The Art Loss Register has for some time now aimed to create a listing of stolen artefacts, with the aim that they can be more easily returned to their original owners if they are found. On paper this seems like a great idea, but the reality is somewhat different.

As I mentioned in a recent post there is a problem, in that auction houses are treating it as in some way authoritive, as a way of validating artefacts as not being looted. The reality though is that it is far from a comprehensive list.

It seems though that this is the least of its problems. The New York Times published a piece on it recently & since then, various people have blogged about their own issued with it.

In particular, I suggest reading Tom Flynn’s article & Dorothy King’s article.

From:
New York Times

Tracking Stolen Art, for Profit, and Blurring a Few Lines
By KATE TAYLOR and LORNE MANLY
Published: September 20, 2013

Early in the morning of May 11, 1987, someone smashed through the glass doors of the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, removed a Matisse from a wall and fled.

All it took was daring and a sledgehammer.

The whereabouts of the painting, “Le Jardin,” remained a mystery until the work was found last year and made a celebratory trip home in January.
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This story highlights a number of issues with the global trade in antiquities.

Firstly, there is the fact, that the international art market is a murky world full of forgeries, items lacking provenance & other artefacts that aren’t quite what they first appear to be. Next, is the issue of checking the status of the artefacts against a single register, that is not in any way authoritative. It is a voluntary register, and as such is far from comprehensive. My final issue though is that the auction house acts as though this is pretty much acceptable. They were selling forged artefacts & really only made the most cursory of checks to see whether they were authentic or not. Its almost as though they are worried about asking too many questions, as they’ll uncover stuff they didn’t want to know and then no longer be able to sell it.

From:
Art Newspaper

Guilty plea over antiquities
Suspect admits falsifying provenance of Egyptian items offered for auction in London

By Martin Bailey and Melanie Gerlis. News, Issue 249, September 2013
Published online: 05 September 2013

Neil Kingsbury, of Northwood, London, has pleaded guilty to charges relating to the provenance of Egyptian antiquities that were consigned to Bonhams and Christie’s.

Kingsbury was arrested after misrepresented items were identified in Christie’s London antiquities sale of 2 May. Marcel Marée, a curator at the British Museum, saw the published catalogue a week earlier and spotted that a relief fragment of a Nubian prisoner appeared to come from the Amenhotep III temple in Thebes, across the Nile from Luxor. He contacted Hourig Sourouzian, the site’s conservation director, who confirmed that the relief was missing. It was excavated a decade ago and had been kept in storage.
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When it first occurred, the looting of Iraq was one of the most publicly visible destructions of a nature’s culture that had been seen, with much of the ransacking shown on live TV feeds, while troops on the ground struggled to assess the situation. It has to an extent though helped people to understand the kind of situations in which many other artefacts in museums, such as the Benin Bronzes were acquired – a knowledge that we aren’t always talking about smugglers taking an artefact, but in many cases about violent acts of vandalism taking place at the same time.

Since the dark days of 2003, much has been done to help retrieve some of the items lost during the looting, although few would dispute that the best course of events would have been for the looting to have been prevented in the first place.

A new database now aims to catalogue much of Iraq’s ancient sites, with the intention that this will allow better monitoring & protection of them.

From:
CNN

Iraq harnesses technology to protect ancient treasures
By Laura Allsop for CNN
July 21, 2011 — Updated 1517 GMT (2317 HKT)

(CNN) — Known to many as the “cradle of civilization,” Iraq is a treasure trove of important archaeological sites including Babylon, Ur and Nimrud.

Yet hostile circumstances on the ground have left the country’s antique heritage vulnerable to looting and damage.
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They say that there was no chance that Gianni Versace knew the painting was stolen when he purchased it. At the same time though, without a certain level of due diligence, it is easy to avoid finding out things that you don’t want to know. Its worth bearing in mind that this isn’t the first case of a fashion designer owning looted artefacts either.

From:
Reuters

Versace’s return stolen painting to original owners
LONDON | Mon Nov 22, 2010 1:39pm GMT

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – A painting stolen from a London home in 1979 and which ended up in the collection of late Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace has been returned to its original owners, Britain’s Art Loss Register said on Monday.

The work by 18th century German artist Johann Zoffany had been billed as the star lot in a Sotheby’s auction of the contents of Versace’s Lake Como villa last year, but it was withdrawn at the last moment.
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