Looted/Stolen Works

Peru: Recovery of Cultural Heritage Increases

by Paola Pinedo García via “InfoSurHoy“

LIMA, Peru – Peruvian cultural artifacts illegally sold on the international black market are being returned to museums and archeological sites from where they never should have left.

The joint efforts by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have led to the repatriation of 3,018 pieces belonging to Peru’s cultural heritage since 2007.

Alongside the repatriated items, an additional 31,640 artifacts were recovered in Peru, according to Katie Navarro Vásquez, the director of recoveries in the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage Defense at the Ministry of Culture, which is dedicated to preventing and controlling the illegal trafficking in artifacts, and recovering and repatriating them domestically and internationally.

Prevention and security measures are carried out at three units the Ministry of Culture has established in Peru – at Lima’s Jorge Chávez International Airport, the Santa Rosa complex on the southern border with Chile and in the Postal Services office (Serpost) in the Peruvian capital.

“Our figures for rescued and repatriated items lead us to believe that our control units at strategic exit points from the country have definitely deterred traffickers from trying to smuggle heritage items through these points,” Navarro said.

Ongoing luggage and parcel checks at these three places are carried out by Ministry of Culture personnel alongside officers from the National Police and Customs, she added.

“Peru realized that the loss of its heritage is like somebody ripping out the pieces of our living jigsaw puzzle,” said Cecilia Bákula Budge, former director of the National Institute of Culture of Peru – today the Ministry of Culture – and current head of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank Museum. “I am confident that though we still have a lot to do, we are making progress on an uphill battle in terms of recoveries.”

Thanks to this, 340 cultural pieces destined to be smuggled out of the country were prevented from leaving Peru between January and May after 1,044 pieces were kept from being smuggled out of the country in 2013 and 1,870 in 2012.

“There has been a downward trend since 2007 in trafficking of cultural artifacts,” Navarro said. “This [is due to] our three units’ work. Now, [those] trying to smuggle cultural heritage are aware that we are at the main departure points in the country and that deters them. For us, it’s important that cultural heritage does not cross the border since, once outside, rescuing the pieces – though not impossible – is certainly more difficult [due to] long repatriation processes.” . . . .

“TRADITIONAL HERITAGE HOUSE IN SANA’A PLUNDERED AS YEMENI HERITAGE COMES UNDER INCREASING THREAT”

by Amal Al-Yarisi via “Yemen Times“

“Arwa Othman, head of the Traditional Heritage House in Sana’a, spent two years collecting traditional artifacts to fill the museum. She was devastated when it was robbed earlier last month. The padlocks were broken and glass windows were smashed. Important collectibles were found scattered around the house and precious silver items were missing, along with rare traditional clothes.

Established in 2004, Othman says the museum is one of a kind and contained important pieces of Yemen’s rich heritage. Museums in Hadramout, Seyoun, and Al-Dhale have also been robbed in the past, Othman said.

“On May 16, I was surprised to find the house robbed by unknown individuals. Some other collectibles were tampered with. So far, we have not identified who did it,” said Othman. The problem of robberies is particularly acute at the moment, given that the government’s hands are full in dealing with multiple crises and it cannot pay much attention to matters of heritage. What happened to the Traditional Heritage House is a case in point.

Othman said the house is a cultural entity that was formed to help safeguard the spiritual and material heritage of Yemen. She said she aims to preserve it and make it accessible to researchers.

Othman has been interested in Yemen’s history since she was a teenager. She used to save her allowance and buy traditional collectibles. “Every time my family gave me YR50 ($0.23), I headed to the market in Taiz where I was living. I used to buy many old items,” Othman recalled. . . . .”

Cambodia Welcomes Return of 1,000-year-old Statues

“Cambodia Welcomes Return of 1,000-year-old Statues”

by Sopheng Cheang via “Monteray Herald“

Three 1,000-year-old statues depicting Hindu mythology were welcomed home to Cambodia on Tuesday after being looted from a temple during the country’s civil war and put in Western art collections.

The pieces were handed over at a ceremony attended by Deputy Prime Minister Sok An and U.S. diplomat Jeff Daigle after being returned by the U.S. branches of auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and the Norton Simon Museum in California.

Cambodian officials say the statues were looted in the 1970s by being hacked off their bases in the Koh Ker temple complex in Siem Reap province, also home to the Angkor Wat temples. (more…)

Metropolitan Museum of Art Found to House Looted Art

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Python bell-krater acquired in 1989 matches object documented in confiscated Medici archive, according to forensic archaeologist Christos Tsirogiannis: “The evidence suggests that the vase has most likely been unlawfully removed from Italian soil”

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin via “ARCA“

The Classic Greek mixing-bowl attributed to the artist Python (active ca. 350 – 325 BC) of Poseidonia (Paestan) on display in Gallery 161 of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City should be returned to Italy because it has no collecting history before 1989 and has been matched with photographs in the possession of a convicted art dealer, according to the work of University of Cambridge’s Christos Tsirogiannis. (You can see The Met’s description of the object online here ).

This terracotta bell-krater, described in detail in Dr. Tsirogiannis’ column “Nekyia” in the Spring 2014 issue ofThe Journal of Art Crime, appears with soil/salt encrustations in five photographs from the confiscated Medici archive – including one Polaroid image. Then, “The object was auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York in June 1989 and the same year appeared as part of The Met’s antiquities collection,” Dr. Tsirogiannis reports.

Art dealer Giacomo Medici was convicted in 2005 of participating in the sale of looted antiquities. The story of how illicit antiquities were sold to art galleries and museums in Europe and North America was told in the 2006 book by Peter Watson & Cecilia Todeschini, The Medici Conspiracy: the illicit journey of looted antiquities, from Italy’s tomb raiders to the world’s greatest museums(Public Affairs). The Medici archives (or “Medici Dossier”) were described as “thirty albums of Polaroids, fifteen envelopes with photographs, and twelve envelopes with rolls of film … [along with] 100 full rolls of exposed film … [for] a total of 3,600 images” found in Medici’s warehouse of antiquities in Geneva in 1995. . . . .

“Cornelius Gurlitt and the complexities of rehoming Nazi-looted art”

by Rita Lobo via “European CEO“

A priceless haul of invaluable art thought to have been destroyed by the Nazi’s has recently been uncovered in Germany, raising questions about if and how artefacts are returned to their rightful owners or their heirs

“A priceless haul of invaluable art thought to have been destroyed by the Nazi’s has recently been uncovered in Germany, raising questions about if and how artefacts are returned to their rightful owners or their heirs

When the Bavarian customs officer searched Cornelius Gurlitt aboard a train crossing the Lindau Border in 2010, he had no way of knowing that he was about to reignite one of the fiercest cultural debates in European history. Gurlitt, the son of an important German art curator during World War II, turned out to be sitting on a veritable trove of priceless works of art thought to have been lost during or shortly after the war – a fact only discovered because police raided his home on suspicions of tax evasion.

An elderly recluse living in an affluent neighbourhood of Munich, Gurlitt had inherited from his father, Hildebrand, over 1,200 pieces the curator had acquired during the war. The story of how Hildebrand Gurlitt came to be in possession of such an array of what the Nazi’s had labelled ‘degenerate art’ – during a time when collectors were fleeing Europe in droves – is murky at best. But because Germany does not have a law preventing anyone or any institutions from owning looted art, it is unlikely that the provenance of Gurlitt’s collection matters very much, should he wish to retain it.

There is no evidence that Hildebrand, who was part Jewish, stole any . . . .”