Hong Kong Police Search Landfill for $3.7 Mln Painting

Wonder how the contract read. . . When did title transfer over? Is the artist responsible for the cost if it cannot be found. **DB

“Hong Kong Police Search Landfill for $3.7 Mln Painting”

by AFP

“Hong Kong (AFP) – Hong Kong police on Wednesday searched for a valuable painting mistakenly dumped in a landfill after it sold for $3.7 million at auction, reports said.

“Snowy Mountain” by Chinese artist Cui Ruzhuo, which was a main feature of the spring auction by Beijing-based Poly Culture this week, was dumped by cleaners at the luxury hotel hosting the sale, the South China Morning Post said.

Grand Hyatt hotel cleaners were suspected of dumping the painting, which sold on Monday for more than HK$28.75 million ($3.71 million), along with rubbish that was taken to a landfill, the paper said, citing an unnamed police source.

Poly Culture did not comment immediately when contacted by AFP.

Police suspected the painting was thrown out by cleaners after viewing security camera images but would not rule out the possibility of it having been stolen, media reported.

Police told AFP a theft case was reported on Tuesday by an auction house staff member regarding a painting, without giving further details.

A Grant Hyatt spokeswoman would not confirm if the painting had been dumped as trash but said hotel staff did not handle items sold at the auction because they were too expensive.

She said in an emailed statement to AFP that organisers would hire their own security and contractors for such events involving “high-value” items.

The spring sale was the first major auction organised by Poly Culture in Hong Kong following its stock debut in March.

Poly Culture Group, the world’s third largest auction house by revenue behind Sotheby’s and Christie’s, is a subsidiary of state-run conglomerate Poly Group. . . .

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Rare $39 Million Ming Dynasty Cup to Be Part of Auction

by Frederick Balfour

A 15th-century ceramic cup from the Ming Dynasty will be included in a Sotheby’s (BID) auction next month in Hong Kong, after the seller retracted an earlier decision to pull the sale.

The cup, valued at HK$200 million ($26 million) to HK$300 million, will be offered at Sotheby’s on April 8, according to Nicolas Chow, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Asia and International Head of Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art.

The seller, a Swiss collector in his nineties who had earlier asked to pull the cup from the sale, changed his mind, said Giuseppe Eskenazi, who originally sold the piece to the collector in 2000 and is advising the seller.

The cup was promoted in a March 6 press release by Sotheby’s as a “potential record breaker” and is considered the finest piece of Chinese ceramics in private hands. It comes from the Meiyintang Collection, whose owner has vacillated over selling it, said Eskenazi, a London-based dealer who originally sold the piece to him in 2000.

“It’s such a great treasure, he didn’t want to part with it as he treasured it so much,” Eskenazi, who helped the seller place pieces with Sotheby’s before, said by telephone today. “But finally, he agreed a few hours ago to go ahead.”

Emperor Allegory

Eskenazi, who bought the cup for almost HK$30 million in 1999, sold it one year later to its present owner.

“This is the most valuable piece of porcelain in any private collection,” he said.

The cup, made for the Chenghua emperor (1465-1487) is considered the most rare of Chinese ceramics and may set an auction record, according to the Sotheby’s press release. It has been nicknamed the “Chicken Cup” because it depicts a rooster, his hen and their chicks, an allegorical representation of the emperor, the empress and their subjects.

“We are very excited to present this in the sale,” Chow said by telephone. “It is the single most expensive, single most sought after Chinese porcelain ever offered at auction.”

The “Chicken Cup” is only 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) in diameter, delicate and dainty, . . . .

Small Museums

“Small Museums”

by Orhan Pamuk via “New York Times“

“In the age of mega-institutions and competitive building, the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk pays homage to the more personal places, like his own Museum of Innocence, whose character and content evoke a deeper experience.

My favorite museums tend to be small, the kind that showcase the inventiveness and the life stories of private individuals. Though I admire national museums like the Louvre or the British Museum, when I’m traveling and whenever I set foot in a new city, the first places I rush to see are not these institutions that fill me with a sense of the power of the state and of the history of its people, but those that will allow me to experience the private world and the vision of a passionate individual. I have so much respect for the efforts of those creative people who devoted the final decades of their lives to the task of turning their homes and their studios into museums for the public to visit after their deaths. These small museums are usually hidden on side streets just outside the center of large Western cities. They have the power to make us rediscover a feeling that the big national museums, looking more and more like fun-filled shopping malls with each passing day, can no longer make us feel, and that we have begun to forget. Museums must not confine themselves to showing us pictures and objects from the past; they must also convey the ambiance of the lost time from which those objects have come to us. And this can only happen through personal stories.

The newly reopened Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, for example, is a dazzling demonstration of (more…)

“Italy Heritage Sleuths Launch Stolen Art App”

by AFP via “France 24”

Italy's top art detectives, global experts in finding stolen works, launched a smartphone app Wednesday to get people to collaborate on cracking crimesItaly's top art detectives, global experts in finding stolen works, launched a smartphone app Wednesday to get people to collaborate on cracking crimes

“Italy’s top art detectives, global experts in finding stolen works, launched a smartphone app Wednesday to get people to collaborate on cracking crimes.

The application, which will be available to download from AndroidMarket and AppleStore soon, was “thought up and created for citizens”, according to Mariano Mossa, the head of Italy’s heritage police.

“It represents a first for those who hope to contribute to the fight against heritage crimes,” he said at a press presentation of the new app.

Users who come across works of art they suspect have been stolen can take a photograph of it and send it straight to the police, who check in real time whether it matches any of the works in their archives. (more…)

Thousands of Artifacts Seized at Rural Indiana Home

I don’t have the whole story or all the facts. That said, if this article is true: they haven’t charged the man, there is no offered evidence as to reasonable suspicion, and there is no explanation given as to what precisely he did wrong. Instead they have taken items worth immeasurable value from a 90 year old man that will take more than his life for them to “catalog.” Just imagine the potential threat to all museums and private owners if it is considered acceptable for officials to take collections just to “verify,” without probable cause for suspicion. It’s incomprehensible. ** DB

“Thousands of Artifacts Seized at Rural Indiana Home”

by Diana Penner via “IndyStar”

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“FBI agents Wednesday seized “thousands” of cultural artifacts, including American Indian items, from the private collection of a 91-year-old Rush County man who had acquired them over the past eight decades.

An FBI command vehicle and several tents were spotted at the property in rural Waldron, about 35 miles southeast of Indianapolis.

The man, Don Miller, has not been arrested or charged.

Robert A. Jones, special agent in charge of the Indianapolis FBI office, would not say at a news conference specifically why the investigation was initiated, but he did say the FBI had information about Miller’s collection and acted on it by deploying its art crime team.

FBI agents are working with art experts and museum curators, and neither they nor Jones would describe a single artifact involved in the investigation, but it is a massive collection. Jones added that cataloging of all of the items found will take longer than “weeks or months.”

“Frankly, overwhelmed,” is how Larry Zimmerman, professor of anthropology and museum studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis described his reaction. “I have never seen a collection like this in my life except in some of the largest museums.”

The monetary value of the items and relics has not been determined, Jones said, but the cultural value is beyond measure. In addition to American Indian objects, the collection includes items from China, Russia, Peru, Haiti, Australia and New Guinea, he said.

The items were found in a main residence, in which Miller lives; a second, unoccupied residence on the property; and in several outbuildings, Jones said. The town originally was Iroquois land.

The objects were not stored to museum standards, Jones said, but it was apparent Miller had made an effort to maintain them well. (more…)