The long summer of 2016

by Marc Masurovsky

I confess.

The absence of any postings on the plundered-art blog this past summer was as a direct result of the thrashing that we suffered at the hands of the American museum lobby, its auction house allies and a handful of well-established community groups which found it easier to support museum boards than claimants suing them to foster some form of justice 80 years after the genocide against the Jews of Europe.

It’s not as if the roof collapsed over our heads. But it felt like a sucker punch, one that we had not been dealt in quite some time.

What am I referring to here? The US Senate Judiciary committee and its processing of two legislative proposals critical to the claims process affecting art objects displaced in Axis-controlled Europe—S. 2763 known as the HEAR Act and S.3155.

Round 1-- June 2016

The HEAR Act (S. 2763) was the subject of a hearing on 7 June 2016. Helen Mirren, a highly talented and versatile actress, was the star witness for claimants seeking the restitution of their cultural assets on US territory. Senators, Republican and Democrat, fawned over her when it came time for photo ops and autographs. A Hollywood actress always plays well in Peoria. She could have sold used cars to these elected fools, the result would have been the same.

Members of HARP, myself and counsel, Pierre Ciric, suspected that something was up at this Senate hearing. On the Republican side, Senator Cornyn (Texas) uttered menacing words (seize this opportunity because there won’t be another one like it, or something to that effect), Senator Charles Grassley (Iowa) advised Senator Orrin Hatch (Utah) that he could introduce his other bill (in effect, S. 3155). On the Democrat side, Senator Charles Schumer, great friend of museum lobbies, trial lawyers and mainstream Jewish organizations, abandoned the hearing five minutes after it had begun. These minor events contributed to an almost surreal atmosphere in the Senate hearing room. Added to the mix, the absence of a genuine debate on whether or not looted art claims would be extinguished after the proposed “truce” or sunset period lapsed (by this, I mean that the HEAR Act’s lure was to propose that  current possessors could not invoke echnical defenses when defending against cultural claims, only up to 2026. After that date, who knows? It’s been the ambition, no, the goal, of the art market in the US, including museum directors and their boards, to extinguish all cultural claims that could be filed on the US market.) And, last but not least, the unfortunate and misguided collusion of certain American Jewish groups, like the American Jewish Committee in its mistaken belief that the HEAR Act was a great gift to claimants, considering that the AJC never did anything constructive to support cultural claimants. Period.

Round 2--July 2016

The onslaught by the museum lobbyists of the AAMD (Association of American Museum Directors) and the leadership of New York museums was finding its mark. Their success among members of the Senate Judiciary Committee relied on the fact that the Republican and Democrat senators and their staff members had no basic understanding of the massive losses suffered by Jewish victims of the Nazis, the complexities of burdensome and costly recovery in postwar America of art objects confiscated and misappropriated between 1933 and 1945. In short order, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch introduced S. 3155 and was able to have it processed speedily through the Senate Judiciary Committee with unanimous consent. Even Democrat Senator Pat Healey who had vehemently opposed its forerunner, S. 2122, felt that he could not pursue his opposition to the museums’ attempt to create a claims-free market inside the United States.

Round 3--August 2016

HARP tried to rebuild the successful coalition of 2012-2013 against Senate Bill 2212 in order to neutralize its successor, S. 3155. In vain.

The newest and most visible group promoting the protection of cultural heritage and antiquities in the Mideast war zone, the Antiquities Coalition, was nowhere to be found and seemed to ignore the very existence of these two pieces of legislation.

It’s hard to tell what exactly happened. But it could be that its full attention was focused on overseas recruitment of and negotiations with source countries as part of their campaign to forge new coalitions among all source countries, in order to safeguard antiquities and archaeological sites under threat of destruction and crack down on the illicit trade. Despite all of this maneuvering on the international arena, no attention was being paid to the domestic US market and its complex, often absurd and confusing legislative environment. Only ARCA, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, has been a steadfast and reliable ally because its leadership understands the linkages between Nazi confiscated art, looted antiquities, and looted indigenous sacred objects on the international market.

One preliminary assessement would hold that the American cultural heritage community had failed to understand that S. 3155 affects them and their clientele, those constituencies and nations that they aim to protect. We don’t blame them, we simply nurtured expectations that ran higher than warranted.

As for the lawyers representing plaintiffs in art restitution and repatriation cases, most of them are based in New York, some are in Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, DC. Some of these attorneys participated in the drafting and amending of both bills that sailed through the Senate Judiciary Committee and therefore aligned themselves with their framers.

One can only wonder whether their tacit or explicit support of S. 2763 and S. 3155 was a business decision aimed at adapting to new realities, that, in their view, Holocaust-era claims are fated to be extinguished by the callousness and calculated hostility of the art world’s leadership and their opportunistic political allies whose main objective is to make sure that history, the kind that affects people’s lives and their cultural assets, no longer enters the sanctum of cultural institutions on American territory. We hope that this was all a big miscalculation, but we won’t know unless we ask them and they agree to go on the record.

S. 2763 and S. 3155, combined with other recent legislative proposals (the so-called Engel bill) that passed through the House of Representatives to protect antiquities and restrict their importation into the US is what we call a cultural policy, one that the US government pretends that it does not have. And yet, those who are on the front line of enforcement have been waging an incredible and outstanding battle to suppress with the few tools at their disposal the resale networks of looted cultural objects operating on US territory. These government agencies—ICE, the FBI, even the BIA--are simply not helped by the failure of other government agencies and a confused and ignorant Congress, and the obstreperousness of museum leaders and their lobbyists in fostering an environment that encourages a general clean-up of the domestic art and antiquities market.

Instead of antiquities and cultural heritage groups, HARP found solace amongst anti-communist and conservative groups which understood that cultural objects plundered in other historical contexts  (like during and after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917) would end up entering the US market without fear of being confiscated, thus embarrassing the lenders, like Russia, France, the UK, and many other nations with a lot of cultural skeletons to rattle in their display cases and exhibition halls. These groups’ enthusiasm at contributing to the fostering of a more ethical approach to the art market has contrasted sharply with the indifference of antiquities groups and their lawyers in this summer of 2016  Lesson learned.

Round 4--September 2016

Cultural claimants lost several major legislative battles between June and September 2016, for the first time since the Washington Conference on Holocaust-era Assets of December 1998.

Luckily for them, S. 2763 and S. 3155 do not appear to be hastily headed for a vote of the full Senate in the current session which ends on 7 October 2016. Operators like Senators Charles Schumer and Orrin Hatch may try to manipulate Senate procedures to have these two bills passed on voice vote with a quorum plus one in the Senate chamber. What with all of the nonsense generated by the Congressional resolve to hold the Saudis accountable for the attacks on New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC on 11 September 2001, budgetary issues and the presidential election campaign, one can only hope that these votes will be postponed. But anything is possible.

There’s a war to fight out there and the stakes are high.

For references, please consult past articles on the plundered-art blog:

plundered art: S. 2763: Restitution kabuki plundered art: Highlights from Senate Judiciary Committee hearing ...

plundered art: The American museums, the US Senate and the art ... plundered art: Revisiting Senate Bill 2212, Part Two

O Canada! Where did you go wrong?

by Marc Masurovsky

What is the problem up there?

Way back when, at the turn of the twenty-first century, an international conference was held in Ottawa hosted by the National Gallery of Canada, where members of the art trade, civil servants, researchers, claimants, survivors, art historians, lawyers, and hangers-on from various nations met to discuss looted art and restitution as a global problem but more particularly as a Canadian problem.

After three intense days of deliberations and animated discussions, the participants to this conclave came up with a blueprint with could have led to meaningful reforms in Canada that might have raised the ethical bar, thus ensuring that museums, dealers, collectors—the private and public sectors—did the right thing, cleaned up their collections, stopped buying looted artifacts and stolen art, and educated their public and their personnel about the ethics of collecting and the evils of cultural plunder. In some respect, the Ottawa Conference had accomplished a small miracle, one that was out of reach of the Washington Holocaust Assets Conference of December 1998.

Lost opportunities. Had this blueprint been enacted, even in part, it would have placed Canada at the forefront of the art restitution movement, a title that Austria is fighting hard to gain, since it is the only country in the world with a basic and generically effective restitution law.

Twelve years later, nothing has happened of any significance in Canada, save for interesting declarations, expressions of good will, attempts at increased provenance research in various museums (three at last count) and an inability, more to the point, an unwillingness to return stolen cultural property to their rightful owners. All this inaction despite the presence of highly educated and aware specialists, art lawyers specialized in restitutions, at least in name only, as well as thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors whose property was stolen but who somehow do not weigh in to these debates. Well-intentioned people everywhere, but no one to step up to the plate and tip the scales in favor of JUSTICE. Even the Canadian Jewish Congress has vanished from the very debates that it used to stoke with glee in the late 1990s. Times have changed, indeed.

Why the sour face?

Montreal is a poster child for everything that is wrong and that is right about Canada. Forget Toronto because no one is paying attention there.

Who gets it right? Why, the Max Stern Foundation at Concordia University. This foundation, established after the death of a German Jewish art dealer from Düsseldorf who was forced to leave the Third Reich for the obvious reasons after having been forced to sell his collection of several hundred Old Master paintings.

Max Stern's gallery in Dusseldorf, Germany
Source: Concordia University

Forced sale drove Max Stern into the ground and Nazi anti-Jewish policies drove him into exile to Canada where he became a successful businessman and bequeathed his estate to Concordia University, with the caveat that it would have to establish a project whose main goal would be to recover his lost works of art. Brilliant! The only project of its kind in the entire world… No kidding.

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montreal
Source: Wikipedia

Who gets it wrong? The Musée des Beaux-Arts of Montreal, a wonderful, albeit eclectic, compilation of brilliant Old Master paintings abutting fairly tacky and should I say “pompier” art from the 19th and early 20th century.  Now is not the time to be snobbish about the quality of the art. Suffice it to say that, from the 1950s on, this charming museum benefited from the largesse of a handful of very wealthy donors who parted with their classical acquisitions, coupled with new acquisitions over the past several decades aiming to place the Musée des Beaux-Arts as close as possible to the pantheon of great museums in North America, if not in Canada. Mission accomplished? You be the judge. Meanwhile, in their great haste to acquire, the museum staff and board members forgot to do their due diligence and, in the process, absorbed a small trove of paintings of dubious origin. The most glaring examples are:

The Deification of Aeneas (1642-1644) by Charles Le Brun
Source: Wikipedia

The Deification of Aeneas (1642-1644), by Charles Le Brun, which once belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a wealthy Dutch art merchant who perished accidentally on a boat in the North Sea shortly before the Nazi takeover of Holland in spring of 1940. The rest being history, several thousand pieces in his extraordinary collection were dispersed under the watchful eyes of Marshal Goering and his minions. Goudstikker’s heirs have spent decades seeking the return of these stolen works. Successes and failures have followed in quick succession, but the behavior of the Musée des beaux-arts of Montréal ranks as low as that of the Norton Simon Museum in California over its stubborn reticence to relinquish paintings that belong to the Goudstikker family, even if all of the evidence in hand is clear and incontrovertible.

“Das Duett” by Gerhard Honthorst, which used to be the property of a German Jew named Bruno Spiro before being sold under less than honorable circumstances in 1934. How it ended up at the Musée des Beaux-Arts remains unclear.

"Das Duett" by Gerhard Honthorst
Source: Lost Art

As with many cultural institutions, the Montreal museum’s leadership has been sitting pat on its hands, waiting for things to not happen. That is one strategy that characterizes most museums’ responses to restitution claims, the strategy of attrition. Tire them out, stall for time, until someone passes away, namely the claimant, or the plaintiff’s treasury runs dry, or a combination thereof.

It’s even more unfortunate to have to witness this callous state of affairs when one realizes that the chairperson of the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Montreal is one of the most successful Holocaust survivors in Canada. Yes, you heard it here. This is not esoteric or a mystery, no one is hiding under a rock here. Mr. Hornstein is a distinguished member of the Canadian Jewish community, a highly decorated member of Canadian society, someone to look up to and admire, especially after everything that he went through, least of which was to be deported to Auschwitz. And yet, with the moral sway and the burden of history that Mr. Hornstein carries on his frail shoulders, although he sounds like one tough guy, a man known for his boundless generosity, why does he not awaken from his dream and persuade the Museum’s board to relinquish those few paintings that are at issue to their rightful owners, thus transforming him into an even greater mensch than he already is? Why? Does anyone know? Maybe it’s because at least one painting in the collection was claimed by the Polish government. Who knows?

It’s always been a puzzle as to why it would have to come to this, time and time again, where Jewish claimants, some rich, most not, would have to butt heads against formidable members of the Jewish community, current possessors of their property, and bloody their heads against brick walls of indifference, verging on disdain and contempt. Yes, strong words these are, but truthful words, words spoken from decades of hapless and helpless observation. How many times have Jewish claimants come up against other members of the community in futile attempts to knock sense into them and invoke age-old communal ties to do the right thing much like the Torah commands them to do? Nothing doing. For some inexplicable reason, the principle of having acquired a stolen work of art in good faith primes over any moral, ethical, communal, communitarian, spiritual, religious, or plain commonsensical reason. It simply ain’t gonna happen.

So, what is to be done?

All-out war? Is that what where we are headed? Intra-communitarian warfare? Silly discourses about working hard and having suffered greatly and why should I simply hand this painting back to you? How do I know it’s yours anyway? And so forth and so on? So much unnecessary strife, so much grandstanding, why? As usual, it’s the principle that matters, on both sides of the fence. The current possessors reason like 2nd Amendment nut cakes who prize their guns over human life, while claimants invoke rightfully the wrongs of history, the certainty that injustice has been committed, brandish the incontrovertible proof that backs their claim, invoke and implore, and plead, in vain. Maybe the Mounties can resolve this, much like agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) do in the United States whose track record is practically unblemished. After all, it’s hard to challenge a badge and a gun, because there’s not much left to say. A crime is a crime. But if the hapless claimant comes unarmed, the current possessor eats him alive, arguing that there is no crime. Long live Kafka!

It is somewhat a fitting irony to have two antithetical institutions and modes of behavior co-existing within half a mile of one another in Montreal—the Max Stern Art Restitution Project on the one hand and the Musée des Beaux-Arts on the other. They embody the optimism that one can feel whereby it is possible to recover and to do right, while the other exudes cynicism and reinforces our endless pessimism that museum boards and their supporters live on another planet in some kind of art-fueled apartheid.

As yet another pessimistic sign of things to come, there is an event coming up at McGill University, also in Montreal, which appears to be underwritten by one of the top law firms in Canada. The event hosts none other than Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to discuss the intersection of art and law when it comes to questions of restitution of looted art. Well, now, who else but Glenn Lowry to discuss in the most objective and impartial manner how his institution has refused steadfastly ever since the end of the Second World War to return anything to anyone.

Glenn Lowry
Source: The Lattice Group

Quite the contrary, MOMA is always happy to preserve, safeguard, store, display, acquire, and otherwise hoard works of art that do not necessarily belong to this fine cultural institution. Perhaps, these words are on the cusp of libel. Perhaps they are, but go ask the Georg Grosz heirs, go ask the heirs of the Redslob family, go ask anyone about Alfred Barr’s disingenuous and clever ways of acquiring looted art on the European market and then on the American market, hiding behind sycophantic dealers and collectors only too happy to minister to Barr’s wishes, in the hopes that he would …. what? Curry favors to them? The art world being what it is, anything is possible, of course. But Alfred Barr was no dummy, no he wasn’t. When looted art, art looted by the Nazi government from its own citizens and institutions was put up for sale in Lucerne, Switzerland, in late June 1939, Barr didn’t dare embarrass himself by bidding in person for those works. No, he hired “cut-outs” who acted on his behalf and turned the acquired works over to MOMA without dropping a hint that the purchases had been commissioned by good ol’ Alfred.

Alfred H. Barr
Source: Wikipedia

Back to Canada... Suffice it to say that for McGill to host a presentation on a subject as complex and contentious as restitution of looted art by asking the proverbial elegant fox to lead the discussion, the fox being Mr. Lowry of course, is already a very bad sign, an indication that there is no interest on the part of this fine academic institution to provide a forum where the complexities of plunder and its consequences for institutions such as MOMA can be brought to bear for the benefit of the audience. Or one senses callous indifference on the part of the organizers of this event as they prefer to display their talent at bringing in one of the most successful American museum directors on their campus to discuss a topic where he unfortunately behaves more like a perpetrator than a Solomon, thereby cheating its public of an unique opportunity to apprehend the role of cultural institutions as enablers of historic injustices by refusing to return objects that clearly do not belong to them.

The fight continues…

Come on, Canada! Wake up! Smell the coffee! Do something useful and honorable! Restitute!

"Christ carrying the cross," by Girolamo di Romano

Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue, Girolamo Romano
Source: New York Times, Arts Beat

Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science (Tallahassee, FL)
Source: Wikipedia

Shortly after noon, on November 4, 2011, a group of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents entered the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee, Florida. Armed with a seizure warrant signed by US Attorney, Pamela Marsh, the agents removed a painting by Girolamo di Romano (also known as “Romanino”) entitled “Christ carrying the cross”, on suspicions that the painting was stolen property belonging to the heirs of Federico Gentili di Giuseppe, an Italian Jewish patriarch who had lived in France and had died there in 1940 shortly before the German invasion of May 1940.


The painting was part of a major loan exhibit from the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, Italy, that had graced the walls of the Tallahassee museum since March 2011 until the show closed on September 4. All the works returned to Milan except for the Romanino.

Anonymous ICE Official at Seizure
Source: ICE

The Pinacoteca had acquired the Romanino painting on the private art market in 1988, obviously without due consideration for the provenance of the work itself.

In 2001, the Gentili di Giuseppe heirs petitioned the Italian government and the Pinacoteca to return the painting to their family, in vain. Aware that the painting was being exhibited in the United States, Gentili di Giuseppe’s grandson, Lionel Salem, contacted Chucha Barber, director of the Mary Brogan Museum, to discuss the painting and to notify her of his belief that this was the same painting that had been illegally sold by the Vichy government in 1941 and was thus subject to restitution.

Several comments are needed here:

Pinacoteca di Brera (Milan, Italy)
Source: Wikipedia

Firstly, no one in the press has pointed out that the Pinacoteca and the Italian government had been aware for over a decade of the questionable origin of the Romanino painting. Hence, when the Pinacoteca agreed to send the painting to Tallahassee, the Italian government authorized its export, despite the fact that a potentially stolen cultural asset was leaving the borders of Italy, entering United States territory and thus transferring the risk to the host, the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science.

Secondly, neither the Pinacoteca nor the Italian government deemed it necessary to alert Ms. Barber that there might be some complications arising from the presence of the Romanino painting on its walls. A sign of arrogance? Who knows?

Let’s turn to the case itself:

In 1941, the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini became concerned that the property of its nationals of Jewish ancestry was falling into the hands of the Vichy government so that the French government could liquidate it and pocket the proceeds of the sales. Mussolini’s diplomats in Vichy repeatedly petitioned the Pétain government to lay off the assets of its nationals and to allow Italy to initiate proceedings for repatriating Italian Jewish property back to the homeland. In other words, the Fascist message to Pétain was clear: don’t mess with our Jews.

The Gentili di Giuseppe family was among those listed whose confiscated assets should be repatriated to Italy. That did not happen.

Hence, the proof of confiscation is explicit since, one way or another, the Gentili di Giuseppe family’s belongings were targeted both by Vichy and by Fascist Italy.

Fast forward to the present:

In July 2010, I had the extraordinary pleasure of chatting informally with Italy’s State Attorney Maurizio Fiorilli, after a conference held in Amelia, Italy, regarding illicit cultural property. To be honest, I spotted him at a local restaurant where I was finishing up lunch. Fiorilli was seated nearby. I took a deep breath, introduced myself and requested the pleasure of asking several questions, which he agreed to do. At first, he spoke in Italian and a woman at his table translated his words into English. Soon, he switched to English once we discussed the Gentili case.

Paraphrasing his words, Fiorilli indicated that even if the Gentili di Giuseppe family was able to get its painting back—the Romanino!-- it had to remain in Italy, as cultural property.

Cultural property? Does that mean that a XVIth century Italian painting is treated like an antique vase dug up from Roman ruins? How does that happen? Cultural property applies to cultural objects and artifacts extracted from the earth, not to Holocaust-era cultural assets that were forcibly removed from the homes and businesses of Nazi and Fascist victims. In other words, Fiorilli was playing a dangerous game, using cultural property laws to prevent Holocaust victims from recovering their assets.

Could it be that Fiorilli considers the Romanino painting as part of Italy’s patrimony—patrimonio culturale, patrimoine culturel, cultural heritage? If that is the case, the Italian government is pre-empting the rights of individuals to recover what is rightfully theirs, by invoking abstract concepts of cultural heritage and the greater good of the nation.

Both arguments—cultural property and cultural heritage—are self-serving, opportunistic gambits to ignore individual rights to ownership of cultural assets. Hence, the Tallahassee case extends far beyond the restitution of an Italian Old Master painting to the rightful heirs of Gentili di Giuseppe. It brings into question the dubious practices of governments in preventing restitution of stolen cultural assets by invoking abstract and ill-defined concepts of cultural heritage and misusing notions that apply to antiquities by conflating them with Holocaust-era losses.

As far as we know, the Gentili di Giuseppe family has had a rough time dealing with American museums. The compromises that it was forced to accept with cultural institutions such as the Princeton Art Museum were not aimed at returning their property to them, but at negotiating financial settlements to allow those museums to maintain so-called good title to the Gentili property. ICE’s action might be the first step in a long process that might actually give the Gentili di Giuseppe heirs a taste of justice on American soil and maybe teach the Italian government a lesson or two about the Holocaust and restitution.

Princeton University Museum of Art
Source: Wikipedia

Maurizio Fiorilli's comments at the 2010 ARCA Conference in the Palazzo Petrignani in Amelia, Italy:


Maurizio Fiorilli, ARCA 2010, Part I 
Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA), 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97SvrwtfTVo

Maurizio Fiorilli, ARCA 2010, Part II

Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA), 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt5hGIkDT3U

Maurizio Fiorilli, ARCA 2010, Part III
Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA), 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7LPJTm7BXc

Maurizio Fiorilli, ARCA 2010, Part IV
Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA), 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DO7hn3hKPY

Seeking guidance from INTERPOL

The words vary but their meaning does not.

Plunder, looting, theft, spoliation, misappropriation, pillage—call it what you wish, it all comes down to the same thing: someone somewhere has committed a theft of cultural items either under cover of an international military conflict, a domestic uprising or insurrection or major civil unrest, or simply has broken into someone’s home, place of business, or public institution to commit the crime of art theft.

Lawyers will have a field day arguing that each word connotes something slightly different. But as one famous unnamed general said at the end of the Second World War, “Theft does not convey title”. Period.

Since 1945, much has been said but little has been done to address in absolute terms the global problem of cultural theft, especially when it has been fueled by considerations of race, ethnicity, belief, and/or greed and lucre.

INTERPOL
Source: Wikipedia

No global solution to the problem of cultural property theft, cultural plunder and looting, can be achieved without the full and engaged participation of international organizations, especially since the founding of the United Nations in 1945.  As part of an on-going effort to spark more interest in the role of the organized international community of experts and officials who take at least a nominal interest in questions of art crime, let’s take a brief look at one institution—INTERPOL—and its pronouncements between 2004 and 2007 regarding international art crime.

First off, we paid a visit to INTERPOL’s website datelined 2007 and found these remarkable items under the rubric of “frequently asked questions” or FAQs” :

• “In fact, it is very difficult to gain an exact idea of how many items of cultural property are stolen throughout the world and it is unlikely that there will ever be any accurate statistics. National statistics are often based on the circumstances of the theft (petty theft, theft by breaking and entering or armed robbery) rather than the type of object stolen. To illustrate this, every year, the Interpol General Secretariat asks all member countries for statistics on thefts of works of art, information on where the thefts took place, and the nature of the stolen objects. On average, we receive 60 replies a year (out of 186 member countries), some of which are incomplete or inform us that no statistics exist.”
• To the question, “Which countries are most affected by this type of crime?”, the answer is…….
  
  France
  Italy
  Russia
  Germany
• The most sought after items by thieves as reported by law enforcement agencies are:
  
  Paintings
  Sculptures and statues
  Religious items
• INTERPOL’s General Secretariat devised the following tools “to tackle the traffic in cultural property”:
  
  A "wanted" poster:
  
  In 1986, INTERPOL published “THE 12 MOST WANTED WORKS OF ART’ poster.  The following year, the poster was renamed “THE MOST WANTED WORKS OF ART", printed in black and white and updated twice. Since 1998, the poster has been printed in COLOR!
  
  A database of stolen works of art:
  
  As of 2007, Interpol’s computerized database contained 26,000 stolen works of art. The main caveat for eligibility to be entered into the Interpol Stolen Works of Art database is that the object be “fully identifiable.”  The most astounding development occurred in 2010 when, for the first time, INTERPOL agreed to publish a series of paintings stolen from Max Stern, a German Jewish art dealer once based in Duesseldorf whose business was liquidated by the Nazi government and he was forced to flee to Canada.  At his death, Concordia University became the executor of his estate and launched a unique program under the guise of the "Max Stern Foundation" to publicize the cultural losses suffered by Max Stern and promote the identification and restitution of his cultural property, with some measure of success, thanks in part to the crucial role played by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit of the Department of Homeland Security in the apprehension and restitution of some of Stern's works from private collections in the United States.

Max Stern in Germany, c. 1925
Source: National Gallery of Canada, Library and Archives, Fonds Max Stern via Max Stern Art Restition Project, Concordia University

Since INTERPOL is comprised of representatives from police forces the world over, it is well-positioned to make recommendations that allow its law enforcement members to do their job more efficiently and curb the global crime wave of art theft.

When reading these recommendations, please keep in mind that we are now in the year 2011. Our planet has suffered through two global wars since 1914 which accounted for combined human casualties of close to 80 million individuals and massive thefts of cultural property. Since 1945, there has been at least one international military conflict in some part of the globe. Each conflict has produced its fair share of cultural plunder.

INTERPOL believes that the following conditions need to be met in order to achieve lasting long-term solutions to the problems of global art crime:

1. bring in laws to protect cultural heritage and regulate the art market. 
2.  become party to international conventions (1970 UNESCO Convention and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention)
3. prepare inventories of public collections using standards which will make it possible to circulate information in the event of theft
4. develop a computerized database along the lines of those currently in use, to avoid duplication of effort. 
5. circulate information on thefts as rapidly as possible
6. raise public awareness with regard to the cultural heritage both in the country and abroad
7. set up specialized police units to tackle this type of crime
8. hold training courses for the police, other law enforcement services and customs, with the support of cultural institutions.

In order to appreciate the tedium of political discourse at the international level and the degree to which raising international awareness can best be compared to La Fontaine’s fable of the “Turtle and the Hare” (We know who won the race, right?), here are some highlights of meetings convened by INTERPOL between 2004 and 2007:

Meeting place: Sinaïa City, Romania 
Date: September 7-9, 2004
Title: 4th International Conference on the Illicit Traffic in Cultural Property Stolen in Central and Eastern Europe

The participants acknowledged that there were serious problems east of the Oder River “concerning the protection and documentation of cultural property”.

They recommended the following:

• “To monitor the art market including the increasing sales on the Internet.”
• “To encourage the completion of inventories including photographs of cultural property for public and private collections using international description standards such as Object ID.”

Castelul Peles, Sinaia, Romania
Source: Wikipedia

Meeting place: Washington, DC
Date: May 23, 2005
Title: 3rd Meeting of the Interpol Tracking Task Force to Fight the Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property Stolen in Iraq

The participants realized that the Internet is becoming a favorite venue for the sale of cultural items stolen in Iraq.

Meeting place: Lyon, France
Date: June 21-23, 2005
Title: 6th International Symposium on the Theft of and Illicit Traffic in Works of Art, Cultural Property and Antiques

The participants recommended the adoption of a “model export certificate for cultural property jointly developed by UNESCO and the World Customs Organization.”

More importantly, albeit very diplomatically, the participants invite their members to “consider adopting legislation and developing procedures that require proper examination of appropriate documentation for all cultural goods entering their country.” Remember, we are now in 2005, not in 1955.

The participants agreed to provide “relevant law enforcement agencies” around the world access to Interpol’s Stolen Works of Art database.

This one is the clincher:

The participants asked that the governments of their respective nations should “consider whether their cultural heritage legislation should include a provision for proof of ownership of cultural property prior to their trade.” In other words, was there no requirement until 2005 to prove the ownership of a cultural item before it entered the art trade?

Other recommendations included:

“Countries seeking the return of their cultural property provide adequate relevant documentation detailing the date and place of the theft with a full inventory of the stolen objects including descriptions and photographs. For incidents of looting, date and place with documented justification of the provenance of the items should be provided.”

“Establishment of minimum documentation for all cultural objects and use of the Object ID checklist for this purpose.”

Meeting place: Lyon, France
Date: March 7-8, 2006
Title: 3rd Meeting of the Interpol Expert Group (IEG) on Stolen Cultural Property

The participants admitted that they needed the assistance of “art market professionals in the trade in cultural objects” in order to enable law enforcement agencies to locate stolen cultural items more effectively. Interesting… Should one surmise that the international art trade has not had to worry about the heavy arm of law enforcement until very recently?

As a result of high-profile looted art cases which required years of litigation and tentative outcomes, the participants focused on alternative dispute resolutions as one way of facilitating the restitution of stolen art to countries of origin.

Not only did they propose that “law enforcement agencies extend their co-operation efforts to art market professionals as valuable partners and sources of information,” but, in the same breath, the participants suggested that “creative solutions” be found to facilitate the “return of cultural objects.” These solutions might include: arbitration, conciliation, mediation or negotiation procedures. More worrisome is the notion that long term loans could be used as an acceptable compromise to achieve the return of coveted stolen objects. Worrisome in light of the deals struck by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. These institutions have sufficient clout, despite their egregious behavior concerning the harboring of looted art and antiquities, to convince the injured parties—in these instances, foreign nations—to accept complex deals whose outcome is to dilute the responsibility of the institution responsible for benefiting from the misappropriation of a cultural object.

In other words, the aiding and abetting of art crimes has a way of turning into a profitable moment for all parties concerned, fueled for the most part by commercial and financial incentives at the expense of ethics. Let's hope that INTERPOL and other like-minded well-intentioned organizations do not fall into this gilded trap.  Theft is theft, no matter how you look at it and cultural institutions that profit from it should be held accountable even if it costs them an exhibit or two and the ill-gotten items that they have acquired.