Stolen Art Alert

Volume 3, No. 1

January/February 1982

Caveat Vendor
— Edwin L. Weisl Jr.
Court decision (Jeanneret v. Vichey) on 1920 Matisse oil, Portrait sur fond jaune, poses immense consequences for sellers of imported art, who may have no recourse if a foreign government claims that a work was illegally exported

Canada Seizes a Nigerian Statue
West African Nok figure is test case for Canada's 1976 Cultural Property Import and Export Act as well as for the use of the 1970 UNESCO Convention (ratified by Nigeria in 1971 and by Canada in 1978), as an instrument for the return of smuggled cultural property.

Focus on Peru
— B. Burnham
Peru's priorities in trying to control its cultural heritage. The Bernstein case (where an antiquities dealer pled guilty to false customs declaration over imported Peruvian antiquities) is the first test of the September 1981 Executive Agreement between the U.S. and Peru. Will Peru turn to foreign courts to enforce its laws?