by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Aug 6, 2021 |
On August 2, 2021, the Southern District of New York granted our motion to dismiss a case brought against the Republic of Italy. The case involved a marble bust (purportedly discovered in the Roman Forum) that was for sale by the Safani Gallery. We discussed the litigation and our motion to dismiss in a prior blog post. The highly anticipated opinion concerned the applicability of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) to the Republic of Italy; namely, whether Italy acted in such a manner that a U.S. court could obtain subject matter jurisdiction over it. The FSIA is the only means for US courts to obtain jurisdiction over foreign states, through a series of limited statutory exceptions. The court ruled that plaintiff Safani Gallery failed to establish grounds satisfying any of the exceptions named in its Amended Complaint. (The gallery initially alleged that Italy engaged in commercial activity, but then amended its complaint to instead allege waiver, expropriation, and tortious activity). In particular, the court noted that Italy did not engage in a taking in violation of international law, nor did it exert agency over the N.Y. law enforcement officials who seized the object in Manhattan. Judge Vernon Broderick noted that Italy’s communication with the District Attorney’s office was analogous to someone who reports a crime, which was insufficient to establish a fiduciary relationship. The seizure of the object was also carried out for a public purpose and was therefore lawful.
This case is the third in a line of litigations in which art market participants have sued foreign governments for communicating about problematic or suspicious antiquities. This is also the third case in that line of cases to be dismissed. The first of those litigations, Barnet et al. v. Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic, involved an antiquity up for auction at Sotheby’s. Amineddoleh & Associates is proud to have represented Greece in the landmark case and to have secured a win for the nation. There, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals granted our motion to dismiss on behalf of Greece in June 2020. We are pleased that US courts have upheld foreign states’ defense from actions suing them for communicating with law enforcement or art market participants. Our firm is proud to have gained recognition as a leader in FSIA litigations and antiquities matters.
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Jul 28, 2021 |
“Gilgamesh Dream Tablet” (Photo courtesy of US Department of Justice)
The epic saga of Gilgamesh continues as Hobby Lobby is once again caught in the crossfire of illicit antiquities trafficking. Yesterday, federal authorities forfeited a 3,500 year old clay cuneiform tablet known as the “Gilgamesh Dream Tablet” from the crafting giant. The tablet contains a portion of the “Epic of Gilgamesh” where the protagonist describes his dreams to his mother. It is considered a rare and ancient masterpiece of world literature.
The federal government had originally seized the tablet in 2019 and filed a civil forfeiture action in May 2020 to return it to Iraq. The tablet’s provenance was falsified to assert that it had been discovered in a box purchased at a California auction in 1981. In reality, the item had been purchased by an American dealer in London in 2003, who then brought it to the US. This timing coincided with widespread looting of archaeological sites in Iraq as a result of the ongoing war with the US. Hobby Lobby purchased the tablet for $1.6 million at a Christie’s auction in 2014, relying on the auction house to perform the appropriate due diligence. It transpired that the previous owner had warned Christie’s that the tablet’s stated provenance would not withstand scrutiny. The auction house failed to notify Hobby Lobby of this fact even after the craft company had expressed concerns. Ultimately, Hobby Lobby cooperated with the authorities and consented to the tablet’s forfeiture.
However, this is not Hobby Lobby’s first brush with the law over looted Middle Eastern antiquities. In 2010, representatives of Hobby Lobby purchased thousands of antiquities originating from Iraq for display at the future Museum of the Bible. The provenance information for the objects was fabricated, listing their origin as Israel or Turkey to avoid suspicions of illicit trafficking. Notably, Hobby Lobby consulted a respected cultural heritage expert regarding its acquisition, but went against her advice and continued with the transaction, ignoring several red flags indicating that the items had been looted. In 2017, a civil forfeiture action was filed and Hobby Lobby agreed to pay a $3.3 million fine and return over 5,500 looted objects to Iraq.
In this instance, our founder Leila Amineddoleh served as a cultural heritage law expert for the Eastern District of New York. She was extensively quoted on her participation in the matter in national media and trade outlets. She noted how the verdict resulted in greater public scrutiny over the purchase of antiquities and a higher expectation of due diligence measures related to provenance, even for so-called “inexperienced” purchasers. (Information about the matter can be found in our prior blog posts here and here.) This approach has indeed borne fruit, as the forfeiture of the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet demonstrates.
Law enforcement authorities in the US have been actively pursuing black market antiquities and disrupting trafficking networks for some time, but judicial enforcement and specialist support are also crucial. Many countries that suffer from cultural property looting and trafficking, including Iraq, have applicable provenance laws that cover items like the tablet. Furthermore, the US has placed import restrictions on Iraqi cultural property since 1990 and implemented sanctions as recently as 2010, allowing the government to seize objects at or after import. Judicial precedent has empowered US courts to recognize foreign patrimony laws and classify such objects as stolen property, increasing their protection on US soil, but government agents rely on knowledgeable attorneys and experts to advise them on cultural property protection and available legal remedies.
Amineddoleh & Associates LLC is proud to have a founder that has advised the government extensively on such matters and is a staunch advocate for responsible acquisition practices to combat the illicit antiquities trade. Our firm deals with various cases involving potentially looted items on behalf of private and public parties, and we are committed to ensuring that cultural property is protected irrespective of origin. Our strong track record in this field is a testament to our expertise and commitment to stemming the trade in looted objects. We commend the Department of Justice for its excellent work and look forward to continued collaboration in the future with law enforcement to ensure that looted antiquities return to their rightful homes.
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Jul 23, 2021 |
Amineddoleh & Associates LLC is pleased to contribute to the Preserving History Series by the American Institute for Roman Culture (AIRC). AIRC, founded in 2002, is a non-profit organization with locations in both the United States and Italy. The organization provides educational content, conducts archeological fieldwork, and provides its study abroad students with a full immersion into modern Italian culture while learning about the nation’s rich past. A lauded organization, AIRC has received numerous grants, including an NEH grant, American Express Foundation grant for the Villa delle Vignacce excavation, World Monuments Fund (WMF) collaboration for Santa Maria project, anonymous angel grants, and numerous donations from supporters. Its founder and director, Darius Arya, has received acclaim for his television and outreach work.
Flayed Marsyas at Centro Montemartini
One of the finds from the organization’s excavations can be viewed at Centrale Montemartini in Rome. In 2009, during a four-year excavation conducted by the Sovrintendenza Capitolina and AIRC, at Villa Vignacce in southeastern Rome, a statue in red marble was discovered. Dating from the 1st half of the 2nd century, it depicts the punishment of Marsyas. Marsyas was a satyr who challenged Apollo to a music contest. When Marsyas lost, Apollo had him tied to be flayed alive. In the Vignacce Marsyas, the bloodied skin is rendered by head, arms, torso and legs of a veiny red marble, while hands and feet would have been white marble. An extraordinary find, the statue is almost entirely intact, missing only one hand and both feet.
Amineddoleh & Associates LLC has a long history collaborating with AIRC, and we are pleased to contribute a series of post entries to the Preserving History Series.
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Jun 14, 2021 |
Virtual restoration of the Old Summer Palace during the Qing Dynasty, 1644-1911. (Copyright: Asianewsphoto)
Over two thousand years ago, the Jade Emperor, Supreme God of the Heavens in Taoism mythology, launched what is now known as the Great Race. The invitation was extended to every animal species in the Empire but, because of prior engagements or travel restrictions, only twelve (the Pig, Rooster, Sheep, Horse, Dog, Monkey, Snake, Rabbit, Dragon, Tiger, Rat, and Ox) attended the event. In gratitude, the Jade Emperor promised each participant it would be attributed a zodiac year and two hours of the day. The first to reach the finish line would become the first zodiac sign and the first two hours of the day, and so on. The race crossed all terrains, with its climax being a river crossing. Rat, the group’s smallest member, feared for its life; until it spied Ox. The bovine was known to have poor vision so Rat offered to direct it through the river by riding on its back. Ox agreed and they began the final leg of the journey. Yet once the pair grew close to the opposite bank, Rat jumped off Ox’s head and won the race. To this day, Rat remains the first sign in the Chinese zodiac and it symbolizes hours 11:00pm to 1:00am.
Under the Qing dynasty in the 18th century, Emperor Qianlong commissioned the creation of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. Reigning over 715 acres of utopian hills and gardens, the palace hosted the empire’s formal and recreational stays. Within this land, hidden in the Garden of Eternal Spring, was the Haiyantang water-clock fountain. Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian painter, designed the fountain to include twelve bronze heads in the shapes of the zodiac animals, which sprouted water at the hours to which the creatures were assigned in the Great Race myth. Water speared out of Rat’s mouth at midnight and Rabbit rose with the sun from 5:00 to 7:00am.
In 1856, the British declared the Second Opium War against the Qing government. The French joined soon after. Four years into the war, British High Commissioner to China, James Bruce, the Eight Earl of Elgin entered the picture. The son of the Thomas Bruce (known for removing from marble frieze from the Parthenon), James Bruce ordered the burning and looting of the Old Summer Palace. Like his father, James has faced the ire of history due to his destruction and theft of a nation’s heritage. He knew that amongst the Chinese Palace’s treasures, the fountain’s bronze heads were no small catch. The French and British soldiers likely traded some of the loot amongst themselves. We now know most of the bronze heads were sent to Europe.
World-renowned French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé spent years acquiring an enviable art collection. From their first acquisition of a wooden bird sculpture, Oiseau Sénoufo, originating from Côte d’Ivoire in 1960, animals became a central theme in their collection. When Saint Laurent died in 2008, Bergé auctioned off a large part of their collection with Christie’s Paris the following year. Up for auction were the rat and rabbit heads. They may have gone unnoticed, but the Republic of China had had its eyes out for the bronzes for nearly a decade. Back in 2000 the tiger, the monkey, and the ox were the first zodiac heads to reappear on the public art market. At the time, they were featured in Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction catalogues for their upcoming sales. The Chinese State Bureau of Cultural Relics promptly wrote to the auction houses demanding the withdrawal of the bronze heads from the sales. The Chinese government did not formulate an official restitution request because international conventions were viewed as inapplicable to lootings that occurred over 140 years ago. As a result, the auction houses rejected the State’s request. In an unexpected turn of events, however, China Poly Group Corp. Ltd.placed its live bids on all three heads, and won them for a total of $4 million dollars. The sculptures were placed in this state-owned corporation’s Poly Art Museum in Beijing, which is dedicated to Chinese heritage. Three years later, the same museum acquired the pig head from Chinese billionaire Stanley Ho, who had bought it from a New York collector. Finally, in 2007, Ho purchased the horse head from Sotheby’s Hong Kong for $8.9 million dollars.
Jackie Chan wrote, directed, and starred in a film about the stolen zodiac bronzes.
It came as no surprise when Christie’s Paris received a letter from the Chinese government in February 2009 asking that the rat and rabbit heads be removed from the Yves Saint Laurent-Bergé sale. It was also to be expected that the auction house would refuse. In protest, the “Association pour la protection de l’art chinois en Europe” (the Foundation for the protection of Chinese art in Europe) along with eighty other Chinese lawyers, filed a complaint with the “juge des référés” whose role in France is to deliver temporary restraining orders in time-sensitive situations. Two days before auction, the tribunal rejected the foundation’s request to enjoin the sale.
THE PROVENANCE: In its press release on the three-day Saint Laurent estate sale, Christie’s described the zodiac bronze heads as the “two main pieces” amongst the works for sale. The sculptures’ provenance revealed that Saint Laurent had acquired them from the Kugel brothers at their famous Galerie Kugel in Paris. The Kugels bought the bronze heads from the marquis de Pomereu in 1986 who had attained them from the Spanish painter José María Sert.
On the closing day of the sale, February 25, 2009, the rat and rabbit bronzes sold for the equivalent of nearly $40 million. A few days later, the winning bidder refused to pay for them. Cai Mingchao, a self-described Chinese patriot, explained his act was a national duty. “This money,” he claimed, “should not be paid.” The Chinese government publicly supported Mingchao’s fraud and, in addition, placed tighter trade restrictions on Christie’s art trades, ordering local law enforcement officials to report any artifact that might have been looted and trafficked. Following Mingchao’s refusal to pay for the sculptures, Pierre Bergé eventually sold the lots to French billionaire François Pinault, the owner of Christie’s.
Rabbit bronze for auction at Christie’s (Copyright: Agence France-Presse)
However, the story was not over. In 2013, Pinault announced that the rat and rabbit heads would return to Beijing. But the animals’ race home came at a price. Curiously, this donation occurred only a few days after Christie’s was granted a license to conduct business on mainland China. Most recently, in December 2020, China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration launched the return of the horse head. The Summer Palace was restored in 1886, twenty-six years after its destruction. However, the dragon, dog, sheep, snake, and rooster have yet to reach to finish line and return home.
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Jun 10, 2021 |
The Rumor Circuit, 2004
At Amineddoleh & Associates, we are proud to represent many talents. Amongst them is visual artist Kamrooz Aram. His current group shows at Peter Blum Gallery in New York, NY, and Z33 in Hasselt, Belgium, give us the opportunity to highlight his work and career.
Based in Brooklyn, NY, Aram was born in Shiraz, Iran. He received a BFA from Maryland Institute’s College of Art and an MFA from Columbia University. His work questions the complex relationship between ornament and the so-called decorative arts and Modernism. He also engages architecture through painting and exhibition design by using physical spaces in his art. In his current two-person exhibit at Z33, Lives of Forms, Aram and his colleague Iman Issa use the gallery space as a tool to expand their work. In Luster on Blue Glaze (2021), Aram’s small painting of a Middle Eastern vase is framed by small geometric shapes of mat colors, with the vase collaged from a book documenting Iranian ceramics. The ensemble is surrounded by a scarlet red wall. The viewer’s eyes are caught between the artifact’s delicacy and timelessness, at the center, and the contrasting grandiosity of modern abstraction.
Untitled (Arabesque Composition), 2021
Field of Vision, at Peter Blum Gallery, like Lives of Forms, include some of Aram’s Arabesques compositions. The term Arabesque, according to Aram, has several definitions. The most common refers to the leafy and floral forms that might ornament a carpet or a tiled wall. The word’s etymology suggests a form that is Arab-like. The term was created by Europeans. At first glance, his Arabesque series represents large floral grids surrounded by a border. However, just like Luster on Blue Glaze’s play on space, the Arabesques’ borders become part of the grid. The frame and the enclosed content merge into a singular composition. The exposed grid lines and the artist’s visible strokes add an organic element to the works. This technique also gives the impression that the paintings are worn by time and have survived from a different era. Aram uses a variety of mediums, including oil, acrylic, and wax pencil.
Luster on Blue Glaze, 2021
Aram’s work has been acquired by well-known public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; and M+, Hong Kong. He has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the world, including in New York, Dubai, Belgium, Texas, and Chicago. He was awarded the Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014) and has won grants from Art Matters, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, Artforum.com, The New York Times, Asian Art Newspaper, ArtReview, The Village Voice, the Wall Street Journal, and the arts and culture segment on BBC Persian: Tamasha.
Field of Vision is on view at Peter Blum Gallery through July 30, 2021.
Lives of Forms is on view at Z33 through August 1, 2021.
For press inquiries or questions about Aram’s work, please contact the artist at kamroozaram.studio@gmail.com
