Artistic Pinspiration!

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antiquities, art crime, art theft, art trafficking, artefact, artifact, board, heist, looting, Pinterest

Practical people, on hearing that one’s chosen field is something like art history or anthropology, will often ask (perhaps not unreasonably), “but what can you do with that?”. If an archaeologist or other rare species seems frustrated by the question, it is not for lack of an answer, but rather, because the questioner is missing the point. No one plunges deeply into an abstract academic profession because a magazine article listed it in “Top Ten Careers for Wealth and Prestige”; we do it because we love it. When I was a student, and still now when I work, whenever I get caught up in the effort, or am sick of stumbling on a problem-block, I always come back to the art, and am always cured. An hour in a gallery, or a museum, alone with something a thousand years old, and the wonder, the amazement at humankind and its history remind me why I wanted to do this.

The Problem of Public Awareness

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archaeology, art crime, art theft, art trafficking, artefact, artifact, collecting, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, excavation, interdisciplinary, looting, public awareness

It is in the nature of research to take one in unexpected directions; what I was not prepared for was a single, simple idea that struck to the heart of a major problem of art crime. I was working on a post recently on how to recognise and protect archaeological sites for the general public; especially in North America, sites can be very hard to detect on the surface and artefacts hard to identify. Sometimes sites are damaged by people who don’t even realise they are on top of archaeology. Trying to develop a simple explanation of what sites and artefacts might look like, I realised I had a deeper question: what might be the consequences if I did?

Links: ARCA

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ARCA, art, art crime, art forgery, art market, art theft, art trafficking, cultural preservation, interdisciplinary, international law, looting, provenance, repatriation, research, smuggling

The Association for Research Into Crimes Against Art is an important international organisation doing exactly what the name suggests, and their site is highly recommended. Conceived as a think tank, it connects professionals from the varied disciplines relevant to art crime worldwide, promotes scholarship, and emphasizes public outreach. The group organises conferences and training in interdisciplinary research, publishes, and keeps a blog on recent media relevant to art crime. It also has outstanding links to more specialised blogs and sites.

Click here or above to go to ARCA’s site.

 

Modernist Meditation

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art, art crime, art market, art theft, collecting, installation, modern art, museum, Portland Art Museum, provenance

Courtesy Portland Art Museum

I was at the Portland Art Museum this morning (like many of Oregon’s features, an under-the-radar gem, with an impressive scope to its collections), listening to a charming lecture from the curator, and suddenly found myself distracted by images from the modern and contemporary galleries. Leaving aside my personal opinions on modern art, I began to wonder—has the twenty-first century created unstealable art?

The Thomas Crown Affair

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art, art crime, art market, art theft, collecting, heist, museum, Thomas Crown Affair

An art crime researcher watching a heist movie for leisure is probably as bad as a personal trainer doing push-ups to unwind, but even intense intellectual scrutiny of caper films can’t escape one thing—they’re fun. Watching a movie with someone who can debate its accuracy and presentation is either fascinating or maddening, so out of compassion for my friends, I try to keep quiet, but I can’t help making mental notes. Perhaps it should be heresy that I can enjoy movies about art theft, but The Thomas Crown Affair lets me forget about the ugliness for a while and lose myself in the game.

New Links Page and Opening Link

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archaeology, art crime, art theft, art trafficking, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, Illicit Antiquities Research Centre, interdisciplinary, museum, research, University of Cambridge

For anyone interested in knowing more about the vast, complex world of art crime, A Year in Provenance will now feature a links page, comprising the best resources on the internet. The global presence of the internet in the digital era may become the pivotal tool for reversing trafficking trends and protecting the world’s cultures, and this links page will try to provide the best sites for finding out about any facet of this interdisciplinary field: news items, ethical codes, threatened sites, missing art, repatriation efforts, and the list goes on. Since the difficulty of the internet is not finding information, but sifting through it, each link will be added along with a short post on what to find on the site, what it does best, and what to use it for.

The Impact of Art Crime II: Cultural Loss Is Forever

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antiquities, archaeology, art, art crime, art market, art theft, art trafficking, artefact, artifact, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, in situ, looting, provenance

In economics, there is a model called the broken window fallacy. The example is a thug that breaks a store window: a new window, supplies, and labour all have to be expended to repair the damage, none of which would have happened without that crime. Money is spent, things are happening; doesn’t that stimulate the economy? Two seconds’ thought shows the absurdity; destruction is not productive, and crime does not create prosperity. (If that still seems abstract, imagine being the owner of that store). Now imagine that there were no windows on earth that could replace the broken one. People could offer different kinds of walls, a door installed in the hole left by the window, or a security grill, but there could never again be a window for people to look into.

What Provenance Research Can Do: Looting

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antiquities, archaeology, art crime, art market, art theft, art trafficking, artefact, artifact, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, looting, provenance

Of all forms of art crime, looting of archaeological and historical sites is the most destructive. When an artwork is stolen from a gallery or museum, there is always a risk that the work will be unwittingly ruined, but at least the damage will be limited to a single piece. This is cold comfort when confronted with losing a masterpiece, but by comparison, the loss of a single site is immense. Looters are interested only in what they think will fetch a good price, and will throw away, cut through, or literally bulldoze anything that doesn’t appeal to them.

Launch of the Markham Caerus website!

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A Musing, art crime, art theft, Changing Your Clothes, colormusing, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, Markham Caerus, provenance, research, website launch

Click image to visit the website

I am thrilled to announce the new website for Markham Caerus, the project that started A Year in Provenance. Yours Truly started Markham Caerus as a research project on preventing and reversing art crime; taking it from an idea to a reality was the inspiration to start this blog. My hope is that the blog will become a forum, and take you deeper into the ideas presented on markhamcaerus.com, which presents an overview of the scope and focus of my work.

Look for more pages on the Markham Caerus site in the coming months, on specific projects, results, and resources. Click here to go to markhamcaerus.com, or scroll down to the bottom of the Year in Provenance homepage anytime, and find Markham Caerus in the alphabetical list of links.

A thousand thank-yous to the brilliant Lindy (colormusing), for the inexhaustible help and guidance ( above all, the hard work!) on the images and design that made the website so beautiful, and for the smashing new header for A Year in Provenance. Lindy has turned her extensive graphic design knowledge and eye for design to new projects, like Changing Your Clothes, and A Musing; both take inspiration from the world around us and show how to apply it everyday, and both are right here on WordPress.

The Abstract Becomes Personal

Tags

antiquities, archaeology, art crime, art theft, art trafficking, artefact, artifact, authenticity, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, excavation, international law, looting, provenance

I was breakfasting with a friend a few days ago, cheerfully exchanging notes on current projects and dueling with iPhone apps, when my friend excitedly showed me an e-commerce listing for some “ancient glass beads”, purportedly from Afghanistan. She was interested in them for jewelry-making and colour inspiration, and wanted to know what I thought. I was stunned—the research I do every day, the main focus of my work, was suddenly, intrusively personal. I have fought back tears, hearing reports of decimated archaeological sites or carelessly destroyed paintings, yet this simple craft supply had made the meaning of provenance real to me as nothing had before.