Trade News from Around the World
Two siblings have agreed to pay $135,000 in taxes, penalties and interest to settle a decade-long dispute over priceless religious artwork their brother stole while stationed in Germany during World War II, The New York Times reported to the Associated Press on September 2. Jane Meador Cook, 66, and Jack Meador, 80, were accused of trafficking in stolen goods after they tried to sell some of the objects brought home after the war by their late brother Joe T. Meador from a mine he had been assigned to guard where Germans stored hidden religious artifacts. Among the rdf_Descriptions was the “Samuhel Gospels,” a Ninth Century manuscript written in gold, which Cook and Meador sold in 1990 for nearly $3 million. The Meadors, who both live in northeast Texas, agreed to return the remaining works to Germany, but were allowed to keep about $2.7 million from the sale of the manuscript. Criminal charges were thrown out because the statute of limitations had expired, leaving only the tax case. The settlement was reached April 20 in federal tax court, but was not publicly announced, The Times reported.
A New Economy business consulting firm, eidea, Cincinnati, Ohio, has partnered with The Serious Collector, an online community featuring fine arts, antiques, and collectibles. The partnership will enable The Serious Collector to continue its development and marketing; eidea will focus upon operational guidance, financial strategy and brand development. “We believe that The Serious Collector can have the same market impact as eSteel has achieved in the metals industry, because many of the same market inefficiencies and challenges associated with understanding deployment of complex technologies remain the same, ” says Antonio Ragio, Chief Executive Officer of eidea. “While [the site] faces serious challenges from independent components of the supply chain, the nature of their application offering is superior to that of any links within the chain.” As part of their ongoing service expansion, the site is offering a new “Premier Dealer,” commission-based membership, with free image hosting, thumbnails, featured placements, and traffic reports.
Two members of Raleigh’s North Carolina Museum of History’s booster group have been charged with using thousands of dollars in money raised for the museum for their personal benefit, says the Associated Press. Eve R. Williamson, the former executive director of the N.C. Museum of History Associates, was arrested August 31 on a felony charge of obtaining property by false pretenses. Williamson held the post for 22 years. The arrest warrant said that between May 1996 and January, Williamson submitted bills of $15,229.05 for personal rdf_Descriptions bought with the booster group’s credit card. The charge is punishable by 2 and a half years in prison. LeaAnne Keel Harris, 30, a former booker for the group, was charged September 1 with embezzling $75,000.
Burlington, Vt. entrepreneur Daniel J. Feeney has been hired as Collector Online’s CEO. He will also occupy a seat on the company’s board of directors. Feeney brings 14 years of marketing and management experience to the five-year-old company co-founded by Erik Wheeler and Tom Jiamachello.
According to the AP wire, Euan Uglow, 68, one of Britain’s most highly regarded realist painters, died of cancer August 31. He passed away at his studio in south London, said the artist’s dealer, the Browse and Darby Gallery. Uglow was best known for his still lifes and nudes, and was known for being especially meticulous, sometimes completing just two paintings a year. His work was exhibited in major British galleries including the Tate Gallery.
Artprice.com has announced it will sponsor Paris Photo 2000 at the Louvre Carrousel November 16-19, an event expected to attract 50,000 to 60,000 photography professionals and collectors. In its fourth year, the show is one of the leading exhibitions devoted wholly to photography, and Artprice.com will use the occasion to launch an “enriched version” of photographyprice.com. The company will also issue a preview of its pocket-sized edition of Photography Price Indicator.
A man accused of cutting fine prints from Santa Fe’s University of New Mexico library collection and selling them to galleries has been sentenced to four years in prison. Joseph Frontino, an attorney, was sentenced August 29; he will serve five years’ probation following the prison term and was ordered to pay $116,000 in restitution to the university. He was indicted last December on 21 counts of embezzlement and criminal damage to property, and pleaded guilty to three embezzlement counts in April. He was accused of embezzling art and photography from the UNM library from June through December 1997. Some of the prints by photographer Alfred Stieglitz were from a priceless collection of Camera Works books of photography, Attorney General Patricia Madrid said to the Associated Press in announcing the culmination of the case. The prints were cut from the books and cannot easily be replaced. Frontino sold the prints to at least two Santa Fe photo galleries: Andrew Smith and Scheinbaum & Russek. Stella DeSaRego, an archivist with the Center for Southwest Research, a collection of rare books and prints at the UNM library, said there are many copies of the original prints, so no photo gallery owner would necessarily have noticed the prints could have been stolen.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has approved a grant of $2 million, together with a low-interest loan of $3.2 million, for MASS MoCA, North Adams, Mass., to expand the project’s job-creating commercial development efforts. The funds will help MASS MoCA renovate approximately 50,000 square feet of existing buildings into high-bandwidth enabled commercial space. To date, some 180 new jobs have been created in the firms renting MASS MoCA space – with another 50 expected by October, 2000. In addition, the museum employs 70 persons. Based on the experience of Phase 1, the renovations made possible through the HUD grant/loan will support the creation of 400 additional jobs.
Burglars disabled security alarms, removed a door at the Maryhill Museum of Art, Centerville, Wash., and stole 22 artifacts from an American Indian art exhibit. Items taken on the night of August 29. The southcentral Washington tourist destination on a bluff overlooks the Columbia River Gorge. Beaded bags, moccasins and a bone breastplate were some of the rdf_Descriptions taken, says the Associated Press.
Conrad Marca-Relli, 87, an Italian-American collagist who served as a link between the European avant-garde and American abstract expressionism, died August 29 of a heart attack at his home in Parma, Italy, reports Giovanna dell’Orto of the Associated Press. His greatest contribution came in the 1950s, when he revolutionized the medium of collage adding strips of canvas over the canvas and painting them over in a subdued palette – a “painting with oil and canvas,” in one critic’s words.
The University of New Mexico’s Harwood Museum, Taos, N.M., is the recipient of an anonymous $1 million gift, the largest cash gift in its history, said Harwood director Robert M. Ellis to the Associated Press. The money will be placed in a perpetual endowment fund to support part of the museum’s operations.
