Sotheby's: Inside Story.

Sotheby's: Inside Story. Dr Jerome Eisenberg, Director of both the Royal-Athena Galleries inNew York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of and Seaby Gallery in London, declared at the 1993 conference atthe Institute of Archaeology The Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of University College London (UCL), in the United Kingdom. The Institute is located in a separate building at the north end of Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. in London on 'Antiquities trade orbetrayed: legal, ethical and conservation issues': 'there is arotten apple or two in nearly every barrel, even antiquity dealers'(Eisenberg 1995: 216). This claim echoes the press briefing by TimLlewelyn, managing director of Sotheby's, following the convictionfor theft and one count of forgery of James Hodges James Hodges may refer to: James L. Hodges, (1790-1846), delegate from Maryland in the United States House of Representatives Jim Hodges, governor of South Carolina from 1999 until 2003 , formerly theadministrator of the antiquities department in the famous auction house.Distancing the auctioneers from any suggestion of wrongdoing, Llewelynsaid, 'Hodges was a solitary rotten apple in the barrel' (p.99). Peter Watson, in this brisk and highly readable account of theHodges affair, instead finds that Hodges 'was by no means the onlyrotten apple in the Sotheby's barrel' (p. 272).In March 1991 Watson was shown the contents of three suitcases in theWhite Horse pub The White Horse Pub is a small public house situated in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton Village. It is known as one of the smallest pubs in Liverpool and was the first in the area of Merseyside to adopt a complete No-Smoking policy within the premises. See www.wooltonvillage.co.uk at Parson's Green in London, in which Hodges hadsquirrelled away a series of documents ranging in date from 1975 to 1989and relating to relating torelate prep → concernantrelating torelate prep → bez��glich +gen, mit Bezug auf +accthe workings of the major auction house. The dossier wasimpressive: Watson 'narrowed down Hodges' three or fourthousand documents to 592 core papers, consisting of 878 pages' (p.61). They revealed serious wrong-doing by members of Sotheby'sstaff. Watson checked the handwriting contained in the documents withindependent documents written by members of Sotheby's; a forensichandwriting expert Noun 1. handwriting expert - a specialist in inferring character from handwritinggraphologistspecialiser, specialist, specializer - an expert who is devoted to one occupation or branch of learning concluded that 'in all nine cases she was 90 percent certain that the handwriting was the same' (p. 64).A number of the documents were used in the subsequent court case(November-December 1991) where Hodges was charged with the followingoffences (p. 74):i the theft of a helmet and a bowl from Sotheby'sii the forgery of two release notes (one allowing him to have thehelmet and the bowl at home, the other to operate certain bank accounts)iii falsification falsification/fal��si��fi��ca��tion/ (fawl?si-fi-ka��shun) lying.retrospective falsification? unconscious distortion of past experiences to conform to present emotional needs. of 12 documents so as to obtain cheques related tothe bank accounts in (ii).As the authenticity of these documents was never challenged Watsondecided to corroborate To support or enhance the believability of a fact or assertion by the presentation of additional information that confirms the truthfulness of the item.The testimony of a witness is corroborated if subsequent evidence, such as a coroner's report or the testimony of other the evidence by investigating some of the issuesraised in the trial. The first case study (chapter 5) considered Apulianvases, figure-decorated pots from southern Italy. Watson had first beenalerted to this category of 'smuggled antiquities' by BrianCook For other persons named Brian Cook, see Brian Cook (disambiguation).Brian Joshua Cook (born December 4, 1980 in Lincoln, Illinois) is a power forward for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association. , then Keeper of Greek & Roman Antiquities at the BritishMuseum British Museum,the national repository in London for treasures in science and art. Located in the Bloomsbury section of the city, it has departments of antiquities, prints and drawings, coins and medals, and ethnography. , in November 1985. In spite of the scandal, highlighted by theObserver, as well as the intervention of the Italian government,Sotheby's pressed ahead with the sale. Felicity Nicholson, head ofSotheby's antiquities department put the case: 'I don'tthink one ever knows where antiquities come from. We assume that ourclients have title to whatever it is they are selling' (p. 116).Nicholson should have been more cautious. The Apulian vases in thissale had been consigned to Sotheby's by Christian Boursaud, adealer based in Geneva Geneva, canton and city, SwitzerlandGeneva(jənē`və), Fr. Genève, canton (1990 pop. 373,019), 109 sq mi (282 sq km), SW Switzerland, surrounding the southwest tip of the Lake of Geneva. (p. 117). In the July of the same year as theApulian vases scandal, Dietrich von Bothmer, then chairman of theDepartment of Greek & Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art inNew York, had alerted Nicholson to the fact that an Attic black-figuredamphora (lot 540, sale of 17 July 1985) had been looted by an Italiantombarolo, Luigi Perticerari (Perticerari & Giuntani 1986; Bahn1996: 366), and was subsequently published (p. 121). The documentationprovided by Hodges showed that lot 540 was one of 104 unprovenancedantiquities in the sale linked to a Mr Vilbert c/o Boursaud in Geneva.Indeed it seemed that Boursaud and Vilbert had consigned some 248objects to six sales between December 1983 and December 1986 worth some[pounds]640,880. Further documents showed that Boursaud was merelyacting as an agent for, so Watson believes, one Giacomo Medici Giacomo Medici is the name of three noteworthy men: Gian Giacomo Medici di Marignano (c. 1495 - 8 November 1555), Condottiero Giacomo Medici. (1817-1882), Italian patriot and soldier Giacomo Medici, Italian illicit antiquities dealer (p. 119),the man who had bought the amphora from Perticerari (p. 122). AlthoughBoursaud stopped trading in March 1986, consignments continued fromanother company, Editions Services, based in Geneva; this appeared to beBoursaud re-surfacing in new form. Watson shows the significance ofBoursaud for Sotheby's antiquity sales when he reveals that in theDecember 1987 sale 101 out of 360 lots were sent in by EditionsServices.The scale of looting in Apulia was brought home to Watson when hewent to film there with a team from Channel 4's Dispatches. Theycame across two separate gangs working on different tombs near Foggia onthe same day. That night the team joined a carabinieri operation againstthe tombaroli. The cameraman was astounded by the organized looting (pp.124-5):'There in the middle, in the light of the moon, was a hugemechanical digger tearing into the soil, snatching enormous chunks ofearth from above the roof of a tomb . . . It brought home the sheerbarbarity of the tomb robbing and desecration that Italy suffers at thehands of the tombaroli, and the disgraceful, tawdry nature of theillegal antiquities trade that ends up at auction in London or NewYork.'Watson rightly draws attention to the large number of Apulian vasespassing through Sotheby's without previous stated history (p. 268).Between July 1985 and July 1995 Watson claims that 'Sotheby'ssold the colossal total of 339 Apulian vases, worth around [pounds]1.5million'. 248 vases (73%) have no previous history. This percentage- below the shocking 90% that applies to the corpus of marble Cycladicfigurines (Gill & Chippindale 1993; Chippindale & Gill 1995) -represents widespread looting of Apulian cemeteries, and the permanentloss of information about the archaeological contexts.Watson reports how antiquities - and even paintings (chapter 1: TheLady from Naples) - are smuggled into Britain without the necessarydocumentation. An Egyptian basalt basalt(bəsôlt`, băs`ôlt), fine-grained rock of volcanic origin, dark gray, dark green, brown, reddish, or black in color. Basalt is an igneous rock, i.e., one that has congealed from a molten state. figure of a temple singer, already inLondon, had no documentation; so it was arranged that it be exported toSwitzerland - in the name of Domitilla Steiner, the stepdaughter ofNicholas Rayner, a senior Sotheby's executive who at the time wasin charge of company operations in Switzerland (p. 128) - and thenbrought back to London. The piece, already published, could be shown tohave been in the collection of Count Andrea Beaumont Bonelli in Naplesin 1960; under Italian law it could not have been exported legally.Document 00339 (reproduced in an appendix at the back) shows an internalSotheby's memorandum discussing the piece. Paragraph 3 provides asignificant view of Sotheby's thinking about antiquities:'Surely as far as the present owner is concerned all he has tosay is that he sold it in the late 1970's and that the piece is nolonger his. As far as Sotheby's are concerned it belongs to someonein Switzerland; it was imported to us absolutely legally fromSwitzerland and that is the end of the affair.'It is not without good cause that the transit trajectories of thesevaluable things contrive con��trive?v. con��trived, con��triv��ing, con��trivesv.tr.1. To plan with cleverness or ingenuity; devise: contrive ways to amuse the children.2. often to pass through neutral Switzerland.Although the piece was eventually withdrawn from the July 1986 auction,it was sold, according to Watson, to a Californian dealer, Heidi Betz(p. 132). The owner of the piece appears in the documentation for thisdeal as a Guilio Jatta - whose mother's maiden name wassignificantly Beaumont - of Via L. Respighi, 16 in Rome (Appendix,Document 00036). Sotheby's itself received a commission (p. 133).This very secrecy surrounding the movement of antiquities allowsforgeries to enter the market and corrupt our knowledge of the past(Gill & Chippindale 1993). One of the pieces not discussed atHodges' trial was a statue of the Egyptian lion goddess Sekhmet.This was reported as the property of Xoilan Trading Inc. (a companywhich shares the same address as Editions Services in Geneva). Thesculpture was apparently seen in Italy by both Felicity Nicholson andMichael Thomson Glover, then in charge of Sotheby's Florenceoffice. When a decision had been made to acquire her, Nicholsonapproached the London antiquities dealer Robin Symes to help Sekhmetmove from Genoa to London. Documentation shows that senior members ofSotheby's were informed about the spiriting of Sekhmet from Genoato London via Rome and Geneva. The transport costs are revealing (p.136): [TABULAR DATA OMITTED]For the record (in case any readers are wanting to send objects fromItaly to Switzerland) the cost for sending a properly documented objectthe weight and size of Sekhmet by air from Rome to Geneva is[pounds]1900 ([at] [pounds]4.75/mile). Comically when Sekhmet arrived inNew York, she was discovered to be a cast, 'made of a mixture ofPortland cement, charcoal, calcite calcite(kăl`sīt), very widely distributed mineral, commonly white or colorless, but appearing in a great variety of colors owing to impurities. chips and some wood' (p. 139).Even so, she was eventually sold in 1987 for $8000 (though compare theoriginal estimate of $200,000-300,000; p. 141).Watson's third major case study concerns Indian antiquities.Among the Indian antiquities sold at Sotheby's (14 November 1988,lot 92) was a stone goat-headed goddess consigned by one F.M. Sham;related documentation provides him with two London address, 20 AberdeenCourt in Maida Vale, and 38 Crommeock Gardens, W9 (the latter afictitious address). The piece had already been published when in situ In place. When something is "in situ," it is in its original location. near the village of Lokhari in the Banda district of Uttar Pradesh (p.176). The site was eventually tracked down and a camera crew dispatched.Watson describes the scene (p. 184):'what caught the eye was a black stone platform with, on thewest side, a wall against which leaned nine slabs of stone - or, rather,their remains. We knew . . . that there had once been twenty completedcarved yoginis on this site. Now there was not a single one whole.Eleven had been stolen, but the nine that remained had been smashed andwere now little more than rubble.'Further investigations with the Sham [sic] family in Bombay - who hadhandled the Lokhari figure - revealed that antiquities were beingshipped by the container load as part of the diplomatic bag (pp. 1967).The 'diplomatic bag' in the modern world is not an elegantleather valise, but any closed box however large - a 40-foot steelfreight container will do - passing between states with an agreedexemption from customs. Like Italian antiquities, the Indian objectswere often passed through Switzerland.Watson is sensitive both to the material and intellectualconsequences of looting. In the case of Apulian vases he observes thatthe interpretation of their iconography can be linked to their funerary fu��ner��ar��y?adj.Of or suitable for a funeral or burial.[Latin fner context: 'So the underground trade is more than a contravention A term of French law meaning an act violative of a law, a treaty, or an agreement made between parties; a breach of law punishable by a fine of fifteen francs or less and by an imprisonment of three days or less. In the U.S. ofItalian law; it is a sad and significant loss to scholarship and ourunderstanding of the classical world.' (p. 115). This is one reasonwhy archaeologists are rightly scandalized by the actions of dealers inantiquities. Although there really are antiquities knocking about ingrandparents' attics - this reviewer has come across someremarkable pieces surfacing that way in his capacity as a museum curator- nobody, surely not even the dealers themselves, is naive enough tosuppose that this category forms anything but a tiny proportion of whatis appearing on the market. The selection of 1066 objects mentioned inHodges' documentation involve transactions valued at [pounds]4.2million (pp. 279-81). Is this only the tip of the antiquities iceberg?Eisenberg (1995: 217) has estimated 'the entire annual worldwideturnover in Classical, Egyptian and Near Eastern antiquities is perhapsUS$200 to 300 million'. One of the last events recorded by the bookrelates to the arrest in January 1997 of Giacomo Medici, the Italianantiquities dealer. Seizures in four warehouses in Geneva consisted ofsome 10,000 antiquities, almost certainly from Italy, and valued at[pounds]25 million (p. 276).The cancer is running deep; it has reached well into the framework ofacademic institutions. Watson draws attention to the autumn 1996 sale ofthree Sunga terracotta votive vo��tive?adj.1. Given or dedicated in fulfillment of a vow or pledge: a votive offering.2. plaques at Sotheby's, 'probablyChandraketugarh, West Bengal, 2nd/1st century B.C.'. He reports thedevastation of this site near Calcutta (pp. 241-2) and continues,'"Probably Chandraketugarh" suggests that Sotheby'sare fully aware that anything from that site must be illicit, but theymay think that adding "probably" lets them off the hook'.He overlooks that each of these plaques was sold with individualthermoluminescence thermoluminescenceEmission of light from certain heated substances as a result of previous exposure to high-energy radiation. The radiation causes displacement of electrons within the crystal lattice of the substance. analysis reports (nos. 581x44-46) from the ResearchLaboratory for Archaeology in Oxford which had affirmed their antiquity.The Oxford Laboratory, after being implicated in the'affirmation' of terracottas from Mali, is supposed to havedesisted from such activity (Chippindale 1991: 6-8; Elia 1995: 252-3;Inskeep 1992).More salutary is the case study of The crossroads of Asia, anexhibition mounted at the Fitzwilliam Museum, a constituent institutionof the University of Cambridge, in 1992 (Errington & Cribb 1992).When the idea of such an exhibition was being floated, it was becomingclear that considerable damage was being inflicted upon various sites inAfghanistan and Pakistan in order to provide Gandharan 'art'for western collectors (Chippindale 1990: 450-51). As a member of theFitzwilliam's Department of Antiquities at the time I raised myconcern; one piece was admitted as being looted in recent years. Inspite of questions being raised within Cambridge University (Chippindale1993; also 1991: 8-9), the Fitzwilliam pressed ahead, ignoring thequestion of provenance and recent history of the objects. The exhibitionwas designed to present a shadowy collection of Gandharan antiquitiesowned by 'AIC'; repeated questions to the Fitzwilliam and tothe Ancient India and Iran Trust, the show's co-promoters, wereheard in silence. Cambridge and London gossip was that the initialsrelated to an antiquities investment company based in Switzerland. Loand behold, Watson (p. 177) reveals that a company used to launderlooted Indian antiquities was the Swiss-based Artistic ImportsCorporation. If these two AICs are indeed the same trust, then theFitzwilliam appears to have been involved in the wilful wil��ful?adj.Variant of willful.wilfulor US willfulAdjective1. determined to do things in one's own way: a wilful and insubordinate childdisplay ofsmuggled antiquities, and provided the owner with a respected platformto present his (or her) loot. It may become clear, when the Fitzwilliamproperly explains itself, whether this fine museum was naive or knowing.What Watson's book and the Dispatches programmes havedemonstrated is that Sotheby's do not appear to abide by To stand to; to adhere; to maintain.See also: Abide theBritish Antique Dealers' Association guidelines. Felicity Nicholsonagreed under oath at Hodges' trial that since 1984 Sotheby'swere signatories of the BADA convention 'whereby it never traded ingoods which it had good reason to believe had been illegally excavated,stolen or smuggled from their country of origin' (pp. 79,104).Nicholson's evading Watson's questions by pretending to have ameeting in another part of the building (p. 105) is almost asentertaining as when Roger Cook tried to present her with a petitionfrom villagers in Turkey for the return of a looted sculpture whichSotheby's was to sell at auction. No wonder archaeologists, andindeed the general public, can be cynical about the aims of bodies suchas the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art, howeverpleasant individual members are (see Ede 1995). Given the Sotheby'strack record, who is going to believe members of the IADAA even if they'have undertaken, to the best of their ability, to make theirpurchases in good faith and to establish that an object has not beenstolen from an excavation, public institution or private property'(Ede 1995: 214)?It is easy to get upset by the sleaze sleaze?n.A sleazy condition, quality, or appearance: "His record of public service is untouched by any stain of shadiness or sleaze"James J. Kilpatrick. surrounding the antiquitiesmarket. In an honourable world we might expect to see resignations as aresult of these revelations, but we all know that this is unlikely. Sowhere do we go from here? If we are pragmatic we will realize that thistrade will continue, even if it is forced underground. I recall oneancient art consultant telling me that it was well known that certainsmugglers of antiquities also traded in drugs and arms; do we want toendorse those actions as well? One obvious thing that professionalarchaeologists can do is to refuse assistance with the attributions,conservation, identification and authentication of antiquities. When apainted pot is provided with an attribution to an anonymous painter itbecomes a vase, a work of Art; and dealers, including Sotheby's,are not slow to include attributions (p. 118). I am aware of oneAmerican dealer who had - and for all I know still has - a scholar basedin Italy working on attributions for pottery recently looted by'night-time archaeologists'.There also needs to be re-education of those who collect the objectsas well as those guardians of national heritage. Watson'sinvestigations have provided significant evidence which should be usedto call for the cessation of the antiquities market before moreirreversible damage is done. Those unconvinced that the antiquitiestrade is surrounded by sleaze should read this book; those alreadyconvinced have been provided with powerful ammunition.ReferencesBAHN, P.G. 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London: Archetype archetype(är`kĭtīp')[Gr. arch=first, typos=mold], term whose earlier meaning, "original model," or "prototype," has been enlarged by C. G. Jung and by several contemporary literary critics. .