The Art Loss Register: the view of a private collector

There is nothing like a thick stack of minutes. During the last few days I have had cause to reflect on the Art Loss Register and the way that it is being cited as part of a "self-regulation" culture in the antiquities market. I was checking the index of evidence for the UK House of Commons 2000 report on Cultural Property: Return and Illicit Trade (see Gill and Chippindale) and Appendix 2, "Memorandum submitted by Mr Claude Hankes-Drielsma", addressed the issue:

"Counteracting this illicit trade has to start by the countries concerned applying a more pragmatic approach both with regard to losses and economic realities. Furthermore, countries which are concerned with archaeological illegal exports need to ensure that objects excavated and in museums are properly photographed and recorded. This would enable them to identify when these objects are stolen and then ensure that they alert institutions such as the Art Loss Register to the loss. It would enable dealers in antiquities over a certain value to always check with the Art Loss Register or such like organisations to ensure that the objects they are handling are not stolen."

This assumes, of course, that the antiquities surfacing on the market as a result of "illicit trade" had been excavated by archaeologists, placed in a museum or store, and then stolen. These things can happen.

But what about antiquities which surface on the market with a reported but undocumented history? They will not appear in the Register.

Hankes-Drielsma --- or Sir Claude Hankes as he is now --- describes himself in the memorandum as follows:

"I am a former Chairman of the Management Committee of Price Waterhouse and Partners, a collector of antiquities, a Patron and benefactor to the British Museum and on a Committee of the Ashmolean Museum, Patron of the National Portrait Gallery and an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford."

Hankes, it should also be noted, was opposed to the UK ratification of UNIDROIT. His memorandum continued,

"Ratification of UNIDROIT by the UK would not only be a direct contravention of free trade but the bureaucracy required to deal with claims would be insurmountable given the above problems. Art trade is a very major international market and if a country could claim art which had been purchased legally was under their domestic law an illegal purchase, and it would then be for the owners of the art to prove this was not the case and these owners would be in an impossible position to fight the resources of a country. Furthermore, the country's laws may be such that they totally contravene the legal rights of ownership of the country under whose jurisdiction the owners are. Any success in this regard for the said countries could generate an avalanche of claims, very often for political reasons rather than cultural."

The UK Government subsequently signed up to the 1970 UNESCO Convention. The Arts Minister, Baroness Blackstone, commented:

"By signing this agreement, we are sending a strong warning to those who do so much damage to the world's cultural heritage that the UK is serious about joining the international effort to stamp out illicit trade in cultural objects. It will also help us claim back objects unlawfully removed from the UK."

"There is good self-regulation in most countries"

Sir John Boardman (in Who Owns Objects?) has posed the question,

"Should we not simply admit the impossibility of controlling the antiques trade, and indeed the undesirability of so doing except where proven stolen goods are involved, as in any other trade?"

I have discussed elsewhere the issue of what is "demonstrably stolen". My view is in keeping with the position of the UK Museums Association:

"In general many parts of the trade seems to prefer to assume items are all licit, "innocent until proven guilty". It would be safer—and more realistic—to regard certain categories of material as likely to be illicit unless proven otherwise. Objects without a known recent history should not normally be traded or collected."

But I digress.

Boardman continues, "By now there is good self-regulation in most countries" and cites two bodies:
a. The Antiquities Dealers Association
b. An (sic.?) Art Loss Register

Ashton Hawkins and Judith Church have written about "A tale of two innocents: the rights of former owners and good-faith purchasers of stolen art" (in Kate Fitz Gibbon (ed.),Who Owns the Past? (2005), 62-63). They draw attention to the replacement of the International Foundation for Art Research, Inc. (IFAR) by "a British not-for-profit corporation formed by IFAR, Sotheby's, Christie's, London-based insurance brokers, and other British and American companies called the International Art and Antique Loss Register, Ltd. (ALR)".

They expand, "This registry [sc. ALR] has emerged as the leading international clearinghouse for information on stolen art".

One could be led to believe that the looting of antiquities is minor. Kate Fitz Gibbon, editor of Who Owns the Past?, drew on "information published by the Art Loss Register" to comment, "thefts of antiquities represent only 3 percent of total art thefts" ("Editor's note: The Illicit Trade - Fact or Fiction?", 179).

Perhaps this deserves a few words.

There is a difference between the theft of a Roman portrait head from a stately home or London apartment, and the deliberate digging up of an archaeological context to remove an Etruscan bronze mirror. Note that the Art Loss Register observes, "the majority of the items registered are objects stolen from private homes".

Take my first example. The Roman portrait head will have been inherited or purchased at a gallery, there will be documentation, and the circumstances of the theft will have been recorded by the police.

But take the second. The Etruscan tomb was opened secretly at night away from public gaze. The last person to see the bronze mirror was a member of the grieving family some 2400 years earlier. The tomb was unknown to archaeology. Its contents were unrecorded. There was nothing to go on the register.

So imagine a sale. The dealer checks with a register.

The Roman head pops up in the database: stolen from Slappleby Hall, Northamptonshire on November 12, 2002. (This is an imaginary theft before you scrabble for your computers. Even Google does not list such a residence ...)

The Etruscan mirror is clear: there is nothing in the database. Indeed a potential buyer can be told that a register has been checked.

Does the lack of presence on a register mean that the mirror has not been ripped from its archaeological context? No.

So should you be reassured, as Boardman would have us believe, when you buy from a member of the Association of Antiquities Dealers?

Their "Code of Conduct" states:

"It is a condition of membership that all goods acquired at the purchase price of £2,000 or more be checked with the Art Loss Register, or any other comparable stolen art database, unless they have already been so checked."

Indeed to help sellers, "Full members receive a number of free searches at the Art Loss Register."

The Code for the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art says much the same:

"All members undertake to check objects with a purchase value of Euro 3000 or over (or local currency equivalent) with the Art Loss Register unless the item has already been checked."

Do I feel reassured by all this? Not really.

But perhaps I should take comfort from a memorandum (dated October 2003) submitted by the Art Loss Register to the House of Commons (Committee for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport):

"Many stolen antiquities have been identified by the ALR and recently the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art (IADAA) maintains a protocol whereby all potential purchases by their members above a value of £10,000 must be checked against the database. An audit trial of all checks of the database is maintained. The ALR has been involved in advising parties in relation to major archaeological losses. In one case involving a dispute in excess of £20 million the company developed the concept of an international trust financed by a major museum, which would have the items on display. The terms of the trust would require the items to be exhibited in those countries which had a reasonable claim and eventually repatriated to the country should complete proof be obtained of their original excavation. The ALR has assisted in the recovery of items from Iraq and Iran which have resulted in arrests."

Are the "many stolen antiquities" from private residences, museums or previously unrecorded archaeological sites? The memorandum did not make it clear.

And am I saying anything new? Let me finish with some words from the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre in Cambridge published in 2000:

"In any event, at the risk of boring our more informed readers, the Art Loss Register cannot (and does not claim to) contain details of antiquities which have been excavated without record and smuggled without trace. Data bases are invaluable in the fight against art theft, but as a defence against the circulation of illicit antiquities they are of only limited use — a necessary but not sufficient check."

How can the Art Loss Register be strengthened to reduce the number of newly surfaced antiquities appearing on the market?

An Italian cavalryman in Manhattan

Greek colonial cavalrymen are clearly gathering on the eastern seaboard of North America - or at least sets of their armour can be found there.

The acquisition of a suit of Greek cavalry armour by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has been noted before. And there is another "set of armor from a burial" in the collection of Shelby White and the late Leon Levy. It consists of:

a. A "South Italian-Chalcidian" helmet
b. A long "muscle" cuirass (front and back)
c. A pair of greaves
d. A chamfron
e. A muzzle of a horse

The Apulian bronze armour appeared in the Glories of the Past exhibition (no. 95). The entry was written by David Cahn who suggested that the "set" should be placed in Apulia, "about 330 BC".

Cahn notes: "The date of the helmet is based on the many finds of armor in Apulia buried with Apulian red-figured vases, for which we have an established chronology".

Again, "Like the helmet, cuirasses of this type have come to light, usually with a wealth of ceramic material, in many monumental chamber tombs in Apulia".

As for the chamfron, Cahn notes its stylistic links with three others that appear to come from "a single workshop". He continues: "All four chamfrons were found with "south Italian-Chalcidian" helmets, long "muscle" cuirasses, and greaves; three of the four come from tombs that also contained Apulian red-figured vases".

No further information (e.g. archaeology, previous owners) is provided in the printed catalogue entry about the White/Levy set. But we can infer from Cahn's discussion and the catalogue entry caption that it came "from a burial" in Apulia.

And there is one more thing. Such sets of cavalry armour from Apulia tended to be found with Apulian pottery.

So does the dramatic increase of Apulian pottery surfacing on the market in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s - so ably and forcefully demonstrated by Professor Ricardo Elia - coincide with the appearance of such sets of armour on the market?

If Cahn is right, and there is no reason to doubt his comments and observations, it would be interesting to know which Apulian pots (if any) were found in the "burial" alongside this "set of armor".

But perhaps such valuable archaeological evidence has been lost and will never be retrieved.

The collecting of such military equipment has material consequences for the funerary record of Southern Italy, and intellectual consequences for the study of both Greek colonial cavalry armour and Apulian pottery.

A lesson from Virginia

The report in The Cavalier Daily ("Behind the masks: The University must explain the mystery of the Morgantina masks", Tuesday September 4, 2007) concerning the announced returns - or are they? - from the University of Virginia Art Museum in Charlottesville raises some interesting questions.

Although the New York Times has linked the "masks" with the collector Maurice Tempelsman,

"The University Art Museum acknowledges that the masks are on loan from an anonymous donor and that an agreement exists between the museum and the unnamed donor that limits the loan to a period of five years, after which the museum can do with the masks what it sees fit."

Has the time come for museums to refuse to accept loans from donors who require that their identities remain anonymous? This is not the first time I have come across the phenomenon, and I doubt it will be the last.

The trail of a South Italian cavalryman's armour

At some point in the late fourth century BCE a cavalryman from one of the Greek colonies was laid to rest in a tomb in the rolling foothills of southern Italy.

We do not know his name. We do not know his age. We do not know the name of his community. We do not even know what other objects were placed in the tomb.

And we shall never know, because nearly two and a half thousand years later a group of men dug up his grave and packed up his bronze armour.

We do not know the route the armour took. We do not know where it was conserved.

But the set consisting of a helmet, the front and back cuirass, and one greave surfaced on the Köln art market in 1975 where the group was purchased by Joost Kuizenga of Enschede, The Netherlands.

Eighteen years later, in March 1993, the pieces were sold and formed part of the Liebert collection in Krefeld, Germany. In 2001 they were "acquired by or consigned to" Axel Guttmann (1944-2001). For some unstated reason they were returned to Liebert after three months. (Guttmann died on 28 October 2001 but after the next stage in the armour's journey.)

Liebert then consigned the set to Sotheby's in New York where they appeared as a single lot ("A Greek Helmet, Cuirass, and Greave, circa late 4th Century B.C.") in a sale of antiquities on June 12, 2001, lot 68. Although they had resided in the hands of Guttmann for some three months - and there is no apparent evidence they were owned by him - the Sotheby's catalogue entry stresses the pedigree: "Axel Guttmann, Berlin". (This is also stressed in a review of the sale.)

There is no mention of Kuizenga or Liebert. But Guttmann was known as a collector of ancient armour. His name (and endorsement) was valuable.

The helmet, cuirass and greave were sold to an unnamed "private collector" for US$115,750. But he or she did not wish to keep the armour and the pieces were "repurchased not long thereafter" by Sotheby's.

So the pieces were re-auctioned as a single lot the following June (June 13, 2002, lot 67). They failed to sell.

In August 2003, Peter Aldrich purchased the armour from Sotheby's. And in December Widgie and Peter Aldrich presented the set to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Who is Peter Aldrich?

First (in no particular order), he is a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Second, he is a collector of ancient Greek pottery.

And the list goes on.

He also does not have a good track-record of buying at Sotheby's. An Athenian bell-krater purchased from the auction-house in 1995 and presented to the MFA in 1999 was among those antiquities returned to Italy in 2006.

So where does this leave the set of armour?

The MFA's present acquisition and provenance policy states:

"In recognition of the November 1970 UNESCO Convention, the Museum will not acquire any archaeological material or work of ancient art known to have been "stolen from a museum, or a religious, or secular public monument or similar institution." In addition, the Museum will not acquire an object known to have been part of an official archaeological excavation and removed in contravention of the laws of the country of origin."

The paper trail - "the due-diligence research" - suggests that the armour does not appear to have been known prior to the 1970 UNESCO Convention. The Museum acknowledges that the armour "probably comes from the tomb of a South Italian cavalryman".

The museum must be praised for its approach to providing this information as part of its policy:

"In order to ensure transparency and aid potential claimants, all recent acquisitions will be posted with images on the Museum’s website. Inquiries regarding potential claims on objects in the collection must be immediately directed to the Deputy Director who will ensure thorough research and prompt response to each inquiry."

This leaves a few questions.

When was the tomb found?

Has the due-diligence process demonstrated that the tomb was opened prior to 1970?

What was the justification for its acquisition?

The armour

a. 2003.815.1. South Italian-Chalcidian helmet

b. 2003.815.2. South Italian cuirass, front

c. 2003.815.3. South Italian cuirass, back

d. 2003.815.4. South Italian greave

Note
This information is based on the catalogue entries provided on the MFA website (links above).

The Virginia Return: could this have been anticipated?

The announcement of the return of antiquities from the University of Virginia Art Museum in Charlottesville could perhaps have been expected.

Back in June Elisabetta Povoledo ("Antiquities Trial Fixes on Collectors’ Role", New York Times, June 9, 2007) reported that as part of the True / Hecht trial in Rome:

"the prosecutors have clearly adopted a strategy of calling attention to collectors, especially well-heeled Americans, with the implicit message that every player in the global antiquities trade is within their sights."

So who are the North American collectors? Four examples were cited:

"the Texas oilmen Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt (who sold their artifacts at auction in 1990 after their fortunes collapsed); the New York diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman; the art philanthropist Lawrence Fleischman and his wife, Barbara; and the financier Leon Levy and his wife, Shelby White."

Barbara Fleischman responded to the claim in the NYT:

“It seems like anyone can accuse anyone of anything without any proof. We collected for the pure joy of the object.”

Povoledo continued that Fleischman "said that she and her husband, who died in 1997, never suspected that they might be buying anything less than legitimate."

But it looks as if there was proof. The appearance of Fleischman material in the Geneva Polaroids is likely to be part of the evidence. In any case the 40 antiquities about to be returned from the Getty to Italy include 13 antiquities formerly owned by the Fleischmans.

Former Tempelsman material is also in the list of antiquities to be returned from the Getty. Is the Virginia return an extension of that line of enquiry?

And where does it leave Shelby White?

From Virginia to Sicily: more returning antiquities

Elisabetta Povoledo has today reported on the return of two antiquities to Sicily from the University of Virginia Art Museum in Charlottesville ("Two Marble Sculptures to Return to Sicily", New York Times, September 1, 2007).

The two sixth-century BCE sculptures will be displayed in the archaeological museum at Aidone. They will be joined by other antiquities returning from North American collections: the "Morgantina" silver (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), and an acrolitihic statue in the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The Viriginia sculptures are reported to have been looted from Morgantina in the 1970s (and said to have been seen in the boot of a car in 1979). They then surfaced in the hands of Robin Symes who sold them (in 1980) to Maurice Tempelsman (for a reported US$1 million).

Antiquities from the former Tempelsman collection form part of the agreement with the J. Paul Getty Museum. Symes has also been associated with many of the returning objects from North America - and indeed others which are still under investigation.

What other agreements can be expected in the coming months?