Journal of Art Crime

JOURNAL OF ART CRIME (posted from a forwarded email)

The Journal of Art Crime, published by ARCA, is the first peer-reviewed interdisciplinary academic journal in the study of art crime. This twice-yearly publication will provide vital information for members of the art trade, museums, security professionals, police, art lawyers, cultural ministries, private collectors, gallery owners and dealers, conservators, insurers, cultural heritage NGOs, as well as academics in the fields of criminology, law, art history, history, sociology, policing, security, and archaeology.

Our editorial board includes the following prominent professionals:

• Lord Colin Renfrew, Professor of Archaeology, University of Cambridge
• Petrus van Duyne, Professor of Criminology, University of Tilburg, Netherlands
• Matjaz Jager, Director, Institute of Criminology, Slovenia
• Bojan Dobovsek, Professor of Criminology, University of Maribor, Slovenia
• Travis McDade, Professor of Library Studies, University of Illinois Law School, US
• Ken Polk, Professor of Criminology, University of Melbourne, Australia
• David Simon, Professor of Art History, Colby College, US
• Erik Nemeth, The Getty Research Institute, US
• Todd Fell, Yale University Libraries, US
• Liisa van Vliet, Accenture Consulting, UK
• Dick Drent, Director of Security, the Van Gogh Museum, Netherlands
• Michael Kirchner, CPP, CIPM, Director of Safety and Security, Harvard Art Museums
• Anthony Amore, Director of Security, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, US
• Dennis Ahern, Director of Security, the Tate Museums, UK
• Richard Ellis, former Director of Scotland Yard's Arts and Antiquities Unit, UK
• Col. Giovanni Pastore, Vice-Commandante of the Carabinieri Art Protection Unit, Italy
• Neil Brodie, Professor of Archaeology, Stamford University, US
• David Gill, Professor of Archaeology, University of Swansea, Wales
• Edgar Tijhuis, Attorney, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Benoit van Asbroeck, Attorney, Brussels, Belgium
• Howard Spiegler, Attorney, US
• Judah Best, Attorney and Smithsonian Commissioner, US

Content

Each issue of The Journal of Art Crime will include the following:

-At least five peer-reviewed academic essays

-Regular columns from expert contributors:

• Letter from the Editor, by ARCA Director Noah Charney
• Art Law & Policy, by Donn Zaretsky
• Antiquities & Archaeology, by David Gill
• Fine Art Crime, by Derek Fincham
• Security & Policing Update, by Stevan Layne
• Lessons from the History of Art Crime, by Noah Charney

-Summaries of major news and events related to art crime and cultural propertyover the six months leading up to each issue, including expert commentary

-Statistics and data on art crime, with commentary

-Informed editorials on contemporary issues

-Profiles of professionals working against art crime

-Book reviews

-Conference & Publication Listings

-Calls for Papers

-Most Wanted Artworks, with descriptions, information, and images

-Complete Literature Review & Bibliography, with commentary, in the subjects of:

• War Looting
• Art Theft
• Vandalism/Iconoclasm
• Antiquities
• Forgery/Deception
• Security/Policing

Between the academic and practical information provided, The Journal of Art Crime will be the best one-stop source for up-to-date information on all aspects of art crime.

Submissions

Submissions are welcome at any time. We publish articles from both academics and professionals, related to art crime, its history, and its repercussions. Relevant fields include criminology, law, art history, history, sociology, policing, security, archaeology, and conservation.

Academic essays should be 4000-9000 words in length (including footnotes, excluding bibliography). Please adhere to MLA style guidelines. Relevant images should be sent in jpg form in a separate email. Authors are responsible for securing any necessary permissions for the reproduction of images related to their articles. Essays considered to be of merit by peers may be returned to their authors along with rewrite guidelines which must be applied before publication. Average turnover for peer-reviewed essays is eight weeks, and two weeks for editorial or review material.

Each academic essay should be accompanied by a cover page that includes:

-author's name, affiliation, and contact information

-biographical information (up to 100 words)

-an abstract (100-200 words in length)

-six keywords that characterize the content of the article.

Please remove all identifying material from the body of the article.

Editorial proposals or submissions (book reviews, letters, etc) should include:

-brief abstract of proposed or submitted topic (200 word maximum)

-author's name, affiliation, and contact information

-biographical information (up to 100 words)

The Journal of Art Crime will also include book and exhibition reviews, conference write-ups, summaries of major recent art crimes, art-related legislation, and other relevant news, and editorial columns. The Journal welcomes submissions or proposals for any of the aforementioned.

Please send all submissions to editor@artcrime.info as an attachment in Word format.

SubscriptionsThe Journal of Art Crime will be published both as an e-journal and in printed form. Subscribers may choose the electronic form alone, or purchase the electronic and print form as a package, priced for individuals and institutions. All income from subscriptions will go directly to fund ARCA's non-profit activities.

The first issue will be published in the Spring of 2009, the second issue the following Fall. Please visit www.artcrime.info to subscribe.Please direct any queries to editor@artcrime.info.

a few upcoming event opportunities

a few notes sent to tme from Del that might be of interest -

Don Soeffing will be lecturing at--

• The Silver Society of Canada on Oct. 22nd
• Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas on Nov. 1st.
• the Decorative Arts League in San Francisco on 11 August 2009
  

Roderick Thompson has offered to host a tour of his restoration workshop Santo Spirito in Brooklyn for those who live in the NY Metropolitan area--

• Let him know when and whom, and he can make arrangements.
• His shop is in the Gowanus Canal area, but is easily accessible by F train.
• A mapquest search to locate 112 2nd Avenue is recommended.
• A date and time can be decided upon with short advance, so that all involved could make the plan.
• Rod also suggests lunch at a congenial Modanese trattoria/pizzeria closeby.
  

Anyone interested is welcome to contact me (Del -[Alyssum Enterprises [alyssum.usa@worldnet.att.net]), and we can coordinate our schedules with Roderick.

Vik Muniz: verso

This is an exhibition by a well known contemporary artist, Vik Muniz. The content of the exhibition - the back of paintings and what they reveal about authenticity, provenance, etc- might be of interest here.

Vik Muniz, Verso
Sikkema Jenkins & Co.Chelsea
530 West 22nd Street, 212-929-2262September 6 - October 11, 2008 Opening: Saturday, September 6, 6 - 8PM

Whenever someone wants to see if an artwork is ‘real’, the first gesture is to look at its back or at it’s base; the part of it that normally isn’t visible to anyone but experts, dealers, museum conservators or the artists themselves. This happens because while the image’s objective is to remain eternally the same, its support is constantly changing, telling its story, showing its scars, its labels and periodic clichés. So when a cousin of mine told me his 7-year old could paint a Picasso, I told him ‘probably, but he couldn’t do the back’. As a teenager, I used to fix the neighbor’s TV as a hobby. I wanted to learn how to fix clocks too. Whenever something‘s function is basically visual, there is always an opening in the back for curiosity to do its damage.
-Vik Muniz in an unpublished interview, 2005
For over 20 years Muniz has consistently defined art as a subtle connection between mind and matter by recreating iconic images while simultaneously revealing and debasing the process of their making. Muniz aims to distill the binding agent connecting concept and substance in art via an exercise of meta-objectivity that reveals the “particle and wave” nature of cultural artifacts in general. While keeping within the conceptual frameworks of Muniz’s previously established images Verso marks a return to the object-making that first brought him attention in the late 1980s.
People who have seen images one million times in books go to the museum to have a chance to read their labels. They would be much happier if the painting was turned backwards so instead of having to associate name to image they would have to imagine the picture while reading the label.
-Muniz, ibid.
Verso consists of a group of 3-dimensional trompe-l’oeils of the actual backs of such iconic works as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Seurat’s La Grande Jatte that, over a period of six years, Muniz photographed and systematically studied in partnership with the curatorial and conservation departments of MOMA, the Guggenheim and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as with a team of dedicated craftsman, artists, forgers, and technicians. These are disconcertingly faithful reproductions in a 1:1 scale realized in an inch-by-inch process that did not spare the slightest detail. Every scratch, dent or scribble is physically reproduced to photographic precision. Authentic looking labels, worn-away tape, faded pencil notations and actual period hardware and carpentry make it hard even for an expert to disbelieve they are seeing the actual backs of these masterpieces.
There is a great tradition of trompe-l‘oeil representations depicting the verso of paintings that hark back to Cornelius Gijsbrechts in the mid-1600s. They can be seen throughout the Baroque period until 19th century with artists such as Harnett and Peto and in the 1960s and 70s in the works of some photo realists but the act of feigning to illustrate painting’s material nature through skillful illusion dates back to the 5th century BC with Parrhasius, the conceptual artist, who fooled Zeuxis by perfectly painting fabric over a “painting.” These are pictures of paintings as commodities and I somehow find something eternally contemporary about them. Drawing attention away from their primary function, as well as from their actual support, these paintings always appear as a responsive redefinition of the medium through the exercise of its own limitations. By continuously updating Parrhasius’ picture-object paradigm the artist is able to embrace the cause of realism with all its foolishness and flamboyance.
-Muniz, ibid
Along with Verso, Muniz will be exhibiting equally confounding recreations of the backs of famous photographs from the New York Times archive at MOMA. The backs are full of cancelled dates, yellowed newspaper captions and rubber cement stains offering a glimpse of the life of these images in the newsroom and beyond.
Vik Muniz will be curating an artist’s choice exhibition at MOMA this December. His retrospective, organized by the Miami Art Museum in 2006, is currently on view in Mexico City at the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso. His work is in the collection of many museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre George Pompidou, the Centro Cultural Reina Sofia, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.Muniz was born in Brazil and currently lives and works in Brazil and Brooklyn.

USPAP Certification

It appears that the USPAP results and certifications have been mailed. I recieved mine. If you haven't, you should call one of the powers that be and find out where it is.

Make up test for American Silver

Hi All:
A couple of people are having to take make up tests for Don's American Silver class. They are going to have to do it over the phone. They are wondering if anyone has any notes. if so post them here or email Laura at lattanzi.laura@gmail.com

Wasn't there two people at least who needed to take the test this way?

regardless of notes, I think if you read the papers that he handed out, you might be able to come up with some hints.

ok, anyone with notes, step up!!!!

Did I Miss Anything????

Hi all,
I have finished adding a post to the blog on each of the assignments that were due outside of the class. I have to say it has been very beneficial to me personally to put this together. It has been a way for me to go back and absorb some of the information that I was not able to absorb in the whirlwind four weeks. After the class I was thrown back into real life work as many of you were too, I’m sure.

So please contact me if I have forgotten something or if you would like for me to add another post about anything else.

Best,
JD Talasek
Director
Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS)
500 5th Street, NW Room NAS271
Washington DC 20001 (o) 202.334.3104 (f) 202.334.1690 jtalasek@nas.edu www.nasonline.org/arts

Assignment: Sylvia Leonard Wolf: Fine Art

Instructor: Sylvia Wolf
Course: Fine Art
email sylvialwolf@gmail.com

Like Jane's assignments, these are past due at the time of this post. There were two assignments on painters Durand or Kensett. The first was due on July 16 and the second was due on July 21.

If you missed this, email me (jtalasek@nas.edu) and I'll give you more information. However, I strongly suggest that you contact Sylvia at this point.

Assignment: Jane Willis: Appraisal Writing Workshop

Instructor: Jane Willis
Due Date: Within two months of completion of the course though we have one year.
email: jwillisaaa@aol.com (do not email this assignment)
address: 30 Joyce Road
Tenafly, NJ 07670-2506

(quoted from the assignment sheet):
"One complete appraisal report, at fair market value, for either Estate or Non-cash Charitable Contribution purposes, including an item of sufficient value (over $5,000) to warrant the inclusion of comparables. It may be a single item if of appropriate value and interest.

You must be able to physicaly examine and photograph the object so do not select anything in a museum, unless you have access to it.

For identification purpose, please include a photograph of hte item (even if it would not be required, as in the estate report. ) If you want to submit any of the other types of communications for my review - such as a letter of intent, contract, etc. - feel free to do so, just remember to leave them separate from the report."

do not email report
do not put each page in a plastic sleeve

NYU Student AAA Member

Gang,
Look back in your packages that Jane gave out the first day of our class. There was a form for NYU Student membership in AAA (i just can't get over the feeling I'm buying car insurance with this acronym...is it just me?).

I bring this up because (although I really hate the feeling that the classes were in some way promotions for the various associations,) the associations are good gateways for networking and staying informed. The student membership seems like a good way of testing it all out.

According to the form, student membership is 75 bucks (almost as expensive as a day out with Aunt Louise) and students are entitled to free admission to AAA monthly lectures, the AAA newsletter, reduced registration for the National Conference and special seminars, and discounts on selected publication.s There also seems to be scholarships available.

there is a deadline to take advantage of it: September 1.

If you can't find the form, contact
Tiffany W. Niem
Appraisers Association of America
386 Park Avenue South Suite 2000
New York, NY 10016
212.889.5404 X13
212 889 5503 (FAX)
email: twniem@appraisersassoc.org

Assignment: Jane Jacob: Essentials of Appraising

Jane Jacob
jane@jacobfineart.com
Due Date: August 1, 2008

I'm not going to write about this assignment in detail because it is past due and hope that everyone got it in to her in time. Its the three page paper on what it takes to be a good appraiser, what skills you posses to do well, and what skills you might need to develop, etc....

if anyone didn't get this done email me and I'll give you the details (jtalasek@nas.edu). If this is the case I strongly suggest you write to Jane at the email above and ask her if you can still submit.....hope no one is in that boat....

ARTINFO ARTICLE: Buyer Beware

Judith found this article on artinfo.com
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/28263/buyer-beware/?page=1
It might be helpful with the Victor exam:

Four major art crimes and how they affect the market

For centuries, art crime was relatively harmless, at least from the perspective of the global economy and international crime. Forgers fooled the occasional buyer, tomb raiders dug up what archaeologists didn't have time to reach, and the occasional nonviolent thief would steal for reasons more often ideological than fiscal. Even vandalism was dismissed as part and parcel of the ravages of war.

But since the Second World War, art crime has evolved into the third-highest–grossing annual criminal trade worldwide, behind only the drug and arms trades. Most art crime is now perpetrated either by or on behalf of organized crime syndicates, who have brought violence into art theft and turned what was once a crime of passion (think of Vincenzo Peruggia's stealing the Mona Lisa in order to repatriate it to Italy, or Kempton Bunton's stealing Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington as a protest against taxes on television sets) into a cold business. Art crime now funds, and is funded by, organized crime’s other enterprises, from the drug and arms trades to terrorism. It is no longer merely the art that is at stake, and it is no longer a crime to be admired for its elegance.

Today, the largest victim of art crime is the art trade. This multi-billion-dollar legitimate industry is victimized to the tune of a conservatively estimated $6 billion per year, most of which goes into the pockets of organized crime. Here is a brief analysis of how the four main categories of art crime influence the art market. These encompass a myriad of sub-categories but are unified in being premeditated criminal activities — undertaken for financial and/or ideological reasons — that profit from, or reduce the value of, art and therefore affect the art market.

Vandalism
Whether the willful damage to art and architecture is ideological or simply spiteful, damaged art decreases in value, and destroying an artwork can turn a potential fortune into a pile of dust. However, for certain famous works, the cachet of having endured vandalism (or theft) actually increases value. It certainly adds to popular interest, as witnessed by the tour guides in Florence and London who love to recount the survival tales of Michelangelo’s David and Pieta or Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus. The destruction of art can also raise the value of related works that survive — imagine a fire that consumes every Vermeer but one.

Forgery/Deception
This category encompasses a range of confidence tricks that involve the premeditated misattribution of art for profit. This includes a number of different methods, all of which take advantage of a degree of enthusiasm and wishful thinking on the part of the art trade. Everyone benefits if an artwork that comes on the market is legitimate: The owner makes money, the dealer receives a high commission, the buyer gets a new trophy, and academics get a new object to study. Because of this, there is a subconscious desire on the part of the members of the art trade for potentially questionable objects to be legitimate. This is where clever criminals can take advantage. The most common types of deception crimes are:

1. Wholesale Forgery: A new artwork is passed off as a piece that is either older than it really is or is by a more valuable artist than the one who actually created it.
2. Alteration Forgery: A legitimate work is altered in some way — a signature is added, for instance — that raises its value. Such alterations are difficult to detect, as scientific tests are designed to determine age, not attribution.
3. Provenance Forgery: The documented history of an artwork, as opposed to the work itself, is altered or falsified. Provenance is much easier to forge than the work itself. This technique is most often used to provide looted antiquities with a false history, suggesting that they were excavated before art exportation laws were put in place.
4. Willful Misattribution: The value of an artwork is intentionally overestimated. This is a question of connoisseurship, and the most frequent perpetrators are the very experts that the art trade relies on to determine the values of artworks, which ultimately, it must be remembered, are not intrinsic. A work’s value depends on a combination of its perceived authenticity and perceived rarity, and millions hang upon the words of experts as to a work’s authorship. One need only recall Bernard Berenson’s questionable, and profitable, attributions: Especially if an expert is paid on commission, there is the temptation to attribute a higher value. This is the easiest type of forgery to get away with, as an expert can always claim to have “made a mistake.”

Crimes of deceit and forgery affect the art market in a generally beneficial way. The members of the art trade — gallerists, auction houses, dealers, middlemen, and sellers — all benefit, earning money even if the item they are handling is not what they claim it to be. Only the buyer who overpays for a fake or misrepresented work suffers. But the buyer only loses out if the work is proven to be false. If the buyer and the world at large remain blissfully ignorant, then the perceived value of the work remains consistent — which is why it is in the best interest of all involved to believe that the art in question is exactly what they hope it to be.

Art Theft
Art theft affects the art trade less than other categories of art crime, to a large extent because stolen art is rarely offered on the market. In this Internet age, police and dealers worldwide can be notified of stolen goods in minutes, making it difficult for criminals to “shop” stolen art. Rather, criminals profit from art theft in a variety of ways that tend not to involve resale. For famous works, there is basically no market, black or otherwise. Famous art is either offered for ransom (such as the Munch paintings stolen in 2004) or traded on a closed black-market system among organized criminals for an equivalent value of another illicit good, such as drugs or arms. Within this system, a work’s value is generally marked at seven to ten percent of its legitimate auction value — the amount that criminals could sell it for, were they willing to run the risk of seeking a buyer. Experts have discovered this black-market price because it is the value at which undercover police posing as criminal buyers were offered stolen art.

Less recognizable artworks and antiquities are often altered in some way, provided false provenance, and then sold on an open market in which the actual owner is never revealed, or on a gray market (this would include objects that “fell off a truck” or that are stored in the basement of a legitimate dealer’s shop). In such cases, the art trade can actually benefit from criminal activity. With more objects to sell, the trade will make more money, provided the illicit origins of the artworks can be disguised.

The final and most alarming method of profit from stolen works is the sale of raw materials. Since 2005, there has been a rash of thefts of bronze and copper artworks and objects, following the astronomical rise in the price of these raw materials. Masterpieces such as Henry Moore’s Reclining Nude, a two-ton object stolen from the Henry Moore Foundation in December 2005, was almost certainly chopped into pieces and sold for scrap, earning perhaps as little as £3,000 ($5,800). The work carried a £2 million insurance policy.

Antiquities Looting
Perhaps comprising as much as 75 percent of all art crime, antiquities looting is the most difficult crime to catch. Objects taken directly out of the earth or the sea will not appear on stolen art registries, because the objects never existed, at least not to the knowledge of contemporary society, before their illicit excavation. Looted antiquities can often be sold on an open market for full value, even without a false provenance suggesting they were legitimately excavated and exported. Since the legitimate antiquities trade is laced with questionable characters and objects with incomplete provenances, the nature of this market provides shadows in which criminals can hide. Although buying a looted artifact might seem relatively harmless, trade in illicit antiquities has been identified as a major funding source for terrorist groups. As with art theft, the art trade can actually benefit from antiquities looting. New, exciting antiquities on the market benefit the trade — even if money from the transactions is going into the pockets of criminals.

Art crime is a subtle and fascinating world, one in which even the best-intentioned dealer or collector could be supporting organized crime through their purchases. Buyer beware.

Assignment: Victor Wiener: Legal and Ethical issues

Due Date: August 25, 2008
Instructor: Victor Wiener
Mailing address (he will not accept assignment by email...either mail or hand deliver)

Victor Wiener
201 West 89th St.
New York, NY 10024

when submitting the exam, include the course number, the semester and your student id
do not put in bulky folders or in individual sheets of plastic.

Exam Question:

The field of appraising works of art is filled with many problem areas which have very specific legal remifications. Your assignment is:

1. To identify the three areass which you find most problematic and to explain why you feel this is hte case?

2. From your readings in Art Law, or other sources, to discuss which cases you feel add to one's understanding of the three problem areas you have identified and how these cases are specifically relevant to the areas you have identified. You should discuss at least four cases for each area.

Assignment: Rod Thompson: 18th & 19th Furniture

Due Date: September 30, 2008
Instructor:Roderick Thompson
email: santospiritorestoration@yahoo.com


Assignment for final paper
Study entry #168 for the “Pompadour” high chest of drawers from the catalog by Morrison Heckscher. (American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Late Colonial Period, Queen Anne and Chippendale Styles, v.@.,New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985, pp. 258 - 260.) You have a photocopy of this text, but the original is on reserve in Bobst Library, 2nd basement, Level A. This will serve as the model for an analysis of and a comparison with a piece of furniture of your choice. The chosen piece may be a part of your own collection, or may come from another source, such as an antique shop, or auction preview. Based upon the catalog entry and your personal observations, make a comparison with the piece that you select.
You will see the high chest on the class visit to the Met on 29 July 2008, but you may also wish to stop and see it beforehand, if you intend to be at the museum. As I understand, Louise Devenish will give a tour there on 25 July. You may contact me for directions to locate the piece on your own time. Use the general format of the catalog entry in your analysis.

Evidently, pedigrees and detailed historic analysis may not pertain to the piece that you opt to study for this assignment, but the model will serve to allow the inclusion of such information, if it is available, or if you choose to undertake such research.
Wherever possible, corroborate your study materials , styles and construction with research materials such as citations and illustrations. Observations of existing conditions are critical to your conclusions, therefore surfaces and joints need to be inspected, as they have been by Heckscher in his entry. You may hypothesize about modifications and inconsistencies that you discover.

The completed assignment should be submitted at your earliest convenience, but no later than 30 September 2008. An emailed submittal will yield my email response. A mailed submittal with a self-addressed stamped envelope, sent to the address above will yield my response mailed back to you with your original paper. An Incomplete grade will be recorded and carried until 1 October 2008, as I await your assignment. If no assignment has been received by that date, a No Credit will take its place. If you have any questions, or points to raise, you can always reach me at the co-ordinates above.

An attempt to stay in touch

Hi All

I've set this up to create a community for us -to help each other in finishing up our assignments, remembering deadlines, and in general talking each other down off the ledge.

As I have time I will enter in a different post for each instructor / class who left us with a long term project. I'll enter in all of the information that I have including deadlines and how the work is to be submitted (email/address/ etc.) . then we can post questions, comments and, in general, support each other. If you have a general question, respond to this post. If needed, I'll generate a seperate post!

Perhaps this blog might be a way for us to keep in touch with each other and continue the networking that we have started.....

best to all!!!!

JD