Sunday,
January 14, 2007
The
ANNOTICO Report
The
Cleveland Museum of Art follows the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
Negotiations
are completed with the former two, while the negotiations with the Getty are
ongoing, and tense.
It
traces antiquities to tomb raiders
Cleveland
Plain Dealer
Steven
Litt
Plain
Dealer Art Critic
Saturday,
January 13, 2007
The Cleveland
Museum of Art is next on the list of American museums from which
Maurizio Fiorilli, the Italian government lawyer leading
negotiations with American museums, confirmed Friday that he has been trying to
open discussions with the
He said three
e-mails to the museum have gone unanswered, although he acknowledged that the
e-mails may not have been addressed properly and may be missing.
In
the latest message, sent Dec. 20, Fiorilli said he
proposed that the museum send representatives to
"We are
available to sit around a table to examine in complete serenity the basis of
our requests," Fiorilli said Friday, speaking by
phone from his office in
Timothy Rub,
director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, was in
As recently as
Tuesday, how ever, Rub said that he had received no communications from
Italian
authorities say evidence unearthed in a police raid on a warehouse in
Switzerland in 1995 exposed direct links between tombaroli
-- tomb robbers -- and art dealers who then restored the works and later sold
them. The authorities say the dealers provided each work with a fake ownership
history, or provenance, to cover up its origin.
American museums
check with agencies that monitor art thefts, such as the International
Foundation for Art Research, before buying such works to see if they were
stolen. But because no prior records exist for looted works, it is impossible
to know their exact origins. Museums say that in such cases, it is better to
buy and exhibit antiquities than to pass them up.
Over the past
year, however,
"We offer
loans of long duration for those who return objects we seek, and there is no
damage to culture or to the museums," Fiorilli
said. "Our goal is to sever clandestine excavations and ille gal international traffic in antiquities from
Fiorilli declined to specify which
works
"It's not great numbers," he said.
Evidence from the
1995 police raid is at the core of
Attorneys for
both have said their clients are not guilty of any crime.
The
"We know
that we can't take all of the collection," Fiorilli
said.
"We are
interested in working on this side by side."
To reach this
Plain Dealer columnist: slitt@plaind.com, 216-999-4136
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