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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
- RT @zoecaselli: Looted relics returned to Cambodia receive monks’ blessings theworld.org/stories/2023-0… 12 hours ago
- @chapps @MEHFarrior @Musei_Vaticani Spotted yesterday in the wild. He’s a bit hung up at the moment https://t.co/JKywF5oZrs 15 hours ago
- RT @NagpraNews: Remains of 15 Native American individuals discovered in #Dartmouth College’s collections - “Some bones of Native American i… 15 hours ago
- @theuniversalben He makes some broad but concrete suggestions that are overdue, such as “stringent regulations abou… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 15 hours ago
- Fighter jets and squadrons of military choppers have been blitzing the skies above Rome all week. Nobody I spoke to… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 15 hours ago
- “Art also provides oligarchs with a mechanism to launder their reputations – weaving themselves into such a gilded… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 16 hours ago
- “so much more could be done to tackle a notoriously opaque market which has been long favoured by Russian oligarchs… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 16 hours ago
- Vladyslav Vlasiuk in The Guardian: Putin and his allies love buying art. To help us win the war in Ukraine, confisc… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 16 hours ago
- RT @TomSeymour: On Saturday, @heatha_a was ejected from #BlackPowerNaps @MuseumModernArt - the museum has apologised, but is it committed t… 2 days ago
- RT @sens_ton: UNESCO builds the capacities and awareness of Koh Ker villagers against the looting and illicit trafficking of cultural prope… 2 days 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
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Search Results for: hecht
Hecht’s Footprints: Haverford College Opens Up About Source of Their Greek Vases
American antiquities dealer Robert Hecht died in February 2012 after six decades at the top of the trade in recently looted Classical antiquities. I’ve recently learned that some of that infamous career will be recounted when Hecht’s memoir is privately published in the … Continue reading
Robert E. Hecht Jr., leading antiquities dealer over five decades, dead at 92.
Bob Hecht died quietly at home in Paris at about noon on Wednesday, according to his wife Elizabeth. He was 92 years old. Here’s my obituary in the LA Times. When Robert E. Hecht Jr. arrived at the loading platform of the Metropolitan … Continue reading
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
A Call from Robert Hecht: I’m Not a Squealer
Robert Hecht called the other day to say he’d received the copy of Chasing Aphrodite that we sent to his home on Boulevard La Tour Maubourg in Paris. Hecht is the American antiquities dealer who has dominated the trade for more … Continue reading
Asia Week Raids: New Details on the Christie’s Seizures
This week, a series of five federal raids during New York’s Asia week led to the seizure of at least eight looted antiquities and the arrest of at least one dealer. This is the first of several posts that … Continue reading
Steinhardt Redux: Feds Seize Fresco Looted from Italian World Heritage Site, Destined for New York Billionaire
UPDATED with a statement from Andrew Baker below. Federal agents in New York have seized a looted fresco fragment destined for Michael Steinhardt, the billionaire hedge fund titan turned antiquities collector, according to court records filed last week. The legal … Continue reading
Posted in News
Tagged Andrew Baker, forfeiture, Harold Grunfeld, Karin Ornstein, lee rosenbaum, Mat Securitas, Michael Steinhardt, Paestum, phiale, shelby white
The Rosen Connection: Cornell Will Return 10,000 Cuneiform Tablets to Iraq
On the front page of Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Jason has the scoop on Cornell University’s decision to return 10,000 cuneiform tablets of unclear provenance to Iraq. The tablets were donated and lent to Cornell by New York attorney Jonathan … Continue reading
The Danish Connection: Holding on to Loot at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotech of Copenhagen
UPDATE 7/5/16: After years of stonewalling, the Ny Carlsburg Glyptotek has agreed to return hundreds of looted antiquities to Italy. In a joint announcement released July 5, 2016, Italy and the Danish museum said they had reached an agreement for … Continue reading
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