From museum-security at museum-security.org  Sun May  1 08:00:43 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 08:00:43 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] British government scraps key database. It was
	supposed to be a crucial element in helping to enforce the
	new Dealing in Cultural Objects Act
Message-ID: <20050501060044.ZOES1752.amsfep15-int.chello.nl@cremers>

>From The Art Newspaper:
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/


British government scraps key database
It was supposed to be a crucial element in helping to enforce the new
Dealing in Cultural Objects Act
By Martin Bailey 

LONDON. The British government has quietly dropped plans for a database of
stolen art and antiquities, although this was a key element in helping to
enforce a new law. The Dealing in Cultural Objects Act came into force at
the beginning of 2004, and the government then advised dealers that
consulting the projected database should be part of the "due diligence"
process, to help establish that they were not knowingly handling tainted
objects.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) warned the trade last
year that in cases of suspected breaches of the new law, "a failure to
consult the database [once established] would be a further evidential factor
in determining whether the accused knew or believed that an object was
tainted."
The pilot "Database of stolen and unlawfully removed cultural objects" was
to have been available in April 2004.
Following inquiries from The Art Newspaper, DCMS has admitted that it and
the Home Office has decided "not to progress" the database. It said an
independent appraisal had reached three conclusions: a database would not
have a significant effect on reducing crime, the long-term sustainability of
the database could not be assured, and there were question marks over how
much demand there would be for such a database.
The U-turn is surprising, given DCMS's commitment to the scheme in the
build-up to the Dealing in Cultural Objects Act. The database had originally
been a major recommendation in the 2000 report of the Illicit Trade Advisory
Panel, chaired by Professor Norman Palmer. However, the scheme needed
support from the Home Office, which does not regard the recovery of art and
antiquities as a priority. The database would have been expensive-and the
question was whether it should be primarily funded by the government or the
trade.
Professor Palmer admits that he is disappointed with the news. He says that
some members "were outraged, with disbelief that this policy decision had
been taken without reference to the panel."
The House of Commons select committee on Culture, Media and Sport was also
scathing about the U-turn. "We are dismayed not so much by the decision
itself-although it does seem to fly in the face of the evidence we received
(not least from the Government)-but by the sheer amount of time it has taken
to be made."
Last month the British Art Market Federation, representing the trade,
pointed out that a nationally-run database, subsidised by public funds,
would have represented "a major deterrent against art crime". 



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Sun May  1 09:06:45 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 09:06:45 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] Italy is a treasure trove of buried antiquities. But
	now they are being systematically plundered by illegal
	tomb-raiders, who operate with virtual impunity
Message-ID: <20050501070645.FKWB1293.amsfep18-int.chello.nl@cremers>

The great smash and grab
Italy is a treasure trove of buried antiquities. But now they are being
systematically plundered by illegal tomb-raiders, who operate with virtual
impunity. Rose George follows the loot from the hills of Lazio to London's
thriving black market
01 May 2005


In an ordinary living-room in an ordinary, small Italian town, a young man
shows off an ashtray. "Nice, isn't it?" says "Gianni", who prefers not to
reveal his real name. The "ashtray" is a terracotta-coloured dish, painted
around the rim, cracked and repaired. It looks nothing special, but it is,
because it's about 2,600 years old, because it was looted at night from a
tomb in a field nearby, and because by keeping it on his mother's sideboard,
Gianni and his mother are criminals.

Italy is one of the most historically rich countries in the world, with
100,000 churches, 3,500 museums and 6,000 registered archaeological sites.
By a 1902 Italian law, no private citizen can own a cultural artefact. Any
antiquity sent out of the country needs an export licence. On paper, the
trade and market in antiquities is regulated by some of the strictest laws
in the world. In practice, Italy is as pillaged, ravished and raided as
Iraq, but without the headlines.

Until last year, that is, when MPs from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's
Forza Italia party made a stunning suggestion. As an amendment to the 2005
budget bill, they said, why not let anyone in possession of a cultural
artefact - even if stolen - be allowed to keep it by paying 5 per cent of
its value to the state? The value, said MP Gianfranco Conte, would be
decided by the Archeological Superintendency, Italy's archaeological
authority, and if the Superintendency didn't decide a price in time, by the
finder. It was an amnesty that would enable people to legalise their
possessions, he said, just like Berlusconi's 2001 amnesty that allowed
property illegally acquired abroad to be brought into Italy, or the 2003 one
that legalised buildings erected in contravention of planning laws. Both
those amnesties caused controversy; this one caused uproar. Italy's former
culture minister, Giovanna Melandri, called it an "incitement to rob".
Colonel Giovanni Pastore, vice-commander of the Carabinieri Unit for
Safeguarding Cultural Protection, or art squad, wants to be diplomatic, but
even he calls it "scandalous". Professor Salvatore Settis, a leading
archaeologist and head of Pisa's Scuola Normale - Italy's Oxbridge - called
it "shameful" and "an invitation to do-it-yourself archeological digging."

As if there aren't problems enough. Looting is an ancient activity. The
Romans raided * Etruscan tombs for bronze and gold. Eighteenth and
19th-century gentlemen considered tomb-raiding a polite activity. But the
early 21st century is boom-time. Looters these days have better technology
and better networks. The market for illegal antiquities from Italy, says
Annamaria Moretti, the archaeological superintendent for Lazio, "is
flourishing" The loot always finds buyers. And the buyers are invariably,
somewhere along the line, based in Britain.

The global looting market - worth ?1bn a year, according to some - always
flows one way: from antiquities-rich countries to rich countries. From
Italy, Peru, Iraq, Cambodia, looted artefacts usually pass through London,
the biggest legal and illegal art market in the world. Then they end up in
private collections, which you'd expect, and in museums, which you might
not. In the past, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Paul Getty Museum
have both been accused of buying items with murky histories. Sotheby's
auction house was exposed by the investigative reporter Peter Watson as a
standard transit point for looted southern Italian vases, and closed down
its London antiquities auctions as a result. Gianni may be a humble
tomb-raider, but he's the first link on a chain that can end with the
biggest and most powerful names in art, too close to home for comfort.

As tomb-raiders go, Gianni is a relative novice. But there are plenty of
masters around to teach him, such as the prolific local tombarolo who gave
his mother the ashtray. Gianni grew up with tombs, because where he lives is
packed with them. His small town used to be in Etruria, land of the
Etruscans, a people whose heyday was the sixth and fifth centuries BC, and
who prized bronze and gold and luxury as much as the dissolute Romans who
stamped out their kingdom. More importantly for Gianni, they also buried it,
at the conclusion of lavish three-day funeral ceremonies, along with bowls,
pots and other income-generating cultural objects. Necropolises abound
across this central Italian belt, and though many have been dug up - like
the stunning tombs at Cerveteri, an hour from Rome - there are still
pickings left for Gianni.

Gianni takes me for a walk near the site of the ancient town of Ferrentum,
just off a highway on the way to Viterbo in Lazio. Ferrentum's Roman past
has been officially excavated by the Archaeological Superintendency, as an
impressive amphitheatre and mosaic floors make clear. But its Etruscan
history still lies mostly under the green farmland. Gianni points to the
hill opposite. "That's where they'd have lived, and they always put their
necropolis on a hill nearby." Gianni has read up on the Etruscans. It's out
of genuine curiosity about his ancestors, he says, but he's equally
passionate about the tricks for pillaging their tombs. "You make a metal
rod," says Gianni. "You can't buy them." He made two from rusting
agricultural implements, heating and bending the metal into shape to get a
metre-long rod. "You cut a slice into it, like a corkscrew, which gathers
the earth, so you can tell if it's tomb earth or not." Then you take your
rod, and you go for a walk. To those who can read the land, tomb sites are
visible enough: the grass might be drier, because of the empty space
underneath. In winter, the snow might look different. Once you've located a
potential site, probe the ground with the metal rod until you find
nothingness. This may mark the entrance, or dromos, to an Etruscan
underground tomb. "You find it by daylight," says Gianni, "then you come
back at night." You don't use torches, in case the Carabinieri are around,
and it's best to bring at least five men, because the work is hard.

The worst tombaroli then just smash through the ceiling of the tomb. The
stupidest go straight in, and "2,500 years go pouf!" because the objects
inside disintegrate on exposure to air. The more sensible tombaroli make a
hole and leave it for 24 hours for the atmosphere to adjust. Then it's dig
and grab.

"They only take the good stuff," says Fausto Cipriani, whose group of
volunteer archaeologists in Viterbo is responsible for maintaining the
Castel d'Asso necropolis, where 150 tombs have been uncovered and most have
been pillaged. "They smash the rest." Popular culture finds tomb-raiding
entertaining enough to make films and video-games out of it, but for
superintendent Moretti, sitting in her beautiful, antique-stuffed office in
the Villa Giulia Etruscan Museum in Rome, Indiana Jones and Lara Croft are
no role models. "Illegal digging is endemic in this country, and for every
object that ends up on the illegal market, thousands are destroyed. Even if
the objects taken are modest pots, the damage done is enormous because the
tomb-raider destroys the context. It's not about the loss of beautiful
objects, but any objects. The tomb-raider rips a page out of the history
book. It is a terrible, terrible phenomenon."

Not to Gianni. He tuts, walking past an opened tomb. "Think how much I could
earn if I could find one that hadn't been opened. God! It's not fair!" But
neither is a tomb-raider's cut of the profits. "Tomb-raiders are the lowest
link on a long chain," says Col. Pastore. "They're usually poor people, farm
workers, labourers, people who know the land." And they earn a pittance,
usually 1 or 2 per cent of the final price. But it's worthwhile, "because
the demand is constant".

Once the loot is stolen, it's sold on to a middleman, probably someone
local, but more sophisticated, who can restore the object if necessary.
Spruced up, the object heads north, usually to Switzerland, the black hole
of illegal antiquities, thanks to a "good-faith acquisition" law that
legalised any object present on Swiss soil for five years. It's now been
upped to 30 years, but not before "'property of a Swiss gentleman' became a
euphemism for 'illicit material'", as archaeologists at Cambridge's McDonald
Institute note in their 2000 report, Stealing History.

>From Switzerland, the loot heads west. "The UK!" says Col. Pastore, shaking
his head in his spacious office in the Baroque building that is the Unit's
headquarters in Rome. "It's our biggest headache." Despite overwhelming
evidence of how much loot was passing through Britain, until 2002, our
government refused to sign the 1970 Unesco Convention on illicit cultural
property, and still refuses to sign up to the Unidroit Convention on Stolen
and Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, the most powerful international
agreements. This probably keeps the Elgin Marbles safe, but makes it
difficult for the Italians to call on reciprocal laws when they want to
recover Italian property.

Things might be changing - last year the Government passed the Dealing in
Cultural Objects Act, which makes trading in tainted property an offence
punishable by up to seven years in jail. But even the Parliamentary Select
Committee on Culture, Media and Sport has called efforts to counter the
trade "lamentable", highlighting the Government's inability to set up a
database of looted art, two years on, though a database of second-hand cars
was fully functioning. "We would draw attention," wrote the committee, "to a
target set for a reduction in vehicle crime by the Prime Minister and
recommend that he gives consideration to a similar performance objective for
the theft of cultural objects." As things stand, it's better to be an art
thief than to nick cars: Italy's art squad has 150 officers, but Scotland
Yard has only three, to counter trafficking networks that - like the ones
running drugs and women - are sophisticated, well-oiled and usually
impossible to break.

In December, though, the Carabinieri had a stunning success. Back in 1995,
antiques dealer Giacomo Medici, owner of an antiques shop on Rome's swanky
Via del Babuino, had two Geneva warehouses sealed by Swiss police, acting on
the request of Carabinieri. The warehouses - kitted out like showrooms, with
viewing shelves, tables and chairs - contained 4,000 items of Etruscan,
Apulian, Campanian and Roman origin, and photographs of 8,000 others, with
no convincing documentation of provenance, all worth about ?25m.

In December - the Italian justice system is somewhat clogged - Medici was
sentenced to 10 years in jail. It was a rare victory, but the one-off tip of
a fast-moving iceberg. The solution to looting, say specialists, is to shame
the buyers into not buying. It's unlikely any time soon.

"Over the last 20 years at least," say the authors of Stealing History,
"somewhere between 65 per cent and 90 per cent of the antiquities offered
for sale on the London auction market have no published provenance."
European museums, including the British Museum and the Berlin State Museum,
now have strict policies that refuse items with dubious provenance, but
American museums usually don't.

Photographs found in Medici's warehouses have been matched to items in the J
Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, whose former curator Marion True is currently
on trial in Italy for conspiracy to deal in stolen antiquities. The Getty
has published an ethical acquisitions policy, and the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts reportedly has one too, but questions were asked about some museums'
commitment to ethical acquisitions when curators from the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the J Paul Getty Museum
were invited to the high-profile Berlin conference on illegal antiquities,
and none of them showed up.

Prevention is another option, but it doesn't work either. Cerveteri's
necropolis is at the end of a country track in a landscape of rolling hills
and olive trees. The enclosed site is well kept, and was declared a Unesco
World Heritage Site late last year. But outside the fence, Unesco is no use:
the land is pitted with tomb-raider holes. A survey of one Etruscan cemetery
showed that 400 out of 550 tombs had been pillaged.

The Archaeological Superintendency is notoriously short of resources. Col.
Pastore's digital video films of Carabinieri doing patrols in boats, planes
and on horseback are impressive, but largely window-dressing. "The patrols
are during the day," says Orlando Enriquez, Cerveteri's security guard, "But
the tombaroli come at night. What can they do?" Col. Pastore estimates that
there are thousands of tombaroli still active, and they hardly ever catch
any, usually only when one tombarolo informs on another, for business or
grudge reasons. Col. Pastore estimates that they know about only 20 per cent
of looted objects. "We only know what's been stolen when we get it back."
For every vase that appears on the market, there could have been dozens more
broken up or abandoned. When the frenzy of tomb-robbing in Etruria reached
its height, about 15 years ago, the robbers simply moved south. Vases from
the Roman region of Apulia - modern-day Puglia - have been flooding the
market since the 1970s.

Moretti puts her faith in education. She believes outreach work can change
public opinion. Fausto Cipriani, whose volunteers do talks in schools, is
less optimistic. "The younger ones are interested, but the older ones don't
give a shit." Nor does Gianni, a young man on a bad wage who sees Etruria's
riches as his entitlement. It's his land, he says, so why shouldn't he take
from it? It's an argument bolstered by the resource problems of the
Superintendency, which means most items never see a museum display cabinet,
because of a lack of funds.

Such was the argument behind the 5 per cent proposal, says MP Gianfranco
Conte. It would bring thousands of cultural artefacts to light that people
daren't report. It would enrich, not impoverish, Italy's cultural heritage.
But earlier this year, the proposal was dropped, when even the
Berlusconi-appointed cultural minister, Giovanni Urbani, came out against
it. Conte is undeterred and says he will fight for it later. And so is
Gianni, who doesn't need a political licence to loot. As long as there are
museums and collectors who don't care that their oil lamp was dug up with a
metal spike in the dead of night, he'll never be short of a market.  

http://news.independent.co.uk/



From a.cremers3 at chello.nl  Sun May  1 16:33:19 2005
From: a.cremers3 at chello.nl (a.cremers3 at chello.nl)
Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 16:33:19 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] South Florida's sugar-producing Fanjul family reached
	an agreement with Sotheby'
Message-ID: <20050501143319.BQRM1611.amsfep12-int.chello.nl@localhost>

Confiscated art is now off-limits

South Florida's sugar-producing Fanjul family reached an agreement with Sotheby's it hopes will help reclaim art confiscated by Fidel Castro's government.

BY NANCY SAN MARTIN

nsanmartin at herald.com


Sotheby's -- the target of a ''trading with the enemy'' sanctions violation triggered by South Florida's prominent sugar-producing Fanjul family -- has agreed to impose new guidelines that will make it more difficult for dealers to dabble with art confiscated by Fidel Castro's government.

Under an agreement made public Friday, the auction house will not handle any Fanjul family art expropriated by the Cuban government, according to a joint statement issued by Fanjul family attorneys.

''Should it unwittingly come into possession of any such work, Sotheby's will notify the family and maintain possession of such property until any title issues have been resolved. . .,'' the statement said.

The agreement means that valuable art from the Fanjul family collection left behind in Havana and believed to have been smuggled out of the island will be on a watch list that would preclude art dealers with ties to Sotheby's from making a sale.

''With these new guidelines in place, we are confident that our collection will now be off limits in the art world as we trust that others in the art market will follow Sotheby's example,'' Jos? Pepe Fanjul said in a written statement.

''This is a very good thing for anyone whose had something stolen from a government or anyone else and then ends up in the art market,'' Fanjul family attorney Shanker Singham said.

''What it shows is that the art world in general, and Sotheby's in particular, is prepared to not deal in stolen property,'' Singham said.

The dispute with Sotheby's began in 1998 after the Fanjuls discovered one of their paintings by Spanish impressionist Joaqu?n Sorolla y Bastida may have been smuggled out of Havana and obtained by an art dealer in Italy.

The Fanjuls claimed Sotheby's knew but would not tell the whereabouts of the painting, which is part of a collection worth millions of dollars the family left behind when they fled Cuba after Castro seized power in 1959.

The family filed claims with the state and treasury departments, accusing Sotheby's of knowing who holds the Malaga Port painting and violating laws by refusing to provide them with the information.

Under Title IV of the Helms-Burton law, also known as the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act, U.S. citizens whose property was confiscated by the Castro government can go after foreigners who use or profit in any way from those properties.

Sotheby's acknowledged some connection to the painting but adamantly denied any wrongdoing.

Singham said the agreement does not automatically absolve Sotheby's from the federal inquiry, but added that calls have been made to Washington on the auction house's behalf.

''Sotheby's is cooperating in our attempts to get the paintings back,'' Singham said. ``With Sotheby's help, we're getting closer to getting the art back.''




From museum-security at museum-security.org  Sun May  1 21:06:59 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 21:06:59 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] How a cache of valuable art by legendary Italian
	painter Alberto Burri vanished without a trace
Message-ID: <20050501190700.SEVF21363.amsfep16-int.chello.nl@cremers>

 Disappearing Act 

May 2005

How a cache of valuable art by legendary Italian painter Alberto Burri vanished without a trace
BY BERNHARD WARNER | ROME


In Italy, they called it Arte Povera, elsewhere "junk art": turning refuse ? burlap sacks, globs of tar ? into popular works. For artists like Alberto Burri, who began producing Arte Povera in the '50s, such trash would eventually become treasure. Museums and galleries such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York City and the Pompidou Center in Paris vied for his works for decades. In 1989, a collector shelled out $2.8 million for one of his prized Sacco (Sack) paintings called Umbria Vera. At the time of his death in 1995, Burri's most famous pieces, including the Sacks and Plastics series, could be found in modern art museums in London, New York, Venice and, most proudly for the artist, in his hometown of Citt? di Castello in the foothills of central Italy's Apennine mountain range. 

But today, the town of Citt? di Castello ? and part of Italy's art establishment ? is in turmoil, because a large cache of Burri's work is missing. The 15th century palazzo that houses much of his output had been expecting a shipment of 30 more Burri works, kept at the artist's country cottage in the south of France. But the works have disappeared, Time has learned. Italian police believe the art was stolen and smuggled out of Europe to the U.S., but neither they nor officials from La Fondazione Albizzini, which exhibits the artist's work, will speculate about suspects. The collection includes a 3-m-tall Sacco, a piece experts estimate could fetch over ?1 million. "It's a sin," says Tiziano Sarteanesi, a La Fondazione Albizzini board member and a close friend of Burri's. 

Sarteanesi and other Albizzini officials went to collect the art in November 2003, shortly after the death of the artist's American wife, Minsa Craig Burri. "When we entered the house we found nothing, no paintings, no jewels, no documents, nothing," Sarteanesi says somberly. Since then, police in France and Italy have traced the works back to America, but there the trail went cold. They declined to provide any details of their investigation. "It's a bit of a mystery," an investigator for the cultural heritage protection division of Italy's Carabinieri police force says. Over the past two years, the foundation had hoped the missing works would be found, eliminating the need to make the theft public. 

If the Burri collection was stolen, as police believe, it represents one of the biggest heists of Italian art in years. Around the world last year, more than 12,000 pieces of collectible art, jewelry and antiques were reported missing or stolen to the London-based Art Loss Register, whose database of stolen works is the largest in the world. When the stolen object is a rare masterpiece ? such as Edvard Munch's The Scream, which was lifted from The Munch Museum in Oslo last year and is still missing, though three men have been arrested in connection with the crime ? the theft grabs headlines. But hauls of large numbers of works are less common, says Alexandra Smith, the Register's operations director. Whenever possible, foundations like the Albizzini tend to keep such bad news quiet, fearing the negative publicity could hurt ticket sales. 

The disappearance represents a sad coda to Burri's remarkably colorful career. Born in 1915, Burri did not set out to be an artist. He earned a degree in medicine from the University of Perugia, and, at the outbreak of World War II, was shipped to North Africa as an army doctor. Captured by the British army, Burri was turned over to American forces and interned at a prison camp in Hereford, Texas. Depressed and dispirited, Burri abandoned medicine for art. Short of materials, he turned to the abundant supply of burlap in the camp and used it as a canvas. After the war, Burri returned to Italy, where he and contemporaries Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni forged their own unique style to grab attention from the American and French modernists then in vogue. 

It was the burlap paintings that first drew the attention of American art critics to Burri in the early '50s; a young Robert Rauschenberg came to Rome to watch him work. "To his peers, Burri was seen as an absolutely crucial figure to the Italian art scene," says Matthew Gale, curator of a new exhibition at London's Tate Modern dedicated to Burri, Fontana and Manzoni. 

Growing increasingly disenchanted with the international art scene in the 1970s, Burri decided to cut back on exhibiting new work; instead, he created La Fondazione Albizzini to house and promote many of his favorites in his beloved hometown. Locally, it has been reason to celebrate. "Burri's artworks represent Umbria in its deepest and most intimate nature," says Maria Rita Lorenzetti, president of the Umbria region. However, Burri's wife did not share her husband's affection for Citt? di Castello. After the artist's death, she tried to gain control of all of Burri's works. But in 1998, Italian courts ruled in favor of Albizzini as the guardian of Burri's art. 

Right now, the only record of the missing work is a photo-catalogue. In addition to the art, the collection contained intimate pieces Burri gave to his wife. "Some of them were little gifts he used to give his wife on Christmas or birthdays with little dedications," says Sarteanesi. "They are important for the foundation because they are unique." Police have alerted galleries and collectors to be on the lookout for the works, but most American museums and dealers contacted by Time say they were unaware of the warning. 

Although investigations into art thefts can sometimes last decades, the foundation takes some comfort in the hope that, if a collector were to buy one of the missing Burris, he or she would likely have it authenticated, and thus Albizzini would presumably be notified. But Sarteanesi prays it doesn't come to that. "It is very important that these artworks are not sold or dispersed," he says. "It would be a sin, not only for the foundation, but for Italy's and the world's cultural heritage, and for the name of Burri." 


http://www.time.com/



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Sun May  1 21:14:42 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 21:14:42 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] Joy as stolen objects are returned to Africa. How
	British imperialism looted Ethiopia in 1868. The pillage of
	Magdala is well documented in contemporary British accounts.
Message-ID: <20050501191443.KGKV1752.amsfep15-int.chello.nl@cremers>

Socialist Worker 1950, 5 May 2005 (www.socialistworker.co.uk)
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6393

International

Joy as stolen objects are returned to Africa

An extraordinary event has taken place in one of Africa?s most significant
historic sites.

On Monday 25 April, the third and final section of an ancient granite
obelisk was returned to Axum ? Ethiopia?s one-time capital. It had stood in
Rome since 1937, when it was taken there by the troops of Mussolini, the
Italian fascist dictator.

The celebrations marking the return were a powerful expression of national
delight that a wrong had, at last, been righted.

Many thousands of people waited eagerly on Axum?s streets from early morning
until the giant plane carrying the final piece of a plundered treasure
landed.

Unparalleled artistry
The Axum obelisk is not only valuable for its antiquity (it may be as much
as 2,000 years old) or its unparalleled artistic quality.

Its primary value lies as a symbol of national and religious identity.
Although the burial markers of Axum, of which this obelisk is one, predate
the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, they are a powerful symbol of the religious
and historic lineage of the Ethiopian people.

Axum is of profound importance for the identity of a people and the returned
obelisk belongs in that place at least as much as Stonehenge belongs in its
place or the Pantheon belongs in Rome.

Mussolini?s imperialist ambitions were played out ruthlessly and violently
in Ethiopia. 

Were it not for the courageous and tireless efforts of the British socialist
and women?s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst to keep the events in the
Western public eye, this appalling episode in Europe?s fascist past may have
gone unnoticed by many.

The barbarism of the theft of the obelisk was the barbarism of one nation
demonstrating its subjugation of another by the theft of its very identity.

It was a deliberate and humiliating act of a violent and expansionist
regime. For this reason, the return of the obelisk is a way of stating that
the pretensions of Western militarist dominance have no place in our world.

Before relaxing into complacency about the undoing of an unmistakable crime
of international significance, it is worth reflecting on Britain?s own
culpability in the theft of Ethiopian national identity.

Siege of Magdala
British institutions such as the British Museum, British Library and Windsor
Castle still house the plunder of a previous imperialist escapade ? the
British siege of Magdala.

This took place in 1868 when an expeditionary force of 30,000 laid waste to
the stronghold of the Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros after removing thousands of
sacred texts and other items of the greatest religious significance. 

This was another deliberate and humiliating act of a violent and
expansionist regime (see description below, left). But it is not too late to
undo this wrong too.

Repeated calls from the Ethiopian church, government and academic
institutions, not to mention citizens and friends from around the world,
have fallen on deaf ears.

The British institutions maintain a neo-imperialist stance in relation to
this loot. They contend they have a role in guarding the world?s cultural
inheritance.

The Association for the Return of the Magdala Ethiopian Treasures (Afromet)
regards this as an unacceptable arrogance and calls for the repatriation of
a nation?s heritage.

It asks, ?Is it acceptable to tolerate a world in which the domination of
the powerful goes unquestioned under the genteel veneer of a cultural
service to nations who are deemed incapable of looking after their own
property? The British government might consider taking a leaf out of the
Italians? book and end the injustice of decades.?

John McLuckie is chair of Afromet UK. For more go to www.afromet.org

The following should be read alongside this article: 

How British imperialism looted Ethiopia in 1868

The pillage of Magdala is well documented in contemporary British accounts.

One historian says that British troops swarmed around the body of the
deceased Ethiopian monarch. They then ?gave three cheers over it, as if it
had been a dead fox and then began to pull and tear the clothes to pieces
until it was nearly naked?.

The loot from Magdala, included ?an infinite variety of gold, and silver and
brass crosses?, as well as ?heaps of parchment royally illuminated?, and
many other articles which were ?scattered in infinite bewilderment and
confusion until they dotted the whole surface of the rocky citadel, the
slopes of the hill and the entire road to the [British] camp two miles off?.

Sir Richard Holmes, assistant in the British Museum?s department of
manuscripts, had been appointed the expedition?s ?archaeologist?. He wrote
how he met a British soldier who was carrying the crown of the Abun ? the
head of the Ethiopian church ? and a ?solid gold chalice weighing at least
6lbs?. Holmes succeeded in purchasing both for ?4.

The loot from Magdala was transported, on 15 elephants and almost 200 mules,
to the nearby Dalanta Plain. There the British military authorities held an
auction to raise ?prize money? for the troops ? and especially the officers.
The British Museum received 350 Ethiopian manuscripts. A further six
exceptionally beautiful specimens were acquired by the Royal Library at
Windsor Castle.



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Mon May  2 06:42:56 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 06:42:56 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] =?iso-8859-1?q?Sch=F8yen_again_=28Sch=F8yen_still?=
	=?iso-8859-1?q?=29?=
Message-ID: <20050502044257.PTED3274.amsfep20-int.chello.nl@cremers>

May 2, 2005

Information below is from the AFROMET site: http://www.afromet.org/


in the spotlight

Ta'amra Maryam, 33 Miracles of the Virgin Mary and Document concerning a
conciliation

This combined manuscript went on a remarkable journey after it was taken by
a British soldier at the siege of Maqdala. The soldier sold it, along with a
number of other Maqdala papers, to London's Quaritch bookstore, a dealer in
antique manuscripts. The British Museum looked into buying it but was in
effect outbid by Lady Meux, a flambouyant figure in Victorian London, known
for her collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts. She left it to the
descendants of Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia, in her will. But on her
death, it was sold to William Randolph Hearst, the notorious US newspaper
magnate immortalised in the film Citizen Kane. After his death it was sold
on again and ended up in the private collection of Martin Sch?yen, based in
Oslo and London. 

Current location: The Sch?yen manuscript collection - Oslo/London
Photo:
http://www.afromet.org/treasure/

Ta'amra Maryam, 33 Miracles of the Virgin Mary and Document concerning a
conciliation


This combined manuscript went on a remarkable journey after it was taken by
a British soldier at the battle of Maqdala. 

The soldier sold it, along with a number of other Maqdala papers, to
London's Quaritch bookstore, a dealer in antique manuscripts. The British
Museum looked into buying it but was in effect outbid by Lady Meux, a
flambouyant figure in Victorian London, known for her collection of ancient
Egyptian artefacts. She left it to the descendants of Menelik II, Emperor of
Ethiopia, in her will.

But on her death, it was sold to William Randolph Hearst, the notorious US
newspaper magnate immortalised in the film Citizen Kane. After his death it
was sold on again and ended up in the private collection of Martin Sch?yen,
based in Oslo and London.

The entry on the Sch?yen collection's website reads:

Manuscript in Ge'ez and old Amharic (text 2) on vellum, Gondar, Ethiopia,
ca. 1682-1706, 106 ff. (complete), 35x33 cm, 2 columns, (23x25 cm), 17-25
lines in a fine square Ethiopic Ge'ez book script by 2 scribes, one named
Gabre'el, headings, the names of Virgin Mary and King Dawit in red, 41
full-page, and 10 half-page miniatures in very bright colours, by 2 artists
in a transitional style between 1st and 2nd Gondarine styles. 
Binding: Ethiopia, ca. 1700, blindtooled morocco over stout wooden boards,
chain stitches on 4 sewing stations.

 Provenance: 1. Emperor Zyasu I (1682-1706); 2. Emperor T?kla Haymanot I,
(1706-1708); 3. Emperor Dawit III (1708-1721); 4. The Church of Makdala,
Ethiopia; 5. An officer in the British Expedition to Abyssinia 1867
(1867-1897); 6. Quaritch, London (1897); 7. Lady Meux, Hertshire MS 2
(1897-1911); 8. William Randolph Hearst, San Simeon, California (1911-1939);
9. John F. Fleming, New York (1960); 10. Otto Sch?fer, Schweinfurt
(1960-1989); 11. Bernard Breslauer, New York.

Published: The present MS was translated and reproduced in colour for Lady
Meux by Sir E.A. Wallis Budge, London, W. Griggs, 1900.

Photos:
http://www.afromet.org/treasure/archives/000029.html



See Sch?yen's its entire Ethiopian collection:

http://www.nb.no/baser/schoyen/5/5.16/




From museum-security at museum-security.org  Mon May  2 16:29:29 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 16:29:29 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] Italy: Police recover stolen paintings
Message-ID: <20050502142929.RCPZ3274.amsfep20-int.chello.nl@cremers>

Police recover stolen paintings

May 2, 2005

Seven paintings by 20th Century artists, including Pablo Picasso, have been
recovered by Italian authorities in the northern city of Monza, near Milan.

The artwork was found in the course of a police investigation that broke up
a network of nine people and led to the arrest of an international
trafficker with the help of Interpol. 

The paintings included work by Spanish master Picasso, Italy's Arnaldo
Pomodoro and Giorgio Morandi. 

The works were ready to be sold in Italy and abroad, police say.



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Mon May  2 16:29:29 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 16:29:29 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] Nizza: recuperate dai carabinieri opere d'arte per 1
	milione e mezzo di euro 
Message-ID: <20050502142932.RCSB3274.amsfep20-int.chello.nl@cremers>

Nizza: recuperate dai carabinieri opere d'arte per 1 milione e mezzo di euro


 9 persone denunciate, un latitante arrestato a Nizza, 7 opere d'arte rubate
recuperate per un valore complessivo di un milione e 300 mila euro. Questa
mattina i carabinieri del nucleo per la tutela del patrimonio culturale
hanno annunciato il successo dell'operazione "Grandi maestri del '900 " che
ha permesso di individuare e recuperare sette importanti opere d'arte rubate
in un arco di tempo di oltre trent'anni, dal 1973 al 2005. Tutte opere
famose, di grande valore artistico ed economico: dalla "Veduta di Cannes" di
Pablo Picasso a un dipinto in 6 pannelli degli artisti inglesi
Gilbert&George, e poi quadri e sculture di Morandi, Campigli, De Pisis,
Licini, Pomodoro... Opere rimaste nascoste in mano ad antiquari e mediatori
anche per molti anni, fino a quando le valutazioni hanno raggiunto un valore
interessante sul mercato clandestino, e tutte pronte, ora, ad essere vendute
all'estero. Sette indagini parallele hanno portato ognuna alla scoperta di
un mercante, di un'opera e al tentativo di venderla a collezionisti senza
scrupoli. L'accusa per tutti ? di ricettazione: in carcere ? finito un
latitante arrestato a Nizza, che avrebbe reinvestito i proventi del traffico
di droga proprio in opere d'arte contemporanea.   


http://www.tg5.it/altre_notizie/schede/scheda_031020112812.shtml



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Tue May  3 05:34:20 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 05:34:20 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] Seven stolen works of art,
	including a piece by Pablo Picasso, have been recovered in Italy. 
Message-ID: <20050503033421.QFPC25247.amsfep19-int.chello.nl@cremers>

Arrest over stolen Picasso piece 

Seven stolen works of art, including a piece by Pablo Picasso, have been
recovered in Italy. 
Among the 20th Century works retrieved were a sculpture by Italian Arnaldo
Pomodoro and a piece by British modern artists Gilbert and George. 

Police have arrested one man in Nice, France, who they suspect of
trafficking the art to Italy. 

Picasso's View of Cannes had been in a private collection when it was stolen
in 1992. 

The seven recovered pieces, which also included a painting by Italian
Giorgio Morandi, were estimated to be worth 1.3m euros (?881,743). 

Hidden treasure 

Italian police captain Andrea Ilari said nine other people were under
investigation in the case, which was being held in conjunction with
Interpol. 

He said it was suspected the works were to be sold in Italy and other
countries. 

In a separate case, Picasso's Nature Morte a la Charlotte, was recently
recovered hidden behind a wardrobe in Paris after it went missing from the
French capital's Pompidou Centre. 

The painting, valued at 2.5m euros (?1.7m), has since been returned to the
museum where it had been awaiting restoration before it went missing. 




From museum-security at museum-security.org  Wed May  4 00:18:39 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 00:18:39 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] =?iso-8859-1?q?33_000_besch=E4digte_B=FCcher_zur=FC?=
	=?iso-8859-1?q?ck_in_Weimar_?=
Message-ID: <20050503221845.CMCC1611.amsfep12-int.chello.nl@cremers>

33 000 besch?digte B?cher zur?ck in Weimar 

Weimar/Leipzig (dpa) Acht Monate nach dem verheerenden Brand in der Herzogin
Anna Amalia Bibliothek sind 33 000 gefriergetrocknete B?cher von Leipzig
nach Weimar zur?ckgekehrt. In den n?chsten Monaten w?rden nun die Sch?den an
den B?chern genau analysiert, teilte die Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und
Kunstsammlungen (SWKK) am Dienstag mit. Die B?nde waren bei dem Brand am 2.
September mit leichten bis schweren Wassersch?den aus der Bibliothek
gerettet worden. 

Weitere 29 000 B?cher mit zum Teil schweren Brand- und Wassersch?den bleiben
noch im Leipziger Zentrum f?r Bucherhaltung, hie? es. Sie werden bis zum
Sp?therbst in Weimar zur?ckerwartet. Von den insgesamt 62 000 B?chern, die
zur Gefriertrocknung nach Leipzig gebracht worden waren, sind laut SWKK nach
derzeitigen Sch?tzungen maximal 40 000 restaurierbar. 

In der Bibliothek, die zum UNESCO-Weltkulturerbe geh?rt, gingen bei dem
Brand etwa 50 000 B?cher unwiederbringlich verloren. Das Feuer zerst?rte den
Dachstuhl und besch?digte den einzigartigen Rokokosaal. Die zweitgr??te
deutsche Kulturstiftung rechnet mit Kosten von etwa 60 Millionen Euro und
einer Dauer von bis zu 30 Jahren, bis die B?cher restauriert oder ersetzt
sind.  
 
Dienstag, 03. Mai 2005 (17:26) 



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Wed May  4 23:29:09 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 23:29:09 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] Fourth Scream suspect is arrested
Message-ID: <20050504212911.YHMH25247.amsfep19-int.chello.nl@cremers>

May 4, 2005 

Fourth Scream suspect is arrested 

A fourth man has been arrested in Norway over the theft of Edvard Munch's
painting The Scream. 
An unidentified man in his 30s was arrested at his workplace south of Oslo
on Wednesday morning. 

The 1893 masterpiece and another Munch painting, The Madonna, were stolen
from Oslo's Munch Museum by two armed and masked thieves in August 2004. 

Norwegian police spokesman Morten Hojem Ervik said they remained
"optimistic" that the paintings would be returned. 

"Whether they'll be in the same condition they were at the museum is hard to
say," he added. 

The Scream and the Madonna are together worth about ?10.4m. Experts say the
two paintings are too recognisable for the thieves to sell. 

Mr Hojem Ervik denied recent Norwegian media reports that the masterpieces
may have been burned by the robbers. 


He gave no details of the allegations against the man but said: "We don't
think he participated in the actual robbery, but we think he contributed in
some way to it." 
Mr Hojem Ervik added it felt like police were making progress and that more
arrests might follow. 

Two masked thieves stole the paintings in broad daylight last year, pulling
them off the wall as visitors looked on. 

One robber threatened staff with a gun before the pair escaped in the
waiting car, which was recovered shortly afterwards. Parts of the picture
frames were also recovered. 

Three other men have been charged in connection with the theft since March.
None have been named. 

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/arts/4513545.stm



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Wed May  4 23:29:09 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 23:29:09 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] East Valley man returns spoils of WWII  
Message-ID: <20050504212917.YHSE25247.amsfep19-int.chello.nl@cremers>

May 4, 2005 

East Valley man returns spoils of WWII  
By John Leptich, Tribune 

Frank Ellis admits he's a thief. "I know I stole it," Ellis said. "It was
pure theft. Remorse? Hell no. I was just liberating it." Nearly 60 years
after his deed, Ellis will return May 11 to the scene of the crime. 
 
The 89-year-old retired pathologist of Scottsdale will give back a
watercolor painting he took in 1945 from a home in Stiring-Wendel, France,
that was used as a medical aid station during World War II. 

Ellis will give the painting to the family of the late Jean Egloff. Ellis
was unable to find the painter's family until a friend tracked them down
last year. 

"Everybody took whatever struck their fancy," Ellis said. "It was liberating
stuff from the Germans. Those French spoke a German dialect. They were just
as much German as they were French." 

Ellis said he's not returning his booty because what he did gnawed at him
over the years. The painting was tucked in his footlocker and forgotten,
surviving about eight moves Ellis and his family made. 

"He didn't say a lot about it when we were kids, but I saw it," said Don
Ellis, his son, from Glendale, Calif. "I didn't find out about the
significance of it until we found an association for soldiers in the 70th
Infantry Division." 

Frank Ellis thinks the Egloff family is the painting's rightful owner. 

"I don't think it's valuable, maybe to that family," Ellis said. "I didn't
take it because it had great value. I took it because of the great contrast.
It showed a church, pretty flowers, green trees and a clean street with nice
buildings. When I looked outside that house, it was pure devastation from
the war. I thought it must have been a pretty place. I said that someday
after the war I would go back and see what it was really like." 

Ellis said he has several copies of the painting and has received current
photographs of the street. "There are cars there now," he said. 

Ellis said the painting was the last of the souvenirs he "liberated" during
the war. 

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Wed May  4 23:29:09 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 23:29:09 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] Police search for missing magazine 
Message-ID: <20050504212921.YHVQ25247.amsfep19-int.chello.nl@cremers>

May 4, 2005

Police search for missing magazine
By Eric Chima 

University police are continuing to investigate the theft of a 1965 copy of
Electronics Magazine from the Grainger Engineering Library on April 12 - one
day after electronics giant Intel offered to pay $10,000 to anyone with a
copy, University police officials said Monday.

Lieutenant Dave Nelson of University police refused to comment on what
progress the police had made in the investigation, but said they hope to
have concrete information by the end of the week.

The magazine was discovered missing April 13, when librarian Mary Schlembach
saw Intel's listing on eBay and decided to pull the issue from the shelves.

"We had a bunch of staff and grad students go around the building to look
for it, and we weren't able to find it," Schlembach said. "It was on the
shelf upstairs, so anybody could go up there, so long as they found the call
number."

The issue had sat on the shelf for 40 years until Intel became interested,
Schlembach said.

Intel spokesman Manny Vara said the company wanted to purchase the magazine
to put it in the company museum. In the issue, an article written by Intel
co-founder Gordon Moore introduced Moore's Law, which stated that the number
of transistors on a computer chip would double every year for the next 10
years. The law has since become an integral part of the computer chip
industry.

Vara said Intel would not have been interested in the University's copy
because its spine had been cut and bound together with five other issues of
the magazine. The company has since found a seller in the United Kingdom and
pulled its eBay listing.

The library still has another copy of the magazine, which will be kept under
lock and key in the rare book room, Schlembach said. Students wishing to
view the magazine will have to ask a librarian to retrieve it for them.

The University of Toronto had their copy stolen as well, and the
Universities of Michigan, Stanford and Santa Cruz all had to lock their
copies away, Schlembach said. She said Intel went about buying the magazine
the wrong way.

"You can find a book dealer that will find the magazine for you for the
right amount of money," Schlembach said. "That's a better way of doing this
than putting out there that you'll pay $10,000 for an issue of the journal
because the first place people will look is the library ... They should have
found a different way of finding these things. It would have been better for
everybody."

But Vara said other methods had not worked for Intel.

"We didn't just start looking for this magazine," Vara said. "Our museum was
looking for a copy of this for a long time through their normal channels,
and they were unable to find anything at all. That's when we came up with
the idea (of looking on) eBay, because it seems like if you look on there,
there's someone out there in the world that has it."

Nelson said libraries were high-theft areas but usually not for University
property.

"Usually it's students' things - books left unattended, laptops, things like
that," Nelson said. "The University has a lot of rare books, but there
aren't a lot of thefts."

Vara said Intel never thought their listing would cause problems for
libraries.

"We were being very careful with that. In fact, in the posting on eBay we
had very specifically said that we would not buy library or museum copies
unless those organizations themselves said they wanted to sell it," Vara
said. "We certainly weren't looking to create any trouble." 

http://www.dailyillini.com/



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Wed May  4 23:29:09 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 23:29:09 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] CHINA: Case of a Pot Calling the Kettle Black To Halt
	ArtifactsLoss
Message-ID: <20050504212926.YIAC25247.amsfep19-int.chello.nl@cremers>

 CHINA:
Case of a Pot Calling the Kettle Black To Halt Artifacts Loss 

Antoaneta Bezlova 


BEIJING, May 4 (IPS) - An official Chinese government campaign to reverse
the outflow of China's cultural and artistic heritage has sparked off an
impassioned debate about the pros and cons of free trade in art. It also
questions the dubious record of the Communist Party leadership in protecting
its cultural patrimony. 

Chinese officials have asked the United States government to share
responsibility for the depletion of Chinese artifacts in the country by
imposing restrictions on the import to the U.S. of all cultural property
over 95 years old. They argue that huge demand in the United States for
China's rich cultural heritage is the root cause for increased looting and
smuggling of artifacts and works of art. 

China is not the first country to ask the United States to impose import
restrictions on antiquities. The controversy surrounding China's request
stems from the fact that the list of items presented to U.S. customs
authorities as imports to be prohibited is far more sweeping than current
restrictions on export of cultural items from the country. 

Questions are also being raised as to whether China has done enough to halt
the loss of artifacts at home before seeking help from abroad. 

Existing Chinese regulations on exports of cultural relics stipulate that
only items dating from before 1795 (which marks the end of Qing emperor Qian
Long's reign), are prohibited from export. 

But the Chinese request for U.S. import restrictions though, is all
encompassing, covering works of art in virtually every media, from the
Palaeolithic era to the end of the Empire in 1911. 

The request is currently considered by the United States, which is
conducting its own investigation into China's art scene, including the
country's auction houses, antiquities markets and customs controls. 

The United States is bound by an art-importation law, the Convention on
Cultural Policy Implementation Act (CPIA), which was passed by the U.S.
Congress in 1983, after a decade of debate, to comply with a 1970 UNESCO
(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation)
convention. The law is aimed at resolving crisis situations in which the
cultural patrimony of a nation signatory to the U.N. agreement is deemed in
jeopardy. 

Few dispute the need to stem the flow of plundered artifacts from China. 

Last year China had 36 large-scale robberies of museums, tombs and temples
resulting in the loss of 223 antiquities, according to the State Cultural
Relics Bureau. The rate of successful thefts has increased by 80 percent
compared to the year before, the bureau estimates. 

But art dealers and collectors from both sides of the Pacific agree that
granting China its request would be tantamount to shutting down the U.S.
market in Chinese antiquities. 

Restrictions on imports of Chinese artifacts will have far-reaching
implications for the cultural lives of U.S. citizens and all foreigners,
they say, because it would deprive them of valuable opportunities to
appreciate and study China's astonishingly rich culture. 

''That would be a throwback to McCarthy-era restrictions of the 1960s, when
all Chinese art imported to the U.S. required proof that it was not owned by
a communist,'' James Lally, a renowned U.S. Asian art dealer, was quoted in
'Orientations' magazine -- a publication for art collectors. 

The 1950s and 1960s were an ugly time for thousands of U.S. citizens of
Chinese origin, clustered in Chinatowns across the country, who became the
target of anti-communist fervor ignited by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and aimed at
the Soviet Union and China. 

U.S. museum curators have described China's request as a shotgun solution
that would do little to stop or decrease looting and smuggling of artifacts.
But China's art dealers have been equally vocal in opposing the request as
flawed. 

''There is too much emphasis on control; on export restrictions,'' said Liu
Shangyong, an auction official with Rongbao Auction company, commenting on
China's policies on cultural relics. ''To eliminate looting and smuggling,
you have to promote openness and many channels for antiquities exchange
rather than simply blocking them." 

''It is more or less a measure of desperation, an admission that we cannot
tackle the problem at its source,'' said Zhang Deqin, a former official with
the State Cultural Relics Bureau. ''Since we cannot stop people from looting
relics inside the country, we have to ask foreign countries to supervise
their imports.'' 

Many argue that the Chinese government's commitment to investing in huge
infrastructure works is a far more substantial source of artifacts loss than
looting. The most obvious example of artifacts lost to construction and
development is the Three Gorges dam. The world's largest reservoir, going up
on the Yangtze River, has caused the inundation of numerous historic towns
and ancient tombs. Many artifacts from the area were only salvaged thanks to
private collectors. 

Government engagement in the art trade is being scrutinised, not the least
because of Communist China's unsavoury past record of preserving its
cultural patrimony. 

Until ten years ago, all buying and selling of Chinese antiquities abroad
were monopolised by the state. That meant that the Ministry of Foreign Trade
exported works of art to earn foreign currency that was later spent on
buying steel and cement to finance China's industrialisation. 

The exodus of art works had started with the collapse of the Qing empire in
1911 and in the modernisation drive that followed when valuable antiquities
were sold off at rock bottom prices. With the ascendance of the Communist
Party to power, what was left of China's vast cultural heritage was either
destroyed, or confiscated and exported. 

When the frenzied destruction of the Cultural Revolution (1956 to 1966) was
over, the state invited foreign dealers to visit the vast warehouses stacked
full of confiscated works of art and buy in bulk. By some accounts, in the
1980s China was exporting a million snuff bottles a year. 

Trying to reverse this wholesale pillaging of the country's cultural
heritage, China announced in April a large-scale programme aimed at
reclaiming national treasures from abroad. 

A quasi non-governmental organisation, the China Cultural Relics Recovery
Programme, has began work on recovery of items that were stolen, looted and
smuggled abroad between 1840 and 1945, before the founding of communist
China. 

This task force claims that Chinese cultural relics held by private
individuals abroad exceed the numbers of antiquities stashed away in foreign
museums by ten times. UNESCO figures suggest that 1.67 million Chinese
antiquities are owned by more than 200 museums in 47 countries. 

The official 'Xinhua' news agency quoted one senior cultural heritage
preservation expert, Xie Chensheng, as saying: ''The spiritual wealth can be
shared by the whole world, but not the ownership -- just like property
rights on software. Ownership of the scattered cultural treasures should lie
with the Chinese people." (END/2005)




From museum-security at museum-security.org  Wed May  4 23:29:09 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 23:29:09 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] =?iso-8859-1?q?_Un_Chagall=2C_un_Magritte_et_un_L?=
	=?iso-8859-1?q?=E9ger_vol=E9s_en_2001_ont_=E9t=E9_retrouv=E9s?=
Message-ID: <20050504212931.YIFF25247.amsfep19-int.chello.nl@cremers>

May 4, 2005 


Un Chagall, un Magritte et un L?ger vol?s en 2001 ont ?t? retrouv?s

Agence France-Presse

Nice, France

Une gouache de Ren? Magritte, une huile de Fernand L?ger et une encre de
Chine de Marc Chagall, vol?es en 2001 dans une galerie de
Saint-Paul-de-Vence, ont ?t? retrouv?es et deux receleurs pr?sum?s ?crou?s,
a-t-on appris lundi de source proche du dossier.


Les tableaux Le Tire-bouchon et l'?chelle (1932) de Fernand L?ger, estim? ?
200 000 euros (325 000 $), Une Partie de plaisir (1956) de Ren? Magritte,
estim? ? 300 000 euros (485 000 $), et L'?migrant (1945-50) de Marc Chagall,
estim? ? 40 000 euros (65 000 $), ont ?t? retrouv?s par la police, a indiqu?
la galerie Pascal Retelet, propri?taire des oeuvres. 

Deux receleurs pr?sum?s ont ?t? interpell?s le 21 mars ? Grenoble et
?crou?s, selon une source proche du dossier. Les oeuvres ont ?t? restitu?es
? leur propri?taire. 

Cette enqu?te avait permis de mettre au jour en 2001 un trafic de fausses
oeuvres de C?sar, le sculpteur d?c?d? en 1998, a-t-on pr?cis? de source
proche du dossier. 

En octobre 2001, la police avait saisi 200 contrefa?ons, telles des
compressions de cafeti?res ou des maquettes de voitures de collection
?clat?es au marteau, puis en novembre 36 autres faux C?sar dans une galerie
d'art parisienne renomm?e. Celle-ci avait r?cup?r? les oeuvres aupr?s de ses
clients et les avait rembours?s.



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Thu May  5 08:30:26 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 08:30:26 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] East Valley man returns spoils of WWII 
Message-ID: <20050505063027.BDC1611.amsfep12-int.chello.nl@cremers>


May 4, 2005

East Valley man returns spoils of WWII  
By John Leptich, Tribune 

Frank Ellis admits he's a thief. "I know I stole it," Ellis said. "It was
pure theft. Remorse? Hell no. I was just liberating it." Nearly 60 years
after his deed, Ellis will return May 11 to the scene of the crime. 
 
The 89-year-old retired pathologist of Scottsdale will give back a
watercolor painting he took in 1945 from a home in Stiring-Wendel, France,
that was used as a medical aid station during World War II. 

Ellis will give the painting to the family of the late Jean Egloff. Ellis
was unable to find the painter's family until a friend tracked them down
last year. 

"Everybody took whatever struck their fancy," Ellis said. "It was liberating
stuff from the Germans. Those French spoke a German dialect. They were just
as much German as they were French." 

Ellis said he's not returning his booty because what he did gnawed at him
over the years. The painting was tucked in his footlocker and forgotten,
surviving about eight moves Ellis and his family made. 

"He didn't say a lot about it when we were kids, but I saw it," said Don
Ellis, his son, from Glendale, Calif. "I didn't find out about the
significance of it until we found an association for soldiers in the 70th
Infantry Division." 

Frank Ellis thinks the Egloff family is the painting's rightful owner. 

"I don't think it's valuable, maybe to that family," Ellis said. "I didn't
take it because it had great value. I took it because of the great contrast.
It showed a church, pretty flowers, green trees and a clean street with nice
buildings. When I looked outside that house, it was pure devastation from
the war. I thought it must have been a pretty place. I said that someday
after the war I would go back and see what it was really like." 

Ellis said he has several copies of the painting and has received current
photographs of the street. "There are cars there now," he said. 

Ellis said the painting was the last of the souvenirs he "liberated" during
the war. 

 



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Thu May  5 08:30:26 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 08:30:26 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] Men face theft charges in stolen books case
Message-ID: <20050505063030.BEJ1611.amsfep12-int.chello.nl@cremers>

May 4, 2005

Men face theft charges in stolen books case

IOWA CITY, Iowa Four men accused of selling stolen textbooks to a college
bookstore in Iowa City face theft charges.

Police say they sold more than 35-thousand dollars worth of stolen books to
Iowa Book in at least 82 transactions in the past two and a-half years.

Two men have been arrested -- Lucas Othmer and Matthew Price, both of Iowa
City. Investigators are still looking for the other two.

University of Iowa Public Safety Director Chuck Green says he doesn't know
where the books came from, but some could have come from students.

The owner of Iowa Book, Pete Vanderhoef, says they try to watch for books
that have been reported stolen. That includes watching for patterns of
people returning large numbers of textbooks.



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Thu May  5 08:30:26 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 08:30:26 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] Piden que robo de arte sacro sea considerado como
	delito grave / request that robbery of sacred art is
	considered like serious crime
Message-ID: <20050505063032.BFG1611.amsfep12-int.chello.nl@cremers>

May 5, 2005

Piden que robo de arte sacro sea considerado como delito grave

? El senador Rub?n Zaraz?a Rocha propuso reformas legales para que se
incremente la penalidad a saqueadores de templos

El senador Rub?n Zaraz?a Rocha propuso reformas legales para que el robo al
arte sacro y antiguo sea considerado como delito grave y se incremente su
penalidad, con el fin de que quienes lo cometan no obtengan su libertad bajo
fianza. 

En entrevista, el legislador indic? que su iniciativa, que reforma la Ley
Federal sobre Monumentos y Zonas Arqueol?gicas, Art?stica e Hist?ricas, se
debe ante el aumento de estos saqueos, porque cada a?o se cometen 200 robos
de arte sacro. 

Explic? que el robo de este tipo, adem?s de deteriorar el estado de derecho
y debilitar a la base competitiva del sector productivo nacional, disminuye
el potencial de crecimiento econ?mico. 

Zaraz?a Rocha se?al? que, seg?n la Organizaci?n Internacional de Polic?a
Criminal (Interpol por sus siglas en ingl?s), el hurto y comercio ilegal de
arte sacro y antiguo es considerado como la actividad il?cita que genera m?s
dinero a nivel mundial, aun despu?s del narcotr?fico y el tr?fico de armas. 

Adem?s, y de acuerdo con declaraciones del Instituto Nacional de
Antropolog?a e Historia (INAH), hay unos 200 robos al a?o de arte sacro en
inmuebles religiosos, en los estados de Puebla, Tlaxcala, Morelos y en la
ciudad de M?xico. 

Explic? que tan s?lo los robos reportados en iglesias del estado de Puebla
durante cinco a?os fueron de 520 piezas, las cuales est?n valoradas en m?s
de 40 millones de d?lares. 

?Es necesario sancionar los robos de arte sacro en iglesias de diversas
entidades, y para ello se debe elevar la eficacia de las fuerzas policiacas
para aprehender a los delincuentes y aumentar progresivamente las penas?,
a?adi?. 

El senador por Nuevo Le?n sostuvo que la sociedad exige un sistema de
seguridad p?blica que no s?lo asegure la integridad f?sica de las personas,
sino que tambi?n brinde protecci?n a sus bienes e inversiones. 

Zaraz?a Rocha afirm? que un buen trabajo para evitar el robo del arte sacro
contribuye a la cimentaci?n de un estado de derecho, y esto se refleje en un
ambiente propicio para que los individuos y las empresas desarrollen sus
actividades productivas.


Google translation

They request that robbery of sacred art is considered like serious crime

? senator Rub?n Zaraz?a Rocha proposed legal reforms so that the penalty to
plunderers of temples is increased

Senator Rub?n Zaraz?a Rocha proposed legal reforms so that the robbery to
the sacred and old art is considered as serious crime and is increased its
penalty, in order that that commits it they do not obtain his freedom on
bail.

In interview, the legislator indicated that his initiative, that he reforms
the Federal Law on Monuments and Archaeological Zones, Artistic and
Historical, must before the increase of these sackings, because every year
200 robberies of sacred art are committed.

It explained that the robbery of this type, besides to deteriorate the right
state and to debilitate to the competitive base of the national productive
sector, diminishes the potential of economic growth.

Zaraz?a Rocha indicated that, according to the Organization the
International of Criminal Police (Interpol by its abbreviations in English),
the theft and illegal commerce of sacred and old art are considered like the
illicit activity that generates more money at world-wide level, even after
the drug trafficking and the traffic of arms.

In addition, and in agreement with declarations of the National Institute of
Anthropology and Historia (INAH), there are about 200 robberies to the year
of sacred art in religious buildings, the states of Puebla, Tlaxcala,
Morelos and in the city of Mexico.

It explained that only the robberies reported in churches of the state of
Puebla during five years were of 520 pieces, which are valued in more than
40 million dollars.

"It is necessary to sanction the robberies of sacred art in churches of
diverse organizations, and for it the effectiveness of the police forces is
due to elevate to apprehend the delinquents and to increase the pains
progressively", added.

The senator by Nuevo Leo'n maintained that the society demands a public
security system that not only assures the physical integrity the people, but
that also offers to protection to its goods and investments.

Zaraz?a Rocha affirmed that a good work to avoid the robbery of the sacred
art contributes to the laying of foundations of a right state, and this is
reflected in a propitious atmosphere so that the individuals and the
companies develop their productive activities.





From museum-security at museum-security.org  Thu May  5 08:35:40 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 08:35:40 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] The Britishers, when they ruled India,
	virtually walked away with many rare artefacts and
	treasures from the various kings and empires
Message-ID: <20050505063541.UCUO1769.amsfep14-int.chello.nl@cremers>

Looted Indian treasure to go under hammer

The Britishers, when they ruled India, virtually walked away with many rare
artefacts and treasures from the various kings and empires. It was literally
a royal loot and scoot. 

        The items which symbolise the rich cultural heritage of India had
somehow found their way to many homes and are now with Sotheby's, the
well-known British auction house. 

        And sadly, Sothebys London has deemed it fit to put under the hammer
rich treasures from India. It is holding a special series of auctions on the
25 and 26 May. Sotheby's has proudly announced its auction as 'Tipu Takes
The Throne At Sotheby's'. 

        The series of four auctions planned by Sotheby's has angered many of
the local Indians in London. The NRI community, it is learnt, is planning to
stage some kind of protest against the auction. What has got their goat is
Sotheby's has given a spin to its auction as 'a cultural interplay of East
and West'. 

        Sotheby's has said that is offering 'collectors an exciting and rare
opportunity to acquire a range of works of art, weaponry, textiles, books
and photographs relating to India and the Far East, in a series of four
auctions which will focus on the cultural interplay between East and West.'
The pride of the treasures that is to be auctioned off is the 'Tipu Sultan
Collection'. It will include an outstanding group of weaponry and other
rarities captured after the British stormed Tipu Sultan's palace at
Seringapatam in May 1799. 

        NRIs are unhappy that the treasures that were once looted from India
are now being auctioned with fanfare. Just as they are planning to rise in
protest they want Indians to join in support. 

http://newstodaynet.com/



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Thu May  5 08:35:40 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 08:35:40 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] Hoffnung auch zwei Jahre nach Saliera-Diebstahl /
	There is still hope two years after Benvenuto Cellini's salt
	cellar was stolen
Message-ID: <20050505063544.UCVS1769.amsfep14-int.chello.nl@cremers>

Hoffnung auch zwei Jahre nach Saliera-Diebstahl 
Wien (APA) - Auch zwei Jahre nach dem Diebstahl der "Saliera" aus dem
Kunsthistorischen Museum (KHM) in Wien gibt es keinen Hinweis ?ber den
Verbleib des weltber?hmten Kunstwerkes. Dies teilte das KHM mit "gro?em
Bedauern" angesichts des bevorstehenden zweiten Jahrestages (11. Mai) des
spektakul?rsten Kunstdiebstahls der Zweiten Republik mit. Doch das KHM gibt
"die Hoffnung nicht auf", hie? es am Mittwoch.

In den fr?hen Morgenstunden des 11. Mai 2003 waren ?ber ein Ger?st an der
Au?enfassade unbekannte T?ter in das Museum eingedrungen und hatten die
"Saliera", eine weltber?hmte Kleinskulptur von Benvenuto Cellini, entwendet.
Der Diebstahl hatte zu heftigen Diskussionen der Museums-Sicherheit sowie zu
wiederholten R?cktrittsforderungen an KHM -Direktor Wilfried Seipel gef?hrt.
Eine (vermutlich echte) Kontaktaufnahme mit den Dieben verlief ohne
Ergebnis, nachdem dies in den Medien bekannt gemacht worden war. Die Diebe
hatten in einem Schreiben an die UNIQA f?nf Millionen Euro L?segeld
gefordert. Danach wurde versucht, mit den Dieben wieder Kontakt aufzunehmen.
Erfolg wurde keiner bekannt. Eine vermeintliche weitere Spur, der Seipel bis
nach Italien gefolgt war, erwies sich als falsch. Ein Prozess in diesem
Zusammenhang steht noch aus. Nach Erfahrungen von internationalen
Exekutivebeh?rden, Fahndungsexperten und Kunstversicherern "rechnet man mit
mehreren Jahren bis zur Auffindung derart wertvoller Kunstobjekte", betont
das KHM. Das Museum sei zuversichtlich, dass das ber?hmte Salzfass "schon
aufgrund seiner faktischen Unverk?uflichkeit am Markt" unversehrt
zur?ckkehren werde. Von der Exekutive und seitens des Museums werden
"weiterhin alle Anstrengungen unternommen, um den Diebstahl m?glichst bald
aufzukl?ren", hie? es. 

Google translation:


Hope also two years after Saliera theft 
Vienna (APA) - there are also two years after the theft of the "Saliera"
from the art-historical museum (KHM) in Vienna no reference over the
whereabouts of the world-famous work of art. This communicated the KHM with
"large regret" in view of the forthcoming second anniversary (11 May) of the
most spectacular art theft to the second republic. But the KHM gives "hope
up not", was called it on Wednesday. 

In the early morning hours 11 of May 2003 over a stand at the external
facade unknown authors had penetrated a world-famous small sculpture of
Benvenuto Cellini into the museum and the "Saliera", had stolen. The theft
had led to violent discussions of museum security as well as to repeated
demands for resignation on KHM director Wilfried Seipel. (probably genuine)
an establishment of contact with the thieves ran without result, after this
admits in the media had been made. The thieves had demanded five million
euro ransom in a letter to the UNIQA. Was tried to take up with the thieves
again contact. Success did not become admits. An alleged further trace,
which Seipel had followed until Italy, proved than wrong. A process in this
connection is still pending. After experiences of international executive
authorities, search experts and art insurers "one counts on several years up
to the location of such valuable art objects", stresses the KHM. The museum
is confident that the famous salt barrel will already return "due to its
actual unsaleability at the market" intact. By the executive and on the part
of the museum "further all efforts are undertaken, around the theft as soon
as possible to clear up", it were said.
 

 



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Thu May  5 08:37:33 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 08:37:33 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] CHINA: Case of a Pot Calling the Kettle Black To Halt
	Artifacts Loss 
Message-ID: <20050505063734.HADL1752.amsfep15-int.chello.nl@cremers>

CHINA: Case of a Pot Calling the Kettle Black To Halt Artifacts Loss 

Antoaneta Bezlova 


BEIJING, May 4 (IPS) - An official Chinese government campaign to reverse
the outflow of China's cultural and artistic heritage has sparked off an
impassioned debate about the pros and cons of free trade in art. It also
questions the dubious record of the Communist Party leadership in protecting
its cultural patrimony. 

Chinese officials have asked the United States government to share
responsibility for the depletion of Chinese artifacts in the country by
imposing restrictions on the import to the U.S. of all cultural property
over 95 years old. They argue that huge demand in the United States for
China's rich cultural heritage is the root cause for increased looting and
smuggling of artifacts and works of art. 

China is not the first country to ask the United States to impose import
restrictions on antiquities. The controversy surrounding China's request
stems from the fact that the list of items presented to U.S. customs
authorities as imports to be prohibited is far more sweeping than current
restrictions on export of cultural items from the country. 

Questions are also being raised as to whether China has done enough to halt
the loss of artifacts at home before seeking help from abroad. 

Existing Chinese regulations on exports of cultural relics stipulate that
only items dating from before 1795 (which marks the end of Qing emperor Qian
Long's reign), are prohibited from export. 

But the Chinese request for U.S. import restrictions though, is all
encompassing, covering works of art in virtually every media, from the
Palaeolithic era to the end of the Empire in 1911. 

The request is currently considered by the United States, which is
conducting its own investigation into China's art scene, including the
country's auction houses, antiquities markets and customs controls. 

The United States is bound by an art-importation law, the Convention on
Cultural Policy Implementation Act (CPIA), which was passed by the U.S.
Congress in 1983, after a decade of debate, to comply with a 1970 UNESCO
(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation)
convention. The law is aimed at resolving crisis situations in which the
cultural patrimony of a nation signatory to the U.N. agreement is deemed in
jeopardy. 

Few dispute the need to stem the flow of plundered artifacts from China. 

Last year China had 36 large-scale robberies of museums, tombs and temples
resulting in the loss of 223 antiquities, according to the State Cultural
Relics Bureau. The rate of successful thefts has increased by 80 percent
compared to the year before, the bureau estimates. 

But art dealers and collectors from both sides of the Pacific agree that
granting China its request would be tantamount to shutting down the U.S.
market in Chinese antiquities. 

Restrictions on imports of Chinese artifacts will have far-reaching
implications for the cultural lives of U.S. citizens and all foreigners,
they say, because it would deprive them of valuable opportunities to
appreciate and study China's astonishingly rich culture. 

''That would be a throwback to McCarthy-era restrictions of the 1960s, when
all Chinese art imported to the U.S. required proof that it was not owned by
a communist,'' James Lally, a renowned U.S. Asian art dealer, was quoted in
'Orientations' magazine -- a publication for art collectors. 

The 1950s and 1960s were an ugly time for thousands of U.S. citizens of
Chinese origin, clustered in Chinatowns across the country, who became the
target of anti-communist fervor ignited by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and aimed at
the Soviet Union and China. 

U.S. museum curators have described China's request as a shotgun solution
that would do little to stop or decrease looting and smuggling of artifacts.
But China's art dealers have been equally vocal in opposing the request as
flawed. 

''There is too much emphasis on control; on export restrictions,'' said Liu
Shangyong, an auction official with Rongbao Auction company, commenting on
China's policies on cultural relics. ''To eliminate looting and smuggling,
you have to promote openness and many channels for antiquities exchange
rather than simply blocking them." 

''It is more or less a measure of desperation, an admission that we cannot
tackle the problem at its source,'' said Zhang Deqin, a former official with
the State Cultural Relics Bureau. ''Since we cannot stop people from looting
relics inside the country, we have to ask foreign countries to supervise
their imports.'' 

Many argue that the Chinese government's commitment to investing in huge
infrastructure works is a far more substantial source of artifacts loss than
looting. The most obvious example of artifacts lost to construction and
development is the Three Gorges dam. The world's largest reservoir, going up
on the Yangtze River, has caused the inundation of numerous historic towns
and ancient tombs. Many artifacts from the area were only salvaged thanks to
private collectors. 

Government engagement in the art trade is being scrutinised, not the least
because of Communist China's unsavoury past record of preserving its
cultural patrimony. 

Until ten years ago, all buying and selling of Chinese antiquities abroad
were monopolised by the state. That meant that the Ministry of Foreign Trade
exported works of art to earn foreign currency that was later spent on
buying steel and cement to finance China's industrialisation. 

The exodus of art works had started with the collapse of the Qing empire in
1911 and in the modernisation drive that followed when valuable antiquities
were sold off at rock bottom prices. With the ascendance of the Communist
Party to power, what was left of China's vast cultural heritage was either
destroyed, or confiscated and exported. 

When the frenzied destruction of the Cultural Revolution (1956 to 1966) was
over, the state invited foreign dealers to visit the vast warehouses stacked
full of confiscated works of art and buy in bulk. By some accounts, in the
1980s China was exporting a million snuff bottles a year. 

Trying to reverse this wholesale pillaging of the country's cultural
heritage, China announced in April a large-scale programme aimed at
reclaiming national treasures from abroad. 

A quasi non-governmental organisation, the China Cultural Relics Recovery
Programme, has began work on recovery of items that were stolen, looted and
smuggled abroad between 1840 and 1945, before the founding of communist
China. 

This task force claims that Chinese cultural relics held by private
individuals abroad exceed the numbers of antiquities stashed away in foreign
museums by ten times. UNESCO figures suggest that 1.67 million Chinese
antiquities are owned by more than 200 museums in 47 countries. 

The official 'Xinhua' news agency quoted one senior cultural heritage
preservation expert, Xie Chensheng, as saying: ''The spiritual wealth can be
shared by the whole world, but not the ownership -- just like property
rights on software. Ownership of the scattered cultural treasures should lie
with the Chinese people." (END/2005)



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Thu May  5 08:48:46 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 08:48:46 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] CPPROT and MSN-List Messages April 2005
Message-ID: <20050505064847.MKCA1622.amsfep13-int.chello.nl@cremers>

CPPROT and MSN-List Messages April 2005

CPPROT Messages April 2005
?	 FW: Assyrian treasures heading for 'hostile' territory (Cori
Wegener)    
?	 A Sculptor's Weighty Work Is Whole Again    
?	 China's Request forArt-Import Ban Stirs Debate    
?	 International team: Collection belonged to Montreal art dealer Max
Stern    
?	 FW: U.S. v. One Oil Painting Entitled ?Femme en blanc? by Pablo
Picasso.    
?	 A Frenchman's business: fake old masterpieces paint extravagant
Dubai hotel walls    
?	 Eagle-Eyed Garbageman Rescues Library's Stolen Bird    
?	 Korea: Thieves Robbed Confucian Shrines and Temples with Crane    
?	 Riker's officer suspended in Dali painting scam    
?	 Theft leads to jail, $500 fine    
?	 Index March 2005 messages    
?	 China: Heimkehr kultureller Gegenst?nde    
?	 Preserving our Past: Looting and the Black Market in Art,
Artifacts, and Antiquities   Patty Gerstenblith 
?	 Stolen cultural items on the rise, more traffic along the border

?	 Italy: 18TH CENTURY OIL PAINTING RECOVERED    
?	 Antiques smugglers seized in Yemen    
?	 Antiquities sleuth sifts museum collections for fakes    
?	 Nairobi: Crisis At the Museum    
?	 Australia: Ex-ranger accused of theft    
?	 Azerbaijan urges to stop destruction of monuments in occupied lands

?	 FW: Judge Declines to Toss Suit Over Painting Allegedly Stolen by
Nazis    
?	 FW: Ethiopia to get obelisk back    
?	 Investigan robo f?sil dinosaurio museo durantevacaciones Pascua    
?	 Munch robbery a diversion?    
?	 Former Museum Director Indicted in Theft of Space Artifacts    
?	 Canada can set an example of how disputes over Nazi-looted treasure
can be resolved, by Bonnie Czegledi    
?	 London: Double trouble. Play about a famous art forgery case    
?	 USA: Art dealer found guilty. Signature sought for false affidavit

?	 Venezuela: Se robaron la efigie del Chino Can?nico/ They were
stolen the effigy of the Chinese Canonical    
?	 Italy, victim of numerous cultural property thefts, takes over 50
years to fulfill promise and return Axum Obelisk to Ethiopia    
?	 USA: Debate kindles over art values    
?	 Bewaffneter Kunstraub vor Aufkl?rung    
?	 Stolen Picasso found at drug lord's house    
?	 Mexico: Con apoyo de la IP, rescatan Las Tres Gracias de Miloslav
Chlupac/With support of the IP, rescue The Three Thanks of Miloslav Chlupac

?	 Stolen Statue Recovered    
?	 Verschollene Schiffe. Diebstahl von Kunstwerken ist heutzutage fast
allt?glich    
?	 Netherlands: RESTITUTIONS COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS RESTITUTION OF FIVE
ARTWORKS    
?	 Mexico: Crece robo arqueol?gico y sacro ante indiferencia de
autoridades/Robbery of archaeological and sacred art grows in the face of
indifference of authorities    
?	 Return of obelisk to Ethiopia delayed again    
?	 Italy behave!    
?	 Digital reconstruction could resurrect original vision of many
ancient artists, craftsmen    
?	 FW: Ethiopia Angry Over Postponement of Axum Obelisk's Return    
?	 FW: Return of obelisk to Ethiopia delayed again    
?	 1 charged with artifact theft on Coconino Forest    
?	 The Courier-Mail: Man charged with Cezzane theft in court [12apr05]

?	 ARTE E CULTURA RITROVATE AD EXPOLEVANTE DUE MOSTRE RIDONANO AL
PUBBLICO OPERE TRAFUGATE    
?	 Recuperate dai Carabinieri 5 tele rubate    
?	 Oslo Police Charge Second Man in 'Scream' Theft    
?	 Man charged in Munch robbery    
?	 Ethopia vents anger as obelisk stays in Italy    
?	 Strengere Regeln f?r Handel mit Kulturg?tern    
?	 Dresden: Krimi um die K?nigskette    
?	 1.45 lakh books destroyed in state's worst act of vandalism    
?	 The Art Newspaper newsletter    
?	 Art theft puzzles officials    
?	 FW: UK Art Crime Conference    
?	 China: Where have Chen Yifei's studio paintings gone?    
?	 Why the recent rash of biblical fakery is about so much more than
money    
?	 SAFE reports on the CPAC hearing to consider China's request
Cindy Ho 
?	 Key finds in Temple Mount trash heap    
?	 Library burning flayed    
?	 Ethiopia wants heroes' skulls returned    
?	 En ocho a?os se han presentado 130 robos dearte sacro en iglesias
de Tlaxcala    
?	 Kunstraub in Basilika St. Martin    
?	 An Ancient Masterpieceor a Master's Forgery?    
?	 Finding Fakes: Sleuth sorts authentic ancient art objects from
forgeries - sometimes very old themselves    
?	 Iraq War & Archaeology site up in the air    
?	 Santa Anna's leg a real war trophy?    
?	 Mandela suing ex-ally in art feud    
?	 Ethiopian obelisk set for return from Rome    
?	 The first of three parts of the famed Axum obelisk, which was
plundered by fascist Italy nearly 70 years ago, has arrived home in
Ethiopia.    
?	 Sargento novela investigaci?n sobre robo de c?dice de siglo X    
?	 Rome returns stolen obelisk    
?	 Presentaci?n del libro "Objetivo Beato" sobre la recuperaci?n del
valioso "C?dice del Beato de Li?bana"    
?	 Thousands of Ethiopians cheered and cried joyously as Italy
yesterday returned the first piece of the Axum obelisk (Habemus Axum)    
?	 Cezanne theft evidence found at tip    
?	 Beutekunst 60 Jahre nach Kriegsende    
?	 PRESS RELEASE, Netherlands: POSITIVE RECOMMENDATION BY RESTITUTIONS
COMMITTEE ON RETURN OF WORKS BY TROOST AND VAN DER MIJN    
?	 Britain told by Ethiopia to give back treasures    
?	 USA: Rare violin stolen from car    
?	 Canada: Rare violin stolen from East York home    
?	 Two prints by nationally renowned Northwest artist Jacob Lawrence
were stolen from the offices of the Washington State Arts Commission    
?	 REPOST: Two prints by nationally renowned Northwest artist Jacob
Lawrence were stolen from the offices of the Washington State Arts
Commission    
?	 FW: The Art Newspaper newsletter    
?	 USA: Priceless Artifacts Lost In Barn Fire    
?	 Le scandale de l'ob?lisque vol?    
?	 India: Man behind Rs 100-cr Husain art deal is accused of forgery

?	 USA: 300-Pound Sculpture Stolen    
?	 Hotline: Hub fest offers Gardner theft doc    
?	 Stolen centuries-old violin found in LA alley    
?	 Dutch Librarians Fight Domestic Patriot Act    
?	 Martin Schoyen at the heart of an inquiry to establish whether part
of his multimillion-pound collection was illegally exported from the Middle
East    
?	 Musicians targeted???   Stacie M. Jones 
?	 Second of three sections of obelisk reaches Axum.    
?	 Bolivia:  La iglesia de Callapa volvi? a ser robada    
?	 Ethiopia may seek return of 19th-century child prince's body from
Britain    
?	 Thief steels heart, takes art    
?	 Tauziehen um die ?lteste Bibel. Ein ?gyptisches Kloster erhebt
Anspruch auf den ?Codex Sinaiticus? aus dem 4. Jahrhundert    
?	 The cost of art theft to the thief    
?	 Spainish police arrest 16 art traffickers    
?	 La Polic?a se incauta de 10.358 obrasde arte que una red expoliaba

?	 Suspicious Fire Destroys School Library    
?	 La polic?a recupera m?s de 10.000 bienes culturales expoliados La
operaci?n se desarroll? en siete comunidades y fueron detenidas 16 personas

?	 La Polic?a recupera m?s diez mil obras de arte y arresta a
diecis?is personas    
?	 FW: Final part of Ethiopia obelisk arrives from Italy    
?	 Vast necropolis discovered under Ethiopia's Axum obelisk site    
?	 Do antique dealers preserve the past or steal it?    
?	 History lost in dust of war-torn Iraq    
?	 Korea: Row continues over alleged forged art    
?	 Geklautes Gem?lde sichergestellt    
?	 Museum inquiry into 'smuggling' of ancient bowls    
?	 History lost in dust of war-torn Iraq (with photos)    
?	 Search Of Molestation Suspect's Home Uncovers Antiquities. Suspect
Volunteered For Digs In Egypt.    
?	 New Zealand: burglary of several libraries by an organised criminal
enterprise    
?	 RESTITUTIONS COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS RESTITUTION OF EIGHT WORKS FROM
THE NETHERLANDS ART PROPERTY COLLECTION    
?	 Norwegian Police Deny Stolen Paintings Have Been Destroyed    
?	 UK: Stolen painting is returned to owner    
?	 Thefts of works of art, 6 arrests in Sicily    
?	 Botswana: Claim back stolen artefacts    
?	 FIRENZE - FURTI D'ARTE, RECUPERATE 20 OPERE    
?	 Police Doubt Report That 'The Scream' Burned    
?	 small statue inherited by Katy woman could become part of
international effort to return items stolen by Nazis    
?	 $1 painting fetches . . . police    
?	 Propuesta para tipificar como delito grave el saqueo de arte sacro

?	 Detienen en Onil a dos miembros m?s de la red de falsificaci?n y
robo de arte    
?	 New Zealand: Police make seventh arrest in book-theft investigation

?	 Homeless man acquitted in library fire    
?	 Pennsylvania's Highest Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Art
Collection to Move    
?	 Demand 700 million in Munch compensation    
?	 The Art Newspaper    
?	 FW: UN urges Ethiopia to postpone re-erecting obelisk    
?	 Oslo seeks compensation for stolen art    
?	 Looted Art Strains Russo-German Relations    
?	 The Courier-Mail: Painting stolen in broad daylight [29apr05]    
?	 Togo: Goethe-Institut in Togo verw?stet (library burnt down
completely)    
?	 Returning Looted Treasures to Their Rightful Owners    
?	 Rumeur de destruction autour des Munch vol?s    
?	 Detenidos en Burgos con 648 obras de arte sacro de Valencia    
?	 Reciprocity Plea Over Trophy Art    
?	 IRCICA Re-establishes Iraqi Libraries Looted in Occupation    

MSN-List Messages April 2005

?	 Preserving our Past: Looting and the Black Market in Art,
Artifacts, and Antiquities    
?	 Munch robbery a diversion?    
?	 Per?: Restauran antiguo lienzo que da?? un ladr?n/ They restore old
cloth that was damaged by a thief    
?	 Espa?a: Investigan robo f?sil dinosaurio museo durante vacaciones
Pascua/Museum investigates fossil robbery dinosaurio during Easter vacations

?	 Espa?a: Roban cinco ?ngeles del Altar de San Vicente en Ruzafa/They
steal five angels of the Altar of San Vicente in Ruzafa    
?	 Norwegian arrests could be linked to Munch theft    
?	 France: Nature morte ? la charlotte de Picasso retrouv? par la
police/A Picasso rediscovered by the police    
?	 Picasso painting which went missing from the Pompidou Centre in
Paris has been recovered by police    
?	 Mildere Strafen f?r R?uber von Van-Gogh-Gem?lden    
?	 Library fire reaches 4 alarms    
?	 Anger has been directed at arsonists in Whitnash who have forced
the closure of the town's library.    
?	 FW: Developing A Disaster Plan: Web-based class    
?	 Rare painting missing from Bangalore Fort    
?	 Oslo police detain man in 'Scream' theft    
?	 USA: Maine man sentenced for stealing Strawbery Banke Museum
antiques    
?	 Officials hope for clues in library break-in    
?	 FW: Alert- STOLEN- Yellowstone artwork    
?	 Fire breaks out in Manipur's biggest library    
?	 FW: UK Art Crime Conference    
?	 Query: "Clean agent" or "Cleanguard" fire extinguishers    
?	 Indicted former library official pleads not guilty    
?	 Police remand for 2 suspected arsonists    
?	 Library May Be Closed After Nearby Fire    
?	 WCAL expresses anguish at library destruction    
?	 Virginia Library could be closed for six months    
?	 Anthrax scare in Melville Library    
?	 USA: fire believed to have been started by an arsonist gutted the
historic Haycock-Spellman    
?	 India: Security loopholes in tour hotspots    
?	 Marcellus museum wants confiscated gun back    
?	 Library fire trial begins    
?	 Arrest brings Munch solution nearer    
?	 A decade later... Since its opening, over one million people have
visited the museum.   
?	 A Moscow Treasure Reopens One Year After a Deadly Fire    
?	 Espa?a: La Polic?a detiene a dos personas en Ll?ria y recupera
obras de arte y antig?edades    
?	 Defendant: UGA library fire was accidental    
?	 Junger Mann auf dem Weg nach Italien (Statue returned to museum in
Italy 13 years after theft)    
?	 Guilty pleas expected in book theft. FOUR ACCUSED OF TAKING RARE
WORKS FROM TRANSYLVANIA. Stun gun used on a Transylvania University
special-collections librarian    
?	 Four Plead Guilty To Stealing Rare Books    
?	 Stolen Centuries-Old Violin Found in L.A.    
?	 Clues Released in Science Center Heist    
?	 Police Charge Third Man Over 'The Scream' Theft    
?	 Museum Collection destroyed in fire gave insight into early tribal
practices and movements    
?	 Museum theft inside job: Some Cosmosphere artifacts located,
recovery efforts unknown    
?	 Former museum leader in court    
?	 Oslo seeks compensation for stolen art    
?	 County commissioners laud actions in Castle fire    
?	 9-11 Hijackers Used Public Libraries    






From cho at savingantiquities.org  Thu May  5 15:34:38 2005
From: cho at savingantiquities.org (Cindy Ho)
Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 09:34:38 -0400
Subject: [CPProt.net] Recordings from SAFE/LCCHP Panel Discussion now
	available
Message-ID: <BE9F992E.D78%cho@savingantiquities.org>

On April 13, 2005, SAFE | Saving Antiquities for Everyone hosted a panel
discussion with LCCHP (The Lawyers? Committee for Cultural Heritage
Preservation) entitled "Preserving our Past: Looting and the Black Market in
Art, Artifacts, and Antiquities". The public event, which drew over 60
people, was cosponsored by the Washington Office of the College of William
and Mary. 

You can now listen to the speakers and questions and answers on SAFE's
website at http://www.savingantiquities.org/j-safe-events.htm. Moderated by
SAFE advisor/member Lucille Roussin, the panel featured Roger Atwood,
journalist and author of Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the
Looting  of the Ancient World; Ellen Herscher, archaeologist and Chair of
the Archaeological Institute of America's Cultural Property Legislation and
Policy Committee; Magnus Fiskesj?, former Director, Museum of Far Eastern
Antiquities in Stockholm; and Lawyers' Committee President Patty
Gerstenblith, Professor of Law at DePaul University.

The event is the first in a series of panel discussions from SAFE, aimed to
engage the public in the debate around the issues about our shared cultural
heritage. 

SAFE | Saving Antiquities for Everyone at www.savingantiquities.org creates
educational programs and media campaigns to raise public awareness about the
importance of preserving cultural heritage worldwide. SAFE is a coalition of
professionals in communications, media, and advertising working alongside
experts in the academic, legal and law enforcement communities. SAFE has no
political affiliations and is sponsored by the New York Foundation for the
Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3) corporation.

For further information, please contact Cindy Ho, Founder/President at
cho at savingantiquities.org




From museum-security at museum-security.org  Fri May  6 08:57:42 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 08:57:42 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] AUSTRIA RETURNS WARTIME "FLYING MERCURY" TROPHY TO
	RUSSIA
Message-ID: <20050506065744.GVAJ16398.amsfep17-int.chello.nl@cremers>

AUSTRIA RETURNS WARTIME "FLYING MERCURY" TROPHY TO RUSSIA

05/05/2005 21:08 MOSCOW, May 5 (RIA Novosti) - The statue "Flying Mercury"
stolen from the Pavlovsk estate museum, the suburbs of St.Petersburg, in the
second world war and later placed at the land museum "Johanneum in the town
of Graz, Austria, has been returned to Russia. It was received Thursday by
Boris Boyarsky, head of the Russian agency for cultural heritage, from the
hands of Austrian ambassador Martin Vukovic.

The statue Flying Mercury was cast in 1783 by order from the Empress
Catherine the Second. From the end of the 18th century to 1941, the statue,
representing the copy of Giambologna's famous work displayed at the national
museum in Florence, was one of the gems of the Pavlovsk Palace park. Before
the seizure of Pavlovsk by the Nazis, the statue was buried in the park but
after the liberation of the city could not be found.

It was only in 1979 that a Russian art critic discovered it at the art
history museum in Vienna. However, it took another 20 years to prove in May
2002 by joint Russian-Austrian expert examination that the statue did get to
Graz from Pavlovsk. This was sufficient evidence for the Russian side to
demand the retrieval of the statue.

The three sides involved in the effort to return the artwork were the
Austrian government, the Russian agency for cultural heritage and the
Russian foreign ministry.

"Today we have become witness to a singular event, both in terms of culture
and politics. The Flying Mercury will make only a stop in Moscow to land in
the final analysis in Pavlovsk where this sculpture will be ceremoniously
returned on a high political level this autumn. We are happy that we can
return this fascinating work of art to where it belongs," said the Austrian
ambassador.

"The Austrian government's decision on the eve of the 60th anniversary of
the V-Day to meet the inquiry about the return of the statue is viewed in
Moscow as another confirmation of friendly Russian-Austrian relations," said
the Russian foreign ministry's spokesman Alexander Yakovenko.



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Fri May  6 08:57:42 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 08:57:42 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] Australia: Experts warn of increasing art fraud
Message-ID: <20050506065753.GVDR16398.amsfep17-int.chello.nl@cremers>

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT

LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1361075.htm

Broadcast: 05/05/2005

Experts warn of increasing art fraud
Reporter: Natasha Johnson

 
KERRY O'BRIEN: The word "fake" is guaranteed to send a shiver through the
art world. A dodgy painting destroys the buyer's investment, damages a
dealer's credibility devalues an artist's market. Overseas experts suggest
fraudulent works could make up about 10 per cent of the art market and while
it's not known how widespread the problem is here, it is believed to be
growing. It's a difficult crime to stamp out. Dealers who come across a
suspect work rarely call in the police and, even if they do, it's often
extremely hard to get a conviction. So Melbourne University Private has
started Australia's first art fraud course, aimed at police, collectors,
curators and dealers. Natasha Johnson reports. 

TIM ABDALLAH, DEUTSCHER-MENZIES AUCTION HOUSE: The public loves a story
about art forgery. It's kind of a bit James Bond. 

ROBYN SLOGGETT, MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRIVATE: The assumption is that the art
world's all froth and glitter, and if people get ripped off, well, that's
pretty funny, you know, because it's only art. 

TIM ABDALLAH: There's a lot at stake. A lot of people have got a lot of
money at stake in this business. 

ROBYN SLOGGETT: When you're talking about: is this a crime or not a crime?
It's a crime. 

NATASHA JOHNSON: Australians spend an estimated $300 million a year on art.
But in this big-bucks trade lurks a hidden danger - the dreaded fake. 

TIM ABDALLAH: It's like an unexploded bomb, you know. If it does go off in
your auction house, then it's very embarrassing and it's not much fun for
anyone. There's a lot of red faces. 

ROBYN SLOGGETT: When you see people who have bought things in good faith
come in, you know, they're quite distraught. 

NATASHA JOHNSON: Robyn Sloggett is the art world's fraud detective. She
investigates about a dozen suspect works a year at Melbourne University's
Conservation Centre - examining the painting, tracking its history and even
analysing paint samples in the Physics Department's nuclear microprobe. It's
intriguing work, but she'd rather not have to do it. With most dodgy
paintings, there's an innocent buyer who's been ripped off, and
increasingly, they're ordinary people who thought art would be a good
investment for their superannuation or savings. 

ROBYN SLOGGETT: One particularly rough example was a couple who came in and
had a painting that they wanted to leave to their children, and it was
pretty devastating for them because they were not well and it required a
rethink of how they were sorting out their finances for the next generation.


NATASHA JOHNSON: Robyn Sloggett was so frustrated by the number of dubious
works turning up, she decided to start an art authentication course at
Melbourne University Private aimed at collectors, curators, dealers and
police. 

ROBYN SLOGGETT: We do want a strong cohort of people out there who are
skilled in authentication, who know how to look at provenance, who can
access the right experts in terms of art history and know the process to go
through to determine whether something's right or not. 

STEPHEN NALL, DICKERSON GALLERY: This sort of shadow line is very much
something that Dickerson would never do. 

NATASHA JOHNSON: Stephen Nall is the stepson of Australian artist Robert
Dickerson and runs the Dickerson Gallery in Melbourne. 

STEPHEN NALL: It's an awful picture that looks like a Fred Flintstone
cartoon. 

NATASHA JOHNSON: So the alarm bells rang immediately? 

STEPHEN NALL: Absolutely. I didn't have any question about it. 

NATASHA JOHNSON: These pastels sold as Dickerson's for $8,000 but they were
never the work of the 80-year-old artist. 

ROBERT DICKERSON, ARTIST: The thing that makes me really angry is that
obviously the painting's not mine or the drawing's not mine; it's a bad
drawing or it's a bad painting and why should I have my name attached to
this stupid piece of work? Perhaps if it was a good fake you wouldn't mind
so much but they're usually so atrocious. 

NATASHA JOHNSON: The Dickerson family are fierce protectors of his work,
regularly calling in the police and doing their own detective work to track
down those responsible for fakes. 

STEPHEN NALL: It actually tends to destroy an artist's market if there are
fakes around in the marketplace. The difficulty, of course, is that these
works, unless they are taken out of the game, so to speak, become sold time
and again, and therefore, potentially, the confidence of people in the
marketplace in that particular artist is destroyed time and again. 

NATASHA JOHNSON: A range of artists from Whiteley to Streeton have been
faked, and while some galleries and dealers actively pursue the culprits,
many are reluctant to play the role of policeman. When you come across a
suspect work, do you call in the police? 

TIM ABDULLAH: No. 

NATASHA JOHNSON: Tim Abdallah is from Australia's largest auction house,
Deutsche-Menzies. He says about 1 in 500 paintings he sees are what he calls
problematic. 

TIM ABDALLAH: We might call the owner and say, "Well, look, we're a bit
concerned about this aspect of your painting. "Can you give us some more
information "that might back up its authenticity?", and if the owner is able
to provide it, then that's great, but if not, then the owner might just
quietly remove the picture from sale and that's the end of it from our point
of view. 

NATASHA JOHNSON: The problem is, even if the owner bought the fake
innocently, they often want to recoup their money so the suspect work often
pops up again and usually at less scrupulous second-hand dealers. If you're
at the front line, and you obviously care about the art industry, isn't
there a responsibility on you to take a more pro-active role? 

TIM ABDALLAH: You're right, absolutely right, but that's a pretty tricky
legal situation. I mean, I don't know if I've got the guts to do that
myself, to actually say, "You are preparing fakes here." Who's gonna say
that? You've got to have some pretty good evidence and then you've got to
spend time in court and then you've got to prepare cases and all that takes
time. We haven't got time for that sort of thing. 

STEPHEN NALL: I understand why they're reluctant but I do think that it's
irresponsible in terms of their responsibility to the industry to protect
the industry and the product. 

ROBYN SLOGGETT: What you've got to prove is that someone intended to defraud
and was going to profit by it. So it's a very complicated crime to actually
get to prosecution. 

NATASHA JOHNSON: Robyn Sloggett hopes that in educating the industry and
police, her course will help stamp out art forgery. And while everyone
insists it's an isolated problem, there's a concern it's a problem that's
likely to get worse. 

STEPHEN NALL: I believe there's a chance that it will because there are more
and more students of tertiary institutions coming out of art schools, and it
is impossible for this country to absorb all the output of that talent in a
legitimate way. 

TIM ABDALLAH: I would imagine that in the current art market environment
we're gonna see more of it because there is more money coming into the
field. There's gonna be more people out there tempted to have a go at it. 

KERRY O'BRIEN: That report from Natasha Johnson.
 



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Fri May  6 14:04:22 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 14:04:22 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] =?iso-8859-1?q?Des_ch=E2teaux_fort_mal_assur=E9s_co?=
	=?iso-8859-1?q?ntre_les_pillards?=
Message-ID: <20050506120425.NEOJ1752.amsfep15-int.chello.nl@cremers>

PATRIMOINE Par peur du fisc, manque de moyens ou ignorance, les
propri?taires ne sont pas prot?g?s 
Des ch?teaux fort mal assur?s contre les pillards 

Thierry Portes 
[06 mai 2005]  

Bien que parmi les plus cambriol?s d'Europe, les ch?teaux, vieilles demeures
et manoirs fran?ais ne sont que tr?s rarement assur?s. Une r?cente ?tude du
courtier Gras Savoye, portant sur un ?chantillon de son portefeuille
d'environ 3 000 monuments priv?s inscrits ou class?s, vient ? nouveau de le
confirmer.

D'apr?s cette enqu?te, 90% des adh?rents de Gras Savoye sont ainsi
?sous-assur?s?, 98% ne le sont pas pour leurs parcs et jardins, quand 80% ne
le sont pas contre le vol et l'incendie de leurs meubles et objets d'art.
Cette absence de protection, qui chagrine les professionnels de l'assurance,
handicape ?galement le travail des trente-cinq fonctionnaires de l'OCBC,
l'Office central de lutte contre le trafic de biens culturels.


Chaque ann?e, l'OCBC fait face ? 6 000 vols, ce qui repr?sente entre 30 000
? 40 000 objets d'art de diverses valeurs d?rob?s. Les oeuvres vol?es le
sont rarement dans des mus?es ou des lieux de culte : en 2004, ce sont pr?s
de 4 634 particuliers qui ont ?t? d?pouill?s et 451 ch?teaux et demeures de
caract?re.


Le commandant Edmond Darties, qui codirige l'OCBC, a d?j? eu l'occasion de
pr?senter un ?tat des lieux pour le moins pr?occupant. La France, l'Italie
et, dans une moindre mesure, l'Espagne et la Gr?ce sont les pays les plus
touch?s par les vols d'objets d'art. La revente s'effectue en Belgique, aux
Pays-Bas ou au Royaume-Uni, o? les l?gislations, notamment sur le recel,
sont moins s?v?res. Ainsi en deux ou trois jours, un meuble ou un tableau de
prix a g?n?ralement quitt? l'Hexagone, et dans 80% des cas ils ne seront pas
r?cup?r?s par leurs propri?taires, faute de preuves irr?futables.


C'est l? qu'assureurs et policiers se rejoignent pour faire pression sur les
propri?taires d'oeuvres d'art. Car rares sont ces derniers capables de
fournir une photographie de leur bien disparu. ?L'arriv?e du num?rique
changera peut-?tre la donne?, veut croire un membre de l'OCBC, qui r?ve
d'obtenir via le Net des photographies, de les entrer dans la base de
donn?es de l'office central et de la diffuser rapidement, afin de pouvoir
?ventuellement bloquer ? la fronti?re l'oeuvre tout juste vol?e.


Pour l'heure, il s'agit d'un voeu pieu. La r?ticence des propri?taires ?
inventorier leur patrimoine est bien trop grande. Sans l'excuser, Christian
de Lupp?e, parmi les responsables de l'association des Demeures historiques
qui regroupe quelque 3 000 propri?taires, avance plusieurs explications ?
cet ?tat d'esprit. ?Il y a peu encore, souligne-t-il, les assureurs se
devaient de communiquer ? l'administration le montant des oeuvres d'art
expertis?es.? Cette disposition vient certes d'?tre supprim?e, mais elle
demeure toujours un ?frein psychologique? car, rappelle Christian de Lupp?e,
?cette mesure ?tait redoutable ? cause de l'ISF?, l'imp?t sur la fortune. Ne
pas assurer des oeuvres d'art contre le vol est ?galement le plus s?r moyen
d'?chapper aux droits de succession.


?C'est vrai, conc?de Isabelle Pabion, responsable de l'association des
Vieilles Maisons fran?aises (environ 18 000 adh?rents), les Fran?ais se
m?fient du fisc et d'un ?tat qu'il juge inquisiteur. Mais aussi,
ajoute-t-elle, bon nombre de familles n'imaginent pas que le mobilier ou le
tableau qu'ils c?toient depuis leur enfance a une si grande valeur. C'est
parfois par ignorance que l'on ne s'assure pas.?

?Et puis pendant longtemps, poursuit Christian de Lupp?e, les primes
d'assurances n'ont pas ?t? d?ductibles des revenus fonciers. Ce qui vient de
changer, pour les propri?t?s ouvertes au public.? Une disposition dont seuls
Fran?ais et Belges b?n?ficient.


La peur du fisc ne peut cependant pas tout expliquer. La v?rit? est plus
simple : bon nombre de propri?taires peinent ? entretenir leur ch?teau ou
demeure class?e. Une fois pay?es les assurances contre l'incendie et les
d?g?ts des eaux, la famille croise les doigts pour qu'aucun autre dommage
?ventuel ne survienne. Pas moyen de faire autrement, surtout depuis 1999,
l'ann?e de la temp?te, suite ? laquelle les assureurs ont fortement augment?
leurs primes...


Daniel Voisin qui, comme courtier en assurance, est en charge de cinq ? six
cents propri?t?s situ?es principalement sur le Grand Ouest et le Centre,
d?taille les deux publics auquel il se trouve d?sormais confront? : ?Vous
avez, d'abord, les vieilles familles de l'aristocratie ou de la grande
bourgeoisie fran?aise, qui ont souvent du mal ? assumer le train de vie de
leur demeure, y compris ? payer de lourds frais de chauffage. Et puis,
ajoute Daniel Voisin, vous avez une nouvelle cat?gorie de propri?taires :
des Fran?ais ou, de plus en plus souvent, des ?trangers ? Am?ricains,
Anglais, Allemands. Ceux-ci ont plus d'argent, ils sont souvent dans les
affaires et ont l'habitude des contrats.? Si les premi?res familles
rechignent ? d?penser 2 500 euros pour une assurance, ?les seconds, dit-il,
n'h?sitent pas ? signer des primes de 8 000 ? 15 000 euros?.



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Fri May  6 17:35:00 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 17:35:00 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] An insider's account of the evacuation of Babylon 
Message-ID: <20050506153501.DNTF25247.amsfep19-int.chello.nl@cremers>

An insider?s account of the evacuation of Babylon 
In his first interview since returning to Europe, Dr Ren? Teijgeler, former
senior advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, speaks about his
experiences in Baghdad

By Gary Schwartz  

UTRECHT. Ren? Teijgeler (54), a Dutch conservator specialising in the
preservation and management of non-Western artefacts and documents, served
as senior advisor of the United States Embassy to the Iraqi Ministry of
Culture from July 2004 to March 2005.

With the withdrawal from Iraq of the Dutch on 10 March, Teijgeler left Iraq.
His tasks have now been taken over by Robert Kerr, cultural affairs officer
of the US embassy.

Dr Teijgeler spoke to The Art Newspaper about his experiences in Iraq?his
first interview since returning to Europe.

 
GS: What is your training and background?

I studied sociology, anthropology, bookbinding and conservation. Since 1996
I have run a bureau called Paper in Development, for the preservation and
management mainly of collections of non-Western artefacts and documents. I
have worked extensively in libraries, archives and museums in developing
countries. 

GS: How did you get to be Senior Advisor to the Iraq Ministry of Culture?

At a Blue Shield symposium in spring 2003 I heard a presentation on the
cultural affairs unit of CIMIC [CIMIC stands for Civil Military
Co-operation, a NATO programme for sending militarised civilian experts into
the field to perform tasks for which the military is unequipped. The
Netherlands, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Norway form
CIMIC Group North, the Dutch contingent includes a unit of militarised
cultural heritage experts]. I offered my services and was taken on. I was
given four weeks of basic training, waited a while, had another two weeks of
instruction about the mission and was shipped out to Baghdad by the Dutch
army as a major in the reserves. Two weeks after I arrived my predecessor
[Zainab Bahrani] left and I was promoted in quick stages to Senior Advisor.

GS: What facilities were you offered?

I was attached to the US embassy, in the Republican Palace in Baghdad. There
were 1,600 people working there, who all had to be put up inside the Green
Zone. The Palace was surrounded by an improvised trailer park, where the
sewage tanks were always running over. At first I was able to spend free
time in the caf?s outside the perimeter, but after they were hit by a bomb
attack, we all had to stay inside the palace grounds. My trailer was a
10-minute walk from my office. Most of the Senior Advisors had extra staff,
but all I had was a translator. The most important instrument at my disposal
was the high status of the position of Senior Advisor. In military terms,
this was equivalent to the rank of a general; it gave me access to people in
command.

GS: How did the function of Senior Advisor originate and what did it entail?

The Americans offer an advisor to each of the ministries of the Iraqi
government. It is up to the minister whether or not to accept the offer. The
first advisors for the Ministry of Culture were the Italian diplomats Pietro
Cordone followed by Mario Bondioli Osio. They were succeeded by John Malcolm
Russell and Zainab Bahrani. The quick succession of advisors was confusing
for the Iraqis. When I assumed office, I was the fourth cultural advisor
within a period of four months. 

GS: Why is it that your predecessors received lots of publicity and you did
not?

I chose to avoid the press and the media. I did this mostly for my personal
safety but also because keeping a low profile made it easier for me to
negotiate.

GS: How did you establish your priorities?

They defined themselves. In the first place, I had to win the confidence of
the Minister of Culture, which took a while. On the ground there were two
major challenges, safeguarding the National Library and protecting Babylon.
The National Museum could pretty much take care of itself. The National
Library and Archive had been gutted by fire and 70% of the collections were
lost. But 42,000 documents, including rich archives from the Ottoman era,
had survived in the basement of the Ministry of the Interior, where they
were damaged by water. I got a $100,000 grant from the US army for freezer
trucks to stabilise them. A team of three Iraqi restorers are going to take
a course in paper conservation at the Library of Congress and come back to
restore the archive. 

Before I arrived an Italian NGO had set up an electronic cataloguing
project. We worked very well together until the two staff members, the two
Simonas, were kidnapped in October 2004. Soon after I went to Europe with
the director of the library for three weeks to raise money. Basic repairs
got under way at the beginning of 2005, but there is still not enough money
for proper reconstruction. 

I gave high priority to training and improving management. To take full
advantage of the training opportunities that were offered to us, I
introduced the rule that everyone who went abroad had to speak English. In
December 2004 more than 10 restorers-in-training went to the Czech Republic
for a two-month course on conservation. I could have established
high-profile, expensive, prestige programmes, but instead I chose to invest
in human capital. 

The Ministry of Culture sent 100 of its people to the American University of
Beirut last month, for a month-long course in management and team building.
In the near future we hope to send as many as 500 others.

GS: What was the problem at Babylon?

Babylon is one of the most important archaeological sites in the Middle
East. While heavy combat was still going on, the US Marines set up a base to
protect it. Then, in September 2003 the Multinational Division South Central
(MND-CS), under Polish command, established its regional base there. What
happened next is incomprehensible. Halliburton-KBR, the main US Army
contractor for non-military activities, got permission?from whom, no one is
saying?to set up a regional logistic centre in Babylon. They levelled large
tracts with earth-moving equipment to create flat storage areas for heavy
items like trailers, containers and chemical toilets. When the dust cleared,
there were 2,500 troops stationed at Babylon. The Polish militarised
archaeologists managed to prevent some destruction, but a lot of damage was
done.

GS: How did you get Camp Babylon evacuated?

I worked out a plan from which everyone would benefit. The Iraqis were going
to get the site back under their control; they received $200,000 and lots of
equipment; 350 jobs were created for paid guards, who received uniforms,
arms and other equipment. 

The benefit for the Americans was considerable. It might not seem that way,
but they worry a lot about international law. Even though the US is not a
signatory to The Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in
the Event of Armed Conflict, the Army claims to behave in the spirit of the
convention. Halliburton-KBR was easy to please. They made money out of
demolishing the old camp and building the new one. The move cost about $300
million.

The Poles were another story. In the beginning they were dead set against
the move. It took a direct command from Warsaw to get them to clear out.

Even with basic agreement between all parties, things were not happening
quickly enough. I encouraged the Minister of Culture to write a letter to
the then US ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, requesting a speedier
evacuation. With the help of General Charles Davidson, head of Civil
Military Affairs, who was genuinely concerned about Iraqi culture and
history, I reached George Casey, US Commanding General of the Multi-National
Force in Iraq. General Davidson and I drafted a response to the Minister of
Culture assuring him that all coalition troops would be out of Babylon by
January 2005. Once the Americans gave their word, they followed through.

The logistical problems were vast. 882 trucks rode on and off day and night
for months, moving everything to Diwanya, about 100 kilometres away. To
dissolve oil spills, we brought in oil-eating bacteria. Everyone involved
had to be made aware of the danger of causing new damage. It happened.
Babylon is now empty and under Iraqi control. Conferring about the
evacuation on site one day, I found myself staring at the huge concrete
security blocks that the coalition forces put at the end of the famous
Paradise Road. The heavy trucks that put them there destroyed many of the
2,500 year-old baked tiles paving the road. I asked the Iraqis how they were
going to remove these eyesores; they did not know. Taking advantage of the
moment, I got the Poles to lift the blocks out with Chinook helicopters.

GS: A year ago you were a self-employed consultant on conservation; for
seven months in the interim you were the cultural proconsul of Iraq; and now
you?re a private citizen again. How does that feel?

Weird. All development work is addictive, but Iraq was something else. On
the one hand I felt like a potentate, with powers that I never had before.
And on the other hand... My colleague Jim Mollen, Senior Advisor to the
Ministry of Education, with whom I shared an office in Baghdad, was killed
last November four days before he was going to go home. The day she was
kidnapped, I was scheduled to meet with Simona Torretta. A convoy to
al-Hatra that I almost joined was attacked by terrorists.

I left with the feeling that I had done good work. Before the American
invasion of Najaf, I impressed on the Deputy Chief of Mission, James
Jeffrey, that the Mosque of Imam Ali there is very holy to the Shi?ites. I
arranged for an archaeologist to be attached to the Project Contract Office,
so all building plans could be monitored. I assisted Iraq in re-enlisting
the major international cultural organisations. 

The US has asked me to return to Baghdad in September as a civilian advisor
to set up and support national programmes for archives and libraries. 

The contribution of Dutch militarised cultural specialists in Iraq, mainly
in Uruq, has attracted attention. I hope the Dutch decision makers will
realise that they have a major lead in the field of military-cultural
expertise compared to most other countries. Unfortunately so far nothing new
has materialised, but we hope our government will pick up on these
opportunities. The Ethnographic Museum in Kabul, for which our help has been
requested, would be an excellent project.

With my experience in this line of work and with my new military contacts, I
am planning to found an NGO for cultural development work in countries in
conflict, filling the gap between military presence and the arrival of
civilian specialists. I am working on this with the CIMIC officer who
recruited me, Joris Kila.

GS: You were known to oppose the war in Iraq. Did your conscience bother you
working for the Americans in Iraq?

I was not in favour of the American invasion of Iraq. But when I got there,
I decided that recriminations would do no one any good. I accepted reality
as I encountered it and set out to effect whatever improvements I could. To
get anything done in a war zone you have to cooperate with the military,
whether you like it or not. Once you accept that fact of life many things
become possible. Without the coalition forces I could have done nothing for
Iraq?s cultural heritage. Moreover, I soon realised that whatever damage the
coalition troops have done, the effects of Saddam?s rule were far worse. 

The Americans did not invent war, and it is not going to disappear from the
planet any time soon. With this awareness, I avoided the question of blame
altogether and concentrated on what to do next. This was also the spirit in
which I dealt with the Iraqis and the Poles, who were not talking to each
other when I arrived. I agreed with them in advance that we were not going
to assign blame, only to seek common solutions to common problems. It worked
for me, and I made it work for them.

With thanks to Joris Kila.



From museum-security at museum-security.org  Fri May  6 17:35:00 2005
From: museum-security at museum-security.org (Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton
	Cremers))
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 17:35:00 +0200
Subject: [CPProt.net] The Art Newspaper newsletter
Message-ID: <20050506153507.DNVY25247.amsfep19-int.chello.nl@cremers>


Conference puts historic cities in the spotlight 

>From 12-14 May, Vienna City Hall is hosting a major conference entitled
?Managing the historic urban landscape?, organised by the Unesco World
Heritage Centre, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS),
and the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. The aim is to
establish proper definitions and guidelines for the preservation and
conservation of historic urban environments, in particular World Heritage
cities, of which there are 208, ranging from Cairo to Vienna itself. While
the considerations at stake are extremely complex, the conference hopes to
produce an international agreement on urban regulation and management.
Speakers include Themba WAKASHE, Chairman of the World Heritage Committee
(South Africa) and Francesco BANDARIN, Director UNESCO World Heritage
Centre, Paris (France), Jade TABET, Architect and Member of the World
Heritage Committee for Lebanon, and Arata ISOZAKI, Architect (Japan). For a
full programme of the conference including speakers see
http://www.worldheritage2005.at/en/programm.htm 
?This is the only time in Iran that a cultural manager has been supported by
artists like this?
Sami Azar has been reinstated as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art
following protests by artists- By Mark Irving 

LONDON. Dr Ali Reza Sami Azar, who resigned from his post as director of the
Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran in March as reported in this newspaper
last month, has been re-instated... 
go to article <http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11785> 


Mediator of hope
- By Shirin Neshat 
With the Islamic revolution (1979) and the political isolation that
followed, Iran fell into a deep cultural crisis. Artists were suddenly faced
with a dictatorship that essentially denied artistic freedom of
expression... 
go to article <http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11784> 


An insider?s account of the evacuation of Babylon 
In his first interview since returning to Europe, Dr Ren? Teijgeler, former
senior advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, speaks about his
experiences in Baghdad- By Gary Schwartz 
AMSTERDAM. Ren? Teijgeler (54), a Dutch conservator specialising in the
preservation and management of non-Western artefacts and documents, served
as senior advisor of the United States Embassy to the Iraqi Ministry of
Culture from July 2004 to March 2005. With the withdrawal... 
go to article <http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11783> 


The looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad
This book was compiled in the heat of battle, but it misses the main story-
By Martin Bailey 
Producing a book on the Iraq Museum has proved no easy task. As the editors
of The looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: the lost legacy of Mesopotamia
Milbray Polk and Angela Schuster explain, ?on numerous occasions... 
go to article <http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11782> 


Bringer of hope and fine architecture
In a rare interview, His Highness the Aga Khan describes his global approach
to helping Islamic communities help themselves, while also restoring their
past heritage - By Anna Somers Cocks 
In a rare interview,