Tag Archives: Sotheby’s

The Sidon Bull’s Head: Court Record Documents a Journey Through the Illicit Antiquities Trade

Posted on September 24, 2017 | 8 comments

02MET-master675.jpgA remarkable document filed with New York’s Supreme Court on Friday reconstructs the journey of an ancient sculpture of a bull’s head from its theft during the Lebanese civil war through the shadowy corners and winding pathways of the international antiquities black market.

serveimage.jpgThe filing, an application for a turnover order filed by Deputy DA Mathew Bogdanos, recounts a Grand Jury investigation that traced the stolen relic through a who’s who of the antiquities trade before ending up on loan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was seized in July.

The 66-page filing is worth reading in full, as it bristles with insights into the antiquities trade that Bogdanos, the author of Thieves of Bagdad, has collected over more than a decade investigating antiquities trafficking networks. It is also a testament to the type of dogged investigation required to uncover the true history of a stolen antiquity.

Bogdanos’ investigation included the use of Grand Jury subpoenas, search warrants, interviews with witnesses in several countries and thousands of pages of shipping documents, customs forms and email correspondence.

“Nonetheless, even this investigation…has been unable to illuminate those well-appointed shadows where money changes hands and legitimate, but all-too-inconvenient, questions of the provenance and ownership history of the objects are frequently considered outre and ever so gauche,” Bogdanos writes. “Indeed, because so many shadows remain, and because the farther back we go the darker and more impenetrable are those shadows, it is best to trace the possession of the Bull’s Head backward…”

Anyone familiar with investigations of Mediterranean smuggling networks over the past two decades will recognize the dozen names associated with the object’s past.

The following summary of that shadowy journey does not do justice to the tale, but highlights the key players:

July 8, 1967: The bull’s head was excavated from the Temple of Eshmun in Sidon, Lebanon, by French archaeologist Maurice Dunand as part of a state-sponsored excavation.600px-Eshmun_Temple.jpg

1979: Amidst the raging Lebanese civil war, the bull’s head and other artifacts from Eshmun were transferred to Beirut and then to a storage area of the Byblos Citadel for safekeeping.

1981: Armed members of the Phalangist paramilitary group seized objects from the Citadel, including the bull’s head. After negotiations with the antiquities directorate, the Phalangists return many of the objects to the Citadel. But the bull’s head and dozens of other objects are not among them and disappear into the black market.

1980s: The Bull’s Head is associated with the George Lotfi Collection of Beirut and Paris and with Frieda Tchacos in Zurich (Nefer Gallery), according to a subsequent claim by the Met’s curator of ancient art Joan Mertens. Her source for this information is never clarified or documented.

April 11, 1991: Four sculptures stolen from Eshmun appear in an auction by the Numismatic & Ancient Art Gallery in Zurich. They are seized and returned to Lebanon.

December, 1994: Sotheby’s offers a male torso and a sarcophagus fragment from Eshmun for sale. Both are eventually seized and returned to Lebanon. Several more Eshmun objects are recovered over the years.serveimage-1.jpg

May 18, 1996: The Bull’s Head re-appears in shipping documents and was delivered to London antiquities dealer Robin Symes’ New York penthouse at the Four Seasons’ Hotel on 57th Street.

As Bogdanos notes, “There is not a single piece of paper known to exist on or about the Bull’s Head (C-17) between its disappearance from the basement storage room of the Byblos/Jubayl Citadel on August 14, 1981, and its brief appearance in the Transcon invoices in the summer of 1996…A neon sign flashing “stolen” would have been more subtle and less insidious.”

council5feb08-352x224November 27, 1996: Symes sells the Bull’s Head for $1.2 million to Lynda and William Beierwaltes of Colorado, who display it in their dining room. While Symes assures them the object is authentic, as Bogdanos notes, “there was not a whisper-not even the faintest hint of a whisper about whether it was a lawful antiquity. Indeed, the lawfulness of the Bull’s Head (C-17) does not appear to have been part of any documented conversation between the Beierwaltes and Symes.” The Bull’s Head appears on the market “like Athena full-grown from the brow of Zeus,” Bogdanos writes, one of several flourishes in his filing.

1998: The Bull’s Head and other objects in the Beierwaltes collection are displayed in an article in House and Garden. Christos Tsirogiannis, a forensic archaeologist specializing in identifying illicit antiquities, identified many looted antiquities in the Beierwaltes collection by matching the photographs in the article to photographs of looted antiquities contained in dealer archives.

2004: The Beierwaltes ask Max Bernheimer, Head of Christi.e’s Ancient Art & Antiquities Department, to appraise their antiquities collection. He appraised 115 objects in the collection at $51.5 million but never offered it at auction. Symes was revealed as their main supplier, the source of 97 of the 99 objects that listed a prior owner. “Symes was not just their main supplier, he was to all intents and purposes their only supplier: the direct, the essential, and clearly much-used link in a supply chain that started with the tombaroli and ended with the Beierwaltes,” Bogdanos writes.

serveimage-2.jpg2005: The Beierwaltes approach Hicham Aboutaam at Phoenix Ancient Art about selling the Bull’s Head and other antiquities in their collection, which is estimated to be worth $95 million. Phoenix appraises the value of the Bull’s Head at $1.5 million.

2006: Phoenix ships the Bull’s Head and other objects from the Beierwaltes to Geneva, where it is kept in the Geneva Freeport. “According to Hicham Aboutaam, and as is standard procedure with shipments to the Freeports, and hence part of the sine qua non of their existence, the Bull’s Head went directly from the Geneva airport in a Swiss-customs-padlocked truck to the Geneva Freeport. And it left the Freeport the same way.”

2008: Phoenix requested a search for the Bull’s Head in the Art Loss Register database of stolen art. The ALR had been provided details about the stolen Bull’s Head in 2000 but mysteriously failed to enter it into their database of stolen art. ALR issued a certificate for the object — a fact that, in Bogdanos’ words, “highlight(s) the dangers of relying on an ALR search and nothing more for provenance research.”

2008: Phoenix Ancient Arts publishes images of the Bull’s Head in their Geneva catalog in advance of showing the Bull’s Head at the 24th Biennale des Antiquaires at the Grand Palais in Paris. After the Paris show, it is shipped back to Geneva.michael_steinhardt

September 2009: The Bull’s Head is shipped to New York, where hedge fund billionaire Michael Steinhardt expressed an interest after seeing it in the Phoenix catalog but claimed in an email he was too “broke” to buy it at the time.   

August 10, 201O: Steinhardt acquired the Bull’s Head for $700,000 and left it on display at Phoenix Ancient Art’s New York Gallery.

October 2010: The Bull’s Head is loaned to by Met by Steinhardt through Phoenix Ancient Art Gallery. The only reference to its provenance is a single line of six words: “Ex-American private collection, collected in 1980’s-1990’s.” When the Met presses for more detail, Phoenix says The Beierwaltes aquired it from Symes.

2014: The Beierwaltes declare bankruptcy, declaring that their “primary business for much of their adult lives has been the acquisition, management and sale of an extremely extensive and valuable body of art works…[in]…a category of art known as antiquities.”

April 2014: Carlos Picon, the Curator in Charge of the Met’s Greek and Roman Department, noticed that the Bull’s Head on loan from Steinhardt appeared to be the same bull’s head missing from the Eshmun excavations. The object was removed from display and Aboutaam was notified.

April 16, 2014: Given the revelation, the Beierwaltes re-acquired the Bull’s Head from Steinhardt for $560,000 ($700k minus Aboutaam’s 20% commission). Steinhardt receives a piece of equal value from Aboutaam.

October 2016: Met General Counsel Sharon Cott writes to Steinhardt saying the Met intended to notify Lebanese authorities about the stolen Bull’s Head. William Pearlstein, the Beierwaltes’ attorney, acknowledged that the bull’s head was likely the one found in Eshmun but asked the Met not to contact authorities.

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Dec. 5 2016: Met director Thomas Campbell notifies Lebanon that the bull’s head on loan to the museum appears to come from Sidon.

January 10, 2017: Sarkis Khoury, the Lebanese Director General of Antiquities, requests the return of the stolen Bull’s Head. He also writes to the Beierwaltes with a similar demand in March.

June 2017: Amid the District Attorney’s investigation, counsel for the Beierwaltes filed a pre-emptive lawsuit against the Lebanese Republic and the Manhattan DA’s office seeking to prevent the seizure of the bull’s head.

July 7, 2017: Acting on the request from Lebanese authorities, the DA’s office seized the Bull’s Head from the Met.

The full court filing can be found here and below:

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UPDATED > Manhattan Dealer Nancy Wiener Arrested: Criminal Complaint Alleges Sweeping Conspiracy to Sell Stolen Asian Art Through Major Auction Houses

Posted on December 21, 2016 | 6 comments

Nancy WienerAntiquities dealer Nancy Wiener was arrested Wednesday morning in Manhattan and charged with conspiring with international smuggling networks to buy, smuggle, launder and sell millions of dollars worth of stolen Asian art thru leading auction houses.

Wiener is a second generation dealer who runs one of the country’s most prestigious Asian art galleries on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. For nearly three decades, the Nancy Wiener Gallery has sold Asian art to private collectors and museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Asia Society, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the National Gallery of Australia and the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore, according to her website.

The criminal complaint filed after her arrest on Wednesday alleges Wiener was part of a sweeping conspiracy to funnel stolen artifacts into the art market. For decades, the complaint alleges, Wiener has bought stolen and looted antiquities from thieves and smugglers across Asia; sent them to restorers to erase evidence of their theft; and then laundered them through Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction houses, using straw buyers to create false ownership histories and artificially set market prices.

The 12-page complaint, signed by ICE Special Agent Brenton Easter, cites “tens of thousands of pages of emails, documents and photographs” recovered during more than 50 search warrants carried out since 2007. Easter has been the lead investigator on Operation Hidden Idol (the Subhash Kapoor case), Operation Mummy’s Curse and most of the other prominent federal investigations of the illicit antiquities trade in recent years. The prosecutor on the case, Manhattan Assistant DA Matthew Bogdanos, also has a long track record disrupting antiquities smuggling networks and is the author of the book Thieves of Baghdad.

Wiener’s attorney, Georges G. Lederman, told the New York Times his client had surrendered voluntarily. “We are examining the charges and will respond at the appropriate time,” Lederman said.

I’ve asked Sotheby’s and Christie’s for comment on the allegations. I’ll post their responses here when I receive them.

The Seated Buddhas

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The Seated Buddha in Australia

Wiener’s alleged ties to the black market first came to light in 2014 when Michaela Boland and I reported in The Australian newspaper that the dealer had provided a false ownership history when she sold a $1.08 million Seated Buddha to the National Gallery of Australia. As I detailed later, the story started in 2012 when a source tipped me off that Wiener had bought the Australian Buddha – and a matching one that she sold to the Singapore’s Asian Civilizations Museum – from an Indian antiquities trafficker.

Australian authorities conducted their own investigation and reached the same conclusion. They returned the Buddha to India earlier this year, and Wiener was forced to refund the purchase price.

Wednesday’s criminal complaint cites the two Seated Buddhas as evidence of Wiener’s criminal conduct and reveals important new details about their illicit origins.

070507_r16199_p646-320.jpgShe sold the first to Singapore’s ACM without being asked to provide its ownership history, the complaint states. After I repeatedly asked the museum to release its records (to no avail), the museum appears to have contacted Wiener for additional information.

According to the complaint, Wiener gave the ACM an evolving series of stories about its previous owner: first she said it had been in a “European collection” for decades; then she said the owner’s father had acquired the piece in India. Finally, she named the former owner and said he had purchased it while stationed in Vietnam in the 1960s. That name, Ian Donaldson, is the same false story she provided to the National Gallery of Australia.

In fact, records seized during the investigation show that Wiener acquired them both from none other than Vaman Ghiya, the notorious Indian idol thief whose criminal case was profiled in the New Yorker in 2007.

Photos of the ACM Buddha seized during the investigation show it “wet as it lay on a dirty floor in front of a black backdrop” – presumably as it appeared shortly after being looted from India’s ancient city of Mathura, the second capital of the Kushan empire. The sculpture remains on display in the Singapore museum.

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Auction House Due Diligence in the Spotlight

While they are not accused of criminal conduct, Sotheby’s and Christie’s play a prominent role in the alleged criminal conspiracy described in court records filed Wednesday. Several objects illustrate how the auction houses allowed Wiener to launder looted antiquities by accepting false ownership histories without question.

007n08727_5vsw6When Wiener consigned a Cambodian sculpture of 11th century Shiva at a 2011 auction at Sotheby’s, the auction house noted that cracks in the sculpture “had been dressed up with plaint splatters to mask repairs” – a clear sign of looting, according to the complaint.

Sotheby’s nevertheless accepted Wiener’s word that it had been out of Cambodia since 1968 and required no documentation from the dealer to support the claim. When selling Lot 29 at the March 24, 2011 sale, Sotheby’s described it as coming from a “Private English Collection, acquired 1960s.” “This exceptional figure exemplifies the highest achievements of the Baphuon School and is arguably amongst the best of its kind,” the catalog noted. It sold for $578,500.

In fact, there was no English collection, the complaint alleges. Seized emails show Wiener and a co-conspiritor (“an antiquities dealer based in London and Bangkok”) had acquired the sculpture “direct from a supplier, and not through a dealer” for half its market price.  They sent it to London to be “cleaned, put together and mounted,” all evidence, the complaint alleges, that it had been recently looted.

I’ve asked Sotheby’s attorney (and former federal prosecutor) Jane Levine for a comment and will post it when I hear back.

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The Doris Wiener Collection

Christie’s is also singled out in the complaint for the sale of nearly 400 objects – many of them allegedly looted or stolen – that had belonged to Nancy Wiener’s mother Doris, a prominent dealer in her own right who pioneered the Asian art market in the 1960s and 70s’s with sales to prominent collectors like John D. Rockefeller and Jacqueline Kennedy.

Doris continued to deal until her death in 2011, when Nancy inherited her mother’s collection and allegedly destroyed all records of the smugglers from whom they had been acquired. Wiener intially tried to consigned the collection for sale at Sotheby’s, but was turned away because she could not provide their ownership history. So Wiener turned to Christie’s, which according to the complaint only required evidence that the objects had been on the market since 2000 – a full 30 years later than the 1970 standard required by most museums and archaeologists.

Even that low bar was too high for Christie’s, which allegedly only asked Wiener for documentation on the top 25 of the sale’s 380 lots. Wiener told Christie’s 10 had come from Spink and Son, a defunct London auction house that has frequently been linked to looted antiquities. Several others had previously been sold at auction by Doris and re-acquired in “straw purchases” designed to create the impression of good provenance.

This dodgy track record for a fraction of the lots appeared to be enough for Christie’s, which auctioned all 380 lots on March 20, 2012 for a total of nearly $12.8 million dollars.

UPDATE: On December 28, Christie’s released a brief statement on the arrest of Nancy Wiener: “We are aware of these very serious allegations against the defendant and are monitoring the legal proceedings closely. We will withhold further comment until the appropriate time.” I’ve asked whether they will notify customers who purchased objects from the Doris Wiener sale and will post a response when I receive it.

Dozens of the objects sold in that sale have now been tied to smuggling networks reaching from Afghanistan and Pakistan to India, Cambodia and Thailand. We’re report details of those networks soon.

A copy of the criminal complaint can be read here:

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UPDATED > Rebuilding Koh Ker: A 3D Reconstruction Restores Context to a Looted Khmer Temple

Posted on April 10, 2014 | 3 comments

UPDATE 5/6/14: The Norton Simon Museum and Christie’s auction house have agreed to return two additional sculptures looted from the Praset Chen temple at Koh Ker, Cambodia, the New York Times reports. The Norton Simon’s Bhima has been on display since the 1970s. Christies sold a looted sculpture of Pandava twice, most recently in 2009, and bought the sculpture back from the anonymous buyer when information emerged about its looted origins. They are the fourth and fifth objects from the looted temple to be returned. Two additional sculptures from the site remain on display at the Denver Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art.  

Cambodia is quietly negotiating the return of several important 10th century sculptures that were looted from the temple complex of Koh Ker in the 1970s.

Bhima at Norton SimonOfficials from the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena recently traveled to Phnom Penh to discuss the fate of its looted Bhima (right). “We have met and had constructive conversations that are continuing,” said Luis Li, an attorney for the museum. Several other museums are also in talks with Cambodia about objects in their collections.

Koh Ker was the source of several iconic Khmer sculptures that were looted in the 1970s and sold to prominent museums and collectors. We’ve previously written about ties between the looters and the murderous Khmer Rouge regime. The most famous of these stolen masterpieces is the Bhima’s companion, Duryodhana, which Sotheby’s attempted to auction in March 2012 on behalf of a Belgian collector. After a lengthy legal fight, Sotheby’s agreed to return the sculpture to Cambodia last December. Months earlier, the Metropolitan Museum agreed to return two Kneeling Attendants looted from the same site. Additional sculptures from the site have been identified at The Cleveland Museum and the Denver Museum of Art. [Complete coverage here.]

This New York Times graphic shows their original locations in the ruined temple of Prasat Chen:

NYT graphic of Koh KerWhile the returns are being negotiated by Cambodian authorities, archaeologists with the French School of Asian Studies (EFEO) have been busy reconstructing the Koh Ker temples with the tools of virtual reality. By sewing together thousands of digital pictures of the sculptures into 3D images, they’ve re-created their original context in the now ruined temples. At EFEO’s website you can watch a remarkable video showing what the site might have looked like soon after its construction by Jayavarman IV.

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One of those behind this work – and some of the original detective work that linked them to the temple – is French archaeologist Eric Bourdonneau. He graduated from the Sorbonne with degrees in Archaeology and Oriental Studies. His 2005 Phd was entitled “Indianization and Formation of the State in South-East Asia: A reappraisal of the Historiography of the last Thirty Years.” He has been a lecturer at the EFEO since 2007.

Here’s my Q and A with Bourdonneau.

Q: How did you become involved in the case involving the Duryodhana at Sotheby’s?

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Let’s talk first about the Bhima statue at the Norton Simon Foundation.* As far as I know, the connection between the Prasat Chen and this statue (published in Bunker and Latchford 2004) seems to have been made for the first time by a member of the GACP team (a stone conservation German project) who sent a short letter to Unesco in 2007 (I was informed about this letter quite late in 2011). Personally, I saw the pedestal of the statue during the first archaeological campaign I made in Koh Ker in 2009. I made also the connection with the Norton Simon statue that I identified then as a statue of a fighting Bhima … and so concluded that the other pedestal close at hand was for a Duryodhana. But, at that time, I didn’t know of any image of this Duryodhana.

The feet of the disputed statue were left behind when it was taken from the ruins of the Prasat Chen Temple, 80 miles east of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The other feet belong to a statue now in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, experts say.

The feet of the Duryodhana and the Norton Simon’s Bhima in situ in Koh Ker.

I saw it for the first time at the end of 2010 when I presented my work to my colleagues of Guimet Museum, Pierre Baptiste and Thierry Zéphir. They showed me a photo of this statue, a photo that was in the Museum Archives but with no information about its origin, its identification or its localization. The next step was just one week before the sale in New York (March 2011). I was informed almost by accident (I was probably the last one to be informed among those concerned by the sale…). Ironically it was a collector that told me that a statue of “Koh Ker style” would be on sale. I prepared straight after a report (with photos, dimensions and iconographical “demonstration”) and sent it to Unesco office in Phnom Penh (where people were wondering about the authenticity and the provenance of this statue) and this report, I was told, was immediately transmitted to Cambodian Ministry of Culture.

I also made several presentations since 2009 and published a quite long article in 2011 where I explained why these statues should be identified with the two images of Bhima and Duryodhana at Prasat Chen and why there was little doubt that the two “Met pieces” (the Pandava brothers), among others, came from the same building.gopura_II

Q: How did you ultimately make the match between the sculpture and its feet?

The abandoned feet at Koh Ker superimposed on the Temple Warrior at the Norton Simon, from a report to UNESCO by researcher Simon Warrack.

The abandoned feet at Koh Ker superimposed on the Temple Warrior at the Norton Simon, from a report to UNESCO by researcher Simon Warrack.

It is not so difficult. The position, the style, the dimensions (e.g. dimensions of the breaks at the ankles, taken in situ) left not much doubt. It is a little more difficult to show that such a statue could come only from Prasat Chen and not from another temple. The iconographic analysis is essential for that.

Q: Have you found any other matches to objects missing from Koh Ker or other Cambodian sites? Where are these objects today? 

1970_17There are indeed a quite significant number of similar cases. The most obvious are those for which where we have photos in the archives: for example, the Ganesha from Prasat Bak or the lion (right) from the Shiva pedestal in Prasat Thom (and today in Dallas Museum). Many of them are now in private collections so it is not easy to know their current location. At least it is possible to know when and where they were sold thanks to sale catalogues published by auction houses.

Q: The Duryodhana and the Met’s Kneeling Attendants have been returned. Others may soon follow. Where will these objects be displayed in Cambodia? What significance does this have for the local people? 

I have no precise information about this. But, of course, they will be exhibited. You better have to ask to Cambodians themselves. Obviously they have many reasons to be proud of their heritage and to celebrate the return of these remarkable pieces. It is important to remind what we are talking about: a deliberate destruction that did not care about the integrity of the artworks, provided that there were people ready to purchase them.

The state of conservation of these artworks in stone was remarkably good as they were still buried when looted. It is maybe not useless to say again, as Elizabeth Becker rightly wrote in NY Times, that the fury of the Khmer Rouge was, sadly, directed much more against people than stones: in Koh Ker, the only traces of vandalism, of which there are many, ­are those left by the modern looters whose spoils fed the art market (some of them can be seen on the knees of the two “MET statues”, cut hastily and coarsely from their pedestals with dozens of blows of a chisel).

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It is hardly understandable how the purchasers of the objects could be “rescuers” working for the protection of heritage, as it has been said. As you know, they actually were those to whom the damaged statues were destined and the unique raison d’être of this vandalism. For this same reason, they are certainly not working for a better “understanding of Khmer culture.”

The so-called Sotheby’s or MET statues, like many of their kind extracted from their original surroundings, have remained impossible to understand as long as we have not been able to replace them in the temples where they were erected, that is, as long as we have not restored what was destroyed forty or thirty years ago by the looters.

What is at stake here is not only “heritage” but history.

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*We’ve edited Eric’s response to make clear he was referring here to the Bhima, not the Duryodhana.

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Blood Antiquities: After Lengthy Fight, Sotheby’s Agrees to Return Looted Khmer Statue

Posted on December 16, 2013 | 31 comments

Sotheby’s and a private collector agreed on Thursday to forfeit a 10th century statue of a warrior to Cambodia, ending a lengthy legal fight that exposed the trafficking of looted Khmer antiquities to museums and collectors around the world.

The agreement states that Sotheby’s will transfer the statue of Duryodhana to Cambodia within 90 days in exchange for the U.S. government dropping a lawsuit brought on behalf of the Cambodian government. The suit claimed the auction house and Belgian collector Decia Ruspoli di Poggio Suasa had attempted to sell the statue in 2011 despite their knowledge that it had been looted from a Cambodian temple. 

There was never any doubt about whether the statue had been looted, or where it had been found. As we wrote in April 2012, internal emails cited in the case revealed that Sotheby’s officials were warned by an expert that the statue had been stolen from the Khmer temple of Prasat Chen, in Koh Ker, and that its public sale might lead to a legal claim.

“The Cambodians in Pnom Penh now have clear evidence that it was definitely stolen from Prasat Chen at Koh Ker, as the feet are still in situ…The two Dvarapalas must have stood close together and their feet remain, so it’s pretty clear where they came from,” wrote Emma Bunker, a leading expert on Khmer art and close associate of Douglas Latchford, the Bangkok dealer who allegedly bought it from looters and exported it from Thailand. “It is also possible that the Cambodians might block the sale and ask for the piece back,” she added. “I’m sorry as I had some exciting things to say about it, but I don’t think Sotheby wants this kind of potential problem.”

Sotheby’s officials decided that while it might receive bad press from “academics and ‘temple huggers,’” the potential profits from the sale made it “worth the risk,” internal emails showed.

Thursday’s agreement to forfeit the statue shows that calculation was decidedly wrong. Sotheby’s could have returned the statue to the collector and let her decide its fate, as auction houses have often done when claims arise. It also could have accepted a $1 million offer from a private collector who sought to buy the statue on Cambodia’s behalf. Instead Sotheby’s opted to fight it out in court – at considerable cost to both its bank account and its reputation.

One of the lingering questions from the case is, why? Some have pointed to the personalities involved in the case, which pit the US Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York against Jane Levine, one of the former stars of its cultural property crimes unit who now works as Sotheby’s Director of Worldwide Compliance. In a series of bare-knuckled filings, the government accused Levine of providing “false and misleading information to the Government.” Levine pushed back, accusing investigators of misleading the auction house about having probable cause for the statue’s seizure.

Another theory, floated this weekend at a UN-sponsored conference in Courmayeur by a prominent retired art crimes investigator, is that Sotheby’s may have taken on partial ownership of the statue. Why else would it spend what were likely hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees defending someone else’s problematic statue?

Regardless of the motive, the outcome of the case has cast a spotlight on a major trafficking network of looted Khmer antiquities. At the Courmayeur conference, researchers Tess Davis and Simon MacKenzie reported on their field work this summer mapping that very trafficking network, which was responsible for plunder of 10th and 11th century Khmer temples across northern Cambodia. Among the preliminary findings of the research was that Ta Mok, the senior Khmer Rouge leader known as The Butcher and Brother Number 5, may well have played a personal role in the removal of ancient statues from Koh Ker. This lends support to the notion that looted Khmer objects at museums around the world should be considered “blood antiquities.”

Attention now shifts to other Khmer statues likely acquired through the same smuggling network. Over the past year we and others have traced objects from Koh Ker and other sites that passed through the hands of Douglas Latchford before ending up in museums across the United States and Europe. The case for the return of those objects has now grown much stronger.

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In May, the Metropolitan Museum of Art agreed to return its two Khmer Kneeling Attendants, which it acquired from Latchford and other donors. The decision was reached after museum officials traveled to Cambodia and were presented with “dispositive” evidence of the statues’ illicit origins. The Met continues to possess several other objects tied to Latchford that have not been returned.

Officials from the Norton Simon will soon travel to Cambodia to discuss the museum’s statue of Bima, whose feet remain in the Koh Ker temple next to those of its companion, the Durydhana that Sotheby’s has just agreed to return. The Bima was purchased in 1976 from New York dealer William H. Wolff. The museum may well consider the words of its founder. When asked about repatriation of looted antiquities, Norton Simon once told the New York Times: “If it did some good, I would return it. If there were reason and probability that smuggling could be stopped, I would do it. It would do a lot to establish a constructive relationship between nations….Looting is a terribly destructive process. In cutting works out of temples, thieves mutilate them.”

Cambodia has indicated it is preparing to makes similar claims against Khmer statues tied to Latchford at the Kimbell Museum, the Cleveland Museum and the Denver Art Museum. Many more exist in private collections.

The owners of these blood antiquities would be wise to learn from Sotheby’s experience and not wait for a demand from the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Here’s the stipulation Sotheby’s signed on December 12th agreeing to the statue’s return.

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Gloves Come Off: Amid Accusations of Deceit, Sotheby’s Lawsuit Reveals How U.S. Built Its Case

Posted on September 17, 2013 | 3 comments

Duryodhanna

Last week the tables were turned on the U.S. government as documents filed in court by Sotheby’s revealed the private deliberations of American investigators, whose zeal for the return of an allegedly looted 10th century Khmer statue often appears to exceed that of Cambodian officials.

In December, we wrote that filings in the court battle between the U.S. government and Sotheby’s over the statue had revealed the inner workings of the top international auction house. Last November we described how the case had revealed the underbelly of the illicit antiquities trade.

Now it’s the U.S. government’s turn. The exhibits, obtained through discovery in late August and attached to a Sept. 9th Sotheby’s motion for judgment, provide a rare window into the investigation of a major international cultural property case whose outcome will likely hold sway for years. The emails detail how Interpol officials worked close with Brent Easter, an investigator of cultural property crimes at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to build a legal rationale for the statue’s seizure on behalf of Cambodia. The process eventually involved officials at the U.S. Department of State, the American Embassy in Phnom Penh and the Cambodian government. At one point, Easter asked Cambodian officials to stop negotiating with Sotheby’s for the statue’s voluntary return so that the U.S. government could purse its legal case against the auction house.

Read the correspondence:

Sotheby’s cites the records in asking the judge for a ruling on the case without the need for further discovery. The auction house says Easter claimed to have probable cause for seizure of the statue when in fact he was still scrambling to cobble together a legal theory to support Cambodia’s claim. The auction house also cites an expert on French law in arguing that the government’s legal theory — which relies in part on colonial-era decrees for Cambodia’s ownership claim — is bogus.

Read Sotheby’s motion:

The government rebuts Sotheby’s motion in a Sept. 11th letter to the judge, arguing, among other things, that “Sotheby’s provided false and misleading information to the Government.” To support its claim, the government cites a March 22, 2011 email between ICE’s Easter and Jane Levine, a former assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York specialized in cultural property crimes who now works as Sotheby’s Director of Worldwide Compliance. Easter asked Levine whether Sotheby’s had “solid provenance information” for the statue. Levine said they did, noting Sotheby’s had “identified two individuals who presently have no financial interest in the property and who personally saw the piece in London in the late 1960s.”

SothebyRather than take Levine at her word, Easter pursued the original documentation for the statue, which had been passed from the London auction house Spink and Sons to Christies. Remarkably, the Spink records indicate the statue was stolen from the Cambodian temple of Prasat Chen in 1972, according to the government letter. This is the first hint of documentary evidence to support the government’s claim of the statue’s theft. What else might be contained in the archives of Spink, which was dealer Douglas Latchford‘s  primary pass through for allegedly looted Khmer antiquities? Could this archive also be the source of the “dispositive evidence” of looting cited by the Met in its recent return of two looted Khmer attendants to Cambodia?

Read the government’s letter:

As it turns out, the two individuals Levine cited were Latchford, who the government alleges “conspired with the looting network to steal it from Prasat Chen,” and his colleague Emma Bunker, who later told Sotheby’s the statue was “definitely stolen.” Not exactly disinterested parties, and the government accuses Levine of deception: “The information provided by Levine was simply false.”

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Oct 14th. 

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Optical Due Diligence: Art Loss Register Claims To Vet Ancient Art. Does it?

Posted on August 1, 2013 | 6 comments

UPDATE 8/9/14: The Sunday Times has published another devastating report on the Art Loss Register’s business practices. ALR Founder Julian Radcliffe admits paying thieves to recover stolen art in a dozen cases and is described as a “fence” by senior European law enforcement officials.

UPDATE: A 9/20/13 story in The New York Times reveals other questionable dealings of ALR and the departure of General Counsel Chris Marinello.

UPDATE 9/13: We’re told there have been several recent departures of senior staff from the Art Loss Register. They include Alice-Farren Bradley, a recovery specialist; MaryKate Cleary, who researched Nazi looting claims until she left for MOMA; and Ariane Moser, who managed European clients. That leaves Radcliffe, general counsel Chris Marinello, antiquities specialist William Webber and a handful of others.

Thirty years ago, a Getty antiquities curator coined the phrase “optical due diligence” — creating the appearance of caution while continuing to buying suspect antiquities.

Today, that continues to be the favored approach for much of the art world. Museums, auction houses, private collectors and dealers all claim to vet ancient art to make certain it was not illegally excavated. Yet we keep learning that the vetting process failed to prevent the acquisition of recently looted art.

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A key facilitator of this fiction is the Art Loss Register, a for-profit registry based in London. ALR charges nearly $100 for a search of its files, touted as “the world’s largest database of stolen art.” In return, a client receives a certificate stating “at the date that the search was made the item had not been registered as stolen.” Sadly, that caveat-laden certificate has become the coin of the realm for due diligence in the art world.

As we revealed recently, the certificate offered no protection to the National Gallery of Australia, which purchased a stolen bronze Shiva after receiving an ALR search certificate from antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor:

The NGA was merely the latest to learn that, when it comes to antiquities at least, ALR certificates are not worth the paper they’re printed on. David Gill recently noted that the ALR claims to protect buyers, but appears to have provided certificates for the Christies sale of antiquities that have since been tied to known loot dealers Giacamo Medici, Robin Symes and Gianfranco Becchina.

Tom Flynn recently wrote that the ALR “is not a force for good,” adding that “a virtual market monopoly in Due Diligence provision is not good for the art market.” He cited this example of ALR’s shady dealings outside the area of antiquities:  

In 2008, it was revealed that the company had been approached by a Kent art dealer, Michael Marks, who was seeking to conduct Due Diligence on a painting by the Indian Modernist artist Francis Newton Souza, which Mr Marks was hoping to buy. Marks was told by ALR chairman Julian Radcliffe that the painting was not on the ALR’s database of stolen art. It was.

In the court judgment issued by Justice Tugenhadt, it emerged that: “After Mr Marks had paid the search fee, he spoke to Mr Radcliffe. It is common ground that Mr Radcliffe told Mr Marks that if Mr Marks were to buy the Paintings, he, Mr Radcliffe, had a client who was interested in buying them from Mr Marks. Mr Marks asked Mr Radcliffe whether there was a problem with good title, and Mr Radcliffe said that there was not. It is common ground, and Mr Radcliffe accepts, that he misled Mr Marks.”

Given this history, we were curious why the ALR continues to issue certificates for ancient art — and why the art world continues to accept them as evidence of anything. In June, Jason contacted ALR founder Julian Radcliffe for his views on the issue. Here are excerpts from our conversation:

Jason Felch: Why does ALR provide search certificates for ancient art when there is obviously no documented theft when most antiquities are looted?

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Julian Radcliffe: We are aware of the fact that our certifications are waved in the air saying, ‘Look what a good boy we are.’ We don’t like that. Ten years ago, the police and Carabinieri came to us and said, ‘Your certifications are being abused by bad guys who are waving them around as proof of clear title.’ We all know illegal excavations are not in the database. So 10 years ago we said, we’ll stop giving any certifications for antiquities, a difficult area. Then, when we had a further meeting [with law enforcement], they said the certifications are quite useful to police, as they give an audit trail. And if dealers don’t ask you [for one], it’s of great interest because that’s evidence they’re trying to suppress the fact. So we continued to issue them, at the request of law enforcement. 

JF: Who, specifically, asked you to continue providing certificates for antiquities?

JR: I won’t say. And the Carabinieri would deny it if asked, of course.

JF: In 2007, Subhash Kapoor provided no provenance for the Shiva when asking ALR to search its database. Does ALR require provenance today?

JR: We are now insisting they give us some provenance….Where appropriate we try to check the provenance they give us through the British Museum and have made important discoveries. We are not going to be able to detect everything, particularly forged provenance.

JF: When did you start requiring provenance? And what amount of provenance do you require to run a search?

JR: In the last few months. We had a meeting with an auction house this morning, saying that they must give us more provenance…We require the generic information on the current holder and the date that the holder got it. We need a starting point if the certification is challenged later. You told us this was held by a dealer in Paris. If challenged, we would then ask, What’s the name of the dealer? So we can then make the dealer, through a court order, reveal who the parties were. The trouble is very often some of these items genuinely don’t have a full provenance. There are a lot of items out in the market that might have been exported legally, but nobody knows.

JF: So your “provenance” policy doesn’t even require the name of a previous owner until a piece is challenged. Why not require provenance going back to the 1970 UNESCO accord?

JR: I’d love to do that but they [the dealers] would make it up. What I would like to do is to get the source countries and archaeological community to recognize the fact that the antiquities trade would not go away. It continues. One of the problems is that minimalist architectural design favors antiquities and there’s a great demand from interior decorators. The market isn’t going to collapse. So we’ve got to regulate and police it. Reintroduce partage to make the legitimate market and the illicit market very clear. At least we’ve got a clear policy.

JF: Is ALR profitable?

JR: We haven’t made a profit for 10 years. I’ve invested 1 million pounds. I’ve made enough money in other companies that I don’t’ have to worry about it not making additional money. It’s been very hard to get clients to pay. Over half of our income comes from searching people, under half from recovery fees for insurance. Some 40 percent of our income is from recovery. In antiquities we get no recovery fees. The victims can’t pay. It’s a really bad area for us. The rest is from search fees. Half of that comes from auction houses and the other from dealers, museums, collectors, etc. That corresponds to roughly to 50%  of the art market.

JF: Who are your biggest clients?

JR: Our clients include all the major auction houses. A few auction houses won’t search, but Bonhams, Christies and Sotheby’s all use us. It’s no secret that a number of them would like more help from us in this antiquities market. The antiquity dealers have been more inclined to search than dealers in other items.

JF: The NGA’s Shiva is unusual for an antiquity because it had been documented before it was stolen. A year or so after Kapoor received an ALR certificate for the stolen Shiva, Indian authorities posted online images of it with details of the theft. Yet ALR did not make the connection. Why not? Does ALR search past certificates to see if new information has surfaced?

JR: We go around those sites and take items…We employ 25 people in India doing back office searching. A number have worked in the Indian cultural heritage department. But the big issue is with IT:  We have a database of 300,00 – 400,000 stolen items to search against the 2.5 million searches we’ve done in the past. If we search against all those previous searches, it slows down the search too much. And we couldn’t digitize the old searches, not back to 1991.

JF: How many certificates did ALR provide to Subhash Kapoor over the years?

JR: We’re looking into it.

Later via email Radcliffe added, “We are passing on your request for the number of certificates to the law enforcement to whom we gave all the information and will revert when we hear from them.”

No word since.

UPDATE: David Gill, writing with Christos Tsirogiannis in the 2011 Journal of Art Crime, notes that the major auction houses have routinely relied on the Art Loss Register to defend the sale of objects linked to notorious antiquities traffickers including Giacomo Medici, whose archives showing thousands of recently looted antiquities is apparently not included in ALR’s database.

 

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UPDATED: The Met Returns Two Khmer Statues to Cambodia, Citing Clear Evidence Of Looting

Posted on May 3, 2013 | 9 comments

DP212330-1UPDATE: The New York Times reported May 15 that Cambodia is also planning to ask for the return of a statue of Hanuman at the Cleveland Museum of Art. This is in addition to the Norton Simon Bhima and the Denver Rama we’ve written about previously, which Cambodian officials also want returned. All are said to have been taken from the same temple complex at Koh Ker. Neither Cleveland nor Denver would disclose the origins or collecting histories of the contested statues.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has agreed to return two ancient Khmer statues to Cambodia after reviewing clear evidence that they were looted. Here’s Jason’s story in Friday’s LA Times:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has agreed to return two ancient statues to Cambodia after receiving convincing evidence they had been looted and smuggled out of the country illegally.

The 10th century Khmer statues, known as the Kneeling Attendants, have flanked the entrance to the Met’s South East Asian galleries for years and are among the museum’s most prized objects from the region.

They were acquired in fragments between 1987 and 1992 as donations primarily from Douglas Latchford, a British collector based in Bangkok who is at the center of a federal investigation of antiquities looted from the ancient temple complex of Koh Ker.

Cambodian officials announced last June that they would seek the return of the statues. At the time, Met officials said they had no information to indicate the statues were stolen.

On Friday, the Met would not release details on what information led it to decide to return the statues, but noted recent press reports and information provided by UNESCO officials, who have been investigating looting in Cambodia.

“All I can say is that sufficient evidence came to light,” said museum spokesman Harold Holzer. “It was dispositive and more than satisfied the director.”

The returns suggest Cambodia has found substantial evidence to support its claim that several American museums possess looted antiquities that were illegally exported by Bangkok-based dealer Douglas Latchford. Latchford has denied the claim.

We’ve previously identified several other museums that acquired Khmer antiquities from Latchford: The Norton Simon Museum, the Kimbell Museum, the Denver Art Museum and the Berlin Museums. The Met continues to possess several other antiquities tied to Latchford that will not be returned in the deal announced Friday.

The Met’s returns will also have an impact on the on-going lawsuit in which the US government is seeking the return of a Khmer warrior statue at Sotheby’s. See here for our complete coverage of the case , including court documents that detail the government’s evidence.

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UPDATED: Latchford’s Footprints in Berlin: A Khmer Ganesh and other loans to the Asian Art Museum

Posted on April 30, 2013 | 4 comments

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Recently, someone suggested we look into the ties between Douglas Latchford and the Berlin Asian Art Museum, where he is said to have enjoyed a “special arrangement” for several years.

latchford.jpbAs you’ll recall, Latchford is the Bangkok-based British collector who was the source of the looted 10th Century Khmer statues now held by Sotheby’s and the Norton Simon museum. The Sotheby’s statue is the subject of a federal seizure lawsuit brought by the U.S. government on behalf of Cambodia, which claims the statue was illegally removed from the country in the 1970s. The government alleges that Latchford, identified in court records as “the Collector,” knew the statue had been looted from Koh Ker and conspired with Spink and Son auction house to fraudulently obtain export licenses for the statue in 1975. Latchford has denied the allegations.

We’ve previously tracked Khmer art tied to Latchford to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kimbell Art Museum, the Norton Simon Museum and the Denver Art Museum, where his partner Emmy Bunker is a research consultant. In March, a federal judge in New York found sufficient evidence for the US government to proceed with its forfeiture case against the Sotheby’s statue.

Latchford’s ties to the Berlin museum have not previously been reported, and the museum initially declined to answer questions about the loans. Only when we inquired about a specific piece — a statue of Ganesh from Koh Ker — did the museum provide a partial response. “The Museum of Indian Art (today part of the Asian Art Museum) in Berlin borrowed four objects from Mr. Latchford for certain projects between 2000 and 2006,” said spokeswoman Birgit Jöbstl. “It has not purchased any objects from Mr. Latchford. The loans were taken for curatorial reasons, to complete the narrative of the museum.”

One of those four objects was the sandstone Ganesh from Koh Ker.

UPDATE 5/16: The Berlin Museum has yet to respond to our request of April 8 for information about the other three objects loaned by Latchford. German TV producer Wolfgang Luck has had…ehem…better luck. Here is the response he received from the museum almost immediately (translated from German):

Two objects (a pre-Khmer Buddha, No. 259 in the catalog „Magische Götterwelten (Magic Worlds of Gods) and a female Khmer-figurine, No. 260 in the catalog „Magische Götterwelten”) had been lent on occasion of the museum’s opening in the year 2000. The objects were important pieces of the museum’s permanent exhibition. The contract on the lending of the objects expired in December 2004. The Buddha was given back. As a “replacement” Mr. Latchford lent the above mentioned Ganesha-figurine to the museum. The contract on the lending of the female Khmer-figurine was prolonged until the end of 2005, thereafter it was given back as well. The fourth object, a Vishnu, arrived at the museum at the beginning of 2006 and was on display there until its return to Mr. Latchford in February 2007.”

Museum spokeswoman Birgit Jöbstl took issue with our characterization of the loans as evidence of a special relationship, telling Luck, “Within the described contracts on lending there were no extraordinary agreements.” However, she goes on to acknowledge the museum did not follow its own due diligence standards when accepting the statues, which have no documented ownership history:

With regard to the examination of the objects’ provenance we must unfortunately assume that no other documents were obtained from Mr. Latchford than his personal confirmation and the information published in Bunker/Latchford: Adoration and Glory: The Golden Age of Khmer Art (2004). According to the UNESCO Convention of 1970 the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation does not acquire objects, the lawful provenance or importation of which is doubtful. For several years now the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has been maintaining this attitude also towards items of loan. Unfortunately this standard was not yet maintained with the above mentioned objects lent to the museum by Mr. Latchford.

We also note that the authors of the above-cited publication, “Magische Götterwelten,” were several Berlin Museum officials, including Marianne Yaldiz. Look for Wolfgang Luck’s 1 hour documentary on the case sometime next year on the German-French station ARTE.

Now, back to the Koh Ker Ganesh…

Screen Shot 2013-04-29 at 10.50.34 PMThe statue representing the elephantine Hindu deity, worshiped even today as the Remover of Obstacles and Lord of Beginnings, arrived at the Berlin museum in December 2004 and was given prominent display at the museum’s entrance. It was described as being on loan from “an American private collection,” but in fact it had come from Latchford. Soon after it arrived, the piece was published in the museum’s journal Indo-Asiatische Zeitschrift GIAK. Its only previous publication had been in Latchford and Bunker’s 2004 catalog “Adoration and Glory: The Golden Age of Khmer Art” (pp. 168-70.)

The GIAK Indo-Asiatische Zeitschrift article pointed to the striking similarities between the statue and a Ganesh photographed during the 1939 Parmentier expedition to Koh Ker. It had since disappeared, presumably looted. “This work represents an exact counterpart of the present image both in terms of shape and size,” the article noted. “Even in minute details, both figures seem to be quite similar. However, they wear different types of necklaces, and carved nipples are absent on the Berlin Ganesha…Both the figures are probably products of the same workshop, and both of them may have served as cult images.”

Some scholars had already pointed out the similarities with some suspicion. Betrand Porte suggested in an article in Arts Asiatiques (59, 2004) that the Berlin Ganesh may be the same one shown in the Parmentier photos, with a few details carefully altered to disguise its looted origins. Jean Baptiste and Thierry Zéphir suggested in the same publication that the question could be cleared up with a close scientific analysis. But when a museum consultant suggested testing the statue, the museum’s director Marianne Yaldiz reportedly grew upset. Latchford and Bunker provided a report of a visual examination conducted by Pieter Meyers — the same Los Angeles expert used when doubts arose in Sotheby’s investigation — that concluded the Berlin statue had not been altered. Soon after, the consultant left the museum.

The consultant would not comment and Yaldiz, who retired in 2006, could not be reached. The scientific analysis was never conducted. The Ganesh was removed from display in December 2006, and its whereabouts are currently not known.

In a statement, the museum spokeswoman said, “For all loans, the museum observed due diligence according to the Berlin museums’ general practice, and there was at that time no reason to question the integrity of the lender…The Asian Art Museum, like all other collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, observes due diligence before borrowing or buying objects. It thereby works according to the standards set by the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property of 1970.”

Given that commitment to UNESCO principals, we have asked the Berlin museum to provide details about its due diligence for the Latchford loans. What documented ownership history was provided with the loans? What assured the museum that the objects were not the product of modern looting? Where are they today? Why was the Ganesh described as coming from an American collection, when it fact it came from Latchford? And what purpose did the “special arrangement” with Latchford serve, aside from boosting the value of the objects for later sale?

The museum has so far declined to answer those questions. We’ll post a response when we receive it.

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BREAKING: Judge rules in favor of Cambodia, Denies Sotheby’s Motion to Dismiss Claim to Khmer Statue

Posted on March 29, 2013 | 3 comments

A New York judge has denied Sotheby’s motion to dismiss Cambodia’s claim — brought on its behalf by the US government — that a 10th century Khmer statue was looted and should be returned.

Koh Ker wrestler

District court judge George B. Daniels ruled on Thursday that the government has “sufficiently pled facts regarding Sotheby’s knowledge that the Statue was stolen at the time of import into the United States.” He also found the government had presented sufficient evidence that Douglas Latchford, the British collector who initially sold the statue, “knew the statue had been looted from Koh Ker.”

The ruling, which dismissed several of Sotheby’s key arguments, is not a final ruling but allows the case to proceed. You can find our complete coverage of the case, including past legal filings, here.

Here is Daniels’ 18-page ruling:

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Red Flags in Paris: Half of Sotheby’s Barbier-Mueller Pre-Colombian Sale Lacks Provenance

Posted on March 19, 2013 | 9 comments

This week we have a guest post from M. Frechette, an astute college senior majoring in art history with an interest in international cultural property law and art markets. During her travels in Latin America, Frechette grew frustrated with the lack of native archeological material in national museums compared to the artifacts circulating on the North American and European markets. Lately, she’s been helping us dig into this week’s auction of a major private collection of Pre-Colombian antiquities in Paris. Here’s what she found:

Museums and private collectors across the globe are buzzing with excitement over the March 22nd auction at Sotheby’s Paris of the Barbier-Mueller Collection of Pre-Columbian Art.  But they should be concerned that almost half (119 out of 246) of the artifacts from present-day Latin America have no stated provenance before 1970.

Peru has announced it is seeking the return of 67 objects in the collection that it claims were illegally exported from the country, which has required government permission for the export of archaeological material since 1822. Judging from our analysis of the collection, it is likely the first of several claims.

UPDATE: The government of Guatemala has made a claim for 13 objects in the collection. “You cannot allow private collectors to unlawfully enrich themselves at the expense of the Americas’ pre-Hispanic cultural heritage,” the culture ministry said in a statement. 

UPDATE 3/21: Mexico has called on Sotheby’s to halt the auction, citing 51 objects in the collection as Mexico’s property. The government has also said that 79 of the 130 objects of Mexican origin being offered for sale are “handicrafts,” i.e. modern fakes. Sotheby’s insists it will go forward with the auction, saying it “thoroughly researched the provenance of this collection and we are confident in offering these works for auction.” The auction house acknowledged it has “had dialogue with several nations and given careful consideration to their concerns about this sale, and we continue to welcome discussion regarding any new information on specific issues.”

UPDATE 3/21: Costa Rica has also claimed objects in the auction, the New York Times reports. 

UPDATE 3/22: Nord Wennerstrom calls the results of Day 1 sales “a train wreck” for Sotheby’s: 87 of the 172 lots failed to sell amid claims from Latin American countries and indications that several lots are modern fakes. Others suggest the asking prices were overly optimistic. 

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The Barbier-Mueller Collection was built over a century, but major additions to it were made after 1992. According to the official Sotheby’s publicity, the works were gathered primarily for aesthetic purposes, though Sotheby’s emphasizes, “many possess historic provenance.” In an interview earlier this month, Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller described being inspired to add to the collection of his father-in-law, Josef Mueller, while mounting an exhibition to commemorate the Columbus quincentenary in 1992. “I became really caught up in the project, and started visiting specialist dealers to complete the collection,” Barbier-Mueller recalled. “Provenance was always a concern.”

Looking at some samples from the collection, one can see why.

Maya polychrome vessels: Lts 41,121, 122, 214-219, 222 & 223. Estimate: between 18,000 and 40,000 Euros each 

641PF1340_6JSRW_1_GREY.jpg.thumb.385.385Of the 11 painted Maya vessels from Guatemala and Mexico, nine have no listed provenance before 1986.

The market for Maya polychrome vessels developed around 1970 as looting of ancient Maya burial sites became more sophisticated and widespread. The growth of trafficking networks in Mexico and Central America prompted Guatemala’s 1966 Decree No. 425 – Law on the Protection and Conservation of Monuments and Mexico’s 1972 Federal Law on Archaeological, Artistic and Historic Monuments and Zones, which clarified claims of national ownership on all archeological material.

261PF1340_6JSRP_2_GREY.jpg.thumb.385.385Six of the Mayan vessels passed through Merrin Gallery between 1986 and 1990. The Merrin Gallery was also the source of a bronze statue of Zeus that was returned to Italy in 2010. The stated provenance claimed Edward H. Merrin had purchased it from a Swiss collection in the 1960s; in fact, it had been stolen from the Museo Nazionale Romano in 1980. The Merrin Gallery also appears frequently in the business records of Sicilian antiquities dealer Gianfranco Becchina, who has been charged with trafficking in looted Classical antiquities. In dealing with Pre-Colombian material, his first passion, Merrin “certainly handled masterpieces that should never have been removed from their original sites,” Ian Graham, a Mayan expert and director at the Harvard Peabody Museum, told the New York Times in 1989, the same year the Mayan vessels began passing through the gallery. Merrin’s response: ”Look, I have four children, I have a position in society, I am active in a number of charities – I’m simply not interested in anything illegal.” In 2005, Ed and Samuel Merrin were both charged with conducting a 10-year scheme to defraud their customers who collected Pre-Colombian art.

Ulúa Marble Vase: Lot 34. Estimate: 40,000 – 50,000 Euros

103PF1340_6JSRZ_1_White.jpg.thumb.385.385Scholarship has explicitly linked the market demand for Ulúa marble vases, such as Lot 34 for sale in the upcoming auction, to the growth of illegal looting networks and pillaging in Travasiá, Honduras. Anthropologists Christina Luke and John Henderson have investigated the direct and detrimental affects museum and private purchases have on this ancient Mayan center, and the connection is unmistakably apparent: “Looting at Travesía for marble vases increased dramatically during the period when more and more marble vases appeared in galleries and when they were stolen from well-known collections.”  (See Luke, Christina and John Henderson The Plunder of the Ulúa Valley, Honduras, and a Market Analysis for Its Antiquities)

Despite the 1997 Honduran Decree 220-97 that retroactively claimed “the state was the official owner of all cultural patrimony” (Luke and Henderson, 149) the market demand continues to fuel the destruction of a rich cultural site — and production of modern forgeries. Lot 34, with no listed provenance before 2004 and estimated to sell for between 40,000 and 50,000 Euros, may well be a contemporary example of how rising prices are promoting both the devastation and falsification of ancient Mayan cultural knowledge.

Red Lists Raise Red Flags

urlLatin America has not been in the spotlight for cultural heritage claims to the same degree as Italy or Greece in recent years, but the illicit trade of pre-Columbian objects is a serious and continuing problem for countries such as Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil and Peru. Along with UNESCO’s international effort to increase protection of cultural heritage, Latin American countries passed a flurry of national legislation in the 1970s to establish legal ownership of cultural property.

More recently, the International Council of Museums has published several Red Lists of Endangered Cultural Objects. Compiled by an international group of cultural heritage professionals to combat the illicit trade and rampant looting of national artifacts, “all the categories of objects in the Red List are protected by legislation and banned from export, and may under no circumstances be imported or put on sale.”  ICOM could not be more explicit: “The Red List is an appeal to museums, auction houses, art dealers and collectors not to acquire these objects.”

A glance though the Barbier-Mueller catalogue shows quite a bit of overlap with the Red Lists — from Nayarit and Olmec figures to Gran Nicoya stone grindstones, many of the categories of objects on sale in Paris on March 22nd are internationally recognized as the product of rampant looting.

As with all ancient burial objects, the polychrome vessels and Ulúa marble vases are “essential to the understanding of the Maya belief system, mythology, and ideology.” (ICOM Red List: Latin America, p.8)  Yet as these invaluable pieces are illegally looted they become untraceable to their original locations and all context is lost.  Without context, our understanding of one of the most advanced cultures of ancient Mesoamerica is irreparably crippled.

Frechette graduates in May and will soon be looking for gainful employment. Send any leads to us at ChasingAphrodite@gmail.com and we’ll pass them along.

UPDATE: See Donna Yates’ excellent analysis of the Barbier-Mueller collection here and here.

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