[MSN] Internet helps police, collectors determine if art was stolen. A collective gasp was heard among top-dollar art collectors when the FBI disclosed that Steven Spielberg had a stolen Norman Rockwell painting in his possession.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Internet helps police, collectors determine if art was stolen
By JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press Writer

Friday, March 16, 2007

(03-16) 11:20 PDT Los Angeles (AP) -- 


A collective gasp was heard among top-dollar art collectors when the FBI
disclosed that Steven Spielberg had a stolen Norman Rockwell painting in his
possession.


Spielberg had bought "Russian Schoolroom" in 1989 from a legitimate art
dealer. But it wasn't until one of his employees checked an FBI Web site
last month that he learned the painting had been taken from a gallery in
1973.


"You couldn't think of anyone more honest than him," said Charles Dupplin,
an official with Hiscox plc, one of Europe's leading art insurers. "It just
shows what awful messes you can get into."


Spielberg is one of uncounted collectors who have been burned in
transactions that appeared to be legitimate.


However, the advent of Internet databases and search engines, coupled with
the increasing expertise of law enforcement, is making it easier to spot
stolen art and spread the word about paintings that went missing decades
ago.


"We've gotten a lot more advanced in the technology, in tracking stolen
works, so we're hearing about more cases," says Julie Cline, a Santa
Barbara-based independent curator who has put together multimillion-dollar
collections for wealthy clients, luxury hotels and high-end condo complexes.


Authorities say the higher online visibility of missing and stolen art also
has more people and institutions coming forward to claim title to the works.


Last year, the FBI recovered three works by 19th century painter Heinrich
Burkel that disappeared from a German air raid shelter during the closing
days of World War II.


The director of Germany's Pirmasens Museum, the paintings' rightful owner,
had contacted authorities after seeing the works offered for sale on the Web
by a Pennsylvania dealer.


It turned out that a New Jersey man had bought them in the 1960s and left
them to his daughter. They were subsequently returned to the museum.


"They had been with a family that had no idea that these paintings had been
stolen until they sent them to auction," said Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, who
heads the FBI's art theft program.


A lot is at stake in the cyber-sleuthing, as the market for art keeps
booming.


The Rockwell painting in Spielberg's collection, for example, sold for only
$25,000 shortly before somebody stole it more than 30 years ago from an art
gallery in Clayton, Mo. It's value is now estimated at $700,000.


"There's an old saying," Dupplin said with a laugh. "Since the dawn of time,
once man has got a roof over his head and food in his belly, he starts
collecting art."


Some collectors, meanwhile, still get scammed the old-fashioned way.


Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and his wife paid more than
$205,000 to a once-prominent Milwaukee art dealer in October 2000 for a
Henri Matisse painting they later learned wasn't his to sell.


Michael H. Lord had acquired the painting for a friend, then sold it to the
Seligs and pocketed the money. He was convicted of theft and sentenced to
more than a year in prison.


Many more discoveries of theft are likely to occur in the coming years
involving art that was stashed in Eastern Europe by the Soviets or stolen by
the Nazis during World War II, said Judith L. Pearson, president of Aris
Title Insurance Corp. of New York.



"A whole lot of art went missing, and concern exists about so much of this
art finding its way onto the market," she said.


The FBI's Magness-Gardiner advises potential buyers to carefully examine a
work's "history of ownership" before closing the deal.


"Ask those questions: Where did you get this, where was it before you got
it, where was it before that," she said.


People victimized in scams are often left with huge losses unless they have
expensive title insurance or can recover their money from the seller,
Dupplin said.


Premiums run about 5 percent of an object's value, meaning it would cost
more than $2 million to insure a painting such as Picasso's brilliant Blue
period work, "Portrait de Angel Fernandez de Soto."


Christie's pulled that work off its auction bloc last year after a Berlin
man claimed the Nazis forced his great-uncle to sell it in the 1930s.


The painting, held by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's art foundation, was
expected to fetch $60 million. The issue of its ownership will be resolved
in court.

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