Art Fraud Case ends with a Six-Year Sentence

Remember her? some $1.35 million painting, "Portrait of a Girl" by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, painter of the Barbizon school in France? She was purchased by Thomas Doyle in 2010 for a reported $775,000 and became a pawn in a scheme to defraud another art investor, Gary Fitzgerald, of $880,000. Doyle had led this investor believe that he would resell the artwork for $1.7 million but instead, he collected the money from Fitzgerald without ever delivering the artwork.

Later when the scheme started unwinding, Doyle claimed to have given the painting to a friend who allegedly lost it. The painting was found on the Upper East Side under suspicious circumstances.

The New York Times reported that in court Doyle portrayed himself as a reformed convict but the judge did not buy this act. Judge Colleen McMahon said "he lacked respect for the law." She ordered Doyle to pay Fitzgerald $880,000 in restitution and handed down an incarceration and probation sentence, which is twice the stipulated amount according to the guidelines regulating Doyle's guilty plea and his plea bargain. Doyle's attorney, Donald Duboulay, plans to appeal. There is nothing romantic about Doyle and his plight -- he has 11 convictions accumulated over a 34-year period. It probably did not help either that the judge's favorite painting happened to be another work by Corot.

Source: The New York Times.

In US v. Khouli, Leave to Attend a Coin Show Sought and Granted

Cultural Heritage Lawyer, Rick St. Hilaire is closely following the US v. Khouli case. He noted that
the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York held a status conference in the criminal matter of Khouli, an antiquities trafficking matter, on November 17, 2011. A federal grand jury in New York alleged that Khouli's antiquities trafficking ring conspired "to smuggle ancient artifacts from Egypt, engaging in money laundering and false statements in the process."


Hilaire notes that in a letter from 4 November, 2011 Khouli seeks leave to attend a coin show in Baltimore, Maryland, scheduled for November 16 and 20. The short letter explained: “As an antiquities dealer, Mr. Khouli’s livelihood depends on his ability to attend coin shows and other similar events.” The court granted Khouli’s request and extended the ruling, waiving the appearance of the other co-defendants.

Libya's antiquities department recovers and displays looted Roman antiquities

Arab Spring has not been too gentle to cultural heritage. Not surprising, some artifacts have been stolen in the aftermath of Libyan civil war. It has been reported by the new Libyan leaders that "Moammar Gadhafi's forces tried to flee Tripoli with a sack of ancient Roman artifacts in hopes of selling them abroad to help fund their doomed fight. These objects were recovered and are currently on display."

Apparently, the director of the state antiquities department, Saleh Algabe, hailed the find of 17 pieces, mostly small stone heads, as an important recovery of national treasures. These pieces were seized from a car on the road to Tripoli's airport in August as forces were sweeping into the capital. A museum employee said the recovered objects had once been part of the institution's collection.


It appears that most of Libya's archaeological sites and museums were spared from damage during the recent civil war.



From report by Vanessa Gera, Associated Press.

Getty on Folios from Zeytun Gospel -- To Return or Not To Return?

In 1994, the J. Paul Getty Museum bought eight pages belonging to an Armenian medieval illuminated manuscript known as the Zeyt'un Gospels. Reported purchase price was just under $1 million. According to Elizabeth Morrison, the Getty's acting senior curator of manuscripts, nobody asked questions about the legitimacy of the folios' ownership until the mid 2000s, and that the level of due diligence exercised in determining their provenance at the time of purchase was sufficient to meet the museum's standards, then and now.

The Armenians challenge Getty's possession, asserting that the Museum either knew the pages were stolen or failed to do appropriate provenance research. The Armenians note that these were pages from a manuscript that had been a treasure of the Armenian church since the 13th century. Lawyers representing the Armenian church have to argue both that the manuscript is a national treasure of great historical importance, and that it is not surprising that the discovery that pages were missing is only as recent as 2006. The folios were in a private collection in the United States for at least 60 years.

For details, read LA Times report.

What should we do with "our" antiquities?

In the latest issue of the Art Newspaper, Erica Cooke asks on behalf of the museums and collectors, "What should we do with "our" antiquities?" The question is posed on the five-year anniversary of the commencement of Marion True trial in Rome. To remind the readers, True, the former antiquties curator of the Getty museum was accused of conspiracy to receive illegally excavated antiquities. The trial ended last year, discharged as untimely. In 2010, another legal matter emerged into the dealings of Michael Padgett, curator of ancient art at Princeton University Art Museum, and the formerly New York-based Italian antiquities dealer Edoardo Almagià. (For comments on the Princeton situation, consult Looting Matters.)

Cooke's article mentions the discomfort felt by museums for their role in complicity to looting, and gives a nod to the recent publication Chasing Aphrodite by Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino, quoted as saying: "For the past 40 years, museum officials [in the US] have routinely violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the UNESCO treaty [designed to prevent looting], buying ancient art they knew had been illegally excavated and spirited out of source countries."

For more from the newspaper about the True case and its aftershocks, read here.

Artifact Case Ends in Probation Order, Lesson Learned?

In 2009, David A. Lacy, a school teacher, was indicted on nine counts of selling, stealing or offering to sell a number of archeological artifacts taken in violation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

He pleaded guilty to selling Native American artifacts and was sentenced to probation in U.S. District Court on November 18, 2011. As a condition of the probation, Lacy may not enter government property for any reason other than travel.
 
Source: http://www.deseretn ews.com/article/ print/705394634/ Probation- ordered-for- Blanding- teacher-in- artifacts- case.html

Two Hundred Years' Prequel to a Legal Battle

According to a BBC report, France has laid claim to a 17th Century painting displayed by a London gallery, the Weiss Gallery, at an art fair in Paris. The painting in dispute is a Nicolas Tournier's The Carrying of the Cross which was purchased in 2010 for 400,000 euros ($550,000) at the Maastricht art fair.

The French government alleges it stolen for nearly 200 years from a chapel in Toulouse, and there is an export ban on the work to stop it from leaving the country.

The painting disappeared in 1818. It resurfaced two years ago in Italy during the sale of an estate of a wealthy Florence art collector.

The French Culture Ministry is demanding the return of this long-lost work of art. "This was the property of the French state that was deposited at the Augustins Museum in Toulouse and was stolen in 1818. It is a non-transferable work," the ministry said in a statement. "We are claiming this painting as the property of the state and it will not leave the country."

The case is unlikely to settle (quickly).

The Hunt for the Benghazi Treasure

On May 25, 2011 the "Benghazi Treasure" was looted from a bank vault in Libya. The "treasure" had been returned to Libya from Italy in 1961. Although there was documentation of the items returned, no photographs were taken. Now, this is problematic because it will be difficult to prove provenance on items such as individual coins. It is suspected that up to 500 coins and other artifacts have been offered for sale on the Egyptian black market. Irina Bukova, Unesco director-general, expressed that the loss represented “one of the largest thefts of archaeological material in history.”

Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei is back in the news

The Chinese artist, who was held at an undisclosed location earlier this year, is back in the news for tax evasion. Previously, Weiwei, an artist critical of the Chinese government, was released after 81 days of detention. In his bail agreement, he was to stay off twitter and to remain in the capital for a year. However, in August he began posting on twitter and published an article in Newsweek. Now the Chinese government claims that Weiwei owes $2.4 million in back taxes and has two weeks to pay the fees. This new figure is larger than the original $770,000 that the government claimed Weiwei owed. Weiwei insists that not paying the fine is more about the principle than about the money. However, when pressed he is unsure of how he will come up with the money.