Leila A. Amineddoleh was quoted in Le Parisien after speaking with a French journalist about the seizure of 180 items from Michael Steinhardt’s antiquities collection. Leila served as an expert for the seizure of a number of items removed from the Steinhardt collection, including the Bull’s Head that triggered the investigation into the financier’s collection. Details are available HERE.
Like other nations rich in archaeological material, Mexico has suffered a great deal of looting and illegal export of its cultural heritage over the past decades. Despite enacting protective legislation dating back to the late 19th century, cultural heritage objects from Mexico continue to be smuggled out of the country and sold on the open market. These items, many of which hail from pre-Columbian indigenous societies such as the Maya and Aztec, are highly prized by museums and private collectors alike. Stelae (free-standing commemorative monuments erected in front of pyramids or temples and made from limestone), polychrome vessels, jade and gold funerary masks, stone altars, and sculptured figurines are among the many types of objects offered for sale. This is a profitable business worldwide; according to Sotheby’s, its auctions of these items have reached nearly $45 million over the past 15 years. (One of our previous blog posts details the theft of pre-Columbian antiquities worth over $20 million from Mexico’s National Museum of Archaeology on Christmas Day 1985, and how authorities recovered them 3 years later.)
Pre-Colombian Stelea
Photo Credit: National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
In light of these circumstances, Mexico has recently taken several concrete steps to strengthen efforts to track down and recover cultural and historical artifacts. In 2011, the National Institute for Anthropology and History (NIAH) announced the launch of a new unified database for cultural property, which allows for the inscription of cultural goods from anywhere within Mexico. Each item in the database is provided with a unique ID number and accompanying details (such as type, material, dimensions, and provenance), resulting in a publicly accessible and standardized system. This is an invaluable tool that will aid the government in protecting the country’s approximately 2 million movable artifacts.
Mexico has also implemented measures to further protect heritage items already removed from within its borders. In March 2013, the governments of Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Peru contested the sale of pre-Columbian art from the Barbier-Mueller Museum at Sotheby’s Paris. All these countries have similar laws vesting ownership of antiquities in the State; therefore, they alleged that the sale was illegal because the objects were not accompanied by export licenses or sufficient provenance information confirming that the works were removed prior to the passage of the relevant laws. Nonetheless, the sale went ahead as planned. A French diplomat stated that the items did not appear on the Interpol database or ICOM Red List, and as such were not considered looted or stolen. (This statement was made even though pre-Columbian antiquities are underrepresented on both lists.) Ultimately, nearly half of the lots failed to sell, and the total sales proceeds fell far below the pre-sale estimate. Public pressure may have played a role in staving off bidders.
Despite this controversy, auctions of similar items have continued. In September 2019, Mexico and Guatemala jointly denounced the auction of pre-Columbian artifacts at French auction house Drouot. The auction house claimed the sale was “perfectly legitimate” and proceeded to sell 93% of the lots, netting $1.3 million for the sale. In response, the consigner, Alexandre Millon, stated that he was a victim of “opportunistic cultural nationalism.” This stoked further tension among countries of origin and market countries.
Teotihuacan mask, ca. 450–650
Photo Credit: Christie’s
In February 2021, NIAH lodged a formal legal claim against Christie’s over the sale of 33 pre-Columbian objects, including a stone sculpture of the goddess of fertility Cihuatéotl estimated at $722,000-$1.08 million and a Teotihuacán green stone mask of Quetzalcóatl estimated at $420,000-$662,000. Notably, the mask previously belonged to French dealer Pierre Matisse, son of artist Henri Matisse. While Christie’s maintained that it was confident in the legitimate provenance of the items, historian and archaeologist Daniel Salinas Córdova indicated that the circumstances under which the items had left their places of origin was still unclear. He reiterated that auctioning pre-Columbian antiquities is dangerous because it “promote[s] the commercialization and privatization of cultural heritage, prevent[s] the study, enjoyment, and dissemination of the artifacts, and promote[s] archaeological looting.” Although the sale proceeded and the legal claim has not yet been resolved, Mexico continues to enforce its patrimonial rights.
In September 2021, ambassadors from 8 Latin American Countries (Mexico, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, and Peru) banded together to stop an auction of pre-Columbian artifacts in Germany. Mexican Secretary of Culture Alejandra Faustro sent a letter to the Munich-based dealer, Gerhard Hirsch Nachfolger, citing Mexico’s 1934 patrimony law and reiterating the government’s commitment to recovering its cultural heritage. Mexico’s ambassador to Germany, Francisco Quiroga, even visited the auction house in person in an attempt to block the sale. A complaint was also filed with the Attorney General’s Office in Mexico. The auction took place, but of the 67 pieces identified as being Mexican, only 36 sold. Notably, one of the highlights – an Olmec mask with an estimate of €100,000 – did not achieve the reserve price.
That same month, Mexico announced the creation of a new team composed of National Guard personnel tasked with the recovery of stolen archaeological pieces and historical documents. The nation’s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, credited Italy with the idea. He stated, “Italy has a special body to recover stolen archaeological pieces. We are going to follow that example, I have given the instruction for the National Guard to constitute a special team for the purpose,” Lopez Obrador said.
As recently as November 2021, the Mexican government issued a letter questioning the legality of two auctions in Paris (at Artcurial and Christie’s) selling pre-Columbian objects. Embassy officials and the Mexican Secretary of Culture asked for the sales to be halted on the grounds that they “stri[p] these invaluable objects of their cultural, historical and symbolic essence, turning them into commodities or curiosities by separating them from the anthropological environment from which they come.” Only a few months earlier (in July), the governments of Mexico and France had signed a Declaration of Intent on the Strengthening of Cooperation against Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Property, which was meant to signal a recommitment towards the restitution and protection of each nation’s cultural heritage. Although Mexican officials appealed to UNESCO, bidding opened as scheduled on Artcurial’s online platform (with lots priced at $231-$11,600) and Christie’s earned over $3.5 million in its own sale. The day before the Christie’s sale, the embassies of Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, and Peru in France issued a joint statement decrying the “commercialization of cultural property” and “the devastation of the history and identity of the peoples that the illicit trade of cultural property entails.”
Nonetheless, Mexico’s persistence has borne fruit. In September 2021, it was able to halt the sale of 17 artifacts at a Rome-based auction house. The Carabinieri TPC seized the objects after an inspection revealed that they had been illegally exported, and returned them to Mexico in October. The successful recovery of these objects demonstrates the importance of international cooperation. Many governments’ resources are stretched thin policing their own borders for cultural heritage smuggling and theft, and therefore greatly benefit from assistance by foreign law enforcement. It is also an example of how successful cultural diplomacy can be in the recovery of such objects.
The letter signed by Hernán Cortés recovered by the Mexican authorities.
Photo Credit: The National Archives
In addition to law enforcement and government agencies, laypeople have a crucial part to play in the recovery of looted or illegally exported artifacts. For instance, a group of academics in Mexico and Spain helped thwart the sale of a 500-year-old letter linked to conquistador Hernán Cortés. The letter, dating back to 1521, had been offered for sale by Swann Galleries in New York in September 2021. It was expected to fetch $20,000-$30,000. By searching online catalogues of global auction houses and a personal trove of photographs depicting Spanish colonial documents, the group traced the letter’s provenance to the National Archive of Mexico (NAM), a UNESCO World Heritage Site. An image of the letter had been taken by a Mormon genealogy project, which provided supporting evidence. Furthermore, the group unearthed 9 additional documents linked to Cortés that had been sold at auction – including at Bonhams and Christie’s – between 2017 and 2020. One of these had been sold previously at Swann Galleries for $32,500 and later displayed at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York as part of an exhibition. It was confirmed that all the documents had been stolen from the NAM – they were surgically excised from books – and illegally exported. In response, Swann Galleries cancelled the planned auction. The purchaser of the aforementioned letter returned it in good faith to the auction house. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry enlisted the help of the US Department of Justice to repatriate the 10 manuscripts, in cooperation with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations. The manuscripts were formally handed over in September 2021.
After the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. government began forcibly removing Japanese Americans from the West Coast and relocating them to isolated, inland areas. Around 120,000 people were detained in internment camps for the remainder of WWII. Among those interned were various artists – some were professional artists, some created works of art or crafts to occupy their time, and others used art to document their experiences during this uncertain time.
Chiura Obata, a notable artist and art teacher, was one such detained Japanese American artist. Last month, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) acquired thirty-five of Obata’s works created between 1934-1943, many of which were created during his internment in Utah.
Copyright: Archives of American Art, Chiura Obata Papers
Obata was a California-based artist who emigrated to the United States from Japan in 1903. After gaining notoriety early in his art career, Obata was named as a faculty member of the Art Department at the University of California, where he worked from 1932-1954. However, in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attacks, Obata and his family were relocated from their California home and interned. They were first sent to the Tanforan Detention Center (located in the Bay Area) and then to the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah.
During his internment at each detention center, Obata served as a leader in creating art schools for detainees like himself. In addition to teaching, Obata created some 350 works during this period. These works included large-scale paintings of the landscapes surrounding the camps, drawings for the camp’s newspaper, and watercolors and sketches that documented life as a detainee (given that cameras were not permitted, artworks were used to create a record of daily life). Obata wished to show that he and his countrymen had not been defeated by the prejudice and humiliations they suffered.
Today, Obata is known for his brush and ink landscapes and portraits of America, in which he blends traditional Japanese brush styles with traditional Western techniques. Despite his time in the camps, Obata’s work shows a fascination with and focus on the rugged beauty of American landscapes, at odds with the ugliness of the detainment centers. He was able to find “the beauty that exists in enormous darkness.” The collection at the UMFA was donated by the Obata Estate. Representatives of the estate hope that “people will be inspired to learn the history of wartime incarceration and go visit the actual camp site in Delta as well as the Topaz Museum,” after viewing the pieces at the UMFA.
Chiura Obata, Great Nature, Storm on Mount Lyell from Johnson Peak, 1930, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Obata Family, 2000.76.8
Copyright: Lillian Yuri Kodani, 1989
In addition to this new collection, Obata has been featured in several exhibits and his works are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Smithsonian, and other well-known institutions.
Art created during this period of internment, however, went beyond Obata’s contributions. Many Japanese Americans had been artists previously or found solace in art during this period. George Matsusaburo Hibi was another notable artist interned with Obata. The two men worked together while at the Tanforan Assembly Center to create an art school, which eventually enrolled 600 students.
Before internment, Hibi was a student at the California School of Fine Arts. Throughout the 1930s, Hibi’s work was exhibited in the San Francisco area, and was even exhibited at the Oakland Art Gallery in 1943 while he was still interned in the camps. Hibi is primarily known for his printmaking and oil paintings. Many of his works depict the bleak aspects of the camp, including the harsh winters.
2020 Stamps honoring featuring Ruth Asawa’s art. Copyright: 2020 U.S. Postal Service.
Other notable interned artists were ones that worked as animators for Walt Disney Studios, including Tom Okamoto, Chris Ishii and James Tanaka. Like Hibi and Obata, these cartoonists also used their time at the internment camps to teach art. One of their students was Ruth Asawa, a young girl who had not previously explored art. While interned, however, she found free time to draw and explore her creative talents. Today, Asawa is a renowned artist with works in the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum in New York. She is known for her wire sculptures and the fountains she was commissioned to create in San Francisco. In 2020, the U.S. Postal Service honored her by featuring her art on a series of stamps.
During WWII, American Japanese internment camps were not the only camps that detained artists. In Nazi Germany, millions of people were forcibly interned. The circumstances and treatment of the prisoners at these camps varied, but in some cases, they were significantly crueler and more repressive. Unlike the U.S. internment camps, many Nazi camps were a mechanism to kill people. However, like the U.S. internment camps, they provided an unlikely source of inspiration and solace.
One famous artist who emerged from the camps was Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters had had gained renown as an artist for his involvement in the Dada movement, but in 1940 he was placed in a camp on the Isle of Man. Like the interned Japanese American artists on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Schwitters created art in a studio and used his time to teach other prisoners, some of which became successful artists in their own right. However, creating and teaching art were not easy for Schwitters. Given the circumstances in the camps, art supplies were scarce. This forced Schwitters and other artists to become resourceful and find alternate tools to create art. People at the camp with Schwitters recall that he pulled up the linoleum flooring to paint on and even made a sculpture out of his porridge. Regardless of these obstacles, Schwitters produced over 200 works while at the camp. To honor these works and Schwitters’ legacy, a gallery near where he was interned exhibited his work. It attracted thousands of visitors in 2013.
Other works by imprisoned artists are honored at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum is located at the site of the site of the former concentration camp and has a gallery with over 2,000 works of art that were created by prisoners at the various Nazi camps. In some of the more restrictive Nazi camps, art and any tools needed to create art were forbidden. Rather, works created in these camps were prepared in secret and using whatever supplies detainees could find. Many of the works were created to defy the Nazis and expose and document the atrocities occurring in the camps.
Drawing by Franciszek Jaźwiecki
Photo Credit: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Famously, Polish artist Franciszek Jaźwiecki secretly created a historical record through his portraits. An art historian at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum believes that he drew these portraits for the purpose of creating a historical record, given that he included the prisoners’ numbers in each of his portraits. This has allowed historians to attach a name to the portraits through the number. Jaźwiecki took a huge risk by creating these drawings, as it was strictly prohibited. Records reveal that he hid his portraits in his bed or in his clothes. The portraits survived and after his death, his family donated 100 of his works to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in remembrance of his experience.
Many other such works and photographs have been uncovered. Historians believe that, like Jaźwiecki’s portraits, they were being used to document the people, conditions, and events in the camps. On display at the museum is a sketchbook with 22 pictures by an unknown artist. During his time at Auschwitz, he secretly drew the exterminations of detainees. His drawings were found in 1947 in a bottle that had been hidden in the foundations of a building near Birkenau’s crematoriums. This sketchbook is the only artwork uncovered that documents the extermination at Birkenau.
While internment camps are a difficult part of history, the art that was produced there reflects and documents this era. Art was both a practical tool for prisoners to occupy their time, but also contribute to newsletters and document the people and circumstances of the camps. It was additionally an emotional tool to help prisoners distract from their realities, retain their identity and purpose, and in many cases, to expose and cope with the bleak environments in which they were detained.
Leila A. Amineddoleh spoke with The Art Newspaper about the most recent copyright infringement litigation filed against Jeff Koons. Read the article HERE.
In this inaugural newsletter, Amineddoleh & Associates is pleased to share some major developments that took place at the firm during the summer and autumn of 2021.
Ancient marble bust contested in lawsuit
Image from Manhattan DA’s Office
Amineddoleh and Associates secured a win for its client, the Italian Republic, in the ongoing Safani v. Republic of Italy litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The court dismissed litigation against our client in a case concerning an Italian antiquity seized from a Manhattan art gallery. Read about the litigation update here and the case details here.
(The Plaintiff has since filed a Second Amended Complaint, naming the Manhattan District Attorney as a defendant in the case.)
In this blog post, our founder Leila Amineddoleh discusses disgraced art dealer Nancy Wiener, who revealed new details about her involvement in the illicit trafficking of antiquities and its effect on the art market in an allocution statement. Wiener had ties to Douglas Latchford, whose recent appearance in the Pandora Papers leak highlights the global nature of the illicit antiquities trade. Read more on our website.
There were a number of developments this autumn concerning Nazi-Era looting. We presented an entry in our popular Provenance Series to examine the issues surrounding the restitution of looted cultural heritage in Poland, including the country’s history, a new law shortening the applicable statute of limitations, and examples of successful returns. Read more on our website. In addition, questions continue to arise concerning alleged duress sales, with one painting in Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts coming under scrutiny. Founder Leila Amineddoleh discussed the case and its implications with media outlets.
Gold ewer
Image from V&A
Firm founder Leila Amineddoleh consulted with the Gilbert Trust at the Victoria & Albert Museum concerning a 4,250 year old golden ewer that was returned to Turkey in October. The ewer was purchased by a private collector who was unaware of the seller’s dirty dealings, including his involvement in antiquities trafficking. Luckily, the Gilbert Trust was proactive and the matter was resolved amicably and creatively. Read about the ewer’s fascinating history and the details of its return here.
With the ongoing NFT craze, market participants and legal scholars have been waiting for guidance from courts concerning the application of “traditional” intellectual property law to this new digital asset class. We authored a blog post discussing the legal questions and controversies arising as the NFT market continues to grow. NFTs recently made headlines when Miramax sued Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino, the award-winning movie director, announced his plan to sell a new NFT collection consisting of seven tokens to uncut, exclusive scenes from Pulp Fiction. In response, Miramax sued Tarantino for breach of contract, as well as copyright and trademark infringement. Read more about NFTs and this new lawsuit here.
Several artifacts seized from Steinhardt
Image from DA’s Office
This blog post details the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office seizure of 180 looted antiquities from Michael Steinhardt. Steinhardt, a hedge-fund pioneer and one of the world’s most prolific collectors of ancient art, was involved in a criminal investigation examining issues with the provenance of various pieces in his collection. The DA’s Office announced that Steinhardt has been sanctioned by placing him under a lifetime ban on the purchase of antiquities. All of the seized antiquities will be returned to their country of origin. Read more about this news on our website. Our founder served as an independent cultural heritage law expert for the seizure of certain items in Steinhardt’s collection. She discussed this with a number of news outlets, including WNYC.
Our firm added two new members to its roster this fall: Travis Mock and Deanna Schreiber. Travis is an attorney with a wealth of experience in litigation, IP law and trademarks, while Deanna is 3L at Fordham Law School interested in both transactional and litigation aspects of art and cultural heritage law. Deanna was the winner of the NY State Bar Association’s writing competition for her submission discussing the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and its future role in Nazi-looted art controversies. We wish Travis and Deanna a warm welcome. Learn more about our team and their accomplishments here.
Congratulations to our firm’s founder Leila Amineddoleh, who successfully chaired the 13th Annual NYCLA Art Law Institute, one of the most anticipated events of the year. Leila also spoke on the topic of foreign sovereign immunity while Associate Claudia Quinones participated in the ever-popular What’s New in Art Law? panel, focusing on title disputes. Check out the conference program and speaker details here.
In early December, Leila and Claudia also spoke at an international conference, The Intentional Destruction of the Cultural Heritage of Mankind, organized by Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza.” They discussed cultural heritage as a human right as well as measures of legal protection in times of peace and conflict. In November, Leila presented a 3-hour lecture on the topic of NFTs for the Executive Master in Art Market Studies at the University of Zurich. Earlier in the month, she presented on “New Obligations in the Art & Antiquities Markets” for the Responsible Art Market Initiative. She also presented a featured lecture, “Cultural Heritage, the Law and Looting,” for the Department of Art History at New York University in October. Before that, she spoke about Nazi Looted Art and the Guelph Treasure for the International Center of Medieval Art.
Our firm was hired to create a unique template for the sale and purchase of NFTs on Monax. The company’s cutting-edge digital platform will combine technological expertise with art market considerations to provide users with full support for these emerging digital assets. As NFTs continue to increase in price and popularity, this template has the potential to revolutionize the market. Read more about NFTs and Monax’s services here. A&A also advised Nifty Gateway on its Terms & Conditions, and we have been working with a number of clients on new NFT projects.
Fragrance of Infinity: Hiroshi Sugimoto’s limited edition perfume bottle
Copyright: Diptyque
In honor of Diptyque’s 60th anniversary, our client Hiroshi Sugimoto collaborated with the fragrance house on a limited edition perfume bottle inspired by the Japanese region of Kankitsuzan. The artist used his childhood memory of seeing the ocean for the first time to create a striking form exploring the relationship between man and nature. More information on the collection can be found here.
In honor of Veterans Day, the People’s Picture (our client) was commissioned by America250 to create a digital photo mosaic depicting African American WWI hero Sgt. Henry Johnson for its November Salute 2021. The stunning mosaic, containing hundreds of photographs of veterans and other military personnel, is accessible online here and you can read more about The People’s Picture and their work here.
A number of our artist-clients received recognition for international art exhibitions over the past year, including the talented Kamrooz Aram. In addition, our collector-clients and dealer-clients were also actively buying and selling art through both online platforms and in-person art fairs.
As television viewership numbers increase during the pandemic, it is a pleasure to work with producers, writers, and on-screen talent creating exciting programs. One of these clients is Terra Incognita, a company producing content for educational, travel, and documentary programming. They focus on high-quality and thought-provoking ideas to empower audiences around the world.
On behalf of Amineddoleh & Associates, we wish you a happy holiday season and wonderful new year.