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Recently
- UPDATED > USA vs One Ancient Mosaic: A Looted Syrian Masterpiece in Los Angeles May 26, 2018
- The Sidon Bull’s Head: Court Record Documents a Journey Through the Illicit Antiquities Trade September 24, 2017
- Hobby Lobby’s Legal Expert Speaks: “I can’t rule out…they used my advice to evade the law.” July 10, 2017
- UPDATED > Help Wanted: We’re Tracking Down Objects Sold By Nancy and Doris Wiener January 5, 2017
- UPDATED > Manhattan Dealer Nancy Wiener Arrested: Criminal Complaint Alleges Sweeping Conspiracy to Sell Stolen Asian Art Through Major Auction Houses December 21, 2016
- UPDATED > Inside the ISIS Looting Operation: U.S. Lawsuit Reveals Terror Group’s Brutal Bureaucracy of Plunder December 15, 2016
- The End of the Beginning: NGA Returns Kushan Buddha and Two Kapoor Objects September 18, 2016
- The Missing Link: Subhash Kapoor’s Suppliers in India Are (Finally) Getting Rolled Up July 3, 2016
- The Lessons of Palmyra: Iconoclasm in the era of Clickbait April 7, 2016
- UPDATED > Asia Week Arrest: Japanese Dealer Convicted Of Selling Stolen Art March 19, 2016
- Asia Week Raids: New Details on the Christie’s Seizures March 18, 2016
- Busted: Asia Week Raids Reveal Scope of Illicit Trade in Asian Art March 17, 2016
- The Crennan Report: The NGA’s Ex Post Facto Due Diligence Finds 22 “Questionable” Asian Antiquities February 17, 2016
- Operation Antiquity: Prison for Antiquities Dealer Behind Looting and Tax Fraud Scheme December 15, 2015
- Ball State’s Kapoor Return Reveals New False Provenance November 17, 2015
- The Seated Buddha Goes Home: Nancy Wiener and National Gallery of Australia Will Return Sculpture to India March 5, 2015
- The Kushan Buddhas: Nancy Wiener, Douglas Latchford and New Questions about Ancient Buddhas February 1, 2015
- Danti’s Inference: The Known Unknowns Of ISIS and Antiquities Looting November 18, 2014
- Hecht’s Footprints: Haverford College Opens Up About Source of Their Greek Vases November 4, 2014
- Shiva Goes Home: Australia’s Prime Minister Returns Looted Kapoor Idols to India September 4, 2014
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Tweeting Aphrodite
- RT @BarnabyPhillips: Big development coming up this week in the restitution of the Benin Bronzes. Watch this space.... #Nigeria #Edo #Benin… 34 minutes ago
- Guess we’ll know soon. Two arrests: nltimes.nl/2022/06/28/vid… 1 hour ago
- Who is brazen enough to try this, and pull it off, in broad daylight? Perhaps the international jewel thief network… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 hour ago
- RT @LostArtsofNepal: FAITH STOLEN REMINDER !!! @artinstitutechi Three Stolen Artifacts in the Collection of ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO, US… 2 hours ago
- Video: twitter.com/hwhofs/status/… 2 hours ago
- “A robbery at Tefaf Maastricht in the middle of the day: windows of a jewelry stand smashed, two mobsters threateni… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 5 hours ago
- Threaded convo with @vastarchive and @Rostam_Persia on war, loot, fakes and provenance 👀 Among the q’s: Can we cal… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 5 hours ago
- The Orlando Museum of Art’s exhibition Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Thaddeus Mumford, Jr. Venice Co… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 16 hours ago
- The Enablers Act would require art and antique dealers, as well as lawyers, trust companies, public relations firms… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 day ago
- “Simon, Hagop and Serop Simonian keep much of their mystery in the eyes of the OCBC. However, by crossing their inf… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 day ago
What we’re talking about
AAMD American Numismatic Society antiquities Aphrodite archaeology Arnold-Peter Weiss art crime Arthur Houghton Art of the Past Asian Civilizations Museum book review Cambodia Chasing Aphrodite Christies Cleveland Museum Dallas Museum of Art David Gill Dietrich von Bothmer Douglas Latchford Edoardo Almagià Elie Borowski Events FBI Gary Vikan Getty Museum Getty Villa Giacomo Medici Gianfranco Becchina Hugh Eakin illicit antiquities Immigration and Customs Enforcement India Italy J. Paul Getty Museum J. Paul Getty Trust James Cuno james grimaldi Jane Levine Jim Cuno Jiri Frel Khmer Kimbell Art Museum Koh Ker Loot looted antiquities looting Marion True Metropolitan Museum of Art Michaela Boland Michael Padgett museums Nancy Wiener National Gallery of Australia New York Review of Books Nomos AG Norton Simon Museum numismatics Princeton University repatriation Robert Hecht Robin Symes Ron Radford SAFE scandal Selina Mohamed Sicily Sotheby's Subhash Kapoor Tamil Nadu The Art Newspaper Timothy Potts Turkey Vijay Kumar Walters Museum of Art WikiLootTon Cremer’s MSN
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Cultural Heritage Lawyer Rick St. Hilaire
- Cultural Property Lawyers Must Remain Alert to Antiquities Trafficking and Money Laundering
- 7 Questions You Have About the Manhattan DA’s Agreement with "A New York Antiquities Collector"
- Cultural Property Stakeholders Clash Over AML/CFT Regs for Antiquities Dealers
- New Law Aims to Protect Lunar Artifacts
- Thai Cultural Property Case Edges Closer to Settlement
Paul Barford’s Portable Antiquities and Heritage Issues
Derek Fincham’s Illicit Cultural Property
- Smash and Smash at the Dallas Museum of Art
- Elizabeth Marlowe’s Review of ‘The Brutish Museum’
- The Terrific Pandora Papers Looted Art Article
- Italian Senate renews call for return of the ‘Bronze Statue of a Victorious Youth’
- Psychics, Bowie knives, fake Alamo artifacts: New Book out today on how Texas can’t shake the Alamo
David Gill’s Looting Matters
Conflict Antiquities
- Russia’s destruction of Ukraine’s cultural property is proof of its intent to commit genocide.
- Russia is subjecting cultural heritage workers and other civilians to the war crime of forced military labour.
- There is a market in Belarus for cultural property that has been stolen from Ukraine, pillaged by Russia’s soldiers and mercenaries.
- open-source evidence of damage to and destruction of cultural heritage, natural heritage and other civilian objects through Russia’s war in and occupation of Ukraine
- In 2018, “a chartered Tupolev-154 jetliner” reportedly flew from Kazakhstan to Switzerland, “loaded up” with “antiques, jewelry, works of art and other cargo”.
The Association for Research into Crimes against Art
- Justice Rendered: The final confiscation of properties and business enterprises of Gianfranco Becchina has been confirmed.
- Justice rendered in the attempted theft of Claude Monet's De Voorzaan en de Westerhem from the Zaans Museum
- Save the Date/Call for Presenters: August 5-7, 2022 ARCA's 11th Annual Art Crime Conference
- Potential CITES violations and a seizure of specimens from one (of many) large hunted animals collections in Spain.
- What about the well known looted vases in the Altes Museum in Berlin?
Larry Rothfield’s The Punching Bag
- Against "Displacement": A Thought about Hilgert's "Culture Matters"
- 100 antiquities police officers needed, 7 on the books
- A due diligence checklist -- the starting point for a calibrated taxing system for antiquities or for a registration system
- A possible second-best solution for orphaned antiquities?
- U.S. Senators are pushing for Native American Artifact legislation -- but will it do any good?
Elginism — Repatriation Issues
Lee Rosenbaum’s CultureGrrl
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Law Enforcement
- FBI Art Squad FBI’s Art Detail
- Carabinieri Art Squad The Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale, Italy’s Art Squad.
- Interpol Art Detail Interpol has tracked the trade in stolen art since 1947.
- ICE ICE Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
Museums
- The Getty The website of the J. Paul Getty Trust
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Greek and Roman Galleries of the Met
- Boston MFA Art of the Ancient World at the Boston MFA
Related Books
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Search Results for: Giacomo Medici
Hecht Trial Ends With No Verdict, Medici Conviction Affirmed
The criminal trial of Robert E. Hecht ended this week with no verdict, while Giacomo Medici’s conviction for trafficking looted antiquities was upheld last month by Italy’s high court. Here is Jason’s story in the Los Angeles Times: The trial … Continue reading
Posted in News
Tagged antiquities, art crime, Getty Museum, Giacomo Medici, illicit antiquities, looting, Marion True, Paolo Ferri, Robert Hecht
Optical Due Diligence: Art Loss Register Claims To Vet Ancient Art. Does it?
UPDATE 8/9/14: The Sunday Times has published another devastating report on the Art Loss Register’s business practices. ALR Founder Julian Radcliffe admits paying thieves to recover stolen art in a dozen cases and is described as a “fence” by senior European … Continue reading
Posted in News
Tagged antiquities, Art Loss Register, Bonhams, Carabinieri, Christies, David Gill, due diligence, Julian Radcliffe, Sotheby's, Subhash Kapoor
Decoding Eakin: Behind ‘Extortion’ Claim, Fear the Floodgates Have Opened
It is no coincidence that The Great Giveback, Hugh Eakin’s lengthy argument against the repatriation of looted antiquities, landed in The New York Times on Sunday, just as the directors of America’s leading art museums gathered in Kansas City for their annual meeting. … Continue reading
Posted in Ideas
Tagged AAMD, Arthur Houghton, Association of Art Museum Directors, Cleveland Museum, Cornelius Vermeule, Dietrich von Bothmer, Giacamo Medici, Harold Williams, Hugh Eakin, J. Paul Getty Museum, Jim Cuno, Jiri Frel, John Walsh, looted antiquities, Philippe de Montebello, repatriation, Robert Hecht, The Great Giveback, Virginia Museum of Fine Art
The Getty’s Looted Amber: A Window into the Museum’s Deepening Dilemma
In Saturday’s Los Angeles Times, I have a story about Getty Museum’s efforts to find the true origins of its massive antiquities collection. Here’s how the story starts: In the wake of a scandal over its acquisition of looted antiquities, … Continue reading
Tagged ancient amber, Arthur Houghton, Ascoli Satriano, Claire Lyons, Colin Renfrew, Faya Causey, Fritz Burki, Giacomo Medici, Gianfranco Becchina, Gordon McLendon, Head of Hades, J. Paul Getty Museum, James Cuno, Jiri Frel, looted antiquities, Marion True, Morgantina, Robert Hecht, Robin Symes, Tax fraud
Chasing Aphrodite 2012: The Year in Review
Happy New Year from Chasing Aphrodite. It’s been a year and a half since our book was published, and during that time the hunt for looted antiquities at the world’s museums has gone global. Over the past 12 months we’ve … Continue reading
Dallas Museum of Art Returns Orpheus Mosaic, Five Other Looted Treasures in Announcing New Art Loans Initiative
The Dallas Museum of Art has agreed to return six looted antiquities from its collection and announced a broad new initiative to exchange expertise and artwork with cultural institutions around the world. “The problems of illegal excavation and the illicit … Continue reading
The Getty List: 10 Objects at the J. Paul Getty Museum that Turkey Says Were Looted
Among the dozens of allegedly looted antiquities that the government of Turkey is asking American museums to return are ten objects at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Getty declined to provide a list of the objects in question, as … Continue reading
Introducing WikiLoot: Your Chance to Fight the Illicit Antiquities Trade
[UPDATE: Our WikiLoot proposal has sparked a great conversation about the project. Thanks for all the comments submitted below and on the application, which you can find here. Collaboration is at the heart of this project, so we’ve created an … Continue reading
Almagia Objects Traced to Boston MFA, San Antonio Museum, Indiana University.
We’ve heard back from more museums about objects they acquired from Edoardo Almagia, the Italian dealer at the center of an investigation into the illicit antiquities trade. As we’ve reported previously, the Met and Princeton University museums have recently returned … Continue reading
Kimbell Art Museum Responds To Questions About Ancient Cup Acquired Under Timothy Potts
The Kimbell Art Museum has decided to list one of its prized possessions — a Greek cup acquired in 2000 under then-director Timothy Potts — on a public registry of ancient art with unclear origins. The move comes after Jason … Continue reading
Posted in News
Tagged AAMD, Elie Borowski, Getty Museum, Giacomo Medici, Gianfranco Becchina, James Cuno, Kimbell Art Museum, Robert Guy, Robert Hecht, Timothy Potts