The INTERPOL stolen art CD: A giant step in the right direction.

Is this CD a REASONABLE ACCESSIBLE REGISTER OF STOLEN CULTURAL
OBJECTS according to chapter 4 (4) of the Unidroit Convention?


General Information:

INTERPOL, Stolen works of art. More than 14.000 works of art of
all kinds.

Produced by:

Jouve http://www.jouve-diffusion.com
Jouve Diffusion-Interpol,
11 Boulevard de Sebastopol
750011Paris, France.

The CD Rom, which is designed and distributed by Jouve
Diffusion, contains the Interpol database of stolen art, most
of which with photographs. It has an extremely powerful search
system that enables you to identify works of art using numerous
search criteria.

UPDATES: by purchasing this CD you are eligible to receive free
updates for a year. System Requirements: Pentium 75 or above.
Windows 95,98 and NT.
At installation there are three language options: English,
French, or Spanish. After installation it is still possible to
switch between these three languages.

Price; $.480,00

________________________________________

REVIEW.

-- The fact that an art object is not on the CD does not mean
that it is not stolen--

In his introductory message R.E.Kendall Secretary General of
Interpol International, refers to both the 1995 Unidroit and
1970 Unesco conventions on stolen art. The Getty Object ID is
presented as a standard system for registering art. This
introductory message immediately shows the limits of this CD.
Much of the information on a CD will be obsolete as soon as the
CD is published. The 1999 new text of the Unesco convention,
presented May this year in The Hague, is not available on the
CD. The Getty Object ID has been taken over recently by CoPAT,
the Council for the Prevention of Art Theft
(http://www.thesaurus.co.uk/023348.CUS/index.htm ).

The full text of the Unidroit Convention is available at:
http://www.city.ac.uk/artspol/unidroit.html

Article 4 (4) reads: 'In determining whether the possessor
exercised due diligence, regard shall be had to all the
circumstances of the acquisition, including the character of the
parties, the price paid, WHETHER THE POSSESSOR CONSULTED ANY
REASONABLE ACCESSIBLE REGISTER OF STOLEN CULTURAL OBJECTS, and
any other relevant information and documentation which it could
reasonably have obtained, and whether the possessor consulted
accessible agencies or took any other step that a reasonable
person would have taken in the circumstances.'

At http://www.trans-art.com/  the 'Exclusive provider of the
Ownership Due Diligence Certificate(tm)' offers it's commercial
services, Title Protection for works of art and collectibles.
Risk Management and Liability Protection for professional
fiduciaries handling valuable art objects. All of a sudden Due
Diligence has become a trademark.

-----------------------------------------------


Jouve in Paris, France (http://www.jouve-diffusion.com) created
the Interpol CD and performed a gigantic task. The interface is
so user-friendly that there really is no need for any help
function.  Thanks to Macromedia Shockwave the presentation is
very handsome. The search options are very sophisticated and
range from object descriptions to artists' names, descriptions
of depicted images, techniques, appearance (color, shape, width,
height, weight, depth, diameter), and subject matter, to country
of origin. This last query option seems to be very informative.
However this is somewhat misleading. The number of stolen
objects by country (Italy scores highest) does not really give
information about the problem of art theft per country, even
though it is generally known that this is a real problem in
Italy, but rather gives information about the amount of
attention theft gets per country. Cambodia f.i. lists only two
(sic!) stolen items. This is very contrary to what is known
about the looting of temples in this country. China lists 8, and
Egypt 13 items. This does not reflect the problem of art looting
in these countries.

What really is disappointing about the CD is that so many
objects are accompanied with black and white photographs. Most
certainly Jouve does not deserve blame for this. Yetl it is
hard to understand why f.i. Rembrandt's Storm on the sea of
Galilee, one of the paintings lost at the Isabella Stewart
Gardner heist, is only depicted in black and white.

The CD offers a list of participating Interpol countries. The
presentation of this list is seems somewhat strange. Many
countries are listed in alphabetical order, some are not.
Germany can be found between Albania, Algeria and Andorra,
Angola. The USA is listed between Estonia and Ethiopia. How
about this order: Oman, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Pakistan.. The
Netherlands is listed between Pakistan and Peru. The cause of
this is clear: if you translate the names of all of these
countries int French the order is perfectly correct (USA: Etats
Unis, Germany: Allemagne, Netherlands: Pays Bas)

All minor criticism regarding this CD stands in the shade of
the numerous advantages. The search options Jouve created are
most impressive.

----------------------------------------------------------------

SEARCH USING SIX TYPES OF CRITERIA

1: Object

2:  Artist (Name of artist, Presence of signature, Position of
signature, Description)

3: Technique (Production technique, Medium used)


4: Appearance (Main colour, Shape, Group/Ensemble, Dimensions)


5: Subject (Title/Subject, Inscription)


6: Miscellaneous (Full text, Country of theft, Stolen or
recovered objects)

All this criteria lead to numerous detailed new criteria..

For example the search tree created under the OBJECTS entry:

If you start your search with the word Carpet you will be able
to select the following search keywords: Prayer rug, Medallion,
Designs. Prayer rug leads to: Prayer niche (Mihrab) and several
prayer niches (Saph). Medallion leads to three underlying
search options and Designs leads to five underlying search
options. Ceramics has the following options: Vase/Amphora, fruit
dish/bowl, Light, Crockery, Jewellery, and Other. All of these
underlying options will open search queries to many others. Vase
f.i. has 21 underlying search queries. Watches and clocks lead
to over 140 (!) underlying categories. Other main categories in
the Objects section are: coins, prints, furniture, books,
glassware, gold, icons, musical instruments, paintings, stamps,
sculptures, tapestry, firearms, weapons, religious items, dolls,
mosaic etc. All these entries in the Objects sections return in
the Technique section where the search can be refined by
production method.

To give you an example how a query works:

choose: WATCH, continue your search selecting Pocket Watch, and
than Arabic Numerals, and 76 items can be reviewed. Searches can
be saved for later reference. The main keyword Painting will
lead you to the following subsections: Interior scene, Exterior
scene, Scene with undefined background, Portrait (not
religious), Single saint or religious figure with child, Single
saint or religious figure without child, Modern, Still life.
Each of these sections again contains numerous subsections
finally leading to a very detailed search.

If you have finally made your detailed selection a list of
artworks responding to your selection will be presented. Each
individual item can be viewed and it is possible to zoom in on
the smallest details. Search results can be printed and saved
for future reference.

The search by country has in my opinion limited use (as
described above) because this search does not lead to more
detailed geographical information. If you select any of the
countries and consult the results of your search no information
will be available of town, states, or counties.


TEXT SEARCH
Next to the numerous predefined search criteria the CD also
offers the option to create your own boolean searches via plain
text input. Searching this way was not very satisfactory. In the
miscellaneous section the text search icon AND Poland gave no
results. Searching by country via the CD's taskbar showed
numerous icons stolen in Poland.
'Painting and Italy' showed just two results; watch and Italy
showed 1 result. First I checked the artworks stolen from
Andorra using the predefined search option in the Miscellaneous
section. Three paintings by Picasso and one by Miro are
listed. Next I started a boolean text search 'Picasso AND
Andorra', no results were found. 'painting AND Andorra' too
remained without result. Finally I tried a text-search only using
the word Andorra: no result either!!  A plain 'Italy' text
search generated 24 results, ranging from paintings to books,
sculptures to watches. Selecting Italy from the list of
countries however generates 3565 results!  It seems to me that
the text search options needs some reviewing by Jouve. On the
other hand: who needs this text search? The CD's menu bar gives
plenty of search options.
These options are so redundant that nobody will need to create
his own searches using the text option.


ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:

The Jouve-Interpol CD is a giant step towards making a database
of stolen art publicly available. At the moment there is no such
database available for general consulting.

At http://museum-security.org/reporting-stolen-property.html you
will find numerous links to online databases, none of which
offers the sophisticated options this CD offers. Several are
not accesible at all, others cost money to brwose.

The Interpol CD has it's drawbacks: even with regular updates
the information offered will very quickly become obsolete.
But, is there anything better at the moment?
The only way to force every party active in the trade of art to
perform due diligence is by an easily and free accessible
online database that is maintained day by day. Technically this
is possible. The available technique does not offer any limits.
It is just the political will to work together that sets
limits. In my view Jouve is very well able to construct an
online database of stolen art. Their many years of experience
in building multimedia presentations resulted in this great CD.
Even from an art history point of view the CD is a absolute
must-have.

Police forces, insurance companies, government organizations,
FBI, Interpol, ICOM, Unesco etc. should work together to make
such a database possible. Interpol's decision to let Jouve
produce this CD was a wise decision. The result is most
impressive. Let's hope that the next step will be that Jouve and
the Art Loss Register join knowledge and forces to create an
online database that is free accessible to everyone. The best way
to stop art theft and the trade in stolen, looted, and illegally
exported art is by disabling buyers and sellers to hide behind a
mask of  'good faith' .

Museums, galleries, auction houses, private collectors, but also
police forces and customs organizations, they all will
appreciate the merits of this CD. The decision to participate in
this Jouve-Interpol endeavor and buy the CD will finally lead to
a global database of stolen cultural property hence disabling
the illicit trade in art.

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- Is this CD a REASONABLE ACCESSIBLE REGISTER OF STOLEN CULTURAL
OBJECTS according to chapter 4 (4) of the Unidroit Convention?

- YES (It is the best answer there is at the moment. One must
realize however, that the fact that an art object is not on the
CD does not mean that it is not stolen.....)


October 5 - 7 there will be an Interpol conference on stolen art
in Lyon, France.

Ton Cremers
http://museum-security.org/

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