A full account of this affair (facimiles of letters, images of art
works, references included) is available at:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~securma/denney.html , or:
http://museum-security.org/denney.html (mirrorsite in USA)
Parties involved in this matter have been asked for comments. These
comments will be added to the account as soon as we receive them.
Ton Cremers

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SUMMARY:
Lessons from the Denney Collection

Anthony Denney the well-known photographer and interior designer built
up a large collection of modern art during the 1950's and 1960's. A
significant part of the collection - worth several million pounds -
was lent to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1970. Following Denney's
sudden death in Spain in April 1990, 23 pictures were removed from
Dallas to France by means of letters signed "Anthony Denney". The
pictures were hidden, along with others from the collection, and were
subsequently transformed into an apparently bona-fide donation to the
City of Toulouse, thereby stripping the Denney estate of most of its
movable assets. The case suggests that long term loans to reputable
institutions may be less safe than we might suppose and that something
needs to be done to increase security and prevent art loans from
similar attacks in the future. It highlights the professional
responsibility of Museums to establish conclusive proof of ownership
before donations are accepted and of never taking sides in a dispute
over inheritance. Lending to a Museum places the loan in the public
domain. Open access to information about all loans provide the best
protection for them. A distributed public register of loan collections
accessible via the Internet - Denney Net - might provide a cheap and
practical means of improving security and would be a fitting way to
remember a gifted designer and photographer and the recambolesque
story of his art collection.

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