Category: visual

The Iraq war has been over for a month, but looters are targeting archaeological sites and carrying off whatever they can find. “This isn’t about museums anymore. This is about the last resource of our history: what’s underneath our soil.”

“An art dealer has been arrested in Brazil on suspicion of selling a stolen Picasso painting for $4.5 million and trying to sell a Monet painting that belonged to a Holocaust victim. French-born Michel Cohen, 49, who owned a gallery on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue before fleeing the US in 2001, was held while the US began extradition proceedings.” The Picasso in question had been loaned to Cohen by a Manhattan gallery in order for him to show it to a prospective buyer, but before the gallery knew what had happened, Cohen had sold the painting in a secret transaction at a Newark airport. He fled the country shortly thereafter.

American Attorney General John Ashcroft tells an international audience that his country will recover artwork looted from Iraq’s National Museum. “Regardless of how sophisticated these criminals are or how hard they work to avoid detection, United States law enforcement and our colleagues at Interpol will not rest until the stolen Iraqi artefacts are returned to their rightful place; the public museums and libraries of Iraq.”

How many works of art were stolen or broken during looting of Iraq’s National Museum? John Curtis, a curator at the British Museum estimates that “30 or 40 major works – some extremely significant – that remained on display last month are missing and that 15 are broken. The number missing from storage areas is still unknown. Initial reports suggested a much higher toll, which Curtis attributed to ‘poor information’.”

American and Iraqi officials probably know where most of the art from Iraq’s National Museum is, says a top curator from the British Museum. “In a news conference at the museum and a subsequent interview, John Curtis said he believed that American authorities now knew the locations of the artifact repositories but that as a precaution against further looting were not disclosing them. In Iraq yesterday, American and Iraqi officials appeared to support this assessment, saying they still did not know precisely what was missing from the National Museum, because they had not yet had access to sites where art objects may have been hidden, or to rooms inside the building that were among the looters’ targets. But Mr. Curtis said the officials ‘certainly know’ where the hiding places are.”

US Attorney General John Ashcroft told an Interpol meeting that “organized crime was involved in the looting of Iraq’s national museum and the United States will fully back international efforts to retrieve the stolen artifacts. The comments came at a conference of art experts and law enforcement officials aimed at creating a database listing items looted in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.”

The story of looting of Iraq’s National Museum is confusing. “Questions abound. What exactly was stolen? How significant was it? Can it be recovered? The story seems to change every day. Experts do agree on one thing: The losses at museums, libraries and other places were catastrophic even if smaller than first feared.”

“For decades, the Smithsonian Institution museums had quick and easy access for visitors. But after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, security concerns increased for all of Washington’s attractions. The National Air and Space Museum served as the Smithsonian’s test site for visitor inspections, adopting hand searches of pocketbooks and backpacks and, eventually, installing metal detectors and X-ray machines. The addition of walk-through metal detectors at the National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of American History was completed in the past two weeks. The two museums do not have X-ray machines, but may add them at some point. Bags are searched only if the metal detectors indicate a problem.”

“The cost of the Museum of Modern Art’s new complex is going up. “Since the museum broke ground in May 2001 the expansion has grown significantly in both scope and expense. To date there have been $31 million worth of changes to the original plans, along with unbudgeted expenses totaling $21 million. That brings the total cost to $858 million from the original figure of $806 million. And with 18 months to go before the Modern is to open its doors once again on West 53rd Street in Manhattan, museum officials still need to raise more than $200 million to pay for the project.”

“The US Marines in charge of tracking down antiquities of Iraq’s National Museum say their search is “being hampered by strained relations between the US marine corps and officials of the Iraqi National Museum. The marines, who have been given responsibility for finding the missing treasures, say the staff are not cooperating. Colonel Matthew Bogdanus, who commands the taskforce conducting the search, said the officals had yet to provide an inventory of the museum’s possessions. Without that it was impossible to establish how much had been stolen. Baghdad is awash with people offering antiquities, real and fake, to foreigners. In the markets, at street corners and roundabouts, statues and seals said to be more than 5,000 years old are on offer.”