Police Seize Suspected Dalí Forgeries in Italy

Police officers displayed 21 artworks they think are forgeries of Salvador Dalí’s pieces after seizing them at an exhibition in Parma, Italy.Credit...Carabinieri/Handout, via Via Reuters

The Carabinieri Art Squad aka Italy's art police seized 21 suspected fake Salvador Dalí lithographs from a Parma exhibition titled “Salvador Dalí, Between Art and Myth.” The seizure followed months of investigation after similar concerns arose when the show was previously held in Rome.

Lt. Col. Diego Polio of the art theft squad said the exhibit lacked major works and raised red flags. Experts from the Dalí Foundation in Spain reviewed the pieces and questioned the authenticity of 21 lithographs, prompting prosecutors to order their seizure.

The exhibition’s curator, Vincenzo Sanfo, defended the works, claiming they were legitimate and supported by documentation. He said most came from the “Les Chevaux de Dalí” series, published with the artist’s consent in 1983.

The Dalí Foundation, which was not involved in the Parma show, said it had raised concerns about several pieces early on. A major foundation-backed Dalí exhibit opens in Rome this month with fully authenticated works.

The Carabinieri Art Squad is known for tackling both theft and forgery. Just last year, the Carabinieri broke up a Europe-wide forgery ring and seized 450 counterfeit works in Pisa!

J.Larson

Ronald Perelman's $400M Art Insurance Claim Rejected by Judge

Image of Ronald Perelman from Wikipedia

A New York judge has denied billionaire Ronald Perelman’s $400 million insurance claim for five artworks he said were damaged in a 2018 fire at his East Hampton estate. Justice Joel M. Cohen ruled there was no visible or provable damage to the pieces—by Warhol, Ruscha, and Twombly—and that they retained their value.

Perelman argued the fire caused unseen damage like humidity and soot exposure that dulled the works’ vibrancy. Insurers, including Lloyd’s, Chubb, and AIG, countered that the claim was financially motivated, especially following Perelman's financial struggles after Revlon's collapse.

The case, which included expert testimony and nearly 2,000 court filings, raised questions about how art damage is defined. Cohen stopped short of calling Perelman's actions fraudulent, but sided with insurers, stating the artworks remained visually intact and marketable.

Ronald Perelman's $400 million insurance claim appears less about damaged art and more like an attempt to cash in amid financial trouble, using his art collection as a pawn for leverage.

J.Larson

David John Voss sentenced for 5 years for the major art fraud case exploiting the famous Canadian Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau

David John Voss, 52, has been sentenced to five years in prison following his guilty plea to charges of forgery and uttering forged documents. The case, which is being described as Canada's largest art fraud investigation, involved a vast scheme to create and sell counterfeit artworks falsely attributed to the late Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau.

The sentencing took place on Thursday, with Superior Court Justice Bonnie Warkentin emphasizing the profound damage inflicted on Morrisseau's legacy. The judge noted that the fraudulent activities not only aimed for economic gain but also irrevocably tarnished Morrisseau's cultural and spiritual contributions.

Image of Norval Morrisseau

Norval Morrisseau, an influential figure in Canadian art, was born in 1932 and hailed from the Ojibway Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation in northwestern Ontario. He is renowned for founding the Woodlands School of Art, a movement known for its vibrant and spiritual depictions of Indigenous life. Morrisseau's distinctive style features bold colors and intricate symbols rooted in Anishinaabe traditions and mythology. His work earned significant acclaim, with exhibitions held at major galleries across Canada, including Rideau Hall in Ottawa, and his pieces are celebrated for their deep cultural significance.

Morrisseau passed away in 2007 at the age of 75. His contributions to art and Indigenous culture have been recognized widely, cementing his status as one of Canada’s most revered artists. According to court proceedings, Voss orchestrated an elaborate fraud ring from 1996 to 2019. The operation involved an assembly-line process where Voss and his associates created thousands of fake Morrisseau paintings. Painters followed a 'paint by numbers' system to replicate the artist's style.

This evidence photo released by the Ontario Provincial Police in Canada shows a forgery of artwork by legendary Canadian Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau. Photo by HANDOUT / Ontario Provincial Police /AFP via Getty Images

In March 2023, eight individuals were charged in connection with the fraud ring. Gary Lamont, considered the ringleader, was sentenced to five years in prison in December 2023. Other defendants include Diane Marie Champagne, Linda Joy Tkachyk, and Benjamin Paul Morrisseau from Thunder Bay, as well as Jeffrey Gordon Cowan, James White, and David P. Bremner from other locations. Charges against Champagne were withdrawn during Thursday’s proceedings.

A piece of Indigenous artwork on a table. One of more than 1,000 paintings seized by Ontario Provincial Police in connection with an art fraud investigation involving fake paintings attributed to Norval Morrisseau. (Ontario Provincial Police)

The fraud's impact on Morrisseau's estate has been severe, with Cory Dingle, the executive director, revealing that the estate faces estimated losses of at least $100 million. Dingle called for restitution and proposed legal reforms to prevent future occurrences. He also urged for continued assistance from those involved in identifying the fake artworks.

While the Crown did not pursue restitution due to the complexities involved, Dingle emphasized the need for changes to Canadian law to better address and remedy such frauds. This case highlights the broader implications of art fraud on cultural heritage and the challenges faced in combating such crimes.

- J.Larson

The Hunt: $200 Million Worth of Art Is Still Missing From a Paraguay Museum

Thieves dug a tunnel to steal European masterworks back in 2002.

A photograph of a majestic white art museum against blue skies, partially obscured by a palm frond National Museum of Fine Arts (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes), Asuncion, Paraguay. Photo: MJ Photography / Alamy Stock Photo Vittoria Benzine July 15, 2024

In July 2002, a heist at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Asunción in Paraguay rocked the world, not only due to the lost masterworks, which were valued at around $200 million, but the elaborate ploy the thieves used to pull off their robbery. They favored European paintings, with a haul that included a self-portrait by Tintoretto, Tête de Femme by Adolphe Piolt, a landscape by Gustave Courbet, a Madonna and Child by Bartolomé Estéban Murillo, and an unattributed 16th-century portrait of Saint Jerome.

The museum was founded in 1909, 67 years after Paraguay officially declared its independence from the Spanish Empire. It occupies the same building as the National Archives, and holds 650 artworks ranging from paintings to ceramics, alongside antique coins and more from the collection of the inaugural director-general Juan Silvano Godoi.

The museum’s founding was meant to mark a new chapter for the republic, but centuries of political volatility could partially explain why the institution hadn’t managed to install any security cameras to capture the thieves on film.

Instead, a shocking, subterranean discovery told the story. Authorities found that an 80-feet tunnel had been dug to connect the museum with a health food store across the street.

Further investigation revealed that the men who’d opened that store had used fake identities. They had even carved out another leg of the tunnel that led to the parking lot of a hotel nearby, which the bandits likely used to escape.

A scan of a portion of a portrait painting of a coy young woman lit dramatically against a black background Adolphe Piot, Tete de Femme (date unknown). Photo: The History Collection / Alamy Stock Photo

Legend of the haul lives on and international police forces have scoured the black market ever since. Only one opportunity has presented itself so far. In 2008, the National Centre for Cultural Heritage Protection at the INTERPOL-Argentina Department received a tip that the lost “San Gerónimo” by an anonymous artist and valued at $200,000 was up for illicit sale in Posadas, Argentina.

Soon enough, a police fact-finding mission accompanied by Argentinean Federal forces recovered the painting in mint condition. The work was back home by that July, as part of a larger push by Argentinian authorities to repatriate stolen artwork found on their soil.

Those forces are probably still monitoring the art world’s underbelly for the remaining lost artworks. Meanwhile, the museum has taken matters into their own hands. In February, the institution commissioned five contemporary painters to recreate the lost artworks while 700 fascinated attendees watched on.

The resulting canvases went on view in an exhibition that opened on March 22, and is slated to stay up for awhile. Although the decision doesn’t make it seem like the museum has much hope the works will ever turn up, at least they’re capitalizing on the unexpected notoriety of hosting Paraguay’s one-time robbery of the century.

The Hunt explores art and ancient relics that are—alas!—lost to time. From the Ark of the Covenant to Cleopatra’s tomb, these legendary treasures have long captured the imaginations of historians and archaeologists, even if they remain buried under layers of sand, stone, and history.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/the-hunt-paraguay-museum-heist-2463477

Stolen Titian, Once Found at a London Bus Stop, Sells for a Record $22 Million

The work had also been looted by Napoleon in the 19th century.

Titian, Rest on the Flight into Egypt (ca. 1510). A religious painting from the Renaissance with the Holy Family traveling in the wilderness, Joseph sitting on the left and the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus in the center of the painting. A small house is seen in the distance.

A small Titian painting with a storied past has reset the auction record for the famed Renaissance artist. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (ca. 1508-10) sold for £17.6 million ($22.1 million), including fees, at Christie’s Old Masters sale in London on July 2. The Biblical scene, measuring just 18 by 25 inches, has passed through the hands of emperors, aristocrats, and archdukes, and was stolen—twice.

The work bore a presale estimate of £15 million to £25 million and was backed by a third-party guarantee. It sold to a phone bidder, likely its guarantor. According to the auction house, its “intimate” size is typical of Titian’s earlier works.

The artist’s previous record of $16.9 million was set in the 2011 sale of A Sacra Conversazione: The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria at Sotheby’s New York.

“This result is a tribute to the impeccable provenance and quiet beauty of this sublime early masterpiece by Titian, which is one of the most poetic products of the artist’s youth,” said Orlando Rock, the chairman of Christie’s U.K. “This picture has captured the imaginations of audiences for more than half a millennia and will no doubt continue to do so.”

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt was first recorded in the collection of a Venetian merchant in the early 17th century before it was sold to Sir James Hamilton of Holyroodhouse and then on to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria. The Archduke esteemed his collection so highly that, in the mid 1600s, he commissioned a kunstkammer series of paintings to capture all of his trophy artworks. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt appears in one these paintings, which is now in the Prado in Madrid. After a few generations bouncing between Holy Roman Emperors, the work was first stolen when it was looted by French troops in 1809 during Napoleon’s occupation of Vienna. (It was returned in 1815.)

Its second theft was far more recent. In 1995, it was stolen from England’s Longleat, the home of the descendants of John Alexander Thynne, 4th Marquess of Bath, who had acquired the work from the London dealer Colnaghi. The gallery for its part, had bought it in a Christie’s sale in 1878 for 350 guineas (around $46,700 today)—the most of any of the 11 works by Titian in the sale. After it was stolen, Thynne’s heirs called in an art detective, Charles Hill, to help find the painting, then valued at £5 million. It wasn’t until 2002, however, that the painting turned up, frameless and stuffed in a plastic bag, at a bus stop in London in exchange for a £100,000 reward.

It was returned to Longleat and has been there ever since, except for its appearance in the 2012 exhibition “Titian’s First Masterpiece: The Flight into Egypt” at the National Gallery, London.

After the sale, Lord Bath, who succeeded his father as the Marquess of Bath in 2020 and inherited the Longleat estate, said it was “fabulous” to see the interest in the painting. “As the next chapter in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt’s story is written, I am pleased with the outcome [of the sale]; which will support our considerable long-term investment strategy at Longleat to build on the vision and legacy of my ancestors for the benefit of future generations,” he said.

Margaret Carrigan, July 4, 2024 https://news.artnet.com/market/titian-sells-for-a-record-22-million-2507972

Want to Commit Art Fraud? An Expert Shares 5 Strategies

The art world has become inundated with tales of fakes, frauds, and unscrupulous behavior. Here is how cons are orchestrated.

by Richard Polsky March 14, 2024

Over the last few years, the art world has become inundated with tales of fakes, frauds, and unscrupulous behavior. Starting with the Knoedler scandal, and continuing with the Orlando Museum of Art debacle, a pattern of deceit has emerged. Since the art market is unregulated, it continues to attract individuals who don’t play by the rules—because, basically, there are none. Vigilance and common sense are the keys to staying out of trouble.

The remarkable thing about art fraud is that it can literally happen to anyone. As an art authenticator, I spend my days examining random works by Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Andy Warhol, and I continue to be amazed by the forged images and fabricated provenances that I see. Over time, I’ve witnessed reoccurring scams, allowing me to compile a list of ways to commit art fraud—if you really want to. Obviously, getting away with it is easier said than done. But the following five examples bear watching, lest you get taken in by the deceptions that lie below the surface.

Digital collage by Elvin Tavarez for artnet


1. If at First You Can’t Sell a Fake, Try, Try Again Of the seven artists I authenticate, Jackson Pollock is the most complicated. One of the reasons why is because his forgeries often come from highly improbable sources that are impossible to trace. Just during the last two years alone, I’ve learned of an alleged major “drip” painting that was discovered in Bulgaria (of all places) and another that supposedly belonged to Fidel Castro (of all people). Needless to say, neither one of these paintings turned out to be authentic.

What’s really troubling is the surprising number of “Pollock” canvases which I’ve examined, and deemed inauthentic, that then repeatedly pop up on the market like a game of Whac-A-Mole. Usually, there’s a six-month lag until the same picture shows up again. When it does reemerge, it often winds up on eBay. The seller offers platitudes about its glorious history, its extraordinary investment potential, and their rigorous vetting of the piece. Unfortunately, they conveniently leave out the “minor detail” that it was previously rejected as a fake.

An act of fraud is only committed when you sell a counterfeit painting. Up until then, you can do whatever you want with a fake picture. But if you know it’s fake beforehand, and money changes hands, then you’ve crossed over into felonious territory. The owners of these bogus Jackson Pollocks all know the truth about what they’re selling, which means they’re 100 percent liable. Proving their chicanery is the tough part. Far better to avoid getting entangled in these recycled purchases.


2. Sell a Painting Allegedly Found in a Storage Locker Dealing with a “made-up” provenance is an occupational hazard for an art authenticator. Some of the backstories that accompany fake Jean-Michel Basquiats are outrageous. I often hear about paintings and drawings that were part of a trade between the original owner and Jean-Michel for drugs. Inevitably, no one can produce the name of the drug dealer. Or I’m told that the pusher died years ago. This makes it impossible to verify the story—which is exactly what the owner wants. It’s probably true that early in Basquiat’s career he occasionally swapped his art for narcotics. But good luck proving that a particular work can be traced to a specific individual.

A more common strategy for a con artist is to claim that a painting was found in an abandoned storage locker. Everyone has heard of storage lockers whose contents were sold for non-payment. There are professional pickers who cobble together a living buying and selling recovered items from these containers. On rare occasion they score a valuable find; perhaps a piece of antique furniture or a motorcycle. However, I’ve never heard of a painting by a major artist turning up this way. It simply doesn’t work like that. Anyone who collects art is aware of how valuable Basquiat’s work has become. If you were fortunate enough to own one of his canvases, you would never keep it in a storage unit.


3. Sell an Overly Restored Work as an Original Everyone is familiar with the notorious Salvator Mundi painting. To this day, no one has been able to figure out whether it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci, by his assistants (with an assist from the master), or by a completely different artist. The point is that Christie’s sold it as a Leonardo—and obviously the buyer believed this attribution. But what happens if, at a later date, someone uncovers irrefutable evidence that it’s not a Leonardo? Was fraud then committed? The answer is “no,” as long as Christie’s was fully convinced that it was real (and could provide strong evidence to back up its opinion).

This leads to another question: At what point does a work of art cross over from being executed by a specific artist, to being altered so heavily that it’s no longer his work? For example, I knew of a Joseph Cornell box where the wooden shell was fabricated by Cornell, a few of the interior objects were selected by him, and the verso of the box bore Cornell’s signature. Yet, this was clearly an unfinished assemblage. From what I understood, the piece was later restored by someone knowledgeable in Cornell’s work. But the conservator clearly got carried away; the box now contained an overabundance of ephemeral objects and came off as too slick. If you’re going to commit art fraud by completing an unfinished work, make sure you exercise restraint.

The recent story about A.I. being used to complete one of Keith Haring’s last paintings is an example of a painting (which in my opinion) could no longer be considered a Haring for two reasons. One, the validity of an A.I.-generated work has not been established. And two, authentication always comes down to the artist’s intent. Keith Haring’s intention was to leave the painting in its incomplete state—it was meant as a comment on the AIDS epidemic.


4. Whitewash a Painting Speaking of the Salvator Mundi, one of the more provocative stories to emerge from the controversy was the owner’s blatant attempt to validate his acquisition. The owner, said to be Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, approached the Louvre with an offer to lend his painting. At first, the Louvre’s curators proffered interest. If nothing else, it would have led to a surge in admissions. But the deal fell apart once MBS’s representatives demanded the painting be hung directly across from the Mona Lisa. The unambiguous message would have been that the Salvator Mundi is a Leonardo masterpiece just like the Mona Lisa.

This sort of thing has been going on for years. The quickest way to confer authenticity on a painting is “guilt by association.” If you own a picture where all signs point to it being genuine—but you can’t prove it—your best approach is to find a way to align it with an institution. It doesn’t have to be MoMA or the Met (though that would be good); any legitimate public or university museum will do. By hanging your painting, the institution is conferring authenticity. This is how the Orlando Museum of Art got into trouble with its show of questionable Basquiats. Bear in mind this is not committing fraud. It’s only fraud if the lender and/or the institution have suspicions about a painting’s validity (and the owner’s intention to sell it).


5. When It Comes to Documentation, Less Is More Scammers go out of their way to create elaborate paperwork. Their logic is that the greater the paperwork, the more likely the painting will pass muster as authentic. Wrong. All this does is create obfuscation. Over time, I’ve been privy to some impressive paperwork, including documents that include so many gold seals and elaborate rubber stamps that they become works of art in their own right.

If you want to commit fraud, one way to do so is by forging an art authentication committee certificate. In recent years, this has become a growth industry. The Andy Warhol market is rife with fake certificates of authenticity from the now-defunct Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board. There have also been a blizzard of fake Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat certificates of authenticity, complete with counterfeit Julia Gruen and Gerard Basquiat signatures, respectively.

The trick for a con man is to master the subtleties and nuances of these certificates—which, so, far no one has been able to do. Forgers repeatedly make the same mistakes. They would be well-advised to watch Frank Abagnale, the slippery character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch Me If You Can and learn how to get it right.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/want-to-commit-art-fraud-an-expert-shares-5-strategies-2428909

Investigators say Chicago's Art Institute is holding onto 'Looted Art'

The Art Institute of Chicago. Ando Gallery. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
by Tom Mashberg and Graham Bowley

NEW YORK, NY.- New York investigators trying to seize a drawing from the Art Institute of Chicago filed an exacting 160-page motion Friday accusing the museum of blatantly ignoring evidence of an elaborate fraud undertaken to conceal that the artwork had been looted by the Nazis on the eve of World War II.

While the court papers, filed by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, did not accuse the museum of being party to the fraud, they said it had applied “willful blindness” to what the investigators said were clear indications that it was acquiring stolen property.

The drawing, “Russian War Prisoner,” by Egon Schiele, was purchased by the Art Institute in 1966. It is one of a number of works by Schiele that ended up in the hands of museums and collectors and have been sought by the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret entertainer from Vienna who was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. The institute paid about $5,500 for the drawing, which has been valued by investigators today at $1.25 million.

In a statement, the Art Institute said it had good title to the work by Schiele, an Austrian expressionist, and would fight the district attorney’s attempt to seize it.

“We have done extensive research on the provenance history of this work and are confident in our lawful ownership of the piece,” the museum said, adding: “If we had this work unlawfully, we would return it, but that is not the case here.”

But the investigators said in their court filing that the institute’s “failure” to vet the work properly “undercuts any arguments that AIC were truly good-faith purchasers.”

Much of what was presented in the investigators’ voluminous filing had been cited in civil court cases pursued in recent years by the Grünbaum heirs. The current detailed presentation — which included more than 100 exhibits designed to trace the path of the artwork from the hands of Grünbaum to the Nazis to the museum — was aimed at pressuring the institute to follow the lead of seven other museums and collectors who have recently turned over Schiele works once owned by Grünbaum to the district attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit.

The Art Institute has argued that the federal courts have already ruled in the matter, deciding that the heirs had come forward too late to lay claim to the work and that there was reason to believe the works were all inherited by Grünbaum’s sister-in-law, who passed them on to a Swiss dealer in the 1950s.

The New York investigators took aim at that account in their motion, devoting page after page to evidence that they said showed the provenance documents brought forward by the dealer, Eberhard Kornfeld, to prove his account, contained forged signatures or were altered long after he came into possession of the Schieles in the mid-1950s.

“There is one person in this case who doctored” documents, “and always did so in pencil — Eberhard Kornfeld,” Matthew Bogdanos, chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, said in the court filing.

The investigators contend that, while it is not possible to absolutely determine how Kornfeld secured the Grünbaum art, it was most likely provided to him by other art dealers known to have relations with the Nazis. The court filing includes inventory records that prosecutors said establish that the works were in the possession of a Nazi-controlled storehouse in Austria in 1938 after Grünbaum was sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, where he was killed in 1941.

The filing also cites documents to show that the sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, had already fled the country when the “Prisoner” drawing, and others later obtained by Kornfeld, were in the Vienna storage facility. As a result, the investigators said, the works could not have been sold by her to Kornfeld.

In arguing it holds good title to the work, the Art Institute has relied on two federal court rulings. In one, rendered in 2011 involving another Schiele work once owned by Grünbaum, the judge described Kornfeld’s account as credible, and added that, regardless, the heirs were not timely in bringing a claim.

In a second case brought by the heirs and decided in November, a federal court in New York, citing the earlier federal case, awarded the Art Institute ownership of “Prisoner” because it, too, ruled that the Grünbaum heirs had waited too long to make a claim for the drawing.

A lawyer for the heirs, Raymond Dowd, said he had filed to ask the judge to reconsider the decision in this case and to allow him to file an amended complaint.

“The Art Institute of Chicago recently prevailed in civil litigation in federal court regarding Egon Schiele’s ‘Russian War Prisoner,’ successfully demonstrating that the claimants’ suit lacked merit,” the institute said in its statement.

“Federal court,” the statement said, “has explicitly ruled that the Grünbaums’ Schiele art collection was ‘not looted’ and ‘remained in the Grünbaum family’s possession’ and was sold by Fritz Grünbaum’s sister-in-law Mathilde Lukacs in 1956.”

The institute’s decision to continue to fight the efforts by Manhattan prosecutors to retrieve its Schiele work makes it a lone holdout among the museums and collectors who received warrants from investigators telling them they possessed stolen property.

Among those returning Grünbaum works in September were the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library & Museum, both in New York; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California; Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and a longtime advocate of Holocaust restitution; and the estate of Serge Sabarsky, a well-known art collector.

Since then, two other institutions — the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College — agreed to surrender artworks once owned by Grünbaum.

One of the confusing aspects of the dispute is that a state court in New York has ruled in a completely opposite way and found that the Grünbaum Schieles were indeed looted.

While decisions in federal court have held that the Grünbaum heirs waited too long to start reclaiming the works, the 2018 New York state Supreme Court ruling found that Grünbaum had never sold or surrendered any of his works before his death, and that they were looted by the Nazis, making his heirs their true owners.

The ruling relied on the terms of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, a U.S. law that seeks to ensure that “claims to artwork and other property stolen or misappropriated by the Nazis are not unfairly barred by statutes of limitations.”

Investigators for the Manhattan district attorney’s office became involved after the New York state court ruling. Prosecutors have said they have jurisdiction because some of the Grünbaum works passed from Kornfeld to a Manhattan dealer, Otto Kallir.

The Schiele works, including the “Prisoner” drawing, were sold by Kallir to a variety of buyers, and the drawing ultimately ended up at the Art Institute.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.https://artdaily.cc/news/166994/Investigators-say-Chicago-s-Art-Institute-is-holding-onto--Looted-Art-

A German Museum Employee Has Been Caught ‘Shamelessly’ Swapping Original Paintings for Fakes to Fund His Lavish Lifestyle

The man is said to have spent the money on a new apartment, wristwatches, and a Rolls-Royce.

Franz von Stuck, The Fairy Tale of the Frog King (1891). Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.

A German museum employee has confessed to an audacious scheme, after he was caught swapping out paintings with forgeries and selling the originals to fund a luxury lifestyle. He has received a suspended prison sentence of one year and nine months and must pay back more than €60,000 ($63,500) to the unnamed German museum, the Munich District Court ordered on September 11.

The man, now aged 30, stole three paintings while working at the museum in Munich as a technician between May 2016 and April 2018. He replaced the paintings with fakes while they were in storage, consigning the originals to a Munich auction house.

The defendant allegedly used the money to pay debts and fund a luxury lifestyle, the court heard. “Among other things, he bought a new apartment, expensive wristwatches, and bought a Rolls-Royce,” read the verdict, noting that the man now showed remorse. “He stated that he had acted without thinking. He could no longer explain his behavior today.”

After replacing Franz Stuck’s Das Märchen vom Froschkönig (The Fairy Tale of the Frog King) (1891) with a forgery, the man pretended the original was a family heirloom and it was sold at Ketterer Kunst auction house in May 2017 to a Swiss gallery for €70,000 ($74,000). After auction house fees, he received $49,127.40 ($52,000).

Two more paintings that were switched out for fakes, Franz von Defregger’s Zwei Mädchen beim Holzsammeln im Gebirge (Two Girls Gathering Wood in the Mountains) and Eduard von Grützner’s Die Weinprüfung (Tasting the Wine), brought in an additional €11,490.50 ($12,700). An attempt to sell a fourth painting, Franz von Defregger’s Dirndl, at another Munich auction house was unsuccessful. The man made €60,617 ($64,000) in total.

“We have, of course, fulfilled our duty of care in full and have researched the works mentioned extensively,” a spokesperson for Ketterer Kunst told Artnet News. “We regret that the works were stolen from the museum with such high criminal energy. We cooperated closely with the LKA (Bavarian State Criminal Police Office) at an early stage and handed over all documents to solve this case.”

The unnamed German museum is currently trying to arrange for the return of the pictures, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung. It apparently has many valuable German paintings languishing in storage thanks to a history of receiving bequests from local foundations and families.

“The defendant shamelessly exploited the opportunity to access the storage rooms in the employer’s buildings and sold valuable cultural assets in order to secure an exclusive standard of living for himself and to show off,” the verdict summarized.

The apparent vulnerability of the museum’s collection to theft while in storage recalls the recent scandal of a senior curator at the British Museum accused of stealing some 1,500 objects, several of which were sold for cheap on eBay. Most of these items had never been catalogued, revealing the complex challenges faced by museums tasked with keeping track of vast holdings.


https://news.artnet.com/art-world/german-museum-employee-swapped-paintings-fakes-2367937Jo Lawson-Tancred, September 25, 2023

Hartwig Fischer, British Museum Director resigns after worker fired for theft

Hartwig Fischer, the director of the British Museum, in London on Aug. 27, 2020. Just days after the museum announced that it had fired an employee who was suspected of looting its storerooms and selling items on eBay, Fischer announced Friday, Aug. 25, 2023, that he was resigning, effective immediately. (Tom Jamieson/The New York Times) by Alex Marshall

LONDON.- Just days after the British Museum announced that it had fired an employee who was suspected of looting its storerooms and selling items on eBay, the museum’s director announced Friday that he was resigning, effective immediately.

Hartwig Fischer, a German art historian who had led the world-renowned institution since 2016, said in a news release that he was leaving the post at a time “of the utmost seriousness.”

Fischer, 60, said that it was “evident” that under his leadership, the museum did not adequately respond to warnings that a curator may be stealing items. “The responsibility for that failure must ultimately rest with the director,” Fischer said.

A few hours after Fischer’s resignation, the museum announced that its deputy director, Jonathan Williams, had also “agreed to voluntarily step back from his normal duties” until an investigation into the thefts was complete.

Trouble has been brewing at the British Museum since it announced last week that items had been stolen from its collection. The museum did not say how many objects were taken or how valuable they were. But it said that the missing, stolen or damaged pieces included “gold jewelry and “gems of semiprecious stones and glass” dating from as far back as the 15th century B.C.

Ever since, a stream of revelations around the museum’s handling of the thefts undermined Fischer’s position. On Tuesday, The New York Times and the BBC published emails showing that he had downplayed concerns raised by Ittai Gradel, a Denmark-based antiquities dealer, about potential thefts.

In an email to a trustee in October 2022, Fischer said that “the case has been thoroughly investigated,” adding that “there is no evidence to substantiate the allegations.”

Fischer initially defended his response, saying in a statement Wednesday that his handling of the allegations had been robust and that the museum had taken the warnings “incredibly seriously.” The extent of the problem only became clear later, he said, after the museum undertook “a full audit” of its collections.

His defense did little to quell criticism in Britain. On Wednesday, The Times of London wrote that the thefts were “a national disgrace, calling into question the museum’s own claims for its stewardship of cultural treasures, and for which it needs to give a full accounting.”

The unfolding drama was also watched closely in countries that are seeking the return of pieces in the British Museum’s vast collection, which includes more than 8 million items, many from Britain’s former colonies. Lawmakers in Greece and Nigeria used the thefts as an opportunity to call for the return of contested artifacts.

Lina Mendoni, Greece’s culture minister, said in an interview Monday with To Vima, a Greek newspaper, that the case reinforces her country’s demands for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, a series of sculptures and frieze panels, sometimes known as the Elgin marbles, that once decorated the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. The thefts raised questions about the “safety and integrity of all of the museum’s exhibits,” Mendoni said.

And Thursday, Nigerian officials reiterated their long-standing call for the British Museum to return a collection of artifacts known as the Benin Bronzes, which British troops looted in 1897.

Fischer’s time at the museum coincided with a sea change in attitudes over what rightfully belongs in the West’s museums, and an increase in the volume and intensity of restitution demands. He took over at the British Museum in 2016, having formerly run the State Art Collections of Dresden, a prestigious collection of museums in Germany.

In late July, shortly before the news broke that the museum had fired a worker suspected of theft, Fischer announced that he would step down from his role next year. But as the crisis at the museum deepened this week, his position looked increasingly untenable.

The turmoil has come at “a very bad moment,” said Charles Saumarez Smith, a former director of the Royal Academy of Arts, in London. The British Museum is expected to announce a major renovation project that The Financial Times has reported will cost 1 billion pounds, or about $1.26 billion, and the current uncertainty could make fundraising much more difficult, he said.

The resignation was “an act of symbolic bloodletting,” Saumarez Smith said, but it may not end the British Museum’s woes. There are clearly “bigger issues that need to be resolved” at the institution, he added, including the questions about whether it has a handle on its inventory.

Fischer said in his statement that he expected the museum to “come through this moment and emerge stronger” but that he had “come to the conclusion that my presence is proving a distraction.”

“That is the last thing I would want,” he said.

George Osborne, the museum chair, said in the release that the board had accepted Fischer’s decision. “I am clear about this: We are going to fix what has gone wrong,” Osborne said. “The museum has a mission that lasts across generations. We will learn, restore confidence and deserve to be admired once again.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
https://artdaily.cc/news/161675/British-Museum-Director-resigns-after-worker-fired-for-theft

British Museum worker fired over missing treasures

The British Museum has sacked a member of staff and imposed “emergency measures” to increase security after it found items from its collection to be missing.

It launched an independent review of security after items including gold jewellery and gems of semi-precious stones and glass dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD were found to be missing, stolen or damaged.

Legal action against the dismissed member of staff will be taken and the matter is also being investigated by the economic crime command of the Metropolitan police.

The museum’s independent review, led by Sir Nigel Boardman, a former trustee, and Lucy D’Orsi, chief constable of the British Transport Police, will investigate and make recommendations on future security arrangements. It will also “kickstart a vigorous programme to recover the missing items”, the museum said.

Most of the missing items were small pieces kept in a storeroom belonging to one of the museum’s collections. None had recently been on public display, and they were kept primarily for academic and research purposes.

George Osborne, chair of the British Museum, said: “The trustees of the British Museum were extremely concerned when we learned earlier this year that items of the collection had been stolen. “The trustees have taken decisive action to deal with the situation, working with the team at the museum. We called in the police, imposed emergency measures to increase security, set up an independent review into what happened and lessons to learn, and used all the disciplinary powers available to us to deal with the individual we believe to be responsible.

“Our priority is now threefold: first, to recover the stolen items; second, to find out what, if anything, could have been done to stop this; and third, to do whatever it takes, with investment in security and collection records, to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

“This incident only reinforces the case for the reimagination of the museum we have embarked upon. It’s a sad day for all who love our British Museum, but we’re determined to right the wrongs and use the experience to build a stronger museum.” Hartwig Fischer, the museum’s director, said: “This is a highly unusual incident. I know I speak for all colleagues when I say that we take the safeguarding of all the items in our care extremely seriously.

“The museum apologises for what has happened, but we have now brought an end to this – and we are determined to put things right. “We have already tightened our security arrangements and we are working alongside outside experts to complete a definitive account of what is missing, damaged and stolen. This will allow us to throw our efforts into the recovery of objects.”

Boardman said: “The British Museum has been the victim of theft and we are absolutely determined to use our review in order to get to the bottom of what happened, and ensure lessons are learnt. We are working alongside the Metropolitan police in the interest of criminal justice to support any investigations.

“Furthermore, the recovery programme will work to ensure the stolen items are returned to the museum. It will be a painstaking job, involving internal and external experts, but this is an absolute priority – however long it takes – and we are grateful for the help we have already received.” The British Museum said it would not comment further while the police investigation continued.

A spokesperson for the Met said: “We have been working alongside the British Museum. “There is currently an ongoing investigation – there is no arrest and inquiries continue. We will not be providing any further information at this time.”

It is understood that the museum hopes the review of security will be completed by the end of the year.

Items that have gone missing from the museum in previous years include a number of coins and medals taken in the 1970s, and Roman coins stolen in a 1993 break-in.

In 2002, the museum reviewed security after a 2,500-year-old 12cm-high Greek statue was stolen by a member of the public. Two years later, Chinese j went missing.

In 2017, it was revealed a £750,000 Cartier diamond ring from the heritage asset collection had been reported absent in 2011.

Harriet Sherwood Arts and culture correspondent - Wed 16 Aug 2023 20.37 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/16/british-museum-sacks-staff-member-after-items-vanish-from-collection

Italian Police Have Arrested Suspected Forger Pasquele ‘Lino’ Frongia for Allegedly Faking Paintings by Franz Hals, El Greco, and Others

The forgery ring is believed to have been masterminded by French collector Giuliano Ruffini.
Sarah Cascone, June 28, 2023

Lino Frongia. Photo ©Lino Frongia.

Once again, Italian authorities have arrested Pasquale “Lino” Frongia, the artist suspected of forging a string of Old Master paintings that have appeared at high-profile museums and made millions at auctions by passing as the work of Frans Hals, Orazio Gentileschi, Diego Velázquez, El Greco, and Parmigianino, among others.

The 65-year-old painter was first apprehended in 2019, under a warrant from French judge Aude Burési, who is investigating the forgery ring believed to have been masterminded by Giuliano Ruffini, a French art collector. But the court in Bologna declined to extradite Frongia, citing inconsistent charges. After Burési issued a new European warrant, police arrested Frongia in Emilia, according to the Art Newspaper.

The long-running investigation into the fake Old Masters first made headlines in 2016, when authorities raided an exhibition featuring the collection of the prince of Lichtenstein on view at the Caumont Centre d’Art in Aix-en-Provence. They seized the centerpiece of the show, a stunning painting of Venus believed to be by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Soon, more paintings began to fall under suspicion, all linked to one name: Ruffini. Rumors had been circulating about his ties to forgeries for years—Italian police had even raided his home prior to the Cranach seizure—and now, one by one, the individual works are being flagged as fakes.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Venus (1531).
The painting is now believed to be a fake. ©Liechtenstein. The Princely Collections, Vaduz–Vienna.
In his defense, Ruffini has both denied the forensic analysis identifying the works as contemporary fakes, and insisted that he never claimed that any of the paintings were authentic Old Masters—the attributions to some of art history’s biggest names were first raised by the experts, not him.

Last November, Ruffini was reportedly on the run; police arrested him the following month and extradited him to France. He is currently under house arrest, facing charges of gang fraud, forgery, and money laundering.

The collector’s son, Mathieu Ruffini, is also suspected of being involved. Financial records show that the younger Ruffini made several payments to Frongia, including a $740,000 wire transfer in 2007. He was charged with money laundering and is out on bail.


https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-police-arrest-suspected-old-master-forger-2328903

Florida art scammer sentenced to over 2 years in federal prison

An undated photo provided by The United States Department of Justice of a fake Jean-Michel Basquiat work sold by Daniel Elie Bouaziz for $12 million. The Florida art dealer who promised bargains on works he claimed were originals by master artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring and Henri Matisse has been sentenced to more than two years in federal prison for laundering money made running a counterfeit scheme, federal officials said. (The United States Department of Justice via The New York Times) by Livia Albeck-Ripka

NEW YORK, NY.- A Florida art dealer who promised bargains on works he claimed were originals by master artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring and Henri Matisse has been sentenced to more than two years in federal prison for running a counterfeit scheme, federal officials said. The man, Daniel Elie Bouaziz, 69, owned several art galleries in Palm Beach County, Florida, through which he operated the counterfeit scheme. He was sentenced on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Miami to 27 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay a $15,000 fine, court filings show.

Bouaziz pleaded guilty in February to one charge of money laundering on the condition that federal prosecutors drop 16 other counts, according to the documents. Neither Bouaziz nor his lawyer could immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday evening.

According to prosecutors, Bouaziz, a French and Israeli citizen born in Algeria, was in the United States on a B-2 visitor’s visa. They said the pieces he had represented as authentic works were cheap reproductions he had bought through online auctions. He was charged in June after an investigation that included the serving of search warrants at his galleries, a review of financial records and undercover purchases of what prosecutors had deemed to be fraudulent art.

According to the federal complaint, Bouaziz conducted his art dealing through three companies: Galerie Danieli, Danieli Fine Art and VIP Rentals LLC. The website for Danieli Fine Art advertises a collection from a wide range of notable artists, including Monet, Rodin, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Willem de Kooning. But counterfeit Andy Warhols were what sent Bouaziz to prison.

On Oct. 25, 2021, Bouaziz sold what he had claimed were “authentic, original Warhol pieces,” some of them “signed by the artist,” to an unwitting customer, federal prosecutors said. The customer gave Bouaziz a $200,000 down payment, which he then wired to other accounts. According to court documents, Bouaziz then took five artworks to the buyer’s house. Federal prosecutors did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday evening, but in a sentencing memorandum, they noted that Bouaziz “knew some of the pieces he sold were not genuine.” In one instance, they added, he sold fraudulent art to an undercover agent for $25,0000.

Bouaziz, they added, had won over many in Palm Beach with his philanthropy, his luxury cars and invitations to lunch and art events. But his generosity, prosecutors said, belied a darker reality. “Bouaziz painted a picture of himself that he wanted others to see and believe,” they said.

A restitution hearing is scheduled for Aug. 16. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

https://artdaily.cc/news/157920/Florida-art-scammer-sentenced-to-over-2-years-in-federal-prison

Spanish Police Have Seized Five Fake Goya and Velázquez Paintings Supposedly Worth a Collective $84 Million The works will go on view in an exhibition of seized forgeries curated in conjunction with Spanish police.

Sarah Cascone, April 14, 2023

Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Mariana of Austria (1652–1653), detail. Collection of the Museo del Prado, Madrid. A recently seized forgery.

Spanish police have seized five Old Master forgeries that were being sold for a collective €76 million ($84 million). Four of the works were being marketed as the work of Francisco Goya, and the fifth as a Diego Velázquez. Investigators got wind of the paintings earlier this year, when the sellers were offering them to a number of art dealers, the London Times reported.

Police from the Patrimonio Histórico division confiscated the works on two separate raids in the coastal city of Valencia—the faux Velázquez on February 8, and the rest some weeks later. Authorities are investigating four suspects, who have been interviewed, but not arrested, CNN reported. The sellers had also allegedly produced fake provenance documents in the hopes of fooling potential collectors into believing these workers were the genuine article.

“The most important thing about this crime is that it devalues the work of our creative people, in this case, great painters in our history,” Gabriela Bravo, head of the regional government’s justice department, said in a statement, noting that art forgery is the fourth-most lucrative type of crime in Spain, after drugs, weapons, and prostitution.

Manuela Mena, a Goya specialist, and David Gimilio, an art technician at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia, have both confirmed that the works were forgeries—but it doesn’t seem like it was that difficult to tell. The priciest of the five works, at €50 million ($55 million) was a copy of Velazquez’s Portrait of Mariana of Austria, the composition cropped to show only her face. The full-length original was painted for the Spanish Royal Family, and is famously in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Two of the ersatz Goyas were also copies of works at the Prado, but by the 18th-century German artist Anton Rafael Mengs. Each priced at €7 million ($7.7 million), the works were based on details from Portrait of Charles IV and Portrait of María Luisa de Parma, Princess of Asturias.

The €8 million Blessing of Santa Rosa de Lima appears to be done in the style 17th-century Italian painters Carlo Maratta or Pietro Antonio de Pietri. The final forgery, titled Allegory of the Pillar of Zaragoza, “was a work of very low quality and not even done by a professional painter,” according to authorities. It had an asking price of €4 million ($4.4 million).

All the forgeries are believed to have originated with the same owner, a Valencia collector who died in 2020. The Patrimonio Histórico police have partnered with the Museu Valencià de la Illustració i de la Modernitat on an exhibition of 112 counterfeit artworks it has seized in recent years.

A recently seized forgery, offered as Blessing of Santa Rosa de Lima by Francisco Goya. It appears to be done in the style 17th-century Italian painters Carlo Maratta or Pietro Antonio de Pietri. A recently seized forgery, offered as Blessing of Santa Rosa de Lima by Francisco Goya. It appears to be done in the style 17th-century Italian painters Carlo Maratta or Pietro Antonio de Pietri.

The newly identified fakes will soon join the display, according to Spanish news outlet Vozpópuli. Titled “False: The art of deception or art deception,” the exhibition opened late last month and runs through September 3. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/spanish-police-seize-goya-velazquez-forgeries-2285486

An Auctioneer Has Confessed to Playing a Major Role in Producing Fake Basquiats Displayed at the Orlando Museum of Art Los Angeles auctioneer Michael Barzman pled guilty to lying to the FBI about creating the works.

Sarah Cascone, April 12, 2023

Installation view of the "Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Thaddeus Mumford, Jr. Venice Collection" at the Orlando Museum of Art, 2022. Courtesy of the OMA.

The exhibition had one of those fairytale backstories: the Orlando Museum of Art had lucked into a storage unit full of previously unseen paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat, which it was showing to the public for the first time. Now, more than nine months after a dramatic FBI raid shuttered the exhibition “Heroes & Monsters,” which ran from February to June 2022, the truth is out. The paintings were not the work of the late street artist—whose work has sold for over $100 million at auction—but a series of forgeries by 45-year-old Los Angeles auctioneer Michael Barzman and an accomplice identified only as J.F.

On April 11, the United States attorney’s office for the Central District of California charged Barzman with making false statements to the FBI. He had previously denied both having painted the works or having had someone make them for him when speaking to the FBI in 2022. He has pled guilty to the charge, and faces up to five years in jail. “J.F. spent a maximum of 30 minutes on each image and as little as five minutes on others, and then gave them to [Barzman] to sell on eBay,” the plea agreement said, according to a statement from the attorney’s office. “[Barzman] and J.F. agreed to split the money that they made from selling the fraudulent paintings.”

The two are said to have created 20 to 30 fake works around 2012 that they attributed to the artist. Barzman, whose business was auctioning off the contents of abandoned storage units, concocted a fake provenance for the works: Basquiat was said to have sold the cardboard paintings to television screenwriter Thad Mumford for $5,000 in 1982. Decades later, Mumford was behind in rent payments on his storage unit, and its contents went up for auction. It was a compelling story, and it was one that inspired storage hunter William Force and his financial backer, Lee Mangin, to purchase the lot for $15,000. After a messy lawsuit surrounding one of its opinions, the Basquiat estate had shut down its authentication committee in 2012, making it difficult for Force and Magnin to get anyone to officially weigh in on the question of authenticity.

But the fake works nonetheless found champions in some art experts, including Basquiat scholar Jordana Moore Saggese and curator Diego Cortez, founding member of the Basquiat estate’s authentication committee who died in 2021. Both agreed the works looked legitimate (according to her affidavit, Moore Saggese in said she was paid $60,000 by the Basquiat artworks’ owners in 2017 to assess the paintings). Handwriting expert James Blanco also found that the works’ signatures were a match to that of the artist. Due to these factors, it seems that the Orlando Museum leadership was confident that everything was legitimate and the museum published an exhibition catalogue with new essays on the 25 works, and touting a 500 percent uptick in attendance driven by the show. Nevertheless, suspicion about the works arose quickly after the show opened in Orlando in February 2022. The main red flag was a FedEx logo on one of the pieces of cardboard—the company hadn’t introduced it until 1994, six years after Basquiat’s death. (The FBI’s Art Crime Team later confronted Barzman about one of the works, pointing out that one of the works had been painting over a mailing label with his name.)

The raid didn’t happen until June, less than a week before the show was set to close—but the FBI had been investigating the case for years.

Installation view of the "Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Thaddeus Mumford, Jr. Venice Collection" at the Orlando Museum of Art, 2022. Courtesy of the OMA.

Mumford, it turned out, had told an FBI agent back in 2014 that he had never purchased any Basquiats or kept any in his storage unit. He even signed an FBI affidavit the year before he died in 2018, admitting that “at no time in the 1980s or at any other time did I meet with Jean-Michel Basquiat, and at no time did I acquire or purchase any paintings by him.” Following the FBI’s seizure of the suspect works, the museum fired Aaron De Groft as its director and chief executive. He has not been charged with any wrongdoing. The beleaguered institution has formed a “task force” to help rebuild the public’s trust following the fiasco.

An archived version of Barzman’s auction website stated that he “specialize[d] in storage auctions, abandoned property, buying gold and silver, collectibles, Hollywood memorabilia, classic cars, vintage instruments and more,” noting that “since 2015, Michael has been a bonded auctioneer & appraiser of rare memorabilia and collectibles.”

The FBI investigation into the case is still ongoing.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/auctioneer-orlando-museum-art-basquiat-2283954

Man Accused of Selling Faked Warhols Arrested After Wife Goes Missing

BY SHANTI ESCALANTE-DE MATTEI
January 10, 2023 2:16pm

One of the paintings Walshe sold to Revolver Gallery.

Brian Walshe, a Massachusetts man who was arrested after his wife went missing, is the subject of renewed scrutiny after the investigation into him brought back to light his alleged sales of fake Andy Warhol paintings.

In 2016, Walshe, with some assistance from his wife Ann, listed two paintings that they claimed were made by Warhol as a part of his 1979 “Shadows” series on eBay for a combined price of $100,000. According to the original complaint, written that same year by FBI special agent Kristin D. Koch, the item description of the paintings claimed that Walshe had “terribly overpaid” for the pair of paintings in a 2007 Christie’s auction for $240,000. He was offering them for $100,000 on eBay, he explained, because “it is much cheaper and because Christie’s won’t be able to auction our pieces till May 2017.”

Due to some dire financial need, Walshe was willing to offer the pieces for much less than they were worth. Walshe also wrote that the pieces were numbered and registered with the Warhol Foundation, and that they had additional provenance documents from Christie’s.

Two employees from Los Angeles’s Revolver Gallery flew to Boston, where Walshe resides, to pick up and pay for the two paintings, which they bought for a total of $80,000. One representative of the gallery waited in the car while an assistant went into the Four Seasons hotel to retrieve the paintings and hand over a cashiers check made out to Walshe’s business account.

The assistant couldn’t see the authentication stamps from the Warhol Foundation because a frame was covering the backs of the paintings. She sent a photo of the paintings to her boss, who was waiting in the car, and he approved the transaction. However, after the Revolver Gallery employees compared the pictures they had originally seen of the paintings on eBay to the works they had in their hands, they saw significant differences and demanded a refund.

In the coming months, Walshe would allegedly delay, and according to the complaint, he ended up sending only $30,000 of the $80,000 he owed Revolver Gallery. After some time, Revolver Gallery got the FBI involved.

Upon an investigation, the FBI found that Walshe was, in fact, in possession of two possibly authentic Warhol paintings that he had stolen from a South Korean friend he had made in the one year he attended Carnegie Mellon.

The FBI said that Walshe had offered to sell numerous works his friend held, including a porcelain statue from the Tang Dynasty, two Keith Haring Prints, and the two Warhol paintings in question. But after Walshe took them, his friend was never able to get back the two Warhols that Walshe had taken from him.

When Walshe posted the paintings for sale on eBay, he had allegedly taken pictures of these stolen paintings to land the deal with Revolver Gallery, but passed off two faked paintings to Revolver Gallery when it came time to sell. Although Walshe faces counts of wire fraud and other crimes, he has not yet been charged, in part because there is another case open against him that concerns whether he stole from his late father’s estate after destroying his father’s will, according to the New York Post.

Walshe’s wife, Ana, was declared missing by her company on January 4. Walshe was arrested and appeared in court on Monday after investigators found that he had violated the terms of his probation, reported Fox News.

Investigators found blood in the family basement and a damaged knife. They also found that Walshe went to Home Depot, a violation of his house probation, to purchase $450 worth of cleaning supplies and had Googled “how to dispose of a 115-pound woman’s body.” The Walshes have three young sons.

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/man-faked-warhols-arrested-after-wife-goes-missing-brian-walshe-1234653123/

Italian Police Confiscated a $4.2 Million Rubens Painting From a Genoa Exhibition as Part of a Fraud Investigation

A decade ago, the owners illegally exported the piece and staged fake sales abroad to boost its value, according to the Carabinieri.

Peter Paul Rubens, The resurrected Christ appears to his mother (c. 1612-16). Courtesy of the Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale. Last week, Italian police pulled a Peter Paul Rubens painting from a Genoa exhibition, citing an investigation into the artwork’s two owners, who have been accused of money laundering and illegal exportation.

Now, according to the Art Newspaper, the 17th-century canvas has been returned to the show, called “Rubens in Genoa.” However, the probe into the owners continues, as law enforcement officials look into how they allegedly smuggled the painting out of the country a decade ago in an elaborate plot to boost its market value.

At the heart of the case is The resurrected Christ appears to his mother (c. 1612-16), a six-foot-tall painting, attributed to Rubens and his workshop, that depicts the Madonna kneeling before Christ in a cobalt blue cloak. On view now alongside 18 other Rubens works in Genoa’s Doge’s Palace, it is insured for €4 million ($4.2 million).

The artwork’s current owners acquired the artwork from the noble Cambiaso family for €300,000 in 2012, according to the Carabinieri agency for the protection of cultural heritage in Genoa.

However, just two years later, in 2014, the purchasers, along with an accountant and his son, exported the piece to Prague by claiming it was created by an unknown Flemish artist and was worth only €25,000.

They are believed to have obtained an export certificate from an accomplice who worked at the superintendent export office in Pisa. That same office was temporarily shut down in 2019 due to “irregularities” in the issuance of other certificates, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported.

The four suspects then established companies abroad to stage fake sales of the Rubens painting in an attempt to bolster its worth.

In 2015, conservators controversially removed a layer of the painting’s surface to uncover a second woman between Christ and the Madonna, likely from an earlier iteration of the composition. “The figure in question will be the subject of further investigations,” the Carabinieri explained.

That’s a safe prediction, and not just because of the legal investigation surrounding the painting. Questions over whether Rubens was indeed the artist behind The resurrected Christ appears to his mother have been raised in recent years as well.

“No Genoese source and no document attests the reference to Rubens of the painting exhibited in Genoa,” Vittorio Sgarbi, an art historian now serving as Italy’s undersecretary to the culture minister, said in a statement to La Repubblica. He alluded to the “uncertain quality of the work” and noted that the “history of the art lived for three hundred years without this improbable Rubens.”

“I invite those who have carried out the preliminary investigations, who have led to the seizure of the work, to greater prudence and rigor in evaluations, to avoid embarrassing mistakes,” the undersecretary went on. “Criminal liability cannot be assumed for a controversial attribution, deviated from the illusory and presumed market value.”

In response, the Genoa show’s co-curator Anna Orlando said that “the work is not under discussion.” Orlando pointed out that the exhibition’s other organizer, Nils Büttner, is “the highest authority on Rubens in the world.”

Taylor Dafoe, January 4, 2023 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-police-confiscate-rubens-painting-genoa-fraud-smuggling-2238331

Kherson's museums now display shattered cases and missing treasures

A smashed display case at the regional history museum in Kherson, Ukraine, on Sunday Nov. 20, 2022. The museum is another cultural institution ransacked and looted by Russian forces before they withdrew from the city in defeat. (Lynsey Addario/The New York Times) by Lynsey Addario

KHERSON, UKRAINE.- The principal artist designing the exhibitions at Kherson’s regional history museum, Anatoliy Gryaznov, was near tears. The collection to which he had dedicated a lifetime was mostly gone, he said, another cultural institution ransacked and looted by Russian forces before they withdrew from the city in defeat.

Glass display cases were smashed. Deep gouges in the floor marked the paths along which Russian soldiers had dragged tombstones and other heavy objects.

“I spent my whole life working in this museum,” Gryaznov said. “And now it is all gone. Twenty years of my life — gone.”

According to the head of the culture department at its City Council, Svitlana Dumynska, Kherson had “one of the most impressive collections of regional museums in Ukraine.” They are now in ruins. At the regional history museum, the section on guns and weapons was decimated, the Russians taking everything they could carry. A few heavier objects remained, alongside the whole of the nature exhibit.

At the nearby Kherson Art Museum, local officials said, religious paintings from the 17th and 20th centuries were torn from the walls. Ukrainian art from the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries was missing, along with contemporary art from the last 100 years. The Kherson police have opened a criminal investigation, classifying looting as a war crime.

Ukraine’s minister of culture, Oleksandr Tkachenko, said about 80% of the museums’ collections were gone: “Mostly the most valuable things were stolen.” The deputy governor of the Kherson region, Serhii Khlan, told journalists on Monday that there were reports that a second branch of the regional history museum — in Kakhova, east of the Dnieper River, near an important hydroelectric plant — had also been robbed.

The Russians also cleared out the entire section of Kherson’s history museum that was dedicated to World War II, including the identification documents and medals of a Nazi soldier bearing Hitler’s signature. They seem to have done little to conceal what they were taking.

Days after their soldiers fled the city, images circulated on Ukrainian social media that appeared to show objects from the Kherson Art Museum being unloaded at a museum in Crimea, the peninsula that Russia unlawfully annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Museum experts identified several works of art in the pictures, including paintings by Ukrainian modernists Ivan Pokhitonov and Mykhailo Andrienko-Nechitaylo.

In an interview this month with the news outlet The Moscow Times, the Crimean museum’s director, Andrei Malgin, confirmed that the artworks had come to his institution, the Central Museum of Taurida in Simferopol. “I have been instructed to take the exhibits of the Kherson Art Museum for temporary storage and ensure their safety until they are returned to their rightful owner,” he said.

https://artdaily.cc/news/152010/Kherson-s-museums-now-display-shattered-cases-and-missing-treasures#.Y3--D3bMKUk
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

A $100 Million Willem de Kooning Painting Finally Returns to the Arizona Museum It Was Stolen From 37 Years Ago

The work suffered significant damage from the theft but has been carefully restored at the Getty Museum. Jo Lawson-Tancred, September 28, 2022

University of Arizona staff at the inspection and authentication of the recovered Willem de Kooning painting Woman-Ochre (1954–55), ©the Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Bob Demers/UANews, courtesy of the University of Arizona Museum of Art.

A Willem de Kooning painting that was stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 1985 has finally returned home. A New Mexico gallery called Manzanita Ridge Furniture and Antiques found Woman-Ochre (1954-55) in 2017 among the possessions of Jerry and Rita Alter, whose estate it had bought for $2,000 after they both died.

The museum’s interim director, Olivia Miller, recalled the moment she arrived in Silver City to see the long-lost work. “I was able to kneel down on the floor in front of it and take it in. It was a really special moment.” “Seeing it come back was this moment of relief and peace of mind,” she said. “Everyone on campus is excited, everyone at the Getty is excited. The fact that one painting can make all these people come together is—I don’t know—there really are not words for it.”

Willem de Kooning’s Woman-Ochre (1954–55) in August 2017, shortly after it was recovered in New Mexico and returned to the University of Arizona Museum of Art. ©2019 the Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The Alters, who were schoolteachers, are now believed to have stolen the work in broad daylight, the day after Thanksgiving, with Rita distracting the security guards so that Jerry could cut the painting out of its frame. The heist only took 15 minutes.

This rough treatment came at a cost, causing significant harm to the painting which is today valued at $100 million. The painting underwent a complex restoration process, performed free of charge by the Getty. “The brutal way in which it was ripped from its lining caused severe paint flaking and tears, not to mention the damage caused by the blade that was used to slice it from its frame,” said the Getty’s senior paintings conservator, Ulrich Birkmaier.

The process involved removing several layers of varnish, re-bonding the flaking paint, and using precise dental tools and minuscule quantities of paint to fill in the rips and tears. Afterward, it went on public display at the Getty over the summer.

Woman-Ochre is from the artist’s “Woman” series. It will be publicly exhibited at the Arizona museum from October 8 and will appear In a documentary film, The Thief Collector, which offers further insight into the Alters, and will be screened at Centennial Hall at 7 p.m. on October 6.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/stolen-de-kooning-returns-arizona-museum-2182926

Churchill portrait disappears in art heist in Canada

Yousuf Karsh’s famous portrait of Winston Churchill, taken in December 1941 in Ottawa.Credit. Photo: Yousuf Karsh.

NEW YORK, NY.- It is among the most famous photographic images of a statesman. Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, glowers, hand on hip. For decades, an original signed print of the image has hung on a wall in a landmark hotel in Ottawa, Ontario.

But on Friday, an employee noticed that something was off with the photograph, shot by renowned portraitist Yousuf Karsh.

The frame was askew. It did not match the others on the wall. When the hotel, the Fairmont Château Laurier, called Jerry Fielder, director of Karsh’s estate, he thought there was “no chance” that the picture could have been replaced by a copy.

Then they sent him a close-up picture of what was supposed to be Karsh’s signature. “I was stunned,” Fielder said, noting that it had been forged. “This was a heist.”

The photograph, taken in 1941 after Churchill addressed the Canadian Parliament during World War II, is known as the “Roaring Lion” for the fierce gaze of the British leader, and the defiance that many said it captured as the Allied forces forged ahead in a difficult and bloody war. It catapulted Karsh, an Armenian Canadian then 33, to international fame. He went on to photograph Ernest Hemingway, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Georgia O’Keeffe and Nikita Khrushchev.

Karsh had a special relationship with the Fairmont hotel: In 1936, he held his first exhibition there. In 1972, he opened his photography studio in the building. Later, he and his wife, Estrellita Karsh, moved in. “We traveled so much it was difficult to keep up a big home,” Estrellita Karsh, 92, said by phone Tuesday evening. “I loved it,” she added, “because a hotel is like a little city.” She and her husband, who died in 2002, gave the original print of Churchill, along with several others, to the hotel, after living there for nearly two decades. Karsh said that when she learned that the picture was missing, she was incredulous.

“Churchill was important in his life; he was important in everybody’s life,” Karsh said. “When he photographed him, Britain was on the verge of giving up.” Her husband, she added, had practiced making the image on a man who “looked like Churchill from the neck down.”

In a news release Tuesday, the Fairmont hotel said that it had informed local authorities of the picture’s disappearance, and, as a precautionary measure, had removed other photographs that were hanging in the reading lounge of the building. “We are deeply saddened by this brazen act,” said Geneviève Dumas, the hotel’s general manager, adding that the hotel was incredibly proud to house the Karsh collection. In an interview with CTV News, she said the public had sent in photographs of themselves in front of the famous image, which revealed that it had been taken sometime between Dec. 25 and Jan. 6.

The hotel is asking anyone who saw or noticed anything unusual at the hotel during that time to contact them, Dumas said. Fielder said the print was an original made from the original negative by Karsh in his Château Laurier studio. He said it was 20 by 24 inches, printed on photographic paper and mounted on archival board.

When Karsh closed his studio in 1992, his negatives were given to Library and Archives Canada, he said. No copies were allowed, Fielder said; the only prints in existence were those made by Karsh himself before 1992. The Ottawa Police are investigating the disappearance, according to the CBC. The authorities did not respond to a request for further comment on Tuesday. Another signed copy of an original print of Karsh’s “Roaring Lion” photograph was sold for $62,500 at a Sotheby’s auction in 2020.

The famous picture Karsh took of Churchill came after the photographer was invited by Mackenzie King, the Canadian prime minister, to hear Churchill’s “electrifying” speech to Parliament on Dec. 30, 1941. Karsh, eager to photograph Churchill, had set up his lights and camera the night before, according to Karsh’s website.

Churchill was apparently taken aback. “What’s this, what’s this?” he barked as Karsh flipped on the floodlights. Though irritated that he had not been told about the photo session, Churchill lit a cigar and told Karsh that he had one shot. Karsh held out an ashtray but Churchill kept puffing. “Forgive me, sir,” Karsh recalled saying as he snagged the cigar. “By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me,” Karsh said. “It was at that instant that I took the photograph.”

While Karsh said he knew he had taken an important picture, he could “hardly have dreamed that it would become one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography.” In 2016, the image went on to be featured on the British 5 pound note, according to the International Churchill Society. Estrellita Karsh said it was “a sad and stupid thing” to steal the photograph. “I hope they apprehend the person.”

She said that it was amazing that these many years later, the Churchill portrait still resonated. The power of her husband’s images, she said, was that they captured the person behind the mask, including Churchill.

“The relationship and the bond that he shared with many of his sitters made them lose their numbness in front of the camera,” Karsh said. “They allowed him to see, if only for a moment, which he caught, something real in them, something authentic,” she said. “The main element in his relationship to his sitter was trust.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

https://artdaily.cc/news/149322/Churchill-portrait-disappears-in-art-heist-in-Canada#.YwfKqnbMKUk