My colleague Ambassadors who came to the promotional events, appreciated how your organization is helping to building practical capacities in all the areas that you are working in. This means that if ever you were to decide to move out, the people left behind would continue as normal and would not be left bereft of knowledge. Secondly, my colleagues appreciated your statement that you did not go there to change people. They saw this as expressing the right to people to manage their own lives, with your technical input, that also passes on the soft and hard technology. This way people learn from you and make their own choices on how they want to utilize this knowledge in their own communities. This is what partnership is made of. Allow me to take this opportunity to assure you of my highest esteem.

Giulia Spernanzoni

On Sunday 21 December 2014, a major Anglo-Saxon coin hoard was discovered in Buckinghamshire, England. The discovery has been hailed as a major find, but at the same time concerns have been raised about the way that the find was made and removed from its archaeological context. It should be stressed that no crime seems to have been committed, but the impression given is that the hoard was removed from the ground through a less than scientific process. This is an appropriate moment to learn from the discovery of the Lenborough Hoard and to suggest stronger guidelines to protect nationally significant finds. 

Ryan Casey looks at "Analyzing Criminality in the Market for Ancient Near Eastern Art" in the Spring 2015 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, edited by Noah Charney (with Marc Balcells and Christos Tsirogiannis) and published by ARCA:

Similar to other criminally deviant transnational markets, the trade of Near Eastern artifacts involves powerful participants exerting influence over regulative and law enforcement systems in order to manipulate and exploit the market to their advantage. The emphasis in this paper is on the perceptual factors attributed to the power of these offenders and how that can be further manipulated to excuse and perpetuate criminal activity. By exploring criminological theories concerned with crimes of the powerful, neutralization techniques, and sociology theories based on the idea of philanthropic power crimes, we gain a clearer understanding of this criminal scheme. Through case studies specifically involving Near Eastern art, it becomes apparent that perceptual power sustains the illusion of social distinction and boundaries between those in the trade and academic field of Near Eastern art and those not involved, and also how these boundaries encourage a false sense of legitimacy and acceptance of deviant behavior.

On January 17, 1893, a group of influential American businessmen residing in Hawai’i staged a coup to overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy. The illegal occupation and subsequent annexation of Hawai’i by the United States threatened the Hawaiian culture with extinction. Today, three Honolulu museums – Bishop Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and ‘Iolani Palace – are striving to right the wrongs perpetrated against the Hawaiian nation by reviving, promoting, and celebrating Hawaii’s unique history, culture, and art. Their efforts are helping to salvage an endangered heritage by educating the public, Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian alike, about Hawaiian culture. Each in its own way is inspiring a resurgence of Hawaiian identity and a newfound pride in a nation whose language, customs, and art had been nearly eradicated. Like the newly emerging “museums of social justice,” they are raising public awareness of controversial issues in Hawaiian- American relations and inviting dialogue over contentious topics. 

Carolyn EmBree and David A. Scott wrote on "The Multifarious Nature of Art Forgery in France:  Four Case Studies of Belle Époque Fakes and Forgeries" in the 13th issue of The Journal of Art Crime, in the 2015 Spring Issue, edited by Noah Charney (with Marc Balcells and Christos Tsirogiannis) and published by ARCA.

For the insatiable consumer culture that first appeared 19th-century France, fine art objects were among the luxury goods they coveted since these items served as markers of an elevated social status. While this situation certainly created a financial incentive for dishonest art dealers to supplement the elevated demand, issues surrounding art fakery and forgery during the Belle Époque were sometimes more complicated than economic forces during this period. In the pursuit of understanding these more complex issues relating to artistic authenticity, we hope to illustrate that in distancing ourselves from the simplistic notion that profit alone drives art crime, we are better equipped to appreciate the subtleties within the larger notion of art forgery itself. In this article, we present four cases: the Tiara of Saïtapharnès, Mailfert’s furniture, Schuffenecker’s alleged sunflower painting, and the Rodin sculptures of Guy Hain. We will focus on the hermeneutics involved in each of the examples in question, as well as the characteristics that challenge their authenticity. In doing so, we argue that the multifarious nature of these cases serves to further extend the ambit of art forgery, while simultaneously raising the issue of whether such an expansive conception of forgery can negatively color perceptions of the objects and artists it implicates.

Big things are happening for the Journal of Art Crime. After several years courted by a number of academic journal publishers, we have signed on with HeinOnline, a provider of e-edition journals to thousands of libraries around the world, making the JAC accessible via their subscription service to researchers the world over. It remains the more cost-effective method to subscribe to us directly, and the only way to receive print subscriptions, but our goal to disseminate the fine articles in this publication to as many researchers as possible made this a good move. We are also about to release an essay collection that features work published in the JAC, as well as more than a dozen new essays by over thirty leading international experts, many of whom have already appeared in these pages. The book, entitled Art Crime: Terrorists, Tomb Raiders, Forgers and Thieves will be published by Palgrave towards the end of 2015/start of 2016, and all proceeds from it support ARCA. We are also putting together new symposia for the fall and winter in the UK, so stay tuned for more good things to come.