by Kirsten Hower, ARCA Intern and Blog Contributor

ARCA's International Art Crime Conference will be held next weekend, July 9th and 10th, in Amelia, Italy.

ARCA (Association for Research into Crimes against Art) is a non-profit organization which researches contemporary issues in art crime and cultural heritage protection. ARCA’s mission is to serve as an accessible resource of knowledge and expertise necessary to increase the security and integrity of all art and cultural works. As an interdisciplinary research group/think-tank, ARCA aims to bridge the gap between the practical and theoretical elements of this global issue. ARCA utilizes its vast network of partners and colleagues including foreign and domestic law enforcement officials, security consultants, academics, lawyers, archaeologists, insurance specialists, criminologists, art historians, conservationists, as well as a number of others within the arts and antiquities communities to raise awareness of art crime and cultural heritage protection.

ARCA’s annual art crime conference is held at the seat of our MA Certificate Program, in Amelia, Italy, each summer. The focus of our annual conference is the academic and professional study of art crime, and how it can help contemporary law enforcement and art protection. ARCA seeks to encourage scholars and students worldwide to turn their attentions to the understudied field of art crime and cultural heritage protection.

ARCA congratulates its 2011 award winners:

Paolo Ferri

Dr. Ferri has served as Italian State Prosecutor and has been a prominent figure in the return of many looted antiquities from North American public and private collections. He now serves as an expert in international relations and recovery of works of art for the Italian Culture Ministry.

Neil Brodie

Dr. Brodie is an archaeologist who has written extensively on the looting of antiquities and their eventual sale. He has conducted archaeological fieldwork and was the former director of the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. His terrific writing on the illicit trade in antiquities stands as a thoughtful and passionate cry for the preservation of a vanishing and finite resource.

Norman Palmer

ARCA is very pleased to have the opportunity to recognize in person the work of a past award winner, Norman Palmer. He chaired the Ministerial Advisory Board on the Illicit Trade in Cultural Objects (ITAP) from 2001 to 2005 whose work has lead the British parliament to enact the Dealing in Cultural Objects Act in 2003. He has been the chair of the Treasure Valuation Committee since 2001 which advises the Minister of the Arts on discovered portable discoveries. He has published widely on the law relating to cultural objects, personal property and commercial transactions. He is a member of the UK Spoliaton Advisory Panel.

ARCA is pleased to present the following awards to Lord Renfrew and Prof. Merryman who are unable to attend the conference this year.

Lord Colin Renfrew

Lord Renfrew has been a tireless voice in the struggle for the prevention of looting of archaeological sites, and one of the most influential archaeologists in recent decades. At Cambridge he was formerly Disney Professor of Archaeology and Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and a Senior Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

John Henry Merryman

A renowned expert on art and cultural property law, Professor Merryman has written beautifully about art and heritage for many years. He currently serves as an Emeritus Professor at Stanford Law School. He adds this award to his impressive list of awards, including the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and honorary doctorates from Aix-en Provence, Rome (Tor Vergata), and Trieste. His textbook Law, Ethics, and the Visual Arts, first published in 1979 with Albert Elsen, stands as the leading art law text. His writings have shaped the way we think about art and cultural disputes, and have added clarity and rigor to a field he helped pioneer.