Fall 1996

Two thieves quietly enter the Munich Museum in Oslo. They have spent three years planning for this heist, gathering maps of the city and blue prints of the museum. They have made contact with one of the museum’s security guards who has told them all about the building’s security measures. For the past six months they have tunneled underneath the building. Tonight, they have reached the correct spot. They are ready to break into the museum and take off with it: Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

This type of scenario is what comes to mind for most people when they think about art theft. This type of art theft, however, is a rarity. A more likely theft would go something like this: A scholar isolated within the Vatican Library looks through fourteenth-century illuminated manuscripts. He considers cutting a few pages from them, thinking to himself that no one would ever notice the missing text.

This scene portrays a much more typical art theft, one actually committed by Anthony Melnikasow, a retired art history professor from Ohio State University. Indeed, the works of art that disappear and fall into private collectors; hands each year are largely unknown and undocumented pieces. Fortunately, the pages from the Vatican manuscript were recovered and the professor who stole them was indicted for smuggling. Art thieves rarely target well-known works of art because art dealers can easily recognize them as stolen. For instance, when the famous The Scream was actually stolen from the Munch Museum in 1994, it was recovered less than three months later. Edouard Manet’s Portrait of a Little Girl and Eugene Delacroix’s Moroccan Chief are still missing, however.

Disappearing at Alarming Rates

The black market for cultural objects is extremely lucrative. In fact, art theft is the third most valuable international illegal activity, after drug dealing and computer fraud. Perhaps not surprisingly then, cultural artifacts are being stolen at alarming rates around the world. In Britain alone it is estimated that 1.5 billion dollars’ worth of art is lost each year. Art theft is also on the rise in the United States. In Arizona, a former Anglican priest was caught with several art pieces owned by the churches at which he worked. In the Tri-State area, a church organist was caught selling stolen liturgical objects worth at least 2.5 million dollars.

Curators are especially frightened by recent incidents involving forged documentation. In one instance, a benefactor from the British Tate Gallery added a forged work to the museum’s file on the artist Ben Nicholson. In 1990, a forged Jackson Pollock painting accompanied by a letter from Sotheby’s, the famous New York auction house, sold for a whopping seven million dollars.

Another major concern is the pillaging of archeological sites throughout the world, most notably in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Thieves target rural archeological sites in these regions because artifact are plentiful and not very well guarded. In China alone, 40,000 tombs have been plundered. Although archeological thefts mostly occur abroad, the United States is not safe from cultural plundering. Native American art has recently been the target of thieves. In addition, art from small museums and burial sites in the West have also fallen prey to thieves since works of art in these locations are relatively accessible and transportable.

Munch's The Scream

Taking Stolen Art Back

Countries such as Greece have fought difficult battles trying to repatriate its stolen art. In 1993, Greek authorities managed to obtain Aidonian jewelry stolen 18 years ago. The art was found in the hands of Micael Ward, a member of the United States Cultural Property Advisory Committee, which was created in 1983 to advise the president on how to implement laws protecting cultural property. Mr. Ward at first denied that he had stolen Aidonian jewelry, but when scholars confirmed that the jewelry Mr. Ward claimed he owned was stolen treasure, Ward decided to donate the pieces to a nonprofit organization that would return the pieces to Greece. By donating the jewelry to a nonprofit, Ward saved himself from further embarrassment. Moreover, his donation enabled him to receive tax exemptions from the United States government.

Other governments are currently trying to regain their stolen art, but it is difficult to prove the art belongs to them. Under current regulations, countries must have absolute proof that the objects they claim are stolen are their own. Peru lost its case in 1989 because the country could not sufficiently prove that the art in question was excavated from Peru and not Ecuador or another South American country.

Repatriating stolen artwork from fifty years ago is still a controversy. German collectors are fighting to reclaim art stolen from them during the Soviet occupation of Germany during World War II. The Russian government, however, is reluctant to return these works because they claim that Germans looted their own country. The two countries are in a type of draw. Art stolen from Jewish families by the Nazis during World War II has created another particularly sticky situation. Only 71 of the 1,200 claims filed to the Austrian government by Holocaust survivors or their descendants have been successful. The problem again is documentation. It is very difficult for descendants to prove that pieces of art actually belonged to their families.

Unifying Cultural Trade Law

For the past eight years, the 57 member-nations of the UNIDROIT Convention, part of the International institution for Common Law, have been working to unify cultural trade law. UNIDROIT supporters point out that universal cultural trade laws would make it easier for countries to retrieve stolen objects sold to other countries. For example, Turkey would be able to retrieve the head of a Hercules statue that disappeared during a 1980 excavation and mysteriously appeared in a New York auction house. Since there were and are no international cultural trade statutes in place, the Hercules head was sold to a private collector. Turkey has been unable to reclaim what is rightfully hers.

"Things such as cracks make art identifiable ... It is almost similar to a fingerprint."

UNIDROIT is not without its critics, however. The United States, in fact, is one of the biggest critics of the measure. Countries opposed to UNIDROIT are frightened that countries would adopt strict restrictions on art, especially art from archeological sites. Such restrictions would inhibit the ability of museums to build their collections, to acquire and exhibit a broad array of objects. In some cases, museums could even lose part of their collections.

Keeping Tabs on the Fine Print

Compared to the war on drugs or efforts to prevent computer fraud, there is little law enforcement dedicated to the recovery of cultural property. increased security in museums and at archeological sits would be helpful, but the best solution right now is better documentation.

The Getty Art Information Program, part of the 4.1 billion dollar Getty Trust, has partnered with museums and other cultural institutions to develop uniform standards for identification. These standards, which call for detailed information on every piece of art work, have made it much easier for police authorities to track stolen objects. Detailed information, especially information about defects, is crucial. "Things such as cracks make art identifiable," says Cynthia Scott of The Getty Program. "It is almost similar to a fingerprint."

Other organizations that are active in the retrieval of lost or stolen art are the Art Loss Register and the International Foundation for Art Research. The Art Loss Register keeps up-to-date listings of all stolen or lost art, while the International Foundation for Art Research publishes a magazine which profiles stolen art.

For now, the best weapon against cultural theft is documentation and partnerships between art institutions so that they are able to share information. With proper documentation works of art can be easily identified and quickly returned to their owners.

Sources Consulted: Blumenthal, Ralph. "Museums Getting Together to Track Stolen Art." New York Times, June 16, 1996, B1. Riding, Alan. "The Trick in Art Fraud: Falsifying Records." The New York Times, June 19, 1996, B1. Thornes, Robin. "Protecting Cultural Objects." The Getty Art History Information Program, 1995. Walsh, Mary Williams. "A Grecian Treasure: Back From the Grave?" Los Angeles Times, August 12, 1996, A1. Waxman, Sharon. "Austra: Ending the Legacy of Shame." ART News, September 1995, 122.

Mr. Flores, PC'98, is a history and political science major at Yale College.