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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 @profdanhicks: sounds legit https://t.co/hBAyN3CA3V 3 hours ago
- This bot clearly has a guilty conscience twitter.com/cma_african/st… 12 hours ago
- RT @sauterne: Well it looks like the South Arabia stela of Abdu which sold at Christie's with only "Art Market, U.A.E., 1990." as provenanc… 12 hours ago
- “As promised, my article on trading in looted text finds: The Wedge in Research” 👀 twitter.com/lui_log/status… 12 hours ago
- Afghan ambassador in Washington celebrates return of stolen antiquities news.yahoo.com/afghan-ambassa… via @YahooNews 12 hours ago
- RT @DrEmilineSmith: Relics stolen from Siena in 1989 recovered by "Italy's crack Carabinieri cultural heritage protection unit, the NTPC" @… 13 hours ago
- The others are two "sema" (Buddhist's temple boundary markers) that have been displayed at the British Museum in Lo… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 13 hours ago
- Thailand will pursue three looted artifacts displayed in museums in the US and UK. One is a Buddha statue on displ… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 13 hours ago
- This is why we put these looted beauties on the cover: "Griffins were mythological creatures associated with Apollo… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 17 hours ago
- Museum of the Bible’s position here appears to be: yes it was clearly stolen from Afghanistan after 1998 and there… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 17 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
- New Law Aims to Protect Lunar Artifacts
- Thai Cultural Property Case Edges Closer to Settlement
- Antiquities Trafficking Bathed in Sunshine: Disclosures of Shell Company Owners and Suspicious Financial Transactions May Be on the Horizon if the NDAA Becomes Law
- OFAC Puts High-Value Art Market Participants on Notice
- Brooklyn Man Indicted for Egyptian Artifact Smuggling. Did COVID-19 Impact Grand Jury Selection?
Paul Barford’s Portable Antiquities and Heritage Issues
Derek Fincham’s Illicit Cultural Property
David Gill’s Looting Matters
Conflict Antiquities
- “This is all published information and anyone who googles it can find it.” Christos Tsirogiannis, monitoring the trade in illicit antiquities.
- Private ‘rescue’-by-purchase of stolen cultural goods: The material and social consequences and the complicity of Europe and North America
- trafficking of forgeries by forced migrants and forced migrants as false provenances for forgeries
- Turkey’s Gendarmerie caught a Covid-19-infected, health emergency worker-impersonating antiquities trafficker
- the international conference on Handling of Cultural Goods and Financing of Political Violence, at the Norwegian Institute in Rome, has been postponed
The Association for Research into Crimes against Art
- Restitution announcements sometimes don't (or can't) tell the whole story
- Restitution: Manhattan and US authorities hand over 33 artefacts stolen from the the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
- Restitution: Manhattan and US authorities hand over three 13 - 16th century CE artefacts stolen from the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal.
- Restitution: Manhattan and US authorities hand over two Kandyan Period artefacts depicting the Lord Buddha in Abhaya Mudra stolen from the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
- Conference: IFAR's Provenance Research: Where Scholarship Meets Diligence
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
This is a great website/idea.
There are many internet websites that sell antiquities. They source from countries like India, bring them out of India despite the 1972 law against removing any statues/antiques older than 100 years and offer them at great prices on their internet sites. How can we put an end to such sites? Closing them down would discourage their thievery.
Thanks,
Yes but, art works like these may be better off in a huge public museum institution in countries that can be visited with free access so that hundreds of millions of people can look , observe and study and learn from them whereas now they are returned to their country of origin where very people will ever see them or study them. There are many sides to this argument..
isn’t it true that many of these antiquities are beautifully cared for and carefully displayed when placed in large important museums where they are studied by scholars and lay people alike and that the higher good is that they are then to be seen widely rather than narrowly?
I was a friend with Christo Michaelidis and Robin Symes. I was a young artist that they supported by buying much of my early work and encouraging me with grace and intelligence. I saw some extraordinary pieces of art in Robin’s house and I have always felt indebted to him for enthusiastically championing my art in the beginning. If I could tell Robin Symes one thing it would be thank you!