Paul Apodaca used to pick out art with the same savvy he chose his battles. For him, there’s a huge difference between scientific and informal testing in the search for an object’s authenticity and, finally, its acquisition. The former curator said that, amid sloppy assessment, up to 5 percent of a given museum’s stockpile may consist of phony or stolen artifacts. Although that figure is small, the potential for harm within it is as large as the art world itself.
“There are lots of curators and lots of art dealers and lots of art collectors who work on the edge,” he added, “and they take a chance that they may or may not have crossed the line.”
A real-life twist on that statement is as near as your computer. And it may indirectly figure in the Jan. 24 raid on Balboa Park’s Mingei International Museum.
On that day, about 40 officials from three federal agencies seized 23 items from the museum suspected to have been stolen from Southeast Asia. An affidavit supporting the search warrant states that the pieces, which include jewelry and a water vessel from Thailand’s ancient Ban Chiang culture, are thought to be central to a smuggling operation that enabled donors to receive inflated appraisals on the articles and thus claim higher tax write-offs.
Also raided as part of the 5-year probe were two Los Angeles-area art galleries, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pasadena’s Pacific Asia Museum, the UC-Berkeley Art Museum and the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana. No one has been charged in the case.
The nonprofit Mingei, which since its 1978 founding has exhibited folk art from around the world, is conducting business as usual after closing the day of the raid.
But Cathy Sang, the museum’s director of development, asserted the venue is “very much working on [its] own internal investigation, and we’re focused on doing the things we do every day to have the museum open.”
Beyond that, she added, the museum’s attorneys have asked Mingei officials to refrain from comment.
The local flap has shifted in part to Armand Labbe, who sat on the Mingei’s board for most of the 12 years prior to his death in 2005. Labbe, once a Bowers curator, reportedly introduced Mingei officials to at least one figure at the center of the federal investigation (Mingei director Rob Sidner has reportedly said that the museum worked with art dealer Jon Markell upon Labbe’s recommendation).
One federal affidavit allegedly details Labbe’s relationship with Bob Olson, thought to be a longtime smuggler of Ban Chiang artifacts. Thai antiquity laws prohibit export of these and other items without special licensing.
Enter Apodaca, who outlined a simple test of the law’s effect. At his direction, a search of the popular eBay auction Web site served up no fewer than 13 pieces of pottery and jewelry supposedly from the Ban Chiang era, which dates to 1,000 B.C. Yes, the information says that many of the works are reproductions “” but some of the files include no such claim.
“This wonderful Ban Chiang bracelet,” states the description from one item, “dates back to Thailand between 1,000 and 300 B.C. The bangle is adorned with application work forming swirls and five thick dots. The … artifact is crafted from bronze, and the patina is highly appealing.”
The file further reads that the seller is based in Boulder, Colo. and that the bracelet could fetch up to $2,100 at electronic auction.
“But if this stuff is illegal,” Apodaca asked, “what are we looking at? None of this stuff is allowed out of Thailand? I thought [the Mingei matter] was an international art crime. That’s what Armand’s being accused of. I don’t see anybody raiding eBay. Do you?”
Apodaca apparently earned the right to address Labbe by his first name. He, too, was a Bowers curator and a Labbe colleague, having worked at the venue from the early 1980s until 1995.
Now an associate professor of American studies at Santa Ana’s Chapman University, he cited the chains of command that govern museum acquisitions and, ideally, the vigilance of the people within them. That little stunt on eBay is one thing, he said. Abandonment of the public trust is another.
“Armand,” he concluded, “was not [allegedly] doing this in a vacuum. Every curator, every museum, every board member… [is] charged with knowing what the international laws are concerning this material. If they all say, ‘Well, I just trusted in what he told me,’ then they’re telling you they didn’t do their job.
“Hell of a way to run an institution.”
For more information on the Mingei International Museum visit www.mingei.org.