse. After the sale
in Istanbul, two of the peasants were arrested by police acting on a
tip. Basbug, Senturk said, had spent the windfall on an alcoholic
binge, during which he stood in the middle of the street and shouted,
''We are the three richest men in Turkey!'' He then disappeared.
''I asked him [after he was caught two years later], `Is this the
rooster that nobody would hear?''' Senturk recalled.
Senturk and Sungur were tried and convicted. Senturk spent a year in
jail, and spent the following decade ''getting better'' after the
ordeal. But he did not forget the coins: Last year, Senturk testified
in preparation for the Turkish lawsuit, examining 200 photographs of
Koch's coins.
''There is no doubt in my mind that these coins are among the coins
that we dug up in the field,'' he said.
By the time the peasants were caught, the hoard had been launched on
its international journey, slipping across the border of Turkey into
Germany, and ultimately into the hands of American numismatists who
knew how extraordinary it was, according to documents filed in Boston
federal court.
''It was kind of the King Tut of numismatic discoveries,'' said
Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum in New
York.
Aydiner, the Istanbul smuggler, had spent more than $500,000 on the
hoard, a relative pittance, especially for a cache that included 13
rare Athenian decadrachmas, of which there are only 30 in the world,
and the other 1,000 Lycian coins.
Aydiner then nearly doubled the price, reselling it to a group of
renowned smugglers in Munich - including Edip Telliagaoglu, a convict
nicknamed ''blind Edip,'' who had a forbidding reputation, according
to court papers.
And yet, Turkish officials allege, when the dealers started peddling
the hoard around Europe, their dodgy backgrounds failed to dissuade
one erudite buyer: Jeffrey Spier, then an archeology PhD candidate at
Oxford University. He flew to Munich, setting in motion a purchase
that Turkish officials say became part of his doctoral thesis - and,
ultimately, spurred the long dispute.
After seeing the coins, court documents allege, Spier called Jonathan
Kagan, a friend who graduated a year behind him at Harvard, in 1978.
Kagan, also a classics enthusiast and a director at the investment
firm Lazard Freres, then mentioned the potential purchase to a man who
could afford the valuable prize: William Koch.
Koch would eventually become a fixture of flamboyance in
Massachusetts, annoying his neighbors on Cape Cod with helicopter
traffic, publicly evicting his mistress from his luxury condo, and
battling the state for what is believed to be the biggest tax refund
in history, $47.5 million.
But conscientiousness was not his trademark even in 1984, Turkish
officials allege. After agreeing to buy into the collection, Koch had
it authenticated by Vermeule, an equally idiosyncratic character
known for his fluency in seven languages and razor-sharp memory.
Shortly thereafter, in July, 1984, Vermeule received a letter from
Silvia Hurter, a manager at Bank Leu in Switzerland, who said Turkish
authorities were reportedly looking for the illegally smuggled hoard.
One month later, according to court documents, Vermeule sent an
official letter telling Koch not to worry. He apparently took the
advice.
Yet other reasons for concern started cropping up. Almost immediately
after the sale, Koch and his partners decided they had been cheated,
and sued the Munich dealers for pieces that were withheld. Then, in
1986, Acar, heard about the alleged smuggling operation and began
working on a story.
Other collectors were becoming suspicious. Bruce McNall, the former
owner of the Los Angeles Kings, had put 10 pieces up for sale; he
returned them to Turkey in 1988 when their origins were questioned.
The same year, court papers said, Vermeule wrote to Koch: ''It would
be wise to let dust settle before exhibiting the coins. One doesn't
want a process server from the Turkish Embassy's New York lawyers!''
Turkey filed suit in 1989.
Koch and his partners deny their coins were among those unearthed by
Senturk. By their account, Spier first saw his coins on Feb. 22,
1984, two months earlier.
And in an interview last week, Vermeule also denied the disputed
coins could have come from Turkey - despite the warnings he issued to
Koch in 1984 and 1988. He also said the letter from Hurter was about
a hoard ''that may well not be Mr. Koch's coins.''
Whether that argument will succeed will be determined in court. In
the meantime, according to Ricardo J. Elia, associate archeology
professor at Boston University, the loser is the community at large.
''It's like taking a history book and ripping out the pages,'' Elia
said. ''Turkey is responsible for protecting all these centuries of
history within its borders. Who else is supposed to protect it?''
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 12/13/98.
Hunt for stolen Birmingham photos reaches Web
Rare photos worth $750,000 appear on FBI site after disappearing from
Houston hotel
By Mike Martindale / The Detroit News
BIRMINGHAM -- The theft of $750,000 in rare photographs owned by a
Birmingham art gallery has made the FBI's National Stolen Art File
Web site. The 120 black and white photographs, all owned by the
Halstead Gallery, were reported missing on June 10 outside a
Houston, Texas, hotel. A spokeswoman at the Halstead Gallery
declined to comment on the theft, which remains under
investigation, said Frank Agraz a spokesman with the FBI's Houston
office. "The amount of this art theft is considerable," said
Agraz. "Like in other cases, we utilized the FBI's Web site in the
hope that putting the information out will catch someone's
attention." Agraz said the rare photographs were stolen sometime
between the hours of 5:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. from a 1998 green Dodge
Caravan parked at the West Loop Hampton Inn in Houston, Texas. The
photographs, listed on the FBI's Web site on Nov. 23, were prints
made by some well-known photographers who have chronicled
everything from the arrival of early immigrants to the United
States to moody portraits of children. Seven stolen photographs
featured on the Web page include three by photographer Lewis Hine:
Climbing Into America, Ellis Island, New York, a 1905 photograph
depicting immigrants arriving in America; Powerhouse Mechanic, a
1925 portrayal of a muscled man leaning on a large wrench; and Man
On Hoisting Ball, Empire State Building, New York. Also missing
are Half Shell Nautilus, a 1927 still life photograph of a
seashell by Edward Weston; Fifth Avenue Row House, a 1936
photograph by Berenice Abbott and two character portraits by Paul
Strand. The FBI maintains a computerized list of art objects
stolen throughout the United States and the world. The National
Stolen Art File was created by the FBI because of an increasing
number of thefts in art and cultural items. The Halstead Gallery
case is among a list of thefts which includes a 1727 Stradivarius
violin; a Rembrandt painting; and a 15th-century Russian Icon
removed from a church. Anyone with information about the stolen
photographs is asked to contact the Detroit FBI at (313) 965-2323.
Stolen Art
The FBI's National Stolen Art File includes cases of missing
historical art work. Pieces must be valued at $2,000 or more and
be connected with a major crime. The Web site is one of several
links available on the FBI's national Web page. The site can be
accessed at http://www.fbi.gov/art.htm
From: w_robinson@globe.com
Subject: Forwarding page one piece in Monday Baltimore Sun
In search of Nazi plunder
Loyola professor tracks art looted during the Holocaust
By Michael Hill Sun Staff
The path leading from artworks looted by the Nazis to their rightful
owners often goes through a garret-like office in a building at Loyola
College. There history professor Jonathan Petropoulos keeps the
results of six years of combing the archives of European museums and
dealers, institutions and individuals -- work that has produced two
books and made him a leading authority on the subject. Two weeks ago,
he positively identified a Monet on display at Boston's Museum of Fine
Arts as one taken by the Nazis from the Paris gallery of Paul
Rosenberg, who fled France in 1940 and whose family still has a
gallery in New York. The Rosenbergs are expected to seek recovery of
the painting. Earlier this month, Petropoulos spoke at two
international gatherings of officials considering how to recover the
loot from the Holocaust, a still-unresolved issue that resonates more
than a half-century later. "When I was in graduate school, it was a
matter of documents and archives," Petropoulos said. "Now I have met
some of the victims and have some feel for them. There is a human
dimension to this history." There is, it turns out, also a practical
dimension to his abstract academic work. It hit home for this
37-year-old California native when he addressed the conference on
Holocaust restitution held at the National Archives facility in
College Park. "I was talking and I looked over and saw that Stuart
Eizenstat was scribbling furiously," he said, referring to the
undersecretary of state who has become the U.S. government's point man
on this subject. "I thought maybe he was going to tell me I was out of
time. But then I realized he was taking notes," Petropoulos said. "On
what I was saying." He clearly is more accustomed to Loyola
undergraduates taking notes on his lectures than undersecretaries of
state. But Eizenstat said Petropoulos should not underestimate his
importance. "His work was seminal in the progress that we made,"
Eizenstat said. "The fact that he spoke as an academic expert, someone
who did not have an ax to grind, gave him a credibility that was
important in influencing the delegates," Eizenstat said, emphasizing
that those delegates went on to agree to principles for tracking and
returning art that went far beyond his expectations going into the
conference. Said Petropoulos: "It is satisfying to know that my
efforts have some practical consequences." Petropoulos, at once
soft-spoken and enthusiastic, said his fascination with World War II
dates to his childhood and his father's stories of living in Athens,
Greece, under German occupation, of tearing down the swastika flag
that flew over the Acropolis when the Nazis fled. In graduate school
at Harvard, he found what every Ph.D. candidate is looking for -- "a
gap in the literature" -- when he decided to write about Nazi art
collecting: who in the Nazi hierarchy collected what and why. Three
years of scouring the archives in Germany -- "The Nazis were fanatical
record-keepers" -- led to his first book, "Art as Politics in the
Third Reich," published in 1996. It was only the first chapter. Three
more years in archives led to his second book, due out next spring.
"The Faustian Bargain" looks at what Petropoulos calls "the second
tier," a group of art professionals -- museum directors, academics,
critics -- who could have left, but who agreed to work with the Nazis
in return for access to the immense hoards of art they were collecting
from across the continent. "What was chilling was what happened to
these people after the war," Petropoulos said. "They were
rehabilitated and resumed their careers. They went right back into
their professions. They all had very important positions -- museum
directors, dealers, academics, critics. "That's one reason for the
book -- they may have avoided justice after the war, but they are not
going to get away with it in the eyes of history," he said. "I must
say that I identify with them to some extent. They were academics,
intellectuals, professionals. The study poses a question that hit home
with me: What would I have done in similar circumstances?" Though the
book focuses on people who are long dead -- German law keeps personal
papers sealed for 30 years after a death -- Petropoulos interviewed
many living Germans and Austrians who traveled in the Nazi art world.
"Most of them met me for lunch at restaurants. They would not let me
into their homes," he said. "I don't think they wanted me to see what
was in their personal collections." Though this book is done,
Petropoulos' research continues. The agreements reached at the recent
conference should open up more archives and documents. He sees a
chance that the advancing age of the people he has met will help as
well. "I hope some of them, as they approach the end of their lives,
will want to make a full accounting of what they did," he said. "For
now, they are still guarded, still secretive. I'm sure there are
vaults in Swiss banks that are full of looted art." For Petropoulos,
what was once an academic exercise has become something of a crusade.
On the computer in his office at Loyola, where he has taught for four
years, is a Web site, The Documentation Project, launched recently by
him and a small group of academics. Among its many documents are
pictures of the loot piled up in the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris,
where the Nazis stored much of their stolen French art. Click on
almost any painting or object and a detailed image appears on the
screen along with information on its identity. "Many of these images
we have found have never been seen before" said Elizabeth Simpson, a
professor at the Bard Graduate Center in New York and chair of The
Documentation Project. "Our goal is to produce something that is
historically relevant that will also be relevant to people trying to
recover their works of art." Petropoulos said there is something
special about finding lost art. "It's not like gold or a bank account.
The people trying to recover art are not usually that interested in
the monetary value. These are paintings that hung in people's homes,
that were part of their daily lives. "They are a part of a family's
history. Recovering them is an attempt to connect with the family
members who collected them, an attempt to recover a part of their own
history."
Originally published on Dec 14 1998
Main Indexpage
