Art Law Blog : New York Art Law Lawyer & Attorney : Fox Rothschild Law Firm : Theft, Intellectual Property, Institutional Negotiation : Manhattan, New York City

Victoria Reed, curator of provenance at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, researches potential acquisitions with questionable histories.  In her position, the Museum of Fine Arts asks Ms. Reed to attend to provenance issues by investigating liens on title before the Museum acquires works. 

Recently, her research, which traced a 17^th century gold medallion to a museum in Gotha, Germany, looted during the Nazi era, resulted in the Museum electing to decline to purchase the work. A few months later, the Art Loss Register announced that the dealer who had offered the medallion was returning it to the museum in Germany. 

More about Ms. Reed's interesting work can be found here.

[This article was drafted with the assistance of Nicole Dornbusch].

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According to this article, the owner of a stolen Picasso decided that displaying the work adds more economic value to his gallery than actually selling it. 

The Picasso sketch, “Tete de Femme” (1965) was stolen last summer from the gallery. Though the artwork’s value has risen $250,000, or to three times its value, from the time that Weinstein acquired it just six months ago, Weinstein claims that the presence of the recently returned work brings in so much additional foot traffic from people interested in seeing the work that it is worth more as a marketing tool than as merchandise.

[This article was drafted with the assistance of Nicole Dornbusch}.

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Several dealers and a collector were indicted in July for “conspiring to smuggle Egyptian antiquities into the United States and conspiring to launder money in furtherance of smuggling,” according to a press release  from the United States Attorney’s Office.  Most of the works have been recovered by law enforcement.  This case reinforces that the United States will seek to prosecute smugglers of cultural property, and each defendant will face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison if convicted.

[Nicole Dornbusch assisted in drafting this entry].

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Two paintings stolen from the Bolivian National Monument, Templo San Andres de Machaca in La Paz in 1997 have been recovered.  According to this article, in May 2011, a U.S. art dealer contacted the Art Loss Register, claiming that he had received the works on consignment.  The works were identified as “Saint Augustin,” and '/St. Rose of Viterbo" and were returned on September 12, 2011.  Four works remained un-recovered as detailed in the article.

[Nicole Dornbusch assisted in drafting this entry].

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According to this article, Michael Bakwin, who was the victim of the largest residential art theft in Massachusetts history, won $3 million in a civil judgment against the man who held the stolen works of art for two decades.

Bakwin has retrieved several of the paintings over the years, but it was not until last year that the final two of seven were returned. Robert M. Madirosian, convicted for the theft, was already sentenced to seven years in prison.

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Naguib Sawiris, billionaire and founder of the Free Egyptian party, hopes to become the newly liberated country's president and build a public museum to display his personal art collection. According to this article, Sawiris offered a $175,000 reward for the return of Van Gogh’s Poppies, which was stolen from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum in August 2010.

(This entry was drafted with the assistance of Nicole Dornbusch.)

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Typically it is the urban metropolitan museums that suffer art theft.

However, the Art Loss Register has issued a theft alert: two 15 x 10 x 15 inch Louhan sculptures were stolen from an "undisclosed location" within the affluent suburb of Westport, CT.  The estimated value of each of the works is $800,000.  

For more information about the theft read this article.  Note that the sculptures were apparently taken from a "private collection."

Anyone with information regarding these items should contact:

Lieutenant Vincent Penna

Detective Division

Westport Police Department

Tel: +1-203-341-6006

        Email: vpenna@westportct.gov         

or

Christopher A. Marinello 

Executive Director & General Counsel

The Art Loss Register

Tel: +44 (0) 207 841 5780 

Email: chris.marinello@artloss.com 

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According to this article, international art dealer Michael Zabrin has been selling forged works by artists like Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro. Zabrin was a “member of a ring that earned millions of dollars selling phony art online through tony galleries in Paris, Tokyo, Barcelona, and Chicago” for more than two decades. 

The gallerist was sentenced to nine years in prison. In 1992, he pleaded guilty to selling more than $800,000 in counterfeit art, for which he served a prison sentence, so this will be his second time in jail for similar charges. 

Two of his associates, James Kennedy and Leon Amiel Jr. have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentences in the next month. John Donnelly, a postal inspector in Chicago commented “people will be dealing with the ones that are out there for many years to come.” 

This case provides another reason to properly investigate provenance when purchasing a work of art, as often discussed in this blog.

(This entry was created with the assistance of Nicole Dornbusch.)

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The artist Sharyl Davis is now attempting to prove rightful title of a Pissaro print she purchased 25 years ago from a San Antonio art gallery. 

According to this article, she purchased the print, “Le Marche,” for $8,500 and then displayed it in her homes over the years until she recently attempted to sell it at Sotheby’s for $60,000-80,000. 

The Art Loss Register saw the work in an auction catalogue and contacted the auction house to make it aware that this work was previously stolen from the Musee Faure in Aix-les-Baines. The United States government then seized the work as contraband. 

A New York Federal Appeals court is weighing the case between prosecutors from the Southern District of New York and Ms. Davis. Interestingly, Sotheby’s sold a more valuable Renoir painting, “Buste de Femme” in 1987 that, according to defense, was stolen from the same museum on the same day.

(This entry was created with the assistance of Nicole Dornbusch.)

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According to the LA Times,  authorities recovered a collection of art pieces that included works by Picasso, Botero and Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida and which was stolen from a Madrid warehouse last month.

Apoparently the art was found in a stolen truck in an industrial area on Madrid's southern outskirts.

The pieces, recovered Saturday, had a total value of about $6.5 million, according to the article.

No arrests have been made so far.

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According to the BBC, New York police are looking for a thief who tunnelled into an apartment last month and stole works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and others.

The thief apparently broke through a hallway wall between November 24 and 28 while the owner was away and took art and other items worth $750,000.

Among prints taken were Lichtenstein's Thinking Nude and Moonscape, and Warhol's The Truck and Superman.

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A Fifth Avenue doorman found a Corot in the bushes near the apartment building where he works.

Apparently the painting went missing for a month. 

According to the Associated Press, a middleman who was showing the work to a prospective buyer claimed he got drunk and lost "Portrait of a Girl" on July 28. One of the owners sued him, then dropped the suit.

The other owner was recently indicted in federal court on wire fraud conspiracy charges.

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Here is a link to a recent New York Times artciel describing two recent alleged attempts to separate motivated art purchasers from their dollars.

In the first, the article describes a recent attempt to sell 65 photograph negatives claimed to be the work of the late Ansel Adams.  According to the article, David W. Streets, is trying to sell a the negatives — found ten years ago at a garage sale in Fresno, Calif. — as the long lost work of the landscape photographer Ansel Adams. Streets, who according to The Times was “convicted of passing bad checks, fraud and petty theft over a seven-year period,” and the man who bought the negatives in 2000, Rick Norsigian, insist that they are Adams’s work “beyond a reasonable doubt” and are collectively worth $200 million. The two men are selling prints made from the negatives at between $1,500 and $7,500 each.

The second is the recent discovery of a group of 74 plasters allegedly made from wax and clay sculptures crafted by Edgar Degas. The plasters, in turn, are being used to cast a set of bronzes that are being marketed and sold for around $20 million even though, according to the article, Degas is thought to have only displayed one wax sculpture in his life.

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140 works which were found in a bank vault in Paris in 1979 will be offered for sale at Sotheby's, according to the Associated Press.

The collection had been neglected for decades because an acquaintance of the art dealer who owned the work had deposited the art in the bank in 1939, but killed by the Nazis in 1942.

Highlights of the lot include a 1905 painting by French artist Andre Derain valued at up to $18 million, a portrait of the writer Emile Zola by Cezanne, three rare monotypes by Degas, and a print by Renoir.

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Something is rotten in the State of France.

Only a day after five paintings were stolen from a Paris art museum, five pictures including a Picasso were stolen from the home of an art collector in Marseille. The owner was also "beaten up" according to an account in "Another art heist in France," as seen on www.cbc.ca.

The article also notes that thieves made off with 30 paintings from a villa in Marseille last January. 

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After five paintings including a Matisse and a Picasso were stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, an apparent disagreement arose concerning the value of the stolen works. 

An aide to the mayor of Paris reportedly stated that the paintings are worth approximately $123 million while the prosecutor's office reportedly states that the paintings are worth $617 million. 

One might surmise there are political justifications for the estimates: the mayor wants his city to look safe and thereby minimizes the scale of the heist whereas the prosecutor wants to make a splash with a possible criminal case.

But, either way, it's a robbery.

More about the theft can be found here:

www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/05/20/france.paintings.theft/index.html

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According to the Washington Post, a West Hollywood art and antiques dealer who allegedly sold a fake Picasso for $2 million has agreed to plead guilty to federal fraud charges. 

The dealer, a 70 year old woman named Tatiana Khan, apparently admitted that she paid an artist $1,000 to duplicate a 1902 Picasso called "The Woman in the Blue Hat," then sold it as an original for $2 million.

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This blog has covered elsewhere the allegations concerning the largest unresolved art theft of all time -- the 1990 theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in which paintings and drawings worth more than $300 million were taken.

Now, on the 20th anniversary of the theft,  the New York Times reports that the F.B.I. has resubmitted DNA samples recovered in the case for updated testing, and a longstanding $5 million reward offered by the museum is being publicized anew, with the use of two interstate highway billboards to advertise it. The Times also reports that the statute of limitations for prosecuting the thieves — two men who masqueraded as Boston police officers — has long since passed, and federal officials have held out the possibility of immunity, in exchange for information, for anyone subsequently involved in the theft.

More information can be found here:

www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/arts/design/18arts-20THANNIVERS_BRF.html

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In the last entry, we provided some brief background on the Art Loss Register (ALR), a service which provides, among other things, information on recent and unresolved art thefts in the hope of generating leads on the thefts.  By way of example, below are three thefts listed in the ALR's January 6, 2010 email newsletter:

Edgar Degas Pastel Stolen from French Museum
A pastel by Edgar Degas was stolen from the Cantini Museum in Marseilles, France, on the night of December 30, 2009.  The artwork had been removed from the wall, with no visible sign of break-in at the museum, leading police to suggest that the theft may have been an inside job.  The pastel was on loan from the Musee d'Orsay, and is valued at over $1.14m.

From the Archives
Tenth Anniversary of Brash Cezanne Theft

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One of the most useful and invaluable tools for those persons and entities engaged in the business of fine art is the Art Loss Register (ALR).   The link is here: www.artloss.com/

The ALR provides an incredible array of services for almost anyone including those who have suffered a theft of artwork.  The ALR website states that its services include:

• Registration of the legitimate ownership of works of art and other valuable possessions
• Registration of the loss of works of art and other valuable possessions
• Registration of fake and forged works of art and other valuable possessions
• Due diligence services
• Expert provenance research of works of art and other valuable possessions
• Specialist World War II provenance research
• Investigative and recovery work

In addition, the ALR's website notes that it provides services to the following markets:

• Collectors
• Auction Houses
• Art Dealers
• Art Fairs
• Museums
• Financial Institutions
• Law Enforcement Agencies
• Government Authorities
• Private Individuals
   

The ALR publishes an email newsletter which updates any interested party in recent and unresolved art thefts and can alert those who may be in possession of knowledge of the theft in the interest of gathering leads on the thefts. 

The ALR is a highly useful service indeed.

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Readers may recall Europe’s largest bankruptcy, the collapse of Parmalat, back in 2003.  The company fell apart when it was about $20 billion in the red.

Now, Parmalat’s founder, Calisto Tanzi, who was sentenced to prison for 10 years in 2008 for fraud, is charged to have hidden away art works including a drawing of a ballerina by Degas, a tree trunk by Van Gogh, a Picasso still life, and a self-portrait by Antonio Ligabue.  European authorities believe that the works were about to be sold although the reasons for the sale were unclear.

More about the possible fraud can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8397144.stm

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United States District Judge Judith Preska has indicated that a trial may be necessary in order to make a final determination of claims of ownership over a painting looted by the Nazis. The painting in question, “Portrait of Wally,” by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, was confiscated by the United States while on loan from the Leopold Museum in Vienna. Citing the U.S. National Stolen Property Act, the federal government seized the work and placed it into storage in Queens. More about the pending case can be found here: www.courthousenews.com

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The New York Times reported on September 12, 2009 that the theft of 10 silkscreen paintings by Andy Warhol has the Los Angeles Police Department “searching for clues” and “people in the art world scratching their heads.”  The paintings were apparently stolen from the West Los Angeles home of Richard L. Weisman, a businessman and prominent collector. A $1 million reward has been offered by Mr. Weisman for information leading to the paintings’ recovery. The stolen works, which consist of paintings of athletes including Muhammad Ali, Chris Evert, Dorothy Hamill, Tom Seaver, Jack Nicklaus and O. J. Simpson,  were taken from Mr. Weisman’s dining room.

Curiously, the Times noted that, despite the horrific crime, the paintings were not going to net Mr. Weisman any significant sums of money anytime soon.  In 2007, Mr. Weisman’s set of the “Athlete Series” was the subject of an exhibition at Martin Summers Fine Art, a London gallery, where they were for sale as a group for about $28 million but ultimately did not sell. Since that time, the prices of Warhols have fallen. Moreover, the article states that the crime was apparently ill-advised:  “art experts found it strange that anyone would walk off with just the ‘Athlete Series’’ because the market is “insular” enough to make the works “untradeable.” The article does not mention, however, that the black market for stolen art remains one of the world’s most profitable illegal industries.

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As some readers of this blog may be aware, the concept of a statute of limitations may be best described as a maximum time-period by which certain legal proceedings must be initiated or the potential plaintiff may lost his or her right to sue (subject to certain exceptions -- of course!).  One of the most troubling and profound issues that arises with statutes of limitation is whether claims made for the return of stolen or “looted” art can be, or should be, barred when decades or more have passed without anyone making a claim for the return of the subject art.  This question is perhaps at its most pressing point when the subject art was stolen from victims during a genocide such as the Holocaust.

Recently, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down on constitutional grounds a 2002 California law giving owners and heirs to artworks looted by the Nazis additional time -- until the end of 2010 -- to sue for their return.  The appeals court agreed with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles who dismissed a lawsuit in October 2007 that California officials overstepped their authority when they passed the state's Holocaust art-restitution law, because they intruded on what is strictly a federal government prerogative to shape policies on war and foreign affairs. 

The appeals court did, however, allow the plaintiff, Marei Von Saher, the daughter-in-law of a Jewish art dealer who fled Germany in 1940, to amend her complaint against Pasadena’s Norton Simon Art Museum and its supporting foundation to allege facts that might make the suit timely under the three-year statute of limitations generally applicable to actions for recovery of stolen property. 

Von Saher sued two years ago following the collapse of mediation over her claim that she and her family are the rightful owners of “Adam and Eve,” a diptych painted by famed German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder in the 16th century.  The German artist painted them around 1530, and they were valued at $24 million in 2006, when the museum had them appraised for insurance purposes.  

In her 2007 suit against the museum, Saher said that she learned in late 2000 that the Cranachs were at the Norton Simon Museum; the museum contended that she first came forward with her claim in 2001. Mediation sessions in 2005 and March 2007 failed to resolve the dispute, according to the Norton Simon Foundation.  In its written opinion, the Ninth Circuit’s panel of judges noted that Norton Simon attorneys already have submitted news clippings and other published items to show that the Adam and Eve paintings were famous attractions at the museum decades before Von Saher came forward with her claim -- evidence that the museum can use to argue that Von Saher came forward far too late to satisfy the standard, three-year statute of limitations that she must now meet.

Information used for this entry was obtained from the Los Angeles Times and the Metropolitan News Enterprise.

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The BBC reported today that certain works on display the National Library of Wales--several Da Vinci drawings among them--were previously stored in secret in the 1930’s so that they would survive the gathering war in Europe. 

According to the article,  the spokeswoman for the national library said: "The story of the evacuation begins in 1933 when the Right Honourable W.A.Ormsby-Gore (later Lord Harlech) in his role as commissioner of works in Stanley Baldwin's government, called together the directors of all major cultural institutions, museums, libraries and art galleries, to consider a scheme for the safe storage of their most valuable collections in the event of a war in Europe."           

The article reports that “Within hours of the declaration of war 70 years ago in September 1939, collections from many of Britain's cultural institutions were crated up and sent by train to Aberystwyth.”  Apparently twenty-five containers arrived from the British Museum alone, and some institutions even sent their cultural experts to Aberystwyth with the collections.

To ensure the safety of such precious artifacts, the article reports, the national library made the decision to carve out an underground cave to house some of the evacuated material.

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The Boston Globe reported today that a retired criminal defense lawyer, Robert M. Mardirosian, was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for “possessing six Impressionist paintings that he knew were stolen in 1978 from a house in the Berkshires in what is believed to be the largest private art theft in Massachusetts history.” 

United States District Court Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf had strong words for the defendant, apparently telling him: “You started as a lawyer . . . [a]s far I'm concerned, you became a glorified fence." The case stems from charges that Mardirosian took six Impressionist paintings that had allegedly been stolen by one of his clients from a Berkshires house and stored them in Europe. 

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On Nov. 23, The Providence Journal reported that the biggest art theft of all time—the heist of 13 works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston—remains unresolved. The article notes that tips on the whereabouts of the stolen art include theories that the art may be hidden in secret passageways within the museum. 

The article recounts that the heist was committed by men dressed as Boston police officers who claimed they were investigating a disturbance in the museum. After handcuffing and binding the museum’s security guards, the thieves allegedly made off into the night with invaluable works of art by artists such as Rembrandt and Vermeer. The article states that the investigation is still underway and a $5 million reward still stands. 

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