This week we have a guest post from M. Frechette, an astute college senior majoring in art history with an interest in international cultural property law and art markets. During her travels in Latin America, Frechette grew frustrated with the lack of native archeological material in national museums compared to the artifacts circulating on the North American and European markets. Lately, she’s been helping us dig into this week’s auction of a major private collection of Pre-Colombian antiquities in Paris. Here’s what she found:

Museums and private collectors across the globe are buzzing with excitement over the March 22^nd auction at Sotheby’s Paris of the Barbier-Mueller Collection of Pre-Columbian Art.  But they should be concerned that almost half (119 out of 246) of the artifacts from present-day Latin America have no stated provenance before 1970.

Peru has announced it is seeking the return of 67 objects in the collection that it claims were illegally exported from the country, which has required government permission for the export of archaeological material since 1822. Judging from our analysis of the collection, it is likely the first of several claims.

UPDATE: The government of Guatemala has made a claim for 13 objects in the collection. ”You cannot allow private collectors to unlawfully enrich themselves at the expense of the Americas’ pre-Hispanic cultural heritage,” the culture ministry said in a statement. 

UPDATE 3/21: Mexico has called on Sotheby’s to halt the auction, citing 51 objects in the collection as Mexico’s property. The government has also said that 79 of the 130 objects of Mexican origin being offered for sale are “handicrafts,” i.e. modern fakes. Sotheby’s insists it will go forward with the auction, saying it “thoroughly researched the provenance of this collection and we are confident in offering these works for auction.” The auction house acknowledged it has “had dialogue with several nations and given careful consideration to their concerns about this sale, and we continue to welcome discussion regarding any new information on specific issues.”

UPDATE 3/21: Costa Rica has also claimed objects in the auction, the New York Times reports. 

UPDATE 3/22: Nord Wennerstrom calls the results of Day 1 sales “a train wreck” for Sotheby’s: 87 of the 172 lots failed to sell amid claims from Latin American countries and indications that several lots are modern fakes. Others suggest the asking prices were overly optimistic. 

The Barbier-Mueller Collection was built over a century, but major additions to it were made after 1992. According to the official Sotheby’s publicity, the works were gathered primarily for aesthetic purposes, though Sotheby’s emphasizes, “many possess historic provenance.” In an interview earlier this month, Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller described being inspired to add to the collection of his father-in-law, Josef Mueller, while mounting an exhibition to commemorate the Columbus quincentenary in 1992. “I became really caught up in the project, and started visiting specialist dealers to complete the collection,” Barbier-Mueller recalled. “Provenance was always a concern.”

Looking at some samples from the collection, one can see why.

Maya polychrome vessels: Lts 41,121, 122, 214-219, 222 & 223. Estimate: between 18,000 and 40,000 Euros each 

Of the 11 painted Maya vessels from Guatemala and Mexico, nine have no listed provenance before 1986.

The market for Maya polychrome vessels developed around 1970 as looting of ancient Maya burial sites became more sophisticated and widespread. The growth of trafficking networks in Mexico and Central America prompted Guatemala’s 1966 Decree No. 425 – Law on the Protection and Conservation of Monuments and Mexico’s 1972 Federal Law on Archaeological, Artistic and Historic Monuments and Zones, which clarified claims of national ownership on all archeological material.

Six of the Mayan vessels passed through Merrin Gallery between 1986 and 1990. The Merrin Gallery was also the source of a bronze statue of Zeus that was returned to Italy in 2010. The stated provenance claimed Edward H. Merrin had purchased it from a Swiss collection in the 1960s; in fact, it had been stolen from the Museo Nazionale Romano in 1980. The Merrin Gallery also appears frequently in the business records of Sicilian antiquities dealer Gianfranco Becchina, who has been charged with trafficking in looted Classical antiquities. In dealing with Pre-Colombian material, his first passion, Merrin “certainly handled masterpieces that should never have been removed from their original sites,” Ian Graham, a Mayan expert and director at the Harvard Peabody Museum, told the New York Times in 1989, the same year the Mayan vessels began passing through the gallery. Merrin’s response: ”Look, I have four children, I have a position in society, I am active in a number of charities – I’m simply not interested in anything illegal.” In 2005, Ed and Samuel Merrin were both charged with conducting a 10-year scheme to defraud their customers who collected Pre-Colombian art.

Ulúa Marble Vase: Lot 34. Estimate: 40,000 – 50,000 Euros

Scholarship has explicitly linked the market demand for Ulúa marble vases, such as Lot 34 for sale in the upcoming auction, to the growth of illegal looting networks and pillaging in Travasiá, Honduras. Anthropologists Christina Luke and John Henderson have investigated the direct and detrimental affects museum and private purchases have on this ancient Mayan center, and the connection is unmistakably apparent: “Looting at Travesía for marble vases increased dramatically during the period when more and more marble vases appeared in galleries and when they were stolen from well-known collections.”  (See Luke, Christina and John Henderson The Plunder of the Ulúa Valley, Honduras, and a Market Analysis for Its Antiquities)

Despite the 1997 Honduran Decree 220-97 that retroactively claimed “the state was the official owner of all cultural patrimony” (Luke and Henderson, 149) the market demand continues to fuel the destruction of a rich cultural site — and production of modern forgeries. Lot 34, with no listed provenance before 2004 and estimated to sell for between 40,000 and 50,000 Euros, may well be a contemporary example of how rising prices are promoting both the devastation and falsification of ancient Mayan cultural knowledge.

Red Lists Raise Red Flags

Latin America has not been in the spotlight for cultural heritage claims to the same degree as Italy or Greece in recent years, but the illicit trade of pre-Columbian objects is a serious and continuing problem for countries such as Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil and Peru. Along with UNESCO’s international effort to increase protection of cultural heritage, Latin American countries passed a flurry of national legislation in the 1970s to establish legal ownership of cultural property.

More recently, the International Council of Museums has published several Red Lists of Endangered Cultural Objects. Compiled by an international group of cultural heritage professionals to combat the illicit trade and rampant looting of national artifacts, “all the categories of objects in the Red List are protected by legislation and banned from export, and may under no circumstances be imported or put on sale.”  ICOM could not be more explicit: “The Red List is an appeal to museums, auction houses, art dealers and collectors not to acquire these objects.”

A glance though the Barbier-Mueller catalogue shows quite a bit of overlap with the Red Lists — from Nayarit and Olmec figures to Gran Nicoya stone grindstones, many of the categories of objects on sale in Paris on March 22^nd are internationally recognized as the product of rampant looting.

As with all ancient burial objects, the polychrome vessels and Ulúa marble vases are “essential to the understanding of the Maya belief system, mythology, and ideology.” (ICOM Red List: Latin America, p.8)  Yet as these invaluable pieces are illegally looted they become untraceable to their original locations and all context is lost.  Without context, our understanding of one of the most advanced cultures of ancient Mesoamerica is irreparably crippled.

Frechette graduates in May and will soon be looking for gainful employment. Send any leads to us at ChasingAphrodite@gmail.com and we’ll pass them along.

UPDATE: See Donna Yates’ excellent analysis of the Barbier-Mueller collection here and here.

On Monday morning, the Supreme Court of the United States is expected to respond to a petition from the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild challenging federal import restrictions on ancient coins with unclear ownership histories.

The ACCG case started in 2009 when the Guild illegally imported 23 Chinese and Cypriot coins of unclear provenance from London in an effort to challenge import restrictions granted to those countries by the State Department under the Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA). The coins were seized by US Customs officials and ACCG challenged the seizure in court. Both a district court and an appellate court have upheld the seizure and rejected the Guild’s arguments. If the Supreme Court refuses to hear the case, as is expected, the test case is effectively dead.

UPDATE: As expect, this morning the Court declined to hear the case.

So what was this costly legal experiment all about? We thought it a good opportunity to ask the man behind the lawsuit: Peter Tompa.

Tompa is a a lawyer, a collector of ancient coins and a registered lobbyist for several groups of coin collectors, for whom he frequently advocates at CPAC hearings at the State Department, one of the few places where issues relating to looting and the antiquities trade intersects with the federal government. He is also the author of the Cultural Property Observer blog, which champions “the longstanding interests of collectors in the preservation, study, display and enjoyment of cultural artifacts against an ‘archaeology over all’ perspective.” On the blog, he clearly relishes his role as a bête noire to archaeologists and foreign governments that are alarmed by the link between looting and the antiquities trade.

The dialogue between archaeologists and antiquities collectors like Tompa in online forums frequently starts with substance and quickly descends into sniping and personal attacks. Both groups share a passion for the ancient world but very different values about how to enjoy and preserve it. In an effort to open a more civil dialogue on the issues, we decided to launch our own test case and invited Tompa to answer a few questions here.

Chasing Aphrodite: You’re a collector of ancient coins and a registered lobbyist for several coin collecting groups. Broadly speaking, what’s the ultimate goal for these groups?

Peter Tompa: To ensure the continued access of Americans to ancient coins of the sort openly collected world-wide.

CA: Coin collectors seemingly have every reason to deplore the loss of archaeological context, and yet they often find themselves on opposite sides of the argument as archaeologists. Why is that?

PT: The single-minded obsession with archaeological context puzzles most coin collectors. Numismatists derive their own context by studying the inscriptions and iconography found on coins, by reconstructing the chronology of dies used to strike a given series, and by analyzing the weight standard and the metallurgical content of each issue. The coins themselves often provide amazingly detailed information about the politics and economic circumstances of the time, the course of military campaigns, religious practices, and artistic development. Coins include portraits of individuals whose appearance is otherwise unknown and depictions of lost architectural and artistic monuments. That’s not to say preservation of archaeological context is not a worthy goal, just that it should not be allowed to control all else.

 CA:  Much of the debate revolves around the link between the antiquities trade and looting. In your view, what percentage of ancient coins on the market are the product of modern looting (ie post 1970)? Is looting a necessary consequence of a free market in ancient art? What do the various coin groups you’re associated with do to prevent looting and the discourage or expose the illicit trade?

PT: “Looting” is a rather loaded term, particularly when one jumps to the conclusion that anything that cannot be traced back to 1970 “must be looted.” Whatever laws may be on the books, countries like Bulgaria, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and China tolerate (if not encourage) their own citizens to collect unprovenanced coins. So, perhaps American collectors are being asked to be “holier than the Pope.”  Indeed, what’s most different today from when the Cultural Property Implementation Act (“CPIA”) was passed is that a number of “source countries” like Italy and China have also become major “market countries” due to their increasing wealth.

I can’t say what percentages of coins were excavated since 1970. However, I suspect they vary by type and country. For example, coins have been found in Italy since the Renaissance. On the other hand, lots of mostly low value late Roman bronze coins came out of the Balkans right after the fall of Communism. Looting equates more closely with poor governance and political and economic turmoil than free markets.  Look currently at places like Egypt, Syria and Greece.    

Metal detectors are the real issue for coins. You simply can’t find ancient coins in any number without them. There are two rational ways to deal with the issue: an outright ban or a mandatory recording system that allows the State to retain any coin for its collections based on payment of a fair market value to the finder. The problem arises where you allow individuals to buy metal detectors, but then naively expect them to either not use them at sensitive sites or turn in whatever they might find for just a token reward.

Of course, the coin trade prefers a recording system like the Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme (“PAS”) operating in England and Wales because most coins end up in the collector market after recordation. However, PAS has also garnered considerable support amongst local archaeologists because these reports have led archaeologists to sites they would not have otherwise have known existed.

Coin groups believe that such issues are best addressed at the source with such programs. Nonetheless, they also have codes of ethics.  For example, IAPN (The International Assoc. of Professional Numismatists) members agree “To guarantee that good title accompanies all items sold, and never knowingly deal in any numismatic items stolen from private or public collections or reasonably suspected to be the direct products of illicit excavations in contravention of national cultural heritage legislation.” Those who have been found in contravention of this requirement have been given the choice of either resigning voluntarily or being suspended.

CA: You’ve asked the US Supreme Court to hear your challenge of the State Department’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) decision to include ancient coins in import restrictions on antiquities from Cyprus and China. What’s the crux of your complaint?

The Ancient Coin Collector’s Guild imported these Chinese and Cypriot coins into the United States to test the law barring their import.

PT: I disagree with your premise. CPAC’s former Chairman has stated under oath that CPAC did not recommend import restrictions on Cypriot coins. We also have evidence China never specifically asked for import restrictions on coins. All we seek is judicial review of whether government decision-makers complied with the law before they changed prior precedent and placed import restrictions on coins.              

We also believe that current restrictions are grossly overbroad. The CPIA only authorizes restrictions on coins “first discovered in” and “subject to the export control” of a specific country, but U.S. Customs has instead placed far more extensive restrictions on coins based on their place of production. This has greatly limited the ability of American collectors to legally import historical coins openly available abroad.

 CA: As you’ve noted, two lower courts have both ruled against you and the odds are very slim that the high court will agree to hear your case. If the Supreme Court does not agree to review it, what next?    

PT: We will continue to press our case before Congress, CPAC and in the press.  Nor do we foreclose further litigation.

CA:  What’s your relationship with the museum community these days? In the past, you were often joined by museum officials in testifying against import restrictions before CPAC. These days, that is less common. What changed? What are your views of museums adopting the 1970 rule for acquisitions? Will coin collectors adopt similar standards?

PT: You should ask AAMD why it no longer presses government decision-makers to comply with the CPIA before imposing import restrictions. The 1970 rule is an arbitrary construct that has created a huge universe of “orphan artifacts,” — legitimate material that museums can no longer acquire. It has no impact on current looting, and indeed only distracts attention away from the poor stewardship of cultural resources in places like Greece and Italy.  Coins have routinely been traded for decades and centuries without ownership history being retained when they pass from one person to another, and only the smallest number of coins has records of sale or purchase.  I can think of no good reason for coin collectors to voluntarily adopt rule as flawed as the 1970 stipulation as a result.

We’re grateful to Peter for his responses and look forward to answering questions on his blog in the coming weeks. For more about the ACCG’s Petition for Certiorari, see here. For more on coin collectors’ view oncultural patrimony issues, see here. 

A New York judge has denied Sotheby’s motion to dismiss Cambodia’s claim — brought on its behalf by the US government — that a 10th century Khmer statue was looted and should be returned.

District court judge George B. Daniels ruled on Thursday that the government has “sufficiently pled facts regarding Sotheby’s knowledge that the Statue was stolen at the time of import into the United States.” He also found the government had presented sufficient evidence that Douglas Latchford, the British collector who initially sold the statue, “knew the statue had been looted from Koh Ker.”

The ruling, which dismissed several of Sotheby’s key arguments, is not a final ruling but allows the case to proceed. You can find our complete coverage of the case, including past legal filings, here.

Here is Daniels’ 18-page ruling:

A federal grand jury indicted Gantcho Zagorski, a 59-year old U.S. dealer in ancient coins, on three counts of aiding and assisting in the filing of false income tax returns, the FBI announced Tuesday.

Zagorski sold ancient coins online via EBay under the name Diana Coins and Paganecoins, the indictment states. Diana Coins LLC was founded in 2008 in Hackensack, N.J., public records show. Records also list Zagorski as the owner of Balkan Import Auto Sales, Inc. in Venice Florida, where he has lived. He currently resides in Chicago, authorities said. Calls to his federal public defender attorney were not returned late Thursday.

The indictment alleges:

Zagorski owned and operated a business that sold ancient coins to domestic and international customers, primarily on eBay, from his residence in Hackensack. Zagorski, along with his wife and, at times, his daughter, operated the coin-selling business under the names Diana Coins, Paganecoins, and Diana Coins LLC. For calendar years 2006, 2007, and 2008, Zagorski provided his tax preparer with false and fraudulent information by understating the amount of gross receipts and sales earned by his business. Zagorski then caused to be filed with the IRS those federal income tax returns for 2006, 2007, and 2008 containing that false and fraudulent information.

The indictment also says that Zagorski claimed gross receipts and sales of $230,000 – $314,000 between 2006 and 2008, amounts the indictment claims were “underreported.” Each of the three tax counts carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The indictment does not address the legality of the coins he was selling. Here is the complete indictment:

Last week a federal grand jury indicted two Utah residents and two Peruvians in an alleged scheme to smuggle recently looted artifacts into the United States.

The case started in the fall of 2012 when an undercover agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) bought 12 artifacts from 70-year old  Cesar Guarderas of West Valley City Utah for more than $20,000.

Guarderas told the agent that Javier Abanto-Sarmiento, his supplier in Trujillo, Peru, had access to more than 100 more pieces of pottery. Trujillo is a major city in northwest Peru near what was once the center of the ancient Chimu kingdom. The Chimu capital Chan Chan, just 5 km outside Trujillo, is the largest Pre-Colombian city in South America and the largest adobe city in the world. It has been a World Heritage Site since 1986.

The site has a long history of plunder, as noted by Smithsonian Magazine:

Chan Chan’s days of glory came to an end around 1470, when the Inca conquered the city, broke up the Chimú Empire and brought many of Chan Chan’s craftsmen to their own capital, Cuzco, 600 miles to the southeast. By the time Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro arrived around 1532, the city had been largely abandoned, though reports from the expedition described walls and other architectural features adorned with precious metals. (One of the conqueror’s kinsmen, Pedro Pizarro, found a doorway covered in silver that might well have been worth more than $2 million today.) Chan Chan was pillaged as the Spaniards formed mining companies to extract every trace of gold and silver from the city.

Today, Early Chimu (Moche) and Chimu pottery like this piece acquired in 2009 by the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is popular among collectors of Pre-Colombian art.

Guarderas told the undercover agent that Abanto-Sarmiento “knows where to look for pottery buried in the ground” and “had a contact with the National Institute of Culture in Peru who provides him with authentic certifications stating that the pottery are replicas and  uses the certifications to illegally export genuine artwork from Peru.”

The agent subsequently acquired another 25 objects from the network, the indictment alleges. The objects were later authenticated by experts at Utah Valley University and Tulane University.

Also named in the indictment is Abanto-Sarmiento’s brother Alfredo, who remains at large in Peru, and their sister Rosa Isabel Guarderas of West Valley Utah.

Some issues to watch as the case moves forward: How long had the alleged network been in action? To whom did they sell the looted artifacts? Have any local museums done business with them?

In 1997, the United States and Peru signed a bi-lateral agreement under the 1970 UNESCO accord prohibiting the importation into the United States of specific cultural property originating from Peru, including artifacts and ethnological religious objects. But as Rick St. Hilaire has noted, the prosecutors are pursuing smuggling charges, not violations of the import restrictions. The potential maximum penalty for smuggling goods into the United States is up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Here is the criminal complaint:

Recently, someone suggested we look into the ties between Douglas Latchford and the Berlin Asian Art Museum, where he is said to have enjoyed a “special arrangement” for several years.

As you’ll recall, Latchford is the Bangkok-based British collector who was the source of the looted 10th Century Khmer statues now held by Sotheby’s and the Norton Simon museum. The Sotheby’s statue is the subject of a federal seizure lawsuit brought by the U.S. government on behalf of Cambodia, which claims the statue was illegally removed from the country in the 1970s. The government alleges that Latchford, identified in court records as “the Collector,” knew the statue had been looted from Koh Ker and conspired with Spink and Son auction house to fraudulently obtain export licenses for the statue in 1975. Latchford has denied the allegations.

We’ve previously tracked Khmer art tied to Latchford to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kimbell Art Museum, the Norton Simon Museum and the Denver Art Museum, where his partner Emmy Bunker is a research consultant. In March, a federal judge in New York found sufficient evidence for the US government to proceed with its forfeiture case against the Sotheby’s statue.

UPDATE: The New York Times reported May 15 that Cambodia is also planning to ask for the return of a statue of Hanuman at the Cleveland Museum of Art. This is in addition to the Norton Simon Bhima and the Denver Rama we’ve written about previously, which Cambodian officials also want returned. All are said to have been taken from the same temple complex at Koh Ker. Neither Cleveland nor Denver would disclose the origins or collecting histories of the contested statues.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has agreed to return two ancient Khmer statues to Cambodia after reviewing clear evidence that they were looted. Here’s Jason’s story in Friday’s LA Times:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has agreed to return two ancient statues to Cambodia after receiving convincing evidence they had been looted and smuggled out of the country illegally.

In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Jason has an update on the 2008 federal raids of Southern California museums:

When hundreds of federal agents raided four Southern California museums early one January morning in 2008, it set the art world ablaze, suggesting that even amid an international looting scandal museums had continued to do business with the black market in stolen antiquities.

LACMA’s Michael Govan asks federal agents permission to enter the museum on the morning of the January 2008 raids.

Acting on evidence gathered during a five-year undercover probe, investigators seized more than 10,000 artifacts at the museums and more than a half-dozen other locations in California and Illinois. The objects had allegedly been illegally excavated from sites across South East Asia, smuggled into Los Angeles and donated to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, the Mingei Museum in San Diego and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, according to search warrant affidavits.

But in the years since the high-profile raids, no museum officials or collectors have been indicted, and none of the seized objects have been returned to the countries from which they were allegedly stolen.

Days before the statute of limitations on criminal charges were about to expire in January, a federal grand jury indicted two men in the case. Robert Olson, an 84-year old Van Nuys man, and Marc Pettibone, a 62-year-old American living in Thailand, are both accused of one count of conspiracy and one of trafficking in stolen goods. Two peripheral players in the alleged scheme pleaded guilty to similar charges last year.

Several people targeted by prosecutors — including Bowers curator Armand Labbe and antiquities dealer Joel Malter — died during the 11-year investigation. A third target, UCLA trained pottery expert Roxanna Brown, was indicted in 2008 and died from health complications while in federal custody, leading the federal government to settle a lawsuit brought by her family for $880,000.

“I’m baffled,” said Stephen Urice, a professor at the University of Miami law school who has written critically of the raids. “Given the amount of illicit antiquities moving through the U.S. borders, these guys are really hacks. Surely there must be more significant people out there.”

In recent interviews, several people with direct knowledge of the investigation expressed anger and frustration, saying the case had languished in the U.S. Attorney’s office. They described Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Johns, who has directed the case since its inception, as overzealous, eager to send federal agents into museums to gather evidence but too distracted or overwhelmed with other cases to bring timely criminal charges.

As a result, they say, the case has wasted millions of dollars and inadvertently encouraged the very black market it targeted by suggesting the government is weak on enforcement. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment and feared imperiling the criminal case against Olson and Pettibone, which is set to go to trial in June.

You can read the full story here. You can find the previous LA Times coverage of the case here:

Raid story: Raids suggest a deeper network of looted art

Chicago raid on Barry MacLean: Probe of Stolen Art Goes National

Robert Olson profile: “Intrigue but no glamour for smuggling case figure”

Roxanna Brown’s story: Part I, Part II, Part III and settlement

Inflated Art Appraisals are Rampant: You Say That Art Is Worth How Much? 

Here is the Olson and Pettibone indictment:

And the indictments and plea agreements for the “peripheral figures” mentioned in the story.

Michael Malter

Robert Perez

This 900-year-old bronze statue of Dancing Shiva, shown on display at the National Gallery of Australia, was stolen from a temple in Tamil Nadu, India shortly before the museum acquired it, new records show.

UPDATE 6/12: Since publishing this post we’ve received documents that show the National Gallery of Art purchased the Dancing Shiva (above) for $5 million, not the $2 million originally stated below and in other media reports.

Last July, we wrote that the arrest of Indian antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor would test the museum world’s commitment to transparency.

Federal investigators in the United States have seized more than $100 million in allegedly looted art from the Manhattan dealer, who they describe as “one of the most prolific commodities smugglers in the world.” In previous posts, we have identified suspect Kapoor objects at museums around the world, including the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, which acquired 21 objects from Kapoor.

So far, the NGA has failed the transparency test. As a member of the International Council of Museums, the museum is bound by a code of ethics that requires it to be open about its collection. But museum officials have refused to identify or release collecting histories for the 21 objects. Instead, the NGA created an investigative committee that includes the two museum officials most responsible for the Kapoor acquisitions: museum director Ron Radford (left) and senior curator of Asian art Robyn Maxwell.

The museum has promised to cooperate with investigators, but in May, Indian officials complained that the NGA had refused to respond to a formal request for information. (The museum claims it never received the request.) Last week Radford was asked about the case during a hearing of Australia’s senate, but would not divulge additional information, saying only that he was confident none of the Kapoor objects had been looted.

Radford’s confidence is sorely misplaced. In the coming days, ChasingAphrodite.com will publish new information about several of the objects the NGA acquired from Kapoor. The records, obtained from sources with knowledge of the on-going investigations, show that several of the objects were illegally removed from Indian temples shortly before Kapoor offered them to Radford, Maxwell and other NGA officials. Many of the objects were accompanied by false provenance papers. Those ownership histories are belied by evidence seized from Kapoor, including photographs sent to him by smugglers soon after the idols had been removed from Indian temples.

The Lord of Dance

In 2008, the NGA paid Kapoor $5 million $2 million for a bronze Nataraja, or Dancing Shiva. The more than 4-foot (130 cm.) tall figure depicts the Hindu god as the Lord of Dance, prancing in a ring of flames as he steps on the head of a dwarf who represents ignorance. Shiva is ushering in the destruction of the weary universe so that the god Brahma may restart the process of creation. It is a common theme in Indian mythology, particularly in the Tamil temples of southern India.

Kapoor provided the museum with a document stating that he had purchased the bronze from a Washington D.C. man in October 2004. He also signed a warranty prepared by the museum that transferred title to the NGA and indemnified the museum in case of a breach.

The story of the Washington owner was a fabrication, the records show. This photo of the Nataraja (left) was sent to Kapoor by smugglers in October 2006. Sources say it was taken soon after the  idol was stolen from the Sivan Temple in the village of Sree Puranthan in Tamil Nadu, where it and several other large bronze idols were worshiped before the temple fell into ruin.

According to Indian investigators, a year earlier Kapoor had traveled to Tamil Nadu and met with Sanjivi Asokan, the alleged head of a ring of idol thieves in the region. Kapoor asked for Chola-era bronzes, which were in high demand on the art market. Over the next several months, Asokan allegedly hired thieves who — for 700,000 rupees, or about USD$12,000 — broke into the Sivan Temple and stole the eight idols shown below (Shiva at top left.)The idols were allegedly mingled with replicas to convince a government official to certify them as modern handicrafts. They were exported by Ever Star International Services Inc. to New York, where they were received by Kapoor’s company Nimbus Imports Exports in the fall of 2006. For his trouble, Asokan was allegedly paid about USD$200,000.

In April 2007, Kapoor obtained a certificate from the Art Loss Register saying the Shiva had not been registered as stolen property. ALR had no basis to know the Shiva had been stolen — the theft was only discovered by villagers in 2008. But Kapoor was not required to provide any provenance information for the bronze, despite ALR’s public claim that ”certificates are not issued on the basis of incomplete or inadequately researched information.”

Kapoor included the Shiva in the catalog of his Madison Avenue gallery Art of the Past with the above photo and this description:

Shiva as the Nataraja, The Lord of the Dance, is the symbol par excellence of South Asian art. It is the full and perfect expression of divine totality—the manifestation of pure, primal rhythmic power. Shiva simultaneously dances the universe into existence by awakening inert matter with the rhythmic pulse of movement, sustains this existence, and sends all form into destruction….