Schinousa outcome and reaction to expert witness

In November 2006 four members of a shipping family were charged. It was reported at the time in the Greek press that '152 artifacts were found at the villa on Schinoussa and at the family's Athenian home in Psychico, northern Athens' ("Four charged over artifact stash", 23 November 2006).

The verdict on the Schinousa case was reached on Thursday 26 July 2018. A translation of the verdict has been circulated by the State lawyer: ‘The Court by majority found guilty Despina and Dimitri Papadimitriou for the act of misappropriation of monuments and convicted each one of them to suspended imprisonment of 4 years. It also ratified the seizure and ordered the confiscation of the seized items’.

The day after the verdict, 27 July 2018, Dr Christos Tsirogannis, who had served as an expert witness in the case, received a letter from the London law firm acting for their Greek clients.

Dr Sam Hardy has written extended comments on this latest development, and ARCA provides an overview of the case.

Charges against New York art dealer Nancy Wiener

ARCA has provided a text-base version of the charges against New York dealer Nancy Wiener [see here].
There are some points to note:

• apparent falsification of the collecting history ("provenance") of an object
• apparent consigning genuine objects with other works to provide cover when passing through customs
• weakness in the policy for accepting lots by a major New York auction house
• the apparent changing of a stated collecting history by the same major New York auction house

We are particularly interested in co-conspirator #6:

Co-Conspirator #6 and his father are suppliers of illicit cultural property from primarily Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to several recorded conversations, Co-Conspirator #6 has been shipping large quantities of newly dug-up, stolen antiquities from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Thailand, often via Hong Kong, and then to dealers from around the world for more than a decade.

We note:

Co-Conspirator #6, who in the mid-1980s was a child living in Pakistan and England

Arrest of New York dealer

The New York Times is reporting continuing fall-out over the antiquities from Asia case (Tom Mashberg, "Prominent Antiquities Dealer Accused of Selling Stolen Artifacts", New York Times December 21, 2016). The case relates to Nancy Wiener.

The complaint states:

“Defendant used a laundering process that included restoration services to hide damage from illegal excavations, straw purchases at auction houses to create sham ownership histories, and the creation of false provenance to predate international laws of patrimony prohibiting the exportation of looted antiquities,”

Such claims undermine the position of the market at a time when dealers are claiming to conduct due diligence. How common is the creation of "sham ownership histories"? What about placing objects in collections so that they pre-date the 1970 UNESCO Convention?

Jason Felch adds an important observation:

“Even after a decade of reforms, the art market continues to be pervaded with stolen and looted antiquities.”

Nathan Elkins on ACCG Coin Test Case

I have commented before on Nathan Elkins' article on "Ancient coins, find spots, and import restrictions: A critique of arguments made in the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild’s ‘‘test case’’" in the Journal of Field Archaeology (2015).

This is now available online via academia.edu.

Abstract
The Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (ACCG) has launched multiple legal challenges aimed at undermining import restrictions on ancient coins into the United States in bilateral agreements with foreign countries.One key component of the ACCG’s argument is that the State Department has inappropriately restricted certain types of coins according to where they were made rather than where they are found, as mandated by the 1983 Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act. Although the ACCG has thus far been unsuccessful, it has not been pointed out that existing import restrictions on coins, in fact, have been written to include coins that tended to circulate locally and that are found primarily within the borders of the country with which the bilateral agreement is made. The ACCG’s argument is thus on shaky ground. As the ACCG continues to press ahead with new litigation, it is worth drawing attention to realities and probabilities of ancient coin circulation as they pertain to protected coins.

Condemning "monsters": Yates on the trade in archaeological material

Dr Donna Yates (University of Glasgow) has been interviewed by Chris Havergal for the Times Higher ('Cultural Guardian', THE 15 January 2015, 42-45). The interview starts with her experience of looting at Mayan sites. She explains her role, 'piercing together smuggling networks or studying legal mechanisms for preventing looting'.

She reflects on the impact on local communities:

It's a situation in which extremely rich and wealthy white people take complete advantage of people who can't fight back, and then blame them for it. I see it as double victimisation - these people are not only having their property taken from them, they are having their ability to construct their own identities taken from them by people who have all this power, who don't even consider it to be a problem.

She also talks about museums:

She says some museums have done "horrible" things and has little sympathy for institutions that are not honest about their past and the provenance of their artefacts.

The interview also reflects on Yates' research:

[the] project seeks to understand the relationships between communities, governments, the law and international criminal markets, with the aim of developing regulatory mechanisms for controlling the illicit antiquities trade. 

Those involved in dealing with archaeological material will be concerned to read that her focus is on 'eliminating the markets for looted archaeological treasures'. She would also like to see more people 'being jailed for committing this sort of crime'. (It is not clear if she means looters, dealers or collectors.)

She sees a role for the general public:

And she believes that society at large can play a role, too, by not accepting the illicit collecting of antiquities as something that just happens, but by condemning those who deal and collect such items as "monsters".

This interview helps to remind the archaeological and museological communities why "looting matters" both in terms of the impact on unexcavated remains as well as the corruption of knowledge as objects with lost contexts enter the corpus.

US Government Pays $425,000 for Legal Case

It now appears that the US Government has had to pay $425,000 in legal fees and costs to the St Louis Art Museum (Jenna Greence, "Feds Lose Fight Over Ancient Mummy Mask", National Law Journal October 21, 2014).

The mask was purchased for $499,000 in 1998.

Pat McInerney of Dentons and Husch Blackwell was quoted:

"The Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer was a fascinating case that ultimately showed the extent to which the government unfortunately overreached in an attempt to literally take an artifact from the Saint Louis Art Museum using a lawsuit the court said was ‘completely devoid of any facts’ supporting their claims,” McInerney of Dentons said. “Credit really belongs to the art museum and its leadership for not caving in to the government's threats and, after winning the case, for compelling the government to pay the cost of defending a lawsuit that never should have been filed."

There are continuing questions about the acquisition that need to be resolved. The key ones are these:

• When did curators at SLAM become aware that the mask was linked with Saqqara?
• Did curators at SLAM contact the Egyptian SCA on learning that the mask was linked to Saqqara?
• When was the personal name of Ka-Nefer-Nefer removed from the hand on the mask?

The SLAM Mask in Two Places?

I have been reviewing some of the views on the Egyptian mummy mask acquired by the St Louis Art Museum. There is a useful piece in The International Lawyer (Spring 2013) --- based on the forfeiture statement --- that reminds us that the mummy mask was moved from Saqqara to Cairo in 1966 in box 54. And then in 1973 it was found that the mask was missing from box 54.

Thus we can reconstruct the collecting history as follows:

a. The mask is excavated at Saqqara in 1952.
b. Charly Mathez recalls (in 1997) that he had seen the mask in an antiquities dealer's shop in Brussels in 1952.
c. In 1962 the mask was purchased for the Kaloterna collection.
d. The mask was acquired for the collection of Zuzi Jelinek who possessed it for "40 years" (sic.).
e. Sometime between 1962 to 1966, the mask was returned to the archaeological store in Saqqara.
f. In 1966 the mask was moved to Cairo in box 54.
g. In 1973 the mask was found to be missing from box 54.
h. The mask was back in the Jelinek collection.
i. In 1997 the mask was sold to Phoenix Ancient Art.
j. The mask was displayed in Geneva.
k. In 1998 the mask was sold to SLAM.

I have a strong hunch that this reconstruction is flawed.

Perhaps the Director, Trustees and Curatorial Team of SLAM could explain how the timeline for the mummy mask can be presented.

St Louis Art Museum: The Egyptian Mummy Mask

The legal decision (conveniently discussed by Rik St Hilare here) that the Egyptian mummy mask acquired by the St Louis Art Museum will not be returning to Egypt leaves some questions unanswered.

I have discussed this mask elsewhere. But if we summarise, we can state that we know that it was excavated at Saqqara.

But what about these issues?

What is the authenticated documented collecting history of the mask between 1952 and 1995?

What is the Kaloterna collection?

Can Zuzi Jalinek's testimony be considered trustworthy?

How could the mask be in Cairo and form part of the Kaloterna collection at the same point in time?

Have SLAM curators checked the Cairo register and explained the anomaly in the "received" collecting history?

The officials at SLAM may feel that the legal case is closed.

But if the testimony by Jalinek is flawed, as it clearly appears to be, then the Director and Trustees of SLAM have an ethical obligation to return the mask to Egypt.

Icklingham bronzes: looking back

I am reviewing the history of the Icklingham bronzes case. In 1991 the New York Times reported on the case raised by John Browning, the land owner (William H. Honan, "Peripatetic Roman Bronzes Trailed by Lawsuit", May 14, 1991). Browning claimed that 16 bronzes had been removed from his land in the winter of 1981-82, and that these bronzes were the ones being offered by Ariadne Galleries Inc.

Frances Dunkels, a spokesman for the British Museum, said in a telephone interview last week that in 1982 Dr. Ian Longworth, the keeper of Roman-British antiquities at the British Museum, was shown photographs of 16 bronzes said to be in the hands of a British dealer who indicated that they had come from the Brownings' farm. In 1988, Miss Dunkels said, Dr. Longworth said Ariadne Galleries had those bronzes.

One item to note is that Marion True would not touch the bronzes because she considered them to have been "stolen". Yet Shelby White seems to have been happy to acquire them no doubt to display alongside some of the objects now returned to Greece, Italy and Turkey.

Houghton on Tempelsman

Arthur Houghton prepared a short note on the acquisition of the Tempelsman collection for the J. Paul Getty Museum. It is quoted in its entirety in The Medici Conspiracy by Peter Watson and Celia Todeschini (p. 125):

The collection represents a selection of objects from a larger collection formed by Maurice Tempelsman, a diamond merchant resident in New York, over the past twenty-five years. The individual pieces come from a variety of sources, although the largest number were provided directly by, or were bought through, Robin Symes of London. All have been legally imported into the U.S. The collection is currently in the Museum.

Will Houghton be making a statement about his part in the acquisition? It appears that he was a member of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) at the time of writing the note.

See also Chasing Aphrodite.

Illicit antiquities and UAE

I am grateful to the BBC monitoring service (and Happy 90th Birthday!) for their report on the newly issued "Federal Legal Decree No 5 for 2012 on combating cyber crimes".

The new law stipulates: "... penalties of imprisonment on any person using electronic sites or any information technology means to call to engage in the unauthorized trade of antiquities and works of art."

Will this take material off line and off the market?

Coin dealer pleads guilty

In January this year coin dealer Arnold Peter C. Weiss, a founding partner of "the second incarnation of the firm Nomos A.G., of Zürich", was arrested and charged. It has now been reported that Weiss has pleaded guilty ("Prominent hand surgeon pleads guilty to selling phony ancient coins to undercover agent", New York Daily News July 3, 2012).

The renowned doctor pleaded guilty Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court to criminal possession of the three Fifth Century B.C. Sicilian coins. 

Weiss said he thought the coins were real, but admitted he knew he violated Italy’s Code of Cultural and Landscape Heritage, which makes it a crime to remove from the country anything that has been unearthed after 1909. 

“I know that there are foreign statutes that prohibit the removal of antiquities, including coins from countries,” Weiss said in court.

Apart from 70 hours of community service, the court has imposed a creative task on Weiss.

Under a plea agreement with Manhattan prosecutors, Ivy League surgeon Arnold-Peter Weiss, 52, has to write an article detailing the widespread corruption among collectors selling and trading rare coins without the proper paperwork. 

Weiss, a professor of Orthopaedics at Brown University and a trustee of the American Numismatic Society, must also chronicle how the anything-goes atmosphere threatens historical records and he must suggest ways of policing the hobby. 

“Thanks to today’s disposition, the article to be written by the defendant for a coin trade magazine will raise needed awareness about unprovenanced coins, and will promote responsible collecting among numismatists,” said Joan Vollero, a spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.

This should be an interesting read. The twist in the case is that the coins turned out to be modern creations.

Weiss had earlier opposed any restrictions on the movement of coins from Italy.

No cover up: coin conspiracy theory falls

I note that the Courthouse News service is reporting that there was no concealment of evidence as alleged by the IAPN, the PNG and the ACCG. This must come as a blow to the paid Washington lobbyist who has argued for a cover-up. This will hopefully bring an end to the shameful attack on the late Dr Danielle Parks whose emails have been the subject of interest by the request made by the three organizations. | |

St Louis Mummy Mask Back for Reconsideration?

Rick St Hilaire has reported that the US Attorney for Eastern District of Missouri has asked for the case relating to the Egyptian mummy mask in the St Louis Art Museum to be reopened.

This is a sensible move as it is now clear that the collecting history ("provenance") supplied by the dealer does not appear to be accurate or even trustworthy.

One has to ask why anybody would wish to fabricate a collecting history?

If the case does reopen it will cause problems for those auction houses and dealers who have already started to cite the SLAM case. And there are implications for those museums that have acquired material with equally interesting collecting histories from the same Swiss source.

Getty: "little room for manoeuvre"

It has been reported in the Italian press that a court in Pesaro has confirmed the confiscation of the "Fano Athlete" currently residing in the J. Paul Getty Museum (ANSA May 4, 2012). The Italian prosecutor is quoted: "Vedo pochi spazi di manovra per il Getty, se non un ricorso per motivi dilatori".

Delaying tactics may, indeed, be the order of the day. It is clear that the process of removing the statue from Italian territory was far from straightforward. The Getty should act in a positive and conciliatory way and open negotiations with the Italian authorities.

It should be remembered that the Becchina revelations are likely to identify further material removed from Italy.

Dealer pleads guilty over Egyptian antiquities

Source: ICE

Dealer Mousa Khouli has pleaded guilty to the charge of "smuggling ancient Egyptian treasures" and for "making a false statement to law enforcement authorities" ("Dealer admits smuggling Egyptian treasures to US", Agence France Presse April 18, 2012). Khouli could be facing up to 20 years in prison.

The objects were imported via Dubai. The case will no doubt be of serious concern to those private collectors and public museums who have been purchasing material from Khouli.

SLAM: "We don't have any interest in possessing a stolen object"

David Linenbroker, the attorney for the St Louis Art Museum (SLAM), has spoken about the legal ruling over the Egytian mummy mask acquired by the museum ("Judge: 3,200-year-old mummy mask can stay in Mo.", AP, April 5, 2012).

We don't have any interest in possessing a stolen object ...We've been facing all this innuendo for years.

I am delighted that SLAM does not want to "possess" stolen objects.

The same report states:

Museum officials have said they researched the mask's ownership history before buying it and had no indication there were questions about how it arrived in the U.S. The museum's research showed the mask was part of the Kaloterna private collection during the 1960s, before a Croatian collector, Zuzi Jelinek, bought it in Switzerland and later sold it to Phoenix Ancient Art of New York in 1995. The art museum purchased the mask from Phoenix Ancient Art.

It is now clear that the mask could not have entered the "Kaloterna collection" in the early 1960s as the object was still in Egypt. The collecting history for the mask appears to be seriously flawed. Why? What could be the motive?

What does Linenbroker understand by "innuendo"? Perhaps he could produce the authenticated documentation demonstrating the full collecting history of the mask. Perhaps he could explain the apparent fact that the mask was still in Egypt at the time that the museum claimed it was in a private collection in Switzerland.

St Louis Art Museum Mask: implications for Swiss dealer

I have noted earlier this week that the collecting history ("provenance") for the Egyptian mummy mask acquired by the St Louis Art Museum was seemingly flawed. It cannot have been given to the excavator (who died in 1959). It cannot have been in Brussels in 1952. It cannot have been in the "Kaloterna collection" in 1962. The reason for this is the apparently undisputed statement that the mask was known to be in Egypt in 1966 and recorded in Cairo.

The collecting history for the mask was allegedly supplied by the vendor, Phoenix Ancient Art. One of the owners of the gallery apparently supports the repatriation of antiquities to the country of origin. What was the basis for the mask's collecting history as supplied by Phoenix Ancient Art? Who created the collecting history?

It now appears that SLAM's due diligence process prior to the acquisition was flawed. The collecting history, as it was understood at the time of acquisition, no longer appears to be secure.

Will the director of SLAM, who is a member of the AAMD, make the appropriate professional and ethical response by opening up negotiations with the Egyptian authorities?

St Louis Art Museum: "we would do the right thing"

i was very struck by the 2010 words of St Louis Art Museum spokeswoman Jennifer Stoffel when talking about the dispute between SLAM and Egypt over the mummy mask that was excavated at Saqqara:

we would do the right thing ... if there was something that refuted the legitimacy of the provenance.

The Missouri legal decision over the mask should raise serious concerns for the museum authorities. The legal statement demonstrates at that the mask's presence was documented up to 1966, and that it seems to have gone missing by 1973.

I have rehearsed the collecting history of the mask elsewhere. Laura Elizabeth Young has also had access to the documentation at SLAM.

Let me repeat the alleged history of the mask here (as it is presented by SLAM and the Swiss dealer that sold the mask):

b. The mask was given to an official associated with the excavations. There appears to be no paperwork to support this. (Indeed Goneim in his report, The Buried Pyramid (1956), thanked the Department of Antiquities of the Egyptian Government, Cairo. The implication is that at the time of going to press the mask was in a government store.) 

The following sequence is based on documentation provided by Phoenix Ancient Art:

c. Mask seen in 1952 at an antiquities dealer in Brussels. This depends on the testimony of a Swiss national, Charly Mathez made in February 1997. SLAM contacted Mathez in 1999 but he could not remember the details or the name of the gallery. Could he really be certain that the mask he claimed to see in Brussels 45 years earlier was indeed the same one? 

d. Mask purchased "by a private collector" in approximately 1962 ("ten years later"). This is named as the "Kaloterna Collection". 

e. The private collector sold the mask to "an unnamed Swiss citizen, in whose private collection it would remain for 40 years". It is noted that the "Swiss collector requested anonymity". The Riverfront Times identified the individual as "Zuzi Jelinek of 84 Quai de Cologny, Geneva, Switzerland"; they confirmed that a "Suzana Jelinek-Ronkuline" lived at that address. (Her son is said to have offered the information that the Aboutaam brothers once rented a property on Quai de Cologny belonging to his mother. The Riverfront Times then reported, "Hicham Aboutaam directed the Riverfront Times to a woman identifying herself as Suzana Jelinek, of Zagreb, Croatia. 'I bought the mask many many years ago, and I sold it many many years ago,' says Suzana Jelinek when reached at her Zagreb home. 'I have so many things in my collection that my children don't know what all I have.'")

If we accept the Missouri legal version of the collecting history of the mask that confirms its presence in 1966 we need to conclude:

1. The mask was not given to an official connected with the excavation. We should also note that the excavator died in 1959. 

2. The mask was not at an antiquities dealer in Brussels in 1952. The testimony of Charly Mathez appears to be mistaken. 

3. The mask was not in the "Kaloterna Collection" in 1962.

This raises questions about when the mask entered the "collection" of Zuzi Jelinek. How reliable is her testimony?

The legitimacy of the "official" collecting history ("provenance") of the mask seems to have been brought into question by the court case. SLAM has stated that they would "do the right thing" if the legitimacy of the provenance was flawed.

Will the museum now do the ethical and professional "right thing" and return the mask to Egypt?

Hecht Trial: Jason Felch comments

Jason Felch has commented on the expiry of the Robert Hecht Trial for the LA Times.

“There is plenty of evidence,” Ferri said, citing as an example Hecht’s own handwritten memoir, in which the dealer detailed his long career buying ancient art from Medici and other suppliers whom Hecht described as “clandestine diggers.” An organizational chart seized from a middleman in the illicit trade showed Hecht’s name at the top of a pyramid of suspected looters and smugglers.

I am grateful to Chasing Aphrodite for the link.

Correction: I misattributed this report to Vernon Silver.