Theft at the Villa Giulia

A view of the Villa Giulia, Italy's Etruscan Museum

Over the Easter holiday weekend, thieves have broken into the Villa Giulia Museum in Rome, home to thousands of Etruscan artifacts, including the Euphronios/Sarpedon Krater. La Reppubblica reports today that the thieves broke into the museum on Saturday night through the back, locked the guards on duty in the gatehouse, and stole some jewelry from the 19th century Castellani collection. They appear to have avoided entirely the antiquities from Cerveteri, and elsewhere, many of which had been repatriated back to Italy in recent years. Holiday weekends are notorious for being risky times for museums.

Some of the recently repatriated antiquities that
have hopefully been left unscathed after the theft

The thieves reportedly used smoke bombs to distract the guards and to obscure the view of the security cameras. But they appear to have taken little. Most of the antiquities were unscathed, at least according to initial reports.

The Villa Giulia was founded in 1889 to house pre-Roman antiquities from the Etruscan civilization. The building had been a Renaissance villa built by Pope Julius III beginning in 1550. It has a lovely garden designed by Giorgio Vasari, and a very early 19th century recreation of an ancient Greek temple.

There does not appear to be any reporting of the theft in English, here is the text of a Repubblica account in Italian:

Sono entrati dal retro e, dopo aver rinchiuso i custodi di turno nella guardiola, sono saliti nella Sala degli ori dove hanno fracassato tre vetrine e rubato alcuni gioielli ottocenteschi della collezione Castellani, usando dei fumogeni per non rendere visibili le immagini riprese dalle telecamere. Quello avvenuto la scorsa notte al Museo nazionale etrusco di Villa Giulia, a Roma, è un "furto singolare", di cui "non si capisce la finalità" perché gli oggetti rubati non sono quelli di maggior valore nel museo, spiega la direttrice regionale per i Beni culturali e paesaggistici del Lazio, Federica Galloni. "I ladri - racconta la dirigente del Ministero dei Beni culturali - sono entrati dal retro del museo ieri sera, verso le 23.30. Hanno rinchiuso i custodi nella guardiola e sono saliti al secondo livello, nella sala degli Ori, dove hanno frantumato con un'ascia tre vetrine blindate molto spesse all'interno delle quali erano esposti dei gioielli della collezione Castellani. Ne hanno presi solo alcuni, forse perché disturbati dall'arrivo dei carabinieri, chiamati immediatamente dai custodi. Non capisco - ragiona Galloni -, è veramente un furto strano, singolare, perché nel museo ci sono dei reperti archeologici di gran lunga più importanti, che hanno maggior valore se immessi sul mercato". Sul posto si trovano sia la scientifica che il Nucleo Tutela Patrimonio Culturale dei carabinieri. "Verranno esaminati i filmati delle telecamere a circuito chiuso", aggiunge Galloni, anche se "i ladri hanno utilizzato dei fumogeni durante il furto". 

“Roma, Rapina Con Fumogeni  Rubati Gioielli Dell’800 a Villa Giulia - Roma - Repubblica.it.” Roma - La Repubblica. Mar. 31, 2013.

The FBI's Art Crime Team

Ulrich Boser has written a piece on the FBI Art Crime Team for the recent edition of the US News and World Report; it will also likely be a popular citation for law students composing student notes on art theft and cultural property crime for the next few years.  The piece discusses the work of the FBI, and how the special art unit was instituted after the 2003 Iraq invasion.  For contrast, consider that Italy's Carabinieri has had a special Art Squad for 40 years.

The piece focuses on the reasons for art theft, and how the FBI has worked to combat these thefts.  One of the most interesting recoveries was the theft of North Carolina's Bill of Rights:

During the final days of the Civil War, Union Army soldiers stole North Carolina's Bill of Rights out of the state Capitol. Commissioned by President George Washington, the document was one of only 14 copies created after Congress proposed the first amendments, and for more than 140 years, it remained missing. Then, in 2003, two antiques dealers tried to peddle the work for $4 million. A millionaire philanthropist showed interest in the document, claiming that he would buy the artifact on behalf of Philadelphia's Constitution Center. But the philanthropist was actually an undercover FBI agent, and investigators seized the document. "It was like touching history," one agent said.

It is an interesting piece, but one that has been written many times, without adding much new for those like me who read these kinds of pieces. 

I found the comments of Mark Durney, who blogs at Art Theft Central much more interesting.  It seems Durney was interviewed for Boser's piece, but his comments didn't make the final cut.  That's a shame, because Durney had a lot of interesting things to say about why many art crimes go unreported; much of which has not been discussed before.  As Durney argued with respect to attracting traveling exhibitions, 

. . .  I described how museums and cultural institutions are often wary of reporting thefts as it can discourage other institutions and individuals from loaning works of art for special exhibitions - the cash cow for many institutions. To confirm my suspicions that special exhibitions are a source of considerable income I examined the 2006-2007 financial reports of several high-profile art museums. For example, the Philadelphia Museum of Art reported an income of $1,839,449 from special exhibitions. This amounted to a shade over 29% of the museum's program service revenue ($6,281,637 - program service revenue is revenue from admissions, special exhibition ticket sales, concession sales etc., BUT not membership dues or government grants - usually the largest portions of an institution's total revenue). Another institution, the Wadsworth Atheneum reported that in 2007 its income from special exhibitions was more than double its income from regular admissions ($842,218 versus $401,527 respectively). Although special exhibitions can be great sources of income for museums, they are also instrumental in sustaining and attracting donors and grants.

Antiquities Dealer Returns Italian Antiquities

Antiquities dealer Jerome Eisenberg has apparently agreed to return eight antiquities to Italy. Ariel David has an overview for the AP, complete with photos of all the objects.

According to Ariel, "Eisenberg, who runs galleries in New York and London, said he bought most of the antiquities at auctions in the British capital in the 1980s, and decided to return them after Italian authorities recently turned up evidence that they were looted." According to Giovanni Nistri, who leads the art squad of the Carabinieri "This is a dealer who since 1999 has returned of his own initiative other artifacts that came into his possession".

What is the significance of the return? It appears to be one of the only examples of a dealer voluntarily relinquishing allegedly illicitly-excavated antiquities. It seems the Italians had some kind of iron-clad proof that these objects had been wrongfully removed in some way.

David Gill at Looting Matters argues this agreement to return objects is significant because "It is now clear that the Code of Ethics and the due diligence processes conducted by members of the IADAA are not rigorous enough." I think he's exactly right about the lack of effectiveness of Codes of Ethics, but this agreement has little to do with them. These objects were acquired at auctions, sometime in the 1980's. The acquisition of these objects in the 1980's doesn't strike me as an accurate indicator of the current state of the antiquities trade, though it's badly flawed to be sure.

The more relevant point I think is how effectively the Italian Culture Ministry uses the press in painting a picture of a vast Italian repatriation campaign. An agreement seems to have been concluded months ago. Why is the story appearing now? It seems to be a calculated move. Seldom does a week go by that there is not news of an arrest, agreement for repatriation or the like. Italy and cultural property is in just about every news cycle. Believe it or not, public pressure like this is the single best tool a source nation has to secure the return of objects. This fact speaks volumes about the fatally flawed body of law which attempts to regulate the illicit antiquities trade. Italy is not using the law to seek these objects because it cannot; instead it is exerting tremendous public pressure on museums and individuals.

(AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

52 Arrested for Antiquities Trafficking in Italy

From Bloomberg,

"Italian police arrested 52 people and recovered several hundred smuggled archeological artifacts as part of their ``tomb raider'' investigation into international art theft.

More than 300 carabinieri of the finance police and paramilitary art squad searched suspects' homes in eight Italian provinces early today and found smuggled goods of ``considerable worth,'' Italy's Culture Ministry said in an e-mail.

Three years of investigations into a group of Sicilian ``tomb raiders'' led to the searches, arrests and uncovering of a wider international network, with contacts in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, the U.K. and U.S., the statement said. The investigation and raids were coordinated by the magistrates from the Sicilian province of Gela, the e-mail said."

The Bloomberg story got one important detail very wrong. It incorrectly stated that the Getty has agreed to return 52 antiquities to Italy. In fact, Italy demanded the return of 52 objects; the Getty has agreed to return 25 of them in principle, along with one other which was not on the list.

The Malta Star has more on this story as well. It seems that many of the Sicilians arrested were not "from usual criminal backgrounds but rather from the professions and the business community and also include collectors and antiquarians." If that's true, it would be quite a blow to the antiquities trade. One difficulty the Italian authorities may have is following through with convictions of these individuals, who may be considered upstanding members of their community.

3 Year Italian Investigation Yields Marble Reliefs

From the Daily Mail, it seems Italian police have recovered 12 marble reliefs depicting Roman gladiators. USA Today picks up an AP story as well, available here. The panels were discovered buried in a garden near Fiano Romano. The reliefs, made of Carrara marble, are thought to date to the 1st century BC. The images are stunning, as David Nishimura rightly points out. Officials say the pieces will be studied, restored, and then displayed at the Villa Giulia in Rome.

The Prosecutor, Paolo Ferri, says individuals have been charged, but their names have not been released. One thing I would like to know is, what archaeological context was destroyed in the process of removing this from the decorated tomb? How will the raiders be punished? I wonder as well, why the investigation took three years. That's a very long time; I imagine they were waiting to catch the raiders trying to sell the pieces to a dealer or international buyer.

(Image by Plinio Lepri, AP)

Italy's Carabinieri Strike Again

News of yet another Italian victory in the struggle to combat the illicit art and antiquities market. Yesterday, Italian authorities announced that a cultural property trafficking ring has been uncovered. The two-year investigation centered on 35 individuals, and potential charges are likely to include both illegal possession as well as trafficking of archaeological artifacts. The recoveries include a renaissance still-life and marble altar pieces. The announcement evidences the continuing Italian efforts to combat the illicit trade in cultural property. The Italian efforts are garnering some impressive results, but one wonders if these efforts are just the tip of the iceberg, or represent a substantive blow to the illicit trade. Increasing the interdiction resources may be working, but I wonder if there are similarities between the cultural property black market and the illegal drug trade. Will other enterprising traffickers step in? I fear that they will, and the only real substantive change must be effected at the other end of the market, where the purchases take place.