"Holding Out for a Hero"

In Brief

• Tragedy of Terror, Theater Director & Playwright to serve 6 years for "justifying terrorism"

  After writing and producing an award-winning play “Finist the Brave Falcon” about women going to marry radical men from Syria (and other places perhaps), outspoken peace advocates, theater director Yevgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriichuk, were arrested for more than a year and sentenced to six years in prison on July 8, 2024. Their attorney compared this injustice to the work of Herostratus.

  You can read more here and here.

• Zooming in: Finding India’s Stolen Art

  For decades, Indian art and artifacts have been systemically stolen and looted. Many of India’s most precious artifacts have disappeared into the black markets of the west. One striking example is the case of the two bronze statues of Nataraja and Sivakami (Goddess Parvati’s form). Through an outstanding observation on Google Street View, heritage enthusiast S. Vijay Kumar zoomed into an art gallery in New York and located the two antique statues with a market value of $8.5 million. The statues were stolen from India by Shubhash Kapoor, a notorious art smuggler. Though he is now behind bars, the two Chola bronzes are still missing as they remain concealed by Kapoor’s associates.

  On a more positive view, the tides are changing in repatriation efforts. In 2023, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art vowed to return fifteen sculptures to India upon being informed that they were illegally smuggled out of the country by Subhash Kapoor. In 2013, S. Vijay Kumar co-founded the India Pride Project and since then, Kumar and his team’s efforts have resulted in 68 convictions across India, the UK and the US, and the repatriation of 3,000 artifacts. Kumar highlights that two thousand more artifacts are in our US embassy, waiting to be repatriated. Read more here. (DK)

• Ukrainian Art Under Russian Threat

  As a propaganda device, Russia has been destroying art across occupied Ukraine and Crimea to erase the people’s cultural connection to their homeland. There have been many case studies portraying this destruction. In the name of restoration, Russian authorities in Crimea have changed the aesthetics of Bakhchysarai Khan’s Palace by demolishing the roof to reconstruct it in an incompatible modern fashion. Additionally, while claiming to excavate the ancient suburb of Taurian Chersonesus, Russian excavators damaged and lost physical signifiers of the city’s existence. More recently, Russian occupiers successfully seized the Kherson Regional Art Museum and 80% of its collection. The space then exhibited Soviet-Era art until Kherson’s liberation. In 2023, Polina Raiko’s painted home, legally protected as a cultural heritage site, was tragically flooded due to an explosion at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station leaving only 20% of the house preserved. Finally, Russian air strikes directly hit the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol, destroying the building. While most of the work was protected from the hit, they, like countless other culturally significant works, have been stolen or destroyed by Russian occupiers. Read more here.  (HB)

• Cambodia Celebrates Return of looted Statues Held By The Met

  After years of negotiations, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art recently returned 14 sculptures to Cambodia, following its looting from the country during a time of war. The sculptures were created in the Angkorian period between the 9th and 14th centuries and represent the Hindu and Buddhist influences of the time and carry the souls of ancestors. Cambodia held a welcome ceremony to celebrate their return. Read more here. (BO)

• Germany returns looted antiquities in Berlin’s Altes Museum to Italy

  Berlin’s Altes Museum has repatriated 25 antiquities, including 21 Apulian vases, believed to have been illegally excavated and smuggled out of Italy several decades ago. In a ceremony held in Berlin in June German Culture Minister Claudia Roth handed the artifacts over to her Italian counterpart, Gennaro Sangiuliano. In appreciation of this voluntary restitution, Italy is reciprocating with a long-term loan of two painted panels from Lucanian graves and bronze armor from the archaeological museums of Paestum and Naples. Read more here. (TS)

• British Loot Returns Home

  Oxford University will soon return a 500 year old bronze statue to India that depicts Thirumangai Alwar, an important religious figure in Hinduism. The statue was on display in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, but the Indian High Commission claimed that the British had looted it from an Indian museum in the late 1890s. On March 11, 2024, Ashmolean Museum released a statement saying that Oxford supported the return of the object, and that the decision to repatriate it would be submitted to the Charity Commission for final approval. Read more here. (JGS)

• Bananas for NFTs: Unraveling the Evolved Apes Scam

  In the surge of NFTs, the “Evolved Apes” fraud operation defrauded investors of a staggering 798 ETH, or $2.7 million. In 2021, it was exposed that the project was a scheme, and criminal network. Since then, the mastermind behind the operation had been sought out. Recently, US authorities charged three UK nationals (Mohamed-Amin Atcha, Mohamed Rilaz Waleedh, and Daood Hassan) in connection with the scheme. They are accused of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and other charges related to orchestrating a scam involving the Evolved Apes NFT collection.

  U.S. Attorney Damian Williams stated: “As alleged, the defendants ran a scam to drive up the price of digital artwork through false promises about developing a videogame. They allegedly took investor funds, never developed the game, and pocketed the proceeds. Digital art may be new, but old rules still apply: making false promises for money is illegal.”  Read more here. (DK)

• Denver Art Museum Refuses Repatriation Requests from Native Alaskan Tribes

  The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska sought the return of five items from the Denver Art Museum. The museum, staying true to their history of denying repatriation requests, refused the request at hand. Commenting on the matter, DAM’s curator of Native arts, John Lukavic has said: “We’re not in the business of just giving away our collections… Nobody is.” This particular comment enraged the general public and members of the Tlingit and Haida tribes as it came across as insensitive to the fact that most of such museums’ possessions are stolen or otherwise unethically acquired pieces. One of the cultural resource officers undertaking negotiations with the Museum remarked that the DAM was “probably the worst museum” they had ever dealt with. Read more here. (DK)

• Warhol and Monet Works As Part of DOJ and 1MDB Fugitive Deal

  In cooperation with the US Justice Department, Low Taek Jho has agreed to return more than $100 million of the $4.5 billion he allegedly stole from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad fund (1MDB), a fund Malaysia’s government established to promote the country’s economic growth. Low is required to liquidate his assets two works by Warhol and Monet, together worth around $35 million. This is the latest addition to the $1.4 billion already returned to the Malaysian government. Read more here. (HB)

• Report Finds Sub-Standard Provenance Histories in the E. G. Bührle Foundation Collection

  According to a report authored by German Historical Museum president, Raphael Gross, the provenance research conducted by the E. G. Bührle Foundation into its collection is insufficient. In addition, the E. G. Bührle Foundation was found to have omitted information in their publications regarding the former Jewish owners of many works in their collection. Accusations made against the E. G. Bührle Foundation, of “white-washing” the provenances of its collection, prompted the trustees of the Swiss art museum Kunsthaus and the canton and city of Zurich to commission the report by Gross in May 2024. Gross identified 62 of 205 objects in the Bührle collection as having belonged to Jewish owners during the Holocaust. Gross and the investigative team looked deeply into the provenances of five works and discovered that there had been multiple insufficiently mentioned Jewish collectors. Read more about the works in question and the E. G. Bührle Foundation’s response to Gross’s report here. (TD)

• Restitution of Henri Matisse Odalisque (1920/21)

  A Henri Matisse painting will be returned to the heirs of Albert Stern, a Jewish textile manufacturer, as announced by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam on June 25, 2024. Stern sold Odalisque (1920/21) in an attempt to survive while facing persecution at the hand of the Nazis from 1933 onwards. The painting had been under the ownership of the Municipality of the City of Amsterdam in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum since 1941. Read more here. (TD)

• Climate Protesters Target Cultural Heritage Again

  Two members of the Just Stop Oil climate advocacy group were arrested after throwing orange powder onto parts of the Stonehenge monument, an UNESCO World Heritage Site, located near the British city of Salisbury. The orange pigment the protesters used is said to be made of orange cornflower. The powder was able to be removed from the monuments without signs of visible damage to the stones. Read more here. (TD)

• University of Manitoba Decolonizes its Art Collection

  In an effort to decolonize its collection, the University of Manitoba is replacing sculptures and paintings of problematic imagery and messaging with contemporary Indigenous art. Amid reflections about the nature of the museum as an institution, C.W. Brooks-Ip, registrar and preparator of the University of Manitoba Art Collection, has created the Indigenous Student Led Indigenous Art Purchase Program. The program is a two-year pilot project through which Indigenous students visit studios and meet with curators and artists and ultimately recommend what contemporary Indigenous art should enter the University of Manitoba Art Collection. Read more about this new initiative here. (TD)

• Mass-Production, Forgeries, & Inuit Art; How Will Indigenous Art Be Protected?

  A recent report by Indigenous-owned consulting firm, Big River Analytics, estimates that over 13 000 Inuit artists  are producing visual arts and craft in Canada. With nearly a third of these artists producing work to earn an income, the report also notes that in 2015, over $33 million in income was earned. While art creation has a long history in the traditions of Inuit peoples and has been a substantial economic sector, the mass-production and sale of imitations has posed a significant challenge for Indigenous creators. Unlike the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of the U.S., Canada does not have any law specifically protecting Indigenous art from misrepresentations in the market. With the wave of commodification and rising cases of people pretending to be Indigenous (‘pretendians’), more Inuit artists are advocating for stronger protections for their art against forgeries. Read more here. (BO)

• Algonquin Beader to Face Off Against Temu for Stolen Designs

  Algonquin beader, Melody Markle, from Long Point First Nation (Winneway) in western Quebec found her beaded earring designs on the popular online retail site, Temu. The earrings had been sold on the retail site for nearly a year without her permission nor knowledge. Instances of copied designs by major retailers often result in the lessening of value of Indigenous works and removal of the cultural context in which beaded art is created. Cease and desist letters may be a path to resolution, however with the scale of platforms like Temu or Amazon, there is little direct contact with sellers, leaving artists like Markle disadvantaged in enforcing their rights. Although copyright in Canada is afforded automatically to works, many artists still struggle in its enforcement, especially if the copyright is not registered. Markle has gone to hire a lawyer to pursue her case. Read more here. (BO)

• Former New Orleans Police Officer Indicted for Alleged Art Fraud Scheme

  A former police officer for the New Orleans Police Department was indicted by a grand jury for wire fraud, mail fraud, and making false statements in connection with an art fraud scheme. The indictment alleges that then-officer Christian Claus conspired with mansion-owner Fouad Zeton to file a false report stating that art had been stolen from Zeton’s mansion. Claus initially met Zeton when he responded to a call at Zeton’s mansion in connection with a robbery, when Claus allegedly asked Zeton if he was insured. The two allegedly devised a plan to report that art had been stolen from the home to fleece Zeton’s insurance company. Michael Jon Schofeld, the Nevada art appraiser who allegedly sent Claus and Zeton the inflated prices, recently pleaded guilty to participating in the scheme. Read more here. (JGS)

• Famous Art Fraudster Inigo Philbrick Is Back––And He Wants to Deal Again

  Inigo Philbrick, the infamous art dealer who fraudulently sold inflated shares of works to multiple investors without their knowledge, has been on a media tour following his release from prison. Philbrick was released after serving four years of a seven year sentence in federal prison, and both he and his wife have been in regular contact with media outlets. Philbrick spoke to Vanity Fair, which wrote a lengthy exposé of his exploits, and The Times of London reported that the BBC is putting together a three-part documentary of the affair. While Philbrick has passed off his fraud as an unfortunate frivolity deriving from his drinking problem, it is estimated that his scheme cost investors more than $86 million. Still, Philbrick is set on becoming an art dealer once again, hoping that he can convince investors of his knowledge of the art world. Read more on Puck News here. (JGS)

• Egon Schiele's Portrait of the Artist's Wife, 1917

  The whereabouts of Egon Schiele’s Portrait of the Artist’s Wife were unknown from 1917 to 1964. In 1964 the work was bought by Robert Owen Lehman Sr., head of Lehman Brothers investment firm, in a London gallery for £2,000 ($5,600 in 1964). Later, Lehman Sr. gave it to his son, Lehman Jr., who gifted the watercolor to the Robert Owen Lehman Jr. Foundation in 2016. When the foundation attempted to sell the work through Christie’s, two families claimed to be its rightful owners and the auction house postponed the sale. There are currently three competing claims to Portrait of the Artist’s Wife being heard in New York court; The Robert Owen Lehman Foundation, the heirs of Karl Mayländer, and the heirs of Heinrich Riege. Mayländer was an art collector, textile merchant, and the portrait subject of Schiele. Rieger was Schiele’s dentist and an art collector who owned dozens of Schiele’s work. Both were murdered during the Holocaust. The three parties have been engaged in litigation for many years now with the most recent arguments being heard currently in a State Supreme Court in Rochester, New York. There is no clear proof confirming the rightful owner, but if one family proves their claim by a preponderance of the evidence, they will gain the rights to a work estimated at $10 Million. Read more here. (HB)