[MSN] The art of practising art law. Protecting cultural heritage and tracking stolen pieces all in a day's work.

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The art of practising art law    
Protecting cultural heritage and tracking stolen pieces all in a day's work

Written by Julius Melnitzer     
Tuesday, 04 July 2006  

When Bonnie Czegledi was a teenager, she wanted to be an artist. But her
parents, fearful that there was no living in it, would not allow her to
paint. She painted anyway, hiding her work under her bed, away from the
prying eyes of her mother and father.
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Bonnie Czegledi says, 'It is imperative that those entrusted with the
responsibility to create laws to protect our cultural heritage attach some
degree of shame to the illicit export of our own property as well as the
looting of U.S. sites.'Never did she imagine that her adult world would also
be a shadowy one. For in a tour de force of life planning, she not only
fulfilled her parents' wishes by becoming a lawyer, she managed to live her
own dream by becoming a cultural heritage lawyer ? a rare breed indeed.

"The art world has traditionally been a very secretive one," Czegledi says.
"Apart from the drug trade, the black market in art is the largest illicit
trade in the world. It's a haven for both money laundering and terrorism."

The illicit trade, worth $6 billion annually, has become known as "The
Greatest Show You've Never Seen."

Interpol's most wanted list of stolen art includes a Da Vinci valued at $65
million and a Renoir valued at $300,000. And the Art Loss Register in New
York, which helps purchasers identify stolen works, lists 160,000
misappropriated items.

All the while, Czegledi remains an artist herself, practising both her craft
and her profession from an art gallery cum law office in Toronto's tony
Yorkville district. On the legal side, she spends a great deal of her time
dealing with art theft and tracking down the rightful owners of artworks
lost to the Nazis during the second World War.

"I get a lot of referrals from other lawyers whose clients need legal advice
about their collections," she says.

At times, it's difficult to distinguish whether Czegledi's services fall on
the legal or artistic side of her abilities.

"But it's no different from a business-law lawyer who employs both her
business skills and her knowledge of the law in advising the client," she
says. "It's the package the client is looking for."

The package embraces a practice that includes provenance research, recovery
of stolen art, trade law compliance for art and antiquities, taxation of
art, relationships between artist and dealer, representation of galleries
and museums, sales and gifting of collections and works, estate work for
artists and collectors, and due diligence investigation for art purchasers.

Preservation of intangible and tangible indigenous cultures and heritage
sites is also an important aspect of this field, which involves extensive
knowledge of international law. For example, Canada is a signatory to the
UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit
Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, 1970. The
enabling domestic legislation is The Cultural Property Import-Export Act.

Czegledi is certainly on to something. Allegations that Iraqi museums and
archeological sites in Afghanistan were looted and treasures destroyed
without intervention from coalition forces has attracted the intention of
international media to the realities of art theft.

"People have come to realize how our cultural heritage is the tangible
embodiment of human past," Czegledi says. "When it is destroyed by armed
conflict or economic despair, humanity loses some of its common heritage,
and that cost of that kind of loss is incalculable."

Canada, however, does almost nothing about art theft. Apart from two
officers in Quebec, no Canadian jurisdiction has resources dedicated to
combating it. Indeed, Canada is prominent on the Interpol list, which says
stolen works by Chagall, Colville, Mir?, Rubens, and Warhol are located in
this country.

Czegledi is particularly upset that Canada and the United States allowed the
Bilateral Agreement Concerning the Imposition of Import Restrictions on
Certain Categories of Archeological and Ethnograph-ical Material to lapse in
April 2002. That agreement helped stem illicit trafficking of cultural
property ? such as First Nations and Inuit materials ? by providing a
mechanism for the return of artifacts that entered the U.S. illegally.

Czegledi believes that a new agreement should improve on the old one. The
old treaty, for example, covered only material more than 250 years old, but
the majority of items illegally traded are only 100 years old and older. She
also believes the treaty should not be subject to renewal every five years
and that it should be reciprocal.

"By establishing a new, improved treaty, Canadi-ans and Americans could set
a powerful example for legislative responsibility in protecting the heritage
of nations," Czegledi says.

Aggravating the art theft problem is a general lack of public awareness.

"It is imperative that those entrusted with the responsibility to create
laws to protect our cultural heritage attach some degree of shame to the
illicit export of our own property as well as the looting of U.S. sites,"
says Czegledi.

Czegledi is certainly doing her part. Apart from lobbying for a new
agreement with the U.S., she is a prolific writer and lecturer on the
subject of art law and art theft.

"Attitudes to illegal trade in cultural property are analogous to such
social woes as domestic violence and drunk driving," she says. "It is the
lack of pubic awareness or concern that contributes to its existence."  
  
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