Former head of Louvre is charged in artifact trafficking case

Jean-Luc Martinez, director of the Louvre, at the museum’s conservation center in Lievin, France, Feb. 9, 2021. Martinez, who led the museum from 2013 to 2021, has been charged with complicity in fraud and money laundering in connection with an investigation into Egyptian artifacts that were trafficked over the past decade, French prosecutors said on May 26, 2022. Dmitry Kostyukov/The New York Times.
by Aurelien Breeden

PARIS.- The former president of the Louvre has been charged with complicity in fraud and money laundering in connection with an investigation into Egyptian artifacts that were trafficked over the past decade, French prosecutors said Thursday.

Jean-Luc Martinez, who was the president and director of the Louvre from 2013 to 2021, was released under judicial supervision after he was charged, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

The prosecutor’s office did not provide more details about the investigation, which was first reported by Le Canard Enchaîné and Le Monde.

Under the French legal system, the charges against Martinez indicate that investigators suspect him of involvement in a crime but he may not necessarily stand trial. The charges could be dropped at any point if the police uncover new evidence. Complex legal investigations often take several years to unfold in France.

Representatives for the Louvre declined to comment Thursday. Lawyers for Martinez were not immediately reachable for comment but told Agence France-Presse that he firmly disputed the charges.

“For now he is saving his statements for the judiciary, and he has no doubt that his good faith will be established,” Jacqueline Laffont and François Artuphel, Martinez’s lawyers, told the news agency.

The charges were a stunning turn of events for Martinez, who is France’s official ambassador for international cooperation on heritage issues and spearheaded efforts to safeguard artifacts at risk of looting and destruction in conflict zones during his time at the Louvre.

Martinez had written a report that France presented to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2015 that included 50 proposals to protect antiquities from looters.

Two French Egyptologists were also questioned by the police in connection with the case but were released without charges, the prosecutor’s office said. According to Le Monde, in 2019, a colleague of the Egyptologists alerted them that he had grown suspicious of the provenance of a Tutankhamen stele that ended up at the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi said it was unable to comment on the specifics of the case because of the ongoing investigation.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
https://artdaily.cc/news/146775/Former-head-of-Louvre-is-charged-in-artifact-trafficking-case#.YpDhkajMLIU

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

Art World Art Industry News: Celebrity Art Scammer Anna Delvey Is Free—And Is Now Being Shipped Back to Germany

Fake German heiress Anna Sorokin is led away after being sentenced in Manhattan Supreme Court May 9, 2019. Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP.

Anna Delvey Has Been Released From Custody...The scammer Anna Sorokin, who called herself Anna Delvey, was sent back to Frankfurt, Germany, yesterday after being released from an upstate New York detention center. She had been in ICE custody for nearly a year.

The former socialite, who sought to open her own art foundation in Manhattan before her downfall, is the subject of the hit Netflix show Inventing Anna.


Full Article NY Post: https://nypost.com/2022/03/14/anna-delvey-released-from-ice-custody-to-be-deported-to-germany/

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-industry-news-march-15-stories-2085152?utm_content=from_&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=US%20News%20Morning%203/15/22&utm_term=US%20Daily%20Newsletter%20%5BMORNING%5D

@Artcrime2 https://twitter.com/artcrime2

Stolen Roman statue returned to France after 50 years

By Paul Kirby, BBC News

Statue of Bacchus - Museum director Catherine Monnet was visibly moved when Arthur Brand handed back the statue Almost half a century after it was stolen, a Roman statue of the god Bacchus has been handed back to the French museum where it was displayed.

The 1st Century bronze of Bacchus as a child was taken by thieves in December 1973, along with 5,000 Roman coins. Art detective Arthur Brand traced the statue to the museum when a client was offered it by an Austrian collector. "Fifty years after a theft it's unheard of that something comes back - normally it's been destroyed," he told the BBC.

The 40cm-high (15.7in) statue was dug up on the site of the Gallo-Roman village of Vertillum in eastern France in 1894 and years later featured in a Paris exhibition of France's finest art pieces.

Bacchus - The statue was stolen in December 1973

When Mr Brand handed the statue back to the Musée du Pays Châtillonnais this week, director Catherine Monnet said she realised how much more beautiful it was than the copy that had been put on display.

The Dutch art sleuth, who has built a reputation for tracking down stolen masterpieces around the world, said the museum was "flabbergasted" when he told them he had traced their missing statue.

He described how he had been contacted by a client who wanted to know more about the statue after he was offered it by an Austrian collector, who had bought it legally and in good faith.

There were no databases in 1973 but Mr Brand eventually found a reference to it in an archaeology magazine dating back to 1927, and French police then found their report from the time of the theft.

"I contacted the collector. He didn't want to have a stolen piece in his collection so he wanted to give it back, but French law dictates that a small amount has to be paid for safekeeping."

That small amount in relation to the statue's value is still a considerable sum of money.

While half was paid by the local authority in Chatillon, the rest was provided by an auction house specialising in ancient art in the English port town of Harwich. "The piece belongs in the museum so it's only right people can get together and make that happen," said Aaron Hammond of Timeline Auctions.

According to Mr Brand, the museum director cried tears of joy when she saw the statue: "I thought she was going to drop it she was so nervous."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60226454

Experts Have Been Searching for This Marsden Hartley Painting for Decades. It Just Turned Up in a Bank Vault

An art historian tracked the painting down while working on an online catalogue of the modernist artist’s work.

Marsden Hartley, Friend Against the Wind (1936). Courtesy of the Bates College Museum of Art.

For decades, the whereabouts of a rarely seen painting by Marsden Hartley remained unknown, leading many experts to wonder if it still existed at all. But then, last summer, a Hartley scholar finally found it in an unexpected place: a bank safety vault.

Gail Scott, an art historian who, with support from the Bates College Museum of Art, is leading a multi-year effort to catalogue all of Hartley’s works, was the person responsible for the discovery, according to the Portland Press Herald. Last year, Scott tracked down the last-known owner of the artwork, an unidentified collector who had purchased the piece more than 40 years ago, but never heard back.

The reason for that, it turned out, was because the collector had recently passed away. Scott learned this fact months later, in the early summer of 2021, when she was contacted by an attorney for the estate of the buyer. Fearing that the prized artwork could be stolen from his Windham, Maine, home, the collector had, years ago, stored the artwork in the vault of a Key Bank branch in the adjacent city of Portland, the lawyer told Scott.

In August, she finally had a chance to see it. “It took a couple of months, but sure enough, I walked down to the Key Bank in downtown Portland and into the big vault and there was this painting that I had never seen in color and had never seen in person,” Scott told the Herald.

The scholar quickly went to work photographing and otherwise documenting the painting, a 14-by-17-inch oil-on-board picture of a gold chalice that Hartley had created in 1936 as a remembrance to friends who had drowned in a hurricane. Various titles had been scrawled in different handwriting on the back—Ciboire avec Ostie (or Chalice with Host), Friend in the Storm, Roses for Fishermen Lost at Sea—but Scott chose to stick with the one that Hartley himself seemed to have written: Friend Against the Wind.

That’s the name of the painting as it will appear in “The Marsden Hartley Legacy Project,” an exhaustive online catalogue of all the Maine-born artist’s paintings and works on paper. The project will be rolled out in the coming years by the Bates Museum of Art, which owns the Marsden Hartley memorial collection of 400 artworks and objects.

Hardly one of the modernist artist’s greatest hits, Friend Against the Wind has only been shown publicly twice, once at New York’s American Place Gallery in 1936, shortly after its creation, and again at Barridoff Galleries in Portland in 1980, where it was sold to the collector who eventually stored it in the bank. The only evidence the artwork existed at all was a black-and-white photo of it reproduced in a catalogue for an exhibition in 1987.

Taylor Dafoe, January 12, 2022
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/marsden-hartley-painting-found-2059416?utm_content=from_&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=US%20PM%201/13&utm_term=US%20Daily%20Newsletter%20%5BAFTERNOON%5D