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Features Editor: Joe Rayment | E-mail: features@ubyssey.ca October 3, 2008 | Page 

The Midas
Crutch
Greed, gold and stolen art
by Alia Dharssi

I
t must have seemed like a typical cool and cloudy Vancouver night when the security guard at
UBC’s clifftop Museum of Anthropology stepped out to have his smoke break. After the guard
walked out to enjoy a cigarette, thieves wearing gas masks and armed with bear spray entered
the museum, according to a CBC interview with Anthony Shelton, the museum’s director.
The masked robbers proceeded to contaminate the interior of the museum with a powerful bear
spray. The fumes would have made it difficult for anyone who tried to stop them, but apparently no
one did. They made off with 11 sculptures by iconic Haida artist Bill Reid—ten of which were made
of gold—and three Mexican Zapotec Indian gold-coloured necklaces. When the security guard re-
turned from his break, everything seemed normal. The robbery wasn’t discovered until the following
morning, when the museum’s security guards were conducting a shift change.

H
ow the thieves man- the fact that the cameras had gone heritage are disappearing, piece never recovered and form what ex-
aged to pull off the offline, but this information wasn’t by piece. perts refer to as the “Lost Museum,”

heist, which occurred
between May 23 and
May 24 2008, is still unclear, as is
the motivation behind the act. Au-
thorities are unable or unwilling to
confirm many of the details about
the case, which is still under inves-
tigation. The theft, which involved
works totalling approximately $2
million, is one of the most sig-
nificant art robberies in Canadian
history.
One rumour describes the
thieves calling the museum the
day before claiming to be the alarm
company. They explained that the
alarm would be malfunctioning
that night and that the museum
should simply ignore it. A CBC ar-
ticle claimed that four hours prior
to the robbery, important surveil-
lance cameras in the museum
had stopped recording. An electric
alarm alerted campus security to
acted on. According to Douglas
Reynolds, who owns a gallery that
specializes in historic and contem-
porary Northwest Coast Art, the
construction going on at the Mu-
seum of Anthropology probably
contributed to the lack of response.
“You have a large renovation going
on, workmen going in all the time,
systems were just not in place like
they normally are.”
Though a robbery of this
magnitude at a public institu-
tion is rare in Canada, the illegal
trade in arts and antiquities has
increased substantially over the
past decades. Today, it forms a
transnational market that some
claim is surpassed in size only by
drugs and arms. Worse still is that
the billions of dollars made from
this illicit trade every year may be
funding criminal networks. All the
while, fragments of our cultural
B
onnie Czegledi is one of
a handful of lawyers in
the world that specialize
in international art and
cultural heritage law. She explains
that frequent theft of pieces from
small to medium-sized galleries,
museums and archaeological sites
adds up to a bigger problem than
individual high-profile thefts, such
as the one at the Museum of An-
thropology. “It only makes the news
when a bigger statue or important
piece is stolen; however, if we dealt
more effectively with the smaller
incidences, we would be more pre-
pared to handle the big events.” For
instance, in Iraq, looting of small
pieces is happening all of the time
and, in the process, an important
part of the world’s cultural heritage
is being lost.
Many stolen works of art are
a fictional museum that holds all of
the artwork ever stolen. If you were
to meander through its halls, you
would see a room of lost paintings
by European artists like Picasso and
Monet. However, in the midst of the
maze of stolen works, you might
also find a bronze woman posing
for a photographer who is wait-
ing for her in Vancouver`s Queen
Elizabeth Park, where she was
grabbed from a tableau of statues.
Another room might be reserved
for an exhibit of stolen cuneiform
tablets that have been looted from
archaeological sites in Iraq.
Fortunately, the Bill Reid pieces
didn’t end up in this inaccessible
museum. “The RCMP had a real
team on this case and they just
went all out,” said Karen Duffek,
the curator of Pacific Northwest
and Contemporary Visual Art at
the Museum of Anthropology. By

the end of August, all of the miss-
ing items had been recovered,
although not in their original con-
dition. A chunk of a dark argillite
pipe carved by Reid is still missing
and the Mexican necklaces were
badly damaged.
RCMP Constable Annie Linteau
referred to the recovery as “amaz-
ing in itself.” She partly attributed
the success to the wide publicity
the theft received through the
media and the Art Alert Register,
an organization that disseminates
information to relevant orga-
nizations, such as galleries the
criminals might attempt to sell the
works to. “The market had been lit-
erally saturated with information.”
It would have been very difficult to
re-sell the works.
“Publicizing is the most impor-
tant thing to do…we have to speak
to the media and make the mate-
rial too hot to handle,” Czegledi
said on a phone call from Toronto.
“Secrecy only helps the criminal.”
The Museum of Anthropology’s
open response may have to do with
Bill Reid’s importance and the fact
that the museum is a public insti-
tution. Moreover, they feared that
the gold pieces, which included
seminal works from Reid’s career,
might be melted down. “That’s
why the museum very quickly got
out the value of the materials, so
that the thieves would know that it
wouldn’t be too smart to melt them
down,” Duffek explained.
Most art crime in Canada, how-
ever, consists of theft from private
homes or commercial galleries
that aren’t inclined to go public
when pieces are poached. There
is a reluctance to discuss this is-
sue in the art world. Some of the
local art gallery owners I met were
hesitant to speak to me or to be
quoted by name. One of them sug-
gested that she would be reluctant
to publicize an incident because
it might give other people ideas.
Another concern expressed by art
dealers is that publicizing a theft
might ruin a gallery’s reputation.
Heffel, an important Canadian fine
art auction house, declined to be
interviewed for this story, stating
in an email that “art theft is a sensi-
tive issue, and in light of recent art
thefts in and around Vancouver,
our comments could potentially be
misconstrued.”
“It’s really hard to solve a prob-
lem when it’s shrouded in secrecy,”
Czegledi commented. “There’s no
hope of a recovery.” She noted that
it is unfortunate that there is still
some fear in the business, despite
cases where people have been able
to recover stolen works precisely
because they were publicized.
Small art robberies occur of-
ten in Vancouver. Gallery owners
say that thieves are usually after
sculptures or metallic pieces they
can melt down quickly for profit.
It’s plausible that the thieves who
robbed the Museum of Anthropol-
ogy were after quick money. “They
also grabbed three Mexican neck-
laces that were of no particular
value,” Duffek said. “But they were
gold coloured, so they were obvi-
ously lured by gold.”
Going through the trouble of
stealing $2 million gold artwork
by an iconic Canadian artist and
melting it down for $15,000 worth
of gold may seem ridiculous, Reyn-
olds said, but “people will do a lot
for $15,000 regardless of what the
actual value is.”
There was a flurry of thefts of
Northwest Coast art in the mid
1990s. Thieves broke into a num-
ber of galleries, including Reyn-
olds’s, targeting specific works.
Fortunately, that subsided and, in
the last ten years, the Northwest
Coast art scene has experienced
mostly amateur thefts. “More
recent thefts have been unprofes-
sional and just really smash and
grab. There hasn’t been a huge
crime scene up until, of course,
you have the huge break-in at the
Museum of Anthropology.”
Thieves tend to target metal
works and sculptures in local gal-
leries. Few paintings are stolen
from local galleries because, un-
like sculptures, they are difficult to
profit from without being caught.
However, some thieves are
after culturally valuable Pacific
Northwest Coast art, especially
historic pieces, which have risen
in value in recent years. In October
2006, the Dundas Collection, a
collection of 19th century artifacts
pertaining to the Tsimshian people
of BC, was auctioned off for $7 mil-
lion at Sotheby’s Auction House in
New York. Of especial note was a re-
cord-breaking $1.8 million paid for
a prized shaman’s mask. “I think
these record prices getting set in
New York shows the importance of
Northwest Coast art internationally
and also brings a lot more attention
to the art,” Reynolds said. “The his-
toric work has been undervalued,
in my opinion, for years.”
As prices soar they attract col-
lectors. Northwest Coast art moves
further and further from home,
away from the community that
influenced the art and out of public
view. “The objects are completely
ripped out of their contexts,” Duffek
said, “and seen in terms that have
nothing to do with their original
meaning to people.” The price also
attracts thieves to museums and
archaeological sites. All of which
results in the gradual disappear-
ance of our cultural heritage.
October 3, 2008 | Page 
Lost, not
found
by Joe Rayment
Features Editor
T
he prospects for resale
may have motivated a rob-
bery at the Fort Langley
National Historic Site this
September. Thieves stole three co-
lourful ceremonial masks, one cer-
emonial drum, and a cedar weaved Pieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt
basket belonging to the Kwantlen and Manet
First Nations Community from Reward: $5.4 Million
the site’s museum. Thieves gained
access by smashing their way On March 18, 1990, two white males
through thick glass that led into the dressed as Boston police officers
visitor centre. They proceeded to entered the Gardner Museum claim-
break the Plexiglas back of the exhi- ing to be responding to a call. From
bition case holding the works and 1:24am to 2:45am they took 12
made off with pieces worth $5500. paintings, including “The Concert”
The items were taken from a small by Vermeer, “The Storm on the Sea
blind spot in the museum’s sensor of Galilee” by Rembrandt and “Chez
system. Tortoni” by Manet. The total value
In addition to the theft at Fort of the pieces taken is estimated at
Langley, September also saw the $300 million.
robbery of $18,000 worth of reli-
gious items, many of them made
of precious metals, from a church
in Surrey. A local gallery owner
I spoke to said he had $30,000
worth of Pacific Northwest Coast
jewellery pieces stolen from his
gallery in a robbery that occurred
a year and a half ago. None of these
pieces have been recovered. And
this is only handful of robberies—a
small part of a global problem. Art-
work is regularly looted the world “A Reclining Figure” by Henry
over, particularly from remote ar- Moore
chaeological sites that are not well
protected. Reward: $190,000
To deal with the problem,
Czegledi suggests we examine the On December 15, 2005, security
experience of other nations. For cameras at Henry Moore’s former
instance, Canada could look to studio in Hertfordshire caught
the American guidelines on sen- caught two vehicles driving into the
tencing cultural resource crimes courtyard. One was a Mini Cooper
in order to use incarceration as a and the second was a flatbed truck.
much-needed disincentive. The thieves used a crane to load
“The fact that countless the sculpture, which weighed 2.1
pieces of cultural heritage, tonnes, on to the back of the truck
which, although deemed small and drove off.
are being stolen at an increas-
ingly rapid rate from hundreds
of sites, galleries and public
institutions in a systematic op-
eration, constitutes a significant
loss rivalling high-priced thefts.
Little by little cultural heritage
is being lost and destroyed,”
Czegledi said. “If we deal with
the problem of illicit trafficking
at the first stages there will not
be the groundwork and estab-
lished network there to carry
out the big-name heists.”
When I spoke to Matthew Paintings by Hans Hofmann,
Petley-Jones, a local gallery-
owner, he told me about a group Chaim Soutine and Arshile
of thieves who broke through Gorky
his gallery’s storefront window Reward: $215,000
to grab a sculpture on display.
It was a nice piece, but not on On the morning of August 23, 2008,
the same level as the Bill Reid a thief stole at least a dozen paintings
sculptures. The people who from a private home in California.
steal in Vancouver are not usu- The paintings were valued in the
ally the ones “with a desire for millions. The thief entered the house
Van Gogh”—they’re just trying to through an unlocked door while the
make a buck. U maid was taking a break.