Blog'Art

Officials covered costs of board member's testimony in True case despite legal warning.

By Ralph Frammolino and Jason Felch, Times Staff Writers

June 29, 2006, The LA Times

The J. Paul Getty Trust paid $64,000 in legal fees for a wealthy board member to testify in an Italian legal proceeding despite warnings from attorneys that doing so would be inappropriate and might jeopardize the nonprofit's tax status.

Barbara Fleischman, elected to the Getty board in 2000, incurred the fees in connection with a deposition she gave in the criminal case against former Getty antiquities curator Marion True.

Fleischman and her late husband, Lawrence, had become close friends with True while building a $60-million antiquities collection that the Getty acquired in 1996.

Fleischman joined the Getty board just as the trust learned that True was the target of an Italian investigation into trafficking in looted antiquities.

True's defense attorney asked Fleischman to testify on the curator's behalf. Fleischman agreed to do so and asked the Getty to pay for her legal fees, records show.

Getty general counsel Peter Erichsen told Fleischman in January 2003 that the Getty was not obligated to pay her fees because her testimony was unrelated to her service as a trustee.

He warned board members in an April 2003 memo that paying the bills "would not be appropriate." He said payment would risk violating federal tax rules, which prohibit self-dealing, and go against Getty bylaws, which limit reimbursement of legal fees to actions taken as a trustee.

Helene Kaplan, the board's vice chair and a New York attorney specializing in nonprofit law, agreed. "I think we would be jeopardizing our potential tax exemption by any potential plan to give her legal fees," she said, according to a voicemail transcribed for Getty files.

But the Getty reversed its position and began paying the fees nearly two years later, records and interviews show.

Getty officials refuse to explain what led to the reversal, citing attorney-client privilege. They note that the payments were reported in the trust's latest tax filing.

The payments raise further questions about possible misuse of tax-exempt funds by Getty board members, who are prohibited by J. Paul Getty's will and federal tax rules from benefiting financially from their service at the institution.

Tax experts, consulted about the payments by The Times, said they agreed with Erichsen's initial advice and expressed surprise that the Getty had gone against it.

"Unless there's something significant that intervened, it's astonishing," said Harvey Dale, director of the National Center on Philanthropy and the Law at New York University.

The Getty's payment of Fleischman's legal fees is but the latest example of questionable spending at the Getty. Former trust chief executive Barry Munitz was forced to resign earlier this year with an internal review and an investigation by the California attorney general underway to determine whether he had used Getty resources for personal benefit.

The Times reported earlier this month that Munitz had agreed to pay retired Getty board Chairman David Gardner nearly $300,000 to write a coffee-table book after Gardner left the foundation's board in 2004, months after he intervened on Munitz's behalf to help the chief executive secure a five-year contract.

Both men denied any impropriety, but several experts on the laws governing nonprofits said the book deal created a potential conflict of interest.

The Getty's payment of Fleischman's legal fees also sheds light on an increasingly tense relationship between the Getty and Fleischman, its most generous living donor.

During her tenure on the board, Fleischman became an outspoken trustee, critical of the Getty's administration because she thought it was not doing enough to defend True.

The tension deepened recently when an internal investigation found Fleischman had violated the trust's conflict-of-interest rules when she and her husband gave True a $400,000 loan days before the trust acquired the Fleischman collection. As a result, Fleischman was forced to resign from the board in January.

In an interview, Fleischman said she never asked for help with her legal bills and was unaware of any of the concerns raised by Erichsen. She added that Gardner approached her with the offer to help with the fees after she had already absorbed $46,000 in legal costs.

"I exerted no pressure on anybody," she said. "I did not raise a rumpus about this."

John Biggs, the current Getty board chairman, said trustees agreed to pay a "narrow amount" of Fleischman's fees because her testimony on behalf of True was "in the interest of the trust."

Biggs indicated that Erichsen, the trust's general counsel, had changed his mind from his earlier decision.

Erichsen "would be the first to acknowledge that the cleanest thing would have been to say 'no,' but frankly it was a gray issue," Biggs said. "Peter said the argument was one that could hold water." The Getty declined to make Erichsen available for an interview. Kaplan, the former vice chair of the board, declined repeated requests for comment.

Fleischman testified before Italian authorities in September 2004 in New York City at the request of True's defense attorneys. They were eager to refute allegations that the curator used her relationship with the Fleischmans to "launder" looted items into the Getty by directing their purchases before the museum acquired the collection.

Fleischman testified as to how she and her husband had acquired their collection and emphatically disputed testimony from one dealer, who said the Fleischmans were purchasing at True's behest, records show.

Records show that the Getty made two payments, in December 2004 and August 2005, totaling $64,234 to cover Fleischman's fees from her New York law firm, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP.

Gardner, the former board chairman, said Munitz told him that Fleischman had expressed frustration over her mounting legal costs.

"Barbara was feeling under the gun and a little alone and had some strong emotional feelings about it," he said.

Munitz declined to comment.

A former senior Getty official familiar with the payment said board members decided to rethink Erichsen's advice and pay the fees to mollify Fleischman, who had complained at board meetings that the Getty wasn't doing enough to protect True.

"They didn't want her wandering around New York saying bad things about the Getty," said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Fleischman, who is wealthy, said Gardner told her the board had "second thoughts" and offered to pay her attorneys' bill. Fleischman said she was relieved by the offer, which also required that she recuse herself from board briefings or deliberations regarding the Italian case.

The offer, however, did not keep the peace for long. A month after the second payment, Fleischman became the subject of an internal Getty investigation of the $400,000 loan to True, which resulted in her removal. Most recently, Fleischman's attorneys have demanded that the Getty pay additional fees Fleischman incurred during the internal probe, according to sources familiar with the request.

A bitter fight ensued, with the Getty and Fleischman's attorney exchanging a number of strongly worded letters about the payment, the sources said.

But the Getty has refused to pay the additional fees.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-getty29jun29,1,2498659,print.story

Compiled by LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

Published: June 30, 2006, The NY Times

The J. Paul Getty Trust paid $64,000 in legal fees last year for Barbara Fleischman, who was then a trustee, when she testified in a deposition on behalf of the former Getty curator Marion True. Ms. True, who has been accused by the Italian government of conspiring to deal in looted artifacts, went on trial in Rome in November. The Los Angeles Times reported the payment yesterday, saying that the Getty's board agreed to compensate Ms. Fleischman despite warnings from its lawyers in 2003 that covering such an expense could jeopardize the trust's nonprofit status. In a telephone interview yesterday Ms. Fleischman said she had not asked the board to pay her legal fees and that she "was also never aware that there were any concerns or questions about any reimbursement." Ron Hartwig, a Getty spokesman, said yesterday that "there was a lively debate, and the board did agree to pay those legal fees," and that the Getty reported the expenditure on its tax forms and alerted the California state attorney general's office of the board's decision to pay the legal fees. "They were considered an expense in connection with Marion True's case," Mr. Hartwig said. Ms. Fleischman resigned from the Getty board in January after reports in The Los Angeles Times that she had made a personal loan to Ms. True. The attorney general opened an investigation into the Getty Trust's finances last summer to determine whether it had violated state laws governing its tax-exempt status. CAROL VOGEL

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/arts/30arts.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

En droit, la collection privée reste un objet mal identifié, sans véritable statut.
OEuvre de l’homme ou oeuvre de l’esprit ? Réflexions autour d’une notion floue.

Si le code civil dispose, à l’article 534, que "les collections de tableaux [et de porcelaines] qui peuvent être dans les galeries ou pièces particulières" ne sont pas des meubles meublants, rares sont les normes s’intéressant à la collection. L’objet de collection est doté d’un statut, principalement fiscal, celui-ci soumettant aux règles applicables aux objets d’art (par exemple en matière de dation, d’ISF ou de TVA à l’importation) des objets qui ne peuvent prétendre à cette appellation et sont seulement distingués par leur présence au sein d’une collection. La collection, quant à elle, est visée par le dispositif du code du patrimoine, qui soumet l’exportation de certains biens culturels à l’obtention d’un certificat, et le décret d’application du 29 janvier 1993, qui définit la collection comme "un ensemble d’objets, d’oeuvres et de documents dont les différents éléments ne peuvent être dissociés sans porter atteinte à sa cohérence et dont la valeur est supérieure à la somme des valeurs individuelles des éléments qui le composent".
Au coeur de cette définition est la notion d’ensemble - l’essence même de la collection - qui, en droit, s’appréhende au moyen du concept d’universalité, envisageant la pluralité des biens comme un bien unique. En l’espèce, une telle approche permettrait d’envisager une protection de la collection, sa dispersion pouvant alors être regardée comme une atteinte à ce bien unique. Aucune norme n’offre cependant une telle protection. Les tribunaux utilisent le principe d’universalité pour la collection afin d’appliquer le régime d’exportation (cf. affaire Arp), ou pour valider l’estimation globale d’une collection de dessins (pour une donation) ou de figurines en étain (pour une vente "en bloc"), sans exiger l’énumération exhaustive de chacune des pièces qui les composent. Mais ceci ne constitue pas en soi un régime protecteur de la collection. En outre, si la préservation de l’ensemble peut être imposée par le collectionneur dans un testament, un acte de donation ou un acte de vente, cette protection demeure fragile, car son effet est relatif. Ainsi et par exemple, le collectionneur ne peut déroger aux règles du partage successoral pour privilégier celui qui reçoit la collection au détriment des autres.
On pourrait alors rechercher cette protection dans le droit d’auteur – que le collectionneur revendiquerait en tant que "créateur" de sa collection - et, plus précisément, dans le droit au respect de l’intégrité de l’oeuvre, qui procède du droit moral de l’auteur prévu par le code de la propriété intellectuelle. À ce jour cependant, la collection n’est pas reconnue en tant qu’oeuvre de l’esprit protégée par le droit d’auteur. On pense notamment à l’arrêt de la cour d’appel de Paris du 25 mai 1988 relatif à la collection d’automobiles des frères Schlumpf, même si la cour a entrepris de donner une consistance juridique au lien existant entre le collectionneur et sa collection, grâce à la notion «d’oeuvre de l’homme». Ce lien "spécial" a également été invoqué le 12 janvier 2004 à Grenoble, dans un arrêt relatif à un divorce. La cour a en effet considéré que la collection de sciences naturelles était un bien propre attaché à la personne du collectionneur et n’entrait en conséquence pas dans les biens de la communauté. Pour autant, le contour flou de l’approche juridique de ce lien ne permet pas de l’envisager comme fondement d’un régime protecteur de la collection. Ainsi, la protection de la collection, que seul un classement au titre des monuments historiques assure avec certitude, apparaît fort délicate : empêcher la dispersion d’une collection contribue à geler les objets et, par conséquent, entrave la constitution de nouvelles collections. Dès lors, c’est peut-être l’esprit de la collection plus que sa matérialité qu’il convient de protéger. Par exemple, en lui reconnaissant la qualité d’oeuvre de l’esprit.

Pierre Taugourdeau, La Gazette de l'Hôtel Drouot

http://www.gazette-drouot.com/magazine/loi/loi053.html

A POINT OF VIEW

By Lisa Jardine, BBC News

The theft of art during war has always taken place, says Lisa Jardine. But the recent plundering of historic remains in Iraq and Afghanistan threatens the permanent loss of the record of ancient civilisations.

I went to look at a painting at Christie's on Monday, by the early-20th-Century Austrian artist Egon Schiele. Wilted Sunflowers is a largish landscape - about a metre square.

In the foreground are half-a-dozen tall, withered sunflower stems, silhouetted against distant, daisy-covered hills. Framed by dying leaves, the blackened sunflower heads droop heavily.

Behind them the autumnal air is pale, and a white sun struggles through a wall of grey-brown mist. Painted in 1914, the work is considered to be a sombre homage to Van Gogh's Sunflowers. It hints at decay, and the looming loss and destruction of the first world war.

This is a melancholy painting with a dark history. In the 1930s it belonged to the collector Karl Grünwald, a Viennese art and antiques dealer. During the First World War Grünwald and Schiele had served in the army together, and Grünwald, recognising the younger man's artistic talents, lobbied successfully to have him appointed as a war artist, rather than being sent to the front. Schiele died of influenza in 1918.

In 1938, the year Hitler annexed Austria, Grünwald fled to Paris. His finest art-works were packed up to follow him, but they were intercepted in Strasbourg and auctioned off by the Nazis in 1942.

Looted

Grünwald himself survived, but his wife and a daughter died in a concentration camp. After the war, first Karl Grünwald and then his son devoted much time, money and energy to searching for the stolen art works, with small success.

With the ebb and flow of empires, significant items stolen from one nation have been returned, or moved on, as new players enter the imperial scene
Lisa Jardine
Then, a year ago, Wilted Sunflowers resurfaced in France. On Tuesday, the painting was sold to an anonymous buyer for an astounding £11.8m, the money going to Grünwald's heirs, closing a sombre chapter in the family's history.

War and the pillaging of art and antiquities have always gone hand in hand. The callous accumulation by the Nazis of looted fine-art, in the form of personal possessions seized from Jews, many of whom were rounded up and sent to the gas chambers, is a shameful story of our time.

But it is only one of the most recent and high-profile historical examples of the glories of a nation taken by force by its invaders.

The treaty of Campo Formio, signed in October 1797, marked the successful conclusion to Napoleon Bonaparte's campaigns in Italy and the end of the first phase of the Napoleonic Wars.

As imperial victor, Napoleon considered himself entitled to strip all his conquered Italian territories of their cultural and artistic treasures. "Rome is no longer in Rome," he is said to have announced exultantly. "The whole of Rome is in Paris."

The following year, Napoleon brought his trophies triumphantly back to France. A spectacular cavalcade wound its way through the streets of Paris, while crowds lined the route.

Treasure laden

Antique statuary including the great marble figure of the priest Laocoon (struggling with sea-snakes) and the majestic Roman Apollo Belvedere, with famous paintings by Raphaël, Titian and Tintoretto, all crammed into huge packing cases, were carried into the city on horse-drawn carts.

To add to the sense of occasion, there were also animals from Napoleon's African campaign - a caged lion and a pair of dromedaries. But the parade's centre-piece was a cart bearing - unwrapped and on display - the four huge, antique, gilded bronze horses, which for 600 years had stood high above the great central door of St Mark's basilica in Venice.

In 1808 those Venetian horses provided the crowning glory for the Triumphal Arch erected by Napoleon in the Place du Carrousel, just in front of the Louvre. Today that arch still presides magnificently over one end of a nine-kilometre-long grand vista, running through the Place de La Concorde, and the length of the Champs-Elysée, down to the Arc de Triomphe.

The traffic in priceless antiquities, from defenceless to more powerful nations continues today. Only today the perpetrators of the destruction of a nation's ancient heritage may well be its own people, enticed into selling off their patrimony to the highest bidder, out of the simple need to survive.

Plundering the vanquished, sacking conquered cities, and other such acts of war-related pillaging have occurred throughout history. Till now, though, they have followed a kind of inexorable logic.

With the ebb and flow of empires, significant items stolen from one nation have been returned, or moved on, as new players enter the imperial scene. The bronze horses Napoleon removed from St Mark's basilica and took to Paris, had themselves been looted by Crusaders and brought to Venice after the sack of Constantinople 600 years earlier.

Ransacked

And in 1815, as Napoleon's power waned and he tried to curry favour with the Italians, he returned the horses to Venice, replacing them on the Carrousel arch with casts of the originals.

There is something much more brutally nihilistic about today's cultural theft.

The succession of wars in modern Afghanistan has made its ancient archaeological sites acutely vulnerable to plunder, for objects to sell on the international black market.

The squandering of Afghanistan's heritage began under the Taliban, when mujahideen soldiers systematically ransacked the National Museum in Kabul, passing its contents on - often to order - to dealers in Pakistan and elsewhere.

What is now reaching the West from Afghanistan, however, is not museum exhibits, but recently excavated archaeological treasures. Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan has become a grave-robber's paradise. The country's more than 3,000 historical sites are being systematically plundered.

Experts estimate that there is not an ancient site left in the whole country that has not been partly or fully looted, with the contraband antiquities going to London, Tokyo and New York.

Lost civilisations

As Afghanistan struggles to restore internal order and security, its rich, ancient past is seeping away, like sand between the fingers. As a Unesco spokesman puts it: "To Afghan farmers, digging up antiquities is the same as digging up potatoes" - you harvest what you can, so that your family can eat.

Earlier this year it was reported that almost four tons of illegally acquired ancient Afghan artefacts had been seized here in Britain. They included ceramics, stone sculptures, Buddhist statues, bronze weapons and coins, dating back to the third century BC.

At present these are stored for safety at the British Museum while discussions take place between the Foreign Office and the Afghan government over what to do with them.

Following the invasion of Iraq, the world watched in horror as the National Museum in Baghdad - left vulnerable and unguarded - was ransacked by looters, who removed any artefact that could be carried away, and destroyed or damaged many more in situ.

American troops posted to protect the nearby Oil Ministry and its documents - judged crucial for the functioning of Iraq's oil industry - did nothing.

What is now Iraq was once the cradle of civilisation. The astonishing remains of its ancient peoples are an important part of our western civilisation. Amid the disorder of war they became the West's responsibility. How could we have failed to protect Iraq's unique and precious cultural heritage?

Some commodities on which the West depends, which are currently being rapidly depleted by uncontrolled western consumption, may, over time, be replaced. By the time readily accessible sources of affordable oil have been exhausted, economic necessity will surely have driven the developed world to discover some viable alternative.

Schiele's Wilted Sunflowers, although lost for 70 years, was eventually recovered. The same cannot be said of the archaeological treasures currently pouring out of sites across Iraq and Afghanistan.

The precious remains of peoples and practices long gone, some of which have survived for more than two millennia, are being removed undocumented from unexcavated sites, dispersed and squandered. Once plundered, they are lost for ever from history. And with them vanishes the collective memory of a whole civilisation.

Add your comments on this story, using the form below.

Lets not forget the wanton damage done by invading forces to nonmilitary buildings - such as levelling the ruins of Babylon to make a helipad and truck park. How can we expect the locals to behave when we show such breathtaking barbarity!
Mark, oxford

Frankly, in many areas of the world the legal trade in artifacts is not an option because the governments are so corrupt. If it was accepted that this trade was going on and it was allowed in some areas then it might encourage a semi-commercial opening of sites with less looting and at the very least stop items being lost to the underground of private illegal collections.
Andy, Cleveleys

Always interested to consider how much of the art in the London museums were looted by the Empire....
Jack, UK

As an archaeologist I have worked in the Near and Middle East throughout my career. I had the privilege of working in the international salvage archaeology programme in Iraq in the 1980s. Many archaeologists resented Edward Said's views in his book Orientalism, but old ideas that we western archaeologists and museum curators know best, and that we (whether public museums or private collectors) will look after things better than the nationals in the countries of the Middle East are dying only slowly. Lisa Jardine puts her finger on it when she remarks that coalition forces were quick to guard the buildings of the Iraqi oil ministry, but did nothing to protect the Iraq museum. And she is quite right to ask "How could we have failed to protect Iraq's unique and precious cultural heritage?"

But it was worse than that. Known archaeological sites all around the country have been wantonly damaged through the completely careless location of military facilities. We have to accept that nowadays heads of government and their closest ministers will neither know nor care about such things.
Trevor Watkins, North Queensferry, Fife, Scotland

"The world watched in horror as the National Museum in Baghdad - left vulnerable and unguarded - was ransacked by looters." I can assure you that this was one of the least horrific events to have taken place in Baghdad over the last few years. It sould be pointed out that all the treasures of ancient civilisation are worth nothing without a modern civilisation.
Dave, Glasgow

I recently read several stories about how, during the second world war, Americans forces were given unstructions not to bomb Kyoto in Japan. this was to preserve the cultural heritage of this site, even though it was a dominant city in Japan. This seems to be the only case where the artistic achievements of the enemy are appreciated and preserved by attacking forces. Although the plundering of art and artifacts seems sad, it is the way of the world when war happens. to see the enemy as ones own property is one of the emotions that contributed to the fighting attitude, and this includes the feeling that 'what you own is mine by right'. the fact thet most of these artifacts are lost or kept in secret is a great loss to the world.
Heather, Wolverhampton

the language taught in english schools is french which is just about the most difficult european language. no wonder the english have a reputation for being unable to learn languages. english is essentially a mixsture of french and low german, and in type it is closest to italian, so it is the most obvious language for europeans to use.
robert craig, north somerset/lower wessex

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5111196.stm

Published: 2006/06/26 15:06:50 GMT

Un rapport pointe les conditions de conservation désastreuses dans la plupart des 41 établissements.

Par Vincent NOCE

mardi 27 juin 2006, Libération

Nos musées ont-ils les moyens de conserver dans des conditions décentes les oeuvres d'art dont ils ont la charge ? Sans doute pas, si l'on en croit une enquête qui a été conduite en Haute-Normandie par cinq spécialistes du Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (1), qui dressent un bilan des 41 musées de la région du lieu associatif jusqu'aux grands musées du Havre et de Rouen suffisamment sérieux pour tirer la sonnette d'alarme.

Aucun projet. Près de la moitié de ces établissements n'ont pris aucune mesure spécifique de «conservation préventive», terme qui désigne l'ensemble des éléments d'une bonne préservation des oeuvres. Les autres l'ont fait de manière disparate. Un même musée peut avoir le souci d'un éclairage adapté, mais pas de ses conditions de stockage. Ainsi, très peu d'interventions portent-elles sur l'entretien proprement dit des collections, comme le dépoussiérage ou la lutte contre les infestations. «Les mesures peuvent être aussi prises au gré des budgets, des opportunités et des préoccupations des équipes», notent les rapporteurs, sans «politique définie, s'appuyant sur un diagnostic et des objectifs».

Faute de moyens, les rénovations récentes des bâtiments sont rares. Un musée sur quatre n'a fait l'objet d'aucun chantier depuis plus de trente ans. Sept n'ont aucun chauffage. Seuls six sont équipés de traitement de l'air, parfois partiel, et sept d'appareils de contrôle de l'humidité.

Premières à bénéficier des rénovations, les salles d'expositions temporaires sont un peu mieux loties. Et pour cause : musées ou collectionneurs peuvent refuser de prêter des oeuvres dès lors que les conditions de conservation leur paraissent périlleuses. Du coup, la situation des collections permanentes se dégrade encore plus. Le rapport d'enquête conclut ainsi à «l'inadaptation ou l'inexistence du conditionnement dans trois quarts des musées et du stockage dans plus de la moitié des établissements». Des réserves se trouvent en «situation à risque». Trente-deux débordent, onze sont «en état de saturation». Seuls neuf bénéficient d'une «propreté acceptable», et six d'un rangement adapté.

Au final, nombre de collections sont en mauvais état, voire «en danger», notamment les dessins et estampes et les ensembles d'ethnographie ou des sciences naturelles. Les musées ne savent pas toujours très bien ce qui se trouve dans leurs collections, l'inventaire étant très inégal. Plus du quart n'ont pas entrepris un récolement qui doit, selon la loi, être mené tous les dix ans. Si un plan de numérisation de la région a contribué à l'informatisation des inventaires, seuls cinq musées ont une couverture photographique dépassant la moitié de leur fonds.

Pour couronner le tout, dix-huit établissements se trouvent dans des zones à risque, notamment ceux menacés de crues en bord de Seine, ou de tempêtes sur le littoral. Six sont implantés dans des zones à pollution potentielle, dont certaines classées Seveso. Cette localisation est sans doute spécifique à cette région, mais le constat d'ensemble témoigne de la situation critique du patrimoine, sur fond de dégringolade budgétaire, de désengagement de l'Etat et d'une décentralisation laborieuse.

«Plan Delta». Les auteurs appellent de leurs voeux un «plan Delta», référence à la campagne lancée sous ce nom en 1995 aux Pays-Bas à la demande du Parlement, qui a entraîné pendant cinq ans une remise à niveau des collections et des musées en fonction de l'urgence et de la gravité de chaque situation. Une démarche qui pourrait se faire à l'échelle nationale, tant ce triste bilan a tout lieu d'être partagé par d'autres régions.

(1) Voir «Vers un plan Delta en Haute-Normandie», Techné n°23, revue du Centre .

http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=393486

Arts, Briefly

Compiled by LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

Published: June 27, 2006, The NY Times

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam was closed yesterday morning after a vandal hurled a caustic substance at a 17th-century painting in its Masterpieces exhibition on Sunday, Agence France-Presse reported. But the museum was reopened to the public at noon after experts assessed the damage to the painting, "Celebration of the Peace of Münster" (1648) by Bartholomeus van der Helst. "The damage seems to be limited to the varnish layer, but the painting has been taken to the restoration workshop of the museum, and we will know more next week," said Ellis Kamphuis, a spokeswoman for the museum. Museum security workers said the unidentified man who attacked the painting, in an exhibition of highlights of the Rijksmuseum's collection, was a known vandal whose picture had been circulated among guards, but he was not recognized when he entered. "He didn't attract attention when he came in; people grow older and change appearance," Ms. Kamphuis said. The ANP news agency said a 69-year-old German had been arrested and told the police that he had attacked other paintings outside the Netherlands. Another van der Helst painting at the Rijksmuseum was attacked with a knife in 1989, and in 1990 the museum's best-known painting, Rembrandt's "Nightwatch" (1642), was sprayed with hydrochloric acid but only the varnish layer was damaged.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/arts/27arts.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Léna Lutaud et Mathilde Visseyrias

26 juin 2006, (Rubrique Entreprises), Le Figaro

Comme les autres, le Musée du quai Branly, inauguré la semaine dernière, doit s'organiser pour gagner de l'argent, quitte à sous-traiter certaines fonctions.
LES TEMPS ont changé. Si l'État n'impose pas encore aux musées nationaux d'être rentables, il leur demande de gagner plus d'argent par eux-mêmes. Inauguré en grande pompe par Jacques Chirac la semaine dernière, le Musée du quai Branly a appliqué cette nouvelle règle avant même son ouverture.
«Nous sommes garants d'une mission de service public couvrant à la fois l'exposition et la conservation des oeuvres du musée, la gestion d'une médiathèque, ainsi que des activités de recherche et d'enseignement. Cependant, toutes nos opérations commerciales doivent être rentables», explique Pierre Hanotaux, directeur général délégué du musée, qui gère un budget annuel de 43 millions d'euros.
Pour y arriver, cet inspecteur des finances espère couvrir environ 20% de ses dépenses grâce aux recettes propres du musée, dont les tickets d'entrée à 8,50 euros constitueront la principale ressource. Le solde proviendra surtout du mécénat et des concessions accordées par le musée à des sociétés privées. Il a ainsi confié la gestion de sa librairie à la Réunion des musées nationaux et les trois restaurants au groupe Elior. «Pour amortir leur investissement de départ, qui est lourd, il a été entendu que ces entreprises ne verseraient aucune redevance pendant les deux premières années d'exploitation. Dès 2008, en revanche, le musée bénéficiera de ces revenus», précise Pierre Hanotaux.
Une première en France
A l'instar du Louvre qui prend entre 5 000 et 24 000 euros par tournage, le musée compte aussi d'ici six mois louer ses espaces. L'auditorium, le hall d'accueil et la galerie jardin pourront ainsi être utilisés pour des tournages de films ou pour des défilés.
Enfin, pour alléger ses coûts, le musée a sous-traité à Faceo, filiale de Thales et Cegelec, l'accueil, le nettoyage, le gardiennage et la restauration du personnel, mais aussi le dispositif de sécurité et l'exploitation du système informatique. Ce contrat de 40 millions d'euros s'étale sur quatre ans. «C'est une première en France pour un établissement public, se félicite Brigitte Bouquot, directeur grands comptes du secteur public de la division services de Thales. Le musée a lancé l'an dernier un appel d'offres, auquel nous avons répondu en compétition avec Dalkia, Suez et Bouygues. Il avait le souci de ne pas gérer en propre ses services généraux. C'est donc nous qui emploierons le personnel de ces services, soit près de 200 salariés : une véritable petite PME dans le musée !» Selon cette spécialiste, la future Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine, qui sera située dans une aile du Palais de Chaillot, a déjà dit qu'elle allait faire la même chose.
Toujours pour mieux remplir leurs caisses, les musées nationaux louent de plus en plus leurs mètres carrés pour des réceptions et des réunions professionnelles. Aujourd'hui, les actionnaires et les journalistes économiques ne s'étonnent plus d'assister à l'assemblée générale de grandes sociétés cotées en Bourse comme LVMH et Carrefour, dans une des salles du Centre Pompidou ou du Louvre.
Le Quai d'Orsay bon élève
Mais selon Bruno Monnier, président de Culturespaces, filiale de Suez qui gère entre autres le Château des Baux-de-Provence et le Musée Jacquemart-André, les musées nationaux ont encore des progrès à faire s'ils veulent améliorer leurs comptes. «Leurs recettes ne couvrent en moyenne que 30% des charges, alors que les 13 établissements que nous gérons sont tous rentables, déclare-t-il. Leurs niveaux de charges, en particulier fonctionnelles, sont 20 fois plus élevés que chez nous. C'est là qu'ils ont un effort important à faire.» Selon cet expert, pour gagner plus d'argent, les musées auraient intérêt à ouvrir plus souvent leurs portes. «Ils sont fermés 60 jours par an, alors que les établissements que nous gérons ouvrent 7 jours sur 7», constate Bruno Monnier.
Au final, le Musée du quai Branly s'en sortira-t-il aussi bien que les bons élèves comme le Quai d'Orsay qui s'autofinance à 55%, contre 39% pour le Louvre et 17% pour le centre Georges-Pompidou ? Réponse en 2007, lors du prochain classement du magazine Journal des arts. Publié chaque année en mai depuis trois ans, ce palmarès classe les 300 musées de France selon la qualité de l'accueil, leur dynamisme et leur politique d'acquisitions.
Grand vainqueur de l'édition 2006, le Musée du Louvre est talonné par ses éternels challengers, le Quai d'Orsay et le Centre Georges-Pompidou. Le Musée d'art moderne de Lille arrive en quatrième position devant le Musée d'art de Roubaix. Le palmarès montre que la gestion des musées est difficile : si tous ces musées ont attiré 32 millions de visiteurs en 2005, soit une hausse de 5% par rapport à 2004, cette fréquentation est absorbée à 49% par les trois géants parisiens.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/eco-entreprises/20060626.FIG000000291_les_musees_se_convertissent_a_la_gestion.html#

LE MONDE | 24.06.06 | 14h26 • Mis à jour le 26.06.06 | 07h47

À la suite de notre article intitulé "Conflit autour de la succession Arman" (Le Monde daté 18-19 juin), nous avons reçu de Marion Moreau, fille du sculpteur et peintre Arman, la mise au point suivante :
Je ne suis pas la seule à avoir été citée devant la cour du comté de New York en validation d'un testament que nous contestons tous. Sont également dans la procédure Anne Lamb-Fernandez, ma soeur, Madison Arman, ma nièce et fille de mon frère décédé Yves, mon demi-frère Yves César Arman, fils naturel de mon père, Armand Fernandez, dit Arman.

Nous avons tous pris le même conseil, l'un aux Etats-Unis, l'autre en France.

En tant qu'"aînée", ma soeur, ma nièce et mon jeune frère m'ont demandé d'agir en leur nom et sont tous informés et d'accord sur toutes les décisions que je peux prendre pour nous tous.

Je n'ai pas envoyé un huissier, mais ma soeur et moi-même, en accord avec les susvisés et étant les seuls résidents en France, avons effectivement fait interdiction aux fondeurs de fondre tous objets relatifs à l'oeuvre de mon père sans que nous en soyons avertis afin d'éviter toute reproduction illicite, et ce, dans l'intérêt même de l'intégralité des membres de la succession.

Concernant les affirmations de M. Pierre Nahon que vous croyez utile de devoir reproduire, un certain nombre de précisions sont nécessaires.

M. Pierre Nahon a visiblement omis de vous indiquer qu'en 1993 son contrat d'exclusivité avec mon père n'a pas été reconduit par ce dernier. Mon père a, à ce moment-là, consenti à la société LMA SA, dont mon mari, M. Marc Moreau, est devenu le directeur, le contrat dont M. Nahon était avant bénéficiaire.

Nous n'avons jamais reçu de pension de mon père, ni directement ni par l'intermédiaire de M. Nahon. Une telle pension, si elle avait existé, serait apparue dans la comptabilité tenue par M. Nahon. Lorsque mon père a demandé l'audit de cette comptabilité, celle-ci n'a pu être présentée, car réputée détruite dans un incendie.

Je me pose la question, avec ma soeur et les autres héritiers que je représente, de l'intérêt de M. Nahon d'accorder de telles interviews et de tenir de tels propos.

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3382,36-787709@51-723032,0.html

Experts warn of downturn after record-breaking week in London auction rooms

Charlotte Higgins, arts correspondent

Saturday June 24, 2006, The Guardian

It is a boom that has been driven by the "wallpaper generation"; people with money who prefer to spend their millions on art than a stately pile in the country. And there are no signs of a bust. Yet.
The British market reached boiling point this week, with records smashed, jaw-dropping amounts of money changing hands and frantic auctions taking place at rival London sale rooms.

On Monday, Sotheby's sale of impressionist and modern art raised £88.7m, more than any auction held in London before. The star lot was a Modigliani that went for £16.3m - the buyer had ratcheted up the price by a cool £500,000 per bid. Tuesday saw a £86.9m sale of impressionists and modernists at Christie's, where a Schiele - Nazi loot that had hung unrecognised in a French apartment since the war - sold for £11.8m.

The titans clashed again in rival contemporary sales on Wednesday. At Sotheby's 11 artists, including Anselm Kiefer and Rachel Whiteread, achieved record prices. Hockney's The Splash fetched £2.9m, punching through his previous record, set last month, by £1m. Bridget Riley joined the handful of women artists to break the £1m mark, with her Untitled (Diagonal Curve).
The next night, Francis Bacon's Three Studies for a Self-portrait, 1980, sold for £3.8m at Christie's. All this in the week when the most expensive painting ever was sold - Klimt's Adele Bloch-Bauer I, for £73m.

Heights

The last time the market hit such heights was at the end of the 1980s, followed by a crash that saw New York's SoHo, then the city's main gallery district, end up a ghost town. Now a new boom has hit London and, according to Christie's European president Jussi Pylkkanen, "everybody's talking about the Russians". At its root is "the state of the global economy, and buyers from places such as Asia, the Middle East and Russia entering the market for contemporary and impressionist", he said.

It was a neophyte Russian bidder, for instance, who took Picasso's Dora Maar au Chat for $95.2m (£52m) at Sotheby's New York in May, the second highest sum paid for an artwork at auction. In Russia, dollar millionaires grew by 17.4% in 2005, according to Merrill Lynch and Capgemini's World Wealth Report, published this week. It also identified super-rich mushrooming in China, North America, Britain and the Middle East - all key growth areas for the art market.

Britain's slow adoption, compared with the rest of Europe, of the droit de suite (a levy payable to artists on works bought on the secondary market) has helped establish London as the world's second art city after New York. But it is its role as a global financial centre that is the main factor. Significantly, London is also the world's second city for hedge-fund activity, creating a superbreed of new rich.

It is contemporary art that has seen the most inflation, a development unimaginable 15 years ago. According to Matthew Slotover, co-director of Frieze art fair, the taste-shift has deep cultural roots. "In the 1980s and 90s, if you made a lot of money you probably wanted to buy a country house and have the sort of things your ancestors, or other people's ancestors, had. That's changed. Blair has meant a huge temperature shift in Britain. The people making large sums of money are the wallpaper generation - they want new things."

London has adapted to that taste. It has Tate Modern, Frieze art fair itself -the most influential contemporary fair after Basel - and a host of high-end galleries. "Everyone feels the exuberance," said Amy Cappellazzo, international co-head for postwar and contemporary art at Christie's. "It's an important crossroads for dealers and collectors. It's chic-er, more interesting and has better restaurants than it used to." It helps that the artworld is a circuit, a ready-made social scene. A calendar of events beckons, taking in Basel, Frieze and the Venice Biennale. At the same time, spending money on art is reckoned more sophisticated than spending it on vulgarities. "A lot of people have a private jet or a yacht now. Art distinguishes you," said Mr Slotover. The kind of work being made at the moment also helps, he says. Only limited connoisseurship is required: anyone can tell what's going on in a Damien Hirst.

Sophistication

The real question is: will the boom continue? Insiders will not mention the dread word "crash", though they admit the market could be in for some "correction". Mr Pylkkanen said: "Without doubt the boom will continue. There are pictures I see go through the room that I think aren't expensive. If the global economy continues to flourish, people will continue buying works of art."

"There are no signs of its abating," agreed Ms Cappellazzo. "There might be a slowing with particular artists - a bit of correction with people who've gone very high very quickly."

According to current wisdom, this boom is safer because the new globalised market means more stability. The last boom was all about one economy, Japan's, so it was snuffed out when that economy collapsed.

But the new markets could be as yet too new and shallow to rely on. "If the European or American art market softened now, China, Japan, Russia, and the others could never take up the slack," Anders Petterson, whose firm ArtTactic analyses the market, told New York magazine recently. And, though there is no immediate sign of hedge funds ceasing to yield giant bonuses, if the flood of new buyers dries up and prices continue to soar, the good times will cease to roll.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1804947,00.html

By Cahal Milmo

Published: 24 June 2006, The Independent

Edward Forbes Smiley III always made a selling point of his single-minded pursuit of the world's most precious maps. The American antiques dealer boasted to clients that he was "very aggressive" in his buying method.

But the true extent of the urbane antiquarian's bullishness was only confirmed on Thursday when he pleaded guilty to stealing nearly 100 maps worth £1.6m from institutions including the British Library.

The map dealer from New England admitted to an eight-year crime spree during which he used his professional credentials to smooth his way into leading libraries and museums on both sides of the Atlantic before slicing pages from volumes up to 500 years old.

Smiley, 50, who faces six years in prison and a fine of up to £860,000, is the latest in a succession of map thieves who have targeted British institutions.

The American dealer confirmed to a court in Connecticut that one of the charts he stole was a Tudor world map dating from 1520, taken from the reading room of the British Library between February and September last year. The library said it was trying to trace three other maps stolen in the same period.

Lawyers for Smiley said he had decided to admit to all his thefts after he was arrested at Yale University last year. Yesterday he pleaded guilty to three theft charges and asked for a total of 97 offences to be considered.

The pilferer might still have been operating but for a keen-eyed librarian at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library who noticed a scalpel blade on the floor of the Rare Documents Reading Room one morning in June last year. She also noted that the only man there at the time was looking at old books with maps. She identified him as Smiley by cross-referencing the library register with the internet, which revealed his identity as a rare-map dealer.

When the silver-haired Smiley emerged from the library en route to another campus library, he was intercepted by police. A search revealed that he was carrying seven maps cut from books in the space of a few hours.

His arrest sent a ripple of discomfort through the cosy and learned world of map dealers and cartographers after it emerged that the spree had been perpetrated by one of the trade's "inner circle". Among the institutions targeted by Smiley were the New York and Boston public libraries, a private library in Chicago and Harvard University.

Smiley, who ran a gallery in New York before moving to Martha's Vineyard, a wealthy Massachusetts island, sold the stolen maps through his network of private dealers and collectors. It is understood that at least six of the stolen maps were sold to British clients.

On his website, Smiley detailed his expertise in helping collectors and institutions build up collections of maps and atlases relating to the discovery of North America. He pointed to his role in acquiring maps for two public collections, including one of English maps held at the New York Public Library. There is no suggestion that these maps were improperly acquired.

But the antiquarian gave a hint of his modus operandi, saying: "I work to protect the collector's interest. This service includes negotiating on the collector's behalf as well as offering important maps and atlases from our inventory."

Peter Barber, the head of the British Library map collection, said in a recent interview: "In the past, the people who have stolen maps have been mainly outsiders - not properly professional. Forbes Smiley is disturbing as he is a member of the inner circle."

Mr Barber said he recalled being approached by the dealer when he visited in June 2004. "I remember he had made a great effort to meet me and I was puzzled as to why. Gut feelings are not evidence, but something about the whole encounter had seemed very odd. His whole manner was odd. He was almost timid but I thought also nervous and shifty."

The arrest led to what US detectives described as a "global treasure hunt" to find the 97 stolen maps with the help of police forces including Scotland Yard. To date, all but 11 of the maps have been recovered. Among the recovered maps were the first to carry the name New England and the first French map formally recognising the US.

Kimberly Mertz, the investigating FBI agent, said: "It's just incredible that things of that value are so readily accessible in libraries around the world."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1096055.ece