Picasso Vandalism at the Menil in Houston

 A moron has decided to vandalize a Picasso work at the Menil in Houston. This is a few blocks from our house—but we are away in Amelia at the ARCA summer program finishing up my teaching and preparing for the annual conference this weekend. If we were home the spaniels and I would be scouring Houston looking for this dimwit. From the chronicle:

Menil communications director Vance Muse, reached in Germany Monday, said the painting was rushed down the hall, with the paint barely dry, to the museum's renowned conservation lab, where chief conservator Brad Epley quickly began its repair. The vandal, who fled the building and has not been identified, stenciled an image of a bullfighter killing a bull and the word "Conquista" on the painting.

 The vandal used a stencil and spraypaint to damage Picasso's Woman in a Red Armchair. The work may have been rushed down to the conservation lab, yet the museum security was nowhere to be seen. One of the great charms of the Menil is you can wander in and have the place to yourself on a hot afternoon, but perhaps security needs to pay a little closer attention. 

1. Molly Glentzer, Picasso vandal hits Menil, Houston Chronicle, http://www.chron.com/entertainment/article/Picasso-vandal-hits-Menil-3642537.php#src=fb (last visited Jun 20, 2012).

More Context on the Menil Frescoes

The Frescoes at the Menil in Montrose

The return of the Byzantine Frescoes to Cyprus presents an opportunity to consider what will happen to the physical space which was specially created to house them at the Menil in Houston. But it also offers an opportunity to look back at the acquisition process for the frescoes. Lisa Gray reports that at the time of the acquisition, Dominique de Menil understood they were dealing with 'Thugs':

An example of the chopped up mosaics before restoration

De Menil and her associates had flown to Munich, expecting to see two Byzantine frescoes of unusual excellence. Their contact, Turkish businessman Aydin Dikmen, led the little party to a ratty neighborhood at the edge of Munich, then up a flight of stairs to an apartment that had no electricity. In a room lit only by two candles, de Menil was shown two pieces of plaster (John the Baptist, plus part of an angel) propped against a wall. Other bits were packed in a crate. De Menil was horrified. "The pieces were too much chopped up to derive any impression of beauty," she later told Texas Monthly reporter Helen Thorpe. "It was like a miserable human being that has to be brought to the hospital." Through translators, Dikmen told her that the frescoes had been discovered under rubble at a construction site in Turkey. The de Menil party doubted the story. But de Menil agreed to pay Dikmen earnest money in exchange for the right to buy them in the future. At that point, she did something unusual for the wild-and-woolly 1980s antiquity market: She began earnestly trying to track down the frescoes' rightful owner. Eventually, after many letters exchanged by lawyers and embassies, it became clear that the frescoes had been stolen from a tiny church near the town of Lysi, on the island of Cyprus. In 1974, after Turkey invaded northern Cyprus, looters systematically robbed the area's churches and monuments of anything they could carry off. In the little church at Lysi, where the frescoes were painted into the walls' plaster, they'd glued cloth to the walls' surfaces, then used a chain saw and chisel to hack away Christ, Mary and the angels, yielding 38 cloth-fronted pieces.

It is a fascinating story of one of the rare examples of a collector working with the original owner to solve a theft, restore the mosaics, display them, and return them to Cyprus. But in this case, the thieves were rewarded. The mosaics were stripped from their church, sold on the international market in Munich. So it is a good result, and the Menil and the Byzantine Church of Cyprus should be rewarded, and yet this was a success for the thieves as well.

The Chapel in Lysi, Cyprus where the mosaics were stolen

1. Lisa Gray, Afterlife for a chapel, Houston Chronicle, February 5, 2012, http://www.chron.com/life/gray/article/Gray-Afterlife-for-a-chapel-2968817.php#src=fb (last visited Feb 6, 2012).

"Participatory Stewardship" at the Menil

The Byzantine Fresco Chapel in Houston

Last Thursday I attended a terrific panel discussion at the Menil. It affirmed for me why cultural heritage offers such a rich area of study. It gives us an opportunity to think beyond who owns what and offers new ways of envisioning things like patent rights in the human body, the trade in works of art, stewardship, engineering design above and beyond contractual relationships, open source museums which can extend beyond cultural walls and bureaucracy, and the creative commons. As Rex Koontz, Director of the School of Art at the University of Houston noted, short of discussing pre-Columbian art, his area of focus, a conversation about heritage and stewardship is the most important conversation we could be having. The discussion touched on all these areas in exciting ways.

The moderator, Kristina Van Dyke facilitated the free-flowing exchange. She began the conversation by pointing out that artworks have lives and a offer us an opportunity for each visitor to "possess" them in a way. If I like to stand and absorb and really take in a work of art, I've created a connection with the work which might not be the same as ownership, but is in many ways a richer more fulfilling relationship. The starting point was the recent announcement that the Menil would return the Byzantine Mosaics which were on long term loan from Cyprus.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Dominique de Menil was offered the mosaics for sale in 1983. The pieces had been stolen from a small church in the Northern Turkish-controlled region of Cyprus. After consulting the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus Ms. de Menil purchases the mosaics, restored them, and they have been on display in a specially-constructed building near the Menil since 1997. Recently it was announced that this long-term loan will end and the mosaics will return to Cyprus. The acquisition, restoration and long-term loan of the mosaics offers lessons for the antiquities trade, and was a remarkable act of stewardship which eschewed the concept of permanent ownership and instead produced a collaborative relationship which benefitted the original owner—the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus—and also allowed Ms. de Menil to put the mosaics on display for many visitors to see. You can read more about the story at the Menil's chapel website.

This was the starting point for the conversation which took on a number of interesting themes. Prof. James Leach from the University of Aberdeen offered his thoughts on property. He is an anthropologist who has worked in Papua New Guinea and he provided an overview of property theory, which he defined as the relationships among people with respect to things. Property in fact stands as a particular form of ownership, while other conceptions of property offer a richer and more meaningful way to foster relationships. In fact anthropology, and the law grudgingly, has begun to increasingly view property not as mechanical rights but as a complex web of interconnected relationships. This is an idea I've tried to think a lot about, and I wish I'd had the benefit of this exchange before I tackled the ideas of property and heritage. Before the event, the audience may have been skeptical that biomedical research, the legal relationships of Schlumberger and intellectual property would link up to heritage. But of course they do if you move beyond property and examine these problems through the lense of stewardship and conceive of property as a web of relationships.

Frescoes to Return to Cyprus from the Menil

The Byzantine Frescoes on Display at the Menil

Some cultural repatriation news from my neighborhood. The Menil has announced that it will return the byzantine mosaics  frescoes currently housed in a custom-built chapel here in Montrose in Houston. In 1983 Dominique de Menil was offered frescoes from Cyprus. After a rigorous due diligence inquiry, it was discovered that the mosaics had been looted from Cyprus. And in a groundbreaking move, she worked with the theft victim, the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus to purchase the mosaics, to restore the damage done to them when they were looted. The mosaics have been displayed since 1997, but next year they will return to Cyprus to go on display in a new museum, though they sadly cannot be returned to the original church, for fear it might be disturbed again.


Menil Director Josef Helfenstein announced in a letter:

After more than two decades in Houston, the beloved Byzantine frescoes will go back to Cyprus in 2012. While this moment is bittersweet, the story of these frescoes—from their rescue, to their long-term loan to us, and now to their return—very much reflects the essence of the Menil Collection, its focus on the aesthetic and the spiritual, and our responsible stewardship of works from other nations and cultures

When we consider when this decision took place, in the 1980s during an era in which so many wealthy collectors bought so much looted art, this long-term lease and 'rescue' of the frescoes really stands apart and should be commended.

I haven't read this in any of the reporting on the Menil, but I've wondered whether there is other art at the Menil which might have been acquired under suspect circumstances. In the antiquities room in the Menil there are a number of works also purchased during this period which might be suspect—red-figured vases, small pre-historic carvings of deities, cycladic figurines. The kinds of objects that were ubiquitous in the market in the 1970s and 1980s, and which we now know were likely looted. These objects may have been lawfully acquired, but its an indication of just how many objects were looted and sold to collectors at this time, and how far law, policy, and behaviors have changed. So I'll cheer the return of these mosaics, and their responsible stewardship but I also wonder, should other objects go back?

The Original Location of the Frescoes in Cyprus

1. Douglas Britt, Houston’s Menil is returning holy artworks to Cyprus - Houston Chronicle Houston Chronicle (2011), http://www.chron.com/life/article/Houston-s-Menil-is-returning-holy-artworks-to-2186452.php#photo-1621133 (last visited Sep 27, 2011).
2. Bill Davenport, Space-Age Chapel Will Need New Art: Menil’s Byzantine Frescos a Go-Go Going Glasstire (2011), http://glasstire.com/2011/09/24/space-age-chapel-will-need-new-art-menils-byzantine-frescos-a-go-go-going/ (last visited Sep 27, 2011).
3. Elisabetta Povoledo, Menil Collection Is to Return Frescoes to Cyprus, New York Times (2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/arts/design/menil-collection-is-to-return-frescoes-to-cyprus.html?_r=1 (last visited Sep 27, 2011).
4. Kelly Crow, Houston’s Menil Collection to Return Frescoes to Cyprus The Wall Street Journal (2011), http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903703604576587072924927678.html (last visited Sep 27, 2011).