Dr. Erin Thompson, a New York Professor recently wrote about this, now restituted Roman marble portrait bust of a bearded man which was sold by Phoenix Ancient Art in 1998 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  When it was sold, this marble portrait of a vigorous middle-aged man with sharply turned head and piercing gaze was said to have been part of the collection of Belgian-born, Neuchâtel resident André Lagneau, who had gotten it in 1977 from the Geneva collector Pierre Sciclounoff.  At the time, we thought the piece may have originated in Libya. 

Sciclounoff, 1926-1997, who moved to Geneva from Bulgaria, was a powerful attorney and businessman in the city who is known to have been a friend and advisor to other powerful men of the period including Aristotle Onassis, Edward Kennedy, the Geneva Rothschilds, and J. Paul. Getty.  He was also an avid and wealthy collector, filling his 50-room mansion with art and antiquities and became a patron to the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire (MAH) in Geneva, although he seldom visited the museum.  

Jacques Chamay, a problematic curator from this Geneva museum, wrote a memoir of sorts about Sciclounoff's important collection of Greek vases, many of which, from southern Italy, have problematic provenances as well as a second book about the disbursal of specific pieces from the Sciclounoff collection. 

Chamay's first book about Sciclounoff's collection was published through the Hellas & Roma association (started by Chamay) in its 19th volume, which assisted in providing a veneer of legitimacy to ancient objects in the collection which otherwise had no prior collecting history, aside from their first purchase by the Geneva-based lawyer.  Chamay later published a second volume of Sciclounoff's collection in 2021 which presented forty additional antiquities, including a grouping of astonishing monumental vases with mythological and funerary themes, most of which are still little studied, and are even unpublished. 

Sciclounoff is also known to have been purchased a forged Vermeer, painted by Hans van Meegeren, formerly in the collection of Hermann Wilhelm Göring via a transaction with the Dutch arms dealer Daniël George van Beuningen. That work was returned to van Beuningen’s family after the war and the family in turn gave it to Pierre Sciclounoff, its Geneva-based lawyer.  

Sciclounoff also had hard transactions with Christian Boursaud [Galerie Hydra] and brokered the sale of purchased by The J. Paul Getty via  Swiss classical archaeologist and art dealer Christoph Leon.  Leon is most famous for having sold the looted golden Greek funerary wreath to the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1993 for $1.1 million and for having brokered the 1984 sale of all twenty-one pieces of Apulian pottery, looted from a single grave that were restituted from the Altes Museum.  

Aside from Sciclounoff's mention in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's accession record for the Roman marble bus of a bearded man when it was acquired by the museum, ARCA didn't find any related open source evidence connecting this bust to either the Sciclounoff collection or of him having sold a bust of this description on/around 1977 to André Lagneau. 

So who was André Lagneau? 

ARCA began cataloguing Lagneau's pieces in circulation by Phoenix Ancient Art, in 2017.  Back then, the Aboutaam Swiss investigation was just gathering steam, and it wasn't until 2019 that Paris Match reporter Frédéric Loore reported that Ali Aboutaam had been charged in Switzerland with VAT fraud, concealment and breach of the law on the transfer of cultural goods.

While the open source digital footprint André P. Lagneau is very small, he was purportedly an archaeologist and ethnographer, as well as a subject matter expert in Switzerland who studied to the doctorate level.  According to a single open-source record, Lagneau purportedly collaborating with federal customs, and at least one UN agency.  

A biography published on the website Art Passions in 2015 stated that Lagneau was at some unnamed date responsible for the detailed inventory and the reorganisation of the ancient Egyptian collections at the Musée d'ethnographie de Neuchâtel for which he wrote and published an explanatory brochure.  He was also known to have collaborated with Jacques Chamay, at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire (MAH) in Geneva. 

Exploring further, ARCA documented more than twenty-five eclectically diverse artefacts tagged with Lagneau's name as the prior owner, several of which, listed below, are found in other notable museum collections and demonstrtrate that they were put into circulation via the Aboutaams or other art market actors who are known to have possessed and circulated problematic antiquities. 

Take for example the following: 

This Black-Figure Mixing bowl (krater) with sprinters at the Museum of Fine Arts - Boston sold by Phoenix Ancient art in 1998.  André Lagneau attested that this krater had been in his collection, that he had acquired it in 1975 from his friend, Pierre Sciclounoff.

This 500 BCE Archaic-period terracotta oil lamp gifted in 2001 to the Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum by Dina and Hicham Aboutaam. It's ownership history is recorded as being: 

an integral part of the personal collection of a Belgian family. The family of Dr. Andre Lagneau moved from Belgium to Geneva, Switzerland in 1961. They now live in Neuchatel.

Yet, no mention is given as to when or how or from whom it was acquired. 

This diminutive 2900–2350 BCE, Mesopotamian (Sumarian) votive statue of a male cupbearer, with large inlaid eyes, bear to the waist and wearing a kaunake was purchased by the Saint Louis Art Museum from Phoenix Ancient Art, S.A. on 28 September 2000 with a letter dated May 18, 2000 from Andre Lagneau purportedly confirming that the figurine was acquired by his father, Alfred Lagneau, sometime in the 1950s from a cousin, Auguste Hiermaux, who was an officer in the Belgian army occupying Germany. 

Dr. André Lagneau, Switzerland, [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Antiquarium Ltd. New York, 1996, no. ANT 1375 [mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 1997, by purchase.

Planned as a focal point of the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester's Egyptian collection, this 332 BCE-30 BCE, Ptolemaic Period anthropoid coffin nested in the rectangular outer coffin has eyes decorated with shell and stone, eyelines and chin lines of inlaid glass, and a face of gold leaf gilding.  They were purchased by the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester via the Marion Stratton Gould Fund in 2000 with a provenance of: 

Private collection, Lucerne, Switzerland; purchased from that owner by the family of Dr. Andre P. Lagneau, Neuchatel, Switzerland, ca. 1970; purchased from Dr. Lagneau by Francis

Wilhelm, Geneva (dealer); purchased from him by Antiquarium, Ltd., New York (dealers); purchased from them by the Gallery, 2000.

Note: This is the same New York gallery that the New York Times reported earlier this month had surrendered 20 valuable ancient artifacts linked to Douglas A.J. Latchford.

This portrait head of a middle-aged bearded Plato shows chips and damages above the right eyebrow and across the forehead.  His nose is also broken.   This artefact was purchased on 9 June 2011 by the Yale University Art Gallery during a sale at Christie's New York as Lot 200. 

According to an attestation signed and dated 21 May 2011 by Lagneau and provided by the consignor Lagneau saw the bust in the apartment of Byron Zoumboulakis, Geneva, in the second half of the 1960s on the occasion of a visit to Zoumboulakis’s apartment gallery at the Rue de la Taconnerie in Geneva with Niklaus Dürr, Curator at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva. 

This 2000 BCE Mesopotamian lama deity with the head of a man and the body of a reclining bull was purchased by the Museum of Fine Arts - Houston in 2003.   It's provenance is listed as: 

Alfred Lagneau (d. 1979), by the early-1950s–1979; by inheritance to his nephew, André Lagneau, Neuchatel, Switzerland, from 1979;[Phoenix Ancient Art, New York/Geneva, by 2003]; purchased by MFAH, 2003.

The Museum of Fine Arts - Houston also purchased a set of mosaic panels depicting The Musical Contest between Apollo and Marsyas in 2006.

Their provenance is listed as: 

René Bursztejn-Lavigne (d. 1981) and Mercedes Alfonseca Bursztejn-Lavigne, 1970–1981; by inheritance to Mercedes Alfonseca Bursztejn-Lavigne, 1981–1988; sold through Dr. André Lagneau, Secretary General of Credit Suisse; purchased by Sleiman Aboutaam (d. 1998), Geneva, 1988–1998; by inheritance to his sons, Hicham Aboutaam and Ali Aboutaam, New York, 1998–2006; sold through [Phoenix Ancient Art, New York/Geneva]; purchased by MFAH, 2006.

In 2015 Egyptian art collector Joseph A. Lewis II and his wife Sofi, known for other problematic loaned and donated pieces gifted two Egyptian Ushabtis, one for Khaemwaset and one for Ramesses to the Michael C. Carlos Museum. Said to have been found at the Serapeum, Saqqara, Egypt, both were purchased between January and March 2012 from Galerie Gunter Puhze in Freiburg, Germany with a purported provenance that states they were acquired by Florent Dalcq from the Service des Antiquities in Egypt, 1923 and then passed to André Lagneau. 

This Egyptian white glazed composition shabti for the Lady of the House, Inhay has a similar backstory.   

This artefact came up for sale at Bonhams, London, New Bond Street on 28 November 2017 with a provenance listed as:

Florent Dalcq (1878-1950) collection, Belgium, acquired from the Service des Antiquities (Egyptian Museum, Cairo Museum) in 1923; and thence by descent to the Andre Lagneau collection, Neuchatel.

with Galerie Puhze, Freiburg, 2011.

Private collection, North America.

What are we bringing all this up? 

According to a 29 September 2021 Swiss penal order André Lagneau, in Switzerland, in a period between 1992 and 2016, was accused of having

•⁠  ⁠produced and/or signed false invoices,

•⁠  ⁠produced documents of indications of source contrary to reality,

•⁠  ⁠provided indications of source contrary to reality to be used by others,

and this, for the purpose of obtaining cultural goods, within the meaning of article 2 of the law on the transfer of cultural goods (LTBC), a pedigree aimed at dispelling suspicions of illicit provenance and/or at facilitating their customs transfer and their sale on the art market.

These facts were committed mainly within the framework of his relations with Phoenix Ancient Art. 

According to the same Swiss penal order, during the hearing held 20 August 2019 at his home given his particularly fragile state of health Lagneau admitted to having made a false invoices and attestations in furtherance of specific antiquities sales.   

Following a six-year investigation into the provenance of 15,000 antiquities, Ali Aboutaam pled guilty to charges of violating Swiss law on the transfer of cultural properties on 10 January 2023, admitting to the use of forged provenance documents.  He received an 18-month suspended jail sentence, a three-year probation term, and was ordered to pay 450,00 Swiss Francs (approximately $488,000) in legal costs to the Geneva Police Tribunal.

Listed as "a passionate collector" with the initial's "BM" (one letter off from "AL") in this November 2021 SwissInfo news article,  André Lagneau wast convicted of forgery and sentenced him to a suspended fine of 4,500 francs at the age of 86.  The sentence was relatively light due to the statute of limitations having expired for the offenses committed between 1992 and 2006. 

Lagneau died, at age 89, on 2 June 2023 in Neuchâtel.  He was never questioned about the veracity of his statements in relation to any of the objects sold which are located in the 9 museums in the United States mentioned in this blog post. 

Taken together, the record raises a narrow but serious legal and evidentiary point. Where a museum acquisition depends on a prior owner’s attestation, and that same individual is later convicted of producing false invoices or provenance statements in connection with antiquities sales, the evidentiary value of any unsupported provenance associated with that individual is necessarily diminished.  This does not, by itself, prove that every object linked to Lagneau is illicit.  It does, however, mean that museums, dealers, and researchers can no longer treat such attestations as neutral or self-authenticating evidence.

For the Roman marble portrait bust recently restituted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the problem is not simply that its earlier collecting history remains incomplete.  The problem was that the claimed chain of ownership appeared to rest on names and documents now associated with a proven pattern of provenance laundering.  In legal and ethical terms, that distinction should matter to all museums.  A provenance gap is one kind of risk.  A provenance gap bridged by a later-discredited attestation is another.

The Lagneau-linked material  dispersed across major American museums should therefore be reviewed with heightened scrutiny.  Institutions that acquired objects through Phoenix Ancient Art, Antiquarium Ltd., Galerie Puhze, or other market actors or collectors associated with these chains should not wait for law enforcement intervention before reassessing their files.  Due diligence is not satisfied by preserving old paperwork in an acquisition file when that paperwork has become materially unreliable.

At a minimum, museums should publicly disclose the underlying documents supporting these provenances, identify which statements depend on Lagneau’s attestations, and distinguish between independently corroborated ownership history and unsupported market narrative.  Where no credible pre-1970 or lawful export history can be established, continued retention becomes increasingly difficult to justify.

By:  Lynda Albertson

One of the highlights of ARCA's Postgraduate Certificate Programmes in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection – Summer 2026 was undoubtedly Course 8 – Risk Assessment and Museum Security, held in the beautiful town of Amelia, Italy, from 9 to 14 July 2026.

After several days of exploring security risk assessments, museum security strategies, threat identification, emergency preparedness, and best practices for protecting cultural heritage, it was time to step outside the classroom.

Our annual field visit transformed theory into practice. Walking through a museum together, the participants were challenged to observe, analyse and assess the environment through the eyes of a security professional. From physical security measures and visitor management to object protection, emergency planning and operational procedures, every detail became part of the discussion.

What makes this course so rewarding is witnessing the shift in perspective. By the end of the programme, students no longer visit a museum simply as visitors—they begin to think like security consultants, risk managers and cultural heritage protectors. Every gallery, entrance, display case and emergency exit tells a different story.

Protecting cultural heritage is about far more than preventing theft. It is about balancing security, accessibility, conservation and the visitor experience, ensuring that priceless collections remain safe while continuing to inspire future generations.

We have no doubt that, from this moment on, you will never look at a museum in quite the same way again.

Congratulations to all our 2026 participants. We wish you every success in applying these principles in your own institutions and countries.

On 8 July 2026, Jeffrey Ying, a resident of Fremont, California, was sentenced in federal court after confessing to the theft of approximately $216,000 worth of rare and historical Chinese manuscripts from the Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library at the University of California, Los Angeles.  Some of the stolen literature dating to as early as 1393, while another was published in 1575. 

Jeffrey Ying pleaded guilty in October 2025 to just one felony count of theft of a major artwork, for the December 2024 theft of a 17th Century manuscript dating from China's Qing dynasty (1644-1911).  Court documents indicate that the manuscript thief carried out a series of thefts which began prior to 2020 Pandemic and continued up to the time of his arrest after Ying returned again to the UCLA, in August 2025, after the missing manuscripts were detected.  According to the wider investigation, he is alleged to have removed at least eight rare Chinese books or manuscripts. 

According to investigators, using assumed names like “Jason Wang,” “Alan Fujimori,” and “Austin Chen” Ying would borrow the rare documents for a few days at a time, create copies, and then affix fake asset tags before returning the counterfeit or “dummy” manuscripts in place of the authentic originals.  Afterward, within days of the thefts, he regularly travelled to and from China. 

His sentence this week, as corrected in reporting following an amended Justice Department release, includes credit for time served, one year of home confinement, three years of supervised release, no fine, and restitution to be determined at a later date.

Library staff eventually noticed the counterfeit manuscripts and ultimately traced their last known access to a visitor using the name “Alan Fujimori.”  Law enforcement then searched Ying’s hotel room in Brentwood, where they found blank manuscripts and paperwork made in the style of the manuscripts he had checked out, as well as pre-made asset tags that could be used to help disguise substitute volumes, making them appear to be legitimate library holdings.  When arrested, authorities also found that Ying held a fraudulent California identification card in the name “Austin Chen” and library cards bearing the names “Austin Chen” and “Jason Wang.”

For special collections, rare books, and manuscript libraries, the Ying case is a reminder that access control alone is not enough.  Institutions must pair reader registration and supervised handling with item-level photography, condition checks, return inspections, staff training, and procedures for comparing returned material against existing documentation.  Asset tags, shelf marks, bindings, wrappers, paper, calligraphy, seals, annotations, and other identifying features need to be checked as part of a return workflow, especially when materials are valuable, portable, and vulnerable to substitution.

This is not a glamorous art theft story. It is a procedural one. Its significance lies in how ordinary library processes can be exploited through aliases, reservations, dummy copies, and the appearance of normal return.  For archives and libraries stewarding cultural heritage, the case shows why documentation, chain of custody, reading-room controls, and careful return verification are not administrative burdens.  They are core protections against cultural property crime.

The Musée Lalique in Wingen-sur-Moder, Alsace, was targeted in an early morning burglary on Sunday, 5 July 2026, with thieves reportedly stealing around twenty pieces of jewellery from the museum’s jewellery room.

Jewellery display cases at the Musée Lalique

The ‘Jeune beauté et héron’ pendant and chain is a creation by René Lalique, crafted from gold, enamel and opal. The piece was created between 1897 and 1898.

The burglary is troubling not only because of the financial value of the stolen works, but because of what it suggests about planning, targeting, and institutional vulnerability. The thieves appear to have gone directly for the jewellery room, raising questions about prior knowledge, response time, and whether the stolen works were selected for their value, portability, recognisability, or perceived resale potential.

Before it was a brand name, Lalique was the name of a man and artist of genius, René-Jules Lalique.  From his birth in 1860 to his death in 1945, he rose to become one of the major protagonists of the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements. Drawing inspiration from nature and daring enough to use the female body as an ornamental component, he is considered by some to be the inventor of modern jewellery.

The museum has announced that it will remain closed for several days while the investigation continues and while arrangements are made for a safe reopening. CCTV footage is also being reviewed by investigators.

As with many high-value museum burglaries, the public sale of such recognisable works will be difficult. But that does not make the theft less serious. Stolen cultural objects do not need to be easily sold in order to be damaged, hidden, displaced, used as criminal collateral, or moved through opaque networks. 

For museums, especially those holding portable luxury objects, jewellery, antiquities, and small works of high cultural value, the Lalique burglary is another reminder that object documentation, alarm response protocols, display security, and rapid circulation of theft alerts remain essential parts of cultural property protection.

According to evidence collected by the Dutch authorities and presented in court, the theft was carried out by three men, eventually identified publicly as Douglas Chesley Wendersteyt, Bernhard Zeeman and Jan B., acting in concert.  At approximately 03:45 in the morning, the burglars used an improvised explosive devise, or IED, made from a Ti-Rex flash banger firework attached to the garden underground emergency exit of the Drents Museum.  The force of this detonation allowed accesses into the museum by causing damage to the museum's entry point as well as damaged several buildings on the Brink, shattering nearby windows.

CCTV footage, captured during the burglary, showed that the accomplices spent only a few minutes inside the museum. The smallest of the three men entered first and moved directly toward the display case containing the golden helmet of Cotofenesti, (pronounced /kotsofeneʃti/), a Geto-Dacian helmet dating to the 5th century BCE made from almost a kilogram of gold.  After striking the case repeatedly with a sledgehammer, he removed the helmet and placed it in a bag. A second offender targeted another display case and succeeded in removing the three gold spiral Dacian bracelets from the Sarmizegetusa Regia archaeological site. The third participant also attempted to break into a display case but failed to gain access before the group fled the museum.

According to the court's record it seems that the operation had been carefully prepared. The accomplices acquired a hammer, crowbar, and other tools in advance of the museum's break-in, arranged vehicles, rented accommodation, and coordinated their movements before and after the burglary. Following the theft, the group escaped in a grey Volkswagen Golf, stolen in Alkmaar, which was later set on fire under the viaduct of the N33 at the Grolloërstraat, at the intersection of Grolloërstraat and Marwijksoord, near Rolde before the thieves transferred to another vehicle.

When the news broke of the theft, it caused immense anger in Romania over the loss of such important national treasures. As a result, the director of the National History Museum of Romania, Ernest Oberländer-Târnoveanu, was fired.

The subsequent investigation became one of the largest heritage-crime inquiries in recent Dutch history. Through forensic evidence recovered, surveillance footage, witness testimony, telecommunications data, and an extensive undercover operation, prosecutors ultimately secured convictions against these three participants. 

Law enforcement's first breakthrough came on 29 January 2025 when three individuals from Heerhugowaard were taken into custody. The Dutch police publicly identified two of the suspects as Douglas Chesley Wendersteyt and Bernhard Zeeman, releasing both their names and photographs to the public. The third person arrested was not named, but was reported to be the partner of one of the suspects.  The names of two of the identified accomplices were made public in hopes of flushing others involved in the burglary.  April 2025 saw another breakthrough in the investigation when the police identified several additional suspects.  Around the same time, authorities announced they were actively seeking a suspect captured on CCTV footage wearing a Nike cap and glasses and visiting a hardware store in Assen shortly before the burglary.

While the judgments provide a detailed reconstruction of how the theft was planned and executed, they also addressed a question that has lingered since the spectacular burglary first made international headlines: why were these objects stolen in the first place?

The court's answer is remarkably consistent across all three charged individuals.

Despite extensive investigations, multiple arrests, an undercover operation, and eventually the recovery of the helmet and two of the bracelets, the judges acknowledged that they never received a direct explanation from the defendants themselves. Throughout interrogations and their later court proceedings, the the charged individuals, largely remained silent regarding their motivations.

As a result, the court was forced to infer motive gleaned from the available evidence. Its conclusion was unequivocal.

"The court remains left to speculate as to the motive, but it cannot conclude otherwise than that the defendants were guided by financial gain."

That observation appears repeatedly throughout the judgments and represents the clearest judicial assessment of the case.

The Undercover Operation

Perhaps the most revealing evidence concerning motive emerged during the undercover police operation following the break-in.

Dutch investigators deployed officers posing as intermediaries for purported buyers interested in acquiring the stolen artefacts.  During a series of meetings, one of the accomplices, named publicly only as Jan B., discussed the theft, the whereabouts of the objects, and the possibility of transferring them.

The conversations centred on value, payment, and negotiations. At one point, a proposed payment of €400,000 was rejected as being insufficient. In another conversation, the accomplice explained that the theft had been carried out "as one team" and therefore had to be resolved collectively.

For investigators, these conversations reinforced an interpretation that had already begun to emerge from the broader evidence. The stolen artefacts were being discussed not as cultural treasures, but merely as assets with a substantial monetary value.

A Familiar Pattern in Heritage Crime

The judgments against the three indicted individuals highlights a recurring feature of major cultural property offences.

The Golden Helmet of Coțofenești and the Dacian bracelets surely possess extraordinary historical, artistic, and symbolic importance. Yet the court found no evidence that these qualities themselves were motivating factors in their selection by  the thieves. Instead, the available evidence pointed toward personal enrichment.

The judges repeatedly emphasised that the defendants in this case had offered no alternative explanation for their actions.  In the absence of such an explanation, and considering both the planning of the offence and the discussions recorded during the undercover operation, the court concluded that financial gain remained the only plausible motive.

Recovery and Convictions

A significant breakthrough occurred in March and April 2026 when the Golden Helmet of Coțofenești and two of the stolen bracelets were returned to Dutch authorities as part of negotiated procedural agreements between prosecutors and two of the three defendants.

The recovery of the Helmet of Coțofenești and two of the three stolen gold bangles, announced by Corien Fahner, the head public prosecutor at the OM Noord-Nederland, represented an extraordinary success for investigators and ensured the return of some of Romania's most important archaeological treasures. Nevertheless, the judgments issued yesterday makes clear that the return of the artefacts occurred more than a year after the theft and only after the participants had been identified and were subject to prosecution.

In the end, the three judgments offer a rare judicial examination not only of how a major museum theft was committed, but also of why. The answer reached by the court was neither ideological, political, nor cultural.

In the judges' view, the most plausible explanation was also the simplest: the offenders acted for financial gain.

For heritage-crime researchers, the Drents Museum case serves as a reminder that even spectacular crimes involving objects of immense cultural significance are often simply motivated by ordinary criminal incentives. Behind the international headlines, diplomatic concern, and public fascination, the court ultimately found a motive familiar to investigators across the field of art crime. Money.

The complete verdicts (in Dutch) which can be found here state that:

The court imposed a prison sentence of 47 months, less time served in pre-trial detention against Bernhard Zeeman.

The court imposed a prison sentence of 47 months, less time served in pre-trial detention against Douglas Chesley Wendersteyt.

The court imposed a prison sentence of 47 months, less time served in pre-trial detention against the defendant known as Jan B.

The Statement from the Drents Museum after the verdict can be read here.

Image Credit from Leids Dagblad

For more than 160 years, two extraordinary copper-plate charters from South India sat within the collections of Leiden University Libraries. Known in scholarly literature as the Larger and Smaller Leiden Plates, or more recently as the Chola Plates, the objects are not small archival curiosities. Together they constitute some thirty kilograms of inscribed copper, bound by bronze rings carrying royal Chola seals. Their texts, written in Sanskrit and Tamil, record royal grants connected to Buddhist religious institutions at Nagapattinam, an important port city on India’s Coromandel Coast.

Leiden University has announced that it will return the Chola Plates, inventory numbers Or.1687 and Or.1688, to India, following the advice of the Dutch national Colonial Collections Committee. The 354 page advice can be read online.  

The objects were shown on 16 May 2026 during a formal moment in The Hague in the presence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten. Their physical transfer to India will follow at a later date, with the Archaeological Survey of India in New Delhi expected to receive them. 

The political symbolism of the moment should not obscure the evidentiary work that brought the matter to this point. This was not simply a diplomatic courtesy timed to coincide with a prime ministerial visit. It was the outcome of a formal restitution process, a provenance investigation, an additional independent inquiry, and a legal-policy assessment under the Netherlands’ framework for cultural objects removed in colonial contexts.

The objects

The restitution request concerns two Chola-era charters. The first, Or.1687, consists of 21 copper plates held together by a bronze ring bearing the seal of Rājendra Chola I, who ruled from 1012 to 1042. Five plates contain Sanskrit text in Grantha script and sixteen contain Tamil text. The second, Or.1688, consists of three copper plates, also held together by a bronze ring, this time bearing the seal of Kulōttunga Chola I, who ruled from 1070 to 1120. 

Their inscriptions relate to the collection of revenues from villages for the maintenance of a Buddhist vihara ( a monastic residences or complexes serving as a center for spiritual practice and learning) at Nagapattinam. In plain terms, these were not decorative artefacts. They were documentary instruments of enduring legal, religious, and economic significance. The committee described them as important examples of South Indian royal decrees and as significant historical sources for the relationship between the Chola kingdom in South India and the Srivijaya world of Southeast Asia. 

That matters, because the legal and moral question in this case turned not only on where the plates were found, but on what they were understood to be.

How the Dutch procedure worked

India submitted its request to Leiden University on 6 July 2023. On 24 October 2023, Leiden asked the Dutch State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science to place the matter before the Colonial Collections Committee. This was important because Leiden University, not the Dutch State, owned the objects. Under the Dutch restitution framework, however, public owners other than the State may use the national procedure if they agree to be bound by its outcome. Leiden did so. 

The committee’s first task was not to decide immediately whether India should receive the objects. Its first task was procedural and evidentiary: was the provenance research sufficient?

Before the committee’s involvement, Leiden University Libraries had already commissioned research by historian Roelof van Gelder and by Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer, former curator of South and Southeast Asian art at the Rijksmuseum. Their findings were later summarised by Marieke van Meer and Doris Jedamski of Leiden University Libraries. India’s Ministry of Culture, through the Indian Embassy in the Netherlands, also submitted background documentation. 

The committee then identified gaps. It wanted further research into the precise route by which the objects left Nagapattinam, into local practices surrounding Chola Plates and related sacred objects, and into the possibility — ultimately rejected — that the plates may have travelled from India to the Srivijaya realm in pre-colonial times and only later reached Dutch hands. Independent historians Tristan Mostert and Lennart Bes were asked to carry out additional provenance research. Their report was delivered in June 2025, shared with Leiden University Libraries and the Archaeological Survey of India, and both institutions were invited to respond. 

Only after this research-and-response phase did the committee deliberate. On 21 November 2025, it adopted its advice.

The colonial setting

The committee found the request admissible because Nagapattinam had been conquered by the VOC from the Portuguese in 1658 and was then used as a Dutch trading post within the VOC’s colonial-commercial network. The VOC exercised territorial authority in and around Nagapattinam. 

The key historical question was how the plates left that setting. The provenance chain is clearest only from the early eighteenth century onward. A label once attached to Or.1687 indicated that Florentius Camper, a minister in Batavia, brought the objects to the Netherlands. Camper returned from Batavia in 1712 with his wife, Sara Geertrui Camper-Kettingh. In 1862, their descendants donated the plates to Leiden University. 

What remains uncertain is precisely how Camper or his household acquired them. The committee did not claim certainty where the evidence did not permit it. Instead, it worked with a standard of plausibility grounded in converging evidence.

Lunsingh Scheurleer had argued that the plates were likely unearthed during VOC construction works at Fort De Vijf Sinnen and the redevelopment of the area around the so-called China Pagoda in Nagapattinam between 1687 and 1700. Mostert and Bes found the circumstantial evidence for this scenario to be “more than substantial.” The inscriptions, archaeology, and European documentary sources all pointed to the likelihood that the Leiden Chola Plates belonged to a group of Buddhist finds made in Nagapattinam during that period. 

Why burial did not mean abandonment

One of the most consequential elements of the committee’s reasoning concerns the meaning of burial.

Objects like the Chola Plates, Buddhist bronzes, and other religious materials were often carefully buried in the region. The question was whether burial could be interpreted as abandonment — whether the objects had become ownerless, or res nullius, and therefore available for taking.

The committee answered no.

The research indicated that careful burial was most commonly understood as a means of protection in times of unrest, not as an act of relinquishment. Sir Walter Elliot, writing in the nineteenth century about finds at the China Pagoda, observed that objects had been placed carefully in a chamber under brick covering, apparently with a view to future religious use. The committee treated this as consistent with a protective practice rather than disposal. 

This point is crucial. The Chola Plates were not scrap metal, curios, or abandoned ruins. They had been legal-religious charters intended to remain permanently with the Buddhist institutions to which they related. The committee noted that their grants were considered to have perpetual validity and that comparable Chola plates were still used as evidence in legal proceedings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

Even if the Buddhist institutions at Nagapattinam were no longer active at the time the plates were removed, the committee concluded that this did not mean there were no rightsholders. Nor did it mean that those rightsholders had consented to the removal.

The legal and ethical conclusion

Under the Dutch policy framework, once involuntary loss of possession in a colonial context is established with a reasonable degree of certainty, the appropriate recommendation is unconditional return. If involuntary loss cannot be established, the committee may instead undertake a broader balancing of interests. 

In this case, the committee did not need to rely merely on a balancing exercise. It concluded that the plates had likely been removed from Nagapattinam without the consent of rightsholders and that they were not ownerless objects. The removal therefore amounted to involuntary loss of possession. 

The committee advised Leiden University to return both sets of Chola Plates unconditionally to the Republic of India. It also advised that associated metadata, including archival material, correspondence, and contextual documentation, should be made available to India as part of the work of repairing historical injustice. 

Leiden has accepted the advice.

Why this case matters

For provenance researchers, the Chola Plates case is instructive precisely because it is not built on a single dramatic document saying “taken by force.” Many colonial-era object histories do not provide that kind of archival clarity. Instead, they require the careful reading of inscriptions, ownership functions, local religious practice, colonial construction history, European collecting networks, shipping movements, family transmission, and institutional acquisition.

Here, the evidentiary pattern was enough.

The plates were made for named religious institutions in Nagapattinam. They were meant to remain there as proof of land and revenue rights. Their likely discovery occurred during VOC works in a city under Dutch colonial control. Their burial was understood not as abandonment but as safeguarding. No evidence of consent by rightsholders was found. Their later movement into a European family collection and then into Leiden University did not cure the original loss.

That is the deeper lesson behind the diplomatic photographs.

The return of the Chola Plates is a reminder that colonial restitution is not only about the removal of objects from Western institutions. It is about the reconstruction of historical relationships: between archive and archaeology, between sacred and legal function, between possession and entitlement, and between what an institution can hold and what it should now return.

By: Edgar Tijhuis

Dutch crime journalist John van den Heuvel, long known in the Netherlands for his reporting on organised crime and high-profile criminal investigations, has now become linked to the discreet return later today of a Nazi-looted artwork we wrote about this morning.  The painting had been hidden for decades with a descendant of a World War II wartime collaborator, first disclosed by Private Investigator Arthur Brand.

The painting, Portrait of a Young Girl by Dutch artist Toon Kelder, looted by Nazis from the famous Goudstikker collection, has been handed over today to Telegraaf journalist John van den Heuvel by a descendant of the notorious Dutch SS lieutenant general and NSB figurehead Hendrik Alexander Seyffardt, one of the Netherlands’ most prominent wartime collaborators.  The painting had originally belonged to prominent Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker before being displaced during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

As mentioned in ARCA's blog post early this morning, this painting resurfaced after descendants connected to Hendrik Alexander Seyffardt, the Dutch general who collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War, began confronting difficult aspects of their family history.  Private investigator Arthur Brand was ultimately contacted regarding the painting’s origins and the family's wartime connection. Van den Heuvel reportedly assisted in bringing public attention to the case, helping frame the discovery not simply as a story of hidden art, but as part of the Netherlands’ continuing reckoning with unresolved wartime dispossession.

More than eighty years after the war, the rediscovery of this Kelder portrait demonstrates that the legacy of Nazi cultural theft still persists not only in archives and courtrooms, but inside ordinary homes where displaced objects continue to carry histories their current holders may only now be beginning to understand.