Art Loss Register Helps People Recover Stolen Masterpieces

Christian Science Monitor: He's a master at recovering Old Masters
Julian Radcliffe's Art Loss Register has been able to reunite $100 million worth of stolen art with rightful owners. His secret: a list.

LONDON
Ask Julian Radcliffe if he has always been an art lover, and you get a boyish grin. Maybe it's a silly question. This is a man who has been hunting down works of art and restoring them to their rightful owners around the world for 15 years. So it's a surprise to learn that Mr. Radcliffe has only recently started his own modest collection. But, as he says, you don't have to know your art to catch a thief. "I often say I'm in this not because I love art but because I hate criminals."

Since he set up the London-based Art Loss Register (ALR) in 1991, an inventory of stolen and missing works of art, Radcliffe has helped recover more than $100 million worth of stolen property.

The ALR is the largest database of looted treasure in the world. It catalogs more than 170,000 uniquely identifiable items, from Picasso and Cézanne originals, to sculptures, jewelry, silverware, furniture, and even classic cars and toys. It logs stolen items and searches its database when suspect items turn up.

It helps local police, Interpol, and insurers tackle what is estimated to be a $5 billion-a-year racket. ALR's efforts make thieves, fences, and shadowy dealers think hard about how to dispose of their ill-gotten gains. "We don't see ourselves as making the odd recovery; we see ourselves as leading the whole campaign against stolen art," says Radcliffe, bustling about his modest first-floor office in the heart of London's jewelry district. The phone bleats on a desk deep in paperwork. Radcliffe ignores it. "We recover, we provide the central checkpoint, and we deter by making it difficult to sell the stuff."

ALR's efforts have made a big difference, says Graham Saltmarsh, a former Scotland Yard detective with experience tracking down stolen art. "It's the first port of call for everyone involved in the recovery of art," says Mr. Saltmarsh, who now works as a consultant in art risk for the Cromwell group. "It's a great resource for the police and those of us in the private sector. We couldn't survive without them."

ALR may have altruistic motives, but it turns a profit, too. It costs about $50 (more for an exceptionally valuable work) to register a missing piece on ALR's database. When would-be buyers wants to verify that a painting, for example, is not stolen, they pay a fee from $50 to $100 for a search of ALR's database. A "clean" item is issued a certificate. When a piece is restored to its owner, a commission (typically 20 percent of the item's value) is levied.

Radcliffe has resisted calls to put the database online. "A lot of people say this would result in more recoveries, but it's not true. Thieves would check it, too, and make sure that suspect items remain out of view."

Searches are done by the 25-member ALR team. Key words - the artist's name or a striking feature of the work - are entered. Any matches bring up thumbnail pictures and brief descriptions. Typing in "Picasso," for example, yields 600 hits. Apparently there's a lot of plundered cubism out there.

When missing items are identified by ALR experts - in auction catalogs, at fairs, or brought to their attention by potential buyers - Radcliffe pounces. By notifying the seller that he cannot sell an item identified as stolen, he begins a delicate negotiation that he hopes will bring the artwork back to its owner. Radcliffe has as many as 200 "live" cases at any one time.

Perhaps his most famous case climaxed last month when a court case in London unveiled the whereabouts of six paintings stolen almost 30 years ago from the Stockbridge, Mass., home of Michael Bakwin. The ruling followed six years of tortuous, clandestine dealings with an elusive lawyer who says the works were stowed in his attic by the thief, whom he had represented.

The lawyer, Robert Mardirosian, says he had been holding out for a reward, but that he will now return the paintings.

"It's the highest-value item we've recovered, and probably the oldest theft we've dealt with," says Radcliffe. It was also the most complex, he adds.

Recoveries range from the banal to the spectacular. The Bakwin case involved art worth more than $30 million, including a Cézanne painting returned early in the negotiations. An 18th-century bookcase worth more than $600,000, swiped in Ireland 16 years ago, was seized at a London art fair when an expert spotted it five years ago. Three paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, and Gauguin were recently returned to a Buenos Aires museum after the ALR blocked an attempted sale. They had been snatched in Argentina's biggest-ever art theft in 1980.

On a more prosaic level, Radcliffe says a dealer approached ALR a few weeks ago about a clock someone was trying to sell him. The ALR searched its database and, sure enough, the piece turned up as stolen. Radcliffe swung into action, posing as a would-be purchaser so he could make a positive I.D. in person. The police swooped in. The clock was recovered.

Sometimes crooks instead demand a ransom for an artwork's return. This is where negotiations come in, Radcliffe says.

"The first thing to do is to convince them that they can't sell the stuff for any decent money because of the database," he says. "So then they've got to surrender." Many, he says, still refuse. "So then you say 'We'll pay your legal fees.' And so it goes."

In complex cases, it can be difficult to determine if one is dealing with a crook holding out for a ransom or a mostly innocent party seeking a reward. Stolen art may change hands a few times before it's identified as such. Innocent parties are entitled to get their money back and so are more likely to surrender a piece. Crooks are less apt to yield. They want money.

"You have to have a policy that you stick to and agree with the police," Radcliffe adds. "Otherwise you start paying out money and you don't get the item back. You are fueling future crime."

Despite recent successes, Radcliffe knows that ALR's tentacles only reach so far. Dozens of countries have no formal dealings with it, making detection and retrieval difficult. The Western art trade is steeped in confidentiality. Dealers are slack about performing the searches that would determine whether a piece is stolen or not.

So where are all the missing items of priceless antiquities that Radcliffe knows are out there?

"In bank vaults," he surmises, or "sitting very innocently in someone's house, destroyed perhaps if they're too hot to keep, or just lost - buried and then the thieves can't find where they put them."

The thieves had it easy in Cairo art heist

Christian Science Monitor: The thieves had it easy in Cairo art heist
The thieves who made off with van Gogh's 'Poppy Flowers' in a daytime Cairo art heist weren't met with alarms or guards. The head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities said Egypt would create a central security office.

When the Vincent van Gogh still life “Poppy Flowers” was stolen from Egypt’s Mahmoud Khalil museum Saturday, no one noticed at first.

Skip to next paragraph The Vincent van Gogh painting known as 'Poppy Flowers' and 'Vase with Flowers,' valued at $55 million, was stolen in broad daylight from the Mahmoud Khalil museum in Cairo, where the surveillance cameras and alarms had long been defunct.

Egyptian Ministry of Culture/AFP/Newscom/File
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Stolen Van Gogh still missing, Egypt deputy minister detained Paris art heist: The alarm that didn't sound, the dog that didn't bark He's a master at recovering Old Masters None of the alarms meant to protect the artwork in the museum sounded. Only seven of 43 security cameras were working. Just 10 people visited the museum that day and guards were scarce enough that the thieves were able to drag a couch underneath the painting to stand on while cutting the $55 million painting from its frame in broad daylight.

Those are some of the security failures that Egyptian officials have pledged to address as they react with outrage to the daring heist.

The blame quickly fell on the deputy culture minister, who, as the head of the fine arts department with an office in the museum, has been charged with negligence. Four museum employees were also detained.

“I can’t work with these incompetent employees,” Culture Minister Farouk Hosni told Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Al Youm, saying he cannot sleep at night because of concerns over Egypt’s art and antiquities.

“Poppy Flowers” was hanging in the Mahmoud Khalil Museum, the former home of a 1930s Egyptian politician that now houses his collection of more than 300 paintings and 50 sculptures, including works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gaugin, and van Gogh. Such security failures at a museum with a collection worth an estimated $1.2 billion are surprising, even in Cairo, where metal detectors are ubiquitous but seldom put to real use. (The metal detector at the Mahmoud Khalil museum was said to be broken.)

Zahi Hawas, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in a statement Tuesday that Egypt would create a central security office to monitor its museums, and that Mr. Hosni would review museum security procedures.

Mr. Hawass is eager to keep the heist from being used as an argument against his mission to recover the ancient Egyptian artifacts held by international museums. The Ministry of Culture and the public prosecutor‘s office refused to comment on the issue. Hosni caused confusion when he falsely declared the painting recovered and the thieves apprehended at the Cairo Airport, later claiming his statement was guided by false information.

Julian Radcliffe, founder of The Art Loss Register, which maintains a database of stolen artwork, says properly protecting artwork is no simple task. It requires costly technological safeguards, such as burglar alarms and camera surveillance, and guards in every room.

“It's a very expensive and complex operation to keep security at a high level,” he says. “That does not excuse the bad security but it's not cheap and easy.”

Even before the theft, the lack of security was at the small museum was noticeable. Visitors had virtually free rein in the worn interior where many paintings, lacking a glass protectant, hung within easy reach. In most rooms, there were no guards to keep watch.

Egypt has reportedly put border patrols and airport officials on alert to prevent the painting from being smuggled out of the country. Mr. Radcliffe says the thieves will almost certainly attempt to move the painting out of Egypt to access the bigger markets in Europe and the US, if they have not already.

“They will eventually try to put it back on the market or try to get a ransom for it,” he says. “They may put it back on the market as a very good copy.” They will glean a profit even if they only receive a small percentage of its open-market value.

The chances of recovering “Poppy Flowers” quickly is slim. Only about 15 percent of stolen works of art are recovered within 20 years, says Radcliffe. According to him, about 15 to 20 percent of stolen artwork is destroyed or forgotten, while another 15 to 20 percent are sold, and yet another 15 to 20 percent “stay in the underworld for long periods of time.”

The worldwide art theft trade could be as large as $1 to $2 billion a year, according to calculations by The Art Loss Register.

Poppy Flowers by Van Gogh

From Wikipedia:

Poppy Flowers (also known as Vase and Flowers) is a painting by Vincent van Gogh with an estimated value of $50 million. The painting is small, measuring 1 by 1 feet (30 by 30 cm), and depicts yellow and red poppy flowers. It is believed that van Gogh painted it in 1887, three years before his suicide.


As of 23 August 2010, its location is unknown. It was stolen from Cairo's Mohammed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in August 2010, and erroneously believed recovered only hours later when two Italian suspects attempted to board a plane to Italy at Cairo International Airport.

The same painting had been stolen from the same museum on June 4, 1977, and was recovered ten years later in Kuwait.

BBC News: Galleries warned after art thefts

Poppy Flowers / Vase and Flowers

Galleries warned after art thefts

Art galleries must improve their security following recent high-profile raids, a leading investigator has said.

A Cairo gallery had no alarms working when a Vincent Van Gogh painting worth $50m (£32m) was stolen on Saturday.

"This doesn't surprise me at all," said Charles Hill, a former detective with the Metropolitan Police's art squad.

He said the "same sorry saga" was seen in May when thieves targeted the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, where the alarm had been out of order for weeks.

Five works by artists including Picasso and Matisse, worth just under 100m euros (£86m), were taken in that theft.

At Cairo's Khalil Museum, only seven out of 43 security cameras were working when thieves cut the Van Gogh painting from its frame.

Egypt's prosecutor-general Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud described the museum's security measures as "for the most part feeble and superficial".

The same Van Gogh painting was stolen from the same museum 32 years ago Mr Hill told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If you just go back three months to Paris and the Museum of Modern Art, [it was] the same sorry saga of no alarms, or few alarms, and cameras that don't work and on and on.

"It's a wearying saga and you think, why don't directors of museums and the boards of trustees take security more seriously?

"Certainly in Cairo and Paris you've got two prime examples of people being indifferent to the need to protect their paintings."

Somebody with "inside information" about the Cairo museum's lax security could have taken advantage of the situation, he said.

But the painting was unlikely to have been stolen to order for a collector, he added.

The Van Gogh painting - known as both Poppy Flowers and Vase And Flowers - measures 30cm by 30cm (1ft by 1ft).

Depicting yellow and red flowers, it is believed to have been painted in 1887, three years before the artist's death from a self-inflicted gunshot.

The painting was previously taken from the same museum in 1978, but recovered a decade later in Kuwait.

The Mahmoud Khalil Museum also holds works by Monet, Renoir and Degas.

Manifesto

This blog focuses on art of all kinds - from art that is stolen (a major art theft takes place somewhere around the world at least once a month) to art on display.