Reposted from Observer

An art museum in Autun, France, has helped restitute an Old Master painting to the heirs of Jacques Goudstikker, a prominent Dutch Jewish art dealer whose collection was looted by the Nazis in 1940.Entitled Adam and Eve and attributed to Dutch painter Cornelis van Haarlem, the painting in question was recently offered as a donation to Musée Rolin. But upon evaluating the work, employees found a Goudstikker label fixed to its back and discovered that it was one of the works looted from the late dealer’s collection. The donors, who were unaware of the painting’s history and have chosen to remain anonymous, worked with the museum to notify Goudstikker’s family of its discovery. "The museum really acted in the way that you want museums to be acting; they flagged it, they contacted the family, they were doing the right thing to resolve this in a fair and correct way,” said Yaél Weitz, counsel on the case and an attorney with art law firm Kaye Spiegler. “They handled it in a way that we hope other museums will going forward,” she told Observer. Goudstikker, a dealer of Old Master and 19th-century artists, was forced to flee Europe in 1940 and leave his gallery of approximately 1,400 works behind. He died in an accident while escaping across the English Channel on a cargo boat. As his widow and son traveled to North America, a majority of his collection was subsequently turned over to Hermann Göring in a forced sale. A small black notebook Goudstikker used to catalog his artwork was later used as evidence by the dealer’s heirs as they fought for decades to recover his collection. In 2006, after an eight-year-long campaign led by Marei von Saher, Goudstikker’s daughter-in-law, the Dutch government agreed to return more than 200 works it had received following WWII in what constituted one of the largest restitutions of Nazi-looted artwork. More than half of these works were sold the following year in a series of auctions in New York, London and Amsterdam that netted $20.8 million in total. Meanwhile, a selection of Goudstikker paintings were exhibited in shows at New York’s Jewish Museum and the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. Several other works belonging to Goudstikker have since been returned by the German city of Trier and institutions like the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Cummer Museum of Arts & Gardens. To celebrate the most recent return, Musée Rolin will hold a presentation ceremony on Dec. 13 to recognize the painting and the work involved in its restitution. “I am deeply appreciative of the efforts that led to the recovery of this piece of our family’s history,” said von Saher in a statement. “It is so gratifying to see justice achieved and have this painting returned to its rightful owners.” Not all restitution attempts have been so successful. Despite a lengthy litigation battle over two Lucas Cranach the Elder paintings from the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, a court ruling in 2018 found that the works rightfully belong to the museum. There are still hundreds of missing works out there, according to Weitz, who has worked on the restitution of Goudstikker artwork for years. “These restitutions are really meaningful,” she said. “They make a difference in a small way by righting some of the historical wrongs.”

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Reposted from ABCnet

Around 1,700 First Nations ancestors have been returned from overseas collecting institutions and private collections since 1990, including 139 from America. The Australian government said it continued to work closely with the National Museum to progress the repatriation of other ancestors still held in its care. Nyamba Buru Yawuru cultural coordinator Dianne Appleby said bringing home ancestors exposed the dark history that saw them taken from country in the first place. "We have to talk about the tragedy and the trauma and to make sense of these events," she said. She spoke about the massacres inflicted on Yawuru people, knowledge and stories of which were passed down by her grandmother, which led to the theft of ancestral remains. "They never understood the tragedies, why they were killed and taken away, and they took the bones away, it's like taking the children away," Ms Appleby said. "We are very sad. With an additional 36 sets of remains still held by overseas institutions — the majority in Europe — the project remains a long-term one for the Yawuru community.

The Yawuru man's remains will be held in a specially constructed room at the WA Museum, which will act as a caretaker. Mr McKenzie said the plan was to eventually build a holding place in Broome and bring ancestors back home on Yawuru country, but there were still cultural practices that needed to be established. “We haven't structured a way of how we rebury the dead ... we only bury our dead and we have to find a way of reburying our dead," he said. Ross Chadwick, the museum's head of archaeology and anthropology, has been involved in the repatriation project for more than 20 years. "The community come to us occasionally to request that we care for their ancestors when there's not a suitable place or a suitable location for them to be taken back to on country," Dr Chadwick said. Dr Chadwick said the museum was constantly working to return ancestors to their traditional lands, while currently caring for around 120 ancestral remains. "The Western Australian Museum is privileged to be able to do this on behalf of community and it is a significant event for them," he said.

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Reposted from ARTnews

Four antiquities, valued at more than $1 million, were recently returned to Nepal by the Manhattan District Attorney Office, the office announced in a statement Monday. The pieces returned to Nepal on December 4 include a large pair of gilt bronze Bhairava masks, dating to the 16th century, that are collectively valued at $900,000. According to the Manhattan DA’s office, “the masks depict the god as Shiva, one of the Hindu trinity which also includes Brahma and Vishnu. They were used for ritual worship during the annual Indra Jātrā festival in Nepal. Both masks were stolen in the mid-1990s as part of a series of break-in robberies from the home of the family whose relatives created the masks. They were then smuggled to Hong Kong, sold at auction in New York, and subsequently entered the collections of the Rubin Museum of Art and the Dallas Museum of Art until they were recovered earlier this year by the Office.” The items were matched using family photographs submitted to an anonymous whistleblower known online as Lost Arts of Nepal. “As far as I know, the first such match in Nepal,” Erin Thompson, a professor specializing in art crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told ARTnews. Thompson submitted the tip from Lost Arts to the DA’s office in September 2022. As part of the investigation, the DA’s office retrieved the police report filed by the family at the time of the thefts, and had it translated by a Nepali lawyer.

According to Thompson, the Bhairava masks are also not for people, but pots for beer, which would then be served to worshipers during the Indra Jātrā festival. One of the other items repatriated to Nepal, a 10-armed Durga statue, was seized as part of the office’s investigation into convicted art trafficker Subhash Kapoor. According to the Manhattan DA’s office, the statue was allegedly smuggled out of Nepal “by the Zeeshan and Zahid Butt trafficking network, which was run by Kapoor’s alleged co-conspirators. The statue was then purchased from the Butts in Bangkok by Kapoor and subsequently trafficked into New York in the early 2000s, before it was recovered from a Kapoor-owned storage unit.” The four items were returned to Nepal during a ceremony with Nepal’s acting New York Consul General Bishnu Prasad Gautam and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations Deputy Special Agent in Charge Christopher Lau on Monday. “The return of these illegally exported four masterpieces is a significant step in reclaiming Nepal’s cultural heritage and preserving its historical treasures,” Gautam said in a press statement. “This has deeply contributed to Nepal’s national efforts of recovery and reinstatement of lost cultural properties. The cooperation and collaboration between Nepal and the Manhattan District Attorney in this field, like in others, are deeply commendable and inspirations for the international community in the fight against illicit trafficking of cultural artifacts.”

On December 4, the Rubin Museum issued a press statement acknowledging that it had placed the mask under review “with its collections team as well as independent researchers” after seeing the social media posts, then removed it from public view and posted public signage in the galleries about this process. The statement also acknowledged that the Manhattan DA’s office showed the museum “corroborating evidence the mask was stolen from a site in Dolakha in March 1994.” It reviewed the documentation, deaccessioned the mask, and voluntarily agreed to turn it over to the authorities. The institution said it acquired the mask in 2005, with “no evidence of theft or unlawful removal from Nepal at the time of acquisition until evidence was provided by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office,” citing previous transactions on the art market, including a public auction at Sotheby’s in 1996. “While we have treasured this exceptional mask and enjoyed sharing it with visitors in our galleries since 2005 as well as through several scholarly publications, the evidence presented is clear, as is our decision to return the work to Nepal,” Rubin Museum executive director Jorrit Britschgi said in a press statement. “We’re deeply sorry for the loss its removal has caused community members in Dolakha. We hope the work can return to its former location, yet also understand that the return will not remedy the wrongs that were done.” The museum also announced it had committed additional resources through the appointment of Linda Colet as its new head of collections management and provenance research. Provenance research in museums and private collections often focuses on scholarly books or photography archives to determine whether or not an object was stolen. For Thompson, the successful use of family photographs as proof of the Bhairava masks’ origins also demonstrates how repatriations are handled by foreign antiquities collections. “I think that there should be a push toward museums and collectors to really think about returning things before that proof comes up, and not waiting until that happens,” Thompson said.

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Reposted from Jerusalem Post

The president of the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court sent him to involuntary hospitalization for four years, a period equal to the maximum prison sentence for the offense attributed to him. The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court on Sunday acquitted Stephen Edward Porth, a 40-year-old American tourist from California, accused of smashing valuable historical statues at the Israel Museum. His defense attorney, Nick Kaufman, claimed that he suffers from "Jerusalem Syndrome" and admitted on his behalf that he committed the acts attributed to him. A psychiatric opinion received in his case last Thursday found him competent to stand trial, but at the same time determined that at the time of the incident he was not responsible for his actions.

The president of the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, Judge Shmuel Herbst, who acquitted him, sent him to involuntary hospitalization for four years, a period equal to the maximum prison sentence for the offense attributed to him. The incident took place on the afternoon of Thursday, October 5. According to the indictment, Forth, who went to the classical archaeology section of the National Museum, where statues from the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods are displayed, threw a Roman marble statue dated 201-211 AD to the Griffon, a mythological animal with the body, tail and hind legs of a lion, and the head and wings of an eagle. which places the foot on the wheel of fate of the goddess Nemesis, as well as a marble statue from the late Hellenistic period from the first century BC, of Athena, the goddess of war. Security cameras recorded Forth's actions. The damage he caused was estimated at $1 million. The police claimed that he acted cunningly and premeditatedly and waited until closing time so that there would be no crowd. According to the investigators, forth intended to break more art sculptures, but his actions created a noise and so he stopped. He said he did not regret his actions and had wanted to do so on previous visits to Israel and other museums. During interrogation, he confessed to the acts and claimed that these statues contradicted his faith and religion. He told investigators that these were "statues of idolatry, contrary to the laws of the Torah."

According to the indictment, he then tried to flee the museum, but security guards detained him and called police officers who arrested him. He has been behind bars ever since because he failed to raise the amount required for bail. The Israel Museum said after the incident that "the museum's management sees this incident as a worrisome and exceptional case. The museum's management condemns violence of any kind and hopes that such incidents will not be repeated."  The same is true of the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Eli Escozido, who said that it is the head of a marble statue of the goddess Athena from the Roman period discovered in the 1960s in northern Beit Shean, and the statue of Griffon II, a symbol of a pagan deity from the Roman period, which was previously exposed in the northwestern Negev. "This is a shocking case of the destruction of cultural values," Escozido said, "We see with concern the fact that cultural values are being destroyed by religiously motivated extremists. We will speak with the management of the Israel Museum to ensure that such incidents do not recur."

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Reposted from BBC

A bronze sculpture of a pigeon thought to be stolen from a street in Edinburgh has been found - after it was handed to a local café. Craig Jones Rowley spotted the bird on its side on Elm Row after he said it was "hacked" from its plinth on Sunday. He gave it to a friend who works in the nearby café for safekeeping before the artwork was reported missing to the council on Wednesday. Police initially investigated the bird's disappearance as theft but are now probing its removal as an act of vandalism. City of Edinburgh Council said it was co-operating with the investigation. The birds, created by sculptor Shona Kinloch, were introduced to the area in 1996 before being removed ten years later. They were reinstalled in July upon completion of the extension to the city's tram line down Leith Walk. The damaged bird has since been returned to the council for repair after it was traced to Cafe Elmrow. Mr Rowley, 54, who owns Dean Jones Hairdressing on Elm Row, said he was "disappointed" to see the sculpture damaged on its return. He said: "It just seems a bit pointless. I don't know who damaged it or why. "I believe it has been hacked and cut with some kind of tool. They weigh a lot, it would have to be kicked with some force to take it off. "They are such a pleasant wee bit of street art. I don't really understand why it would be damaged and then just dumped there." Each of the bronze sculptures weigh up to 20lb (9kg). 

They endured several instances of theft and vandalism for a decade before being removed altogether in 2006 during initial moves to extend the city's urban rail network to Leith. The birds were later refurbished and completely recast prior to their return. The council's transport and environment convener, Scott Arthur, said the sculpture would be reinstalled as soon as possible. He said: “Of course, this is still a case of vandalism, which we take very seriously. "We will continue working with Police Scotland to assist investigations into this crime.”

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Reposted from Glassgow Times

Hannah Bright, 22, Alex Dekoning, 25, Emma Brown, 32, Carmen Lean, 29, and Jennifer Kowalski, 28, all face allegations at Glasgow Sheriff Court. The five face a charge of behaving in a threatening or abusive manner at the city's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Court papers state they used a megaphone and shouted while delivering a speech. A separate allegation says that, while acting together, they maliciously attached themselves to the frame of a painting. The charge claims this was done by using an adhesive. Allegations go on to say they spray-painted the walls and floor at the gallery which caused damage to it. Kowalski, of the city's Govanhill, faces a separate charge on her own of breaching a court undertaking order not to attend, organize or participate in any protest in Scotland. Kowalski, and Dekoning, of Newcastle, Brown of Cessnock, and Lean and Bright both of Glasgow city center deny the charges against them. A further hearing has been set for next month.

Reposted from CISA

The DHS “If You See Something, Say Something®” Campaign recently released a new general awareness video, which can be used for a variety of purposes (public outreach, trainings, etc.).   The new video highlights the campaign’s mission, educates the public on signs that may indicate a potential nexus to terrorism, and how to report suspicious activity to appropriate local authorities.  

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Reposted from CISA

As federal civilian agencies continue to modernize IT enterprises, increased reliance on cloud services, platform services, and external providers has introduced new types of risks. Recent threat activity from groups such as Storm-0558 have demonstrated the importance of hardening email and identity infrastructure, enabling key security capabilities such as logging, and enhancing the security of underlying cloud environments. The Administration’s Executive Order 14028 has accelerated cross-government efforts to advance cloud security practices, implement encryption and multifactor authentication, and enhance operational visibility and logging on federal government networks.  

Earlier this year, CISA worked with a dozen federal agencies to apply the Secure Cloud Business Applications (SCuBA) secure configuration baselines for Microsoft 365 (M365) across agency enterprises. Using our ScubaGear assessment tool, agency practitioners implemented advanced protections and configured cloud environments to better safeguard sensitive information and secure government services against sophisticated threat actors. Though the Microsoft-specific baselines were developed collaboratively with the Federal Chief Information Officers Council to provide necessary security enhancements for most federal cloud business applications, we quickly identified that more was needed. 

Today, CISA takes another step forward by releasing the SCuBA project’s Google Workspace (GWS) secure configuration baselines along with our new assessment tool, ScubaGoggles. Developed in close collaboration with Google, these materials are specifically designed to assist federal agencies with securing GWS environments and leveraging native security capabilities to enhance an organization’s overall cyber posture. However, every organization, public and private, can benefit from the security recommendations and best practices outlined in the GWS Baselines and should consider whether their current baseline requires enhancements in light of the evolving cyber threat environment.

CISA requests public comment on the GWS baselines and the ScubaGoggles tool to help ensure our products enable necessary security improvements to keep pace with evolving technologies while considering the challenging cyber threat environment. CISA’s GWS Baselines draw upon the success, lessons learned, and expertise gained from the M365 Baselines project to apply a consistent and comprehensive approach to securing GWS cloud environments. 

Once finalized and fully implemented, the GWS baselines will reduce misconfigurations and enhance the protection of sensitive data, bolstering overall cybersecurity resilience. These baselines provide a collection of tailored security controls for nine core GWS services. They cover key GWS components, such as safeguarding collaboration on Google Meet, securing data stored in Gmail or protecting sensitive information in Google Drive and Docs. 

The publication of the GWS and M365 Baselines will further CISA’s mission to secure the federal IT enterprise while the also serving as a resource for all organizations leveraging the two most widely used business platforms. Users across the Federal Government and beyond rely on these cloud-based business applications daily to communicate and store sensitive information and conduct critical business functions which is precisely why these systems remain such prime targets for malicious actors. Our goal is to help organizations secure their work, keep confidential information private, and empower cybersecurity teams to harden these environments and gain operational visibility within these cloud-based business applications.  

Along with seeking public comment from all interested stakeholders, CISA asks federal agencies to help validate and enhance the automated implementation of these SCuBA Baselines. Agencies interested in coordinating with CISA to help refine the baselines, implementation guidance, and the assessment tool should email CyberSharedServices@cisa.dhs.gov.

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Reposted from CISA

In the fast-paced world of cybersecurity, staying ahead of threats is essential. And while security is without a doubt a priority for businesses of all sizes, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by all the information available. At CISA, we have been diligently developing a solution aimed at simplifying the way our partners and potential collaborators understand their cyber risk and prioritize their investments, ensuring they can quickly navigate this complexity with ease. Our focus has been on making the process of working with us more intuitive and user-friendly so that every organization can spend more time meeting business goals and less time sifting through cybersecurity resources. We believe this approach will be especially helpful for smaller to medium sized stakeholders with fewer resources, who need help prioritizing actions to help them to reduce the likelihood and impact of damaging intrusions.

In early 2024, we look forward to launching a new way for organizations to understand their cyber risk and receive targeted, straightforward guidance built around our Cybersecurity Performance Goals. This new tool is called Ready.Set.Cyber. While we’re not quite ready to unveil all the details just yet, we are excited to share a glimpse of what’s on the horizon.

ReadySetCyber will simplify the process of incorporating cybersecurity into your organization’s business decisions, regardless of your level of expertise or the number of IT personnel you have on staff. Instead of making cybersecurity a daunting challenge, with the ever-present question of where to invest next, prioritization decisions become a guided, step-by-step process on a user-friendly interface accessible to organizations of all sizes. By providing tailored resources and insights in a streamlined format, ReadySetCyber will empower users to align scarce resources with the most impactful cybersecurity measures for their organization.

Our approach to ReadySetCyber begins with baselining your organization’s current cybersecurity maturity, based on your input to a dynamic set of questions, then providing actionable strategies, tools, and resources to mitigate risks effectively, along with a direct connection to your regional CISA cybersecurity advisor. We plan to launch ReadySetCyber in a beta capacity, while iteratively implementing improvements over time, using your valuable feedback as our guide. The questions for ReadySetCyber will be submitted for public comment before the end of the year, setting it up for public use in early 2024. This approach will help ensure we are not providing a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather tailoring our application to suit your unique needs.

ReadySetCyber is about leveling the playing field and enabling our wide variety of partners to make measurably effective risk reduction investments. Our aim is to simplify and streamline access to the right information, ensuring that every organization can make informed decisions to enhance their digital security. With ReadySetCyber, users will be able to provide feedback on their experience, enabling us in return to refine and enhance our application in a collaborative way. We are committed to listening to input and allowing it to shape ReadySetCyber into a capability that genuinely meets the needs of those who use it.

The information we received from our request for information that closed October 10 will greatly help us refine and establish this new capability. We are excited to bring you an application that not only offers a tailored bundle of actions and tools for your organization but a capability that will evolve based on your needs and feedback. Watch this space for more updates and details about ReadySetCyber’s beta launch and how we can work together to elevate your organization’s digital security, one step at a time.

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Reposted from Artnet News

Activists with the climate change awareness group Extinction Rebellion protested at the American Museum of Natural History and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, staging a “speak-out” and “die-in” at the former on November 18 and unfurling banners at the latter on November 19. The 13 activists were arrested by the New York Police Department. In an emailed statement, the police said that protests began around 4:30 p.m. and ended around 9:15 p.m. on Saturday. A spokesperson for the department did indicate how many were arrested at each museum. At the AMNH, protestors laid down on the floor, in front of the reconstructed Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton in the museum’s lobby, for over an hour to urge climate justice. 

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