Originally posted: Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 18:48:16 -0500 From: Claire Lyons Museums' stance on Nazi loot belies their role in a key case By Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff, 02/13/98 WASHINGTON - Prodded by Congress and recent disclosures, the directors of four major American museums yesterday promised an industry-wide effort to facilitate the return of any artworks that may have been plundered from European Jews by Nazis during World War II. "We are sensitive to the outrages suffered by the victims of Nazi art theft, and to the rights of their heirs to legitimate claims for the restitution of stolen art," James N. Wood, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, told the House Banking Committee. But despite such comments, the same museum directors' association has also quietly decided to join a legal battle to protect the booming multibillion-dollar trade in antiquities, objects often plundered from archeological sites in countries like Italy and Turkey and then illegally exported. The association's support for an appeal of a federal court decision that upheld US Customs seizure of a gold platter smuggled out of Italy has provoked objections from some museum directors, who find the smuggling indefensible and fear the museums will be tainted by joining the effort to overturn the judge's decision. Critics of museum ethics said this week the museums are both hypocritical and inconsistent for pledging to return looted wartime artworks while supporting a legal effort that, if successful, would insulate modern-day plunder from forfeiture. "These are both human rights issues. Both involve the identities and cultures of peoples being wiped out on purpose,'' Claire Lyons, the vice president for professional responsibilities for the Archaeological Institute of America, said in an interview this week. Appeal strategy set Officials of the Association of Art Museum Directors have planned strategy for overturning the November 1997 New York court decision in private meetings that included New York dealer Frederick Schultz, the president of the antiquities dealers association. Last year, Schultz was identified during a London art smuggling trial as the principal recipient of artifacts smuggled out of Egypt by a British art restorer. Schultz was not charged in the British case, but the FBI is now investigating him, armed with documents showing that he was aware the restorer was supplying him with looted artifacts. In an interview, Schultz said he was nothing more than an unwitting victim of the restorer, who was convicted and imprisoned for six years. In the strategy meetings, Schultz and others confirmed, there was even discussion of seeking congressional intervention on behalf of the antiquities trade, with help from the bete noire of the American art world, Senator Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee. Ashton Hawkins, the legal counsel for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, said the Association of Art Museum Directors, in its decision to support the appeal by New York financier and art collector Michael H. Steinhardt, is not in any way endorsing the smuggling and falsification of customs documents by Steinhardt's dealer. Instead, Hawkins said, the Association of Art Museum Directors feels that the judge's decision to enforce Italian law barring archeological exports was wrong and sets a "very dangerous" precedent. At stake, in both the wartime and antiquities issues, is the future of the profitable but largely unregulated US art market, and especially the antiquities trade that museums increasingly rely on to build their collections. In the New York case, an aggressive US Customs unit seized Steinhardt's 2,500-year-old hammered gold platter, for which he paid nearly $1.2 million. Also in New York, the Manhattan district attorney has thrown the art world into turmoil by blocking the movement of two Austrian paintings after claims surfaced that they were once stolen by the Nazis. The paintings, by Egon Schiele, had been on loan to the Museum of Modern Art. Warning is sounded Museums, which rarely find their conduct criticized, much less scrutinized, fear that both actions could have dire consequences. Indeed, Schultz, the president of the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art, warned that such aggressive moves by US government agencies "will kill art collecting outright and bring to an end donations to museums." But amid the turmoil, the four museum directors found a receptive audience yesterday in their testimony before the House Banking Committee - testimony designed in part to head off possible legislation that could limit the museums' freedom to acquire new works. But they were concerned enough about the hearing that they conducted an extensive private rehearsal at which they were peppered with prospective hostile questions. The committee chairman, Representative James A. Leach, Republican of Iowa, remarked at one point that the directors represent "the most reputable institutions of any kind in the world today." The four directors, Philippe de Montebello of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Glenn D. Lowry of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Earl A. Powell 3d of the National Gallery of Art, and Wood, of the Art Institute of Chicago, are among the 13 members of the Association of Art Museum Directors task force charged with devising a system to resolve the growing number of claims for plundered wartime art. The association represents 170 US art museums. The task force also includes Malcolm Rogers, director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and James Cuno, the director of Harvard University's art museums. In November, the Globe reported that both museums had little documentation for some artworks they acquired during and after the war. At Harvard, the Globe identified several paintings whose ownership records have aroused suspicions. In recent years, as the Globe has reported, both museums have also acquired antiquities that appear to have been illegally exported from countries that include Guatemala and Italy. Wood, the Chicago museum director, said museums face a daunting task if they are subject to claims. At his own museum, he said, barely 20 percent of European paintings have been fully catalogued. "The holes in our knowledge are so gaping," Woods said. Title-search proposal If there was any bad news for the museum directors, it came from one of their longtime allies, Representative Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. Schumer told them he plans to introduce legislation that would require those who acquire art, like those who buy homes, to do a full title search to ensure that artworks are not stolen. The Association of Art Museum Directors board, at the same Los Angeles meeting at which it decided to form the task force, also made a decision it has yet to announce: to file a legal brief along with the Association of American Museums in support of Steinhardt's appeal of last November's ruling by US District Judge Barbara S. Jones. Jones upheld the seizure by Customs of the ancient ceremonial platter Steinhardt bought in 1992 through New York dealer Robert Haber. Jones ruled that Haber was involved in the illegal export of the items from Italy to Switzerland, and that Haber filed a false Customs declaration by listing Switzerland as the country of origin and the value at $250,000. Jones also ruled that because a 1939 Italian law declares archeological items to be state property, the platter is considered stolen property under US law and must be returned to Italy. Hawkins, the Met's counsel, says that puts the US government in the insupportable position of enforcing the laws of another country. For art owners accustomed to fending off civil lawsuits while retaining possession of disputed artifacts, the notion of Customs seizing an artwork in response to a foreign claim is a radical change. But not everyone in the art world was shocked. Harlan Levy, a former prosecutor who has studied and written a law journal article about the Steinhardt case, said in an interview that he believes the judge's decision was based on legal precedent that will withstand the appeal. "The art museums and dealers are in denial on this. They don't want to recognize how far the law has moved in creating liability for people who handle stolen art," Levy said. But he is not surprised the museums have joined the appeal. "With Italy such a major source of antiquities, this decision creates complications and risks for those who import and acquire antiquities," he added. "It will force buyers to ask: What am I buying? Where is it from? Am I susceptible to liability?" This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 02/13/98. *Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company. ------------------------------