[MSN] Asian Art Inquiry Will Be `Headache' for All Museums

[Museum Security Network Mailing list]

Asian Art Inquiry Will Be `Headache' for All Museums 

By Linda Sandler

Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. investigation into imports and donations of
Southeast Asian art in California will be a ``headache'' for all U.S.
museums, a museum director said.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was searched yesterday by federal
agents investigating the origins of Southeast Asian objects given by dealers
Jonathan and Cari Markell to the museum's collections. The museum, known as
Lacma, and other California museums were shown search warrants by the
federal government, which is looking into how certain collectors imported,
purchased or donated Southeast Asian art, the museum said in a statement.

``After these raids, provenance research into Southeast Asian art is going
to become a big headache for museums,'' said Franklin Robinson, director of
Cornell University's Herbert F. Johnson Museum in Ithaca, New York.

U.S. museums have been fielding a growing number of claims from Italy and
Greece that some art in the museums' collections is illegitimately owned. A
vase called the Euphronios krater was sent back to Italy last week by New
York's Metropolitan Museum, which bought it in 1972 for $1 million. Now
directors and trustees face new challenges.

``We at the Cornell museum have been focusing on Greek and Roman antiquities
and Chinese art,'' Robinson said in an interview. ``Going forward, we'll
have to start paying as much attention to our Asian galleries.''

Lacma said it allowed the U.S. agents access yesterday to staff and records
in the registrar's office, the development office and the Indian and
Southeast Asian Art department, providing registrar's and donor files to the
authorities.

Museum Cooperation

``Lacma will continue to look into the records associated with these objects
and share findings with the public,'' Michael Govan, the museum's director,
said in the statement.

The Internal Revenue Service, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement
office, the National Park Service and other enforcement agencies are
involved in the inquiry, according to an affidavit for a warrant filed by an
IRS criminal investigator who has been scrutinizing the Markells since
September 2003.

Customs officials that month intercepted a cargo shipment from Thailand on
its way to a smuggler and the Markells, according to the affidavit, filed in
U.S. District Court in California.

Undercover Agent

An undercover agent from the Park Service, posing as a collector, began
dealing with the Markells, who sold the agent stolen Thai artifacts and
illegally imported Burmese antiquities, also showing the agent objects
stolen from China, according to the filing.

The dealers helped the agent to claim fraudulent charitable tax deductions
by donating artifacts to museums, also providing fraudulent appraisals of
the value of the objects, the filing said.

The affidavit asked the court for permission to search the Markells'
gallery, green Dodge Grand Caravan and computers located at the gallery,
their residence and Lacma.

Calls to the Markell residence and the Silk Roads Gallery in Los Angeles,
which is owned by the Markells, according to the gallery Web site, weren't
immediately returned.

Donors in the alleged scheme, which may have lasted 10 years, may have
avoided attention from tax officials by contributing objects valued at less
than $5,000, the Los Angeles Times reported.

To contact the reporter on this story: Linda Sandler in New York at
lsandler at bloomberg.net . 

http://www.bloomberg.com/