Thursday, December 10, 2015

My Word - Christmas 2015

Closing another year - my 41st in business - is in some ways a good thing. 2015 saw increased government intervention in our business with the promise of more to come. Somehow terrorism, appropriately I might add, supersedes in most cases our desire to maintain our individual rights. Having lived in the Middle East for four years I feel certain there is no end in sight especially in light of our government's unfocused policies in this area. But we have much to be thankful for during the past 12 months. We have had some success in predicting a very unpredictable art market which continues to offer opportunities to both succeed and fail dramatically. The gallery has had two more great interns in Codie and Carolyn. Most of my friends are still upright and talking. And now after almost 40 years since my brother's Christmas Day auto accident, he continues to do well spending most of the time surfing the Internet. During this year it was an honor to work with the great people in Chicago on the Nancy Florsheim appraisal. This comprehensive Southwest pottery collection should be seen soon at auction. The Newsletter will follow this closely.

I had a great time this summer completing my 20th year on the Roadshow. I love the crew, staff and all my appraisal colleagues and will continue doing the show until they kick me out. Thank you again to my social media guru Jessica Tomberlin and MontageMedia. And thanks again to my "guest road intern" Emma Mooney (Beloit College) who made Charleston more fun. It would be a major failing to not also recognize the major contribution of Kim Kolker who has been my right hand for almost a decade.

Thank you to our readers of the Newsletter and followers of the blog. If you see ways that we can improve, let us know.From Barbara, Kim, and me.. Best wishes for a great Christmas and New Year 2016. JB

African Art and Silicon Chips: A Life in Science and Art - Jay Last

African Art and Silicon Chips: A Life in Science and Art is Jay T. Last’s insightful and illuminating memoir of over four decades spent collecting African art. It is a must-read for collectors, dealers, scholars, students, and aficionados of the continent’s rich and varied artistic genres. Those who contributed to the growth of a market for African art will find themselves chronicled in the chapters of this book, which highlights major milestones and trends—decade-by-decade—beginning in the 1950s and continuing to the present. Last focuses his narrative on the men and women, who like himself, formed a lifelong passion for collecting the arts of Africa and who have given the enterprise its distinctive character and energy. He details his firsthand relationships with a veritable “who’s who” of dealers and collectors in the United States and Europe and describes how these personal connections led to the many purchases that shaped his own extraordinary and idiosyncratic collection. Beginning with the acquisition of a Kuba cup in 1961 from the Ladislas Segy Gallery in New York, Last’s adventure in collecting continued, with the 1960s and 1970s constituting the most fertile period. This highly readable text details stories of luck, serendipity, prescience, and tenacity in the focused search for objects that met Last’s clearly defined aesthetic preferences and addressed his fascination with the serial image.


As the title of this autobiography suggests, the intersection of Jay Last’s engagement with science and art offers insights into the man behind the collection. The highly inventive and entrepreneurial spirit that brought him such success in the fledgling tech industry in Northern California starting in the 1950s was matched by an appetite for intrepid excursions to remote locations across Africa and by his predilection for simple abstract forms, often featuring tough geometries, that attracted few others in the years of his most intense collecting. Beautiful full-page color images of more than a hundred key works from the Last collection, largely photographed by Scott McCue, are interspersed throughout and object close-ups help to demonstrate the collector’s eye. Numerous snapshots document highlights of the author’s travels (often with his wife, Deborah) and put faces to many of the individuals who were and still are key to the history of the collecting, affirming, and understanding of the vibrant arts of Africa.(Now available on Amazon.com)

Marla C. Berns
Fowler Museum at UCLA
December 2015

Merry Christmas 2015


TOO BAD TO RE-GIFT - Christmas 2015




















BOOKS YOU SHOULD BUY - Christmas 2015


1. BEVERLY HILLS - African Art and Silicon Chips by Jay Last. This book spans Last's African art collecting years from the 1950's to the present from his perspective. Jay mentions the dealers, collectors, and curators that he met along the way. With this important history of the field Jay has also presents beautiful photographs of the objects he acquired. This book is a personal glimpse into what has motivated one of the most important collectors of this material in the past 65 years. The title says it all its physicist meets the world and its fascinating.Now available on Amazon.com

2.  NEW YORK Custer’s Trials by T. J. Stiles Knopf,It is easy to forget that Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer did anything of significance before the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn. So gaudily iconic is his last stand—in which he and five companies of his 7th Cavalry Regiment were killed by Native Americans—that it remains the only thing most of us still know about the man. The burden of T.J. Stiles’s epic, ambitious, bursting-at-the-seams biography, “Custer’s Trials,” is to show that for 30-some years preceding Little Bighorn, Custer (1839-76) was shaped by forces every bit as powerful and overwhelming as Sitting Bull’s army of warriors on that infamous summer day. These forces included cultural divisions between the North and the South, a lethal Civil War, similarly lethal westward expansion, and the cluster of postwar developments—rapid industrialization, urbanization and a more centralized federal government—that the historian Alan Trachtenberg once termed “the incorporation of America.” Mr. Stiles, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Cornelius Vanderbilt, scrupulously avoids caricature when discussing his subject. His Custer is neither the raving
 
buffoon memorialized in Thomas Berger’s novel “Little Big Man” (1964) nor the blindly racist Indian-killer who simply cannot imagine Native Americans capable of defeating the U.S. Army in Evan S. Connell’s beautifully written biography “Son of the Morning Star” (1984). At the same time, he cannot be said to capture the essence of Custer, for the simple reason that there seems to have been little essence to capture. Like a real-life Huckleberry Finn, altering his persona with each snag in the river of events, Custer was adept at becoming who and what circumstances required of him. His unquenchable craving for attention, manifested in garish costumes and a propensity to hobnob with theatrical celebrities, point to an underdeveloped selfhood, a tenuous identity he sought to bolster with acclaim. Born into an unremarkable family in Ohio (his father was a pro-slavery blacksmith perennially in need of money), Custer charmed a prominent local judge into recommending him for West Point. There he drank and gambled and whored, finishing his academic career in disgrace and last in his class. Normally this would have resulted in his being passed over for promotion for the rest of his professional life, but the outbreak of the Civil War and his success on the battlefield enabled him to rise to the brevet rank of major general by the time he was in his mid-20s. Nearly half of Mr. Stiles’s book is devoted to Custer’s career in the Civil War... More http://www.wsj.com/articles/custer-agonistes-1448039067?cb=logged0.6910165315554331


3. NEW YORK The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World Hardcover – July 14, 2015 by Anthony M. Amore
Art scams are today so numerous that the specter of a lawsuit arising from a mistaken attribution has scared a number of experts away from the business of authentication and forgery, and with good reason. Art scams are increasingly convincing and involve incredible sums of money. The cons perpetrated by unscrupulous art dealers and their accomplices are proportionately elaborate.
Anthony M. Amore's The Art of the Con tells the stories of some of history's most notorious yet untold cons. They involve stolen art hidden for decades; elaborate ruses that involve the Nazis and allegedly plundered art; the theft of a conceptual prototype from a well-known artist by his assistant to be used later to create copies; the use of online and television auction sites to scam buyers out of millions; and other confidence ...More http://www.amazon.com/Art-Con-Notorious-Frauds-Forgeries/dp/1137279877/ref=sr_1_1/183-8260087-8425734?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1448492067&sr=1-1&keywords=the+art+of+the+con



Tuesday, December 08, 2015

ARCHAEOLOGY - Christmas 2015

1. GENEVA (AFP).- A Swiss fruit-and-vegetable farmer stumbled across more than tree roots when inspecting his cherry orchard recently, uncovering a massive trove of coins buried some 1,700 years earlier, archeologists said Thursday. More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/83036/Trove-of-antique-Roman-coins-found-in-Swiss-orchard#.VlOm1t-rT2Q

2. LONDON A trove of stone artifacts uncovered in northwestern Kenya suggests human ancestors were crafting tools 3.3 million years ago—about 700,000 years earlier than previously thought.The tools, described at the Paleoanthropology Society’s meeting in San Francisco this week, are in the form of flakes—sharp stone fragments that could be used for cutting, as well as the cores from which flakes were struck, and anvils, used to hold the cores during the knapping process. Overall, more than 130 artifacts have been recovered from the site, called Lomekwi 3, said Stony Brook University
archaeologist Sonia Harmand, and some of them are quite large, weighing more than 30 pounds.The origin of tool-making is long-thought to begin only with the appearance of the genus Homo in the fossil record. But the oldest Homo fossils now known are about 2.8 million years old—half a million years younger than the newly announced artifacts from Kenya. This suggests that either ancient australopithecines like “Lucy” had developed stone tool use...More information http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/150416-oil-fish-hearts-spill-tuna-gulf-bp-deepwater-exxon-alaska/150416-oldest-stone-tools-archaeology-kenya-human-origins-evolution/


3. GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA—Marcello A. Canuto of Tulane University and Tomás Barrientos of the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala announced at a press conference the discovery of a fifth-century stela at the Maya site of El Achiotal, located to the east of La Corona. “This stela portrays an early king during one of the more poorly understood periods of ancient Maya history,”
Canuto said in a press release. Graduate student Luke Auld-Thomas found fragments of the stela in a shrine that had been built for it during a time of political upheaval in the central Maya area. The archaeologists, who are part of the La Corona Regional Archaeological Project in Guatemala, also uncovered two hieroglyphic panels in a corner room at La Corona’s palace. These texts, which tell of rituals.. MOre Information http://www.archaeology.org/news/3514-150727-guatemala-stela-hieroglyphs

4. CHACO CANYON NEW MEXICO - In the prehistoric American Southwest, trade with distant Mesoamerica was a source of power and prestige that could make or break a ruler. Within the massive multistory buildings at New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon, for instance, archaeologists have discovered exotic goods from Mexico, such as cacao and the remains of 33 scarlet macaws, whose natural habitat is 1,000 miles away on the Gulf of Mexico. Scholars had assumed that long-distance trade became important only during the period when Chaco’s power was greatest, from A.D. 1040 to 1110. But now a team has dated the macaw bones and found that some were imported as early as A.D. 900... More Information http://www.archaeology.org/issues/188-1509/trenches/3572-trenches-ancient-southwest-early-parrots.

5. PQUIME CASAS GRANDES, MEXICO In the northwestern part of the federal state of Chihuahua, west of the old Camino Real between El Paso and the state capital Chihuahua, lies Casas Grandes with its famous excavation site Paquimé. The large, archeologically interesting area at the foot of the Sierra Madre Occidental covers more than 60 hectares (about 150 acres) on the west bank of the Casas Grandes River. So far only 10 hectares (25 acres) of the historically very important place have been excavated and secured. The remains of the settlement are still impressive.
Several buildings, which consisted of up to 600 rooms, were constructed from tamped clay using the toilsome hand-molding technique: Wet clay was manually applied to an existing clay layer and spread equally. Interestingly, the buildings had rectangular walls, a fact that is indicative of intense planning and is a remarkable difference from buildings erected in other civilizations at the same time. Water was led through the rooms in open channels. Also characteristic of the buildings were T-shaped doorways between the rooms. The buildings enclosed large courts for games or meetings. There were subterranean religious convention halls and walk-in wells. You can still see the remains of firm market stands and the houses for parrots, imported from South America, and turkeys. In Paquimé, pit houses – pits in the ground with a primitive roof – define the origin of new building techniques that began to soar in the 7th century AD. Over some centuries, the simple pit houses.“I was very much surprised,” says American Museum of Natural History archaeologist Adam Watson, who helped organize the dating. “I, along with everyone else, assumed the trade networks with Mexico didn’t become important until Chaco expanded. Now we have evidence that control over trade and political power were being consolidated long before then.”    ....More Information.. http://www.nativetrails.de/index.php?id=86&L=1

6. PAQUIME CASAS GRANDES MEXICO THROUGHOUT HISTORY, ANIMALS HAVE BEEN UTILIZED AND DOMESTICATED FOR FOOD, LABOR, AND OCCASIONALLY FOR COMPANIONSHIP. It is a rare thing when animals are utilized for divination, or worshipped in a godly state (some examples would be the famous royal cats of ancient egypt, or sacred cows in India). In the desert southwest of the United States, however, macaws were revered and used as part of religious ceremonies. In the New World, macaws have played an important role in myth and culture for thousands of years. Archaeological and ethnographic evidence of the interaction between humans and these unique birds exists not only in shared environments, like the jungles of the Amazon and Central America, but also in more distant places where the macaws are not native.  In the southwest, egg shells, skeletal remains and macaw imagery on ceramics have been recovered at archaeological sites. This suggests the important role macaws played as exotic trade items and as objects of veneration.When the Spanish first arrived in the southwest in the 16th century, they
recorded feather trade and the keeping of macaws among Pueblo peoples (Hodge and Lewis 1907:106; Schroeder 1968:98-99). As evidenced by Lyndon Hargrove (1970), macaw skeletal remains make their appearance in the American Southwest by 1000 AD. Most significant are the remains of the scarlet macaw (Ara macao) whose native habitat only extends from the jungles of South America into lowland Mexico. The presence of scarlet macaws in the desert southwest illustrates the importance of trade in exotica between the cultures of the southwest and Mexico. The earliest macaw feathers that have been recovered in this region date back to 750 A.D.  These feathers indicate the start of a large trade network between the southwestern cultures and Central Mexico.  Turquoise from New Mexico and Arizona have been found in Mexico, while marine shells from the Sea of Cortez, copper bells, and cacao from Central Mexico have been recovered in the southwest. More Information..http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/april-2011/article/prehistoric-macaws-of-the-american-southwest

7. CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA—A piece of red, glossy pottery found in the rugged highlands of Papua New Guinea has been shown to be the oldest-known pottery in New Guinea. Tim Denham of Australian National University, working with researchers from Otago University, obtained precise dates for the pottery as part of a study to learn more about how the technology spread throughout the Pacific. People who lived on the coast of Papua New Guinea would have had contact with seafaring, pottery-making cultures such as the Lapita people. “It’s an example of how technology spread among cultures. Some pottery must have soon found its way into the highlands, which inspired the highlanders to try making it themselves,” Denham said in a press release. “And it shows human history is not always a smooth progression—later on pottery making was abandoned across most of the highlands of New Guinea. No one knows when or why,” he said. To read about smoked mummies in Papua New Guinea, go to the current issue's "World Roundup." More information.. http://www.archaeology.org/news/3664-150903-pottery-papua-new-guinea

8. ISRAEL An 8-year-old Israeli boy on a hike with his family at Tel Beit Shemesh — an ancient city mentioned repeatedly in the Bible — found a small, round ceramic object that he later learned held important archaeological significance.It turns out the figurine Itai Halperin picked up last weekend was a 3,000-year-old ceramic head depicting a fertility goddess often found in homes in the Kingdom of Judah during the First Temple period, Israel Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday.Itai Halperin, 8, holds the First Temple-era figurine he found while he was hiking with his family at an archaeological site. (Image source: Israel Antiquities Authority/Arik Halperin)/ An 8-year-old Israeli boy on a hike with his family at Tel Beit Shemesh — an ancient city mentioned repeatedly in the
Bible — found a small, round ceramic object that he later learned held important archaeological significance.It turns out the figurine Itai Halperin picked up last weekend was a 3,000-year-old ceramic head depicting a fertility goddess often found in homes in the Kingdom of Judah during the First Temple period, Israel Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday.Itai Halperin, 8, holds the First Temple-era figurine he found while he was hiking with his family at an archaeological site. (Image source: Israel Antiquities Authority/Arik Halperin) Itai Halperin, 8, holds the First Temple-era figurine he found while he was hiking with his family at an archaeological site. (Image source: Israel Antiquities Authority/Arik Halperin) “Figurines such as these, in the shape of naked women representing fertility, were common in the homes of the residents of the Judean Kingdom in the 8th century BCE and until the destruction of the kingdom by the Babylonians in the days of Zedekiah (in 586 BCE),” the authority’s Iron Age specialist, Alon De Groot, said in a statement, using an alternate designation for B.C. “It’s no coincidence that a statuette like this was found atop Tel Beit Shemesh next to a residential quarter from the First Temple period,” Anna Eirich of the Antiquities Authority said in a statement. “Beit Shemesh is mentioned as a city in the area of the Tribe of Judah.” Eirich explained that during the First Temple period, Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, was a large walled-city that served as a commercial and industrial center. “Assyrian King Sennacherib sacked Beit Shemesh in 701 BCE, and the destruction of the area was completed in 86 BCE by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar,” Eirich added. To express its thanks for Halperin turning over the find, the Antiquities Authority gave the boy a good citizenship award and invited his elementary school class on an archaeological dig.The boy told the antiquities experts he had recently seen an Indiana Jones film which inspired him....More http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/11/26/8-year-old-boy-on-family-hike-makes-3000-year-old-discovery-dating-to-biblical-first-temple-period/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%2011-26-15%20FINAL-Thanksgiving&utm_term=Firewire

9. LUXOR (AFP).- Scans of King Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings point to a secret chamber, archaeologists said Saturday, possibly heralding the discovery of Queen Nefertiti's long-sought mummy. Using hi-tech infrared and radar technology, researchers are trying to unravel the mystery over the legendary monarch's resting place. A wife of Tutankhamun's father Akhenaten, Nefertiti played a major political and religious role in the 14th century BC, and the discovery of her tomb would be a major prize for Egyptologists. Experts are now "approximately 90 percent" sure
there is a hidden chamber in Tutankhamun's tomb, Antiquities Minister Mamduh al-Damati told a news conference. The scans were spurred by a study by renowned British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves that said Nefertiti's lost tomb may be hidden in an adjoining chamber. Speaking at the same press conference, Reeves said the initial results could bear out his theory. "Clearly it does look from the radar ... More http://artdaily.com/news/83282/Scans-point-to-hidden-chamber-possibly-heralding-discovery-of-Queen-Nefertiti-s-mummy



SAVING THE ART - Christmas 2015

1. PARIS France Proposes Safe Harbor for Syrian Antiquities. November 19, 2015. French President Francois Hollande proposed bringing Syrian antiquities to France for safekeeping, in an address to delegates at the 38th UNESCO Conference in Paris on November 17. Hollande’s proposal was larger in scope and in the protections offered antiquities that of the Association of Art Museum Directors’ “safe harbor” proposals issued in October 2015. ( See AAMD Issues Safe Haven Protocols for Art from Countries in Crisis, Oct. 29, 2015) Even the more modest AAMD proposal has drawn criticism from archaeological hardliners, who have misrepresented the AAMD proposal as “museum acquisition of looted goods.” Hollande spoke just a week after the violent attacks by extremists in Paris that killed 130 people. He said that the UNESCO conference was a symbol of the unity of cultures, and that it stood counter to the cowardly and despicable attacks of terrorists. He drew attention to the fact that each attack took place at a venue where people of varied cultures came together for enjoyment: a Thai restaurant, a concert by American musicians, and an international football match. France should, he said, show its commitment to liberty, creativity and the dialog of cultures. He said that the war against jihadist terror was not a war of civilizations. More.. http://committeeforculturalpolicy.org/france-proposes-safe-harbor-for-syrian-antiquities/

2. NEW YORK AAMD Issues Safe Haven Protocols for Art from Countries in Crisis October 29, 2015.The Association of Art Museum Directors’ (AAMD) newly issued Protocols For Safe Havens For Works Of Cultural Significance From Countries In Crisis urge international museum actions to protect artistic heritage at risk of loss and destruction. The AAMD protocols stress security, preservation in museum safe havens, international access, and returning objects only when it is safe to do so. The protocols thereby run counter to current US government policies, which prioritize repatriation, even to hostile regimes in countries currently in a state of war.
The Protocols begin, “Protecting works of cultural significance in danger of damage, destruction or looting as a result of war, terrorism or natural disasters is the responsibility of everyone and especially of institutions whose mission is to protect, conserve and study the artistic heritage of human kind.”
According to the AAMD, member museums can offer technical and professional help to preserve collections in countries where crises threaten the security of cultural heritage, but in situations where in situ assistance is not practical, AAMD museums and other cultural institutions outside the areas of crisis can offer safe havens to works in danger until they can be safely returned. The AAMD notes that objects might require specialized treatment or care that is unavailable nearby. Therefore museums in North America and around the world should offer to preserve and protect threatened cultural property.
The AAMD notes that providing a safe haven removes threatened works from the marketplace (legal or illegal), preserves their physical integrity, and enables essential documentation to record these works for posterity. The AAMD statement identifies the following as possible depositors of artworks for safe haven: museums and governmental entities inside countries in crisis, US government authorities who have seized works on entry to the US, and private individuals, companies, or organizations who have come into possession of artworks.
The protocols call for action to inventory and document the condition of works prior to movement, if possible; safe transportation, preferably paid by the depositor; storage comparable to that which an AAMD museum applies to works in its own collection, and conservation for works in need of immediate stabilization.
Works should be inventoried, digitally documented, and treated as loaned works typically would be. Museums should publish the documentation on their own websites, on the AAMD Object Registry, and appropriate international websites.Museums should grant scholarly access to the works as they would for objects in their own collections. With the consent of depositors, museums may exhibit works stored for safe haven and all information about them should be made available to the public, along with educational information on preserving heritage.
Finally, the AAMD notes that return of objects should take place as soon as is practicable and that objects might be returned to the depositor, the then owner, the government of the affected area, or to the government of the United States, among others. The AAMD urges compliance with all applicable law in returning objects and the avoidance of potential ownership disputes. http://committeeforculturalpolicy.org/aamd-issues-safe-haven-protocols-for-countries-in-crisis/

AUCTIONS - Christmas 2015

1. NEW YORK (AFP).- Christie's on Monday smashed world record prices at auction for Amedeo Modigliani and Roy Lichtenstein, selling works by the artists for $170.4 million and $95.37 million respectively. Modigliani's "Nu Couche" or "Reclining Nude," painted in 1917-18, sold in New York after a frantic nine-minute bidding war in the first time the painting has ever come to auction. More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/82793/Christie-s-New-York-sets-world-record-prices-for-Amedeo-Modigliani-and-Roy-Lichtenstein#.VlOnL9-rT2Q

2. NEW YORK, NY.- Barnebys, the online search and valuation tool for artworks, antiques and collectibles that has taken Europe by storm, will officially launch in the United States with an office in New York City, soon after the turn of the year. Already, representatives from the company are in Manhattan, gearing up for the launch. From their other offices in Stockholm and London, Barnebys has already revolutionized the auctioneering landscape, but not as an online-bidding platform in an already crowded space. Rather, it is an auction house aggregator. The company’s free, one-stop
service allows potential bidders immediate access to items they desire at a host of major international auction houses as well as regional houses and specialist collections around the world, regardless of where and when the sale happens.
Users are given instant entree to virtually every auction item in the marketplace at any given time. They are also furnished – for free – historical data documenting an item's previous sale history. It's a concept that has caught on mightily in Europe since the firm's launch in 2011. On any given day, Barnebys curates more than 400,000 available objects from 1,000+ international auction houses and dealers.
Barnebys operates on a unique pay-per-click business model, generating its revenue from participating auction houses. That revenue is based on the amount of traffic Barnebys redirects to online auction catalogs. The firm enjoys a healthy and cooperative working relationship with international auction houses large and small, averaging around 20 new auction house sign-ups per month. It also sells banner ads on its website.
In the United States, top-tier auction houses such as Sotheby's, Christie's, Paddle 8, Phillips and Heritage have already signed on to become cooperative partners with Barnebys. Others are expected to follow suit, once the concept is more widely understood and the potential for increased revenue is explained. International users include Catawiki, Dorotheum, Tajan and Auctionata. Further global market expansion is planned for 2016. More information...http://artdaily.com/news/83085/Europe-s-powerhouse-auction-aggregator-Barnebys-will-enter-the-U-S--market

3. PARIS PARIS.- The African and Oceanic Arts department's last sale of the year totalled €5,932,500 ($6,312,773), with 81% of lots sold and 90% by value, with nearly 50% of lots sold above their high estimates. The highest prices went to works from collections built up several decades ago and masterpieces from restricted corpuses.At €2.9 million ($3 million), the René and Odette Delenne collection largely exceeded its high estimate, with 100% of lots sold. This remarkable collection begun in the 1950’s was celebrated at several outstanding exhibitions, and more recently with the acquisition of thirty-four sculptures from Congo by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2010.The sale was led by a pair of statues portraying King Pokam and his wife Yugang: a masterpiece by the Master of Batoufam (Bamileke, Cameroon), which was sold for €1,443,000 / $1,535,500 (lot 14). Documented since 1920’s, this work joined the Delenne collection in 1970, and was unveiled in 1988 at the famous Utotombo exhibition (Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts).From the same collection, the Kopar male figure from the Lower Sepik region was sold for €483,000 / $513,960 (lot 9, estimate: €150,000-200,000). Collected around 1960, this austerely beautiful sculpture is part of a very restricted corpus.... More



MUSEUMS TRIBAL ART - Christmas 2015

1. OTTAWA.- Walker's Fine Art & Estate Auctions' Inuit and First Nations Live Art Auction realized phenomenal results with CAD$1.4 million in total sales, and overall sell-through rates of 103% of the low estimate by value. Comprising 333 lots of Native Canadian and American sculpture, prints, drawings, textile arts, and decorative objects spanning some two thousand years, Walker's November 18 sale attracted hundreds of bidders from across North America and Europe. More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/83057/Walker-s-Inuit-and-First-Nations-Art-Auction-breaks-records#.VlOEm9-rSXQ

2. PARIS.- The first exhibition in France to be devoted to the arts of the peoples of the River Sepik in Papua New Guinea, this exhibition at the musée du quai Branly brings together 230 works from its own collections and from those of 18 European museums. More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/82950/First-exhibition-in-France-to-be-devoted-to-the-arts-of-the-peoples-of-the-River-Sepik-on-view-at-mus-e-du-quai-Branly#.VlOLlN-rSXQ



REPATRIATION - Christmas 2015

1. MUNCIE, INDIANA—Operation Hidden Idols, carried out by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), has recovered a Festival Bronze of Shiva and Parvati that dates to the Chola Period (A.D. 860-1279) that had been purchased by the David Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University from a New York City gallery. Special agents from HSI’s cultural property unit traced the trail of false provenances that had been provided by the gallery for the sculpture back to when it had been looted from a temple in southern India in 2004. “HSI’s long-term goal is to reduce the incentive for this kind of criminal activity. Our partnerships with institutions like Ball State University are instrumental to this effort. We hope that other collectors, institutions, and museums will see this surrender as a successful example of a way to move forward when dealing with artifacts that might be of concern,” Glenn Sorge, acting special agent in charge for HSI New York, said in a press release. The bronze will serve as potential evidence in the case against the art dealer. It is anticipated that it will then be repatriated with at least six other Chola bronzes recovered by HSI to India. To read more about archaeology in that country, go to "India's Village of the Dead." More Information...http://www.archaeology.org/news/3890-151118-bronze-shiva-parvati

2. HONOLULU, HAWAII—A totem pole stolen by actor John Barrymore in 1931 that later ended up as a yard decoration for actor Vincent Price was returned to Alaska tribal members on Thursday. The Associated Press reports that the stolen pole was one of more than 100 that once stood in the old village of Tuxecan on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, which was inhabited by the Tlingit people.Barrymore — grandfather of actress Drew Barrymore — took the approximately 40-foot-tall totem pole from an unoccupied village during a yacht trip along the Alaska coast in 1931. The totem pole has carved images of a killer whale, a raven, an eagle and a wolf, and the crew sawed it in three pieces. Barrymore later displayed it in his garden.
When the actor died, horror flick star Price and his wife bought the totem pole, which they then stuck in their yard as decoration, too. In 1981, the Prices donated it to the Honolulu Museum of Art.
Officials at the museum didn't know the totem pole was stolen, and after the top section was briefly displayed, the pole was moved to the museum's climate-controlled basement. While standing in front of his tribe's totem pole, Jonathan Rowan speaks about its significance at the Honolulu Museum of Art on Thursday. The totem pole was carved by the ancestors of the Tlingit tribe. Rowan is a tribe member from Klawock, Alaska.
While standing in front of his tribe's totem pole, Jonathan Rowan speaks about its significance at the Honolulu Museum of Art on Thursday. The totem pole was carved by the ancestors of the Tlingit tribe. Rowan is a tribe member from Klawock, Alaska. Marco Garcia/AP
University of Alaska, Anchorage professor Steve Langdon, who has long researched the object, became interested in the piece when he saw a picture of Price standing next the pole. He told AP: "It was totally out of place," he recalled. "Here's this recognizable Hollywood figure in a backyard estate with a totem pole ... that was surrounded by cactus." After researching he found that the totem pole was used for burials, and before Barrymore put it in his garden, he had removed the remains of a man that were inside it. In 2013, Langdon went to Honolulu to examine it, with permission from tribal leaders. This set in motion a repatriation process funded by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and on Thursday the piece was returned to tribal members. More Information... http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/10/23/451069354/totem-pole-stolen-84-years-ago-by-actor-john-barrymore-goes-home

3. PARIS, FRANCE—PARIS (AP) — A nearly 3,000-year-old carving stolen more than four decades ago from a remote area of southern Mexico has been recovered in France. The Olmec carving dating to around 900 B.C. had been chipped off the rock face sometime between the arrival of an archaeological team in 1968 and 1972, when the team returned to the area. It resurfaced recently in France under unclear circumstances.John Clark, a professor of archaeology at Brigham Young University who learned about the find Thursday, said the carved sculpture showed the extent of the Olmec's reach in an area of Chiapas better known for ties to the Maya. In the decades since the theft, he said, scholars have made due with a replica created by examining archive photos of the piece. The Olmec are best known for their enormous carved heads and are considered one of the founding cultures of Mesoamerica.
Dominique Michelet, a French archaeologist at the CNRS research center involved in recovering the piece, said Thursday the bas relief is believed to represent a priest.Clark said chunks of the cut-out stone were missing, but it appeared largely intact. "There's no image like this anywhere else. You can see he's wearing some sort of mask over his face. His clothes are unlike anything we've seen," Clark said. "There's just enough clues in some of the clothing detail and the face detail to show it's Olmec." He said scholars first learned about the stone carving from Germans traveling through the region in the early 20th century. Then the archaeological team arrived in 1968 to document it and search the area for more artifacts. The next time they returned, there was a gash in the rock face. "It's a real problem in the Maya lowlands. A lot of them show up in the art market mostly in Europe. I'm surprised it was given back," Clark said.Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said in a statement the carving was "secretly extracted from the rock face in the early 1970s and illegally taken out of the country." Michelet wouldn't say how it was found. It will be returned to Mexico for restoration and public display. More Information... http://bigstory.ap.org/article/bde9359c8f094d1e84df73add8094371/ancient-carving-stolen-decades-ago-mexico-found-france

4.  NEW YORK AAMD Issues Safe Haven Protocols for Art from Countries in Crisis October 29, 2015.The Association of Art Museum Directors’ (AAMD) newly issued Protocols For Safe Havens For Works Of Cultural Significance From Countries In Crisis urge international museum actions to protect artistic heritage at risk of loss and destruction. The AAMD protocols stress security, preservation in museum safe havens, international access, and returning objects only when it is safe to do so. The protocols thereby run counter to current US government policies, which prioritize repatriation, even to hostile regimes in countries currently in a state of war.
The Protocols begin, “Protecting works of cultural significance in danger of damage, destruction or looting as a result of war, terrorism or natural disasters is the responsibility of everyone and especially of institutions whose mission is to protect, conserve and study the artistic heritage of human kind.”
According to the AAMD, member museums can offer technical and professional help to preserve
collections in countries where crises threaten the security of cultural heritage, but in situations where in situ assistance is not practical, AAMD museums and other cultural institutions outside the areas of crisis can offer safe havens to works in danger until they can be safely returned. The AAMD notes that objects might require specialized treatment or care that is unavailable nearby. Therefore museums in North America and around the world should offer to preserve and protect threatened cultural property.
The AAMD notes that providing a safe haven removes threatened works from the marketplace (legal or illegal), preserves their physical integrity, and enables essential documentation to record these works for posterity. The AAMD statement identifies the following as possible depositors of artworks for safe haven: museums and governmental entities inside countries in crisis, US government authorities who have seized works on entry to the US, and private individuals, companies, or organizations who have come into possession of artworks.
The protocols call for action to inventory and document the condition of works prior to movement, if possible; safe transportation, preferably paid by the depositor; storage comparable to that which an AAMD museum applies to works in its own collection, and conservation for works in need of immediate stabilization.
Works should be inventoried, digitally documented, and treated as loaned works typically would be. Museums should publish the documentation on their own websites, on the AAMD Object Registry, and appropriate international websites.Museums should grant scholarly access to the works as they would for objects in their own collections. With the consent of depositors, museums may exhibit works stored for safe haven and all information about them should be made available to the public, along with educational information on preserving heritage.
Finally, the AAMD notes that return of objects should take place as soon as is practicable and that objects might be returned to the depositor, the then owner, the government of the affected area, or to the government of the United States, among others. The AAMD urges compliance with all applicable law in returning objects and the avoidance of potential ownership disputes. http://committeeforculturalpolicy.org/aamd-issues-safe-haven-protocols-for-countries-in-crisis/

5. WASHINGTON DC Ancient Tablets Seized from Hobby Lobby October 28, 2015.  The Daily Beast has identified the Hobby Lobby corporation as the destination for a shipment of cuneiform tablets seized by US Customs in 2011. The Green family are owners of the corporation Hobby Lobby and known as some of the most prolific collectors of ancient artifacts in the US today. The Greens are presently constructing a private museum in Washington, D.C., the Museum of the Bible, to house their collection of approximately 40,000 artifacts. Hobby Lobby is also well-known as the prevailing party in the US Supreme Court decision, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which granted the company an exemption from the Affordable Healthcare Act mandate to provide certain forms of contraception to its employees.
According to reporters Candida Moss and Joel Baden of the Daily Beast, an investigation by US federal law enforcement has been ongoing since the 2011 attempted importation. Museum of the Bible CEO Cary Summers acknowledged that there was an ongoing investigation, but told the Daily Beast that the issue was simply one of incomplete paperwork. Some in the media have speculated that importation may have been faulted for improper paperwork (the shipment is said to have originated in Israel, and been identified as “handcrafted clay tiles,” but the tablets appear to be ancient Syrian or Iraqi), or for a possible undervaluation on the import or export papers. No information regarding the matter has so far been released by federal authorities. More Information... http://committeeforculturalpolicy.org/ancient-tablets-seized-from-hobby-lobby/

6. PARIS France Proposes Safe Harbor for Syrian Antiquities. November 19, 2015. French President Francois Hollande proposed bringing Syrian antiquities to France for safekeeping, in an address to delegates at the 38th UNESCO Conference in Paris on November 17. Hollande’s proposal was larger in scope and in the protections offered antiquities that of the Association of Art Museum Directors’ “safe harbor” proposals issued in October 2015. ( See AAMD Issues Safe Haven Protocols for Art from Countries in Crisis, Oct. 29, 2015) Even the more modest AAMD proposal has drawn criticism from archaeological hardliners, who have misrepresented the AAMD proposal as “museum acquisition of looted goods.” Hollande spoke just a week after the violent attacks by extremists in Paris that killed 130 people. He said that the UNESCO conference was a symbol of the unity of cultures, and that it stood counter to the cowardly and despicable attacks of terrorists. He drew attention to the fact that each attack took place at a venue where people of varied cultures came together for enjoyment: a Thai restaurant, a concert by American musicians, and an international football match. France should, he said, show its commitment to liberty, creativity and the dialog of cultures. He said that the war against jihadist terror was not a war of civilizations. More.. http://committeeforculturalpolicy.org/france-proposes-safe-harbor-for-syrian-antiquities/

TECHNOLOGY - Christmas 2015

1. LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND—Researchers from the Idiap Research Institute of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the Digital Humanities Laboratory of the College of Humanities are working with Maya epigraphers to create a digital catalog of Mayan hieroglyphs from the three codices that survived the Spanish conquest. They have analyzed thousands of symbols, some of which have been drawn in different ways over time and in different regions. “Each image tells a story. Sometimes we can guess their meaning with the help of people who still speak this language today, and also by using glossaries,” Idiap researcher Rui Hu said in a press release. This new tool will help scholars quickly identify a hieroglyph and its meaning, and see what common combinations of symbols in a block of text are. “This research is of great interest to Mayanists, given the potential of such novel multidisciplinary approaches for overcoming obstacles resulting from applying more traditional methods,” explained Carlos Pallán Gayol of Bonn University. The project could one day lead to a machine translation tool for Mayan iconography and writing. To read more about Mayan hieroglyphs, go to "The Maya Sense of Time."  More Information ..http://www.archaeology.org/news/3846-151102-maya-hieroglyphs-technology

2. TULSA - Archaeology Magazine September/October 2015. Bob Pickering has been working for
years on West Mexican figures taking a unique approach in forensic authentication by examining the internal surface of these ceramics with an endoscope. Specifically Pickering has been looking in layman's term bug casing that can be tested as organic material by a laboratory equipped for carbon dating. Considering that most of these objects are cleaned leaving them without critical surface data for testing this approach is brilliant in its simplicity. Pickering believes these shaft tomb figures offer us a "snapshot" on the past revealing how this culture lived and died.  Certainly his approach approach can provide a definitive methodology for authenticating these objects. It is certain that such unassailable technology will create ambivalence for many curators and collectors. To know or not to know is the question. Pickering has an upcoming book which we will feature in a subsequent newsletter. Frankly I can't wait to see it.

TRIBAL ART ARCHAEOLOGY - Christmas 2015


1. QUINHAGAK, ALASKA Yupik Bear Mask (University of Aberdeen) —This season’s excavation at Nunalleq, or the well-preserved Yup’ik “old village” on the coast of the Bering Sea, has uncovered a mask depicting a half-human, half-walrus face. “It’s got amazingly lifelike contours with the cheek bones, and the nose, and the forehead and so on,” Rick Knecht of the University of Aberdeen told Alaska Public Media. The team also found a bentwood bowl among other household items, jewelry, and weapons in the 500-year-old sod house, which was burned and abandoned around 1640. “On the bottom of the bentwood bowl is an ownership mark left by the person who carved that and these ownership marks were inherited between families. We have about six or seven ownership marks we see consistently throughout this site, which we believe was a very large sod house divided up into compartments which were domestic spaces for women and children,” he added. The excavation is being conducted with the support of local Yup’ik people to retrieve the artifacts and record the site before it erodes into the sea. To read in-depth about the excavations at Nunalleq, go to "Cultural Revival." More Information http://www.archaeology.org/news/3629-150824-alaska-nunalleq-mask

2. MEXICO CITY, MEXICO—In the ruins of the great Aztec site of Templo Mayor, archaeologists have unearthed a massive tzompantli, or trophy skull rack, that was built between 1485 and 1502. These racks were used by the Aztecs to display the heads of their enemies, who may have been sacrificed atop nearby pyramids. Paintings and descriptions of the racks from the early colonial period suggest the Aztecs used wooden poles to suspend the skulls between vertical posts. The
recently discovered tzompantli differs from others that have been depicted and discovered in that rows of skulls seem to have been mortared to one another and formed a circle in which the skulls were arranged to look at the center. “There are 35 skulls that we can see, but there are many more,” National Institute of Anthropology and History archaeologist Raúl Barrera told The Guardian. “As we continue to dig the number is going to rise a lot.” To read in-depth about the excavations, go to “Under Mexico City.”

LEGAL ISSUES - Christmas 2015

1. BEIJING - The announcement Friday that the United States and China will work together to enact “nearly complete bans” on the import and export of ivory represents the most significant step yet in efforts to shut down an industry that has fueled the illegal hunting of elephants, putting some species at risk.The agreement between U.S. President Barack Obama and China President Xi Jinping means that China, the world’s largest consumer of ivory, is bolstering its promise last May to crack down on its domestic ivory trade—a claim that left many skeptical.
It’s an industry that has been driven largely by China’s booming middle class, in which some people covet ivory as a status symbol. Wildlife conservation groups say that Asia, and China in particular, are the key cogs in an industry that they say has helped to encourage the slaughter of some 30,000 African elephants a year.This is the first time that the presidents of the United States and China have made a specific, shared commitment to protect wildlife, the Humane Society of the United States said in a statement.There is already a near-total ban in the United States on commercial ivory, and new restrictions put in place last year tightened things further. Commercial imports of African elephant ivory, even antiques, were banned, and the restrictions limited the number and types of hunting trophies that could be brought into the country. Individual states, most recently California, have enacted or proposed bills to further restrict ivory sales.
Thursday’s agreement, announced by the White House, is especially significant for China because the Chinese government itself controls—and for years essentially encouraged—the ivory trade in that country.In 1989, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), the international body that sets wildlife trade policy, banned the global ivory trade. And when an experiment allowed Japan to buy a 55 tons of ivory legally in 1999, the resulting rise in smuggling caused China to deem the Japan experiment a failure. But just a few years later, China began lobbying to be allowed to do the same—to buy a limited amount of ivory to sell, in a tightly controlled market, domestically. China lobbied hard, and in 2008, CITES granted its request.That year, China legally bought 73 tons of ivory from Africa. About that time, it also built the world’s largest ivory-carving factory and began opening shops to sell ivory. The Chinese government even added ivory carving to its official register of Intangible Cultural Heritage, in an attempt to further legitimize the industry. National Geographic went inside some of China’s carving factories in 2012 and revealed how China’s actions were promoting the legal and illegal ivory trade. Instead of keeping prices for ivory low, the government raised them, making ivory more profitable to poachers. Meanwhile, Beijing’s plan to assign legally carved ivory products photo IDs backfired—the photos are so small that an ID used to identify a legal piece of ivory can easily be attached to an illegal one to legitimize it. The photos are so small that it’s hard to tell whether the piece in the photo is the same one being sold. China’s internal ivory control systems have failed. While 79 percent of Chinese people surveyed by National Geographic Society and GlobeScan said they’d support a total ban on ivory, the survey also found that 36 percent of those surveyed in China wanted to buy ivory and could afford it, while another 20 percent wanted to buy it but couldn’t afford it. (In the United States, 13 percent said they wanted to buy ivory and could afford it, while 22 said they wanted it but couldn’t afford it. The survey also found that a higher percentage of Americans who could afford it had no interest in buying ivory—24 percent, compared with 12 percent in China.)
The illegal ivory trade has been linked to terrorist organizations and organized crime, and this high-level commitment is a sign that wildlife trafficking has been elevated “into the diplomatic discourse among the world’s most important global political leaders,” the Humane Society statement said.
According to the announcement, the United States and China will restrict the import of ivory as hunting trophies, as well as work to restrict the domestic ivory trade. They also said they will expand cooperation in training, information-sharing, public education and law enforcement.
The agreement “should have a profound effect” on elephant poaching, said Peter Knights, the executive director of WildAid, a nonprofit that fights wildlife trafficking. “The fight will carry on, but this is probably the largest single step that could have been taken.”
Knights added that the announcement puts pressure on ivory-loving Hong Kong, where the legal commercial trade often provides cover for those seeking to launder illegal ivory. This story was produced by National Geographic’s Special Investigations Unit, which focuses on wildlife crime and is made possible by a grant from the BAND Foundation. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150925-ivory-elephants-us-china-obama-xi-poaching/

2. SANTA FE The Ivory Ban: ATADA’s Position
Note: ATADA is the Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association was established in 1988 and incorporated in 2001 to set ethical and professional standards for the trade and to provide education for the public.
ATADA is dedicated to the highest standards of dealing and collecting antique tribal art and, as our members are composed of collectors, dealers, and museum staff, ATADA is well positioned, in terms of knowledge and experience, to address the issues surrounding the new Federal ban on Ivory.
In ATADA’s initial estimation, the ivory ban fails on many counts and it will NOT work for the intended purpose. The ivory ban does too little, too late, in order to have any significant impact on African and Asian elephants killed by poachers today. The ivory ban is a piece of “looks good” legislation that does not address the core issue. More importantly for ATADA, it adversely impacts
our law-abiding antique dealers, collectors, and museums, no to mentions others, like musicians, who possess legal antique objects made of, or containing, ivory.
ATADA asserts that judging someone who buys or sells a piece of antique ivory art as “guilty until proven innocent” is the wrong methodology to use and it certainly will not prevent the contemporary killing of elephants.  At present, the emphasis of the ivory ban is to divert media attention and resources from the real problem, thereby providing the false impression that it will stop illegal poaching and save the elephant. Unfortunately, it won’t and the reality exists that extinction of the elephant could occur within the next 10 years if we do nothing to stop this issue at the source. The ivory ban, as it exists in the law now, will not extend the lifetime of the elephant by a single day and, concurrently, it penalizes countless of Americans who have done nothing wrong.
At the core, ATADA agrees with the Cato Institute: Americans should work together to save elephants with policies that actually address the problem and which respect people’s basic constitutional rights and liberties. Reports from Africa indicate that one elephant is being killed every 15 minutes. Only direct and immediate action at the source can prevent the elephant from becoming extinct. What is needed is enforcement of existing anti-poaching laws in the country of origin and preservation of habitat. The United States needs to direct funds and efforts at the problem abroad.
ATADA supports approaching the antique ivory trade with clear reason and guidelines. To quote ATADA attorney/collector Roger Fry, “It is ATADA’s position that the illegal killing of elephants for their ivory needs to be stopped at the source. The current proposal imposing prohibitions on the purchasing and selling of old, legally collected ivory in the USA may give the appearance of doing something to stop the illegal killing of elephants but, realistically, it is doubtful that it will save a single animal. The concept of shifting the burden of proof to the seller is inconsistent with our time tested rule that the state has the burden of proof.”
According to the guidelines, in order for an object made of, or containing, ivory to qualify as antique, the current owner must show that the item meets all of the following criteria:
    It is 100 years or older;
    It is composed in whole or in part of an ESA-listed species;
    It has not been repaired or modified with any such species after December 27, 1973; and
    It is being or was imported through an endangered species “antique port.”
Of particular note for many Native American art collectors is that this ban will NOT affect ivory derived from other species such as walrus, warthog, hippopotamus, mammoth and mastodon. Of course, it is possible to identify elephant ivory from other types of ivory however, as we often emphasize, buyer beware and proceed with caution if you intend to sell or purchase a product made of, or containing, ivory.  When purchasing, be sure to always ask for documentation that shows the species of AND the age of the ivory item you are purchasing. This documentation could include CITES permits or certificates, certified appraisals, documents that detail date and place of manufacture, etc.
To clarify some points about this new Federal Ivory Ban, ATADA defers to the official resource about the regulation as put forth by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.  There are basic vocabulary terms, necessary documentation, and understanding of the history of the bundle of the laws that surround this regulation that we recommend everyone with an interest (either commercial or personal) should familiarize themselves with before proceeding with sales/purchases/transfers of ivory antiques.  We strongly recommend consulting the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service website found at http://www.fws.gov/international/travel-and-trade/ivory-ban-questions-and-answers.html#2
Here are some more helpful links that add to this conversation:
http://www.natlawreview.com/print/article/us-ivory-regulation-qa-craig-hoover-us-fish-wildlife-service
http://www.fws.gov/policy/do210A1.pdf
http://www.cato.org/blog/when-washington-prefers-punish-ivory-owners-save-elephants
http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/ivory-ban-hurts-musicians-collectors/article_9c690f1f-480d-5f5c-8659-dca5f6d7d71a.html
http://committeeforculturalpolicy.org/new-york-state-bans-ivory-sales
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/13/save-elephants-farm-them-ivory-tusks
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/ivory/index.html
http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2014/06/ny_leg_passes_ivory_rhino_horn_ban_062014.html

TERRORISM IN THE ART WORLD - Christmas 2015

1. NEW YORK October 29, 2015.  A NY Times Opinion piece by Tristan McConnell, The Ivory-Funded Terrorism Myth, debunks the supposed links between terrorist groups such as Al-Shabaab (the East African Al-Qaeda offshoot) and the international ivory trade. McConnell notes that misdirected efforts based on bad information have had disastrous consequences: the illegal ivory trade continues unabated, and Al-Shabaab’s true sources of revenue continue to flow into its coffers. He notes that flawed analysis that vastly exaggerates the terrorism/ivory connection has become the prevalent media narrative, influencing governments, NGOs, and conservation advocates and hampering efforts to halt the flow of funds to terrorist groups in Africa.
Christian Nellemann, author of a joint United Nations Environmental Program and Interpol report on global environmental crime told McConnell that the supposed Al Shabaab/ivory connection was “total nonsense.”
Marc Bryce, the former coordinator of the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea told McConnell, “We saw nothing and we heard nothing about ivory,” during the four years he was in charge.
The direst warnings come from a major research paper funded by the UK’s Royal United Services Institute. In An Illusion of Complicity: Terrorism and the Illegal Ivory Trade in East Africa, authors Tom Maguire and Cathy Haenlein describe in detail the actual main sources of Al Shabaab’s funding: widespread extortionate taxation and illegal export of charcoal and sugar. Author Maguire states: ‘With attention required on so many fronts, the ivory-terrorism narrative serves as nothing more than a distraction from the international community’s efforts to tackle Al-Shabaab financing.”
The report contains extensive recommendations to address separately what it views as two completely separate criminal issues, among them, going after higher echelon government corruption and linked organized crime to stem the ivory trade, and engagement with the UAE and Saudi Arabia to halt Al-Shabaab’s trade-based financing through illegal charcoal and sugar.
There appear to be similarities between the media’s  ill-directed focus on the illicit ivory trade as a primary funding mechanism for Al-Shabaab and the patently absurd claims that the illicit antiquities trade is a major funding source for ISIS. Better data could result in a better-directed campaign against looting and cultural destruction in Iraq and Syria.

US GOVERNMENT - Christmas 2015


1. NEW YORK — Private Museums Tax Status Gets Examined by Senators: The Senate Finance Committee is looking into some dozen private museums owned by individual collectors, asking if their tax-exempt status is deserved or not by their larger public benefit. The Brandt Foundation Art Study Center, Glenstone Museum, and Eli and Edythe Broad Museum are among the establishments coming under scrutiny. [NYT]
http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/1288288/senators-question-tax-status-of-private-museums-black-artists?utm_source=BLOUIN+ARTINFO+Newsletters&utm_campaign=467c9b593b-Daily+Digest+November+30+2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_df23dbd3c6-467c9b593b-83005727

2. WASHINGTON DC ISIS and Antiquities Sales: Fact or Fantasy? November 13, 2015  By Peter K. Tompa*. The archaeological lobby and the media, particularly CBS News, have pushed the story that antiquities provide a major funding source for ISIS. While ISIS is probably making at least some income from either antiquities sales or from taxing looters, the amounts that it has derived from these sources probably amount to no more than 1-2% of its estimated total funding of from $1-2 billion dollars. A CBS News Report, “ISIS Cashing In on Selling Plundered Antiquities to Fund Terror,” CBS News, September 29, 2015, has been a major source for these claims, but the report is deeply flawed. The report is purportedly based on documents seized from ISIS financier, Abu Sayyaf, who was killed in a special operations forces raid last May. First, the report states that documents seized from Abu Sayyaf prove that ISIS has made hundreds of millions of dollars from stolen antiquities. However, according to an article by archaeologist and researcher Christopher Jones, the documents themselves only support a far lower number, $1.25 million. Second, the CBS story again suggests that Apamea has been looted by ISIS.  In fact, the city has been in the hands of the Assad government since the beginning of the conflict. This is part of a pattern of other exaggerations and grossly inaccurate claims, starting with a report that ISIS had made $36 million from stolen antiquities from one area in Syria alone. However, the report was later found to refer to money made from all types of looting in the al-Nabuk region of Syria, not only the looting of archaeological material. More http://committeeforculturalpolicy.org/isis-and-antiquities-sales-fact-or-fantasy/
3. WASHINGTON DC November 30, 2015. The Committee for Cultural Policy.. The Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act, which purports to “protect and preserve” antiquities in regions of crises, needs serious reworking before the Senate takes up the measure. As it is written, the bill does not have a firm factual basis for its assumptions – and without the real facts it will never be able to achieve its worthy goals. In short, by accepting without question the media hyperbole and discredited, phony numbers for ISIS’ trade in looted art – Congress will let slip the opportunity to focus on the true funding sources for terrorism.
H.R. 1493/S.1887 opens the door to a one-sided US policy that ignores the needs of US museums, collectors, and small businessmen and women. It will encourage anti-art trade activists to make every political upheaval around the globe into an excuse to stop the trade in cultural goods. As written, the proposed legislation is simply a recipe for dismantling the lawful trade in antique, ethnographic, and ancient art.  The bill creates a new Coordinating Committee on International Cultural Property
Protection, staffed without guaranteed representation of all stakeholders, which supplants the existing mechanisms already in place to combat the entry of looted materials into the US. Existing regulatory and enforcement mechanisms, both at the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) at the Department of State and in Customs, have already shown bias against both private and public museum collecting through a focus on forfeiture and the routine renewals of agreements halting the trade for fifteen and twenty years at a time. Congressional attempts at oversight have been sporadic and met with stonewalling; complaints have had little effect, despite statements by the State Department’s former Deputy Legal Adviser as well as statements of former CPAC members expressing concerns about how the State Department is handling its administration of the Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA).
H.R. 1493/S.1887 should be “tweaked” so the new State Department bureaucracy that is proposed is more inclusive.  More .. http://committeeforculturalpolicy.org/protect-and-preserve-international-cultural-property-act-h-r-1493s-1887-saving-syrian-antiquities-or-crushing-the-legitimate-art-trade/

CARE AND FEEDING OF ART 2015 - Christmas 2015

1. NEW YORK - “There was a smell of rotting food, rotting chips, rotting meat,” Christopher Redgrave, son of the sculptor William Redgrave, told a journalist, describing the scene he found when retrieving his father’s works from the fire-gutted Momart art storage facility in 2004. The East London conflagration reportedly claimed a “significant” portion of Charles Saatchi’s collection, along with important institutional holdings, racking up aggregate losses of between £30 million and £50 million. Located within a larger industrial complex, Momart’s 10,000-square-foot facility was the unintended victim of a fire that spread from a neighboring unit, where it had been started by burglars. The storage company eventually settled all claims, amounting to tens of millions of pounds, after a group legal action was launched alleging that its setup was “a disaster waiting to happen” and “wholly unsuitable for high-value fine art.”
More than a decade later, this expensive disaster is a mere memory, and the art storage industry is riding high on the same tide lifting the art market in general. There’s “an increasing demand for high-quality warehouse facilities,” insurer AXA Art’s technical officer, Maik Haede, noted in a recent internal briefing provided to ARTINFO. “With the rise of the art market and art prices, we have seen rise of storage facilities in Luxembourg and Switzerland and expect more in China and other Asian regions in the near future. And now that trend has expanded to the US with the opening of a new facility recently,” Haede continued, referring to Fritz Dietl’s 36,000-square-foot Delaware facility, which the veteran art shipper expects “to fill up by the end of next year, at the latest.”
The dangers have not disappeared, however. If anything, according to Haede, the worldwide proliferation of warehouses...More http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/1281627/disaster-waiting-to-happen-freeports-and-the-risk-of-storing?utm_source=BLOUIN+ARTINFO+Newsletters&utm_campaign=0906a47ffb-Daily+Digest+November+19+2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_df23dbd3c6-0906a47ffb-83005727