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Showing posts with label Dorit Straus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dorit Straus. Show all posts

June 17, 2014

ARCA Lecturer Dorit Straus Elected to Board of Directors for AXA Art

Art insurance specialist AXA Art announced last week the election of fine art insurance expert Dorit Straus to its Board of Directors:
Ms. Straus is an accomplished professional with a successful career in providing solutions on art and insurance matters, globally. She is widely recognized for her expertise in insurance and risk transfer needs of museums and cultural institutions, auction houses, galleries and private collectors. She has broad proficiency in legal issues relating to confiscation, repatriation and provenance.... For over 30 years, Dorit Straus has been an important contributor to the fine art insurance industry. She has authored commentary on the implications of art theft on the insurance industry and on insuring art. She currently serves on the faculty of ARCA (the Association for Research on Crimes Against Art) teaching a course on art crime and insurance in Amelia, Italy.
Ms. Straus will teach "Insurance Claims and the Art Trade" in July. She also recently joined Chris Marinello at Art Recovery International.

March 18, 2014

Art Recovery International Announces Opening of London Office; ARCA Lecturer Dorit Straus Joins Team

Dorit Straus
Christopher Marinello, Chairman and Founder of Art Recovery International, issued a press release today announcing the opening of its new offices at Exhibition House, Kensington, London and the recruitment of several key staff, including Dorit Straus, a lecturer at ARCA's Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection:
Joining the team are the following: 
Mark Maurice, Executive Director Mark specialises in corporate and personal wealth preservation and acts for some of the most prestigious dealers and collectors worldwide. He has a First Class Honours Masters in Land Economy from University of Cambridge and has focused his practice on international corporate structuring, private equity and wealth protection with particular emphasis on the fine arts sector. Mark has dealt with a number of high profile restitution and cultural patrimony cases involving complex cross border disputes. 
Dorit Straus, Insurance Industry Advisor Dorit has over thirty years experience in the fine art insurance industry and served as Vice President and Worldwide Specialty Fine Art Manager at Chubb & Son. Trained as a Middle Eastern archaeologist at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Dorit began her career at some of America’s top art institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, Peabody Museum of Ethnology and Jewish Museum, Dorit has an extensive knowledge of collection management, art shipment, exhibition loans and valuation. For the last five years Dorit has been a visiting lecturer at the Association for Research into Crimes against Art and regularly speaks about issues affecting the art market and associated insurance industry. 
Ariane Moser, Associate Director Client Relations Ariane studied Art History, Sinology and East Asian Art History at the University of Zurich and holds an MA in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Ariane was the Manager of European Clients at the Art Loss Register in London where she was responsible for developing and maintaining relationships with major European auction houses, insurance companies, art dealers and law enforcement agencies. Later, at ArtBanc International, Ariane served as a Research Specialist where she engaged in comprehensive provenance research projects as well as assisting the Expert Committee in preparing art valuations, market analyses and intelligence services. 
Alice Farren-Bradley, Associate Director Recoveries Alice read Ancient History and Archaeology at Durham University before completing her Graduate Diploma in Law and Legal Practice Course through the University of Law. She worked for four years at the Art Loss Register in London as Recoveries Case Manager and teaches undergraduate and postgraduate modules in Art Law and Professional Practice and Ethics in the Art Market, at Kingston University. In 2013 Alice was named successor to Ton Cremers as Moderator of the international Museum Security Network, which monitors and circulates information on cultural heritage crime to museums, security personnel, art market professionals and law enforcement agencies.
You may read the complete press release here.

August 2, 2013

Report from ARCA in Amelia: Dorit Straus teaches "Insurance Claims and the Art Market"; Erik Nemeth finishes course on cultural security; and students visit Pompeii and Oplontis with Acting Academic Director Crispin Corrado

Dorit Straus
by Summer Kelley-Bell, ARCA Intern

This week brought us the amazing Dorit Straus, who taught "Insurance Claims and the Art Market".  Until her recent retirement, Ms. Straus worked as the Worldwide Fine Art Specialty Manager for Chubb Personal Insurance. Prior to that, she studied archaeology at Hebrew University and worked in a variety of different museums. The combination of these two careers meant that Ms. Straus was able to offer us a truly unique classroom experience. Her class was shorter than most, a mere two and a half days to the usual five, but by the end the students were clamoring for more time. Through her, we learned about the complexities involved in insuring different types of collections and the steps that are taken in the event of a loss. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that her class was the sleeper hit of the summer. Who would have guessed that art insurance could be so fascinating? In this case, I think we owe a lot to our professor. Ms. Straus was able to distill the important concepts of the art insurance world in understandable and interesting ways. Towards the end of her section, she had the class split into groups to create our own insurance situation. This process helped to solidify the ideas we had been presented with in class and was an excellent means of studying for Straus’ final test. 

Ms. Straus’ class was offset by the end of Dr. Erik Nemeth’s section on cultural security. For the end this class, we looked at the idea of legalizing the trade in antiquities as a possible way of stopping destruction of sites. This sparked intense debate among the students and led to some rather entertaining class discussions. Dr. Nemeth’s class finished up with an epic exam where students were asked to find a way to encourage different groups of people to care about art crime. We were told to come up with a project and try to find funding for it in sectors that do not usually work within the art world. It worked well as a way to sum up everything Dr. Nemeth had been teaching us about interdisciplinary collaboration and how it can be used to help protect art.

"Ducks" of Oplontis
We finished out the week with a trip to Pompeii and Oplontis, led by the always amazing Dr. Crispin Corrado. Dr. Corrado, an archaeologist based out of Rome, gave us a guided tour unlike any other.  We learned about Pompeii: from its humble beginnings, to its fiery end. A few of the students even took a side trip to the House of the Fawn and the Villa of Mysteries. The villa especially was a big hit as it is so beautifully preserved. After a brief break for lunch, we head over to the villa at Oplontis, where I had a minor fit over some very small paintings of ducks. The villa is filled with fantastic frescoes—the reds and golds remain so vibrant that it almost hurts your eyes to look at them. For me though, the most amazing paintings were the hallway frescoes. These simple paintings, which were made to look like marble, have an unassuming boarder of small animals: deer, panthers, and ducks.  The ducks, while of no real importance and placed so high on the wall as to be almost invisible, illustrated for me the love that went into decorating this house.  It was a home, one to which people surely wanted to return.   

For years scholars believed that this sea facing villa was uninhabited at the time of the eruption as there were no human remains found in the Villa "A" portion of the structure.  Even so, walking through its many rooms gave me a very real sense of their presence.  This viewpoint changed dramatically when researchers discovered 54 skeletons in one of the large ground-floor rooms in the Villa "B" portion of the site, an area that opens onto the southern portico.  Here, men, women and children, some rich, others apparently not, had gathered to wait, perhaps hoping rescue from the unfolding tragedy would come from the sea.

The fact that we can still learn new things from a site such as Oplontis over the course of many years  underscores why we need to not only protect sites such as this from decay, but to continue studying them.  We can learn many things about our past from Oplontis and its marvelous ducks and if we teach people about the importance of preservation instead of just herding tourists through by the thousands, we might be able to protect our cultural heritage long enough to uncover even more important discoveries about our past.   

I have learned to love the villa at Oplontis and I will never look at ducks, or those who painted them, the same again.

February 1, 2013

Art Crime in the Media: "Art Cops" Highlights theft of Stradivarius, The Romanoff Heist, and the Art Loss Register's Most Wanted

Here's a link to Art Cops, "A new series dealing with the theft of works of art, antiquities, books and maps from major museums, cultural institutions and collectors" (Twitter), hosted by Burt Wolf, a public television host of Travels & Traditions.

This episode, which aired on September 1, 2012 on Iowa Public Television, tells the story of "The Missing Stradivarius", the 1995 theft of a $3.5 million Stradivarius violin stolen from the New York City Apartment of Erica Morini while the 91-year-old Viennese violinist was dying in the hospital. The rare violin remains missing today.  (You can read more about stolen Stradivarius violins on the website of violinist Joshua Bell in an article by David J. Krajicek for The New York Daily News.  Mr. Wolf interviews Mr. Bell; Christopher Marinello of The Art Loss Register (and a frequent speaker at ARCA's art crime conferences); Dorit Straus, world-wide fine arts manager at Chubb Insurance Company (and an ARCA Lecturer); Bob Wittman, former FBI agent; and Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, head of the FBI's Art Crime Team.

The same episode discusses "The Romanoff Heist" when thieves stole twelve art works by Pop Artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtensteins from the residence of Robert Romanoff in Manhattan's Meat Packing District on Thanksgiving weekend in 2010.

Mr. Wolf also identifies three artworks Marinello and The Art Loss Register are "particularly interested in recovering": Pablo Picasso's Portrait of Dona Maar stolen in 1999 from the yacht of a Saudi Prince while anchored for repairs in the harbor at Antibes on the French Riviera; a portrait of Francis Bacon by Lucian Freud stolen when the Tate Gallery of London lent the painting to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin; and the theft of a painting by Gustav Klimt in 1997 from a gallery under renovation in Italy (someone opened the skylight).

October 25, 2012

ARCA Lecturer Dorit Straus' on how a stolen violin inspired "Orchestra of Exiles"

Bronislaw Huberman with Albert Einstein
 who was instrumental in raising funds to
 start the orchestra./Orchestra of the Exiles
by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

The documentary opening tomorrow in New York City, “Orchestra of Exiles”, tells the story of cultural preservation of people and music, and also features the family history of one of ARCA’s Lecturers, Dorit Straus, who returns each summer to Amelia to teach “Investigation, Insurance and the Art Trade”. Before Ms. Straus studied archaeology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, her father was one of many musicians who escaped Jewish persecution from the Third Reich.

The film's writer, director, and producer Josh Aronson spent two years filming in Germany, Poland, Israel and New York.  The film centers on the story of polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman’s struggle to bring Jewish classical musicians to British Palestine in 1936 to found what would later become the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

One of those musicians, David Grunschlag, was Dorit Straus’ father. We asked Ms. Straus via email about the film -- and discovered her story also involved an anecdote about a stolen -- and recovered -- Stradivarius violin once owned by Bronislaw Huberman.

ARCA Blog: According to Mr. Aronson, it was your dedication to honor Huberman’s memory that was the initial driving force behind this film.   Could you elaborate for us?
Ms. Straus: In 1995 I set down with my father to do an oral history about his life as a musical prodigy and what it was like to live in Vienna during the the 20s.  I was particularly interested to know if there was any intersection between the musical life and the visual arts, since it was such an interesting time in the arts. I also knew that he was Bronsilaw Huberman's protege and I wanted to know more about what it was like to be a "Wunderkind" and what exactly his interactions were with Huberman. My father told me about growing up poor but rich in talent which opened all kinds of doors for him.  He played in some of the most opulent homes in Vienna. There was indeed a direct link to the visual arts as both my father and his sisters would often play in the homes of the wealthiest Viennese families including the Bloch-Bauer family.  My father told me how Bronislaw Huberman was one of the most famous violinists of his time and very hands-on in my father's education -- sending him to Berlin at age 14 to study at the most famous music academies such as "Hochshule fur music" so that he would have a very rounded education.  At the same time, Huberman took care of finding my father a patron in Berlin to live with and arranged to pay for all the expenses through his personal banker.
The following year, my father passed away so it was very lucky for me to have this material to keep for future generations of my family.  In 2004, I was attending a conference in Dresden and decided to make a trip to Berlin to see if I could find any materials relating to my father's studies in Berlin.  I was so surprised to find so much material in the archives of the conservatory including letters from Huberman's banker as well as letters from my grandfather relating to my father's stay there. I connected with my father's younger sisters who were duo pianists, and for the first time I heard how Huberman had personally arranged for them to leave Vienna in 1939 when they had no hope of getting out.  I had never heard that story before and that was a real awakening for me. A few years later, I was visiting family in Israel and noticed that in the hall where the IPO plays there was no mention of Huberman at all or of the founding members so I went to the orchestra management.  In 2006, on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the orchestra, we dedicated a plaque to Huberman and all the founding musicians at a wonderful ceremony with Zubin Mehta and descendants of the original players.
Around the same time, I met by chance Joshua Bell who was riding on the NY subway carrying with him the Stradivarius that used to belong to Huberman.  The violin was stolen in 1936 when Huberman was playing at Carnegie Hall raising money for his orchestra.  The violin did not surface for 50 years when in 1986 the thief on his death bed confessed to his wife that he had stolen it. She reported it to the police and got a reward. The police turned the violin over to the insurance company who sold it through a well known violin dealer to Norbert Brainin the violinist of the Amadeus String Quartet, and eventually in 2004 Joshua Bell purchased it from Norbert.  I felt that this was a sign from heaven, and that it was up to me to remind the world who Huberman was and what he did to save so many musicians from certain death. First I produced a concert in Vienna with Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk to commemorate Huberman and that led to the film.
ARCA Blog: What was your role in the development of the film?
Ms. Straus: First, I pitched the idea to Josh Aronson.  Then I helped in the research and made introductions in Israel to the General Manager of the Israel Philharmonic and many of the people who are featured in the film -- like the violin maker Amnon Weinstein; the composer Tzvi Avni who complied the Huberman archives with Huberman's secretary Ida Ibbeken after Huberman died in 1947;  Leon Botstein who told me that everything about Huberman interested him and he would be happy to help. Leon did a marvelous job in providing historical context and more, and last but not least my aunt Rosi Grunschlag who died  earlier this year who has an incredibly moving interview sort of in the "golden section" of the movie telling how Huberman helped them.
I helped in translations from Hebrew as well as giving advise about images and identifying people.  I found a not-for-profit entity with a mission compatible with the subject of the film who were able to offer tax deductible charitable deductions for contributions.  I contributed financially, as well as raised money from others, wrote letters asking for support, and spoke to anyone who would listen about the film.  For the last three years in addition to my "day" job, I was totally absorbed in the project.  This was a large project with a budget of over $1 million.  We started the film just when the (Bernie) Madoff scandal came out -- so raising money was incredibly difficult when so many Jewish foundations and funders who would have naturally supported such a project were not in a position to do so. So it is incredible that we were able to complete the film without going into a deficit.
ARCA Blog: The website for “Orchestra of Exiles” says that the movie sets out to answer two questions: “How did living through WWI and the Depression change Huberman from a self-absorbed eccentric genius into an altruistic statesman dedicated to egalitarian politics and humanism? How did Nazism and its cultural policies ignite Huberman and inspire him to bring music to Palestine, to save Jews and to fight anti-Semitism?” What is your personal response?
Ms. Straus:  Josh Aronson the filmmaker, did a fabulous job in answering these questions.  When I started out to make this film it was going to be a small personal story, but Josh -- through his research and his creative mind -- saw the bigger picture and asked these questions and answered them very dramatically in the film.
ARCA Blog:  What does Huberman have to teach us today about being heroic and living productive lives that make a difference to others?
Ms. Straus:  In Huberman’s case, the producers of the movie estimate he saved more than 1,000 lives. What made him different from the others who felt so powerless against a repressive government? I think that is the question that is most difficult to answer - why would someone at the height of his career dedicate himself totally to the plight of others when he could have gone to Switzerland and then to the US and continued with his career -- unlike ordinary people, there would have been little difficulty for him to relocate  particularly as early as 1933 -- but that is what makes him and Arturo Toscanini and Pablo Casals unique -- they had a broader world view and a conscious and they acted upon it!
"Orchestra of Exiles" opened October 26th at New York City's Quad Theater at 13th Street between 5th and 6th. NOTE:  The Quad Cinema at 34 W 13th Street is back up and running post hurricane Sandy and the documentary will be running from Friday November 16th for another week.  Josh Aronson will be at the 7:30 showing on Sunday, November 18th for Q & A.

Simultaneously, the film will be shown in LA at the Laemmle Music Hall 3 and will open soon at the Laemmle Monica - both on a limited schedule.  Please consult the Laemmle Theaters website for schedule.  The film will also be screened in the Hudson Valley at Upstate Films November 16th.

In Europe, the documentary will premiere at the Berlin Jewish Museum on November 22 with a 2nd Berlin screening on November 23rd and in Paris on December 11th and on January 15th.

Here’s a link to the film’s trailer and more information about the film: www.orchestraofexiles.com.

Here's a link to an interview with Josh Aronson and his meeting with Ms. Straus and her story about Joshua Bell and the stolen violin.  And here on Joshua Bell's website is the "Story of His Violin".

January 21, 2011

Friday, January 21, 2011 - , No comments

Profile: ARCA lecturer Dorit Straus on insuring art


by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

Dorit Straus, Vice President and Worldwide Specialty Fine Art Manager for Chubb & Son, a division of Federal Insurance Company, will again teach the course, Investigation, Insurance and the Art Trade, in Amelia at ARCA’s 2011 Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies program. Straus’ course discusses fine art insurance; the role of the insurance company, the agent and the broker; the insurance contract; risk analysis and selection; losses and claims; theft losses; and interaction with police and law enforcement.

Ms. Straus published an article, “Implications of Art Theft in the Fine Art Insurance Industry”, in Art & Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World (Edited by Noah Charney) that explains the relationship between insurance and art theft. She has also written a chapter on insuring art in a book by Diane McManus Jensen, Valerie Ann Leeds, and Ralph Toporoff, The Art of Collecting: An Intimate Tour Inside Private Art Collections with Advice on Starting Your Own (Antique Collectors’ Club Ltd, 2010).

Ms. Straus, the Worldwide Fine Art Specialty manager for Chubb Personal Insurance, joined Chubb in 1982. Prior to Chubb, she studied archaeology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, lectured on Biblical Archeology and worked at several museums (The Jewish Museum, The Peabody Museum of Ethnography at Harvard University, and the Museum of Contemporary Craft in New York, now known as the Museum of Art and Design). She has underwriting experience in Property, Casualty, and Entertainment as well as fine art. She was a key member of OBJECT ID of the Getty Institute, which established universal criteria for describing works of art. She speaks on art and insurance at international venues including seminars on risk management for museums and cultural institutions at Shanghai University. She was the keynote speaker at a fine art risk management seminar sponsored by the government of Taiwan; a featured speaker at a conference at Dresden, Germany; and a panelist at a seminar on art theft at Cambridge University, United Kingdom, where she met Noah Charney, ARCA’s founder.

ARCA blog: You’ve been quoted in the press that the most common art insurance claim stems not from theft, but from damage done while the art work is in transit.
Ms. Straus: Actually, its damage from a variety of causes not just damage in transit. In severe winter weather, it is not uncommon to see a lot of water damage claims to fine art. For example, excess weight of snow resulting in roof collapses and seepage of water from various sources including below grade seepage. During the summer we see water damage to fine art as a result of severe rains or air conditioners that leak and saturate walls along with the art that hangs on that wall.

Fire, smoke and soot also are major perils that we see on a regular basis. Improper packing or crating and poor installation are also common causes of loss.

I do not mean to minimize theft as an important cause of loss, but as I have written in various articles, there are ways to prevent theft through central station alarms, and through inspections by the insurance company of the premises to point out the weak spots in the security system.

What is much harder to predict is when a dealer who has been in business for many years, goes rogue and starts selling art on consignment in violation of his consignment agreements and or selling the works and not remitting the proceeds to the owners. This can become more prevalent during bad economic times.
ARCA blog: You’ve also said that when a museum purchases insurance to protect its collection, the insurance companies follow up with security inspections and risk management recommendations such as how to protect the art against damage from fire.
Ms. Straus: This statement needs to be qualified. Not every insurance company has staff on hand that can go out and inspect the museum facilities. So it should be a very important consideration by the people responsible for purchasing the museum insurance policy to ascertain if the company has such capabilities. They should also be looking at the caliber of the people who are doing the inspection. The risk management assessment should include not just the security system and its components, but also the fire protection and procedures, including the adequacy of the fire suppression capabilities of the museum and the local fire department. They should be looking at protective devices as well as the human element. Are employees vetted? Do they undergo periodic background checks? Is there dual accountability? There are lots of other considerations that should be taken into account to address and prevent insider theft.
ARCA blog: It’s too expensive for museums to insure their entire art collection. Do they select a blanket limit up to a certain amount that would cover any paintings stolen from the collection? And do insurance companies get nervous when there’s a rare painting by van Gogh, Vermeer, Rembrandt or any other artist that seems to attract thieves?
Ms. Straus: The way museums purchase insurance varies and each museum, unless it is a governmental entity, makes those decisions based on their own assessment of risk taking. In the US, most museums are private not-for-profit organizations with a board of directors who make those decisions. Also, those decisions are made based on the size of the collection, the type of collection, and by the finances of the institutions. Major art museums are going to take a different approach than historical societies, or a natural history museum.

Many museums in Europe are state owned and therefore the decision making on risk transfer is not their own, but is directed through a governmental entity. There are also government indemnity programs that are similar to purchasing private insurance. However, generally when museums borrow from one another or from private collectors the risk transfer then is typically insured for the value of the loan amount.

When underwriting a museum, one considers the total collection and evaluates the exposures as a whole; one does not look at individual works by certain artists and decide that those are more attractive to a thief.
ARCA blog: You once said that stolen works of art are only recovered 10 percent of the time and, on average, take 20 years to be recovered. Are you surprised when objects are noticed in pre-sale catalogues by large auction houses? Do you expect that they should have done more due diligence or examined the painting’s provenance before listing the work for sale? Is provenance research too time consuming for many of these art houses?
Ms. Straus: I am not surprised that items are flagged as stolen in pre-sale catalogues. The sheer volume that goes through the auction houses is so enormous and rapid. Very often these works have already passed through several owners before they reach the auction house, and these owners may indeed be “innocent purchasers”. I do expect, however, that the auction houses conduct due diligence investigations when they sense that there may be something wrong with the consigners or the work itself, whether it’s a question of illegal ownership or authenticity.
ARCA blog: What kind of art insurance issues have kept you up at night, metaphorically speaking, in the past six months? What do you see as the riskiest areas in insuring art?
Ms. Straus: We have been going through terrible economic times, so I am concerned about moral hazard either by fraudulent insurance claims or from dealers who are stealing from their clients.

I am also particularly concerned about the trend of art as investment and regarding art as an asset class. I don’t want to generalize, but when you start thinking about art as a commodity rather than as an object that expresses our humanity and our culture, it loses its importance and it becomes interchangeable solely as a money exchange. Maybe I am naïve, but when you value something for more than its monetary value you have a personal stake in it along with making sure that you invest in protecting it properly.
The application deadline is today, January 21, for ARCA's 2011 Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies.