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Showing posts with label Art Alert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art Alert. Show all posts

December 16, 2014

Essay: Bringing Art to the Masses, With Limited Success in Rome

Image Credit: Roma Capitale
By Lynda Albertson

It was an initiative to bring the museums to the streets and the streets to the museum.  The city of Rome, in cooperation with three city municipalities, three Rome museums and Italy’s Cultural Ministry, set about to beautify the periphery of Italy’s capital with interesting artworks.  Commuters on their way to work, would be given a unique opportunity to explore the potential of Rome’s artworks within the comfort of their daily routine and hopefully learn a little bit about artists that they might not otherwise have known while they were at it.

The pilot installation, designed to entice passers-by to visit the collections housed at the MACRO - Museo d'arte Contemporanea Roma, the GNAM - Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, and Palazzo Braschi, a large Neoclassical palace in Rome near Campo de' Fiori, have been scheduled to run for six months. 

Image Credit: Roma Capitale
Fifteen masterpieces were photographed at high resolution on a 1:1 scale then printed on canvas and hung along common transit areas.  Like art exhibitions held in New York City’s "Subway Art"  and London Transit Authority’s extensive “Art on the Underground” Rome’s goal was to allow art lovers to appreciate the city's ever-growing collection of Contemporary and Modern art by making more accessible works of art by painters like Carla Accardi, Paolo Anesi, Giacomo Balla, Benedetta Cappa Marinetti, Pablo Echaurren, Filippo Gagliardi, Gavin Hamilton, and Titina.

They even sweetened the pot by publicizing to residents that if they took selfies in front of the artworks they would gain admission to the museum where the artwork was housed for free. 
Image Credit: Roma Capitale

In addition to the free ticket photo shoots, the city scheduled a series of cultural and educational events which include guided tours and workshops for school children designed to  incorporate the masterpieces and the artists that created them. For those too busy to attend, the exhibition also includes a QR code on the captions located beside each of the artworks.  Used in conjunction with a specially-developed smart phone app called "Musei in Strada”  (Museums in the street) rushing pedestrians could also get information on the art works and the museum’s that host the originals.

Giovanna Marinelli, councillor for culture, was quoted in Arte Magazine as saying "We want to reduce the distance that separates, physically and metaphorically, museums in the city center from the suburbs, with the objective being to discover or rediscover the artistic heritage of Rome’s cultural identity and to strengthen the bond of its citizens to the history of their city.”   
Image Credit: Twitter user @anderboz
Unfortunately for Rome’s art loving citizens, some folks got a little too physically close.  In the past week someone has defaced one reproduction with graffiti and destroyed another, setting fire to the reproduction of Benedetta Cappa Marinetti’s "Velocità di motoscafo" on Sunday, December 14th. 

It makes one glad that these were simply reproductions, and not original works of art. 

Not to be discouraged, the city has vowed to replace the damaged artworks and to carefully review CTV footage to identify the art-hating culprit. 

June 7, 2013

Retired Dutch Policemen Dick Steffens and Juul van der LInden's Form Private Detective Agency Missing Art

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief

Two former Dutch policemen, Dick Steffens and Juul van der Linden, have formed Missing Art, a private detective agency dedicated to finding lost or stolen art.

Steffens and van der Linden met in the detective school 1979 for the Amsterdam Police. “In the Netherlands, all policemen start in uniform with the normal police work,” van der Linden explained in an email. “After years you may specialize if you want.”

A few years after helping to ransom the kidnapped Alfred Heineken in 1983, Dick Steffens started his own detective agency, Interludium International BV, specializing in counterfeit clothes and shoes. Two years after Juul van der Linden retired from the Amsterdam police force, he helped Dick Steffens set up Missing Art. Juul van der Linden manages the department of Missing-Art for the Interludium Investigations Group. Here’s a link to their website, www.Missing-Art.com.

“In the Netherlands, there are not many private organization that find lost or stolen art,” van der Linden wrote.

I conducted an interview via email with Mr. van der Linden. 
If I were living in Amsterdam and had my painting stolen, would my first step be to report it to the police? What kind of action would then I then expect from the police?
One of the board members of the Dutch Federatie TMV (www.tmv.nl) once wrote that is was no use to go to the police to make a report when your painting is stolen. This was a statement made a few years ago, but with a lot of truth to it. At this moment I think there is insufficient knowledge of the world of art by the police force in Amsterdam. In the rest of the Netherlands, it is not better, although the Amsterdam police contracted three years ago with Mrs. Godthelp to start a better way to solve art crimes. She will make the first steps to making policemen on the front line aware of art crimes and that will take time.

The Dutch police have a unit working for the whole country, which is called KLPD. Mr Martin Finkelnberg with his team is making art crime visible with a computer.
What services does your private organization offer that the Dutch police cannot provide?
Missing Art can work faster and can in short time contact its network of experts. We also have frequent contact with our clients. We tell them step by step what we are going to do and we will have their support for that.
How does Art-Alert.net work? Is this service just in Europe? Does it have any connection to the Art Alerte in Canada?

Our Art Alert is ready to operate. In the last two years we collected more than 12,000 names of art collectors, auction houses and so on. At this moment we can warn in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (BeNeLux). We will like to expand this service to more countries in Europe and perhaps worldwide. We do not have connection to the Art Alerte in Canada.

April 17, 2013

Quebec's Art Crime Enforcement Unit Reports Recovery of Stolen Domingue Painting

On January 14, Quebec's art crime enforcement unit, a partnership between the province's police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, reported the theft of "Rue Richard", an 18 by 24 cm watercolor by artist Maurice Domingue.

Today Art Alerte, the email notification system for Canada's art crime squad, published the information that the painting has been recovered.

No other information has been made available.

August 27, 2012

"Q&A on Art Crime in Canada" in the Spring/Summer 2012 issue of The Journal of Art Crime

Editor-in-Chief Noah Charney features "Q&A on Art Crime in Canada" in the Spring/Summer 2012 issue of The Journal of Art Crime. You may read the rest of this interview in The Journal of Art Crime by subscribing through ARCA's website.
In 2008 the Sureté du Quebec, in collaboration with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, established the first national art crime investigation team in Canada’s history. The four-man team is now led by Jean-Francois Talbot, who has worked since 2003 with Alain Lacoursiere, an art historian and retired member of the Montreal police. Lacoursiere, who has been nominated for an ARCA Award, helped in the development of an art crime team in Canada and a system called Art Alert, which is an email bulletin sent out to 25,000 subscribers in 75 countries, largely members of the art community and police departments. Between 2004 and 2008, a combined force of agents from the Sureté du Quebec and the Montreal police department investigated around 450 art crimes, made 20 arrests, and seized over 150 stolen or forged artworks, with a total estimated value of around $2 million. The newly-established art crime team handles an average of 90 art crime cases per year. ARCA interviewed the art crime team, including Alain Dumouchel, to learn a bit more about art crime and investigation in Canada.