[CPProt.net] Mysterious journey has local stop; Stolen 16th-century altar to be displayed in Houston before returning to Peru

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

Mysterious journey has local stop
Stolen 16th-century altar to be displayed in Houston before returning to
Peru

July 29, 2005
By ALLAN TURNER
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
RESOURCES 

AN ARTISTIC MIRACLE

A massive, intricately carved gold-covered Spanish colonial altarpiece
recovered from a New Mexico art gallery where it was offered for sale for
$600,000 will go on display Sunday at Houston's Museum of Natural Science
before being returned to the church in a tiny Peruvian mountain village from
which it was stolen.

The 10-foot-tall, 700-pound altarpiece, created by itinerant European
artists traveling through Latin America in the last decades of the 16th
century, will be unveiled at 1:30 p.m. for free viewing in the museum's
grand hall as part of Hermann Park's Peruvian Independence Day celebration.

Beginning Monday, the rescued artwork will be installed as a temporary
component of the museum's current exhibit, "Gold! Natural Treasure, Cultural
Obsession."

Museum spokeswoman Erin Blatzer said the altarpiece likely will be exhibited
through the end of August.

"It's quite a magnificent piece," said Dirk Van Tuerenhout, the museum's
anthropological curator who traveled to El Paso on Wednesday to arrange for
the artwork's transport to Houston. "It's quite eye-catching. There's a lot
of gold, and the relief (carving) is remarkable. The carved figures come
halfway out of the panels. It's very deep relief."

Authorities said the artwork was reported stolen from the tiny Andean
village of Challapampa on Lake Titicaca in January 2002. Shortly thereafter,
U.S. authorities received a tip that the piece was being offered for sale at
a Santa Fe, N.M., gallery. The artwork, consisting of three gold-leafed
panels, had been disassembled for smuggling but was not seriously damaged.


Alternate history
The gallery provided potential buyers a history of the artwork indicating it
entered the United States as part of a private Spanish collection in 1961,
the Albuquerque Journal reported. It supposedly was sold by galleries in New
York City and Tuscon, Ariz. But the newspaper said the New York gallery
never existed, the Tuscon gallery insisted it had not handled the piece and
a textbook dealing with Spanish colonial art listed the altarpiece as being
in Peru as late as the early 1980s. 

In May 2003, Santa Fe gallery owner Ron Messick turned the artwork over to
federal authorities, who transferred it to a secure El Paso facility for
storage.

A grand jury investigation was discontinued after Messick died of cancer.
His partner, Paul Rochford, entered an agreement with federal authorities
through which the altarpiece would be returned to Peru.

In a statement, Eduardo Rivoldi, Peruvian consul general in Houston, said
the altarpiece is being returned to Challapampa in accordance with a 1997
agreement between Peru and the United States that restricts import of
pre-Hispanic and some colonial-era items from the South American nation.

Peruvian officials, who collaborated with the science museum on last year's
exhibit spotlighting the Incan ruins at Machu Picchu, offered the museum the
opportunity to exhibit the altarpiece pending arrangements for its return to
Peru, Van Tuerenhout said.

Alex Riveros, head of public diplomacy at Peru's Washington, D.C., embassy,
noted the theft of the altarpiece was part of a larger pattern in which
thieves had targeted churches for their colonial-era artworks.


Centuries of looting
The Challapampa piece, which is thought to have been crafted by artist
Bernardo Bitti and sculptor Pedro de Vargas, had been moved from its
traditional location in the church while the building was repaired, he said.


"This goes back to the Spanish in Peru," Riveros said. "This looting has
been going on for centuries. ... Now it's different. Organized crime is
involved.

"The problem always arises from demand. And as long as there is demand in
Europe and the United States for big pieces of art, and people are willing
to pay huge amounts for it, there will be people willing to face the risks
of smuggling it out of the country."

Challapampa's population is only about 3,000. In many ways it is typical of
the rural hamlets that possess artistic wealth in their churches.

"There are hundreds of small towns," Riveros said. "And the people gave
everything to have these artworks. ... Peru is a very religious country."


No isolated incident
Van Tuerenhout, who previously lived in Guatemala, agreed such thefts from
villages and cities are common. "Nothing will stop these people if they have
their eye on something," he said of art thieves. " ... It's quite a
prevalent problem, and it has all sorts of issues. The village loses, the
archaeological community, the art-historian community - all of them lose
when the piece is gone." 

Peruvian officials think the Challapampa altarpiece might have been first
taken into nearby Bolivia, then smuggled into the United States in freight
containers.

In a somewhat similar incident, art thieves in the 1980s stripped
13th-century Byzantine frescoes from a chapel near Lysi in Cyprus, intent on
selling them piece by piece. When officials of Houston's Menil Foundation
learned the frescoes were being offered for sale on the "hot" art market,
they purchased the stolen art with the knowledge and approval of the Church
of Cypress, the works' rightful owner.

In a long-term loan agreement with the Cypress church, the Menil restored
the frescoes and arranged for their display in a consecrated chapel. They
have been on public view since 1997.

allan.turner at chron.com