Malevich Heirs and the Guggenheim Resolve Dispute

The Guggenheim has announced it has reached a settlement with the heirs of Kazimir Malevich.  At issue was this untitled work, created in 1916.  The piece was shown at an exhibition in Berlin in 1927 along with 70 other works, but the artist left the paintings behind before returning to the Soviet Union.  He was probably rightly concerned that his works would be confiscated if he returned them to the Soviet Union; and in fact they were later banned by the Nazis as well.  The work was purchased by Peggy Guggenheim in 1942. 

The terms of this settlement are confidential.  Malevich's heirs have recently been pressing claims to many works they believe were improperly obtained.  In 2008 they settled a claim for four works now in the possession of the city of Amsterdam. 

1. Guggenheim and Malevich Heirs Resolve Painting Dispute, ARTINFO, February 8, 2010.
2. Dave Itzkoff, Ownership Settled for Malevich Painting, The New York Times, February 9, 2010.

New Cultural Heritage & the Arts Interest Group

Prof. Jennifer Kreder at Northern Kentucky College of Law has forwarded me a message about the new American Society of International Law Interest Group on the International Law of Cultural Heritage & the Arts.  Here are the details:


Our first panel with ASIL will be held on March 26, 2010, 2:30-4:00PM at the ASIL Annual Meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington DC.  The panel will be entitled "Wrestling the Dead Hand of History: Perspectives on a Proposed State Department Commission on Nazi Looted Art" with Ambassador J. Christian Kennedy, Stuart Eizenstat, Lucille Roussin and Charles Goldstein, moderated by Jennifer Kreder.  Full panel details and bios are below.

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Footnotes 2.8.2010

• The Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in site becomes a Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, N.C.
  
• 1909 murder-suicide in the UK's National Portrait Gallery published in their Archive Catalogue.
• The Jewish heir to a Nazi looted Klimt landscape has agreed to split the $45.4 million proceeds from the Sotheby's auction with the current owner, who bought it in good faith.
• Shaun Greenhalgh, the extremely talented forger who sold fake masterpieces to British museums and auction houses, was recently sentenced to prison, along with his octogenarian accomplice parents.
• Since the FBI's Art Crime Unit's inception in 2004, $142 million worth of art has been recovered, yet an estimated $8 billion is lost each year in art and cultural property crimes.
• An agreement has been reached between the United States Government, private corporations and preservation societies that will protect carvings on Utah's Nine Mile Canyon.
• East Asian remains were found in a 1 CE Roman necropolis, which suggest that there could have been East Asians in Italy before a formal delegation from the Han dynasty made it's "First Contact."
• More deaccessioning thoughts from Judith H. Dobrzynski since her January 2nd article "The Art of the Deal" in the New York Times.
• Mark Durney points looks at whether art theft is seasonal.
• Slate looks at the power of civil asset forfeiture, a tool often used by prosecutors in art and antiquities regulation.    
  

Suspicious Bronze not the Fano Athelete

Earlier this month in a Jan. 14th article the L.A. Times had apparently uncovered some evidence linking the Getty to criminal wrongdoing in the acquisition of this piece.  This bronze statue has been known by many names, including the "Getty Bronze", the "Fano athelete", or the "Bronze statue of a victorious youth".  I've received a note from Julie Jaskol, Assistant Director of Media Relations at the Getty notifying me that the "Bronze" discussed in the letters was not this Bronze Athlete. 

The Times has corrected the story:

Bronze statue: A Jan. 14th article in Section A about an Italian legal  case involving the J. Paul Getty Museum's statue of a bronze athlete mischaracterized a 1976 letter to museum director Stephen Garrett. The  letter from the late antiquities expert and Getty adviser Bernard Ashmole, which referred to the museum's "exploits over the bronze statue" as a "crime," was describing a different bronze statue in the museum's collection. Garrett, who initially told The Times the letter referred to the bronze athlete, now says he was mistaken.

I wrote a very long summery of the dispute back in 2007.  The statue was found by fisherman in the Adriatic in 1964, smuggled out of Italy, and eventually purchased by the Getty in 1977.  The bronze was discussed a great deal in the very public battle between Italy and the Getty over other looted objects in recent years.  Yet there was a lack of direct evidence linking the Getty to any wrongdoing in the acquisition.  Criminal proceedings were brought against some of the fishermen and handlers of the statue in Italy, yet there was not enough evidence to secure a conviction.  At present a prosecutor has brought suit in Italy to attempt to secure possession of the statue.  Had the letter discussed in Felch's original piece referred to this bronze, this would have provided strong corroborating evidence in the court of public opinion for the return of the bronze. 

Footnotes 2/2/2010

• UNESCO wisely calls for a ban in the trade of Haitian artifacts to prevent looting.
• A Korean civic group will appeal a French Court's decision holding looted Korean royal texts to be French public material because they have been in France for over 140 years.
• Over 3,000 people have signed a petition to cease the break up of a musical instrument collection at the V&A Museum in London.
• Funding for the Arts will hold steady under Obama's budget.
• The FBI has paid Ted Gardiner, the Utah antiquities dealer and undercover operative in a federal bust of artifact trading, a total of $224,000 for his cooperation in the investigation.
• The Egyptian Parliament amended Egypt's antiquities law, which forbids trade in antiquities but allows possession of antiquities with some individuals.
• Seven people, including a pastor, were held in Chennai, India for smuggling antique idols.
• According to Noah Charney, stolen art is the 3rd most illegally trafficked item after drugs and guns, and is used by organized criminals for bargaining.
• Author of Among Thieves, David Hosp is interviewed and discusses what being an art thief must be like.
  

Cultural Heritage Preservation Internships in Peru

I get dozens of requests every month from students and arts professionals wondering what career opportunities exist for the protection or preservation of cultural heritage.  There are not yet all that many opportunities, but that is changing.   

Here is one cultural internship program created to support the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Peru and the United States.  It looks like there are nine positions, and applicants should have an arts background and Spanish fluency:

 

In support of the MOU, the Embassy promotes an internship program for American graduate students of museum studies and conservation programs to be held from July through August 2010.The objective of this program is to enable well-qualified graduate students the opportunity to do field research in Lima, Arequipa and Lambayeque. It will also support museums that house rich art collections, but are greatly in need of skilled professionals.  These internships will provide an excellent opportunity for Peruvian and American colleagues to exchange ideas on new techniques related to conservation, marketing, and exhibition planning, with long-term possibilities for collaboration. Please find more information here.

Piecing Together the Origin of Ancient Gold

Interesting story on some ancient gold jewelry currently held by the University of Pennsylvania.  Twenty of the gold objects are on display at the Bowers Museum.  The Bowers website touts these objects as Trojan gold excavated by Heinrich Schliemann.  However the history of the objects is unknown: 

George Allen of Hesperia Art, a few blocks from Rittenhouse Square, approached the museum with a rare opportunity: the chance to purchase 24 gold pieces that he said were from ancient Troy.
Allen had no evidence to back up his claim that the gold was of Trojan origin, other than what the museum's curators could see with their own eyes. The earrings and other baubles were in the same style as the famous objects found by Schliemann.

The pieces were so similar that initially the curators thought they might be from the Schliemann collection - which was still missing, its loss mourned by art historians worldwide.

In addition, the objects for sale bore tantalizing similarities to golden artifacts from another ancient stronghold: the royal Mesopotamian city of Ur, in what is now Iraq. Scholars already had theorized the existence of a trade network between the two civilizations. The new items, though they lacked a paper trail, seemed to support that theory.

"The purchase of this collection is urgently recommended," Penn curator Rodney Young wrote in a March 1966 memo to the museum's board.

Young also acknowledged that the items had an unsavory aspect, probably having been "looted by peasants and dealers."

Museum officials decided to buy the pieces, for $10,000. But evidently they had misgivings.
Four years later, in 1970, the museum announced it would no longer acquire undocumented objects, arguing that such acquisitions encouraged the "wholesale destruction of archaeological sites."

1. Tom Avril, Tracing ancient roots of Penn Museum's gold, PHILADELPHIA ENQ., January 31, 2010.

Footnotes

• A surprising judgment was handed down by a German Court, ruling that a rare poster collection stolen by the Nazi Gestapo, although legally owned by the Jewish heir of the original owner Hans Sachs, could remain in a museum because the heir has no legal remedy to possess the collection.
• Suzanne Glass, the great granddaughter of Hans Sachs, has written a more intimate take on the story behind the aforementioned rare poster collection.
• The First Circuit Court of Appeals hands down major victory for artists and rules in favor of Christoph Buchel, holding Mass MoCA to be in violation of Buchel's right to artistic integtrity.
• Beginning in 1473 with the earliest documented instance of art theft, numerous works of art have been stolen by a variety of criminals, but the multiple thefts of Munch's The Scream trumps them all.
• Following an international precedent of returning looted cultural heritage, the Bolivian government will return four colonial oil paintings to Argentina after they were stolen two years ago.
  
• Is archaeological discovery a good thing when it leads to destruction? The reactivation of interest in archaeology from new discoveries and subsequent television programs about antiquities could be cause of recent tomb looting in China.
• A panel discussion titled Collectors, Dealers, Museums & the Law, with the purpose of increasing awareness of cultural property laws as well as the legal responsibilities of collectors, dealers, and museums, will take place February 11th, at noon Pacific, in San Rafael, California.
• Perhaps the only way to decrease the illicit removal of cultural objects in India is if protective measures are professionalized and creative partnerships developed with local communities.
• Although speculation as to the authenticity of the Archaic Mark (Gospel of Mark) codex has been rife for more than 60 years, US scholars and scientists have proven that one of the jewels of the University of Chicago’s manuscript collection is a skilled late 19th- or early 20th-century forgery.
• New Trend Alert: Museums and Gallery's exhibiting forgeries, the artists who create these fakes, and skilled tactics used to detect forged art, like the two week exhibition at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.
• 2009 proved to be a horrendous year for the Museum world, but 2010 brings a mood of cautious optimism.
• David Gill discusses the issue of the looting on archaeological sites to provide material for the market and to fund organized crime, and Christina Ruiz discusses funding terrorism, specifically 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta's attempted sale of Afghan loot to a German archaeologist.
• A Defense attorney in the four-corners antiquities investigation is raising questions about the unnamed informant.  The sources was integral to the Government's 2½-year multistate investigation into illegal artifact trafficking of objects from Pueblan civilizations.

Footnotes, Jan. 28

• Mark Durney notes how much more attention we pay to damaged masterworks than to outright art theft. 
• artnet weighs the cultural destruction in Haiti.
• Just how much does Zahi Hawass focus on pulling in revenue?
• Donn Zaretsky and Michael Rushton have had an all-too-rare intelligent discussion on the deaccession of art. 
• Tourists were stranded after mudslides near Machu Picchu.
• More discussion of fake antiquities at Safecorner. 
  

Barford on the Sale of Egyptian Antiquities

Archaeologist Paul Barford has an interesting post on the sale of antiquities in Egypt.  He's had a number of interesting posts on his time on an excavation there, but I was really interested in his post Monday.  He talks about his quest for some fake antiquities, and was offered some shabtis.  These small funerary figurines were placed in graves, perhaps as servants meant to serve the deceased in the afterlife.  Pictured here are shabtis on display in the Louvre.  Barford states the "current modes of no-questions asked collecting are directly contributing to the creation of the market which is the motor behind the looting of archaeological sites for saleable objects."  I think I agree with him that buyers are fueling the looting of sites.  But there are other contributing causes:  the paucity of resources in these areas for law enforcement; the desire by visitors and tourists to buy these objects; and the lack of site security when archaeologists leave.  The answer is responsible scrutiny of these transactions, but also the importance of outreach and education of these buyers and the local communities about the value of responsible stewardship of these sites and objects.       

Barford writes:

Last night in a Luxor sidestreet on my quest for the best or the most bizarre fake artefacts, in a grubby shop I'd overlooked before, I was offered several shabtis and shabti fragments which I am pretty sure were not fakes. All the dealer offered as provenance was "here and there". After I had correctly identified the fakes he'd mixed in to test whether his customer knew his onions, he showed me a lot more. I told him that in his country there was a new law under discussion which would make merely having them in his shop punishable by up to twenty five years. I was not terribly surprised that he would not show me the "authentic scarabs" after that. Those suppliers "here and there" who sold them to him knew that these items were saleable to visiting foreigners.

The day before, I was walking across the palace site at Malkata, showing it to some colleagues, and had just replaced the cardboard "protecting" the wall paintings when a guy in a dark robe came running up. "Closed, closed, zis site he closed" he panted. He was presumably the "gafir" who was guarding this site for the SCA. Once he realised he could not make cash out of showing us the wall paintings which I'd just shown people, he then pulled out of his pocket a blue-painted sherd, the "Armarna ware" which I have seen on the Internet being sold at 300 dollars a piece and asked whether I would like to "see" it. It looked remarkably like the one I'd found there a few weeks earlier and put under a nearby bush to protect it from the sun and weather. I told him where he could put it. Interestingly this was after I had pulled out the photo-identity document issued by the SCA authorising me as an archaeologist to visit sites like this.

 . . .

What is interesing about this is Malkata is littered with pottery, tonnes of it. Most of it from the Eighteenth dynasty, including some nice red wares (lovely colours), slipped ware, fine bowls, burnished ware. Yet neither of the would-be vandors had picked any of this up, they knew their market, the blue-painted pottery is coveted by western collectors and that is what they were stealing from the site to make a bit of cash. . . . 

I've had similar experiences at ancient sites as I'm sure many of you have.  Pictured here is a man selling small stone 'zapotec' figurines at Monte Alban in Oaxaca Mexico this summer.  I don't have the expertise required to tell if these are fakes or not.  I've always assumed, as Barford did, that these locals are selling fakes.