Olympia Antiquities Recovered

Some of the recovered objects from Olympia

In February of this year armed men stole 80 small objects from a museum in Olympia dedicated to the Olympic games. They were armed, were able to overcome a lone security guard, and smashed the display cabinets and stole close to 80 small objects. At the time there was speculation by the Mayor of Olympia and others that Greek austerity measures had led to diminished security, making the theft easier to execute. After an undercover operation with an officer posing as a buyer, all of the objects have been recovered, most of them buried in a field only 3 km from the museum.

Given such a high-profile theft, in an olympic year, it is safe to assume that Greek authorities made recovering these stolen objects a high priority. A task which at the time was seemingly more difficult as there was speculation that these small, portable objects would have been easily shipped abroad or smuggled across the Adriatic to organized criminal networks in the Balkans. But it seems the objects did not make it far away from Olympia.

On Sunday authorities in Greece announced three Greek men were arrested in the city of Patra after an undercover officer posing as a potential buyer was offered one of the highlights of the theft, a Bronze Age gold ring. The remaining objects were found in a field near Olympia, where they had been buried inside a sack. So congratulations are in order for Greek law enforcement. And given the context of the theft, it is noteworthy that the Greek Public Order MInister Nikos Dendias told reporters on Sunday that "Despite the difficult economic situation we are not being lax on security issues, especially over our cultural heritage."

 Here is some video of the press conference and the recovered objects from Al Jazeera:


 

1. Greek police recover stolen Olympia artefacts, , http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/11/2012112582211277291.html (last visited Nov 26, 2012).
2. Greek police recover stolen Olympia artefacts, arrest three, Reuters, November 24, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/24/us-greece-olympia-idUSBRE8AN08H20121124 (last visited Nov 26, 2012).

Art theft with pistols, a long drive and a cemetary

Four recovered works from this photo released
by the South African Police Service

Four works of art stolen from a museum in Pretoria South Africa appear to have been discarded hundreds of miles away near the coast in Port Elizabeth. On Sunday the thieves paid for their admission to the art museum and asked the curator to show them around the museum. Then, presumably after seeing what they liked they pulled out their pistols and stole five works of art. Today it seems four of the works have been recovered in a private cemetery 700 miles away. There must be an interesting story here, perhaps more details will emerge and that fifth painting will hopefully be recovered soon.

Flea market Renoir really was a steal

Paysage Bords de Seine, Renoir

Every time I hear the story of a flea market sale where some lucky buyer with a good eye purchased a work by a well-known artist, I always think that chances are good that work was stolen at some point. How does a Renoir make it to a flea market, really. And that's the story of this Renoir purchased at a flea market in West Virginia for $7. It was scheduled for auction this week, but now it looks likely to have been stolen some time before 1951 from the Baltimore Museum of Art.

The painting has not it seems been reported to art loss databases. The Washington Post notes that its own reporters conducted research and found the painting was missing from the Baltimore Museum of Art:

Museum officials then searched their archives, where they found paperwork showing that the Impressionist work, “Paysage Bords de Seine,” or “Landscape on the Banks of the Seine,” was pilfered from their building nearly 61 years ago. The museum had the painting on loan from one of its famous benefactors, Saidie A. May, a Baltimore native who died in May 1951. Museum records show that the Renoir was stolen on Nov. 17, 1951, just as May’s art collection was being bequeathed to the museum for permanent ownership. The revelations put on hold Saturday’s much-ballyhooed auction of the Renoir at the Potomack Company in Alexandria. Elizabeth Wainstein, Potomack’s president, said the Virginia woman who made the flea market find was disappointed. But she immediately agreed to halt the sale until the FBI determines the rightful ownership of the painting, which the auction house estimated is worth $75,000 to $100,000. It will remain at the auction house until then, Wainstein said.

The case reveals the importance of reporting a theft, even decades into the future. There is no word on whether the doll and plastic cow the anonymous flea market art buyer also bought with the this $7 painting are stolen as well. But the buyer should get credit for reportedly cooperating fully with the FBI.

1. Ian Shapira, Flea market Renoir was allegedly stolen from Baltimore Museum of Art, auction canceled, The Washington Post, September 27, 2012.

Cezanne Recovered in Serbia

Boy in the Red Vest, Cezanne

There are reports today that one of the works stolen from the Emil Buehrle Collection in Zurich has been recovered in Serbia. ARCA's blog has a good rundown of the current press reports. The work was stolen in 2008 along with 3 others.

The BBC report notes:

Authorities have not named the painting, but local media have reported it is The Boy in the Red Vest, which was taken from Zurich's Emil Buehrle Collection. Police said three people had been arrested in connection with the theft. It added an art expert was being flown in to confirm the authenticity of the 1888 painting, worth $109m (£68.3m).

Connecting Art and Drug Crime

LS Lowry's The Viaduct, stolen in 2007

We can make at least one more connection between the drug trade and art theft. A number of stolen artworks have been recovered near Manchester. The investigation was primarily aimed at the sale of illegal narcotics, the paintings were ancillary to that investigation. The theft of the paintings in 2007 was a troubling example of a violent art theft:

A man posing as a postman knocked on the Aird family's door in Cheadle Hulme. When Louise Aird, who was carrying the couple's two-year-old daughter Sabrina in her arms, opened the door, she was confronted by Miller brandishing a 10-inch knife. Three other men followed him into the house. "They tied me up with a cable and had a knife in my back," Aird, 46, said. "They said they would slit my throat. Then they said they would kill the baby if we moved, that's what they kept saying. They took everything out of the bottom half of the house."

The four men stole 14 pieces of art. In 2009 one of the thieves was jailed, while three remain at large. The two arrests in connection with this drug raid do not appear to have a connection to the theft itself. Rather the arrested men acquired the paintings through the black market. Though these works are well known and could not have been sold on the open market, these paintings do have value on the black market as leverage. The connections between other criminal activity and art theft are often discussed, but seldom shown in such sharp contrast as we see in this case. Interesting that the defendants thought the police were investigating them for the art, when it was a drug investigation instead that led to the recovery.

1. Victim of LS Lowry paintings robbery relieved after thieves jailed, the Guardian, March 22, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/mar/22/ls-lowry-paintings-robbery (last visited Mar 22, 2012).
2. LS Lowry Masterpieces Found In Anti-Drugs Raid In Liverpool, The Huffington Post,  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/21/ls-lowry-masterpieces-worth-17m-found-liverpool-anti-drugs-raid_n_1370727.html (last visited Mar 22, 2012).

Stolen Magritte Returned

Olympia by Rene Magritte, has been returned

In 2009 two armed thieves stormed the former home of Rene Magritte outside of Brussels. They held the three curators and two tourists at gunpoint while they stole the work.  Given the events yesterday at the Athens Museum, it is perhaps reminding ourselves why art thieves decide to steal. At the time I ran through some possible motives of stealing a work of art:

The first, is that a collector admires the piece, and hired a thief to take it for him. We can call this the Dr. No situation. This seems the least likely possibility, but the one that strikes a chord with the imagination. Writers in this subject frequently cite the Dr. No as being responsible for thefts, and I admit it makes for good Bond villains, but there has been no convincing evidence that thsi is why people are stealing rare objects. Another similar possibility  . . .  is that an unscrupulous dealer may have a similar piece for sale, and if he can establish some excitement around these kinds of pieces, the price for his similar work may go up. 

Second, the thief may not have known that the object was so rare as to make its subsequent sale difficult.

Third, the thief may simply be trying to kidnap the object. They could then [ensure] its safe return for a generous reward, or negotiate its return.

Finally, perhaps the market is doing such a poor job of regulating what is and is not legitimate, that it may not be all that difficult to sell this piece after all. This strikes me as the most troubling possibility, but also not very likely.

We can also add a fifth possibility, that organized criminals use these works as collateral in a kind of shadow version of the stock market.

In this case it seems the second possibility was exactly right, as now the work has been returned because the thieves were unable to find a buyer. In a report the Curator of the Magritte museum, Andre Garitte said the painting was returned after the thieves "understood they wouldn't be able to sell it because it was too well-known," he said. "It became an embarassment and they preferred to get rid of it. Luckily they didn't destroy it."

Hotels Not the Best Place for Art?

As a wise Museum Security Director once said, 'It's a hotel, why should we expect them to safeguard their art?' On Saturday this Rembrandt sketch was stolen from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey, but has since been recovered near a church in Encino. the small drawing was removed from the exhibit Saturday night when the curator was distracted and the drawing was quickly stolen. This almost seems like a case where the work was poorly secured, and anyone could have walked up and stolen it. But there have bee other more elaborate thefts of Rembrandt's works. For more on why Rembrandt is such a popular artist to steal, have a look at Anthony Amore and Tom Mashberg's new Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists.

1. Rembrandt painting stolen from Marina del Rey art exhibit, officials say - latimes.com, (2011), http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/rembrandt-stolen-from-marina-del-rey-art-exhibit-.html (last visited Aug 16, 2011).
2. Stolen Rembrandt recovered at church - latimes.com, (2011), http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/rembrandt-stolen-church.html (last visited Aug 16, 2011).

Forfeitted Pissarro Returning to France

A federal jury has ruled that this Pissaro painting, "Le Marché," was stolen from the Faure Museum in Aix-la-Bains in France.  The work was seized by ICE agents from Sotheby's in 2006, after its theft in 1981.  The thief took the work from the museum under his jacket.  The work has a storied history as the Department of Justice Press Release describes. 

It seems that in 1985 the thief, Emile Guelton, sold the work to Sharyl Davis who was using space art gallery in San Antonio owned by Jay Adelman.  Mr. Adelman seems to operate an antiques shop on the Riverwalk, and operate a website.  In 2003 the work was consigned to Sotheby's by Davis.  Davis paid $8,500 for the painting in 1985, and estimated an auction price of $60-80,000.  However Sotheby's asked about the history of the work and was told it was purchased from someone named "Frenchie". But then Davis asked for "Frenchie's" real name from Adelman, who told her it was Guelton and that he was from Paris.  That information appeared in the auction catalog with an image of Le Marché."

Just before the auction, French federal law enforcement officers learned that Le Marché was at Sotheby's. Based on the information in the auction catalog, the French officers located, contacted, and interviewed Guelton. Guelton confirmed that he knew Adelman, was living in Texas in 1985, sent a container of artwork from France to the United States in 1984, and sold Adelman paintings. The French officers, using a prior arrest photo of Guelton, created a six-person photo array, which they showed to the Faure Museum guard in October 2003.

 The Pissarro was then forfeited under the National Stolen Property Act.  Forfeiture allows prosecutors to bring a suit against an object which was part of a crime, and all claimants to the object come forward to challenge the forfeiture.  It is a powerful tool for prosecutors, and thus should be used carefully, else we may risk losing works of art for many years.  It seems like the right result was achieved in this case.  Mark Durney rightly points out that this round-about story reveals a lot about how difficult recovering stolen art is and how easy it is to acquire in "good faith".

Paris Auction House Searched

In more news which seems to reflect poorly on the French art trade, the AP is reporting that 12 people have been "detained" from the Hotel Druout auction house in Paris.  Police found a stolen Courbet painting, the Wave, which was stolen in 2004. 

Roerich Thieves Arrested

The thieves who stole two paintings from the Roerich Museum in Manhattan were arrested last week as they tried to sell one of the stolen works to an undercover cop at a Starbucks:

On Sept. 3, Ryjenko and Croussouloudis -- carrying the painting in a blue paper shopping bag -- traveled to a Lower East Side Starbucks to meet with the detective, police said.

While Ryjenko waited outside, Croussouloudis met with the phony collector and asked for $20,000 for the painting. She even warned him that the work of art had been stolen and that he would be unable to freely display it in his gallery, police said.

The cop then asked her to come with him to his gallery where he would give her the money. As she and Ryjenko walked with him up Allen Street, they were arrested.

A law-enforcement source said the couple denied having stolen the painting.

Couple busted with Stolen painting [New York Post, Sep. 10, 2009].  

Recovered Picasso a Fake?

The work of art recovered by Iraqi forces last week may be a fake.  This label on the back of the work has some spelling mistakes, and indicates the Louvre sold the work to the Kuwait Museum.  However the Louvre has said it has never had a Picasso. 

From the AP:

The London-based Art Loss Registry said it has no record of any paintings missing from the Kuwait National Museum, and no record of this particular painting as missing at all.  The Picasso Museum in Paris and France's national museum were searching their archives for signs of the painting, which Iraqi forces seized Tuesday during a raid on a house near Hillah, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of Baghdad.  A local judge in Hillah, Aqeel al-Janabi, said Thursday the painting will be sent to Baghdad after an investigation but refused to provide details.  In a video released by the Hillah police, the man detained for trying to sell it, 33-year-old Maitham al-Issawi, said it belonged to his father, who gave it to him before his death. His father, al-Issawi, was an army officer who took part in the invasion of Kuwait, which led to the 1991 Gulf War.  In the video, officers hold up the canvas, which has fold marks on the front. Police have said the painting bears Picasso's signature but would not comment further Thursday.

Looted Picasso Recovered in Iraq

This work by Pablo Picasso, which was looted by an Iraqi soldier during the 1990 invasion of Kuwait has been recovered by Iraqi security forces.  The painting has clearly been folded, and is badly damaged. As usual, the trick isn't stealing a work, it is trying to sell it—even in Iraq. 

From the Times:

The soldier had been trying to sell it, allegedly asking for $450,000 (£278,000). The market value is estimated to be $10 million.  The masterpiece, which is signed by Picasso, was seized this week during a raid on the house belonging to the suspect near the mainly Shia city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad.  A security official said that the painting was tracked to the property, but officers feared that the suspect would burn the artwork if they attempted a raid, so they lured the man into the street where he was arrested.  The suspect claimed to be an electrician, but the official says that he is a former member of the security forces who has a relative from Mukhabarat (Saddam’s former security force) that entered Kuwait.

Roerich Sketch Returned

Mark Durney reports that one of the sketches stolen from the Nicholas Roerich Museum has been returned in an "ordinary yellow, padded envelope, with a Brooklyn return address."  He's got a number of questions:

Was the sketch stolen to simply illustrate the need for the museum to improve its security measures? Were those who were in possession of the stolen art thwarted by the recent publicity the thefts have received? Should one expect the second sketch to turn up in tomorrow's mail? And, what does one make of the Brooklyn return address?

Renoir Recovered in Venice

This work by Pierre Auguste Renoir, stolen 15 years ago in Rome was recovered in Venice according to AFP.  Not too many details, but these from the wire reports:

"We carried out all verifications, with the help of Interpol and French and British police, and established that the painting -- which depicts a mythical scene -- belonged to a Roman family from whom it was stolen in 1984," [an Italian Police Spokesman said].

Captain Salvatore Di Stefano, another police spokesman, said: "We don't know the value but it must be pretty high because Renoir did not paint that many mythical scenes."

With the Treviso resident unable to prove his claim that he bought it at a rummage sale, police seized the painting, dating from around 1895, in order to return it promptly to its rightful owners.

In September 2008, police in Italy, acting on a tip from an art critic, recovered a Renoir nude stolen 33 years earlier from a private collection in Milan. Three suspects were arrested.

The Munch Effect

Earlier this month a church in Larvik, Norway was robbed of a work by Lucas Cranach, Let the Children Come to Me.  The work was soon recovered, and will be displayed again later this summer after it is restored. 

It is often said that a high-profile art theft or media attention can actually be a good thing for increasing visitors.  Ludvig Levinsen, the general manager of church affairs is quoted in the Art Newspaper, and speculates on this "Munch effect", a reference to the increased attention paid to that artist when his works have been stolen in recent years.  Levinsen speculates on the stolen Cranach from his church, "When it was stolen it created a lot of international media attention . . .  Now that we have the painting back we hope people are more aware of what we have."

More on the Dutch Recovery

Is stolen the same as sold?  David Charter for the Times has more details on the recovery of eight works stolen 22 years ago.  He reports that in December a middleman in Dubai tried to sell the works back to the insurance company. 

The detective, Ben Zuidema, [who was hired to investigate the theft two decades ago] said that he was contacted out of the blue by a man wanting to sell the paintings back to the insurers for €5 million (£4.5 million). Included in the offer was €1 million for Mr Zuidema to facilitate the deal.

 The good news is the works were recovered, however many were folded and badly damaged, including this work by Jan Brueghel the Younger. 

The story gets stranger with respect to a still-missing ninth work.  As the private detective Zuidema told Dutch reporters this still missing work may have been destroyed by the gallery owner Robert Noortman who died two years ago.  That is certainly a very serious accusation, and one which Noortman is no longer alive to defend against.  He is quoted by the Dutch news agency Algemeen Nederland Persbureau that "I shared my findings about him with the police in Maastricht, . . .  But in the end it did not lead to the finding of the paintings."
At the time Noortman claimed that "Stolen is sold".  True enough for the bottom line, though it is a pretty distasteful sentiment as these works were lost for 22 years, and have emerged very badly damaged.  

(photo credit:  Ruben Schipper/EPA)

8 Works Recovered 22 Years After the Theft

On Saturday Dutch prosecutors said three people had been arrested in connection with a theft which took place in 1987 from the Noortman gallery in Maastricht.  In the statement Dutch prosecutors said "The suspects were apparently trying to sell the art works to the insurance company that had paid out 2.27 million euros (£2m) after they went missing . . .  The investigation has yet to determine where the paintings have been for more than 20 years,"

 The works were by 17th Century artists David Teniers, Willem van de Velde and Jan Brueghel the Younger, as well as 19th Century painters Eva Gonzales, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Paul Desire Trouillebert.

It Takes a Thief to Install an Alarm

This is the Cellini Salt Cellar, an elaborate gold and enamel table decoration, measuring only 10 inches in height. It was stolen on May 11, 2003 from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It was later recovered in January 2006 near Zwettly, Austria. The thief, Robert Mang was an alarm-systems installer with no criminal history. The theft was listed at one time as one of the FBI's Top Ten Art Crimes.

He claimed to have had a couple of beers before the theft. He climbed into the museum which was covered in scaffolding at the time, and took the work. After hiding it under his bed for a couple of years he attempted to ransom it back. He sent a number of ransom notes to the museum's insurance company threatening to melt the work down if he wasn't paid €10-million. Though eventually a photo of him was circulated and he was forced to turn himself in to the authorities

Mang turned himself in to the police, and served two years and nine months in prison. Now it seems he will return to selling and installing alarm systems: (via) "he had distributed advertising leaflets and made appointments to check on the state of installed alarm systems or to install new ones . . . his lawyer Lukas Kollmann said: 'He wants to be left alone in order to lead a normal life again.'









Photo Credit: Herbert Pfarrhofer/European Pressphoto Agency

Italy Announces Recovery of 10 Works, Doubled Recovery of Stolen Heritage

Italian police have recovered 10 works which were stolen back in 2004. Among the recovered works is this 16th Century painting depicting the holy family attributed ot Hendrick van den Broeck.

Gen. Giovanni Nistri announced the works had a value of $5.3 million USD, noting the works were found in a trailer wrapped in newspaper. The were were stolen in 2004 from "an ancient religious complex in Rome" according to the AP story.

The Culture Ministry also announced today that it had returned over 2,000 antiquities to Bulgaria, many of which were coins.

Nistri also announced that works totaling $243 million had been recovered in 2008, more than double the amount recovered the year before. Also noted in a Bloomberg account: "The number of known illegal digs in Italy last year increased by 15 percent to 238, mostly in the area around Rome, the Carabinieri police said." It seems most of this increase was due to the increased policing of unauthorized archaeological digs (which we might just call looting). How has Italy found the resources or will to increase its efforts? Perhaps its new heritage advisor Mario Resca, profiled in today's Wall Street Journal has some ideas on how to earn revenue from this heritage.

Whether Resca is the man to make the necessary changes remains to be seen, but he:

points in particular to Pompeii -- Italy's most popular site with 2.6 million visitors in 2007 -- where littering, looting and the dilapidation of 2,000-year-old buildings and frescoes prompted the government this summer to declare a "state of emergency." His concerns extend beyond conservation to issues of marketing and service.

Preserving this massive body of heritage is a difficult undertaking, and I touched on the difficulties at Pompei briefly here, but just because Resca is an outsider does not necessarily mean his ideas will be bad. In fact many of his suggestions have been floated before.

How to Buy a $125k Sculpture for $900?

Open up a scrapyard.  Larry Harnisch reports on the theft of a 6-foot bronze miner statue stolen last February in Los Angeles and recovered by the LA Police Department's art theft detail at a local scrapyard where the statue was purchased for $900. 

This is an emerging problem given the high price of metals, though these prices are falling again.  This is an inherent problem with public art, but much of the blame belongs to scrapyard owners as well, which might perhaps look the other way in such circumstances.