Arts council suspends Sulebar over scam

JAKARTA (JP): The Jakarta Arts Council has suspended M. Sulebar Soekarman from the executive board pending the outcome of an investigation into his role in last month's aborted painting exhibition which was widely billed by art critics as a scam.

Ratna Riantiarno, who chairs the board, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday that the council at a plenary meeting on Dec. 6 decided to withdraw its support for The Old Painting Exhibition Pre World War II.

The council will convene and invite experts to ask for their opinions on the case.

Sulebar acted as an adviser to the exhibition and auction of rare and priceless artwork from before World War II.

The exhibition, slated for Nov. 23, never opened after many art critics cast doubts about the authenticity of the works.

Batavia Auctioneer and Amana Inc. which jointly organized the exhibition and auction, attributed the paintings to many international and Indonesian masters.

They included Pablo Picasso's El Toro Rosa (estimated sale price US$200,000), Pierre Auguste Renoir's Girl with a Flower (reportedly found in Semarang and estimated at between $1.5 million and $2 million), Marc Chagall's A Bride's Dream (found in Depok, West Java, estimated at $600,000) and van Gogh's Corn Farmers (found in Riau and estimated at between $2 million and $4 million). Works attributed to Indonesian masters S. Soedjojono, Affandi and Hendra Gunawan as well as foreign-born artists Rudolf Bonnet, Le Mayeur and Arie Smit, who spent much of their lives in the country, were also billed as part of the event.

Ratna said the controversy should not have happened.

She also played down the role of Sulebar in the scam.

"The most important thing is that there should be more cases like this in the future," she said. (04)