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- 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
- @mimanancy Prosecutors use this type of evidence to establish knowledge of guilt: "An archived version of the Met’… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 13 hours ago
- @mimanancy "Throughout 2022, U.S. authorities seized at least 29 items from the Met’s collection..." Somehow these… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 13 hours ago
- Ezra Chowaiki was one of New York’s most active art dealers—until he got busted for wire fraud. Now he reveals the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 17 hours ago
- RT @LAWeeklyArts: .@LAWeekly Movie Review: Willem Dafoe Delves Deep #Inside the Soul of an Art Thief. laweekly.com/willem-dafoe-d… 19 hours ago
- @mimanancy NB: The "east greek treasure" Hoving was referring is the Lydian Hoard, which the Met returned to Turkey… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 20 hours ago
- ProPublica: Questions about the origins and ownership of the Alsdorf Collection @artinstitutechi have cast doubt on… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 20 hours ago
- This is the same boilerplate PR response the Met has been giving FOR YEARS to reports of criminal activity in its w… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 22 hours 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
David Gill’s Looting Matters
Conflict Antiquities
- Destructive Exploitation and care of Cultural Objects and Professional/Public Education for sustainable heritage management (DECOPE)
- a very low estimate of metal-detecting in the United Kingdom, according to the Portable Antiquities Scheme
- loot and forgeries from Eastern Europe on the market in Western Europe, regardless of Russia’s war on Ukraine
- artefact-hunting in drug plantations and by cannabis-cultivators in Ukraine (around 2014)
- attitudes to personal and public health precautions among artefact-hunters amid the Covid-19 pandemic
The Association for Research into Crimes against Art
- 2023 ARCA Amelia Conference - Save the Date & Call for Presenters
- 77 looted artefacts to the Republic of Yemen and a well known Brooklyn dealer
- Penelope Jackson The Art of Copying Art
- Burglars strike the Princessehof Ceramics Museum in Leeuwarden
- A 2,500-year-old sculpture from the monumental ruins of Chavín de Huantar is returned to the Peruvian ambassador
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
Meta
Search Results for: Gianfranco Becchina
UPDATED > Sleeping Beauty: Seizure of Sarcophagus in New York Shows Value of Becchina Dossier
UPDATE September 2014: Japanese dealer Noriyoshi Horiuchi has agreed to return the sarcophagus lid to Italy in a stipulation reached with the federal government. Rick St. Hilaire has the news here. UPDATE: After a 13 year legal battle, Switzerland has returned to … Continue reading
The Becchina Dossier: A New Window into the Illicit Trade
Italian culture reporter Fabio Isman has an important story in the current issue of the Art Newspaper [no link available yet] about Gianfranco Becchina, the retired Sicilian antiquities dealer who now faces trial in Rome for conspiracy to traffic in … Continue reading
Posted in News
Tagged archaeology, Fabio Isman, Getty Museum, Gianfranco Becchina, illicit antiquities, Loot, looting, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sicily, The Art Newspaper
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
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
Kapoor Case: Investigation into Stolen Indian Idols Will Test Museum Transparency
The investigation of antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor, which made international headlines this week when federal agents raided his Manhattan warehouse, promises to shine a bright light on the illicit trade in antiquities smuggled out of India and other South Asian countries … 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
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
New Wave of Returns: Hundreds of Looted Antiquities Recovered from the Met, Princeton and Others
On Jan 20, the Italian art squad announced the return of more than 200 antiquities from US museums, companies, collectors and dealers — all the product of illegal excavation or theft. The Metropolitan Museum of Art returned forty pieces belonging to … Continue reading
Posted in News
Tagged Carabinieri, Cleveland Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Dietrich von Bothmer, Edoardo Almagià, FBI, Giacomo Medici, Gianfranco Becchina, Humana, Indiana University Art Museum, Jerome Eisenberg, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MFA Boston, Michael Padgett, Princeton University, Robert Hecht, Robin Symes, Royal-Athena Gallery, San Antonio Museum of Art, Tampa Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art
The Best of Chasing Aphrodite 2011
Happy New Year! We want to share our profound thanks for the 24,000 visits we’ve had since we launched this site with the release of Chasing Aphrodite last May. You’ve helped make the book a success while shining a light on … Continue reading