Art Law

War’s many victims

IF YOU know anything about the laws of conflict, you probably know that destroying or stealing the cultural and spiritual heritage of an enemy or an occupied land can be a war crime, especially if it’s done in a systematic way. That principle is laid out with ever-growing clarity in every modern document that aspires to set limits to the way people fight. You can find it in Abraham Lincoln’s code of conduct for the American civil war, in the Geneva Conventions, and in the statutes of modern war-crimes tribunals.

Still, that can seem like an awkward point to raise in situations where many other unspeakable things are happening. When the Pakistani Taliban is massacring children, should we also worry about the fact that it has physically eliminatedmany traces of the Buddhist heritage of its home region? During the Balkan wars of the 1990s, some locals were exasperated by media coverage of the shelling of old Dubrovnik by Yugoslav forces. Bad as it was, didn’t this cultural loss pale compared with the human suffering that was unfolding in the region? More recently, the built heritage of Mali and Syria has suffered terrible damage, but surely that is less significant than the killing and uprooting of human civilians?

In reality, the two kinds of atrocity can’t be separated. That point was made vividly in London this week at a House of Lords event organised by Elizabeth Berridge, a lawyer and peeress who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on International Religious Freedom, and Walk of Truth (WOT) a Hague-based NGO which campaigns to protect spiritual and cultural treasures from crime and war. (Full disclosure: I gave some informal advice when WOT was set up in 2011.) Persecuting people and harming or grabbing the things they call holy are two misdeeds that have gone hand in hand throughout history. If anything the interconnection is getting closer.

Islamic State (IS), the ultra-zealous force which under various names has run amok in Iraq and Syria, makes no secret of its intent to wreck or appropriate places of worship, monuments and sites that belong to belief systems other than its own narrow reading of Islam. That contrasts with early Islamic history, in which there were some famous acts of self-restraint: Caliph Omar held back from offering Muslim prayers in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, thus ensuring that it would remain a Christian place of worship. But no such spirit of self-limitation inhibits IS, for whom destroying the enemies’ holy things serves a double purpose. On one hand, it consolidates the group’s monopoly on power, by demoralising rival groups, and ensuring that they flee forever. On the other, cultural vandalism has a more immediate aim, that of raising money to fund further violence.

IS and similar groups either trade in antiquities themselves or license others to do so. Amr al-Azm, a scholar at America’s Shawnee State University, reported after visiting the area that IS was creaming off 20-50% of the proceeds of criminal looting. You can’t always distinguish between cultural vandalism in the name of religious zeal, and the more opportunistic kind. The result is the same: objects and images which are holy to some people are wrenched from the places where they were created and offered to auction houses and galleries in prosperous Western cities.

A Family Battles Over a Disappearing Trove of Chinese Paintings

“A Family Battles Over a Disappearing Trove of Chinese Paintings”

By Graham Bowley via “New York Times“

It has evolved into one of New York’s longest-running fights over an estate.

For more than a decade, the family of C. C. Wang, a collector whose name graces a gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has been battling over a trove of classical Chinese paintings and scrolls that has been described as among the finest in the world.

Now, the feud has escalated. In the past month, two of Mr. Wang’s children, who have been fighting in Surrogate’s Court in Manhattan since his death in 2003 at 96, filed lawsuits in state and federal courts accusing each other of looting and deceit.

But beyond the family strife, a broader issue is dismaying Chinese-art experts for whom the Wang collection has long been a source of wonder.

Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of works from an estate once valued in court papers at more than $60 million have gone missing, including an 11th-century scroll, “The Procession of Taoist Immortals,” that is viewed in China as a national treasure.

“This is heartbreaking, and it is happening right here in the city,” said Laura B. Whitman, a specialist in Chinese art formerly with Sotheby’s and Christie’s, who used to visit Mr. Wang at his apartment in New York to view his collection.

Divining who rightfully owns these works, and who is to blame for the disappearance of so many of them, has consumed the family for more than a decade.

The case has become so complex, and so expensive, that the Surrogate’s Court has suspended discussing matters of inheritance until it can come up with a reliable inventory of what was initially in the collection to see if the estate will be able to pay lawyers and other creditors.

Among the few certainties at this point is that Mr. Wang demonstrated the ability to acquire objects of historical importance, objects that since his death have increased many times in value as the Chinese art market has boomed.

Born near Suzhou, China, in 1907, he moved to the United States during China’s political upheavals in 1949, settling in Manhattan, where he built a career teaching, consulting at Sotheby’s, and dealing in real estate and in art. He became the dean of the rarefied market for Chinese art in New York and was an accomplished artist in his own right. By the end of the 1990s, the Met had bought some 60 works that were once part of his collection and named a gallery in his honor.

Among the Met acquisitions was a colossal hanging scroll titled “Riverbank,” attributed to the 10th-century painter Dong Yuan, but which attracted its own controversy after some scholars declared it a 20th-century forgery.

Maxwell K. Hearn, chairman of the Met’s Asian art department, said Mr. Wang acquired much of his important collection early on, when the market for Chinese art didn’t exist.

“He saw their continued relevance as sources of artistic inspiration,” Mr. Hearn said. “Now, they have become enormously valuable, because people are recognizing their cultural significance and acknowledge him as a source of validation.”

Before his death, Mr. Wang left some works to his daughter Yien-Koo Wang King, now 79, and some to his son, Shou-Kung Wang, now 85, both of whom served during different periods as confidant and business agent to their father.

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.” . . . .

“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 . . . .”

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…)