APPRAISERS ASSOCIATION 

IFAR Executive Director, Sharon Flescher to Lecture on
"Authenticity, Theft, and Law: 40 years at IFAR" at the National Arts Club on Monday, February 2, 2009

On Monday, February 2, 2009, the Appraisers Association of America will present the third of six lectures in the 2008-2009 Freeman's Lecture Series, with speaker Sharon Flescher, Executive Director of the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR), lecturing on, "Authenticity, Theft, and Law: 40 years at IFAR."  IFAR, headquartered in New York, is a nonprofit educational and research organization dedicated to integrity in the visual arts. Working at the intersection of art scholarship, art law and the public interest, IFAR provides objective information on issues relating to attribution, forgery, fraud, law, ethics, provenance, theft, looting and restitution. Although created in 1969 initially to deal with authenticity, IFAR is perhaps best known for its pioneering work in art theft beginning in the 1970s. Among its activities, IFAR offers an Art Authentication Research Service, commissions original research, publishes the quarterly IFAR Journal, organizes public programs and conferences, and serves as an information resource. The proceedings of its conferences on "Provenance and Due Diligence" and "Catalogues Raisonnés and the Authentication Process" were published as special issues of the IFAR Journal. For the last few years, IFAR has been developing two major new Web-based initiatives: the Catalogue Raisonné Database Project and the Art Law/ Cultural Property Website.

Dr. Flescher is a graduate of Barnard College; has Masters Degrees in English literature and art history; attended the Wharton School of Business; and has a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University. She joined IFAR in 1998 as both Executive Director and Editor in Chief of the IFAR Journal. Dr. Flescher is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at NYU.  She has lectured and published widely, and has made numerous media appearance. She has participated in advisory roundtables for the U.S. State Department on Holocaust-era assets; the CIA on the antiquities market; and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on WWII-era provenance research, among others.

Lectures are sponsored by Freeman's Auctions, and are held monthly at the National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, New York City 20th Street between Irving Place and Park Avenue South.  Jacket and tie required.  Lectures begin at 6:00 p.m.; reception follows at 7:00 p.m.  AAA/ISA/ASA/RICS/NAC members free; general admission $15.  Reservations: 212.889.5404 x11.

Please feel free to contact AAA with any questions or comments.

212.889.5404, x11.