Smithsonian for sale?

Perhaps we spoke too soon in our recent post about the UN philatelic archive debacle:

The Society of American Historians, a group that promotes excellence in historical writing, has suspended Smithsonian Books from its ranks in protest over the Smithsonian Institution's "increasingly commercial approach to its mission". . .

The latest criticism follows a month of public debate over partnerships the Smithsonian made with commercial businesses and the change in policy about access to its archives. . .

"The Smithsonian is an institution that involves public money and public trust and is a public archives," said Elizabeth Adkins, president-elect of the Society of American Archivists. "It should follow the general guidelines of equal access. We are distressed."

The exact nature of the agreements are secret. The Smithsonian contends they are proprietary and not subject to freedom-of-information laws that require most federal contracts to be available for public inspection.

This is unbelievable. I hope someone will challenge this in court.

Last month the Smithsonian announced it had entered a production agreement with Showtime Networks to create the cable channel Smithsonian on Demand. As a result, independent filmmakers wanting to make extensive use of the archives would have to offer their idea first to Showtime.

Read the rest here.

Credit cards: reading the fine print

It's often overlooked, but credit cards (and bank debit cards) can vary widely in the commissions they tack on for foreign-currency purchases -- this, mind you, on top of the base percentage charged to all by the card companies themselves.

For many years I have relied upon an MBNA VISA card issued through Fidelity Investments, which had no additional commission. But now I've received an extraordinarily voluminous compilation of Important Amendments to Your Credit Card Agreement, all of which seem to consist of higher fees, shorter grace periods, and new penalties -- including (well-buried) a new 3% charge on all foreign-currency transactions.

So farewell, Fidelity VISA. I'll use it until the new fees kick in at the end of June, but I'll be looking around for a better deal now.

UN stamp archive selloff scandal

Can you imagine the US Government selling off whole collections from the Smithsonian? Or the UK sending the British Library to Christie's? Far fetched, indeed: yet the UN, that great upholder of international law, did pretty much exactly that a few years ago in selling off its philatelic archive lock, stock, and barrel -- and for cheap. Read all about it here:

Auditors from the U.N.’s investigative arm, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), are currently putting the last touches on an investigative report that has taken months to complete, and that aims to determine exactly what happened — and why — to the U.N.’s rare and much-admired collection of materials that belong to the United Nations Postal Administration. . .

One thing that investigators know for certain about the archive: In a discreet but historic auction carried out in a quiet suburb of Geneva, Switzerland, all of it — more than a metric ton of prized material, dating from as early as 1951 — was sold off to a single bidder on May 12, 2003. The collection included original artwork for U.N. stamps, unique so-called die proofs to test the faithfulness of design reproduction, printing proofs and other rarities, along with hundreds of thousands of other stamps, reflecting many of the most colorful aspects of U.N. history.

As the article notes, there were and are strict rules that one would have expected to bar such a selloff outright. One gets the impression that this was in essence a theft in broad daylight, though it is not yet clear how those who profited from the sale and those who orchestrated it might be connected.

The auction itself was carried out in entirely legal fashion.

Excepting, of course, the rather serious matter of title.

The price it fetched — $3,068,000 — was hailed on a variety of stamp collecting Web sites as a world record price for a single lot sale at a stamp auction. . .

But for the U.N., it was no coup, even though, according to officials familiar with UNPA finances, the UNPA netted “some $2.5 million” from the Swiss auction deal.

Not clear here if the $3,068,000 figure represents the hammer price or the net paid with buyer's premium tacked on. In any event, the UN's net seems low. I'm not familiar with the stamp world, but normally the big auction houses waive seller's commissions for large, important consignments from governmental and nonprofit institutions, and will usually pick up the costs of photography and catalog production as well.

This whole affair is certainly a huge black eye for the UN. They must be just tearing their hair out at UNESCO . . . .

Italians finger Merrin Gallery

Italian prosecutors on Wednesday named a New York art gallery as a key link in what they say was a vast conspiracy to market stolen artifacts that allegedly involved a former J. Paul Getty museum curator on trial here.

Prosecutor Paolo Ferri presented documents and testimony he said proved Manhattan's Merrin Gallery served as a conduit for artifacts smuggled out of Italy by a Swiss-based dealer, then resold to various U.S. museums, including the Getty in Los Angeles.

Full story here. This would appear to be another instance of investigations expanding as dealer records are examined:

Prosecution witness Giuseppe Putrino, a police officer who participated in the investigation into Gianfranco Becchina, a Basel, Switzerland-based art dealer, presented documents seized in Becchina's offices.

Putrino said the documents discussed Merrin's purchases of ancient artifacts, including a sarcophagus and a marble head of the 2nd century Roman emperor Commodus. The statue and the sarcophagus were later bought by the Getty, he said.

``Of all these objects there is no trace, no documents of their export from Italy,'' Putrino said, indicating he believed the objects were illegally smuggled out of the country.

It's worth noting that the antiquities world -- dealers, collectors, and scholars all included -- is quite a small one. It's easy to find interconnections, less easy to determine which ones were problematical.

ADDENDUM: It isn't just the Italians:

Edward and Samuel Merrin, father and son dealers in pre-Columbian art, were indicted on March 2 on charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and mail fraud. The Merrin Gallery is located at 724 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

The pair are accused of overcharging an unnamed husband and wife (identified only as V1 and V2 in court papers) who purchased over $63 million of art and antiquities between April 1989 and June 2000.

Looks like another "cost plus" agreement gone bad. From the Maine Antique Digest, pointed out by reader Glenn Bowen.

London Olympics: archeologists race against time

Humans have exploited east London ever since hungry Mesolithic fishermen ventured down to the banks of its marshy pools in search of food. . .

Now, in advance of the arrival of the world's athletes for the London Olympics in 2012, the Lower Lea Valley will finally give up the secrets of its history as it becomes the largest archaeological site ever excavated in Britain. Stretching across an area larger than the neighbouring City of London, experts have begun work to uncover evidence of human occupation dating back to 6000BC. It is a once in a millenia opportunity for the archaeologists who must complete their work before the developers' bulldozers turn this decaying corner of the capital into Europe's largest construction site, complete with an 80,000 seat stadium, a 17,000-bed athlete's village, a velo park and an aquatic centre.

Full article here.

Murder in the Orkneys

A very cold case, however -- after 2000-odd years. Investigations are proceeding nonetheless.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall . . .

. . . who's the biggest collector of them all?

The appearance of a certain quiet, grey-haired Frenchman in his late sixties at an art fair or gallery exhibition is certain to quicken the pulse of any dealer who spots him.

François Pinault hardly stands out in a crowd, but he is arguably the most powerful person in the international art market. Not only does he own Christie's auction house, which he bought for £721 million in 1998, but he is also one of the world's most important collectors of modern and contemporary art. . .

. . . unlike the great showman of the contemporary art world Charles Saatchi, his purchases have always been made discreetly, and until now they have never been displayed publicly.

However, on Sunday, the veil of secrecy that has always surrounded the Pinault collection will at last be drawn back when 200 works go on show at an 18th-century palace on the Grand Canal in Venice.

The exhibition, entitled Where Are We Going?, at the Palazzo Grassi is the culmination of a six-year saga that has provoked enormous controversy in France.

Remembrance

A Holocaust Remembrance Day compilation here.
Down Under, it's Anzac Day. Google News links here. For whatever reason, turnout for the commemorations has been growing considerably in recent years. Some of this must be a result of the passing of the last of the WW1 veterans, just as Gallipolli and other Anzac battlegrounds have passed into legend.

Holy moly!

Is Samsung really younger than I am?! So says today's NY Times:

Thirty-seven years ago, 36 employees began assembling electric fans in a small workshop in this city, just south of Seoul.

Needless to say, Samsung's done rather better for itself than I have.

Thyssen vs Prado

Spanish art collector Baroness Carmen Thyssen threatened yesterday to chain herself to a tree on Madrid's most emblematic street, the Paseo del Prado, to stop proposed building works outside a museum of valuable paintings donated by her family.

The baroness said a redesign of the street, planned to keep traffic away from the nearby Prado museum, would leave her own museum choking in exhaust fumes. "They want to put a motorway in front of us and, what's more, they will do it by cutting down a unique line of trees," she said.

Read the rest here.

New Argo

Shipbuilders in the small Greek port of Volos are struggling with handmade tools and methods used millennia ago to recreate the Argo, the legendary vessel of Jason and the Argonauts.

The absence of modern resources such as electricity and machine tools makes it an exhausting task, but authenticity is an essential part of this experiment in ancient shipbuilding.

Full article at CNN. Not entirely clear how much of the design is based on fact and how much on guesswork.

Look, and look again (but don't taste)

Deep in the dark heart of a passage grave on Anglesey, archaeologists have discovered a decorated slab carved 4,500 years ago for the dead and their guardians, missed when the tomb was originally excavated over half a century ago.

The newly revealed carving at Barclodiad y Gawres, a chevron design pecked into the rock with a stone chisel, brings to six the number of decorated slabs with lozenges, cupmarks, concentric circles and spirals in a tomb already regarded as one of the most spectacularly decorated prehistoric burial monuments in Britain.

From the Guardian. I suppose I shall also have to file this story under "food" as well:

Apart from its significance as a gallery of prehistoric art, Barclodiad y Gawres has a unique place in British archaeology, as the setting for one of the more revolting stews ever recorded from the ancient world . . .

Remains of cremated human bone were found in the cells, but the central chamber seems to have been used to prepare a stew with some, mercifully lost, ritual significance: analysis suggests the ingredients included fish, eel, newt, frog, toad, mice, shrew and snake.

There's no place like 747

A Californian woman attempting to make a home out of a retired Boeing 747 has been told by the US Federal Aviation Administration to use clear markings on the fuselage parts to avoid alarming passengers flying into Los Angeles international aiport (LAX).

Francie Rehwald approached architect David Hertz to construct an environmentally-friendly home out of recycled industrial waste and he hit upon the idea of using scrapped 747 fuselages. However, Hertz's design envisages a "strewn" look for the parts visible above ground, giving the appearance, say the FAA, of a crash site.

Full story here; more on the house project here.

Pet postal peeves

Business obligations have set me a bit behind on news posts, but have once again reminded me to note the following:

Return receipt? Skip it. Literally half the time that someone sends me a package with that green postcard attached, the guys at the Post Office overlook it. If you need something signed for, there are better and cheaper options.

The incredible lines on tax day, that used to back traffic up from our main Post Office onto the freeway, now seem to be a thing of the past -- mostly due to the IRS's success at getting taxpayers to file online (I understand the figure for this year was up to 70%; I know the Congressionally-mandated target for 2007 is 80%). Nonetheless, the diehard last-minute paper-filers still never seem satisfied just to drop their returns in the mail slot, but wait in line to get proof of mailing or to use Certified Mail. But how many returns actually get lost in the mail, or get counted as late despite being properly postmarked? There must be some, yet the number must also be vanishingly small. I still paper-file my state return, and happily chuck it in the box with an ordinary stamp.

Amateur packing, in particular tape and peanuts. Why do some people think that wrapping an object in an impermeable cocoon of clear tape makes it more secure? Cutting the thing free is neither easy nor simple, especially when there's little padding between the tape layer and the object itself. As for those foam peanuts, they are pretty much useless as filler: they shift in transit, they fly all over the place when the package is opened, and then you feel guilty about having bagsful and not being able to reuse or recycle them.

The Long Island Hitlers

No fooling. The NY Times has an article on Adolf's last remaining family (previous article here).