The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "artwork" ...
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The Faking of the Russian Avant-Garde
The Russian modern art market is saturated with fake works. Many European museums and auction houses are completely filled with fraudulent pieces. Once source says that phony modern art from Russian far outnumbers authentic pieces. The problem is exacerbated by a network of experts and professionals who accept large fees to validate Russian modern art as authentic.
Tags: Russian; artwork; modern; fraud; false; fake; phony; bogus; avant-garde; collector; art market
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The Selling of Jeff Koons
Thomas profiles Jeff Koons, a controversial contemporary artist. She chronicles the many ups and downs of his career, and finds that he ultimately succeeded through "a combination of charm, guile, and a talent for creating artworks that spark both heated critical debate and speechless outrage.
Tags: art; artists; art dealers; museums; galleries; controversy; modern art
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Authenticating Andy
After Andy Warhol's death, his will established a foundation in his name. Part of the duty of this foundation is to authenticate pieces of his work and discredit phonies. As this article uncovers, in the past decade, many works have been dismissed as fake without good reason. This often slights private owners while benefitting the foundation itself.
Tags: art; Andy Warhol; portrait; picture; painting; artwork; authentication board; estate; curator
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Money To Burn: The Ohio Teachers' Pension Fund
Tipped off by a school superintendent and a former teacher, the Copley delves into the glaring incongruencies that highlight the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio. The investigation reveals that though the system was losing $12.3 billion from its investment portfolio over a three-year period, its board and administrators spent $15 million on staff bonuses, artwork, parties, furniture storage, childcare, executive perks and travel. From the questionnaire, "they also boosted the system's annual budget by nearly $ 5 billion. Meanwhile, the health care costs of retirees skyrocketed and pension benefits declined".
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Frittered Away: Some Workers Find Retirement Nest Eggs Full of Strange Assets. Coins, parking lots, stores, and artwork turn up; loses can be serious. Employers resist a change.
Article explains how some companies are using 401(k) plans in ways that employees never intended. As a result, employees of some companies which have gone bankrupt (like Color Tile) end up having nothing left in their 401(k) plan because the company misused their retirement funds. This story also includes a "side-bar" story entitled "Color Tile's 401(k) Plan Runs Aground: Employees regret not being vigilant." This supplemental article explains what went wrong with Color Tile's 401 (k) plan, and how people can investigate their own 401 (k) plans to ensure the same thing doesn't happen to them.
Tags: 401 (k); 401K; Color Tile; retirement; funds; nest egg; employment; money; funds; bankrupt; bankruptcy; employees; workers
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Who Owns the Lubomirski Durers?
ARTworks follows through the centuries the path of Lubomirski Durers, a group of great drawings worth millions of dollars. The paintings were placed in a Polish museum in 1823 by Prince Henryk Lubomirski, later seized by the Soviets, exposed in a Ukrainian library, and finally looted by the Nazis. The art pieces were discovered by U.S. troops and secretly turned over to the grandson of Prince Lubomirski by order of the State department, the story reveals. Now both the Polish museum and the Ukrainian library demand the return, but American high-level diplomats and ten museums in the U.S.A. Canada and Europe have made a decision to reject the claims. "Experts say [this] is the most complicated of all war-loot restitution cases," the magazine reports.
Tags: National Archives; Monuments; Fine Arts & Archives (MFA&A); Central Collecting Point (CCP) Munich; property; National Gallery of ART; Ossolinski National Institute in Lemberg (Lviv; Lvov); CAR
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The Master Swindler of Yugoslavia
ARTnews reports on artworks looted from Holocaust victims by the Nazis. Many of the pieces ended up in Yugoslavia, after a "Yugoslav art thief forger and probable spy Ante Topic Mimara ... tricked American art restitution officers into turning over 166 artworks to him in 1949 by falsely claiming that the Nazis had stolen them from Yugoslavia." The duped Americans later searched for the artworks, never found them and covered up the incident, the story reveals. ARTnews has located some the pieces in museums in Serbia and Croatia. The investigation includes photographs of the artworks.
Tags: Nazis; artworks; Soviet Union; National Gallery of Art; Milosevic regime; World War II; Belgrade; Zagreb; paintings
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Nazi Loot in American Museums
ABC News set out to unravel the mystery of how tens of thousands of precious artworks stolen during World War II by the Nazis from Jewish families disappeared from Hitler's secret stash in Paris only to resurface decades later in prominent museums and galleries around the world. The story asked whether American museums and art dealers had been willing to overlook the sometimes clouded history of the art they acquired. Had they unknowingly - or knowingly - collaborated with the Nazis by keeping valuable art from its rightful owners?
Tags: TAPE; VIDEO; Holocaust; Hector Feliciano; National Archives
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A Troubling Undercurrent in Plundered Art and Antiquities
The Boston Globe's series showing how plundered art and antiquities from Holocaust victims and from countries unable to police their architectural sites end up in prestigious museums in direct violation of international treaties and museums' own ethical policies. The series identifies a network of dealers who dealt in stolen artworks, pinpointing suspect paintings hanging in major American museums, and disclosing widespread negligence within the art world about the origin of works of art that routinely change hands for millions of dollars without any inquiry into the ownership chain of the works.
Tags: None
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The Austrian evasion
ARTnews reveals that Jews who wanted to export their reclaimed artworks after World War II were forced to leave the best work behind in Austrian museums. The widow of one major prewar collector was compelled to "donate" 170 works to Austria, including the most valuable piece, in exchange for permission to export the rest.
Tags: Fraud Nazi Embezzlement