Who is Tobias Verhaecht?

Tobie Verhaecht in Het Gulden Cabinet p 47

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tobias Verhaecht (Antwerp, 1561 – 1631) was a painter and draughtsman active in Antwerp, Florence and Rome. Primarily a landscape painter, his style is indebted to mannerist world landscapes of artists like Joachim Patinir with high viewpoints, fantastic distant perspectives and three-colour scheme. Before Verhaecht entered Antwerp's guild of St. Luke in 1590–91, he had already spent time in Italy, first in Florence, and then as a fresco painter in Rome. Peter Paul Rubens, who was a relative by marriage, studied with him around 1592, and another student was his own son, Willem van Haecht. Verhaecht is also known for his designs for prints.

Western Artists: Peter Paul Rubens

Sir Peter Paul Rubens (28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640), was a Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.

In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, King of Spain, and Charles I, King of England.

High life ends for couple who conned art world

From the New Zealand Herald: High life ends for couple who conned art world
They look more like old hippies than the couple who conned the art world out of an estimated €30 million ($52.4 million). He sports worn jeans, a greying blond mane of shoulder-length hair, a moustache and a beard. Under the unforgiving neon lights of the Cologne courtroom, 60-year-old Wolfgang Beltracchi looks like a bizarre cross between Frank Zappa and King Charles the First.

Helene Beltracchi, his 53-year-old wife and accomplice, dresses in long flowing robes and her hair cascades to her waist in thick tresses. Before each court session, the two embrace passionately in front of the public and press.

Several German newspapers have described the couple as "highly sympathetic" despite the enormity of their crimes: Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi have admitted to masterminding the biggest art forgery scandal in German - if not global - history. With Helene Beltracchi's sister, Jeanette Spurzem, and logistical expert Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus, they face charges of systematically duping the art world over 14 years.

The four are expected to be sentenced for their crimes today. They have confessed to supplying top auction houses, including Sotheby's and Christie's, with scores of forged paintings.

They claimed they were undiscovered works by famous early 20th century artists such as the German Expressionists Max Ernst, Max Pechstein and Heinrich Campendonk. Their victims included the American comedian Steve Martin, who was duped into paying about US$800,000 ($1 million) for a supposed Campendonk painting called Landscape with Horses.

Wolfgang Beltracchi, the promising art student from the north-western provincial town of Geilenkirchen, was the master forger.

Many of the 53 works the Beltracchis sold to art houses fetched over €500,000 apiece. The Beltracchis are believed to have enriched themselves to the tune of €16 million.

They spent their fortune on building an opulent villa in the southern German town of Freiburg and on lavishly restoring the country estate they acquired in southwest France. Neighbours said they were shocked by the couple's obsession with their wealth. The Beltracchis spent up to €17,000 a month on shopping, hotels and travel alone.

But, these days, Wolfgang Beltracchi sucks sweets in the Cologne court where the four have been on trial since the beginning of September. He even shares the occasional joke with the presiding judge.

The couple and their accomplices have cut a deal with Germany's justice authorities.

They have confessed to everything. In return they have been promised jail terms likely to amount to six years for Wolfgang Beltracchi and four for Helene. The others will probably get away with suspended jail terms. If the Beltracchis are lucky they will be allowed to work outside prison by day and spend only nights in a cell.

At their trial, the Beltracchis have even accused the world's art houses of themselves being consumed by "greed and depravity" in their relentless pursuit of sensational works capable of fetching sensational prices.

Yet their 14 years of meticulously planned deception are certain to go down as one of the biggest and most elaborate art frauds ever recorded. The Beltracchis started putting their expert forgeries on the market in 1995.

Helene Beltracchi managed to hoodwink the art world into believing she had been left the works by her grandfather Werner Jagers. She claimed he had bought them at the beginning of the Nazi era from the renowned Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim.

The couple went to extraordinary lengths to make their bogus claims appear convincing. Helene Beltracchi had herself photographed by her husband with her hair up, clad in a sombre black dress and pearls in front of several of the Jagers Collection paintings.

The black-and-white photograph was slightly out of focus and printed on pre-war developing paper.

Helene Beltracchi's impersonation of her grandmother, Josefine Jagers, took in all the art dealers and served as indisputable proof of the authenticity of the collection. "It was great fun," Wolfgang Beltracchi told judges.

To dupe prospective buyers, the Beltracchis bought up pre-war canvases which were then carefully sanded down and made ready for forgeries expertly applied, often with the help of a slide projector. The trick was made easier thanks to experts like Werner Spies, a celebrated Max Ernst authority and former director of the Pompidou arts centre in Paris.

Spies, who admits to having been wholly gullible, appears to have been completely taken in by the paintings and even vouched for their authenticity. In fact, the Jagers Collection never existed. Werner Jagers was a member of the Nazi party who had no interest in art. He made his money in the construction industry and died in 1992. Helene Beltracchi is the daughter of a lorry driver.

Wolfgang Beltracchi grew up as Wolfgang Fischer, later adopting his wife's surname. His father made a living out of restoring church paintings. He was a gifted art student but never completed his studies. His attempts to become an art dealer were also a failure.

"For years I lived on sex, drugs and rock'n'roll," he claimed at his trial. But his life changed dramatically when he met Helene Beltracchi.

Her background was working class. Her mother gave her money to buy books and told her that she would "make it" even without a proper education. Both appear to have had high aspirations which were frustrated.

The Beltracchis' elaborate con trick began to unravel in 2006 after the Lempertz auction house in Cologne was offered a painting by Helene Beltracchi's sister which was conclusively proven to be a forgery. The work, named Red Picture with Horses, was supposed to have been painted by Heinrich Campendonk.

The painting was sold to the Maltese company Trasteco at auction for €2.9 million. But Trasteco became suspicious and commissioned two art historians to investigate. Their findings led to scientific analysis of the paint. It found that the painting contained a colour which did not exist in 1914 when the work was said to have been completed.

Police arrested the Beltracchis in August last year as they were leaving their luxury villa to go out to dinner. Their two homes are now being sold and Wolfgang Beltracchi claims the €1 million remaining in his Swiss bank account has since been handed to the court authorities. But Wolfgang Beltracchi now apparently hopes the publicity from his trial may help him to further his own future career as an artist after jail.

As the presiding judge in Cologne revealed last week: "To clear up any confusion, Mr Beltracchi has agreed to take back all his forgeries and return them to their owners signed - this time - with his own name."

5-Minute History of Art Theft during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)

From Art Info, The Secret History of Art (Noah Charney on Art Crimes and Art Historical Mysteries): 5-Minute History of Art Theft during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)

Though largely a war fought between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, the Thirty Years’ War featured an infamous incident of art looting when the phenomenally rich artistic and scientific collections of Rudolf II of Prague were stolen and scattered throughout Europe. While the war led to the inhibition of Habsburg supremacy, the decentralization of the Holy Roman Empire, and a decline in the influence of the Catholic Church, historians have noted that it exemplified Cato the Elder’s phrase bellum se ipsum alet, “the war will feed itself.” The major governmental powers behind the Thirty Years’ War were nearly bankrupted by disease, famine, and the cost of fighting. This resulted in unpaid troops who took out their hunger and frustration on the land that they passed. Troops began to ravage and loot any territory in their path, using extortion and other means to essentially self-fund the campaign. This problem manifested itself on a large scale, with army divisions resorting to such tactics, but also on a soldier-by-soldier basis.

Thirty Years’ War and the Sack of Prague (1618-1648)
When Sweden intervened in the war and overtook Prague in 1648, the marvelous collections of Rudolf II were stolen. Swedish troops sacked Prague Castle on 26 July 1648 and hauled the majority of the collection back to Sweden, where it was absorbed into the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden. Queen Christina would eventually be exiled from Sweden and while the majority of her collection remained there, she brought a large number of works with her: 70-80 paintings, of which 25 were portraits of her friends and family, which she had bought legitimately and at least 50 paintings that had been stolen from Prague.

This would prove important to the history of legitimate art collecting, as the best pieces from Queen Christina’s catalogue, 123 paintings forming its core, were passed on to the Duke of Orleans after her death. The sale of the Orleans Collection, primarily to settle the gambling debts of Louis Philippe d’Orleans, took place over several years in the 1790s. It represented the first of the great sales of aristocratic collections, many others of which would follow in a new era when the aristocracy could no longer support themselves in their traditional ways, through feudal service, and had to sell off the trappings of their nobility, art and castles and titles, in order to survive.

This directly gave rise to the art trade in the modern sense: not of kings and clergy commissioning large-scale works, but of nouveau riches merchants and industrialists now able to afford what the aristocracy no longer can. Scores of paintings that had been looted from Prague a century and a half earlier were sold at this time, including Tintoretto’s Origin of the Milky Way, bought for 50 guineas in 1800 and now at the National Gallery in London.

CT: Real Art Ways Celebrates 35 Years At Creative Cocktail Hour

From Blogs.courant.com (Hartford, CT): Real Art Ways Celebrates 35 Years At Creative Cocktail Hour
It was the best of what Real Art Ways has provided to the Hartford area and beyond over the past 35 years...out-of-the-box, thought-provoking art, theater and music, food, drink and entertainment and a happy hour that attracts one of the most eclectic crowds around.

But Thursday's RAW's monthly Creative Cocktail Party was bigger than usual because it also served as the launch for the art collaborative's 35th anniversary.

" I started coming here 10 years ago, " said Sondra Celle, a West Hartford resident who remembered when she first came with friends who told her about an unusual happy hour in town. "I came because it is where my friends came, and honestly, what I find interesting is that even 10 years later I fit in because the crowd is made up of all kinds of people, young, old, professionals, students. "It's timeless."

"I kind of ended up getting dragged here," explained Middletown resident John Lamb who was with his girlfriend, Maria Pelletier of Windsor. "I come often," said Pelletier about the center known for its blend of mainstream and alternative art offerings that include theater, dance, music and visual arts. "So when he started dating me, he came too."

Besides the monthly party and the anniversary celebration, one of the big draws was the "Street Alchemy" exhibit by "Poster Boy," the pen name for artist, Henry Matyjewicz.

"It's not just me, it is several of us," said the camera-shy but very polite "Poster Boy" about his art he says is made in collaboration with several other artists who were also at the party. The exhibit landed on RAW's doorstep after Trinity College canceled the show because stolen materials are used in Matyjewicz's billboard-like montages that underscore social issues.

"I'm not surprised in the interest in my work," said the soft-spoken Matyjewicz. "The work is so timely."

"It is hard to say whether using stolen items is justified given what he is doing with them," said Kim Silverman, a Hartford court reporter who came with friends. "I think the social message, the controversy and the mystery of the artwork is part of its appeal."

Klimt painting expected to sell for $25 million

in other words...the heirs didn't give a damn about the painting - all they ever wanted was the money they could get for selling it.

From Today.msnbc.com: Klimt painting expected to sell for $25 million
NEW YORK — A landscape painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt that had been stolen by the Nazis is expected to fetch more than $25 million when it is sold at auction next month, Sotheby's said on Thursday.

"Litzlberg on the Attersee," which was returned to the heirs of its Austrian owner, will be the main attraction at the Nov. 2 sale of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York.

"Klimt's landscapes are now considered to be one of the great icons of modern art," Simon Shaw, Sotheby's New York head of Impressionist and Modern Art, said in an interview.

"They are one of the most recognizable images and their appeal is truly a global one."

The work gained international attention earlier this year when Austria's Museum der Moderne Salzburg agreed to return the work to George Jorisch, the grandson of its owner. The decision followed a 2002 accord struck with Jewish organizations and the Salzburg city government to return assets stolen by the Nazis.

Jorisch, who now lives in Montreal, is the great-nephew of Austrian iron magnate Viktor Zuckerkandl, who was a great collector of Klimt landscapes. When he died in 1927 the work was inherited by his sister Amalie Redlich, Jorisch's grandmother.

Redlich was deported in 1941 to the Nazi created Lodz ghetto in Poland and never heard from again. Her art collection was seized by the Nazis, sold and ended up in the Austrian museum.

"People love a picture with a story behind it," Shaw said. "It always adds desirability when there is a story behind a painting."

Klimt painted the work in 1915, displaying a dramatic view of the countryside of Lake Attersee in western Austria, where he spent his summers.

"These landscape paintings were very affectionate to Klimt," Shaw said. "He left Vienna and his patrons and would paint these for himself. They were very daring because he explored different techniques that were very radical."

The experimentation Klimt showed in his landscapes makes them some of the most important and influential of his works and among the rarest.

"Few remain in private collections outside Austria which could ever be sold," Shaw explained.

Klimt's "Church in Cassone — Landscape with Cypresses," sold in February 2010 for $43 million in London, a record for a Klimt landscape.

"It is possible it could go into a great Asian collection," Shaw said about the painting on sale. "It is also possible that it could go into a great European collection. It has a genuine global appeal."

UK: Work by Welsh sculptor William Goscombe-John targeted by art thieves

From Wales Online.co.uk: Work by Welsh sculptor William Goscombe-John targeted by art thieves

THE “national sculptor of Wales” is being repeatedly targeted by art thieves and not crooks trying to make a fast buck flogging metal to scrapyards – according to an arts charity.

This is the message being put out by statues charity the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association (PMSA) and they warn dozens of William Goscombe-John’s works are at risk.

His Joyance statue in Cardiff’s Thompson’s Park has been taken four times. The bronze has now been replaced with a plastic version.

And a memorial to his Swiss-born wife Marthe Weiss has been taken twice in London. The first time it was discovered at auction after being swiped from Hampstead Cemetery in 2001. Then it was stolen from inside a locked shed at East Finchley Cemetery in 2006. It remains missing.

PMSA deputy chairman Ian Leith said the Rodin-influenced artist’s works can be worth tens of thousands of pounds.

“It is quite clear Goscombe-John is in artistic demand,” he said. “Goscombe-John is a favourite and he is the key proof that these are being stolen for collectors as well as for metal.

“If you’re going into the middle of a pond in Thompson’s Park you are trying to find a sculpture, not just a piece of metal.”

Joyance was most recently replaced in February after being cut last year from the water fountain it stood on.

“Unless some organisation takes responsibility to audit and monitor thefts we’ll get the sculpture losses we deserve.”

Cardiff born Goscombe-John’s works appear all over Wales. Pieces can be found in locations including Aberdare, Aberystwyth, Bala, Cardiff, Caernarfon, Lampeter, Llanelli, Llansannan, Merthyr Tydfil, Mold, Monmouth, Penarth, Pontypridd and Wrexham.

His statues are also dotted around the rest of the UK and the globe. There are pieces at both St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.

“He is extremely important,” said Mr Leith. “You can’t get better than this. This is what I’m trying to say. People collect anything by him. There are books on him.”

He insisted “you can’t exaggerate” the importance of the artist, who died in 1952 aged 92. “He is the national sculptor of Wales, you could easily argue,” he said.

Richard Cook is the councillor for Cardiff’s Canton ward, where the statue stands. He said: “The original was taken about 40 years ago. That was made from bronze. Subsequent ones have been made from some base metal.

“And it has now been replaced with some sort of resin plastic that will hopefully be less attractive to thieves.”

Coun Cook said a “couple of copies” had been made so the statue could be replaced quickly.

A South Wales Police spokesman said: “Criminals are indiscriminately targeting metal objects for their scrap value. In some cases it is possible for objects to be targeted for their value as public art.”

Minnesota: Statue stolen in North Mankato

From Mankato Free Press: Statue stolen in North Mankato

NORTH MANKATO — A statue on the CityArt Walking Sculpture Tour was stolen from North Mankato sometime Friday night or early Saturday morning.

Police say they discovered the sculpture, “The Farmer’s Wife,” missing early Saturday morning. It was in the 200 block of Belgrade Avenue.

The sculpture, valued at $6,000, was broken off at the base.

A reward of up to $2,200 is being offered for information leading to a conviction. The reward is offered by North Mankato, Mankato and area businesses. (Call 625-4141 for the North Mankato police.)

Two other statues in the art walk have been vandalized since being erected last spring — one in Mankato and one in North Mankato.

California: Stolen plaques to be replaced at Roseville’s Sculpture Park

From Roseville, California: Stolen plaques to be replaced at Roseville’s Sculpture Park
On a recent afternoon in Roseville’s Sculpture Park, an art administrator rushed up to a young woman and child reading an informational kiosk.

The kiosk provides details on the bronze plaques mounted to four concrete sculptures in the park. But there’s a problem: the plaques are gone.

“Don’t be discouraged, we’re actually refashioning this park,” Judi Nicholson, with the City of Roseville, told the woman.

Through a joint partnership between the city and Roseville Arts, the nonprofit organization behind the Blue Line Gallery, students in Roseville can participate in a public arts contest intended to breathe life into the undecorated sculptures.

Fifth graders at any public, private or charter school or who are home schooled within city limits are asked to submit mosaic tile entries using construction paper to Roseville Arts. The theme is “Nature and Wildlife.” A panel of judges will select 96 winners and the tile installation will take place in spring 2012.

Between 1993 and 2003, children winners in a city-sponsored contest created bronze plaques that were installed in Sculpture Park at the base of the Cosmos Sculpture off Sunrise Avenue — the big red structure you can see from the freeway.

In the summer of 2010, the sculptures were vandalized and 33 bronze plaques stolen. The culprit was never found, nor were the plaques.

“We wanted, obviously, to protect the remaining plaques,” Nicholson said. “It’s kind of sad to think these kids thought it would be here forever.”

The plaques have been removed to be placed on public display in Roseville’s libraries, leaving space for a new public art display by local kids.

Nicholson and Roseville Arts CEO Julie Hirota happened upon just the person to oversee the project: 13-year-old Boy Scout Tyler Tate. The Buljan Middle School student was helping gallery volunteers move sand at the Westfield Galleria during an art installation in June.

Hirota talked with Tyler’s assistant scout master about possible service projects with the Boy Scouts, including the Sculpture Park art contest.

“That day Tyler said he was interested in doing that and he’s pretty much taken this on,” Hirota said.

Tyler joined Boy Scouts two and a half years ago, and is working on the project to earn his Eagle Scout rank.

“I really like art and I like helping out,” Tyler said. “And I wanted a challenge. (Kids) should try to take part because it’s helping the community and they get to see their art (in public), which is really cool.”

Hirota said partnering with the city and community groups such as the Boy Scouts is a valuable way to “beautify the entire city through public art.”

Coeur d'Alene public art display of great blue heron stolen

Thieves have been targeting metal in practically every city in the US, not to mention around the world. They are quite brazen - they'll steal manhole covers and if that results in someone falling in and dying...what do they care? And if they are caught - they merely receive a slap on the wrist.

From The Republic (Columbus, Indiana): Coeur d'Alene public art display of great blue heron stolen
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho — Police in Coeur d'Alene say they are investigating the theft of a public art piece of a great blue heron valued at $3,000.

The 3-foot heron made of scrap metal, steel and rebar perched on a basalt base. The base remains along with a foot of the heron that broke off.

The art stood in front of the Olympia Greek restaurant. Restaurant owner Eva Itskos says the artwork when whole towered about 8 feet.

The Coeur d'Alene Press reports (http://bit.ly/nCU8yh) that the 40-pound heron portion disappeared late Thursday or early Friday.

The heron art piece is one of 15 the city has installed as part of its Art Currents project.

The art on display is available for sale. Each piece is insured for $10,000.

Documents stolen

From The Vermont Cynic: Documents stolen
appears one patron of Bailey/Howe did not visit the check-out desk.

The Bailey/Howe library was contacted by the National Archives group in mid-August and asked to examine Special Collections for items that may have been targeted for theft.

"At this point, we have identified 67 missing items, but we are still checking," said Jeffrey Marshall, director of research collections.

The documents were found among hundreds of documents from various universities in the apartment of Barry Landau, a New Yorker accused of conspiring to steal rare documents to sell for a profit, according to the Burlington Free Press.

Most of the documents taken from Bailey/Howe included autographs from President's Theodore Rooselvelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and William Howard Taft.

"They are not a great deal of research value, but because they are signed by a president, they do have some monetary value," he said.

When asked whether Landau visited Bailey/Howe, Marshall said he had no comment because state law and library policy protects the confidentiality of library users.

Right now, the library staff is reviewing their procedures and investigating technology that might improve security, he said.

"Part of our challenge is that we have a large open stack section that mixes with those looking in the private stacks," Marshall said. "It get's pretty chaotic sometimes. We try to watch closely."

Since the incident, the library is now requiring users to show a valid ID.

Marshall said that the staff was discouraged about what happened because they are there to help.

"We're all very disappointed," he said. "We exist to help people with their research. We try as much as we can to make their work easier, but when something like this happens, we feel betrayed."

During the court procedures for Landau, prosecutors said that UVM was a target for the suspects because of its lack of security, the Wall Street Journal stated.

"At some extremes, there's no watchdog" at archival institutions," Robert Goldman, a former federal prosecutor specialized in document and art related theft, told the Wall Street Journal. "A person comes in and is given the keys to the kingdom."

Some students said they were surprised that Bailey/Howe housed documents were worth stealing in the first place.

"I definitely had no idea that UVM had documents that important," sophomore Colby Daniels said. "Why are they even at UVM?"

Marshall said that the FBI will be returning the documents to Bailey/Howe's shelves, but he does not know when.

India blinks as art treasures disappear

From Asia TImes: India blinks as art treasures disappear

NEW DELHI - The Indian art world received a hi-voltage jolt recently when two paintings by legendary Russian artist Nicholas Roerich worth US$2 million, earlier filched from the premises of the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi, resurfaced at an auction-exhibition in London.

Depicting the incandescent Himalayas, both paintings were a part of a cachet of the prized works of Roerich, a brilliant artist who went to India in 1923 and stayed until his death in 1947.

Ironically, the heist came to light only when London authorities contacted IARI, whose officials were until then clueless about how the works had been pinched from under their noses and smuggled out of the country. The institute is now scrambling to "catch the
culprits and bring the works back to India".

The case is just one among countless others of priceless Indian antiques "disappearing" from government offices and museums, with the Indian government seemingly apathetic to theft of priceless heritage, despite the millions of dollars being spent on historical preservation.

Thousands of Buddhist and other antiques are smuggled out of the country each year to museums and private collections overseas. Even the Nobel prize medallion of late Nobel laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore wasn't spared when the museum in his hometown, Shantiniketan, West Bengal, was looted in 2004. Along with the medal, Tagore's priceless collections of antique jewelry, watches, paintings, citations and memorabilia were stolen. None was ever traced.

There was a similar uproar to this week's scandal in 2008 when a bronze figurine of the Goddess Parvati worth millions of dollars turned up at a New York auction. The rare antique - crafted in 1400 BC during the reign of King Harihara II - was considered a masterpiece of the Vijayanagar dynasty.

Historically important sites and under-guarded museums in India have been a fertile playground for antique smugglers for decades. In September 2006, 18 antique pieces disappeared from Patna museum in the the Indian state of Bihar while 200 antiques, including rare Jain statues, were recovered from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, the same year as cops nabbed smugglers preparing to leave the country.

Experts blame lackadaisical implementation of laws, the connivance of authorities, inadequate security and the lack of genuine documentation for the rampant theft.

Indian laws define any piece of art that is over 100 years old as "antique". The export and sale of such antiques is banned and punishable by law. However, it has become a thriving industry gnawing at the cultural roots of the country.

"The blanket rule is that all things over 100 years old qualify as antiques, and have to be registered with the Indian government," says Dr Prakash Nene, formerly with the National Museum, New Delhi. "But where are the technically-equipped professionals to undertake such a task? India is seriously deficient in such wherewithal. Besides, antiques are grossly undervalued in government priorities," he says.

"The problem with Indian laws governing antique thefts is that they are ridden with loopholes," says historian Radhika Ramseshan.

He cites the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act of 1958 as an example. Under the law anyone caught stealing from an ancient monument or archaeological site can get away with being fined a pittance - a meager 5,000 rupees (US$90) and imprisonment for up to three months or both. Similarly, says Ramseshan, the Antiquities Act 1972 proposes three years imprisonment for such crimes.

"Invariably, lawyers play up discrepancies between the two acts to get the guilty off the hook," she says. "These laws are ludicrous in their punition considering many stolen artefacts fetch far more staggering sums for the culprits. The culprits obviously don't mind paying the paltry fines. "

Art aficionados also partly blame the exponential growth of the Indian art industry. The domestic art market - teeming with talented artists whose works now routinely fetch astronomical prices worldwide - has witnessed remarkable growth in the past decade. Works by Indian maestros like F N Souza, Raza, Tyeb Mehta, M F Husain, Atul Dodiya and Anjolie Ela Menon can fetch prices in the millions of dollars.

The scramble for acquisitions has never been so aggressive. "There's awesome money chasing Indian art. It is a recession-proof industry," says Prateek Goyal, a Mumbai-based art buyer planning to launch a gallery soon. "Fueled by coverage in the global media, everybody wants a share in the Indian art pie," he says.

A report by arts institution OSIAN's Connoisseurs of Art released last June estimated the Indian market would be worth $400 million in 2010.

According to experts, trade in stolen art is the fastest-growing crime in the United States and the third-largest international criminal activity. Reports estimate some 30,000 pieces of art are stolen per year in Italy, with the 6,000 taken in France costing insurance companies some $3 billion and $5 billion per year.

Experts say art insiders are often involved in these illegal operations, as they have the technical knowledge and contacts to link with a demand.

Delhi-based art curator Shreya Juneja says museum employees are also usually hand-in-glove with the thieves.

More than anything else, the illicit trade in stolen antiquities is able to flourish with the connivance of dealers, collectors and museum curators, says Shreya. "They form a powerful lobby to dissuade the government from taking any punitive action. Besides, government bodies - like the Archeological Survey of India [ASI] and the National Crime Record Bureau - have little synergy on the issue. This makes non-compliance easier."

The problem isn't isolated to India. Heritage theft is also rampant across Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Iran, Pakistan and African countries.

In a more high-profile case of international art theft, India's former colonial masters Britain is home to numerous Indian artefacts, with ancient Indian art smuggled out of the country appearing in the catalogues of prestigious auction houses. India and Pakistan have been asking the British government for decades to return the purportedly cursed Kohinoor diamond, which is included in Britain's crown jewels.

The architecture of art theft, say experts, is different from other crimes as the items are relatively small and can be easily smuggled in or out of countries. Aggravating the problem is that most thefts are never even reported to the police.

"Victims of art theft fear that if the theft is publicized, other thieves will try to capitalize on their lack of security. Many also believe that publicity about the theft will have a domino effect on their sales," elaborates Goyal.

India also suffers from a lack of a proper bookkeeping. There are fewer critics, curators and catalogues than in the West, as well as no indices and or inventories. No inventory exists for Roerich's works in India and the Central Bureau of Investigation has found that several other works by the legendary painter are lying around the IARI in a state of neglect.

Given paltry state budgets for museum security, staff can hardly be blamed. Security measures like sophisticated CCTV cameras and other electronic surveillance equipment rarely feature in government's budgets.

One step forward would be following America's lead and creating an art theft department. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Art Theft Program is located at FBI headquarters in Washington DC. Agents are coached in art and cultural property investigations and assisted in art-related investigations worldwide with foreign law-enforcement officials.

Delhi could also plug legal loopholes to put pressure on auction houses abroad. Since many stolen antiquities find their way into the storerooms of international auction houses, it is critical that the Indian government use its international influence.

It is also a well-known fact that auction websites sell Indian antiques while keeping the sellers' identities private. This anonymity offers the perfect camouflage to culprits while making it simultaneously difficult for investigators.

Conservators say the real problem with India is an insouciance towards the country's rich history. Add porous laws and laughable budgetary allocations for art preservation and it is hardly a mystery why the jewels of Indian heritage continue to fall into the wrong hands.

French painting stolen during World War I returns home

From News on the Wall: French painting stolen during World War I returns home
A famous painting by French Realist Jules Breton was returned by U.S. officials to France's US ambassador, François Delattre, on Thursaday. The painting, called “A Fisherman's Daughter/Mender of Nets” (Une Fille de Pecheur/Raccommodeuses de Filets) had been stolen by a German soldier during World War I.

The beautiful work of art, now insured for 140,000 euros, was handed by US officials to the French ambassador in a solemn repatriation ceremony at the French embassy in Washington. Commissioned by the northern French city of Douai in 1875, the painting hung in the local museum until September 15, 1918, when an unknown German soldier cut it out of its frame, while German forces were retreating from Douai. The German army took A Fisherman's Daughter and other 180 works to Belgium, and when the Belgium government wanted to return it to France in 1919, the painting just went missing.

Painted at the height of Breton’s career, the work of art shows a barefoot young woman wearing a white headscarf and looking as if her thoughts are elsewhere while mending a fishing net. Most of Breton’s works are displayed at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other museums in France.

The searches have begun in the 1920s. After A Fisherman's Daughter was put up for sale in a Zurich art gallery, in the US, back again in Europe in the Dutch city of Maastricht, then in Cologne (Germany), the last holder of the painting (Daphne Alazraki Fine Art gallery in New York), was alerted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators and returned the painting to Douai museum for free.

French Ambassador François Delattre said in a written statement: “Returning a painting to a museum is a significant contribution to the celebration of our cultural heritage and a gift to all future visitors who will enjoy the work of art, but it is also yet another symbol of Franco-American cooperation”. He sees this return “as a gesture of friendship by the United States toward the French Republic”.

Stolen Sir Peter Blake statue replaced with cheap copy

From BBC News: Stolen Sir Peter Blake statue replaced with cheap copy
Artist Sir Peter Blake's only public sculpture is to be replaced with a replica after the original was targeted by metal thieves.

Bronze figures and shapes were stolen from his Life Is A Circus statue on Blackpool seafront in August.

He has agreed to let Blackpool Council install a replacement, which is likely to be made from metal-coated concrete.

Sir Peter told BBC News he did not mind what material his work was made from as long as "it looks about the same".

The artist, best-known for designing The Beatles' Sgt Pepper album cover, was speaking as he was unveiled as the patron of the John Moores Painting Prize, which is held in Liverpool every two years.

"It just is so silly to steal something just for the value of the bronze," he said. "You wouldn't get a lot for it. So it's such a daft robbery."

He added that he did not object to the use of a replica in the circumstances. "Having been damaged once, I suspect it would happen again," he said. "So I think it's probably the best thing to do."

Life Is A Circus consisted of a tower of four bronze figures holding shapes, all balancing on a horse.

The thieves cut off the sculpture at the elbows of the lowest figure. The remains, and a similar sister sculpture, were taken into storage for safe keeping.

The thieves carried off the top three figures and three giant shapes "Following Sir Peter Blake's approval, we will be re-casting the statues and replacing them back in the South Beach area," a statement from Blackpool Council said.

"For both security and cost reasons, these replacements will not be bronze but are more likely to be metallic coated. The old statues will be exhibitioned in a place around town where they can still be enjoyed but are also kept secure."

The decision comes a week after a £1.6m artwork installed in the pavement outside the Laing Gallery, Newcastle's main city art gallery, was damaged by thieves attempting to steal bronze parts.

Meanwhile, Sir Peter was announced as the patron of the John Moores Prize 50 years after he beat David Hockney to win the junior section.

The 79-year-old artist said the victory was a key moment in his emergence onto the art scene.

"Really, my career started to happen then," he said. "I won £250, which was quite a lot then, which in fact I gave to my dad who set up his own electrical business with it.

"I was teaching by then so I suppose I was managing OK, so looking back it was a good thing to have done."

He also helped judge the award in 2006. Entries are now being accepted for the 2012 prize, which has a £25,000 first prize and is judged anonymously. It is open to all UK-based artists working with paint.

The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool is also hosting an exhibition of one of Sir Peter's alphabet series until 4 December.

Fiction: The Gathering of the Indigo Maidens

PR Web: New Art Theft Mystery Explores Hispanic Human Trafficking
Wealthy widow Paloma Zubionda lives a safe life as an art collector—until she receives a shocking phone call from a woman begging for her help. Suddenly, Paloma finds herself involved in human trafficking and art theft in a thrilling new novel.

Wealthy widow Paloma Zubionda lives a safe life as an art collector—until she receives a shocking phone call from a woman begging for her help. Suddenly, Paloma finds herself involved in human trafficking and art theft in a thrilling new novel.

From Ecuador to sunny Southern California, from 1699 Quito to eighteenth century Mexico City and nineteenth century San Juan Capistrano, and from art collector Paloma’s childhood to her life as a wealthy widow, author Cecilia Velástegui takes readers on an epic journey through the history of indigenous Spanish Colonial art, modern day human trafficking, and how greed can become one’s downfall in her new novel “The Gathering of the Indigo Maidens” (ISBN 9780983745815, Libros Publishing, 2011).

Paloma Zubiondo lives the life of one of the beautiful people. In her beachfront Mediterranean home that overlooks the bay in Laguna Beach, she collects indigenous Spanish Colonial art, rare books, and plays the philanthropist. Her life is happy, safe, secure, disciplined. Like the proverbial ivory tower, her home is a fortress against the world’s evils.

Then Paloma’s peaceful existence is shattered by a ringing phone that turns into a hysterical female voice. The woman, who sounds identical to the indigenous nanny who had raised Paloma in her native land of Ecuador, implores Paloma to return the stolen “Immaculate Conception” painting from her collection in exchange for the woman’s release by her captors. At first, Paloma believes the call a hoax, and she cannot believe her painting was stolen. But a series of threatening calls, texts, and letters reveal things only Paloma’s beloved nanny could know.

Desperate to learn whether her nanny is truly a victim of human trafficking, Paloma enlists her friend, Jen, a psychologist and social activist, to help her. Soon the women are researching a mystery found in symbolic religious paintings, scouring history for clues that go back to an indigo-gathering maiden in colonial Quito 1699 and several other intriguing women throughout Latin American history. Eventually, the clues will lead them to the hiding place of the sex-slave caller, and more secrets will be revealed than they ever could have guessed.

“Gathering the Indigo Maidens” is an exceptionally well-written tale that keeps readers enticed from the first page. Reader Views proclaims the novel, “an incredible story that incorporates both the beauty and history of Spanish art into a modern story about the evils that come with greed in our society.” Comparable to bestselling historical thrillers like “The Historian” and “The DaVinci Code,” art and history spring to life aside modern-day human trafficking in the Hispanic world in this epic tale from Cecilia Velástegui’s pen.

About the Author
Cecilia Velástegui was born in Quito, Ecuador where she spent her childhood. She was raised in California and France, and she has traveled extensively to over fifty countries. Cecilia received her graduate degree from the University of Southern California, and she speaks four languages. She serves on the board of directors of several cultural and educational organizations, and she was nominated for the Arts Orange County Award. Velástegui is donating portions of the novel’s proceeds to support the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force in its mission to aid victims of human trafficking.

“The Gathering of the Indigo Maidens” (ISBN 9780983745815, Libros Publishing, 2011) can be purchased through local and online bookstores.

The Shame of the Galleries: Stained Stein, Purloined Picasso

From HuffPostArts: The Shame of the Galleries: Stained Stein, Purloined Picasso
San Francisco has been awash in art this season. Three major shows made the pioneers of modern art hard to avoid: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MOMA)'s "The Steins Collect," San Francisco Jewish Museum's "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories," and the de Young Museum's "Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso."

But instead of a wonderful learning experience, the shows were merely pictures at an exhibition -- a lost opportunity to look at the origins and meaning of art. A teachable moment consciously abandoned. By what they knowingly chose to ignore, these shows lied to us.

The Stein shows were the most egregious. In the early 20th Century, during the moveable feast in Paris and during the war in their homes in the south of France, the Stein family had befriended and supported many developing artists as they forged modern art's form. Their support was certainly welcome, though problematic and not without strings. The Steins had the opportunity to collect substantial pieces which became quite valuable.

The Bay Area, as a home of Gertrude Stein and with its sizable LBGT population, seemed an appropriate venue for the celebration of the Stein family collection. Gertrude Stein, and her long time partner Alice B. Toklas, were in one way at least models for out-of-the-closet lesbianism. Sadly, they were not models in other important ways, ways in which the museums conveniently chose to ignore.

Their collection, particularly of impressionists, was certainly dazzling. But all that glitters is not gold. The Stein exhibits left out some of the most salient facts about Gertrude Stein. How was Stein able to keep her magnificent collection intact and thrive in occupied France as a Jew and lesbian while gays and Jews were systematically rounded up and killed, and their possessions, especially art, seized?

Less heroic than her unabashed lesbianism was Stein's longtime support for Adolf Hitler. As early as 1934 she shared her admiration for Hitler in the New York Times Magazine, campaigning for Hitler to be given the Nobel Peace Prize:

"I say that Hitler ought to have the peace prize," she says, "because he is removing all elements of contest and struggle from Germany. By driving out the Jews and the democratic and Left elements, he is driving out everything that conduces to activity. That means peace."

This was not merely an aberrant position or just a championing of Hitler alone. She supported both fascist dictator of Spain Francisco Franco and the Nazi-backed Vichy government of France, comparing collaborationist traitor Marshal Pétain to George Washington. She intervened on behalf of captured Gestapo. Indeed, it was Alice B. Toklas who funded their friend and protector Bernard Fäy's breakout from prison. Fäy was charged with being a Gestapo agent responsible for deporting nearly 1,000 people to the concentration camps in Germany.

Yet the SF MOMA and the San Francisco Jewish Museum chose not to deal with this "complicated" issue. Instead they collaborated just as did Stein, closeting her Nazi sympathies and actions.

Not to be outdone, the Picasso exhibit at the de Young Museum was a model of obscurantism. There was not a single descriptive note to any of the works. I suppose we were even lucky the works were titled. But notes on their meaning, development, relationship, or the artists intent were remarkable by their absence. Unlike museums in Europe, the Barcelona Picasso Museum or the French National Picasso Museum (the very museum from whence these pictures originated), for example, we are given nothing explaining the politics and relationships which suffused his work, his support for the Left in the Spanish Civil War, his deep anti-fascism, his identification with the oppressed and his prominent membership in the Communist Party.

It is almost cruel to view Picasso's work without explanation, for instance his great "Massacre in Korea," his literal homage to Goya's "Third of May, 1808," without so much as a hint of its parentage or reference to the 1950 Korean War mass-killing of men, women and a large number of children by American and South Korean forces. Picasso, one of the most political of artists, has been neutered, shrink-wrapped, comodified and de-contextualized.

So at the end of the exhibitions, we are left with galleries empty of meaning. Three exhibits of stellar paintings that could have opened a window into their times and issues. But three museums without the courage or energy to look at the meaning and development of art. Form without substance...only pictures at an exhibition.

On travel til Wednesday

I'm visiting elderly relatives in Box Elder, SD who do not have internet.

Will try to sneak out now and again to an internet cafe to post, but more than likely will not be posting until Wedneday.

South Africa: Art theft: Now you see it, now you don't

From Mail&Guardian.com: Art theft: Now you see it, now you don't
The theft of three valuable bronze works from the Johannesburg Art Gallery has highlighted issues of security in South Africa's public museums and galleries, with lack of funding being blamed for many security shortfalls.

The artworks, King of the Universe by Ernest Ullman, Mourning Woman by Sydney Kumalo and Peter Pan by Romano Romanelli, were taken from storeroom on Sunday September 25, but the break-in was only reported to the media on Monday.

In January, a 19th-century bronze by French artist Jules Dalou, General Lazare Hoche, was stolen from the floor of the gallery, and has not been recovered. Four extra security staff were employed after the incident. The gallery has been targeted frequently over the years, with works such as El Greco's work on canvas Apostle Thomas yet to be recovered.

Concern has been raised about the fact that bronze sculptures are often targeted to be melted down.

Antoinette Murdoch, curator at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, said that the loss of artworks could not be measured in purely financial terms. "These artworks are important, and of immeasurable value. They are part of our history."

She agreed that security measures were probably inadequate, and suggested that, in general, it is difficult for public galleries and museums in South Africa -- those who are funded by local and national government, public donations and grants -- to convince those that hold the purse strings that that protection of artistic and cultural artefacts is a priority.

Not a priority
"We are aware of security issues, and we are doing what we can. We understand that there are other priorities, and when you compare something like this to issues like housing you can understand why this is not seen as a priority".

She added: "Art theft is rife in this country. Earlier this year there was a theft at the National Gallery. The artworks are insured, but it doesn't matter. They are irreplaceable."

Murdoch explained that there are no public galleries or museums in South Africa that match up to international security standards. "It's not a question of not knowing how to protect the artworks. This is a question of money. International models are sophisticated."

Steven Sacks, director of Arts and Culture for the City of Jo'burg, was not available for comment, but, in response to the theft, deputy director of museums and galleries Langelihle Mfupi issued a statement late on Tuesday pledging funds to improve security at the JAG.

Gordon Massie, managing director of Art Insure, a South African company that specialises in insuring artworks for museums, private collectors, corporates and auction houses, explained that art theft was on the rise in South Africa. "We have seen a spike in the number of artworks being stolen in South Africa, and not just artworks that just recyclable material thefts [such as bronzes]."

He also said that the value of South African artworks was rising quickly.

"During apartheid, South African art was ignored on a world stage. Prices remained low. Since the end of apartheid, and especially in the last eight years, there has been an explosion of interest which has pushed values up. We have seen this interest from local and international collectors.

Record prices
"At a time of global recession, South African works are setting records at auctions, and it's not just Irma Sterns."

He agreed that there was not enough emphasis on security and protection of valuable artworks in public galleries.

"Budgets are tight. And when local and government authorities are thinking about priorities, securing art is at the bottom of the pile."

He added that private and corporate collectors often had better access to adequate security than galleries and similar institutions.

Mark Read of the Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg agreed.

"Private institutions and collectors and galleries shell out a lot of money for artworks and so protect them properly. In some public galleries the collections have been in storage for years, and people have come and gone, and so it's maybe easier to lose track."

He agreed that public institutions are at the mercy of funding issues.

"I don't believe that there's anyone in South Africa that would say that public galleries and museums are properly funded. And that goes for everything from salaries to new acquisitions to protecting and looking after the works they have."

He said that issues of preservation and security when it comes to museums and heritage sites have existed for decades. "It always appalled me that some of the most valuable treasures in the country are so poorly protected."

"The people who work for these institutions have passion and a real sense of duty. They do what they can. But they are in a difficult position."

The most recent annual report by Iziko Museums of Cape Town, who run the South African National Gallery and many other heritage museums, states that security systems are being upgraded and improved at all Iziko sites. These improvements focus on training of staff, access control, and alarm and CCTV systems. Iziko received funding from the department of arts and culture for this last year, but these costs would normally be covered by public donations.

In June this year a Barend de Wet bronze disappeared from its display that was located outside the gallery.

Murdoch said she was excited about City of Jo'burg's pledge, but still appealed to the public for support."We feel very strongly about what we offer in terms of art and culture. I believe that people who have access to their culture and heritage, and a chance to be educated about it, have a better quality of life. When something like this happens, it is part of our history that we lose."

To see a list of missing artworks, go here: http://artinsure.co.za/stolen-missing-art-a-55.html

Turkish PM requests stolen tiles from France

From World Bulletin: Turkish PM requests stolen tiles from France
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan officially requested that a set of Ottoman-era tiles, stolen by France in the 1880s and presently in the collections of various French museums, be returned to Turkey by French authorities.

The call for the tiles' return follows a similar request made during the February visit of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, when the prime minister rebuffed accusations that the tiles had been a gift of the sultans to the French government. "No Ottoman sultan would sell or give as a gift the tiles from his father's tomb," Erdoğan declared at the time.

The tiles currently in French collections once decorated the tombs of Selim II and Murat III, as well the library of Mahmut I. Turkish authorities allege that the French archaeologists who were tasked with restoring the tiles in the 1880s instead secretly shipped them to France, amassing an extensive tile collection and sending the Ottoman government fake tiles in their place.

Suspicions that the real tiles were held in museums in France were first aroused in 2003 when a number of tiles, which were suppose to have been restored in France, were examined and removed by archaeologists during the restoration of Selim II's tomb. "They were made in Paris according to the writing on the back of the tiles," Ministry of Culture and Tourism Cultural Heritage and Museums (KVMGM) General Director Murat Süslü, told Cihan news agency. He added: "An investigation was launched when this was discovered. It was determined that all of the tiles were sent without permission to Paris and fake ones were brought and put in their place."

The prime minister's request for the return of the tiles, which are believed to be among the most well-preserved examples of İznik ceramic art, comes as part of a new Turkish campaign to reclaim many of the country's most treasured artifacts from museums abroad. Officials claim that by promising easier access to Turkey's collections and archeological sites in return for the swift return of illegally confiscated artifacts, they have reclaimed roughly 4,500 artifacts since 2000. They further assert that 885 of the artifacts have been reclaimed this year alone. According to Süslü, the tiles may be the next objects to return to Turkey. "We have requested the return of [the tiles] many times. Our correspondence is continuing.

Archeologists at the Antalya Museum joined the long-separated halves of the Weary Herakles statue, combining a lower section long in Turkish possession with an upper section that the Turkish government reclaimed earlier this month. The upper section had been in the possession of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts after it was smuggled from a dig site near Antalya in 1980. On Sept. 25, Weary Herakles returned to Turkey on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's plane, the last chapter in a long dispute between the Boston museum and Turkish authorities over the piece's origins.

Stealing Rembrandts at Weaver Library

The same book as I shared the review of yesterday, but its an interesting article.

From EastProvidencePatch: Stealing Rembrandts at Weaver Library

About 50 art lovers or readers of true crime turned out Monday evening to listen to art security expert Anthony Amore discuss the book he co-authored with former newspaper editor Tom Mashberg called "Stealing Rembrandts."

Amore is a native Rhode Islander and 1989 graduate of the University of Rhode Island. After working for Homeland Security for 15 years, he said he wanted a “new opportunity,” so he took the position of Head of Security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA.

Amore, who described the Gardner Museum as “the best in the world in my estimation,” told the audience that 13 priceless works of art were stolen from the museum in 1990, “the largest property theft in world history,” according to his Web site. The thieves were two people disguised as Boston police officers who told the security guard they were responding to a disturbance. The guard let them in and the two fake cops stole 13 pieces of art.

Three of those stolen Rembrandts include “Storm on the Sea of Galilee” (worth $200 million), “Lady and Gentleman in Black," and an etching called "Self Portrait."

Amore said his book’s theme is to entertain people and educate those who steal. He claims art thieves are usually low-level thieves who are not very bright.

“Art theft is nothing like what you see in the movies,” Amore said.

Amore said the art theft from the Gardner Museum is a 21-year-old crime and the statute of limitations is up.

“We have a $5 million reward and we offer immunity,” Amore said.

To read more about other notorious art heists, visit the Stealing Rembrandts Web site. http://www.stealingrembrandts.com/

Book Review: Looking at Art Theft from the Thefts of One Artist's Work

From The Dispatch, Columbus, Mississippi & The Golden Triangle: Looking at Art Theft from the Thefts of One Artist's Work

If you know about art heists from the movies, I hope you are not surprised to know that the movies have not instructed you factually on the matter. One of the themes in Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists (Palgrave) is to show just how wrong the movies get it, and it is a delight to find out. The two authors are well qualified to break our movie illusions. Anthony M. Amore is the head of security at the Isabella Gardner Museum, site of one of the most famous heists of paintings (including three Rembrandts) in 1990, still unsolved. He assumed the job fifteen years after the robbery, but has researched it and other art thefts in order to come closer to solving the case. He is joined here by Tom Mashberg, a longtime Boston investigative reporter who has written continuing coverage of the Gardner robbery. The Gardner heist has been covered extensively, and is not a main subject of this book, which is a look at modern art thefts simply by attempts at the covetable works of one artist. It's a good choice, looking at Rembrandt thefts, because there are lots of Rembrandt works; although many of the famous paintings have been downgraded to "school of Rembrandt" since there are doubts about their authenticity, there are still over 2,000 paintings, drawings, and etchings that survive. He did some huge studies, like The Night Watch, but most of his works are small and so they are portable. A genuine Rembrandt can get millions at auction, though of course such paintings are seldom on the block. About eighty Rembrandts have been stolen in the past century, and looking at these particular thefts allows the authors to review means and trends in art crime, and to counter our Hollywood illusions.


Take, for instance, the most widely held misconception about art theft: Dr. No did it. Dr. No, in the 1962 James Bond film of that name, has a Francisco Goya painting deep inside his headquarters; it was a painting that indeed had been stolen months before the movie was made, and Bond does a double take and says, "So that's where it went." Mashberg has interviewed Myles J. Connor, Jr., a sophisticated and intelligent man who was responsible for robbing Boston's Museum of Fine Arts of a Rembrandt in 1975. Connor's remarks on this and other subjects are a highlight of the book. Asked about a painting offered to some Dr. No, Connor replied, "Would the Sultan of Brunei or Bill Gates or H. Ross Perot or the Emperor of Japan want to purchase it on the black market? Just in order to own it for selfish reasons? To show to close friends and concubines in privacy? I've never believed in that scenario, tempting as it is." He goes on to say no one has ever approached him for such a heist-for-hire. The authors can't confirm any Dr. No thefts.


What they do find is that art heists are carried out by middle-level criminals, closer to mere burglars than to ranking members of the Mafia. They have little resemblance to the playboy connoisseur like Steve McQueen played in The Thomas Crown Affair, or Pierce Brosnan played in the remake. They are small-timers, mere handymen who are looking for cash, frequently for a drug habit. They are often laughably incompetent, like Carl Horsley. In 1973, he took two Rembrandts from the Taft Museum in Cincinnati; he was coming up in the world, as he had previously been an armed robber of gas stations. When he was in the museum making the theft, he knew he wanted Rembrandts, because he knew the artist's name. He grabbed two of them while ignoring two much more valuable ones hanging nearby. He later explained that he had gone for the bigger pictures because big would be worth more than small. He was caught, and imprisoned, and after his release he was soon in trouble for shoplifting for his drug habit. Not all the criminals are such bozos, but few of them are smart enough to really know what they are doing. Horsley was even dumb enough to have pride in the job. He said that when he heard a radio report of this crime, "I hate to brag, but when the man said, 'This was obviously done by professionals' - well, you take a certain pride in your work, and that was gratifying, to tell the truth."


The thieves also are not acrobats; rappelling into a high museum window is good for building tension in the movies, but such gymnastics are rarely used. It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time for taking paintings may well be in the daylight hours. There are lots of people around and the alarms are off. The thieves take advantage of the openness that is necessary in museums; if you want to steal gold or cash, for instance, you may well have to crack a safe. Artworks in museums or homes, however, are right there on the walls and people are welcome to get close looks at them. In 1972, thieves entered the Worcester Art Museum, dressed as workers. It was daylight, and visitors assumed that as they used their tools to remove several paintings, including Rembrandt's St. Bartholomew, they were just doing their jobs. They succeeded in rushing the paintings out of the building. Better than acrobatics or high-tech gadgetry is to have an insider helping in the theft; the authors say about 80% of such crimes have help from a museum employee.



Time and again, the authors show that getting into the museum and getting the art out is the easy part; few of the crimes described here are thwarted while the theft is actually in progress. It is in trying to make the crime pay that the thieves get caught. There is no market for stolen Rembrandts: "They are quite simply too famous to sell." There are, again, no Dr. No types ready to buy such loot. With a million dollar canvas on their hands, the thieves often come to realize that the best they are going to be able to do is ransom the pieces back to the museums. They can try doing this to a third party, someone who will accept a "reward" for turning in the paintings, but even that subterfuge exposes them to capture. Often the thieves give up even hope of ransom, and reveal where the authorities can pick up the paintings. The museums will cooperate with ransoms up to a point, with the biggest worry that masterpieces will be harmed as they are tossed into car trunks or hidden under mattresses.


It is surprising that some of the thefts described here are not for money. Ink drawings by Rembrandt snatched off the wall of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard in 1937 were recovered, and their theft seems to have been nothing but a student prank. A theft in Moscow in 1927 involved religious paintings, which subsequently underwent ritual vandalism. The press accounts blamed "some sort of religious maniacs." One of the strangest of crimes here was performed by Myles Connor himself. He was facing charges in one art heist, and so he robbed a Rembrandt from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and then offered to help the museum recover the Rembrandt in exchange for leniency in the first case. The brazen strategy worked.


Most of the stolen paintings are recovered, but there is an interesting bimodal aspect to the recovery. They are often found days or weeks after the theft, and if not then, then they are found a generation later, because statues of limitations expire, or the thieves die. Some of the paintings here are documented as being destroyed and gone forever, while most of the missing ones are simply out there somewhere, probably not being well cared for. Their absence and the damage to them represent real human losses. The authors have often combined these varied stories of thefts with a brief history of Rembrandt's wild arc of a career (including the sad descent). Interpol says that the underworld is bullish on art crimes (second only to trade in drugs and arms). The authors have given a fascinating review of a particular aspect of this particular crime, with introductions to a few remarkable, and mostly ordinary, criminals. You won't watch a movie art heist in the same way again.

Booklist: Money For Art - The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy

Money For Art - The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy
by David A Smith
Ivan R. Dee 2008

Description
Money for Art is the story of public funding of the arts in modern America - the risks and achievements inherent in the ongoing relationship among artists, art administrators, and the legislators who control spending. It is a story of noble intentions that have often foundered on the conflict between individual creativity and democratic expectations.

As David A. Smith shows, government funding of the arts in America has never followed an easy course. Whether on a local or national scale, political support for the arts has carried with it a sense of exchange-the expectation that in return for public money the community will benefit. But this concept is fraught with potential difficulties that touch upon basic tensions between the fierce vision of the individual artist and the standards of the community.

In emphasizing the developments since the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965, Mr. Smith also shows how American art and artists have evolved in the last decades of the twentieth century. Many art observers will recall the heated controversy of the late 1980s and early 1990s over the Endowment's involvement with the photographers Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe, episodes that aptly represent the inevitable head-on collision of contemporary arts and national politics.

Mr. Smith reexamines and analyzes these clases between funding and freedom of speech as a prism through which to view the broad disagreement in America over ther meaning, purpose and plce of art in a democracy.

Central to his story are American definitions of egalitarianism and rights. What happens to art in a society that is increasingly, energetically egalitarian and rights-conscious, and how does this direction influence the task of funding art?

Should publically funded art support the "I" of the artist or recognize the "we" of community? And how can these frequently opposed interests be reconciled?

Money for Art tells how these circumstances have evolved and what their consequences are for art in America.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Traditions and Trends
2. Paint By Numbers
3. Momentum from Myth
4. A Great Society's Art
5. Surprise!
6. Paradise Lost
7. Supply-side Art
8. The Difference Between "Naked" and "Nude"
9. Rearranging the Chairs
10. An "I" or a "We"?
Epilogue: the Signature of Man
Notes
Index

Open Book: Hot Art, by Joshua Knelman

From NationalPost: Open Book: Hot Art, by Joshua Knelman

Last April, two thieves broke into a Toronto gallery and ran off with three paintings worth $73,000. The sum was high enough to attract local attention in the press, but the incident represented little more than a good day’s work for members of the worldwide fellowship of art thieves.

It’s a grand fraternity, flourishing in a global culture where art has never commanded greater prices. In the United States, according to Joshua Knelman’s Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives Through the Secret World of Stolen Art, the “business of fine art is worth an estimated $200-billion annually.” The value of the amount of stolen art annually is — well, no one knows for sure. If there was even a vaguely useful figure, depend on it, Knelman would have obtained it. Seven years in the making, Hot Art is an engrossing and thorough study of the shadow side of art fairs, galleries, museums, auction houses, private and public collectors.

It began in 2003 when Knelman was researching a story about a burglary at a small art gallery for The Walrus magazine, research that led him to some strange contacts, including one thief who threatened Knelman serious injury if he wrote anything about his involvement in the art gallery theft. A curious feature of Knelman’s narrative is that he becomes part of the story at the very beginning and at the very end, while in between lies a fairly impersonal stretch of reportage. The episodes that involve Knelman are unsettling. Aside from the anonymous thief, an ever wary Los Angeles Police Department detective temporarily regards Knelman as a suspect in a gallery heist — claiming to be a journalist could be a very good ruse, he figures — and the organizer of a conference on art theft in Cairo demands extra payment on his hotel bill. Knelman refuses to pay that extra money and successfully stands his ground, but only after a blistering argument and another not so veiled threat to the author’s health.

Finally, near the end of the book, his main informant from the criminal world, “Paul,” seeks reassurance from Knelman that there will be enough material left over for his own book. Knelman tries to ease his concern on that score, although he doesn’t actually guarantee anything.

None of these episodes — not even the hotel confrontation, which, strictly speaking, has nothing to do with Knelman’s story — are gratuitous. They help to establish in an intimate and sometimes ironic way themes of innocence and guilt, including the guilt of depriving a crook of the rightful fruits of his experience.

The main story is told from the perspective of a handful of crusaders who battle not only the increasing sophistication and determination of art thieves but the indifference of their police colleagues and even the hostility of gallery owners who don’t want to change their ways. “The business of art is one of the most corrupt, dirtiest industries on the planet,” maintains one such crusader, a Toronto lawyer specializing in cultural property law named Bonnie Czegledi. “There are no regulations and theft is rampant.” Proper documentation of sales is often missing, and gallery owners often feel it is rude to inquire closely about the provenance of a work of art offered to them. “Nobody in the art world asks questions,” Paul informs Knelman.

There’s a certain acceptance in that world of what happened to the Toronto gallery last April — art theft has been in existence as long as art. The history of Egypt, for example, is the history of systematic plunder of its antiquities. Czegledi, a descendent of inhabitants of Hungary’s Carpathian Mountains, who have long been persecuted by Romanian authorities, is particularly sensitive about this political aspect of art theft. “There’s almost nothing left of my people except a few songs collected by Béla Bartók,” she says to Knelman. “The best way to destroy a civilization is to erase their cultural heritage. The Nazis, for example, understood that very well.”

It is greed, however, rather than politics that drives today’s plundering of art, and it is intensive police work that must counter it. Knelman’s other lonely crusaders include LAPD detective Donald Hrycyk, virtually the only member of that police department’s Art Theft Detail; Richard Ellis of Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Squad, a squad that includes Ellis and one partner; Robert Wittman, the first agent in the history of the FBI to investigate art theft full-time; and Julian Radcliffe, a corporate consultant on terrorism and kidnapping who founded the Art Loss Register. That register had its beginnings when Radcliffe realized, in Knelman’s words, that “the best way to curb international art theft was to create an international list of stolen artwork. Whoever assembled that list would be the master of the art world.”

As a counterpoint to these voices, the more or less reformed thief Paul gives his own perspective on the art racket, sometimes sounding grimly amused at the spectacle of art’s losing battle against theft. Hrycyk, for one, admits that “the vast majority of these cases are not solved.” There are different sorts of thefts, however. One kind of theft is the stealing of paintings from galleries and private residences — more than half the items on the Art Loss Register are from private collections. These sooner or later find their way into galleries and auction houses as legitimate items of sale. Another kind is the theft of very high profile paintings from museums. Paul warns criminals against this kind of theft because it draws a lot of police attention. “A good thief stays out of the spotlight,” he says.

It’s one thing to lift a famous Rembrandt, another to dispose of it. A gallery owner tells Knelman, “When a painting is stolen, it has to be laundered. There are two ways to do this. One is to send it to Japan or to another country very far away. The other way is simply to hide it somewhere for a very long time, until anybody who would recognize the stolen painting is dead or has long forgotten it.”

It is hard to believe that Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee or Vermeer’s The Concert — two among the 14 paintings stolen in the famous 1990 heist from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum — will ever be forgotten.

Knelman leaves us no assurance that the scourge of art theft will abate any time soon. Closer regulation of the arts and antiques business might reduce theft by helping to dry up that market for stolen goods. Museums might redouble investment on alarms and securities systems in the almost fanatical mode of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, which has never suffered an incident of theft. Even that solution may not last for long, however, and not just because Getty Center-style security is very expensive. As museums become better secured, one expert tells Knelman, the way to steal art will be through armed robbery, in smash and grab mode. “The only thing thieves need to do is beat the alarm response time,” he observes.

We owe it to posterity, however, not to give up the attempt to secure art. Knelman, in this outstanding work of journalism, places the problem in perspective by quoting the FBI’s Wittman on the successful case of a stolen Rembrandt. “The Rembrandt that I recovered was 400 years old,” he says. “Do you know anyone who is 400 years old? Cultural property is permanent. We are fleeting.”