India/US Cultural Property MOU

                                      .                     

After Biden's wooing of Modi, a White House announcement indicates that India will be seeking a cultural property agreement with the US. Among the points agreed (near the bottom)

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and Prime Minister Narendra Modi today affirmed a vision of the United States and India as among the closest partners in the world – a partnership of democracies looking into the 21st century with hope, ambition, and confidence. [...]
55. Prime Minister Modi conveyed his deep appreciation for the repatriation of antiquities to India by the United States. Both sides expressed strong interest in working quickly toward a Cultural Property Agreement, which would help to prevent illegal trafficking of cultural property from India and enhance cooperation on the protection and lawful exchange of cultural property.

I guess the US could hardly do anything else since their hopeless 1980s illicit-antiquities measures allowed dealers like Subhash Kapoor to operate from the centre of places like Manhattan under everybody's noses with nothing that could be done to curb their activities. This MOU is several decades too late. Time to change the US soft-power system and stop the trade in illegally procured and smuggled artefacts from everywhere, not just a few selected favoured countries.

Hat tip, Rick St Hilaire.

Heritage Blogger Vindicated

I first became aware of Manhattan antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor through a fellow blogger writing to me about a legal threat they had received for writing about him. He dealt with that but a few months later Kapoor was arrested in circumstances that are by now well-known. Just a few days ago the dealer was convicted on trafficking charges in India — more than a decade after his arrest. A CID press release cites "diverse dilatory tactics adopted by Kapoor and the co-accused to delay the trial"; apparently preferring life in jail to facing the accusations in court, “the accused Kapoor filed at least seven bail applications and discharge petitions before the High Court, all of which were dismissed. He also filed various applications before the trial court under some pretext or the other to delay the trial…”. Kapoor and his criminal associates were sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined for plundering Indian temples. Indian press is reporting that several more cases are pending against Kapoor. So let that be a warning to dealers threatening bloggers, eh? Just saying.

Vignette: The National Gallery of Australia Returns to India 13 More Works Bought From Now-Imprisoned Art Dealer Subhash Kapoor

 

New York District Attorney: Not Going to be Just About Repatriation Any More?

Four days ago, Cyrus Vance left office as the 36th District Attorney of New York County, a position he'd held since 2010. He has now been succeeded by Alvin Bragg. It seems that not only will the antiquities unit continue under the new DA, but it will be being beefed up. They are already hiring another Antiquities Trafficking Analyst and they want that person to start right away. The 'Antiquities Trafficking Analyst' job advertisment is for a person with a bachelor's degree (in what is not specified) and Covid jabs. A 'background in cultural heritage is strongly preferred' and 'proficiency in a foreign language (particularly Italian, German or French) is preferred'. The latter suggests they are not so much concerned with "analysis" concerning antiquities from eastern Europe or the Arabic-speaking world. In fact what the job entails is:

"providing critical analytical support to the [antiquities trafficking] unit and DANY [...] gathering information via subpoenas, search warrants, and legal research to critically analyzing that information for use in criminal prosecution"...

The next bit is interesting:

...criminal prosecution against trafficking participants such as looters/thieves, smugglers, financiers, shippers, gallery owners, restorers, on-line sites, conservators, auction houses, museum curators, and other facilitators, whether individuals or corporations, that allow trafficking to exist.

And then we learn that:

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:
Utilizing all of the tools available to recover looted antiquities and prosecute the offenders.
Working with local, national, and international law-enforcement agencies, non-governmental organizations, academic institutions, and members of the diplomatic corps.
Gathering and analyzing information from all sources, to include subpoenas, search warrants, and witnesses.
Working with prosecutors to ensure efficient processing and eventual repatriation of confiscated materials.
Conducting legal research on New York Criminal Law and international patrimony laws.
[...]

Note instead of saying "foreign patrimony laws" they say "international" patrimony laws. The one exists, the second does not.

At first sight "criminal prosecution against trafficking participants [...] that allow trafficking to exist" sounds really exciting. It suggests that now the Manhattan DA is going to go after: looters/thieves,
smugglers,
financiers,
shippers,
gallery owners,
on-line sites,
auction houses,
restorers,
conservators,
museum curators,
"and other facilitators",
all this, "whether individuals or corporations".

 
So, in other words precisely the whole group of people "that allow trafficking to exist" that until now they have in general NOT been going after. Foreign dealers who have allegedly handled material recently seized and repatriated are still at large (Edoardo Almagià, Ayman Ramadan), a New York dealer handling Asian material functioned quite openly from a central NY gallery right under their noses, but was only arrested when he went abroad and is now awaiting trial in India, not New York. The Manhattan DA did not get the foreign dealer living in Thailand that handled a lot of Cambodian antiquities. They did however manage to get a British conservator arrested and extradited to face allegations that he was involved with the handling of antiquities trafficked by both those dealers. It remains to be seen if a NY court in fact does have jurisdiction in the events alleged. The 2008 death during questioning of ceramics expert Roxanna Brown (not a New York DA case) is often swept under the carpet (and the case was dropped). Maybe the DA's office can tell us how many US "museum curators" they've detained for questioning.

Of course, what is important to remember here is that most of the time, the primary emphasis in the USA has been on "repatriation" of items already uproote, decontextualised and circulating in (or just about to enter) the US market. This in no way prevents looting, in no way fights smuggling, in no way prevents teh development and expansion of trafficking networks. It just papers over the cracks of a broken system and presents a facade of "caring about looting and antiquities theft". In reality it only cares about making things look good if somebody is caught. The Kapoor case here is very significant (see also the Sadigh case, and when action was taken).

The motivation of the activities of this department may therefore be questioned. A recent boastful NYT article about the "museum" of objects the DA was "caring for" was illustrated by a photo of various items in various states of preservation pulled out into the open air from the warehouse and stood in a courtyard for a photo op.

Eight objects seized by the Manhattan district attorney’s office as part of its
investigations into the looting of artifacts.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times

That is potentially damaging to the objects, disrespectful towards the real owners waiting to get their cultural property back, and unwittingly reveals the appalling state of repair of the building these items are currently stored in (look at the window frames and dampness above the foundation offset). In reality these objects are being used for soft-power promotion (and here the DA's self-promotion) rather than any actual effort to cut out artefact looting and trafficking. 

There are 94 District Attorneys in the US. How many of them have an effective dedicated Artefacts Trafficking Team? Can somebody list them for us?

* "As far as criminal charges, the fate of the dealers involved wasn’t mentioned in the DA’s statement".

Citizen Activists Lead the Hunt for Antiquities Looted From Nepal

              Nepal (Wikipedia)            

Roshan Mishra, director of the Taragaon Museum in Kathmandu, has creasted a digital archive, which he operates with his wife, of nearly 3,000 Nepalese artefacts that he believes are being held by museums outside the country. Two years later, the archive that he operates with his wife is at the heart of a citizen-led effort to use the internet to find the missing gods and goddesses, Buddhas and bodhisattvas that have been looted from Nepal (Zachary Small, 'Citizen Activists Lead the Hunt for Antiquities Looted From Nepal', NYTtimes October 29, 2021).

Emails now arrive daily from antiquities experts and hobbyists with tips and finds, a process that has helped a small, resource-strapped country persuade some of the world’s most prestigious museums to part with precious artifacts. “When I look at the inquiries that I get, it’s unbelievable,” said Mishra. “Now this has become my life’s work.” The Australian museum is now negotiating possible repatriation of the 13th-century wooden goddess with Nepalese officials, according to a spokesman for the institution. Seven other sculptures have already been returned this year to Nepal because of information provided by the citizen watchdogs and armchair experts who call themselves the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign. In September, it was the Metropolitan Museum of Art that returned a 10th-century statue of a Hindu deity. In March, a campaign member helped the F.B.I. in a repatriation case regarding a Nepalese sculpture which was returned by the Dallas Museum of Art.[...] Many experts, including the Harvard art historian Jinah Kim, said that about 80 percent of Nepalese artifacts outside the country were likely to be illegal exports. But it wasn’t until 2015 when an anonymous Facebook page called Lost Arts of Nepal started accusing museums of holding looted objects that repatriation efforts gained traction. The page now has more than 17,000 followers and collaborates with the Recovery Campaign in researching and publicizing claims. [...] Finding evidence of looting is only the first step in the repatriation process. The nonprofit starts by sending a letter identifying a find to Nepal’s Department of Archaeology, which reviews smuggling claims and forwards credible ones to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Embassy officials in the countries where the items are found take over from there, connecting with institutions and collectors to negotiate the return of stolen artifacts.

parallels are drawn with another citizen initiative that is quite often in the news;

The approach echoes earlier efforts by Vijay Kumar, a writer who in 2008 started using social media to identify religious artifacts stolen from Indian temples. His blog, named Poetry in Stone, became popular for its coverage of the antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor, now jailed in India on smuggling and theft charges. In 2014, Kumar turned the blog into a nonprofit, the India Pride Project, which assists the Indian government in tracking down looted objects. He also now serves on the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign’s advisory committee.

US Returns 250 Antiquities to India after Belated Probe into Stolen Art

                        Shiva                    

Authorities in the United States have returned about 250 antiquities to India in a long-running investigation of a stolen art scheme. The items, worth an estimated $15m, were handed over on Thursday during a ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York City (Al Jazeera,'US returns 250 antiquities to India after probe into stolen art' 29 Oct 2021).

The ceremony follows a sprawling probe by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which focused on tens of thousands of antiquities allegedly smuggled into the US by dealer Subhash Kapoor, who has denied the allegations [...] Authorities say Kapoor – jailed in India and facing charges there pending a US extradition request – used his Art of the Past gallery in New York to traffic looted treasures from India and various countries in Southeast Asia. The investigation has resulted in the recovery of 2,500 artefacts valued at $143m and convictions of six Kapoor co-conspirators, Vance said. [...] In June, the district attorney’s office returned more than two dozen artefacts worth $3.8m to Cambodia as part of the investigation. Another 33 objects were sent back to Afghanistan in April. Court papers filed in New York say Kapoor went to extraordinary lengths to acquire the artefacts, many of them statues of Hindu deities, and then falsified their provenance with forged documents. They say Kapoor travelled the world seeking out antiquities that had been looted from temples, homes and archaeological sites. Some of the artefacts were recovered from Kapoor’s storage units in New York. Kapoor had the items cleaned and repaired to remove any damage from illegal excavation, and then illegally exported them to the US from their countries of origin, according to US prosecutors.

The Art of the Past Gallery was opened in 1974. He was arrested in Frankfurt in 2011 on suspicion of involvement in illicit trade, and extradited to India in 2012, but has yet to face trial there. It is unclear therefore on what grounds the items were forfeit in the US. All very odd.
Among the items going back was also a bronze Shiva Nataraja valued at $4m

The Shiva Nataraja bronze was sold by the mother of Nancy Wiener, a gallery operator who pleaded guilty in the case this month to charges of conspiracy and possession of stolen property, authorities said. Nancy Wiener sold looted items to major museums in Australia and Singapore, they said.

Iowa Takes Credit for Revealing the Bleeding Obvious

    Sadigh Ancient Art  (Yelp)    

Parker Jones, Arts Reporter for the Daily Iowan claims (September 2, 2021) 'Decades-long scheme exposed: UI professor and grad student uncover forged antiquities'.

A massive forgery scheme has been exposed, and it all began with the discoveries of a University of Iowa art history professor and graduate student when they discovered over 90 fake artifacts in an exhibit at the Hoover museum.*  Innumerable artifacts forged, thousands of dollars defrauded, and countless individuals and businesses deceived — without the discoveries of a University of Iowa professor and graduate student, it all may never have been unearthed. In April 2019 ...

How disappointed he would be to find out that if he'd done some research for his article - precisely on that "arts" market, he'd quickly come across a whole number of resources warning of the alleged problems with items from the stock of a particular dealer. We could start with the thread "Sadigh: king of fake sellers" thread on the Ancientartifakes Forum of August 11, 2012, detailing (with links, many still active) the efforts of collectors to attract attention to this issue. There was a petition in 2013 - here are some of the comments from it. Dealers, mindful of the fact that their profits are reliant on the market ever-expanding and not contracting, were reporting him wherever they could, afraid that if too many people found out later that they'd bought items that could not be considered genuine, the public would lose confidence in the market in its present no-questions-asked form. There's a pinterest page of 2013 raising some issues. From the same year, there is a cautionary TripAdvisor page reporting problems.  Some of the comments on a Yelp page are worth consideration (but look at the positive reviews too). The ICOM International Observatory on Illicit Traffic in Cultural Goods website has since 2013 featured prominently the well-made You Tube video made by a group of collector/dealer activists raising these issues (that I'll embed below if you've not seen it). One buyer was a "James" who bought some things from the dealer back in 2007 - the responses he got from the forum shows this problem was recognised well before 2013. He had already found himself right at the top on the forum's April 18, 2005, list of notorious fake sellers. Interestingly, and presciently, one forum member referred back in 2007 to the dealer's "basement-built antiquities". On Worthpoint there are a series of sales offers that provide information about this dealer (I am not clear who posted these items).

There is actually lots more. As can be seen, the 'core' collecting community - especially in the US at least - was already aware that there were problems with this dealer's objects fifteen years ago, and made an effort to alert potential fellow buyers to this issue. I do not know whether the dealer was reported to anyone at this time, but certainly the information was out there to find - if you look. In 2012-2013, there was a concerted effort to get the dealer closed down by raising awareness and by reporting him. There are many fake sellers in the market, but this one particularly provoked the ire of the collecting community and fellow dealers - part of the reason was the way he allegedly responded, with legal threats. 

But this affair shows the inability of the antiquities market to self-regulate itself. The campaign petered out (the petition only got 155 signatures for example) and nobody took any interest, the dealer stayed in business as before, buyers still kept purchasing his stuff, and the Manhattan authorities just let this carry on right under their noses. The same thing happened with Kapoor. The Manhattan authorities turned a blind eye to many years activity right under their noses and only acted when their citizen was arrested in Europe and extradited to India. Then they decided to take their own look into the gallery, and act "surprised" about the scale of what they them (but only then) found. 

In the recent case, what seem to be "basement-built antiquities" were openly flogged for three decades (I think it was) and everybody knew what was going on. Dealers were concerned, the rest of us engaged in schadenfreude, when seeing what people were purchasing as antiquities, laughing at the gullible people that stubbornly and pig-headedly ignored the maxim, "first buy the book, then the antiquity". 

I do not know how many of the people who were disappointed to be told later that what they had bought were not genuine antiquities and got their money back reported the dealer (in the public interest). But however many it was, it would seem indeed to be the case that the Manhattan DA only took an interest when it was a Presidential Museum that fell indirectly a victim to the process. If that is so, that really shows the pitiful extent that the antiquities market in the US is scrutinised and regulated by the authorities. Think of that the next time the DA get out their decorative tablecloth to display some more antiquities they are "repatriating" as the good guys, with all the speeches and canapes. Here's the video. As far as I know, there was never any response from the gallery showing sample (even) documentation of the legitimate sources from which these antiquities had been obtained. Maybe we'll see it in the court case.

.

Posted on You Tube Mar 3, 2013 by ' sadighgalleryfakes', embedding allowed.

.   

One would like to believe that they picked out the worst from the dealer's stock to make this video. Having seen quite a lot of photos of the items he sells (they are widely posted in collectors' forums and held up for ridicule), I am not so sure. There are obviously a lot of gullible people out there who buy antiquities and are not equipped to understand/interpret/analyse what they have before their eyes, or have in their hands.

* I covered this story here. 

Who are the Real Looters?

  ATHAR Project @ATHARProject 8 g.

one Belgian collector= 800 stolen antiquities, worth estimated 11 million euros.

one American collector (Steve Green/Hobby Lobby)= 15,000+ stolen antiquities

one Indian dealer (Kapoor)= $100mil+ in stolen antiquities

See a pattern?

A small wealthy few drive a demand that fund conflict and devastates countries.

This Belgian collector, do they have a name? Why don't we hear it? When's the case coming to court? 

US returns 27 looted Khmer antiquities

The US has returned 27 Cambodian antiquities – including Angkorian Buddhist and Hindu statues – to Cambodia (Sochan, 'US returns 27 looted Khmer antiquities back to Kingdom', Phnom Penh Post 11 June 2021).

The 27 artefacts were all recovered by the Manhattan DA’s office and the US Department of Homeland Security. They include several Angkorian Buddhist statues and Hindu statues such as a bronze meditating Buddha on a Naga throne, a Shiva idol and a Buddhist sandstone sculpture of Prajnaparamita. The usual speeches were made.

What was not being discussed in the media is where these items physically were after they entered the US, who imported them, when, and why was nothing done that would prevent it? My guess is that at least some of these are Kapoor material, so potentially in the US a decade or more without anything being done about this dealer before somebody else arrested him. Only when shamed, did the DA act.

Manhattan D.A.’s Office Returns Lots of Stolen Artefacts from New York Gallery

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office wants us to know that together with the Department of Homeland Security: Press Release, 'Manhattan D.A.’s Office Returns 13 Antiquities to Thailand' April 22, 2021)

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, Jr. today announced the return of 13 antiquities valued at approximately $500,000 to the people of Thailand during a repatriation ceremony attended by Thai Ambassador to the United States [...] For many years, the Manhattan D.A.’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, along with law enforcement partners at HSI, has been investigating KAPOOR and his co-conspirators for the illegal looting, exportation, and sale of ancient art from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal, Indonesia, Myanmar, and other nations. KAPOOR and his co-defendants generally smuggled looted antiquities into Manhattan and sold the pieces through KAPOOR’S Madison Avenue-based gallery, Art of the Past. From 2011 to 2020, the D.A.’s Office and HSI recovered more than 2,500 items trafficked by KAPOOR and his network. The total value of the pieces recovered exceeds $143 million. The D.A.’s Office first issued an arrest warrant for KAPOOR in 2012. In July 2019, a complaint and series of arrest warrants for KAPOOR and seven co-defendants were filed and an indictment was filed in October 2019. In July 2020, the DA’s Office filed extradition paperwork for KAPOOR, who is currently in prison in India pending the completion of his ongoing trial in Tamil Nadu.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know. The fact is that Mr Kapoor did not begin his activities in 2012, but may years before. For a long while a whole load of Asian (mainly) pieces had been passing quite openly through his gallery, and Manhattan D.A.'s office did nothing at all... until the Indians arrested him. Only then did they act.

Just a few days earlier the same DA office returned some stuff to Afghanistan (Tom Mashberg 'Looted Objects From Afghanistan Are Returned' New York Times April 19, 2021). Thirty-three antiquities, many of them delicate lopped-off heads made from stucco, clay and schist, valued at $1.8 million, were handed over to the Afghan ambassador.

The artifacts were part of a hoard of 2,500 objects valued at $143 million seized in a dozen raids between 2012 and 2014 from Subhash Kapoor, a disgraced Manhattan art dealer currently jailed in India on smuggling and theft charges.

(but not yet tried in the US).

An interesting observation from ATHAR:

ATHAR Project @ATHARProject 17 g.
Antiquities market lobbyists are noticeably silent on returns like these.
Saying anything would mean acknowledging that one man—Subhash Kapoor—was responsible for $143 million in trafficked artifacts over just 2 years.
Just 7 Kapoors make this a billion dollar illicit market.

How many high end antiquities dealers are there in the US, Canada and Europe put together?

US Dealers named in Money Laundering Report

Kapoor accused

Data from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the US regulatory agency for enforcing money laundering laws, provide a glimpse into the network of companies and individuals trading with antiques dealer Subhash Kapoor. The data show that dealings of stolen artefacts and transactions continued years after the arrest of the alleged kingpin (Shyamlal Yadav, 'FinCEN Files — Antiques smuggler in Tamil Nadu jail, and a trade that flourished even after his arrest' Indian Express September 23, 2020). US Antiquities dealer Nancy Wiener was named in FinCENFiles for suspect Nepal transactions worth $27 million between 2010-2017. This is the same gallery that sold a stolen 16th-century bronze from Nepal in 2010 and transferred the payment to Pantheon Worldwide in Hong Kong. Some of the transactions were linked to Subhash Kapoor [Indian national and the 'Art of the Past' Gallery owner in New York, who imported artefacts from India to the United States and was arrested by Interpol in 2011 at Frankfurt airport, was extradited to India in July 2012 and is now in a Tamil Nadu jail still awaiting trial].

According to the Suspicious Activity Report, a firm called Pantheon Worldwide Limited, with two listed addresses, one each in the UK and Hong Kong, had extensive financial links with Kapoor and his alleged business partners. Pantheon had several transactions with the Nancy Wiener Gallery, and also received a payment from Nancy Weiner. The Suspicious Activity Report stated: “It is unclear why Weiner conducted a personal remittance to Pantheon for USD 150,000, nor the purpose of the funds.” The Suspicious Activity Report stated that Pantheon utilised its three accounts at Standard Chartered Bank, Hong Kong for the transactions. The UK company registry data show that a company of a similar name was incorporated on July 18, 2016 and dissolved on September 4, 2018. The accounting firm that established the company said that the UK-based Pantheon had never dealt in antiquities — or anything else for that matter. “To the best of my knowledge, the company never traded at all,” a spokesperson for PRB Accountants told ICIJ.

 

"Committed" United States and Algeria Sign Cultural Property Agreement

"The United States has been unwavering in its commitment to protect and preserve cultural heritage around the world and to combat the trafficking in cultural property that funds criminal and terrorist networks", the press release enthuses:

Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Marie Royce and Algerian Minister of Culture Meriem Merdaci will sign a landmark bilateral Memorandum of Understanding on cultural property protection on Thursday, August 15, at 11:00 a.m. at the Department of State. This agreement places U.S. import restrictions on categories of Algerian archaeological material dating from 2.4 million years ago to approximately 1750 A.D.,[...] The joint commitment of the United States and Algeria to protect Algeria’s heritage and accessibility for future generations promotes economic development around sustainable tourism

Really? The thing is just signing these selective MOUs under the wonky CCPIA is in no way any kind of commitment to "protect and preserve cultural heritage around the world" when there are over 195 countries in the world today - 90% of whom - though being states party to the same 1970 UNESCO Convention as the US - have not been deemed worthy of an MOU. When it comes across trafficked material at its borders, the US does absolutely nothing to investigate and counter or block the funding of those criminal and terrorist networks it claims the trade in cultural property is part of. Nothing - look at Kapoor, who arrested him, who is trying him? Would this have happened if one of the biggest participants in the trade in illicit artefacts from SE Asia had remained in the US as a donor to US museums? I doubt it. The US still has no MOU with India, and Kapoor-handled objects are still on display in US collections, both public and private.  As for 'promoting sustainable tourism', I am not sure that is really what the world needs at the moment.  

The Role of Restoration in Making Archaeological Artefacts into Saleable Trophy Art

Two British restorers are facing charges as part of a smuggling ring in the upcoming Kapoor trial (Tom Mashberg, 'Investigators Say a Ring Smuggled $145 Million in Ancient Artifacts' New York Times 11th July 2019)

The smuggling ring harvested objects from Afghanistan, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Thailand, the complaint said, and it created false paper trails that gave the items a patina of legitimacy, then sold them globally for large profits to collectors, art dealers and museums.  Mr. Kapoor was charged along with seven co-conspirators, most of them overseas, who would also require extradition. Arrest warrants for all eight men were filed Monday in the Criminal Court of the City of New York, along with a painstakingly detailed complaint that reconstructed a smuggling scheme stretching back to 1986. [...] artifacts were secreted into the United States using false import documents; [...] many were then shipped to London to be cleaned and restored for sale; and [...] the conspirators created fraudulent invoices and provenance papers asserting the items had left their nations of origin legally.  Two of the accused co-conspirators were identified as restorers who enhanced the value of the pieces — often still marked by the dirt from which they had been dug up by hired thieves — and brought them back to life as treasures. 

The responsibility of the conservators that work on material coming from the international anriquities market has long been a cause for concern, this case may well prompt a new look at this.

Kapoor to Face trial in US?

Chasing Aphrodite report that US authorities have finally brought criminal charges against American antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor and seven members of his alleged smuggling network. It seems that Kapoor himself has been charged with 86 criminal counts by Manhattan DA ranging from Grand Larceny to Possession of Stolen Property and Conspiracy. These charges come seven years after a raid by Federal agents on his Manhattan gallery in July 2012. Interestingly, it is also reported that among those charged was British antiquities restorer Neil Perry Smith, who faces 28 criminal counts related to his work for Kapoor preparing recently looted objects for sale. This gentleman's lawyers were snooping around this blog when I mentioned him in the context of work on some Cambodian objects. Chasing Aphrodite also note "Smith's attorneys threatened legal action when we wrote about him back in 2012". I think conservators everywhere will take an interest in the outcome of these charges. It transpires that another conservator is also mentioned in court documents, Richard Salmon, a British born antiquities restorer in NYC, is reportedly facing 47 criminal counts for his work with the Kapoor network

The five additional people charged are alleged members of Kapoor's Indian smuggling network: Sanjeeve Asokan, Dean Dayal, Ranjeet Kanwar (aka Shantoo), Aditya Prakash and Vallabh Prakash. Collectively they face dozens of additional criminal counts. Kapoor's global antiquities smuggling network is described in staggering detail over the 186 page criminal complaint, 8 arrest warrants and hundreds of exhibits filed in Manhattan courts. A case study like none other.

This promises to be big.

UPDATE
Tom Mashberg, 'Investigators Say a Ring Smuggled $145 Million in Ancient Artifacts' New York Times 11th July 2019. 

Jim Mustian, 'SmugglingArt ring charged with smuggling $143 million in antiquities' APNews 11th July 2019. 

The lead prosecutor, Matthew Bogdanos, told the AP that none of the defendants is believed to be in the United States. He said the authorities asked Interpol to issue international warrants for their arrest.

Ohio Trophy Artefacts (Used as Floor Decoration) to be Returned to Turkey

Not used for research
but decoration

Bowling Green State University in Ohio USA found out five years ago that 12 pieces removed from mosaics in their collection had been looted from Zeugma, Turkey in the 1960s. This was widely discussed and reported in the media at the time, but the university authorities have only now decided that they should be returned to Turkey.  The portableised floor pieces had been sold to them as coming from 'approved archaeological digs in Antioch overseen by Princeton University'.

BGSU purchased the pieces in 1965 for $35,000 from antiquities dealer Peter Marks at the Peter Marks Works of Art, a now-shuttered New York gallery. Paperwork on the sale is scant, but shows that the purchase was made at the suggestion of former art faculty member Hugh Broadley and approved by then-BGSU President William Jerome. The pieces were eventually restored and installed under thick protective glass in the floor of the Wolfe Center for the Arts at the university, which opened in 2012.

Only later did research (by Stephanie Langin-Hooper and Rebecca Molholt) show that combing through photos of the Princeton dig would have revealed that that the mosaic fragments did not match those of the Antioch excavation, but rather, some in ancient Zeugma.

“That site had been extensively looted ... and comparing photographs of looted sites, we were able to pinpoint the exact location, the particular room in a mosaic house, where the fragments came from,” Ms. Langin-Hooper said. “A lot of the mosaic was looted and BGSU does not have all of it. Some of the mosaic, we don’t know where it is. It could be at another university, or lost or who knows, but there was enough there, the particular geometric patterning, the coloring, the size of the tesserae, the individual tiles, everything was a match.”[...] The professors discovered that 11 of the pieces, measuring about 12 by 12 inches, were part of the same floor. The 12th piece, 2 by 3 feet in size, depicts the mask of an ancient Greek female figure and was determined by Ms. Langin-Hooper and Ms. Molholt to have come from the same villa.

The dealer involved specialised in SE Asian and Islamic artefacts, Chasing Aphrodite ‏ notes (here, here and here) that 

Peter Marks' name has surfaced in several other investigations. Australia’s National Gallery  found at least three works from Marks during their internal investigation of un/under-documented Asian antiquities.   Marks was also the source of the Shiva Natarajah that the NGA deaccessioned to purchase the inferior (and looted) Shiva Natarajah from Kapoor. It is now in the Louvre.   Marks also sold this Shiva Vinadhara to the  Freer Sackler Gallery in 1997: [...]  In 1998, Marks wrote an essay on "The ethics of art dealing" in which he lamented, "The moral world of the art dealer and the market in antiquities have recently come under attack", International Journal of Cultural Property 7(1): 116–127.

While dealers may feel that what they are doing is in some object-centred (and self-centred) way, the rest of us may feel that their views may well be open to challenge (is that an 'attack', if those views are defensible?).

Black Market Art: How To Restore Ethics To The Antiquities World

 Liza Oliver and Erich Hatala Matthes, 'Black Market Art: How To Restore Ethics To The Antiquities World' Wbur, April 24, 2017:

The arrests of Wiener and Kapoor reveal how much the black market sustains itself through the same networks and avenues of sale as legal antiquities exported before the 1970 UNESCO convention was created to prevent the unlawful trade in cultural property.The lack of transparency in the art market makes it a welcoming home for illicit transactions, shielding dealers and collectors from risk. As Ricardo Elia, associate professor of archaeology at Boston University has noted, there is no distinction between the legitimate and black market — they are the same entity. The illicit market in antiquities has a range of adverse effects on both the historical record and contemporary communities, which the legitimate art market perpetuates.[...]  Although auction houses emphasize their efforts at doing “due diligence” in their provenance research, consistent revelationsabout the abundance of illicit antiquities for sale through major auction houses supports the conclusion that they are often protecting themselves from liability through plausible deniability rather than attempting to ensure that stolen artifacts are kept off the market.

The  authors suggest that 'museums can do better to educate the public particularly collectors about these issues, since their continued collecting of legal antiquities, directly increases black market demand'. can you see the British Museum, caught up in their own web of 'partnership' with collectors in the UK, doing anything like that?  They suggest museums 'can also make provenance research a greater priority'.

Museums should teach not only about the object in its original historical context, but also about the often violent or unethical social life that led it to the museum's wall. Museums with antiquities often shy away from such discussions, reticent about their own unsavory collecting histories. As a result, contemporary museum practice remains complicit in such histories.

Unethical also involves artefact hunting.

Collectively, these practices add up to a failure of museums’ core mission to educate the public in accordance with the highest of professional and ethical standards. Not engaging openly with the public about these issues, or worse yet, turning a blind eye to participate in these practices, makes museums complicit in perpetuating neocolonial power structures between countries of advanced economies and those that are impoverished and developing. By all means, museums, and events such as Asia Week, should be an occasion for celebrating culture, but they should also be an opportunity for critical reflection on the practices that feed the culture industry. It is the responsibility of auction houses, dealers, museums and collectors alike to ensure that they are not contributing to the decimation of the very cultural histories they claim to value.

Sacred Sculptures treated as Props in NY Gallery

There are some deeply disturbing photographs on the Facebook page of Kapoor Galleries, New York City. They show people holding a drink or two in front of some bronze idols of Hindu gods and goddesses which should be in the sanctum sanctorum of temples in south India. Then there is this Buddha statue made to wear a Santa Claus cap. Not funny. In fact, it is quite painful for any devout or just anyone who loves and respects antiques. For the uninitiated, Kapoor Galleries belong to Ramesh Kapoor, the brother of Subhash Kapoor, who is cooling his heels in Puzhal Central Prison.
([ Anon TNN], 'For God’s sake, save our idols from New York parties' Times of India: Apr 20, 2017).

The author not only argues that American dealers and collectors are treating sacred images with no respect at all, but for shifting the onus of proving the veracity to the seller and not the source country.

Vignette: Buddha Christmasised

American Businessman arrested in India with Sculptures

India arrests Vijay Nanda, American businessman, allegedly "kingpin" of illegal idol trade in Mumbai with ties to Kapoor case.  In storage facilities owned by him were reportedly found

'several antiques and artifacts for which Nanda had no legal documentation or registration with the Archaeological Survey of India as an antique dealer [...] [Also found] statues which belonged to the 10-11th century AD period, appeared to be stolen or vandalized from various temples in sastern and southern India. "There has been an attempt made to legitimize the same through registrations of Archaeological Survey of India and creation of fake documents of procurement"

The syndicate was also involved in the coin trade, so how would US dealers be able to exclude these coins getting into their stockrooms without determining and verifying where they came from?

Times of India, 'Kingpin of antiques smuggling racket held', Feb 8, 2017. See also Somendra Sharma, 'Indian-origin US man arrested for smuggling antiques' DNA Wed, 8 Feb 2017.

The Wiener Gallery case: Publication, and the Market Avoiding the Gottcha

The American 'Committee for Cultural Policy' reports: 'Art Dealer Nancy Wiener Arrested in NYC' December 30, 2016.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has charged Nancy Wiener, a well-known, second-generation New York art dealer, with possession of stolen property and conspiracy to buy, smuggle and launder millions of dollars of antiquities from East and South Asia. The art world awaits the details of the case against Ms. Wiener, and her response, when prosecutors actually set forth their case.

Oh, and I think not just 'the art world'. Whatever the outcome of the case itself, the detailed presentation of evidence in court may well shed a lot of light on how the antiquities and 'dugup art' trade works, and bring it into the public eye.

Many unknowns remain. It can be said that the Complaint contains a number of allegations that appear chilling – not only to the market but to the future of academic study and art history.

The interests of academic study are in no way served by the use of illicitly-obtained data. The results of foreign medical experiments carried out in a manner transgressing accepted ethical norms is excluded from most western medical journals, so should it be with artefacts failing to meet the criterisa of Article 3 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. This is simply disingenuous:

Most surprisingly, the Complaint alleges that publication of an object is a means of “laundering” it, when in fact, publication, especially with a detailed physical description, is widely recognized as the best and most transparent way to make the world at large aware of the existence of the object. The Association of Art Museum Directors’ online registry is an example of how publication makes claims from source nations possible and facilitates recognition of stolen objects. Is art research to be limited only to approved, excavated objects? Is it the District Attorney’s job to censor scholarship?

This of course totally misrepresents the issue over the use of a prior 'publication' as a legitimation strategy (recalling also the place of the 'customs men demand to see picture of an object in an auction catalogue' meme in the discussion over import regulation). So, an object which is 'cellared' while the incidental paper trail goes cold may be 'surfaced' briefly enough to have its photo taken for a glossy magazine or dealers' catalogue, to go back underground for a while longer, and when it is surfaced again, the dealer triumphantly declaring, 'see, it was in somebody else's collection a few years ago, look at this picture'. Anyway, the debate about academic publishing of artefacts with no paperwork showing compliance with Article 3 is going on in academia, and this court case will bring the issue (raised most famously in Renfrew's 2000 book, 'Loot, legitimacy, and ownership : the ethical crisis in archaeology ' - note that last bit) back to the forefront of attention. But this reliance on pictorial images continues in the CCP summary:

It is to be hoped that in this case, unlike the Kapoor case, the prosecutors will make publicly available the photographs of all objects deemed illicit, so that art dealers and collectors can perform due diligence to assure themselves that the works they acquire are not tainted.

This is not what due diligence means in the context of antiquities. Again article 3 of a convention which has set the standards for 47 years is the reference point. Due diligence means ascertaining that all transactions involving the object throughout its collecting history were conducted in a licit manner. A mere assurance that its a 'they-can't-touch-you-for-it-because-they-have-no-proof' legality is not enough. There are other actors on the antiquities market 'surfacing' things beyond the handful mentioned in this case and its papers.

What is of additional interest here can be found by comparing the names of officers of the CCP website and the name of the legal firm representing the Wiener gallery.

Vignette: Innocent until proven guilty, as always.

Asia Week 2017

The Nancy Wiener Gallery is not listed as a participating gallery in Asia Week 2017 March 9-18, 2017. Kapoor galleries will be there. Probably fellow dealers will watch nervously who comes in their front doors the whole week.

Dodgy Dealers Faking Provenance Could be out of Pocket, Hugely

The Dancing Shiva was returned
to India in September 2014,
after it was found to have been
stolen from a temple in Tamil Nadu.

This will be a lesson for any antiquities dealer tempted to supply objects with a false provenance (Anne Barker, 'Dancing Shiva: National Gallery of Australia should get $11m compensation for stolen statue, court rules' ABC News 26th Sept 2016)  

The Supreme Court of New York has granted a motion in favour of a $11 million payment to the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), as compensation for its purchase of a stolen Indian antiquity from disgraced New York art dealer Subhash Kapoor that was later returned to India. The court has entered a 'default' judgement, meaning it was made without hearing evidence from Kapoor, who is in custody awaiting trial in India. 

The NGA in Canberra had bought the statue for $US5 million from Kapoor's New York gallery Art of the Past (AOP) in 2008.

It did so after Kapoor and an AOP gallery employee Aaron Freedman supplied the NGA with documents that purported to vouch for the statue's lawful and legitimate provenance. These included a document certifying that an Indian diplomat Abdulla Mehgoub had lawfully bought the Shiva in Delhi in 1970. Another document — a Letter of Provenance — asserted that his widow Raj Mehgoub later sold the statue to AOP in 2003. The letter purportedly certified that the statue had been out of India since 1971.

The statue had instead been stolen in 2006 from the Brihadeeswarar temple at Sripuranthan and smuggled to the US. The NGA claimed its money back from Kapoor and then sought compensation because "due to wrongful and criminal actions, NGA paid $US5 million for an artefact with a clouded title, and that the NGA had been damaged. " The NGA is considering whether to bring other cases against Kapoor because of other items they bought from him which are now having to be handed back. There are ten of them, and the price paid was in the millions also.

"The NGA is considering all legal options available," the NGA's assistant director Alison Wright told the ABC. [...] "We do believe we are the victims of fraud in relation to provenance supplied by the dealership [...]" Ms Wright said. She said the NGA is committed to investigate the provenance of all 5,000 works in its Asian collection.