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Showing posts with label Canada. Show all posts
Monday, December 14, 2020 - annapurna,art restitution,Canada,India,India Pride Project,Mackenzie Art Gallery,stolen gods,University of Regina,Vijay Kumar No comments
Voluntary Restitution of Indian Annapurna, the Hindu Goddess of food and nourishment, by University of Regina in Canada.
Image Credit: Dona Hall, courtesy of MacKenzie Art Gallery
Figure of Annapoorna (Benares, India, 18th century),
artist unknown, stone, 17.30 x 9.90 x 4.90 cm.
An 18th-century murti of the Hindu goddess Annapurna, which was stolen from India over a century ago, will be returning home soon from Canada. Upon the discovery that one of the idols in their collection had been stolen from a shrine in Varanasi, India, the Mackenzie Art Gallery at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan reached out to officials in India to discuss restitution.
The statue has been in the university's possession since 1936 when it was donated by Norman MacKenzie, the namesake of the university's gallery. The sculpture remained unquestioned until 2019 when artist Divya Mehra was invited to host a solo exhibition at the Gallery.
While doing research for her exhibition at the MacKenzie Art Gallery at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Divya Mehra discovered the statue's illicit origin. Her exhibition, entitled, From India to Canada and Back to India (There Is Nothing I Can Possess Which You Cannot Take Away), "unravels the West's obsession with simultaneously defining and consuming the histories and identities of other cultures. In this collection of reproduced, misclassified, staged, and stolen cultural property, Mehra deftly and playfully navigates complex networks of colonial entitlement, popular culture, art history, sacred objects, exotic adventurism, and novelty."
It was through her research in the university archives that she discovered the notes from Norman MacKenzie's trip to India in 1913 which revealed that the idol had been stolen from a small sanctuary along the Ganges, procured indirectly at the behest of MacKenzie. At the time the sculpture was accessioned into the museum's art collection the idol was misclassified as a representation of the god Vishnu and continued to be labelled as such until Mehra began her research.
When Mehra recognized that the clearly female sculpture was not Vishnu, she consulted with Dr. Siddhartha V. Shah, curator of South Asian Art at the Peabody Essex Museum who revealed that the deity depicted was in fact Annapurna, also known as the Queen of Benares and Hindu goddess of food and nourishment. Upon the discovery of the illicit origins of the artefact the artist approached John Hampton, interim CEO and Executive Director of the MacKenzie Art Gallery, regarding restitution. The university then took the steps to reach out to the High Commission of India to discuss the sacred object's return.
The proactive and voluntary repatriation of an artefact is quite unusual in the museum world, with repatriation often taking years of legal discussions and cultural diplomacy between the cultural institution and the aggrieved nation. Mr. Ajay Bisaria, High Commissioner of India commented that "the move to voluntarily repatriate such cultural treasures shows the maturity and depth of India-Canada relations".
The repatriation ceremony was held virtually on November 19th, with attendees from the High Commission of India, Global Affairs Canada, Canada Border Services Agency, the University of Regina, and the MacKenzie Art Gallery. Dr. Thomas Chase, Interim President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Regina stated during the ceremony that "as a university we have a responsibility to right historical wrongs and help overcome the damaging legacy of colonialism wherever possible...repatriating this statue does not atone for the wrong that was done a century ago, but it is an appropriate and important act today. I am thankful to the MacKenzie Art Gallery, the Indian High Commission, and the Department of Canadian Heritage for their roles in making it possible."
Image Credit: University of Regina
Screenshot from Repatriation Ceremony
The university and gallery have affirmed that as a result of the discovery of the illicit provenance of the Annapurna idol they will be conducting a full review of the rest of their collection. Alex King, the Curator for the University's art collection commented that "the repatriation of the Annapurna is part of a global, long-overdue conversation in which museums seek to address harmful and continuing imperial legacies built into, sometimes, the very foundations of their collections. As stewards of cultural heritage, our responsibility to act respectfully and ethically is fundamental, as is the willingness to look critically at our own institutional histories."
This is undoubtably a step in the right direction for cultural restitution, but it is also a reflection of how little is known about museum collections. Founder of the India Pride Project S. Vijay Kumar commented that "while the recent restitution is a welcome move it is pertinent to point out that a very distinct feminine sculpture holding a ladle and a bowl was displayed in an academic Institution since the mid-1930's as a Vishnu. It shows how little of displaced Indian art in Canada has been properly studied. Further that the paperwork attested to its dodgy provenance was within the University archives shows the importance of reviewing provenance and due diligence not just for current acquisitions but for the past as well. Museums in Canada have in general a very poor record in displaying collections let alone disclosing provenance publicly on their web sites and this is despite high profile cases linked to Subhash Kapoor and even prior that to the Pathur nataraja in 1980s. We hope this good trend catches on and other public museums engage experts into researching provenance or as a start put the available provenance online."
Image Credit: Sarah Fuller
Courtesy the artist and Georgia Scherman Projects
As this Annapurna returns to India her space in the museum collection will be filled by a new piece by Mehra titled 'There is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away (Not Vishnu: New ways of Darsána)'. She spoke with ARCA about the new piece explaining that "the work is a small bag of sand — purchased at a Hollywood prop store (rich in Indiana Jones memorabilia) and artificially aged with coffee, and dye —weighing the equivalent (2.4 lbs.) of the stolen stone goddess of Annapurna that is no longer a part of the collection. The bag sits upon an altar constructed as if for a film set, in front of a 'Jungle Vine' painted backdrop. The work is based on a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark — where Indian Jones steals an idol off of a pedestal from an ancient temple. He leaves a bag of sand with what he guesses to be the weight of the stolen idol." The new piece is a reversal of the gap left in the cultural heritage by the antiquarians of the past, the bag of sand now being left at the museums as the statue returns to the place it was stolen. It can also be seen as a commentary on the idolization in the modern world for characters such as Indiana Jones, who treated the cultural heritage of other countries as prized objects to acquire, careless of the value it held to the people it was stolen from.
By: Lynette Turnblom
Annapoorna Virtual Repatriation Ceremony. 2020. "Annapoorna Virtual Repatriation Ceremony." YouTube. November 20, 2020. https://youtu.be/q769-baqiaA.
Hampton, John G. 2020. "Divya Mehra: From India to Canada and Back to India (There Is Nothing I Can Possess Which You Cannot Take Away)." MacKenzie Art Gallery. 2020. https://mackenzie.art/experience/exhibition/divya-mehra-from-india-to-canada-and-back-to-india-there-is-nothing-i-can-possess-which-you-cannot-take-away/.
"Statue from the University of Regina's Art Collection Officially Repatriated to India in Virtual Repatriation Ceremony | Communications and Marketing, University of Regina." 2020. Uregina.Ca. November 19, 2020. https://www.uregina.ca/external/communications/feature-stories/current/2020/11-19.html.
"Statue from the University of Regina's Art Collection to Be Returned to India Following Virtual Repatriation Ceremony." 2020. MacKenzie Art Gallery. November 24, 2020. https://mackenzie.art/statue-from-the-university-of-reginas-art-collection-to-be-returned-to-india-following-virtual-repatriation-ceremony/.
Sunday, January 20, 2019 - Assyrian,Canada,Frieze,London,Matthew Bogdanos,Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,Persepolis,restitution,theft No comments
Stolen 80 years ago, a section of an Achaemenid-era (550-330 BC) bas-relief, once part of a long line of rock-carved soldiers displayed and then stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) and later recovered 2000 miles away in Edmonton, Canada has been put on temporary exhibition, touring at the Mashhad's Khorasan Great Museum, northeast Iran.
Patron views relief during an unveiling ceremony held at the
Khorasan Grand Museum on Monday, December 24, 2018
Image Credit: Iranian Student News Association
The limestone sculpture, from the UNESCO-registered site of Persepolis in southern Iran, was recently restituted to Iranian officials by the District Attorney of New York County in September, 2018.
Relief takes centerstage at the Khorasan Grand Museum
Wednesday, July 25, 2018 - Assyrian,Canada,Frieze,London,Matthew Bogdanos,Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,Persepolis,theft No comments
New York Supreme Court judge orders plundered bas-relief from the city of Persepolis must be returned to Iran
A New York Supreme Court judge has ordered the plundered bas-relief from the city of Persepolis, which dates from the 5th Century B.C.E., must be returned to Iran as the country from which authorities say it was stolen more than 80 years ago.
In February 2014 ARCA wrote about a sandstone bas-relief panel then-titled, "Head of a Guard" stolen in September 2011 from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) and found 2000 miles away in Edmonton. The Persian Achaemenid relief from Persepolis was one of the museum's only pieces representative of Persian art of the Achaemenid period (2nd half 6th century BCE to 330 BCE) and had been part of the museum's permanent collection for decades.
It was discovered thanks to a collaborative criminal investigation by the Sûreté du Québec and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in collaboration with a Loss Adjuster from the insurance firm AXA Art.
Shortly after its recovery, and with the MMFA unable, or uninterested, in buying the piece back from its insurer, the Persepolis relief was sold. AXA Art sold the relief to London antiquities dealer Rupert Wace, owner of Rupert Wace Ancient Art and the object entered the commercial art market.
Rare and highly valuable on the ancient art market, the relief's debut was highlighted in an article by Royal Academy of Art's Charles Saumarez Smith and Sam Phillips titled What to see at Frieze 2016. In that article, the pair picked out some of their favourite artwork on sale at the London fairs and this image of an ancient fellow was one of them.
The article opened with a high-resolution image of the Assyrian relief and went on to say that the antiquity was located at the booth of Sam Fogg near the show's entrance. It mentioned the relief as being museum quality and that it was once part of the Montreal Museum of Art collection but made no mention of its theft in Canada or why the Museum did not buy back the object at the time it was recovered. A further article in The Guardian stated that the piece was for sale for £2.2 million.
But then the little soldier didn't sell.
The Park Avenue Armory. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Later, on October 27, 2017, law enforcement authorities confiscated the antiquity from Rupert Wace's own stand at the Park Avenue Armory during the first hours of The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in New York. The seizure was done under orders from the New York district attorney's office on the basis that it had been unlawfully transported out of its country of origin.
Court records indicate that archeologists from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago had documented that the same bearded, eight-inch-square, relief of a Persian imperial guard could be seen in old photographs adorning the Persepolis ruins in Iran as late as the year 1936. Given that the Iranian government had criminalised the export of such antiquities in 1930, the New York authorities seized the antiquity as evidence in a possession of stolen property investigation.
Antiquities dealer Rupert Wace argued that the relief had been donated to the Quebec National Museum by Canadian department store heir and collector Frederick Cleveland Morgan sometime between 1950 and 1951 and had been openly exhibited at the museum without any requests from Iran up until the date it was stolen in 2011.
Image Credit: Courtesy of the
Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
But on Monday, July 23, 2018 a New York Supreme Court judge sided with Iran and ordered that the eight-inch-by-eight-inch work be returned to its country of origin on the basis that a thief cannot pass on good title on stolen goods.
As can be seen by this artworks presence in both the London and later New York sale venues, insurance claims can get complicated when it comes to magnificent art works once donated without fabricated, little, or no provenance to museums. Especially when it comes to objects donated during time periods when stricter standards of due diligence may not have been satisfactorily applied. This is especially true when high-value, high-portability and rapidly appreciating works of art are stolen and subsequently recovered years later.
To view New York's very very interesting Application for Turnover and its details on the transactions and due diligence of both AXA and the dealer purchaser in determining this object's legitimacy in the market, please see here.
To view New York's Final Turnover Order please see here.
By Lynda Albertson
Friday, October 14, 2016 - Canada,Conviction and Sentence,Metal Thefts,Museum thefts No comments
Conviction and Sentence - New Brunswick Museum Theft
Last month, Bruce Lee Marion pleaded guilty to possession of stolen property, valued at more than $5,000 for his role in the theft of four bronze plaques taken from the façade of the New Brunswick Museum (Musée du Nouveau-Brunswick) in Saint John, Canada. He was sentenced on October 13, 2016 to two years minus one day in provincial jail.
The four plaques, part of a series of nine commemorative bronzes produced by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada which highlight the stories of New Brunswickers who have made significant contributions to the region, were reported stolen by museum staff on July 28, 2016. One plaque recognized the country's Royal Navy Admiral Charles Carter Drury, a second recognized New Brunswick politician John Hamilton Gray, and the remaining two highlighted the lives of historians George McCall Theal and John Clarence Webster. Once mounted outside the museum, the plaques had been pried off the wall, most likely with a crowbar.
Marion was connected to the theft after scrap dealer, Robert Knox at Simpson Scrap Metal and Recycling reported the license plate of Marion's vehicle to the authorities after he heard radio news reports about the museum's loss and remembered that Marion had delivered material matching the plaques' description to the Lorneville scrap yard.
Given the recent increase in metal thefts in Canada, where scrap metal dealers say bronze and copper alloys can fetch up to Canadian $1.60 per pound, the museum has opted to remove the remaining five plaques for safekeeping.
Sunday, October 09, 2016 - art insurance,art theft,Assyrian,Canada,Frieze,London,Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,Persepolis No comments
A Persian soldier from Persepolis loses his second home
In February 2014 ARCA wrote about a sandstone bas-relief panel then-titled, "Head of a Guard" stolen in September 2011 from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) and found 2000 miles away in Edmonton in February 2014. The relief was recovered thanks to a collaborative criminal investigation by the Sûreté du Québec and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in collaboration with a Loss Adjuster from AXA Art.
At the time of the recovery, Clare Dewey, then a Claims Manager with AXA art in Canada stated that AXA's "responsibility to our policy holders doesn't end with a claims payment; we have a duty to work with law enforcement to recover cultural artefacts."
Achaemenid-era carving of Persian and Median soldiers in traditional
costume (Medians are wearing rounded hats and boots), in Persepolis, Iran
The Persian Achaemenid relief from Persepolis had been, at the time of its theft, part of the museum's permanent collection for decades. So imagine my disappointment when this photograph turned up on ARCA's Instagram feed.
A bit of follow-up research seems to indicate that the handsome soldier holding his weapon unfortunately is no longer part of the MMFA's collection and has entered the commercial art market as the piece is highlighted in an article by Royal Academy of Art's Charles Saumarez Smith and Sam Phillips titled What to see at Frieze 2016. In the article, the pair pick out some of their favourite artwork at this year's Frieze fairs in London and our little fella is one of them.
The article opens with a high-resolution image of the Assyrian relief from Persepolis and goes on to state that it is located at the display stand of Sam Fogg near the show's entrance. It mentions the relief being museum quality and that it was once part of the Montreal Museum of Art collection but makes no mention of its theft or why the piece apparently didn't return to the museum's collection after all. A guardian article states the piece is for sale for £2.2m.
At the time of the recovery, ARCA had interviewed Prof. John M. Fossey, Emeritus Curator, Mediterranean Archaeology for the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, who gave the following quote as to why the recovery was historically important:
"As the curator who was responsible for organizing the exhibition hall from which the object was stolen over two years ago, I am obviously very happy to see this beautiful work of ancient sculpture return to the museum. It was one of our only pieces representative of Persian art of the Achaemenid period (2nd half 6th century BCE to 330 BCE).
It represents in low relief the head and shoulder of an armed Persian guard and probably decorated the walls of one of the several Achaemenid palaces spread across the Persian empire. Similar pieces are found in various museums and most were looted from palace sites in the first part of the 19th century. This particular piece is very well preserved and had suffered no damage during its recent adventure.
The work of the RCMP and the Sureté du Québec in recovering this artefact was remarkable and the officers in question are to be complimented for the quality of their work and its successful end. We all hope that this success will deter would-be thieves from attempting other such thefts. The investigation continues to try and recover the second object stolen from the museum also in the autumn of 2011."
As can be seen by this artworks presence in the London sale venue at Regent's park, insurance claims can get complicated when it comes to magnificent art works held by museums. This is especially true when high-value, high-portability and rapidly appreciating works of art are stolen and subsequently recovered years later.
Who gets to keep an insured artwork usually depends on the policy-holder's "buy-back" rights; specifically written clauses contained in property insurance policies that insure against physical loss or damage of high-value tangible property. In many cases buy-back clauses give the insured, in this case a museum, first rights when in comes to buying the object back from the insurance company. The buy-back amount is usually the amount of the original physical loss payment plus, on some occasions, a loss adjustment fee.
When things go missing, in-house counsel for museums and boards of trustees must manage the financial loss when these assets are stolen and then weigh if it is in the museum's best interests to buy the object back if and when they are found. Sometimes museum's decline to do so, and sadly, as may be the case with this lovely example of Persian art of the Achaemenid period, sometimes a museum just doesn't choose to, or have the financial liquidity to do so, and the object then goes up for sale on the commercial art market.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - ARCA 2013,Canada,Joshua Knelman,Mark Collins No comments
The Toronto Star: ARCA graduate Mark Collins quoted in article on "Crimes of the art"
Last summer, ARCA awarded Mark Collins, a senior officer at the Ontario Provincial Police, the Minerva Law Enforcement Scholarship to attended the Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection. Murray Whyte, writing for the Toronto Star in "Crimes of the art" (March 24, 2014), reports:
Last month, thieves stole work from a collective of Toronto artists. OPP officer Mark Collins is doing what he can to get it back and build some respect for a criminal realm worth $6 billion a year.
Collins, officially assigned as an investigator to the Alcohol and Gaming Commission, was in attendance at a fundraiser for Creatures:Collective, the site of a robbery on Feb. 13 of four pieces of art:
The crowd of mostly young, artfully dishevelled downtown sorts sipped bulk-quality wine and perused the offerings on the walls: small works, for the most part, were offered for auction by a dozen or so artists to help raise a little money to cover the victims' losses and pay for what's become, in hindsight, a glaring oversight. "A security system," smiled Darren Leu ruefully, listing alongside it repairs to the back door and relief for the victims. Leu, the director of Creatures, chatted warmly and embraced a good many of the dozens of people who streamed in over the first hour of the event. He held a clipboard, tracking bids and handling of the auction. The gallery had a camera pointed at its front door, mounted on the wall across the street, he said. That morning, they found the camera oddly askew, directed at a storefront two doors down. "The first week of February was extremely windy," he said. "But still, the way they came in made it seem like they knew the space."
The Creatures: Collective case is being handled out of the Toronto Police Service's 14 Division, with an unofficial assist from Collins based on his particular expertise. "A lot of police here just write art theft up like a stolen laptop or iPad. It's not differentiated," he says. "It isn't following fingerprints; it's getting images of the works out there and making them too hot for the thief to handle. But if you start telling police forces they don't know what they're doing with this stuff, you end up with a lot of hurt feelings." Collins has always had a connection to art. "But I couldn't draw a straight line with a ruler," he said. "I might be able to do a Damien Hirst: I could pickle a shark, but it probably wouldn't turn out as well." Before getting involved in law enforcement, as a teen he worked as a night cleaner at the Art Gallery of Ontario. In 1992, he started policing traffic, writing tickets and plotting his next move. He became an investigator in 2000, but the idea of working with art lingered in the back of his mind. Then, a couple of years ago, he read Canadian author Josh Knelman's book Hot Art and the light went off. "I talked to everyone in that book," he said. "It made me frustrated: art theft is recognized as a serious crime, but it's like the drug trade. No one knows how much it actually represents." There are guesses. The most noted one is roughly $6 billion per year. Nonetheless, Collins is willing to start small. One of Chen's stolen works was part of a triptych, priced at $400. "It's kind of fun, putting it on Interpol or Scotland Yard, or the FBI and the international Art Loss (Register)," Collins said. Chen lost another work, a four-by-six-foot canvas he'd made with Kevin Columbus, destined for another show. "I guess it's the ultimate compliment," he said. Within hours of the theft, the pair set to work to replace the stolen painting. They finished it in a week. "It was just hateful," he said. "We couldn't let them take anymore."
Friday, February 14, 2014 - Archaeology,art theft,Assyrian,Canada,Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,Persepolis,Simon Metke No comments
Simon Metke and His Ongoing Relationship with "Protecting" Cultural Heritage
Journalists Cailynn Klingbeil and Jana G. Pruden from the Edmonton Journal have published an article where they have interviewed the 33 year old Edmonton man charged by the RCMP on January 29, 2014 with Possession Stolen Property over $5,000; Possess a Controlled Substance for the Purpose of Trafficking; and Possession of Proceeds of Crime in connection with the thefts from the Montreal Museum of Fine Art.
In a strange twist of you are famous three times and not just once, Simon Metke was first interviewed by CBC News Edmonton in December 2011 at his South Edmonton, Water's Edge condo on Saskatchewan Drive regarding incomplete works by the developer on the exterior of the highrise development.
Photo Credit: CBC News Edmonton
During his interview with Klingbeil and Pruden, Metke indicated he was drawn to the Achaemenid bas-relief panel stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2011 because of his own interest in Mesopotamian religion and art. He also indicated that he was pleased with having protected the object so that it didn't get destroyed or lost.
Mr. Metke's feeling of protection towards cultural patrimony also seems to have included historic houses. In March 2013 he was listed as a campaign team member for an Indiegogo crowd sourcing effort to raise $80,000 to preserve a historical landmark home to be designated as "The Healing Arts History House". The home was to be utilized as a community centre for art, massage, music, dance, health, sustainable research, and community living. The project only raised $1450 CAD.
CTV Edmonton News has a live interview with the puzzled Mr. Metke which Canadian viewers can see here.
In further information related to this ongoing investigation, ARCA was informed by Sergente Mélanie Dumaresq, Agent d'information, Service des communications avec les médias for the Sûreté du Québec (via email) that no reward has been paid out related to this case. When asked if police acted on a tip, Sergente Dumaresq replied that "Information received from the public enabled us to advance the investigation and identify the suspect." She added that the investigation was begun by the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) but was transferred to the Sûreté du Québec in order to make use of the expertise of the integrated artworks investigation team, a specialized team composed of members of the Sûreté du Québec and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Sergente Dumaresq stated that the investigation indicates that the suspect did not commit the theft at the MMFA, but purchased the object knowing that it had been stolen.
Metke has been ordered to appear in an Edmonton courtroom on March 19, 2014.
Thursday, February 13, 2014 - Archaeology,art theft,Assyrian,Canada,Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,Persepolis No comments
AXA Art Insurance, the Sûreté du Québec, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Announce the recovery of a rare and valuable Achaemenid Bas-Relief Stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2011
Sandstone, Head of a Guard photo by @DomenicFazioli
At a press conference today in Montreal, the Sûreté du Québec - Enquête de l'Équipe intégrée des enquêtes en œuvres d'art and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in cooperation with AXA Art Insurance Limited and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, announced the recovery of the Achaemenid bas-relief panel stolen from the gallery more than two years ago.
On October 26, 2011, a surveillance camera at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts recorded a suspect in a baseball cap walking out of the gallery with a satchel believed by police and the museum to possibly contain one of the stolen artifacts reported to be worth "hundreds of thousands of dollars" (Montreal Gazette).
Three months later, an Art Alert (Case File : 11-98, dated February 14, 2012) issued by the Enquête de l'Équipe intégrée des enquêtes en œuvres d'art (the official name for Canada's Art Crime Enforcement Unit headquartered in Montreal) publicly identified the stolen objects as a 1st century C.E. yellow Numidian marble "Head of a Man, Egypto-archaizing style" and a more valuable 5th century B.C.E. Sandstone "Head of a Guard (fragment of a low relief)" from Persepolis. The announcement advertised a "Substantial Reward (Offered by AXA Art, subject to specific conditions) for information leading to the recovery" of the two archaeological objects. To avoid compromising the police investigation, no details of the theft aside from the video of the potential suspect, were released.
According to the press release issued for today's press conference, the $1.2 million sandstone bas-relief panel "Head of a Guard", valued at 1.2 million dollars, was recovered during a raid on an Edmonton house by an Alberta unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on January 22, 2014. This action led to the arrest of a 33-year-old man who has been charged with possession of stolen goods.
Surete du Quebec's spokesperson Joyce Kemp said in today's press conference said the unnamed individual arrested had purchased the object for an amount significantly inferior to its actual value. The investigation and subsequent arrest have not, as yet, led to the recovery of the second artifact, the Yellow Numidian marble "Head of a Man", valued at $40,000 and reportedly stolen on October 26, 2011 nor the thief responsible for both thefts.
ARCA spoke with Mark Dalryrmple, the specialized fine art loss adjuster appointed by AXA ART assigned to this case, and asked him for his thoughts on today's recovery. His responded positively with "No comment since as may be appreciated, the matter is sub judice, but we are extremely pleased that it is been recovered safely".
Here's an excerpt from today's formal press release from the insurance company who offered the reward two years ago:
AXA ART announces the recovery of a rare and valuable Achaemenid Bas-Relief Following an intensive year long investigation between the police authorities in Montréal and Edmonton, AXA ART is pleased to announce the recovery of a rare and valuable Persian Achaemenid bas-relief panel. The panel, together with a Roman marble head, was stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) in 2011. The small portable panel was recovered almost 2,000 miles away in Edmonton and has now been returned to the Montréal Museum. "Given the difficulties involved in the recovery of stolen artwork we would like to acknowledge the diligence and extraordinary efforts of the Sûreté du Québec and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in collaboration with our Loss Adjuster, in securing the return of this precious cultural property", commented AXA ART's Claims Manager, Clare Dewey. "The recovery should serve as encouragement for on-going investigations and as a deterrent for similar crimes. Our responsibility to our policy holders doesn't end with a claims payment; we have a duty to work with law enforcement to recover cultural artefacts." The Achaemenid relief dates from the 5th century BC. It is made of limestone, and worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It has been part of the permanent collection held by the Montréal Museum for decades. AXA ART is thrilled that this object can be returned to the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts where it will continue to be enjoyed by the public for generations to come.
UPDATED: This afternoon via email, ARCA interviewed Prof. John M. Fossey, Emeritus Curator, Mediterranean Archaeology for the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, who gave the following quote as to why the recovery is historically important:
"As the Curator who was responsible for organizing the exhibition hall from which the object was stolen over two years ago, I am obviously very happy to see this beautiful work of ancient sculpture return to the museum. It was one of our only pieces representative of Persian art of the Achaemenid period (2nd half 6th century BCE to 330 BCE). It represents in low relief the head and shoulder of an armed Persian guard and probably decorated the walls of one of the several Achaemenid palaces spread across the Persian empire. Similar pieces are found in various museums and most were looted from palace sites in the first part of the 19th century. This particular piece is very well preserved and had suffered no damage during its recent adventure. The work of the RCMP and the Sureté du Québec in recovering this artefact was remarkable and the officers in question are to be complimented for the quality of their work and its successful end. We all hope that this success will deter would-be thieves from attempting other such thefts. The investigation continues to try and recover the second object stolen from the museum also in the autumn of 2011."
Sergente Mélanie Dumaresq, spokesperson for the Sureté du Québec, answered a few questions also via email on behalf of Canada's Art Crime Team:
Was a reward paid? In this case no reward was given.
Were the police acting on a tip? Information received from the public enabled us to advance the investigation and identify the suspect. The investigation begun by the Montreal Police (SPVM) but it was transferred to the SQ in order to make use of the expertise of the integrated artworks investigation team, which is a specialized team composed of members of the SQ and the RCMP.
What charges will be filed against the suspect? The investigation shows that he did not commit the theft at the MMFA, but purchased the object knowing that it had been stolen. The arrested suspect may be charged with possession of criminally obtained property. He will appear on march 19, 2014 in the morning at the Edmonton courthouse.
We have posted a copy of the French press release from the Canadian authorities in Quebec below (the original can be viewed here):
Objet: Artéfact de 1,2 million $ rapatrié au Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal
Montréal, le 13 février 2014 – L'Équipe intégrée des enquêtes en œuvres d'art de la Sûreté du Québec a retrouvé, le 22 janvier dernier à Edmonton, l'un des deux artefacts volés en septembre et en octobre 2011 au Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. La pièce d'une valeur de 1,2 million $, qui a été volée le 3 septembre 2011, est un fragment de bas-relief perse datant du 5e siècle avant Jésus-Christ. Elle a été rapatriée au Québec et restituée au Musée des beaux-arts à la suite de sa découverte lors d'une perquisition dans un logement d'Edmonton en Alberta. Un homme de 33 ans d'Edmonton a été arrêté à la suite de cette perquisition réalisée avec la collaboration des policiers de la Division K (Alberta) de la Gendarmerie royale du Canada.
L'enquête se poursuit pour retrouver le deuxième artefact volé, une statuette de marbre représentant la tête d'un homme de style Égypto-archaïsant datant du 1er siècle avant Jésus-Christ. Cette pièce a été volée le 26 octobre 2011. Toute information pouvant permettre de la retrouver peut être communiquée à la Centrale de l'information criminelle de la Sûreté du Québec, au 1 800 659-4264 ou à l'adresse art.alerte@surete.qc.ca. Tous les signalements seront traités de façon confidentielle. Soulignons la collaboration de la compagnie AXA Art qui a permis de faire progresser cette enquête. L'Équipe intégrée des enquêtes en œuvres d'art est formée d'enquêteurs de la Sûreté du Québec et de la Gendarmerie royale du Canada. Elle travaille en étroite collaboration avec différentes organisations qui détiennent des expertises permettant d'enquêter sur les crimes liés au marché de l'art.
Pour plus d'informations sur l'Équipe d'enquête et pour s'inscrire au service gratuit de diffusion ART ALERTE, les intervenants du monde de l'art sont invités à visiter le site web de la Sûreté du Québec, au www.sq.gouv.qc.ca.
Here's a link to the article announcing today's press conference and links to other published reports:
"Edmonton man charged with possessing stolen artifact 'honoured' to have looked after it", Jana G. Purden, Cailynn Klingbeil, Edmonton Journal:
EDMONTON - For two years, a stolen ancient artifact worth $1.2 million sat on an Ikea bookshelf in a south Edmonton apartment, displayed above a plastic Star Wars spaceship, flanked by crystals and a small collection of stuffed animals. The Persian bas-relief sculpture, dating from the fifth century BC, sat slightly behind a handmade vase decorated with a painted fish and filled with dried flowers. Then, at about 9 a.m. on Jan. 22, a team of police officers working with Quebec RCMP's Integrated Art Crime Investigation Team banged on Simon Metke's apartment door. "There's like 20 RCMP officers flooding my place, the sunshine's coming in, the crystals are making rainbows everywhere, the bougainvillea flowers are glowing in the sunrise light," Simon Metke, 33, said Thursday evening, sitting cross-legged in his south Edmonton apartment. "And I'm just sort of, 'What the heck is going on?' And, OK, here's the thing I think you're looking for. This thing is a lot more significant than I thought it was."
Police say the sculpture was stolen from Montreal's Museum of Fine Arts in September 2011. The same thief is then believed to have taken a second piece from the museum a month later. That piece, a statuette of a man dating from the first century B.C., is still missing. The man who took the pieces has not been charged. Police aren't saying what led them to Metke. Metke said he bought the sculpture from the neighbour of a friend in Montreal, thinking it was an "interesting replica" or maybe an antique — but mostly drawn to it because of his own interest in Mesopotamian religion and art. "I didn't realize that it was an actual piece of the Persepolis," he said, referring to the ancient Persian ceremonial capital. "I'm honoured to have had it, but I feel really hurt that I wasn't able to have a positive experience in the end with it." He said he was somewhat skeptical about buying the piece for $1,400 — mostly because he thought it might not be worth it. In the end, he said he bought it to help out his friend, a "starving artist" who received a $300 commission, and the seller, who said he needed to pay child support and rent, and assured Metke it was "a good deal."
"Police track down artifacts stolen from the Museum of Fine Arts", Sue Montgomery, Montreal Gazette:
Twice during fall 2011, someone walked into Montreal's Museum of Fine Arts and walked out with two ancient artifacts worth close to $1.3 million. The Sûreté du Québec, with the help of the RCMP, recently found one of the rare pieces of art in an Edmonton home and arrested a man. The other, from the first century BC, is still missing. Yet the museum said its security system — cameras and agents — is fine and they have no intention of putting the treasures under protective glass. "This is very unusual," Danielle Champagne, director of the museum's foundation, said about the thefts. "Montrealers are very respectful." The last theft from the museum was in 1972, she said.
"Artifact taken from Montreal museum found in Edmonton; 2nd piece still missing", Peter Rakobowchuk, The Canadian Press:
A reward was offered several months after the theft. Provincial police spokeswoman Joyce Kemp said Thursday that whoever bought the artifact after it was stolen paid less than what it was actually worth. "We know that the person purchased it for a price really inferior to what is the real value of the artifact," she told reporters. Kemp would not give any details about how it was purchased. "The investigation is still ongoing (and) it might interfere with the next steps of the investigation," she said.
The SQ/RCMP Integrated Art Crime Investigation Unit issued an Art Alerte for the "Recovered World of Art" (Case File: 11-098) to announce the return of sandstone Bas-Relief, noting its size (21 x 20.5 x 3 cm). Here's the link to the YouTube channel for the Sûreté du Québec if they publish a video of the conference.
by Lynda Albertson, ARCA's CEO and Catherine Schofield Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief
Thursday, December 05, 2013 - art fraud,Canada,news media 1 comment
"The Crime That Pays? The Canadian Print Media's Construction of Art Fraud, 1978-2012" authored by Josh and Adie Nelson in the Fall 2013 issue of The Journal of Art Crime
Josh and Adie Nelson authored "The Crime That Pays? The Canadian Print Media's Construction of Art Fraud, 1978-2012" in the Fall 2013 issue of The Journal of Art Crime. From the abstract:
This article examines the Canadian print media's construction of art fraud from January 1978 until December 2012. Our content analysis of N=386 articles reveals that art fraud was portrayed as a low-risk crime that pays and as a "victimless" crime. In contrast to conventional crime news, which is situated in the front portions of newspapers, articles on art fraud were most often positioned in sections devoted to "entertainment." The media's portrayal of art fraud as a phenomenon that was more entertaining than vexatious resonated in its portrayal of offenders as charming rogues and artful dodgers, with the most notorious of offenders depicted as heroes, and in its casting of victims as fools or "legitimate" victims. This peculiar construction would seem to offer considerable inducements for schadenfreude, a revelling in the misfortunes of others.
From the article's introduction:
Examinations of the "professional imperatives" (Chibnall, 1977: 23) that guide press reporting on crime have repeatedly suggested the folly of supposing that these dicta encourage a faithful rendering of the incidence and dynamics of crime. Thus, in emphasizing that journalists are tasked daily with producing a "certain quantity of what is called 'news'," Breed's (1955) classic study suggested how this role obligation could catalyze a "persistent search in the drab episodes of city life for the romantic and picturesque, its dramatic accounts of victim and crime" (see also crime: e.g., Ericson, Baranek & Chan, 1987, 1989, 1991; Hugill, 2010; Katz, 1987; Peelo, 2006; Rajiva & Batacharya, 2010). While the frenetic quality of this quest may have abated in more recent eras with the rise of "supermarket journalism" (Mawby, 2010a, 2010b; McGovern, 2010) and the concomitant ability of journalists to "simply 'buy' their stories off the shelf from the press offices that are responsible for 'managing the media' about a particular crime or event" (Wilson, 2011), journalism's cynical mantra, "if it bleeds, it leads," continues to resonate both its disdain for coverage of the mundane and prosaic and rapt readiness to endow statistically atypical incidents with especial lustre. As Reiner (2002: 307) observed in his commentary upon the news media's tendency to position the extraordinary as ordinary, "[f]rom the earliest studies (e.g., Harris 1932) onward, analyses of news reports have found that crimes of violence are featured disproportionately compared to their incidence in official statistics. Indeed, a general finding has been the lack of relationship between patterns and trends in crime news and crime statistics."
Josh Nelson is a graduate student at the University of Guelph in the department of art history & visual culture and, beginning in September, 2013, a doctoral student in art history at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His doctoral research addresses a criminal event that the Canadian print media early and, ostensibly enduringly, dubbed the "Great Canadian art fraud"; it examines the social context in which this highly-publicized incident emerged in media reports of the early 1960s, was weighted with significance, framed as portentous and defined as a "crime against culture."
Adie Nelson received her PhD at the London School of Economics and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology & Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo. She is the author/co-author/editor/co-editor of approximately two dozen books and her writings have appeared in journals such as the British Journal of Sociology, Psychology of Women Quarterly, the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Qualitative Sociology and the International Review of Victimology.
Design for this issue and all issues of The Journal of Art Crime is the work of Urška Charney.
Here's a link to ARCA's website on The Journal of Art Crime (includes Table of Contents for previous issues).
Saturday, November 10, 2012 - art security,artists,Canada,Stolen Art Recovered No comments
Eleven year old boy finds and returns stolen painting to artist in British Columbia
Mathew Claxton of the Langley Advance in British Columbia broke the story of an 11-year-old boy who recovered a stolen painting from a neighbor's garage sale. Artist Reet Herder had 17 artworks stolen from an exhibit at an art gallery in Langley in August 2005. Matt Hanna, bargain hunter and now probably our youngest art investigator, noticed a painting of sail boats in a cove titled "Harbouring Great Memories". Hanna Googled it and discovered the painting had been reported as stolen. I wondered if the boy had used any of the conventional stolen art databases so I too Googled the name of the painting and discovered a website named "Stolen Fine Art", a service of MyArtClub.com so I emailed one of the website masters, Cam Anderson, who responded to my questions. This is an excerpt:
The Story of Stolen Fine Art really starts with Reet Herder. Reet was the first to let us know there was an issue. Reet wrote that she and others had suffered such a devastating loss. I shocked to hear just how bad it was. We always like to respond to artist request for features, or listen to their business issues, and look for ways we can assist. This practice has been wonderful for both the artists and for our development as a service.
Peter Newell and I put our heads together and figured we could host the images of stolen art as a collection. The MyArtClub site was already set up to host artist groups, so we simply leveraged that as a way to focus on this awful issue. What we did ask artists for was a police reference number of some kind and police and artist contact information. We have a form for artists to fill out (available on our website).
Over the years Reet has been really a founding member of our website and involved in creating the form. Karma has a way doesn't it? She helped build a service that we host and hope it is of some use to artists, and voila – her art is the one found through the Internet!
I telephoned Reet to congratulate her on the recovery. Reet is amazed at not only the painting's recovery but the media attention! "All I did was paint it" she says. This was one of her earlier works, but she was happy with how it had turned out. It was based on a visit to Schooner Cove. The story continues: as might be expected the painting itself was not in the best of conditions. However with luck Reet had prepared to create giclees from this art, and so offered this kind family a giclee in return which they accepted. Reet says " the giclee's colours look better". She presents it tomorrow to the father at his work.
About us: My wife Heather Anderson and a neighbour Terry Newell, both artists, thought their husbands should get together and do websites for artists. I was studying Internet Marketing and had many years in Sales and Marketing, and Peter Newell had many years in computer software and project management.
We created the site to be a fair deal. We believe artists deserve assistance with business issues, and we wanted on our part to give back to our community using our skills. Also we found and still do find so many who offer help to artists seem to be out to gouge them. Maybe that is reality – you have to charge high prices to survive, but as we have jobs, we don't. But look at this example: in the year 2000 a company offered my wife an artist website with 10 images for $1,000. At the time too, most artist websites were static, artists had to repay the site creators to change an artwork. We wanted to fix that. So we kicked off MyArtClub.Com in year 2000 ( such an early time! Artists then had no digital cameras, and used scanners to create images for their sites).
We set out to launch a service for what is now $45 per year that gives amazing value for an artist website. We had to follow our artist's wives directive – they should be able to change anything they wished, anytime, instantly. In other words, be in total control. However, just having a website is not the answer. You need traffic. We advise artists what they can do to build traffic, and have through newsletters and our blog tried to keep them informed about ideas and opportunities.
We felt a "portal" into the art world would help visitors see more art, and drive traffic to artists' sites. And yet we provide each artist a standalone website. We thought the name MyArtClub fit as we are here to help both artist and art patrons connect. We also know that many artist belong to collectives, sometimes called clubs although many feel that is a little beneath the professional artist. We decided MyArtClub even if controversial had the right motivations, and buyers liked the name, so we launched it.
While we appear to be local to BC, in fact we have artists who have posted art from all over the world. Some load a free 3 images, so they can link from our portal back to their website. It is our form of links. Others sign up for an artist website, we have many across Canada and some in UK, Australia, Europe even Asia. Sadly we have had very little take up in the USA. We have really not tried hard, but I think the out of country aspect maybe an issue. Anyway, big opportunity when retired!
We are here to help artists with their Internet marketing. We give free presentations on what artists need to know. We host a large database which we advertise to increase artists chances of being found online. We have researched the customer base to help our artists understand the who, what, where, when and why of art buyers, and we give this report free to all who ask. All this and so far we have not taken a single dollar of commissions.
Either we are crazy, or we really do just want to help artists progress with their business.
Monday, October 29, 2012 - art theft,Bill Reid,Canada,Museum of Anthropology,RCMP,Stolen Art Recovered,UBC,Vancouver No comments
Bill Reid Theft 2008: Postmedia News obtains RCMP and university campus security records to answer outstanding questions about the heist of UBC's Museum of Anthropology and the investigation that followed
Haida artist Bill Reid's art safely back on display
at UBC's Museum of Anthropology (Photo Sezgin)
by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-chief
More than four years after robbery at University of British Columbia's Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver Canada, journalist Douglas Quan has been persistent in obtaining information about the theft and the investigation that led to the recovery of the stolen Bill Reid jewelry:
Newly released RCMP and university campus security records obtained by Postmedia News through federal and provincial access-to-information laws, plus court documents, offer a fuller picture of the mysterious theft and its bizarre fallout.
At about 4:40 a.m. on May 24, 2008, thieves removed "a glass panel" from the back of the museum, "unleashed a cloud of bear spray, presumably to repel any guards who might try to intervene" and smashed a glass showcase to steal $2 million of jewelry designed by Haida artist Bill Reid (Quan, quoting campus security report). The heist was estimated to have taken less than 3 minutes (compared to the more than 2-minute Kunsthal Rotterdam heist on October 16). According to Quan's review of the report, "security cameras stopped recording before the break-in". UBC's Museum of Anthropology has since been renovated and expanded.
Quan points out that in 2008 the security guard at the Museum of Anthropology had been widely reported to be on a smoking break at the time of the robbery:
Contrary to media reports that suggested he had been on a smoke break and apparently oblivious to trouble, the guard alerted dispatch when the alarms started wailing, the former security officer said.
Protocol at the time dictated that the guard stay put and that dispatch send another officer to walk through the museum. But the walk-through never happened, the former security officer said.
An alarm falsely attributed to "invalid"and a "false sense of security" (Quan) were problematic.
According to Quan, the investigation, led by the RCMP major crimes section, involved an anonymous tip within days of the theft; police surveillance of the suspect; background checks on construction workers involved in the renovation of the museum, a fired security guard, and "disgruntled" artists who had worked with Reid. A search of a home connected to a man with "at least 11 convictions for property crimes" led to the recovery of "all but two of the stolen items" on June 8 (just a little more than two weeks after the theft). By August the other items were recovered: "The last piece, the argillite pipe, was dropped off anonymously. (Quan)"
Then in January 2009, CBC reported the RCMP had paid $20,000 to a criminal informant for "help with the investigation." According to Quan, the RCMP "would not say this week who received the money or how much was paid" and the case is "unresolved" and that "two years after charges were recommended in the museum heist, Crown counsel notified RCMP there wasn't enough evidence to lay charges."
Friday, October 26, 2012 - Canada,cultural property crimes,Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,museum theft No comments
Theft Anniversary: Two artifacts (Assyrian and Roman) stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Art last year
by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor
Last year on October 26, someone stole two ancient sculptures from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Three months later, the Montreal Gazette and AXA Art, the insurance company which insured the pieces, released a video on YouTube from the surveillance camera inside the museum showing a suspect wanted for questioning in the investigation.
AXA Art Insurance issued a press release dated February 13, 2012: "AXA Art Offering Substantial Reward for Safe Recovery of Rare Artifacts". The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts issued no press release in 2011 or 2012 regarding the theft, a reward, or an ongoing investigation -- at least it's not listed on the museum's website.
The Sûreté du Québec's Art Alerte publicized the stolen works and the poster in English and French offering the "Substantial Reward" also on February 14 (Alain Dumouchel responded in an email at that time that the Montreal police were in charge of the investigation). The Art Alerte for Case File: 11-98 also included a picture of the suspect captured by the museum's surveillance cameras.
Reward Poster
The "Head of a guard" (fragment of a low relief) is estimated to as old as 5th century BCE from Persepolis (Persia), the capital of the Achaemenid dynasty (558-330 BC).
Assyrian low relief Sandstone, 21 x 20.5 x 3 cm
A marble head dating from the Roman
Empire 20,2 x 13,3 x 8,5 cm
The second object, Head of a Man (Egypto-archaizing style) of yellow Numidian marble, is dated from the Roman Empire around 1st century A.D.
Neither of these objects was highlighted in the MMFA's museum guide.
In 1972, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts was the site of Canada's largest art theft when three thieves stole 18 paintings, including a painting attributed to Rembrandt. The theft remains unsolved after an aborted ransom attempt and 17 of the paintings are still missing.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012 - Canada,largest art theft in Canada,Montreal Museum of Fine Arts No comments
40th anniversary of Canada's biggest art theft quietly passes
This painting by Rembrandt was stolen from
the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
in 1972 and remains missing.
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin,
ARCA Blog Editor
Forty years ago today three men robbed the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts -- they have never been caught and 17 of the paintings have never been found.
When three men stole 18 paintings by such well-known artists as Rembrandt, Corot, Courbet, Breughel and Millet from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on September 4, 1972 it was the largest art theft in North America. The thieves have never been arrested for this art heist and the pictures remain missing but it was not the perfect crime. The setting off of an old security alarm scared the thieves off and prevented them from stealing more art. And the attempt to ransom back the loot, which also included 39 pieces of jewelry and decorative art, failed.
One of the difficulties of describing the robbery of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1972 is that the police do not show the crime's files to journalists or researchers since the case remains open. Luana Parker's reporting after the heist for The [Montreal] Gazette under the headline "Art worth $2 million stolen from museum" provided the foundation for much of information about the thieves' physical description and how they stole the paintings and 39 pieces of jewelry and decorative art. Her work is footnoted in an academic article on this subject published in the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime. Five years ago, retired journalist Bill Bantey, the museum's director of public relations and the first official alerted to the art heist, wrote an article about the theft. In 2009, I met with Mr. Bantey and retired Montreal police officer Alain Lacoursière to piece together information about the theft. Mr. Lacoursière discussed information he recalled from working on the case in the 1990s while investigating art crime.
Here's a synopsis of my version of the art heist nicknamed "The Skylight Caper" (by columnist L. Ian MacDonald writing "Montreal this morning" for The Gazette in 1975):
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts was robbed in the early hours of Labor Day on September 5, 1972. The city had plenty of distractions that weekend. On Friday night, three men set fire to the Blue Bird Café and Wagon Wheel killing 37 people of the 200 trapped on the supper floor of the country western bar. On Saturday night, Canada's national hockey team lost 7-3 to the "amateur" team from the Soviet Union which stunned overly confidant fans. Sunday's newspapers were filled with stories about the victims from Montreal's fatal fire, otherwise Montreal residents were looking forward to a rematch against the Russians in Toronto the next day and marking the end of a summer exposition with fireworks.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the city's most prestigious art gallery was expecting a quiet weekend. The museum's director, its head of security, and even the president of the Board of Trustees were on vacation in Mexico and the United States. The 60-year-old building housing the art collection, created through donations from some of Canada's wealthiest residents, had a skylight under repair and was scheduled to be closed for a major renovation.
Early Monday morning a man wearing "picks" on his boots (similar to equipment worn by telephone and utility repair personnel) scaled a tree outside of the building on Sherbrooke Street to reach the roof. He found a construction ladder, slipped it down to the ground for two more men to join him on top of the museum building. The three men walked over to the skylight under construction and opened it up. A plastic tarp laid down by the construction crew had de-activated the skylight's alarm. The thieves, who had a 12-pump shotgun and a .38 Smith and Wesson handgun, slid down nylon ropes at about 1.30 a.m. They ordered a security guard to lie down on the floor, when he did not move quickly enough, two shots were fired into the ceiling. Two more guards arrived and the thieves tied up the three guards. While one man watched the security guards, the other two men gathered up paintings, jewelry and other valuable portable objects. Luana Parker cites this description of the thieves from the police report:
They said they saw two long-haired men, about five feet, six inches tall, and wearing ski hoods and sports clothes. One spoke French, the other English. But they heard another French voice of a man they never saw.
The thieves planned to escape in a museum panel truck parked in the garage. However, one of the thieves "tripped the side-entry alarm on his way out with the first load, the men ran out, taking what they could" (Parker).
While Parker reported that the thieves "escaped in a panel truck", Alain Lacoursière told me that the thieves ran out of the building, carrying only half of the paintings that they had selected.
Bill Bantey, the senior museum official on duty that weekend, received a phone call from the head security guard about an hour after the thieves had escaped. He told the security guard to call the police, and then Bantey went down to the museum in the early morning hours. Ruth Jackson, a long-time museum curator, also arrived at the museum, now a crime scene, and would describe later what she saw:
There was a sea of broken frames and backings, and smashed showcases. Upstairs in the room where the major theft took place, it was just devastation. They'd cleaned it out completely.
For the second pile, they'd gone around selecting from various rooms. I shudder when I think what might have been if they hadn't opened that door ... With what they'd proposed to remove, if they'd been undisturbed -- it was just like they meant a general clear out of the museum.
Mr. Bantey organized a press conference a few hours later and released information about the stolen paintings. Only one painting was recovered a few months later.
You can read more about the theft on my blog here and see images of the stolen paintings.


We've finished lectures for the semester, and I'm officially recovering. It was fun teaching Logic and Non-Classical Logic, but it was also a hard slog. Next semester I have a light teaching load, with my honours logic seminar.
Now I have to slog through some marking, and some writing. This weekend, however, I'm in Adelaide for a little ``logic axis" meeting. I'll give a talk on fixing up Prawitz's proof theory for the positive fragment of the relevant logic R. I'm still working on the written version of the paper.


Calls for applications that precede major and developmental Games selections are managed by the organizing committees and will vary in length of time in advance of the specific Game. SPC establishes internal member deadlines for application submission to meet organizing committee criteria.
SPC members are electronically notified directly of all Calls for Applications. Calls for Applications are also available to members on the SPC website when a member has logged in.
SPC members who are in the Credential Program and have maintained an Active status are considered for Games selection.
Applications are submitted to Sport Physiotherapy Canada by the specified deadline date. Late applications are not considered. The applicant's membership status and eligibility as per the selection policy are checked.
The Sport Physiotherapy Canada Selection Team (comprised of 3-5 Diploma holders working independently) is forwarded all applicants' biographical sketches and submitted applications for ranking. The ranking is based on a pre-established National selection criteria grid and is applied equally to all applicants.
Each Selection Team member follows the established grid to score the applicants. Their resulting scores are submitted to the Selection Team Leader who compiles all scores to determine the overall rankings. These are sent to the SPC National Office.
SPC National Office provides the names in ranked order to the Games Organizing Committee based on their specific guidelines.
Final selection is made by the Games organizers. They decide which and how many of the ranked candidates will be offered positions on the medical team. The Games organizers are responsible for notifying the selected individuals and SPC of their decision. SPC will notify the unsuccessful applicants before announcing publicly the names of selected members.
Games organizers are responsible for all further communication with the successful candidates.


5. An American band 1) Hailing from Sweden, Play encompasses pop and r&b to create a youthful sound. Formed in 2000 by Laila Bagge, Play was made up of 4 girls; Anna Sundstrand, Anaïs Lameche, Rosie Munter, and Faye Hamlin.
Read more about Play on Last.fm.


text:
Esther Hart är artistnamnet för Esther Katinka Hartkamp, född 3 juni 1970 i Epe, Nederländerna och som är en holländsk sångerska.

Eurovision Song Contest
Esther Hart var planerad att uppträda i brittiska A song for Europe - BBC:s uttagning till Eurovision Song Contest 2003 - med låten Wait for Moment, men hon drog tillbaka sin medverkan, då hon även tävlade i den nederländska uttagningen till tävlingen, vilket är emot tävlingens regler. Hon vann den nederländska uttagningen Nationaal Songfestival med sitt bidrag One More Night.  I finalen i Riga, Lettland, slutade bidraget på 13:e plats. Hon återvände till tävlingen som den holländska röstavlämnaren under omröstningen av Eurovision Song Contest 2008.

Referenser

Kvinnor
Födda 1970
Nederländska sångare
Artister som representerat Nederländerna i Eurovision Song Contest
Levande personer
Deltagare i Eurovision Song Contest 2003

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Many tasks in the modern world involve collecting information, such as infrastructure inspection, security and surveillance, environmental monitoring, and search and rescue. All of these tasks involve searching an environment to detect, localize, and track objects of interest, such as damage to roadways, suspicious packages, plant species, or victims of a natural disaster. In any of these tasks the number of objects of interest is often not known at the onset of exploration. Teams of robots can automate these often dull, dirty, or dangerous tasks to decrease costs and improve speed and safety. This dissertation addresses the problem of automating data collection processes, so that a team of mobile sensor platforms is able to explore an environment to determine the number of objects of interest and their locations. In real-world scenarios, robots may fail to detect objects within the field of view, receive false positive measurements to clutter objects, and be unable to disambiguate true objects. This makes data association, i.e., matching individual measurements to targets, difficult. To account for this, we utilize filtering algorithms based on random finite sets to simultaneously estimate the number of objects and their locations within the environment without the need to explicitly consider data association. Using the resulting estimates they receive, robots choose actions that maximize the mutual information between the set of targets and the binary events of receiving no detections. This effectively hedges against uninformative actions and leads to a closed form equation to compute mutual information, allowing the robot team to plan over a long time horizon. The robots either communicate with a central agent, which performs the estimation and control computations, or act in a decentralized manner. Our extensive hardware and simulated experiments validate the unified estimation and control framework, using robots with a wide variety of mobility and sensing capabilities to showcase the broad applicability of the framework.
Dames, Philip, "Multi-Robot Active Information Gathering Using Random Finite Sets" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1676.


text:
Black Eyed Peas Label Sues Toy Maker For 'My Poops' Remix
BMG Rights Management owns 75 percent of the publishing rights to Black Eyed Peas' 2005 song My Humps. And they're flexing that ownership in a new $10 million lawsuit against MGA Entertainment, the toy maker behind the Poopsie Slime Surprise unicorn toy.
According to court documents published by StorieReview, BMG filed the lawsuit on Jan. 19 after multiple attempts to get the toymaker to pull the toy's theme song, My Poops, for its alleged similarities to My Humps.
The unicorn kits sell for about $100 to $300 on Amazon. Most kits include a standing unicorn in a range of pastel colors with long colorful hair and slime ingredients. The unicorns are characteristically dressed in crop tops with exposed stomachs and diaper-like bottoms.
In addition to pooping slime, the unicorn dances to what BMG believes is a song modeled after My Humps. All someone has to do is press the toy's heart-shaped belly button.
BMG's lawyer Seth L. Berman said:
"First, the title of the infringing work is My Poops, which is an obvious play on the name of the copyrighted composition My Humps."
According to StorieReview, MGA first sold the unicorn collectible during the 2018 Christmas season. Nearly two-and-a-half years later, the manufacturer released a music video to accompany Poopsie Slime Surprise's theme song.
My Humps Publishing Owner Sent Toy Maker Cease And Desist Before Lawsuit
BMG reportedly sent the toymakers a cease ahead of filing a lawsuit. But, the publishing rights owners insist the company ignored their request.
In addition, they allegedly haven't attempted to license the song My Humps but have "generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue" with it. The suit names similarities like melody, countermelody, lyrics, chord progression, and inflections from the lead singer like Fergie's in the 2005 hit.
BMG filed the suit in the Southern District Of New York, seeking "monetary damages and injunctive relief against" the toymaker. They're hoping to secure $10 million for copyright infringement, $150,000 for statutory damages, and a "temporary, preliminary, and permanent injunction" against the use, storage, and reproduction of My Hump's adjacent work.
BMG also requested a trial. As of Monday, none of the members of Black Eyed Peas have responded to the suit publicly.
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Nia Long Iced Omarion Dating Rumors After 'You People' Red Carpet Clip
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Climate change and health heats up
phaahealth December 10, 2020 Climate change, Public Health
Ingrid Johnston
The connections between climate and health, and the importance of systemic changes in Australia to recognise and address them, have been highlighted in 4 important reports released in the past week – the Lancet Countdown report 2020, the MJA-Lancet Countdown report 2020, the Climate Health WA Inquiry, and the climate and health report from the Grattan Institute.
Between them, these reports make it clear that the health impacts from climate change are happening now and accelerating – we haven't been doing enough and are running out of time to turn the tide.
The Paris Agreement seeks to limit global warming to well below 2oC, and ideally to 1.5oC, but we have already reached an average of 1.2oC globally, and 1.5oC in Australia. The impacts here are significant – 22% increase in exposure to fire in the past 15 years; averaged across Australia, there were more days over 39oC in 2019 than in the rest of the period since 1960 combined; more intense heatwaves are resulting in excess ambulance demand, hospital admissions, and mortality; changing patterns of infectious disease; rising food insecurity; and the impacts on mental health will continue to increase and unfold as time goes on. Health costs associated with mortality due to air pollution are estimated at $5.3 billion per year.
Globally, the hottest 5 years on record have occurred since 2015, and the past 20 years have seen a 54% increase in heat-related mortality among people older than 65. This is having direct financial impacts, with more than 300 billion hours of potential labour capacity lost in 2019 – equivalent to about 5% of GDP in both India and Indonesia.
Many sectors are affected. The climate suitability for infectious disease transmission is growing rapidly, with a 15% increase in environmental conditions suitable for dengue fever in 2018. Up to 565 million people face potential inundation from rising sea levels. Emissions from livestock grew 16% from 2000 to 2017 – the same year in which excess red meat consumption contributed to almost 1 million deaths.
The good news is that globally there are lots of areas of action. Low carbon electricity made up 28% of capacity in China in 2017 (compared with 17% in Australia), and from 2010-2017 the annual growth rate in renewable energy globally averaged 21%. Health services are connected with meteorological services in 86 countries, to assist with health adaptation planning. Almost three quarters of countries mention health and wellbeing in their Nationally Determined Contributions for the Paris Agreement, and in the UK, the National Health Service, which has been actively and successfully decreasing emissions for over a decade, recently declared the ambition to deliver net-zero health services as soon as possible.
As has too often been the way in climate change policy here though, Australia continues to defy the science and be left behind. We are the only OECD country to have worsened the carbon intensity of our energy supplies over the last 3 decades and are now 36% worse than the global average. We also defy the financial logic. Compared with current commitments, limiting warming to 1.5oC by 2100 would generate a global accumulated net benefit of at least USD265 trillion, or more than 3 times the 2018 global economy.
And the will to make the changes exists in Australia. The Cities Power Partnership, a network of local government councils leading the response to climate change now covers more than 50% of the population.
But the longer we delay serious action, the harder the proposition becomes. Right now, the global effort required is a reduction of 7.6% annually. If we wait another 5 years though, this will rise to 15.4% annually to meet the Paris Target. And the impacts are making the task all the more difficult. The emissions from the 2019-20 fires in NSW and Victoria alone were more than equivalent to a year's worth of Australia's annual emissions.
Recommendations from both the Climate Health WA Inquiry and the Grattan Institute report centre around the need for governance and system structures which recognise the links between climate change and health, and leadership at a national level to complement the work being done predominately in the States and Territories so far. Prioritising climate change within national plans and strategies; establishing Sustainable Development Units, incentivising change and planning targets to deliver net-zero health services; strengthening adaptation and resilience of the health systems; monitoring risk and responses, developing early warning systems and communication strategies for specific extreme weather events and climate-related disasters; and strategic long-term thinking will all be required as the health sector mitigates and adapts to climate change, to cope with the impacts, and protect the health of Australians.
Many carbon intensive practices lead to poor air quality, poor food quality and poor housing quality, which disproportionately impact the health of the most disadvantaged populations. These direct links with broader injustices and inequalities can't be ignored, and they are what underpin the climate justice movement. A healthy environment is essential to ensuring a healthy and egalitarian society, and therefore policies addressing health, social issues and climate must now deal with all of these interconnected issues in a cohesive way. We know what we have to do – we just need the will to do it.
Dr Ingrid Johnston is a senior policy officer at PHAA with a diverse background in public health both in Australia and overseas, including with government (State and Federal), academic, and community sector organisations. After many years working across forensic mental health, family violence, youth justice and prison health, Ingrid completed a PhD on adaptation of disaster response to climate change on remote Pacific islands and is on the Board of Australia's Climate and Health Alliance.
bushfires, heatwaves, lancet countdown, western australia
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TEDWomen is on the move. 2017 marks the seventh year of this annual conference focusing on the global narratives, innovations and ideas of women. We began in 2010 in Washington, DC; then hopscotched NY to LA for a couple of years, before returning in 2011 to the capital. In 2012, we headed west to TED's original home venue of Monterey, then up the coast to San Fran, and in November 2017, we're going South to one of the more iconic and most visited US cities, New Orleans.
Why New Orleans? If you've been to visit, you understand the obvious attractions of the famous food, the legendary music and musicians, the diverse and unique combinations of French, Spanish, Creole, and Native American cultures. If you haven't been, I predict you'll be totally seduced by all of the above plus the distinct design and architecture that adds to the overall feeling of being somewhere other than America.
New Orleans is also a city of stunning bridges that span large bodies of water (such as the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the longest bridge over water in the world) and so many other bridges in all directions -- connecting communities, bringing people together during celebrations, and offering a way out in times of peril.
As the editorial director of TEDWomen, working closely in partnership with the extraordinarily experienced curatorial and production teams at TED, I was drawn to New Orleans as just the right place at this time when America sometime feels less like a United States. We think New Orleans – a city on the rise, nobly reinventing itself in response to great devastation – will offer the right environment for thoughtful TEDTalks on some of our more urgent global disruptions and challenges, from climate change to racial and cultural divides to economic and scientific innovations. The theme that will unite all of this year's TEDTalks at TEDWomen will be, not surprisingly, BRIDGES, and we will explore the physical, cultural, ethnic, economic, technological and scientific bridges that women are designing, building, sustaining, and yes, even burning as sometimes, you have to burn a bridge or two in order to move forward.
I hope you'll join the global community of women and men (yes, men do come and speak at TEDWomen!) which convenes on Wed, Nov. 1st and concludes Friday, Nov. 3rd at noon. And you'll want to come early or stay afterward to more fully explore this unique city and to understand better why the TEDWomen2017 team is so excited about this location and this year's conference.


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Colorado Eagles vs. Calgary at Budweiser Events Center
Colorado Eagles vs. Calgary Tickets
Get ready to hit the ice because on Saturday 4th March 2023 you could join thousands of hockey fans in watching Colorado Eagles vs. Calgary. This hockey match brings the finest athletes in hockey for a head-to-head MATCH that could could only happen at Budweiser Events Center in Loveland, Colorado. Intense competition like this always leaves you leaping from your seat and cheering as two astounding teams clash on this exciting Saturday. Two teams have trained for this trying game. Two goalies will do their absolute best to protect their goals. Plus two starting squads are just aching to start and prove their worth. But only ONE team can come out on top. And even the most experienced hockey critiques cannot decide on who will be the best during Colorado Eagles vs. Calgary! But you can catch every pulse-pounding moment only if you're there to experience it. And you won't be alone. Already, hundreds of tickets are sold and more are selling out as you read this. So join the fun and cheer on your favorite team this Saturday 4th March 2023 for the hottest game to come to Loveland! All you have to do is book your tickets before they sell out!
Budweiser Events Center is the popular place to be for unsurpassed sports events according to a recent survey in Loveland Colorado and it's not hard to see why. Not only does Budweiser Events Center have a history of bringing unsurpassed acts like Colorado Eagles vs. Calgary back to this gorgeous town, but they also offer the unsurpassed features that turn any visit to this Loveland venue the favorite bang for your buck. Not only will you be able to experience Colorado Eagles vs. Calgary in comfort and style thanks to their comfortable seating and stylish decor, but you'll also remain refreshed with your choice of alcoholic or non-alcoholic refreshments thanks to the top-class bartending staff. If you're in search for a great place to dine, then don't stress, as Budweiser Events Center is also on the same block as several 5-star restaurants and bars. Budweiser Events Center even offers easy-access parking in proximity to offer the favorite experience. So if you want your Saturday night to be extraordinary, then now's your chance. Click the Buy Tickets button below to order your tickets to see Colorado Eagles vs. Calgary on Saturday 4th March 2023 at Budweiser Events Center in Loveland. Hurry! These tickets won't last long.


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Sermon given at the Sung Eucharist on the Tenth Sunday after Trinity 2020
'Will we be able to say a final 'No' to God?'
The Reverend Mark Birch Minor Canon and Precentor
Sunday, 16th August 2020 at 11.15 AM
In a Radio 4 interview several years ago now, there was a most unusual occurrence. Between the final question and the final answer of the interview there was a long pause—'dead air', as I believe it is known. But this air was as far from being dead as could be imagined. The interviewer had just asked whether, in the end, all people will be saved. The interviewee had asked for a few moments to think about it. This 'air', this pause, was alive with anticipation—anyone listening would have leaned in closer, me included.
To my shame, I can't remember who the interviewer was, but the one whose answer we eagerly awaited was, (who else) Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.
His answer, as ever, rumbled up out of the depths of his learning (and I'm afraid I have to paraphrase, as, search as I might, I couldn't find a transcript anywhere). He said something like: 'I just wonder whether, ultimately, in this life or beyond it, we will be able to say a final 'No' to God—that seems to be the question here.'
Some people might have found this a frustrating, equivocal answer –not a clear yes or no, but 'I wonder.' Someone who is far less equivocal on the question of whether or not everyone will be saved is the American Orthodox philosopher and theologian David Bentley Hart. Last year he published a book with the quite unambiguous title: 'That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, hell and universal salvation'
He argues, with great style and pulling no punches, not only that everyone will be saved, but that to maintain a doctrine of eternal punishment for the 'unsaved'—what he calls 'infernalism'—is so flawed, philosophically, scripturally, and morally, as to render the Gospel utterly incoherent, and no longer in any sense 'good news', not even for the redeemed.
How, he argues (against Aquinas, no less), can heaven be true bliss if we know that others are in agony? Does God lobotomise us so that we are no longer aware of it, or are we just so busy being blissed-out that we don't care anymore? Either option is at least, he argues, morally questionable.
The book is a tour de force—as parts of it were being read to me on a recent trip down the M4 it had me striking the steering wheel with the sheer exhilaration of it.
Bentley Hart is, unequivocally, a Universalist—the logic of Christianity; the incarnation, the atoning work of Christ and the sharing in the Divine Life by the Spirit, requires that everyone must be saved—as he puts it:
God is not a god, and his final victory, as described in scripture, will consist not merely in his assumption of perfect supremacy "over all," but also in his ultimately being "all in all".
In the United States, a country deeply formed in Calvinist theology; where being saved or not, being one of the elect, or not, is a constant and troubling question, despite, on some accounts being something you can do precisely nothing about—it's not surprising then that Bentley Hart's view is quite controversial.
But today's readings certainly seem to push in a universalist direction.
Israel understood herself as a chosen nation—distinctive, unique, holy—and yet, as we heard this morning, her prophet Isaiah tells them that, at the last, foreigners will join themselves to the Lord, will keep the Sabbath with them; and God's House will become a 'house of prayer for all peoples.' I can't help wondering how that kind of message would have been received by those who were used to keeping a very clear distinction between Jew and Gentile, between those inside and outside God's covenant with Israel. Isaiah seems to be saying that, at the end of the day, on the day of the Lord, such distinctions will pass away.
St Paul was dealing with almost the opposite problem in his letter to the Romans. There appears to be a hint of supercessionism in the air, which Paul is compelled to address. The new, predominantly Gentile Church thinks it has taken the place of the Jewish nation in God's affections—the divine covenant has shifted from the old Israel to the new.
Well, Paul will have none of that. The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable, he reminds them. You gentiles were the disobedient ones to start with—he tells them—and now the disobedience of the Jews has won you God's mercy. Everyone has been proved to be disobedient, one way or another, which has only served to show that God's mercy is for everyone.
And finally, in the gospel, can the Canaanite woman, the hated foreigner, claim a crumb of the mercy promised to the lost sheep of the House of Israel?
This is a notoriously difficult passage, and the behaviour of Jesus appears to us, quite rightly, to be absolutely shocking. He calls the woman a dog—an even more appalling slur, coming, as it does from the mouth of a Jew. You're not one of us, he seems to say, you don't deserve my attention, let alone healing for your daughter.
Jesus does not come across well here. Some say, wanting to defend his divine omniscience, that this is a subtle piece of didactic posturing, a bit of play-acting—he is saying what his disciples would be thinking, in order to model, to show them the astonishing change of heart that he desires towards this outcast and her daughter.
Another approach, doing more justice perhaps to Christ's humanity, might be to say that this is a genuine moment of transformation in the ministry of Jesus—that there was a change in the human heart of Christ—that this is a seminal moment, along with the Samaritan woman at the well, the Centurion and his slave; moments in a developing narrative of inclusion, of salvation, that is for all, not just for some.
Could it be that just as we only discover the truth of who we are through our relationships with others, especially the unexpected others who we do not choose, so it might have been for the Son of Man, who discovered something about the true scope of his nature and mission through the unbidden intervention of this outsider?
This discovery, this narrative of a widening, including mission re-emerges especially in the apostolic ministry of St Peter (remember the sheet descending from heaven, and God declaring all things clean); a narrative with which St Paul just runs and runs in his pioneering ministry amongst the gentiles.
Many would argue, me included, that the inclusion of women in the ordained ministry of the Church, and the arguments for the open inclusion of other marginalised groups within the Church's life and ministry are just the latest chapters, the latest discoveries, the most recent emergence of this same, extraordinary narrative. This salvation is for all—even for the most unlikely - those we find a bit disturbing—those we might rather exclude—beginning with this wretched and importunate woman, gate-crashing the Rabbi's house-call.
In an exhilarating moment of noblesse oblige, Jesus almost appears to stand back, talking largely in clichés, letting the woman, and her astonishing confidence take centre stage. She is the undoubted hero of this encounter, coming back again and again, refusing to let her faith in Jesus be shaken, no matter what he says to her.
We can imagine the looks of astonishment on the face of the disciples, and perhaps even on the face of Jesus himself, as he exclaims
'Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.' And her daughter was healed instantly.
If this woman could claim a share, a crumb of the mercy, the salvation that is in Christ, can anyone really be beyond its scope?
But while I am exhilarated and greatly comforted by Bentley Hart's conclusions, part of me is still drawn to the Archbishop's pause—the hesitation between the question and the answer. Because, while there is no limit to God's mercy, God's salvation, we must all be aware that we say 'no' to God quite a bit—that is our sin—and we live in a world that says 'no' to God rather a lot—and we cannot be complacent about either. But the call to repentance, for us and for the world, need not be predicated on the fear of hell, the anxiety of election, but on the kind of confidence we see in the Canaanite woman - confidence that in Christ we can be included, lifted up again and again, into the ever-expanding company of the redeemed—lifted up by the Spirit into the life the Risen Christ and into the love of our Heavenly Father.
Sermon given at the Sung Eucharist on the Ninth Sunday after Trinity 2020
Sermon given at the Sung Eucharist on the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity 2020


text:
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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text:
Jury awards $9.3 million in lead-paint poisoning case
By The Associated Press | Posted - April 30, 2015 at 1:00 a.m.
Estimated read time: Less than a minute
BALTIMORE (AP) — A Baltimore jury has awarded $9.3 million to a man who says he was poisoned by lead-based paint at his former rowhouse.
The Daily Record of Baltimore (http://bit.ly/1I0fmfG ) reports 22-year-old Terrance Smith Jr. lived in a home in Baltimore from birth until he was six years old. In tests between 1993 and 1995, his blood-lead level was 10, twice the CDC's recommended level of 5 in children. Attorney Brian S. Brown says Smith only reached eighth grade and has been unable to work because of his condition.
Brown says Smith's case featured the lowest measured blood-lead level he has ever brought to trial. He said the home wasn't tested for lead.
Lawyers say Smith's award includes $7.9 million in noneconomic damages, which will be capped at $350,000 by the state.
Information from: The Daily Record of Baltimore, http://www.mddailyrecord.com
US surgeon general says 13 is 'too early' to join social media
Emails reveal tensions between states in Colorado River talks


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