Rancho Las Voces: Noticias / Estados Unidos: El misterioso caso de la colección Kingsland

Aspecto del departamento neoyorquino donde fueron encontradas las obras. (Foto: FBI)

C iudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Martes 12 de agosto de 2008. (RanchoNEWS).- El FBI y la Oficina del Administrador Público de Nueva York han recurrido a la colaboración ciudadana para tratar de aclarar el verdadero origen de diversas obras de arte, que pertenecían a una valiosa colección privada descubierta cuando su dueño falleció en 2006 en su pequeño estudio de Manhattan, según informa EFE este día desde la ciudad en mención. La colección pertenecía William M. V. Kingsland, propietario de más de 300 cuadros, bocetos, esculturas y otras piezas de artistas como Pablo Picasso, John Singleton Copley, Alberto Giacometti, Giorgio Morandi o Eugene Boudin. En esta nota incluimos el artículo reproducido en la página de internet del FBI (Is it Yours?), una galería de las obras, y comenzamos con el reporte que Eric Konigsberg escribe hoy para el New York Times:

The paintings share real estate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s «Ten Most Wanted Fugitives», its «Most Wanted Terrorists» and the National Sex Offender Public Registry. In fact, when the F.B.I. posted a detailed listing of 137 artworks of fuzzy provenance from the collection of the late William M. V. Kingsland on Monday, the case had top billing on the department’s home page.

Stolen Art Uncovered: Is It Yours? read the headline. And the teaser: «In 2006, a treasure trove of art —some of it stolen— was found in a New York apartment. The search is on for the rightful owners».

Actually, the search has been on for almost two years —though complications have conspired to slow things down, including a) the difficulty of tracking down the rightful owners of works that, if they were stolen at all, were probably stolen about 40 years ago, b) the fact that the likely perpetrator of the alleged thefts is dead, and c) the fact that few of the rightful owners appear to know or care that the artworks have turned up in this particular collection.

The curious case of William Milliken Vanderbilt Kingsland, a threadbare eccentric and an amateur genealogist of the Upper East Side, began in the summer of 2006, when, a few months after he died (at the age of either 58 or 62), it was discovered that his birth name was Melvyn Kohn, that he resided not on Fifth Avenue but in a small apartment on East 72nd Street, and that he had not —counter to his claims— attended Groton or Harvard, nor had he once been married to a French royal.

He left no will, and the apartment turned out to be full of artworks —including a bust by Giacometti that has since been valued at $900,000 to $1.2 million and a small painting by Giorgio Morandi that would eventually be auctioned for about $600,000— that turned out to be stolen. (The Morandi was subsequently returned to the care of the Manhattan public administrator, who oversees legal details for the intestate).

Some of the art in Mr. Kingsland’s collection does appear to have belonged, in the legal sense of the word, to him. But the F.B.I., brought in to sort through the trove, discovered that of the more than 300 pieces found in his apartment, —including stolen works by Picasso, Copley, Fairfield Porter and Odilon Redon— most anything of commercial significance was difficult, at best, to verify as his.

«It sort of ended when I had received questions about around 20 things, and I had to put it aside,” said James Wynne, the F.B.I. agent supervising the case. “And now we’re hoping that by listing all the things that might still have questions attached, more people will come forward to claim them. Or not».

In the months after Mr. Kingsland’s death, the Office of the Public Administrator consigned the art to two auction houses before anyone realized they were stolen. «Christie’s got whatever was high end»,Agent Wynne said. Colin Stair, an auctioneer in Hudson, N.Y., got the rest.

In October, Mr. Stair sold more than 200 pieces in Mr. Kingsland’s collection, for about a total of $200,000. One painting, a 1790 Copley portrait of the Second Earl of Bessborough, sold to an art dealer for $85,000. The dealer, Alex Acevedo, quickly looked into the painting’s history and found that it had been stolen in 1971 from the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard.

Specialists at Christie’s, meanwhile, were having a similar experience. The Giacometti (which Mr. Kingsland had apparently used as a door stopper) and four paintings —two Porters, a Redon and a Kurt Schwitters— had all been reported stolen in the 1960s. «We had to cancel the sale of the Morandi, and another piece, by Jean-Baptiste Bosschaert, was pulled after the catalog was printed», said Toby Usnik, a spokesman for the auction house.

Agent Wynne said receipts for a handful of the pieces in Mr. Kingsland’s apartment were uncovered. «He went to the sort of junior-collector auctions sometimes», he said. «They used to call it Christie’s East, and at Sotheby’s, it was called Sotheby’s Arcade».

That still leaves 105 pieces of unknown ownership in Christie’s possession.

If nobody comes forward who can make an ironclad claim to any of these works, said the public administrator, Ethel J. Griffin, they will indeed be auctioned off and the proceeds turned over to Mr. Kingsland’s estate. And as it happens, four first cousins of Mr. Kingsland’s and an uncle have contacted her office to declare themselves his rightful heirs. But Christie’s has valued the works in question —including the stolen Giacometti and Morandi pieces— at about $2.4 million.

Factoring out the valuable artworks that Agent Wynne has already discovered to have been stolen, most of the pieces unaccounted for are worth $1,000 to $2,000 each, according to Christie’s assessment.

Agent Wynne, 54, who tends to refer to all manner of artworks as «things», may give the impression that he is lacking a certain reverence for the material in question, but he is as familiar with the landscape of the art market as, say, Corot was with the French countryside. The agent has specialized in art theft at the F.B.I. since 1987, and he said of a drawing in Mr. Kingsland’s collection that is listed as a Corot: «Well, you know what they say about Corot, don’t you? He did 500 pictures and there’s 2,000 of them in the United States».

Many of the Kingsland artworks, Agent Wynne said, appeared to have last belonged to galleries in New York, but it was difficult to track down when they were last seen. «What happens is, you call these people, and you’re talking about prehistoric history», he said. «Some of these galleries have since closed. You try to find the pieces in the artists’ catalogues raisonnées, and sometimes it says ‘whereabouts unknown,’ and sometimes it says it belongs to somebody else who’s dead by now».

In the case of a painting by the French artist Boudin, Agent Wynne said he contacted the son of the owner listed in the artist’s catalogue raisonnée, «who said that in his recollection, the thing had been loaned to a museum in Florida and that it had disappeared».

With a third Fairfield Porter painting, he said, the last verified rightful owner sounded unenthused and asked if the agent would not mind e-mailing a picture first.

Agent Wynne was quick to note that most of the works were very small. «The Robert Henris —there are six, I think— are 5 by 6 inches, 3 by 6 inches. The Toulouse-Lautrec is 5 by 9», he said.

Did he mean that this might have made them easier to steal?

«You said that, not me», Agent Wynne said. «I don’t want to imply anything. I’m just saying».

Is it Yours?

Pablo Picasso's Tete de Femme. (Foto. FBI)

Talk about a surprising discovery. In 2006, a treasure trove of all kinds of art work—some of which has subsequently been identified as stolen—was uncovered in a New York City apartment. In an effort to track down the rightful owners, the FBI and the Public Administrator of New York County have posted pictures of the most important pieces here on our website.

More than 300 works of art—paintings, sketches, sculptures, and other pieces by such artists as Pablo Picasso, John Singleton Copley, Alberto Giacometti, Giorgio Morandi, and Eugene Boudin—were discovered after the death of the apartment’s occupant, William M.V. Kingsland.

Kingsland was well known in New York City’s art circles as an engaging and intelligent connoisseur of art, books, architecture, and genealogy. But when he died, he left no will…and no apparent heirs to claim the floor-to-ceiling stacks of paintings and art works crammed into his one-bedroom apartment.

Turns out Kingsland was a pretty secretive guy—despite having many acquaintances, very few people had ever been inside his residence. In conversations with friends, he was often evasive about his early years and his family. And, as reported by the media not long after his death, William Kingsland wasn’t even his given name—he was born Melvyn Kohn and spent his early years in the Bronx before legally changing his name to Kingsland. He thought it had a more literary sound to it and would help him gain acceptance among Manhattan’s upper crust.

A surprising discovery. After Kingsland’s death, New York Public Administrator Ethel Griffin hired two auction houses—Christie’s and Stair Galleries—to sell the art. But as Christie’s researched the pieces to determine their provenance (history of ownership), it discovered some of them had been reported stolen in the 1960s and 1970s and immediately contacted New York Special Agent Jim Wynne, a member of our Art Crime Team. And after Stair Galleries auctioned off several pieces, one of the buyers—an art gallery owner—discovered the piece he bought had been reported stolen as well, so he too got in touch with Agent Wynne.

One bizarre side note: A mover hired by the Public Administrator’s Office to transport the contents of Kingsland’s apartment to a warehouse was charged for stealing two Picasso sketches each valued at approximately $30,000. And, it turns out that was not the first time those two sketches had been stolen…sometime before they ended up in Kingsland’s collection they were stolen from a New York art gallery around 1967!

With the cooperation of the Public Administrator’s Office and the two auction houses, we began investigating Kingsland’s collection of art and positively identified several works that had been stolen. And we think there are more. But because of the overwhelming size of the collection and the complex and time-consuming nature of provenance investigations, we decided the best and most expeditious course of action was to publicize the art work to the general public.

We need your help. If you have information on the provenance, acquisition, or ownership of any work of art from the Kingsland collection shown here—or if you want to make a claim—please contact Agent Wynne at (718) 286-7302 or by e-mail at James.Wynne@ic.fbi.gov. (08/11/08)

Galería