[MSN] Art History Professor Carol Damian, recently helped the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Broward County Sheriff's Office identify Peruvian artifacts smuggled into the United States.

[Museum Security Network Mailing list]

Art history professor works with police to solve crime
Nadia Kijanka / Contributing Writer
Issue date: 10/11/07 Section: News
Carol Damian is an art professor turned super-sleuth. 

Art History Professor Carol Damian, recently helped the Immigration and
Customs Enforcement and the Broward County Sheriff's Office identify
Peruvian artifacts smuggled into the United States. 

With a master's degree in pre-Columbian Andean art and a doctorate in
history, Damian became a knowledgeable resource for the two-year
investigation that started in 2005. She had been conducting workshops with
customs for a long time, helping them to distinguish authentic pieces of art
from fakes. So when the ICE needed an expert eye in Peruvian art, they went
to Damian. 

"The expertise in identifying real art is developed by years of looking,"
Damian said. "A scholar learns the specifics of a culture's aesthetics.
Peruvian art, for example, has a characteristic way of representing faces or
deities in their art."

Among the artifacts identified by Damian was a clay vessel that dated back
as far as 3,500 B.C. There were also pots, vases, textiles, shrouds and
various pieces of jewelry. Most of the artifacts were stolen from museums
and graves.

The ICE and BSO pursued the smugglers through a series of sting operations.
Undercover cops would purchase artifacts from the smugglers and bring them
to Damian to examine. 

"After a while, you get to know what's right and wrong. The easiest way to
identify them is to pick out the fakes. They have obvious flaws in style,"
Damian said.

The ICE made contact with at least one consistent buyer and worked their way
closer to the lead smuggler. Eventually, the trail led to Ugo Bagnato, an
Italian man in his late 60s, guilty for the theft and sale of 412 artifacts
in total.

Ana Estrada, a third-time graduate student of Damian's, attended the
professor's ceremony at the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami where
she spoke about the investigation. 

Ana recently spent some time working and studying in an art museum in
Paracas, a small village on the coast of Peru. 

She joined a workshop to renovate an archeological textile only to have it
stolen from the museum a couple of weeks later. 

"The museums were not well protected and they didn't have security guards,"
she said. 

When she saw the pictures of the artifacts, she noticed that "some of the
ceramic pieces still had the museum's acquisition numbers taped on the
back."

According to Damian, the Peruvian government was happy to have these
irreplaceable icons of their culture and history returned with the success
of the investigation.

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