Two Guilty Pleas in Four-Corners Antiquities Investigation

On Monday two pleaded guilty to stealing government property and violating the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.  Both Brent Bullock and Tammy Shumway had been among those indicted during a federal investigation into looting Native American sites in the Four Corners region in the Southwest.  From the AP:

Bullock, 61, sold several ancient Indian items to an undercover operative in 2007, including a blanket fragment for $2,000 and a hoe-like tool for $500, according to court documents. He also offered to sell several ceramic figurines taken from U.S. Bureau of Land Management land.

Bullock said he wanted to sell the items because he was in debt, according to a search warrant affidavit.

Investigators said Bullock acknowledged to the informant that the items came from public land in Utah but filled out paperwork saying they were from private land in Colorado.

Shumway, who introduced Bullock to the informant, was charged because the 40-year-old woman aided and abetted the deals and signed a falsified paper about the items' origin as a witness, federal officials said.

In U.S. District Court on Monday, Bullock and Shumway acknowledged they knew the items had been illegally dug up from public land in Utah. As part of a plea deal, they each pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking in stolen artifacts and theft of government property. Prosecutors agreed to seek a reduced sentence. 

A couple points which might not be evident from some of the coverage of these plea deals.  First, sentencing will occur in July; and the AP piece notes the maximum sentence is 12 years in prison.   Neither of these defendants will likely receive anything close to the statutory maximum.  That is because when a defendant enters into a plea deal, they do so in most cases to achieve a recommendation from prosecutors on sentencing; which will often fall far below the maximum sentences.  This should not be construed as authorities in the United States not taking these crimes seriously—rather a reflection of the general criminal procedures when plea agreements are reached. 

Second, Tammy Shumway is the widow of Earl Shumway, a notorious antiquities looter.  Shumway became a national figure in the 1980's, who boasted that he began looting at three years old with his father.  He sold a large collection of over thirty prehistoric baskets and sold them for a great deal.  Though he was prosecuted for selling those baskets, he cooperated with authorities and only received probation.  He went right back to looting, using a helicopter and even lookouts to avoid authorities.  He boasted to the media that he could never be apprehended.  Though he was not caught in the act of looting, authorities did secure a conviction using DNA evidence found on Mountain Dew soda cans he left in the areas he looted.  In 1995 he received a 5-year prison sentence which sent a message that Federal agents and prosecutors took this kind of crime seriously. 

1. Timothy Egan, In the Indian Southwest, Heritage Takes a Hit, N.Y. Times, November 2, 1995.
2. Mike Stark, 2 Utahns plead guilty in sweeping artifacts case, AP, March 29, 2010.

New 6-week Course on First Aid to Cultural Heritage

I've been forwarded information on a new course sponsored by the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Conflict in collaboration with UNESCO and the Blue Shield network.

Here are the details:

Dates: 17 September - 29 October 2010 (6 weeks)

Place: Rome, with study visits to other cities in Italy

With the cooperation of: UNESCO, Blue Shield and specialized international and national agencies

Background

In the past decades, armed conflicts worldwide have involved deliberate or accidental damage to cultural heritage. Conflicts cause the weakening of governments and societies and endanger the core values that hold communities together. Cultural heritage thus plays a crucial role in recovering from such situations. In times of conflict, however, all operations can be delayed because access is often restricted by military, security, or law enforcement agencies. Consequently, it is essential for everyone working in these areas to understand how and when to intervene to protect endangered cultural heritage while humanitarian efforts are under way.

Objectives

• Understand the values associated with cultural heritage and the impact that conflict has on them;
• Apply ethics and principles of conservation in extreme conditions;
• Assess and manage risks to cultural heritage in conflict situations;
• Take peacetime preparatory action to improve response in times of conflict;
• Secure, salvage and stabilize a variety of cultural materials;
• Understand international legal instruments protecting cultural heritage during conflicts;
• Communicate successfully with the various actors involved, and work in teams;

Methodology           

The course will comprise of interactive lectures, group activities, practical sessions, simulations, site visits and case studies. Participants will be asked to develop case studies drawing from their own experience and work context.

Participants

The course is aimed at those who are actively involved in the protection of cultural heritage within a variety of institutions (libraries, museums, archives, sites, departments of antiquities or archaeology, religious and community centres, etc.). It is also aimed at professionals from humanitarian and cultural aid organizations, as well as military, civilian and civil defense personnel. Those with experience in conflict situations are particularly encouraged to apply.

A maximum of 22 participants will be selected.

Working Language: English

Course Fee: 900 € (Euro)

Travel, Accommodation and Living Expenses

Participants are responsible for their round-trip travel costs to and from Rome, Italy, and for all living expenses. To cover the cost of living, participants should plan for a minimum allowance of 2,000 € (Euro) for the entire duration of the course. This sum is based on the cost of moderately priced accommodations. Candidates are strongly encouraged to seek financial support from sources such as governmental institutions, employers and funding agencies.

Financial Assistance

Upon request, the organizers will offer financial support to a limited number of selected candidates who can demonstrate their inability to secure funding.

Application

Please use the ICCROM application form [http://www.iccrom.org/eng/01train_en/forms_en/applfrm_en.doc].  In your submission, include a 700-word personal statement that summarizes your experience and highlights the relevance of the course to your current or future projects. Applications should be sent by regular mail to the following address or by e-mail:

First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Conflict

Collections Unit - ICCROM

Via di San Michele,13

00153 ROME RM, ITALY

Tel +39 06 585531 Fax +39 06 58553349

E-mail: aidinconflict@iccrom.org

Application deadline: 14 May, 2010

This initiative received the financial support of the Italian Ministry of Culture (MiBAC)

Footnotes 3.26.2010

• King Tut is taking a tour through New York, first stopping at the Met (for the 30 year anniversary), then the Brooklyn Museum, and lastly Times Square.
  
• An interesting new art and literary magazine, title Sw!pe, speaks from the viewpoint of museum security staff.
• Some feel that museums have a moral obligation to return Nazi-looted .
• The Staffordshire Hoard will remain in the north of England.
• Mark Durney will take over as new management of the Museum Security Network, though it appears Ton Cremers will continue to forward on information to the network.
• Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, author of Thieves of Baghdad, will be speaking at Georgetown University Law Center on April 13th at 7:00pm.
  

On Looting in Lebanon

 It should not really come as a surprise that Lebanon has experienced problems with looting given its rich ancient past, troubled recent past, and location at the crossroads of commerce in the Mediterranean.  It also has a connection with the Sevso Treasure—a forged Lebanese export permit meant that Lebanon intervened in the legal dispute with the Marquess of Northampton,  Croatia, and Hungary.  The Marquess' Trust retained possession of course, and Lebanon withdrew from the action when the export permit was revealed to be a forgery.

But it also has a rich material heritage.  An anonymous looter tells Rana Moussaoui that:

"I know that these are historical artifacts, but much of the time I don't know their exact value," Abu Nayef admitted to AFP in his garden in Baalbeck.

"Sometimes we even move from one piece of land to another through tunnels, if we think we can find new vestiges," he added.  . . .

"I have a wife and six children to support, and I do so through this business," he explained.

This problem plagues a number of nations, but Lebanon has had particular difficulty.  Looting became widespread during the civil war between 1975-1990.  Funding for heritage preservation and policing is lacking, and there are a number of important sites.  In what is an otherwise sound article, Moussaoui criticizes the National Museum in Beirut for "showcasing 2,000 archaeological relics" while "hundreds of thousands of other pieces are gathering dust in storage".  That ratio could probably be found in just about any museum; what goes on display is only the tip of the iceberg.  It may not be fair to criticize Lebanon for what is a common situation all over the World.

Rana Moussaoui, Lebanon's archaeological sites a pillager's paradise, AFP Mar.25, 2010.

Interview with Cuno and Gerstenblith on Minnesota Public Radio

James Cuno, prominent critic of what he calls cultural nationalism, shares an extended interview with Prof. Patty Gerstenblith on Minnesota Public Radio.  Kimberley Alderman notes the "arguments themselves are not particularly unique to these discussions, but its kind of fun to hear the host and Gerstenblith sock it to Cuno on a couple of points (especially when he’s being smug)."  Is Cuno really smug?  Feel free to give the interview a listen and offer your thoughts in the comments below.

Here's the MPR audio.

Larry Rothfield also notes the moderator "calls Cuno's bluff", and also notes the City University New York will be hosting a discussion on April 7th with Rothfield, Cuno, and Lawrence Coben in which focus will be placed on practical responses to the current looting of antiquities.

Gardner Heist 20th Anniversary

The night before   after St. Patrick's day, early on March 18, 1990, thieves stole 13 works from the Gardner Museum.  The lost works by Degas (including La Sortie de Pesage pictured here), Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Manet were stolen and some were cut from their frames, but were also stolen from the thousands of visitors who have visited the Gardner Museum in these twenty years.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney's office are re-publicizing their offer of unconditional immunity to anyone who helps locate any of the 13 stolen works of art from the Gardner heist. Anyone with information regarding the Gardner Museum theft should contact the Boston FBI office at 1-617-742-5533.

There have been a slew of details on the theft in recent days, here are a few: 

• Charles Hill, a former Scotland Yard detective, says art thieves are not that smart and do not deserve the glamour they receive from heists.
• One of the least interesting items stolen in the infamous Gardner heist could turn over valuable clues.

Footnotes 3.16.2010

• 3,000 year-old wooden sarcophagus is returned to Egypt after being confiscated at the Miami Airport.
• A Philadelphia museum sues over $1.5 million art swindle.
• Suit filed over fake Native American art.
• Efforts to battle sophisticated art-theft rings are halted by public misconception regarding the importance of art theft.
• Unnoticed Chinese vase goes for 70 times it's asking price at a public auction in Ireland.
• Sotheby's will sell at auction a Nazi-looted Jean Baptiste Camille Corot painting.
• Egypt and Ecuador agree to return looted antiquities to their country of origin.
• Three Russian brothers dominate the legal forgery market.

Student Note on VARA

The Fall 2009 issue of the Rutgers Law Review has a student comment by Seth Tipton titled:  CONNOISSEURSHIP CORRECTED: PROTECTING THE ARTIST, THE PUBLIC AND THE ROLE OF ART MUSEUMS THROUGH THE AMENDMENT OF VARA.

From the introduction:

As will be discussed, VARA falls woefully short of granting meaningful and broad moral rights to artists. Most notably, deceased artists do not benefit from any of the protections of VARA. As such, it is imperative that Congress amend VARA to make the right of attribution perpetual and grant community standing to enforce
those rights where the artist is deceased. This Note will discuss the legal solutions that the amendment of the VARA could provide to ameliorate the hazards of the aforementioned issues of misattribution, increase the strength of American moral rights legislation, and protect and strengthen the role of museums in American
society.

Part I of this Note examines the inherent risks associated with assigning authorship to pieces of art. Although a highly important part of the sale and scholarship of art, this Part discusses the weaknesses of art connoisseurship. Also, this Part considers how those troubled methods of attribution cast considerable uncertainty in the assignation of authorship for the artwork of long-deceased authors. Part II maps the development of both the legal doctrine arising from misattribution and some of the solutions crafted by auction houses in response. This Part discusses the inadequacy and unpredictability of current common law doctrines developed to deal with misattribution. 

Part III introduces and explains the philosophical and intellectual underpinnings of moral rights and tracks the development of moral rights legislation in Europe. This Part discusses the inherent personal nature of moral rights and the key distinction between moral and economic rights.

Part IV goes on to introduce and explain state preservation statutes and the emergence of moral rights in American law. This Part also discusses the adoption of VARA. This Part explains that VARA’s
stated goal of protecting the artist’s honor and reputation is unattainable in light of its limitations when compared to European models.

Part V of this Note is a call on Congress to amend VARA. This Part posits that the European model of perpetual moral rights is a form of moral rights that should be implemented in American law. This Part goes on to suggest that perpetual moral rights could be combined with examples of community standing, readily available in state cultural preservation statutes throughout the United States, to vastly improve the actual protections VARA affords.

Lastly, Part VI revisits the solutions created by art auction houses to respond to liability for misattribution. This Part discusses how this model could be quickly and easily adapted as a pragmatic method of remedying a suit brought under an amended VARA. Armed with these examples and their success, Congress could
recreate a VARA that could ensure the protection of the moral rights of deceased artists, safeguard the societal position that museums occupy, and ensure that the public is given access to trustworthy and
objective information.

Seminar Paper: The "Historic" Rehabilitation Tax Credit

I'm publishing here a series of papers written by Loyola law students in my 'Property, Heritage and the Arts' seminar from the Fall of 2009. This paper was written by Andrew Prihoda.

The “Historic” Rehabilitation Tax Credit

Why the Current Tax Code is Stifling Incentives

to Invest in Our Nation’s History

By: Andrew Prihoda

I.                 I.  Introduction

By affixing his signature to the National Historic Preservation Act (“NHPA”) in 1966,[1] President Johnson joined Congress in both declaring historical preservation to be a national prerogative and directing the federal government to take an active role in promoting preservation activities.  Congress had raised some awareness of the goal of preserving historical properties;[2] however, these statutes merely provided penalties for unauthorized injury to or destruction of such properties[3] and mandated categorization and, where possible, acquisition of such properties by the Secretary of the Interior.[4]  While these statutes represented a huge step toward the goal, neither had clearly stated the need for historic preservation by Federal action, nor provided a mechanism by which that preservation could be achieved.[5]

Congress enacted the NHPA in 1966 to fill both of these voids.  To remedy the first, Congress emphasized that preservation of our historical foundations as a living part of our community development was necessary “to give a sense of orientation to the American people”[6] and that, further, an expansion and acceleration of federal preservation activities was necessary to encourage and support private investment.[7]  Congress further elucidated this need in its 1980 amendments to the NHPA, declaring that increased knowledge and better administration of our historic resources will improve the planning and execution of federally sponsored projects and will assist the economic growth and development of the nation.[8]  Thus, the Act intended to foster a consistent and coherent policy of preservation among federal agencies, which would encourage “the use of historic properties to meet the contemporary needs of society.”[9]

Addressing the second, the NHPA authorized Interior to create and maintain an increased and improved categorization of historic properties, the National Register of Historic Places (“Register”), inclusion in which would qualify owners of such properties for federal grants-in-aid.[10]  To assist in this process, Congress later amended the Act to encourage the establishment of state historical preservation offices (SHPOs),[11] which were tasked to administer the state’s preservation plan, with responsibilities including identifying historic properties, determining the eligibility of, and nominating, properties for listing on the Register, and evaluating eligibility for Federal preservation incentives.[12]  Thus, the SHPOs came to assume the role of gatekeepers, maintaining access both to the Register and to the benefits attached to it. 

Although these programs were intended to provide the means by which to pursue a national preservation policy, Congress began to recognize they alone would not be enough to “overcome existing biases in favor of investment in new construction.”[13]  The original grant program’s limited fund availability made developers question whether the stringent application process required for inclusion on the Register, and the conditions imposed therewith, were worth the benefits received.  Therefore, Congress acted swiftly in 1976, creating multiple new incentives.  In addition to a new grant and loan program,[14] Congress enacted the Tax Reform Act of 1976 (“TRA”),[15] which created the first federal tax incentives for historic preservation.  Over the following 30 years, Congress has tinkered with the tax incentives to provide an incentive that is both workable and effective.

This paper will proceed in 3 parts.  Part II will track the attempts of Congress to revise and adjust the historic preservation tax incentives to serve the goals of the NHPA.  Part III will discuss tax credits generally and the current rules concerning the Federal rehabilitation credit.  Finally, Part IV will review recently a proposed amendment to the rehabilitation credit to determine whether it better satisfies the goals of the NHPA.

continue reading

Footnotes

• Taped phone conversation are coming to light in the da Vinci trial in Scotland.
• More on how the key witness, Ted Gardiner, in the Four Corners looted native art case committed suicide.
• DNA evidence may offer some new leads in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft with the 20 year anniversary approaching, while the museum hosted a talk, stating that "everyone is a suspect."
• 2010 Summer internships available with the LCCHP, the Lawyer's Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation
• University of Seville engineers have created a way to monitor monuments by remote control.
• The son and daughter-in-law of Ansel Adams have filed suit to stop the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of art from auctioning off Adams' works.
• With the increased revenue from tourists comes the increased risk of damage to cultural sites.
• Mark Durney gives an economic view on forgery.