No laughing matter as Dutch masterwork stolen for third time!

This photograph taken on November 3, 2011, shows District Chief of Alblasserwaard, Bart Willemsen showing the recovered painting "Two Laughing Boys" by Frans Hals which was stolen from the Leerdam Museum in May 2011. Thieves have stolen the painting "Two Laughing Boys" by Dutch golden age artist Frans Hals from a museum in the Netherlands, the third time it has been taken, police said on August 27, 2020. Ilvy Njiokiktjien / ANP / AFP.

THE HAGUE (AFP).- Thieves have stolen the painting "Two Laughing Boys" by Dutch golden age artist Frans Hals from a museum in the Netherlands, the third time it has been taken, police said Thursday.

The canvas by the 17th century master was taken during a burglary at the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden museum in Leerdam in the early hours of Wednesday, they said.

The painting, featuring two laughing boys with a mug of beer, was previously stolen from the same museum in 2011 and 1988, being recovered after six months and three years respectively.

Dutch police said in a statement that officers rushed to the museum in the town 40 miles (60 kilometres) south of Amsterdam after the alarm went off around 3:30 am but they failed to find the suspects. "After the manager of the museum was able to provide access to the building, it turned out that the back door had been forced and one painting had been stolen, 'Two Laughing Boys'," the statement said.

Police said they had started an "extensive investigation" involving forensic investigators and art theft experts. They were checking cameras and talking to witnesses and local residents, they added.

Frans Hals was a contemporary of fellow masters Rembrandt and Vermeer during the Dutch Golden Age, a flowering of trade, colonialism and art in the Netherlands roughly spanning the 17th century. He is best known for works including "The Laughing Cavalier", which hangs in the Wallace Collection in London, and "The Gypsy Girl", now housed in the Louvre in Paris.

Dutch art detective Arthur Brand -- dubbed the "Indiana Jones of the art world" after tracking down a series of stolen works -- tweeted that "the hunt is on" for the "very important and precious painting by Frans Hals." Brand said the "Two Laughing Boys", an officially designated piece of Dutch national heritage, had been stolen on the anniversary of Hals' death in 1666.

In March burglars stole the Vincent van Gogh painting "Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring" from another Dutch museum that was closed for coronavirus measures, on what would have been the painter's 167th birthday.

Brand said n June that he had received two recent photos of the van Gogh as "proof of life".

© Agence France-Presse

https://artdaily.cc/news/127751/No-laughing-matter-as-Dutch-masterwork-stolen-for-third-time

A refugee from Rwanda, confessed to starting the fire and been charged with arson, official sources say. Stating he was angered because his visa had not been renewed.

A volunteer who cleaned and locked Nantes cathedral on the evening of 17 July has confessed to starting the fire and been charged with arson, official sources say. The man, a refugee from Rwanda, was angered because his visa had not been renewed. Following a series of attacks on cultural and religious sites, the law was changed in 2008 so now those charged with criminal damage to historical buildings in France face a maximum of seven years in prison. 

A blaze broke out inside the gothic cathedral of Nantes on 18 July © Sebastien Salom-Gomis/AFP via Getty Images 

 Only one year after a devastating fire engulfed Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, the fire that broke out in the Gothic St Peter and St Paul Cathedral, in Nantes, western France, on Saturday morning has raised alarm bells about the security of France’s 150 cathedrals and 45,000 churches. France's new prime minister Jean Castex rushed to the scene with the home and religious affairs minister Gérald Darmanin and culture minister Roselyne Bachelot, while images of the church's interior darkened by smoke appeared on television news. 

 It took two hours for a hundred firefighters to contain the fire, which destroyed the baroque 1627 grand organ and a smaller 19th-century choir organ, as well as sculptures and a 19th-painting sent by Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin from the French Academy in Rome. An arson investigation was opened after firemen spotted three fire starting points. But today, a source close to the investigation said the fire may have started in an old electrical cabinet beneath the grand organ (a device that is no longer authorised in public places) and may have spread to the other organs via electrical circuits. 

 A Rwandan refugee, a volunteer who cleaned the church before it was locked down for the night, was interviewed but released on Sunday without charge. No trace of a break-in has been found. Critics have underscored the the lack of care and funding from the state as well as the cities in which religious buildings are located. 

Nantes cathedral was destroyed by fire in 1972 and was rebuilt over more than a decade. Another 19th-century church had its roof destroyed in the city in 2015. And, in the capital, Saint Sulpice church, which is the temporary cathedral of Paris now, was also damaged by a fire last year. “There is no country in Europe where fires are so common in churches,“ says the architecture historian Alexandre Gady, who also says that “there is no capital on the continent where churches are so damaged”. 

After Notre Dame’s fire, the catholic church asked for a comprehensive survey of the safety of these historical buildings, Gady says, "Has it been done? And if so, where is it?” 

 https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/nantes-cathedral 

VINCENT NOCE 20th July 2020 12:26 BST 

Images of a stolen Van Gogh give experts hope it can be recovered

In an undated handout image, the stolen work, Van Gogh’s “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” is shown between a copy of The New York Times, which featured an article on the theft, and a copy of a biography of a man who had previously stolen van Goghs. A private art detective investigating the case said he was sent the images of the work, which was taken from a Dutch museum in March. Handout via The New York Times.

AMSTERDAM (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The photographs look like the sort of images that kidnappers distribute with a ransom demand to establish that their victim is alive. A newspaper’s front page is included and used as a time stamp to indicate that the images are recent.

In this case, the subject isn’t a kidnapping victim, but rather a Vincent van Gogh painting that was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum in the Netherlands in March. Arthur Brand, a private Dutch art crimes detective who is investigating the theft, said only that he received them from a “source in my network,” without further elaboration.

He posted them on his Twitter feed and shared them with a Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf. Brand suspects that the images were circulated in criminal circles in an effort to find a potential buyer.

“They are important because it’s a proof of life,” Brand said. “In many cases like this art theft, you see that criminals get nervous and they feel the police are on their backs and they destroy it. Now we know that it hasn’t been destroyed.”

The police investigating the case did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Brand declined to say whether he had been contacted by the police about the photos.

Ursula Weitzel, a leading art crimes prosecutor in the Netherlands, said she had never seen “proof of life” photographs of art works circulated like this. The painting, “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” from 1884, was stolen while part of a temporary exhibition at the Singer Laren, on loan from the Groninger Museum.

Security camera footage of the robbery on March 30 shows a man breaking into the museum using a sledgehammer to smash two glass doors and leaving with the painting under his arm.

Andreas Blühm, director of the Groninger Museum, said the photographs of the painting appear authentic, because one shows the back of the work. “You can only have that if you have the painting,” he said in an interview.

He said that he could not comment on whether the museum had been approached with a ransom demand.

https://artdaily.cc/news/124712/Images-of-a-stolen-Van-Gogh-give-experts-hope-it-can-be-recovered

Missing Banksy artwork found in an abandoned farmhouse in Abruzzo, Italy

Stolen Banksy work from door of Paris Bataclan found in Italy 

The work was found in an abandoned farmhouse in Abruzzo, according to l'Aquila prosecutor Michele Renzo, who said further details would be provided on Thursday. by Ella Ide 

ROME (AFP).- Italian police said Wednesday they had retrieved a work by famed street artist Banksy commemorating the victims of the November 2015 Paris terror attacks stolen from the Bataclan concert hall. 

The work was an image of a girl in mourning painted on one of the emergency doors of the Parisian venue, where Islamic State gunmen massacred 90 people. It had been cut out and taken in 2019. 

"We have recovered the door stolen in the Bataclan with a Banksy work portraying a sad young girl," a senior Italian police officer from Teramo, in Italy's central east Abruzzo region, told AFP. 

The raid was conducted with French police, he added. The work was found in an abandoned farmhouse in Abruzzo, according to l'Aquila prosecutor Michele Renzo, who said further details would be provided on Thursday. 

Works by Banksy, known for their distinctive style, irreverent humour and thought-provoking themes, have been found on walls, buildings and bridges from the West Bank to post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. At auction, they have sold for more than $1 million. 

Stealing works: The portion of the Bataclan door is not the only Banksy to have been stolen from Paris. In 2018, the artist "blitzed" the French capital with murals during a whirlwind trip, which he said was to mark the 50th anniversary of the Paris student uprising of 1968. After he appeared to authenticate eight of the Paris works on his Instagram account, it did not take long for thieves to strike. 

Works stolen included a mural of a businessman in a suit offering a dog a bone, having just sawed the animal's leg off. Another was an image of a masked rat wielding a box cutter, which disappeared from outside the Pompidou Centre. 

Banksy took on the rat as his avatar, a symbol of the vilified and downtrodden, in homage to Paris street artist Blek le Rat. Blek started out in 1968 when a general strike by students and workers brought France to a halt. 

Some of the stolen works have since been recovered and fans have covered some of his Paris street art with Plexiglass to protect them. But one mural of a migrant girl was defaced with blue spray paint shortly after news of its discovery spread on social media. 

Banksy is believed to have started out as a graffiti artist in London, although he has kept his identity a secret. The most dramatic of his Paris 2018 creations was a pastiche of Jacques-Louis David's "Napoleon Crossing the Alps", with Bonaparte wrapped in a red niqab. It appeared on a wall in an ethnically mixed district of northern Paris. 

 © Agence France-Presse

https://artdaily.cc/news/124438/Stolen-Banksy-work-from-door-of-Paris-Bataclan-found-in-Italy

Saudi Arabia Has Joined a Lawsuit Against Disgraced [and Vanashed] Dealer Inigo Philbrick, Claiming He Sold Them a Kusama Installation He Didn’t Own

Who really owns the multimillion-dollar Yayoi Kusama 'Mirror Room'?

Eileen Kinsella, May 21, 2020

Inigo Philbrick, 

©Patrick McMullan Photo by Clint Spaulding/PMC

An entity known as MVCA in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which is connected to the collection of the Royal Commission for Al-Ula and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to Bloomberg, has retained an attorney to represent its interests as a defendant in an existing Miami lawsuit against Philbrick.

MVCA bought a major Yayoi Kusama installation, All The Eternal Love I Have for Pumpkins (2016), in April of 2019 and loaned it to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami later that year, according to an October report in Bloomberg, which cited sources familiar with the purchase.

The problem? The original owners of the Kusama didn’t know that their partner and co-owner, Philbrick, had sold the work to MVCA from under them.

The Kusama installation is now one of nine works named in a bombshell lawsuit filed against Philbrick last fall by the Berlin-based finance company Fine Art Partners, run by principals David Tümpel and Loretta Würtenburger, seeking the return of the works, worth an estimated $14 million. Attorneys for MVCA, the Royal Commission, and Fine Art Partners did not respond to requests for comment.

Yayoi Kusama, All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins, detail (2016).
Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore and Victoria Miro, London. © Yayoi Kusama.

For years, Philbrick and Fine Art Partners had an art-flipping arrangement where they would buy key works by blue chip artists—including Wade Guyton, Donald Judd, Rudolf Stingel, and Christopher Wool—hold them for several years, and then resell them and split the profits according to prearranged percentages.

According to their complaint, Philbrick bought the Kusama on the group’s behalf in September 2017 for $3.3 million with the understanding that he would resell it for a profit—a target price of $5 million is named on the agreement, with both sides splitting the profit. It is not clear if the Royal Commission ultimately paid that $5 million target price.

The contract was written in accordance with German laws, so it remains to be seen how that will play out in a US court. Even as Tümpel became increasingly frustrated over the course of 2019 over delayed or unremitted funds, Fine Art Partners seemingly had no idea that Philbrick had already sold Kusama’s Pumpkin installation out from under them. Roughly five months after the purported sale to Saudi Arabia, in a September 2019 email responding to concerns, Philbrick told Tümpel the Miami exhibition could help attract a buyer:

“We are preparing the press launch for the Pumpkin Room, which will go into soft view for trustees and other potential funders on the 23rd, in advance of a public launch on October 1st. The presentation is being coordinated with an international PR campaign, which should bring us into contact with a number of potential buyers… To my knowledge this is the first time a mirror room has been presented in a public context that is not either primary market or already in a museum collection.” But soon thereafter, the owners learned that Philbrick had already sold the Kusama, and filed their lawsuit against him.

In late January, as the Kusama show was nearing its end, a Miami-Dade judge issued an injunction stipulating that the artwork must remain in Miami as the case ran its course, according to a report in ARTnews at the time.

After the show’s run, the installation was to be broken down and disassembled. Fine Art Partners had said in a prior filing that it feared MVCA might remove the work from Florida soon after the show ended. Kusama’s infinity room installations are known to be extraordinarily complicated when it comes to installing and deinstalling.

The current whereabouts of the Pumpkin installation are unknown. An art storage company spokesperson in Miami who did not want to be identified, confirmed to Artnet News that the empty crates used to initially ship the work to Florida remain at the warehouse where Philbrick stored them through the run of the Miami show.

Late last month, Artnet News learned that the US Department of Justice is also investigating the dealer, according to four sources who did business with Philbrick or are involved in legal proceedings against him.

At least two companies that provided art support services for Philbrick over the past several years confirmed that they received grand jury subpoenas, indicating a criminal investigation, from the Department of Justice in recent months, asking the companies to supply all records related to business transactions with Philbrick.

Since last fall, Philbrick, who has since vanished, has been targeted by former clients who claim he sold the same works to multiple people and defaulted on loans he secured using art he didn’t own as collateral. Now, disgruntled former business associates are trying to seize his personal assets, which filings suggest could amount to as much as $70 million, as well as $150 million from his business.

The filing that MVCA attached to the Fine Art Partners lawsuit does not mention the specific Kusama artwork nor the nature of its involvement beyond that it is a defendant. But there is little doubt the two entities are battling over ownership rights to the highly-prized, seven-figure Kusama pumpkins.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/saudi-arabia-joining-lawsuit-against-inigo-philbrick-1867710?utm_content=from_&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=US%20News%20Morning%205%2F22%2F20&utm_term=US%20Daily%20Newsletter%20%5BMORNING%5D

101 arrested and 19,000 stolen artefacts recovered in international crackdown on art trafficking

The Spanish National Police recovered a unique Tumaco gold mask.

More than 19,000 archaeological artefacts and other artworks have been recovered as part of a global operation spanning 103 countries and focusing on the dismantlement of international networks of art and antiquities traffickers.

101 suspects have been arrested, and 300 investigations opened as part of this coordinated crackdown. The criminal networks handled archaeological goods and artwork looted from war-stricken countries, as well as works stolen from museums and archaeological sites.

Seizures include coins from different periods, archaeological objects, ceramics, historical weapons, paintings and fossils. Facilitating objects, such as metal detectors were also seized.

These results were achieved during the global Operation Athena II, led by the World Customs Organization (WCO) and INTERPOL, which was carried out in synchronization with the Europe-focused Operation Pandora IV coordinated by the Spanish Civil Guard (Guardia Civil) and Europol in the framework of EMPACT. Details of both Operations, which ran in the autumn of 2019, can only be released now due to operational reasons.

Online illicit markets

Law enforcement officers paid particular attention to the monitoring of online market places and sales sites, as the Internet is an important part of the illicit trade of cultural goods.

During what was called a ‘cyber patrol week’ and under the leadership of the Italian Carabinieri (Arma dei Carabinieri), police and customs experts along with Europol, INTERPOL and the WCO mapped active targets and developed intelligence packages. As a result, 8,670 cultural objects for online sale were seized. This represents 28% of the total number of artefacts recovered during this international crackdown.

Operational highlights

• Afghan Customs seized 971 cultural objects at Kabul airport just as the objects were about to depart for Istanbul, Turkey.
• The Spanish National Police (Policia Nacional), working together with the Colombian Police (Policia Nacional de Colombia), recovered at Barajas airport in Madrid some very rare pre-Columbian objects illegally acquired through looting in Colombia, including a unique Tumaco gold mask and several gold figurines and items of ancient jewellery. Three traffickers were arrested in Spain, and the Colombian authorities carried out house searches in Bogota, resulting in the seizure of a further 242 pre-Columbian objects, the largest ever seizure in the country’s history.
• The investigation of a single case of online sale led to the seizure of 2,500 ancient coins by the Argentinian Federal Police Force (Policia Federal Argentina), the largest seizure for this category of items, while the second largest seizure was made by Latvian State Police (Latvijas Valsts Policija) for a total of 1,375 coins.
• Six European Police forces reported the seizure of a hundred and eight metal detectors, demonstrating that looting in Europe is still an ongoing business.

Colombian authorities seized 242 objects, the largest ever seizure in the country’s history.

A Menaion from 1760 was intercepted in Romania, as well as coins.

Afghan Customs seized 971 cultural objects at Kabul airport.

Objects seized by Spain’s Guardia Civil.

Objects seized in the Czech Republic.

Seizure by Chilean customs.

Cultural objects seized in Italy.

Protecting our cultural heritage

This is the second time that Europol, INTERPOL and the WCO have joined forces to tackle the illicit trade in cultural heritage. Given the global nature of this crackdown, a 24-hour Operational Coordination Unit (OCU) was run jointly by the WCO, INTERPOL and Europol. In addition to assisting with information exchanges and issuing alerts, the OCU also carried out checks against various international and national databases, such as INTERPOL’s database on Stolen Works of Art and Europol’s European Information System.

“The number of arrests and objects show the scale and global reach of the illicit trade in cultural artefacts, where every country with a rich heritage is a potential target.” Jürgen Stock, INTERPOL Secretary General

“The number of arrests and objects show the scale and global reach of the illicit trade in cultural artefacts, where every country with a rich heritage is a potential target,” said INTERPOL Secretary General Jürgen Stock. “If you then take the significant amounts of money involved and the secrecy of the transactions, this also presents opportunities for money laundering and fraud as well as financing organized crime networks,” added the INTERPOL Chief.

“Organized crime has many faces. The trafficking of cultural goods is one of them: it is not a glamorous business run by flamboyant gentlemen forgers, but by international criminal networks. You cannot look at it separately from combating trafficking in drugs and weapons: we know that the same groups are engaged, because it generate big money. Given that this is a global phenomenon affecting every country on the planet – either as a source, transit or destination, it is crucial that Law Enforcement all work together to combat it. Europol, in its role as the European Law Enforcement Agency, supported the EU countries involved in this global crackdown by using its intelligence capabilities to identify the pan-European networks behind these thefts,” said Catherine de Bolle, Europol’s Executive Director.

 “The operational success of Customs and its law enforcement partners offers tangible proof that international trafficking of cultural objects is thriving and touches upon all continents. In particular, we keep receiving evidence that online illicit markets are one of the major vehicles for this crime. However, online transactions always leave a trace and Customs, Police and other partners have established effective mechanisms to work together to prevent cross border illicit trade”, said Dr Kunio Mikuriya, WCO Secretary General.

Background

Many activities carried out during the Operation were decided on and conducted jointly between customs and police at national level, with the support and participation of experts from the Ministries of Culture as well as from other relevant institutions and law enforcement agencies.

Article link - INTERPOL, Europol and World Customs Organization join forces during Operations Athena II and Pandora IV: https://www.interpol.int/News-and-Events/News/2020/101-arrested-and-19-000-stolen-artefacts-recovered-in-international-crackdown-on-art-trafficking

Early Van Gogh painting stolen from Dutch museum

Vincent van Gogh’s "The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring" (1884). The painting was stolen overnight on Monday, March 30, 2020, from a small museum in Laren in the Netherlands, just 20 miles southeast of Amsterdam, on what would have been the artist’s 167th birthday. Groninger Museum via The New York Times.

BERLIN (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- A Vincent van Gogh painting was stolen early Monday from a small museum in Laren in the Netherlands, just 20 miles southeast of Amsterdam, on what would have been the artist’s 167th birthday.

“I feel enormous anger and sadness,” Jan Rudolph de Lorm, the museum’s director, said. “Because especially in these dark days that we are in, I feel so strongly that art is here to comfort us, to inspire us and to heal us.”

Police were called to the Singer Laren museum at 3:15 a.m. Monday, when an alarm went off. By the time they got there, the thief or thieves were already gone, said a spokeswoman for the Dutch police.

All police found was a shattered glass door and a bare spot on the wall where the painting was displayed. Hours later, authorities announced that the work, “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” was taken.

The heist comes as museums in much of Europe and the United States are closed in attempts to stem the spread of the coronavirus. It also comes eight years after a spectacular breach at a museum in Rotterdam, where thieves made off with seven paintings valued at more than 100 million euros (about $110 million) by forcing an emergency exit, exposing the relatively weak security systems at some art museums.

Coronavirus or not, guards are not usually posted at the museum overnight. The alarm system is linked straight to the local police.

“They knew what they were doing, going straight for the famous master,” de Lorm said. Police agreed that it would have taken minutes from the time of forced entry to leaving the premises.

The painting was on loan from the Gröninger Museum for a special exhibition, “Mirror of the Soul,” which was to run from January to May. “It’s an early picture, before Arles and before Paris, so it is darker and less recognizable as a van Gogh,” said Andreas Blühm, director of the Gröninger.

Because of the coronavirus outbreak, museums in the Netherlands closed March 13, and the Singer Laren had announced it would be closed until at least June 1.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

https://artdaily.cc/news/122208/Early-Van-Gogh-painting-stolen-from-Dutch-museum