[CPProt.net] Kuwaiti art recovery

[MusSecNetworkCulPropProtNet]

Kuwaiti art recovery
(Filed: 10/01/2005)

Will Bennett reports on attempts to recover lost Kuwaiti art
	
Telegraph Financial Services & Reader Guides

Thefts from Iraqi museums and archaeological sites have preoccupied the art
world since the US-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein, but one of the most
enduring mysteries is the fate of treasures stolen by the Iraqis after they
occupied Kuwait in 1990-91.

Although most of the collection looted from Kuwait's National Museum has
been recovered, almost all the jewellery, Islamic art and other works taken
from wealthy Kuwaitis by the Iraqis during the six-month occupation has
vanished. Only a few pieces have surfaced on the international art market,
and none of it was found in Iraq after the war in 2003.

"It is a mystery as to where the stuff is," says Charles Young, who works
for the long-established London art agents Gurr Johns.

"The Americans went into Saddam's palaces after the war last year and they
were completely empty. The whole thing is quite extraordinary."

Young recently completed a contract to value lost works for the United
Nations Compensation Commission, which was created in 1991 to process claims
and pay compensation for losses suffered as a direct result of Iraq's
illegal invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

During a series of visits to the oil-rich Gulf state, he valued the losses
suffered by about 60 Kuwaitis including some members of the royal family. "I
was looking at individual items worth over $50,000 and individual pieces of
jewellery worth over $150,000," he says. "There was one claim for 30 items
of modern jewellery valued at $70 million, and that was not the largest. The
overall total of the claims came to several hundred million dollars."

While modern jewellery has probably been broken up and component parts sold
separately to avoid recognition, the Islamic art taken by the Iraqi army in
a ruthlessly well-organised looting operation would be worth relatively
little if it was treated in this way. There are rumours that it has been
smuggled out of Iraq and is being sold off in the Middle East to help fund
the present insurgency.

One Kuwaiti whom Young spoke to showed him a photograph of Saddam sitting by
a porcelain vase that had once adorned his home in Kuwait. The Iraqi
dictator has of course been found, but the vase is still missing.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/