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. ------------------------------------ - 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/ ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ museum-l.html. 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