Finland Seized $46 Million Worth of Art en Route to Russian Museums, Including a Titian and a Picasso, Enforcing E.U. Sanctions

The sanctions prevent the transport of luxury goods, including art
Sarah Cascone, April 6, 2022

Finnish customs officers seized these crates loaded with works of art in transit back to Russia. Photo courtesy of Finnish Customs.

Finnish customs officials have impounded artworks valued by insurance at over €42 million ($46 million), preventing them from returning to Russia, under European Union sanctions imposed in response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Finland intercepted three shipments of art at the Vaalimaa border crossing between Finland and Russia last weekend, impounding one vessel. The Finnish Heritage Agency will oversee the storage of the confiscated items until the sanctions are lifted, according to Reuters. The artworks are still Russian property, and are being held as evidence.

A spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova, confirmed that on April 5, diplomats from the Russian embassy in Finland accompanied the works’ transfer to facilities at the Ateneum state museum in Helsinki. They advised Finnish authorities that breaking the seals on the packaging was “unacceptable.”

“Professionals have been consulted in the moving and storage of the goods,” customs enforcement director Hannu Sinkkonen said at a press conference, reports Agence France-Presse. “We are not going to open the packages.”

The shipments “include works which cannot be valued; they are priceless,” he added..

Giovanni Cariani, Giovane donna con vecchio di profilo (ca. 1516–18). Collection of the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

E.U. sanctions introduced in mid-March prohibit the sale, supply, transfer, or export of luxury goods—including artworks—to Russia, due to the invasion. Authorities say there are 10 people suspected of having violated the sanctions to transport the art.

The works, which include paintings, statues, and antiques, had been on loan to Italy from the collections of the Hermitage and Tsarskoye Selo state museums in St. Petersburg and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Russian ministry of culture told the Russian news agency Moskva. The artworks returning from Japan belong to Moscow’s Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

“The enforcement of sanctions is part of our normal operations and we always direct our controls based on risks. The shipments that have now come under criminal investigation were detected as part of our customary enforcement work,” Sami Rakshit, head of the enforcement department of Finnish Customs, said in a statement.

Titian, Young Woman with Feather Hat (ca. 1536). Collection of the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

In early March, the Hermitage had requested that three Italian institutions return loaned works ahead of schedule. At that time, the Gallerie d’Italia in Milan was exhibiting Antonio Canova’s Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss (1787–93); the Palazzo Reale, also in Milan, had displays of Titian’s Young Woman with Feather Hat (ca. 1536) and Giovanni Cariani’s Giovane donna con vecchio di profilo (1515–16); and Rome’s Fondazione Fendi had Young Woman (1909) by Pablo Picasso on view.

Finland has been strict in enforcing sanctions against Russia, also prohibiting 21 luxury yachts from departing Finnish waters last month amid suspicions that the vessels belong to sanctioned individuals.

“As for the arrested paintings, they will return and pay a penalty,” the Russian State Duma Speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, said in a statement. “Those who did this in Finland probably do not remember their history well.”

Zakharova, of the Russian foreign ministry, told Artnet News: “Basically, the situation can be described as legal anarchy. We are talking about the seizure, in violation of international law, of artwork owned by the Russian Federation that temporarily was on display abroad under the governmental guarantees of the countries where these items were exhibited on a nonprofit basis and in cooperation with our museums. We are waiting for the Finnish authorities to act with due haste to ensure that all these works are returned to the Russian Federation.”

This week, France agreed to return 200 paintings on loan to Paris’s Fondation Louis Vuitton for the show “The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art” to Russia, despite calls to confiscate the works.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/finland-seizes-russian-art-under-sanctions-2095012?utm_content=from_&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Morning%20US%20Newsletter%204%2F7%2F22&utm_term=US%20Daily%20Newsletter%20%5BMORNING%5D

Stolen Darwin notebooks, missing for decades, are returned

A photo provided by the Cambridge University Library in England shows one of the two notebooks of Charles Darwin that were anonymously returned 22 years after they went missing. Pictured is Darwin’s famous “tree of life” drawing, which maps out how related species could diverge from a common ancestor. Cambridge University Library via The New York Times. by Daniel Victor

NEW YORK, NY.- Twenty-two years after a pair of notebooks filled with Charles Darwin’s early musings went missing from the Cambridge University Library, they were anonymously returned in good condition last month along with a note to the elated librarian: “Happy Easter.”

“Happy” scarcely begins to describe the reaction of Jessica Gardner, the university librarian who spearheaded an international publicity blitz in 2020 to recover the notebooks. Filled with Darwin’s scrawled handwriting and sketches from 1837, including the famous “tree of life” drawing, the notebooks recorded his thought process as he began sketching out ideas that would later develop into world-famous theories still revered and studied today, including the theory of natural selection.

On March 9, outside her office in an area of the library with no cameras, someone placed a bright pink gift bag. Gardner and her colleagues first recognized the original blue box that had been taken from the archives. Then, inside a brown envelope, they found the notebooks they had long sought inside tightly wrapped cling wrap, along with the typed note wishing her a Happy Easter.

“I still feel shaky,” she said in an interview Tuesday, when the university announced that the notebooks had been recovered. “It’s really hard to express how overjoyed I am.”

After waiting a few days — the police, who are continuing an investigation, instructed the university to wait before removing the notebooks from the plastic wrap — the university’s conservation experts delicately unsheathed them. Along with a team of experts, they looked through every page of both books, searching for damage or missing pages.

Jim Secord, the director of the university’s Darwin Correspondence Project, which has assembled the scientist’s writings, was among those who handled the notebooks, having also handled them in the 1990s before they went missing. He said it was immediately apparent that they were genuine, and that they had been kept in good condition with no missing pages.

Forgery was not a concern, he said — it would have been far too difficult to forge the several types of ink, the aged paper or the clasps on the leather binding, let alone the box it came in from the archives. “There’s no question, I think, they are the real notebooks,” he said.

The notebooks had been held in the library’s Special Collections Strong Rooms, where the rarest and most valuable items in its collection are stored. They were taken out to be photographed in September 2000. During a routine check a month later, the small box that contained the two notebooks was found to be missing, the library said. Years of fruitless searching led the library and national experts in cultural heritage theft to conclude that they had most likely been stolen.

The return of the notebooks brings relative closure to the academics eager to bring them home to the university’s treasured collection of Darwin’s correspondence. But it has done little to settle the many mysteries that remain: how the notebooks went missing, who took them, what happened in those 22 years, and why they were returned now.

The police in Cambridgeshire said in a statement that the investigation remained open, adding that “we share the university’s delight that these priceless notebooks are now back where they belong.” There’s no way to know what prompted someone to hand back the notebooks. But Gardner said she believed the public appeal for information in 2020, which prompted worldwide media coverage, including an article in The New York Times, could have been a factor. Perhaps someone’s conscience was pricked.

Getting the notebooks back at any point would have been a joy, but Gardner was particularly pleased that they can now be included in an exhibition starting in July. The exhibition, “Darwin in Conversation,” will come to the New York Public Library in spring 2023. “Charles Darwin means so much to people around the world,” Gardner said. The university’s archive includes thousands of his letters, but “these two are so important,” she said.

The contents of the notebooks had long been digitized, so scholars could still study his words and images even when the books themselves were missing. But Secord said that they contained “unparalleled insight into how an individual comes up with a discovery,” and that there was incalculable value to seeing the physical objects. Imagining Darwin scribbling in a grubby book, one that would have been readily available at stationery stores across London at the time, reflects how ordinary settings can give rise to enormous thought, he said.

“I do think they help to make the discoveries real and concrete,” he said, “and I think for us that’s really important to see.”

https://artdaily.cc/news/145239/Stolen-Darwin-notebooks--missing-for-decades--are-returned#.Yk3GUOjMKUk This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

UNESCO says 53 cultural sites in Ukraine have been damaged since the Russian invasion

April 2, 20226:08 PM ET - DEEPA SHIVARAM

The Menorah memorial is seen outside of Kharkiv at the Drobitsky Yar Holocaust memorial, a location that saw a mass killing of Jewish people by Nazis during WWII. UNESCO included the memorial in its list of sites that have sustained damaged since Russia invaded Ukraine. Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty Images

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, UNESCO says it's verified damage to at least 53 cultural sites in the country. The organization says it assesses damage reported in the media or by Ukrainian officials and has a system to monitor main Ukrainian sites and monuments via satellite imagery.

"Our experts continue to verify each report and it is feared that other sites will be added to this list," a UNESCO spokesperson told NPR.

As of March 30, UNESCO said, the confirmed damaged sites, located in several regions across Ukraine, include 29 religious sites, 16 historic buildings, four museums and four monuments.

How some people are trying to make art, not war, in Ukraine right now

When the war began, UNESCO implemented some emergency measures in order to best protect these cultural sites. It held regular online meetings with World Heritage site managers, museum directors, national monument officials and local heritage protection associations in Ukraine to provide expertise and practical advice. UNESCO says it has experts available 24/7 to respond to emergencies.

"We assist them in identifying safe havens in which to store items which can be moved; and in assessing and strengthening fire fighting procedures," the spokesperson said.

The agency says it's also communicated with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov to reiterate that heritage sites are obligated to be protected and sent him location data of the heritage sites in Ukraine.

Both Russian and Ukraine have signed on to an act by the Hague Convention in 1954 that protects cultural property during armed conflict. It prohibits and condemns all attacks and damage to cultural heritage.

If cultural sites are marked with a blue shield — the convention's emblem — it means they are under the protection of the convention. If attacks are committed against these sites, UNESCO says, the perpetrators will be held responsible for acts constituting war crimes.

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/02/1090475172/unesco-ukraine-cultural-sites-damage?t=1648940453841&t=1649066550966