IFAR Journal
Volume 20, No. 3/4
2020/21
Introductory greetings to the special 50th Anniversary IFAR Journal issue provided by IFAR’s Chairman, Anthony Williams, Executive Director, Dr. Sharon Flescher, and Chairman Emeritus, Jack A. Josephson.
Dr. Constance Lowenthal and Bonnie Burnham, two former executive directors, remember their time at IFAR.
IFAR’s beginnings. The International Foundation for Art Research was born when New York State’s Assistant Attorney General and several distinguished art historians conceived of a nonprofit organization where scholars could offer impartial, authoritative opinions regarding works of art whose attribution was in question.
Authentication inquiries began in 1970 and include art from private collections, universities and museums, including works of art that were donated to Miami’s Bass Museum. In 1973, IFAR’s Art Advisory Council delivers “A Progress Report to the Art Community.” In 1974, the New York State Council on the Arts established funding for small museums in need of IFAR’s research services.
In Memoriam: IFAR’s Executive Director, Sharon Flescher, remembers Franklin Feldman, an attorney and former President of IFAR’s board and Chairman of IFAR’s Law Advisory Council, who passed away in 2021.
Reminiscences – by Franklin Feldman written just before his death.
The Guggenheim Gets Its Day in Court to Recover Chagall Gouache -- An article published by Franklin Feldman in IFARreports, February-March 1990 discusses the long-running legal case The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation v. Lubell. It is one of several articles Feldman wrote about the case and the landmark legal decision resulting from it.
A discussion of the history of IFAR’s role in art theft, beginning with IFAR’s mention in Karl Meyer’s book The Plundered Past and continuing with the feasibility study for IFAR’s art theft archive in the 1970s, IFAR’s expansion and digitization of the archive, and the creation of the Art Loss Register (ALR) in 1991.
The director of IFAR’s Art Theft Archive from 1983-87 recalls her time at IFAR and relates highlights of major cases, including the recovery of: five stolen Rembrandt prints from a locker at Grand Central Station; three stolen Old Master paintings that thieves attempted to sell to a New York dealer; and a stolen Roman relief that a collector spotted in an IFAR publication not long after he purchased it from a reputable dealer.
The adoption of the 1970 UNESCO Convention to prohibit and prevent illicit trafficking in cultural property spurs IFAR to launch numerous initiatives in the cultural property arena, including: a 1980 symposium on the International Protection of Cultural Property; the 1983 IFAR Cuzco Inventory, which documents more than 2,000 Spanish Colonial paintings at risk of being looted in Peru’s Cuzco region; and, ultimately, in 2008, IFAR’s Art Law and Cultural Property Database, an online digital resource comprising international cultural property legislation from more than 130 countries and hundreds of case law summaries in IFAR’s focus areas.
A section devoted to IFAR’s public programs, which are an extension of its educational outreach and include: the IFAR Evenings series of lectures and panels; in-depth conferences and symposia; and behind-the-scenes tours of private collections, galleries and museums.
IFAR continues to provide scholarly and objective opinions about artworks while it works against the circulation of fakes and misattributed works. As part of IFAR’s public service mission, the Authentication Research Service exposes scams and assists law enforcement. This section highlights some of the major art scams IFAR helped expose, including the fake Dalis marketed by Center Art Galleries and others; the Knoedler Galleries’ fakes scandal; the collection of Hartert fakes purchased by the Galleria Borghi; seven fake Benton paintings submitted to IFAR by different owners; fakes from the so-called Schulte collection concocted by con man John Re; and the phony Brennerman Collection of “Pollocks.”
A selected list of paintings, works on paper, and sculpture illustrates that IFAR’s Authentication Research Service sometimes discovers previously unknown works by major artists, such as Rosa Bonheur, Joshua Reynolds, Joan Miró, van Ruisdael, and Pollock.
This section summarizes IFAR’s involvement with and coverage of art law in its publications and through its public programs. IFAR’s Law Advisory Council members and other distinguished attorneys contribute to these efforts.
Organizations as varied as the FBI, U.S. Customs, The National Arts Club, the Private Art Dealers Association, and the American Alliance of Museums have recognized IFAR for its good work.
IFAR continues to update and expand its digital resources like the Art Law & Cultural Property Database, the Catalogues Raisonnés Database, and the Provenance Guide. The Covid era necessitated a move to virtual – and increasingly popular – public programming. A new endowment campaign will aid future growth.
Featuring IFAR-related recoveries and other recoveries on which IFAR reported over the years, IFAR’s Top Ten missing works of all time, and other notable thefts, including works by Corot, Leonardo, Picasso, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, and Vermeer.
Where are they now? As part of a new publication series, IFAR remembers four career art criminals whose headline-making art crimes were reported on by IFAR.
