Over the last year, as museums were forced to grapple with the question of how to to handle illicit antiquities in their collections, this year we see some of the more interesting pieces beginning to make their way home.  One of which is the 500 kilogram Late Period (747-332 BCE) "green sarcophagus" of a priest named Ankhenmaat, which was received by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in a formal handover ceremony in Cairo on January 2nd.  

Acquired by the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Texas in 2013, the artefact was looted, likely from a shaft tomb, at the Memphis necropolis at Abusir Al Malaq in Egypt, an archaeological locality on the western bank of the Nile River, approximately 25 kilometers southwest of Cairo.  Investigations overseen by the New York District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan determined that the sarcophagus had been illicitly exported out of Egypt and subsequently smuggled into Germany before eventually passing onward to the United States in 2008. 

January 2, 2023 ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted handing over the "green sarcophagus" to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities after it was recovered in the United States.

2023 may also be the year where some of the same museums which grappled with their illicit antiquities in 2022 also begin, this year, come to terms with their acquisition of Nazi-stolen art or art sold by members of the Jewish community under Nazi duress.

In the last week of 2022 Judith Silver, her sister Deborah Silver, and seven other individuals from Los Angeles, Seattle and Israel, named in a lawsuit as the surviving heirs of Jewish collector Hedwig Stern, filed a claim in the Northern District of California District Court, against the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Athens-based Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation.  

Their lawsuit, surrounding the museum's deaccessioning of Van Gogh's "Olive Picking, 1889, contends that the Met's (then) chief curator Theodore Rousseau, “knew or consciously disregarded that the painting had been looted from Hedwig Stern by the Nazis” but still approved the Van Gogh painting's purchase and its later deaccessioning and sale. 

The painting's World War II era owner, Hedwig Stern, escaped Germany in December 1936 leaving behind a collection of artworks, which a Nazi-appointed trustee then sold onward.  The painting named in the lawsuit was deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972 and after a series of transactions is now part of the collection of the Goulandris Museum of Contemporary Art, an Athens museum run by the family foundation of the late Greek shipping magnate Basil Goulandris and his wife, Elise Goulandris.   The lawsuit further contends that the Foundation continues to hold the painting despite its known provenance problems. 

Not counting this deaccessioned work, the Metropolitan Museum of Art reported that it has identified 53 works in its collection as having been seized or sold under duress during the Nazi era, excluding Picasso's painting “The Actor.”

Elsewhere, Timothy Reif and David Fraenkel, heirs of another collector persecuted during the Nazi regime, Fritz Grünbaum, have also filed lawsuits against the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California seeking to recover a 1912 painting and 1915 pencil drawing, by Egon Schiele, each of which depict a woman. Grünbaum's art collection was looted by Nazis before he died on January 14, 1941 while held at Dachau Concentration Camp.

On the side of building capacity and advancing knowledge, later this month on January 18, 2023, at 5:00 pm, London time The Institute of Art and Law will host its next instalment of The Restitution Dialogues conference series.  This event will take place in the form of an online seminar investigating the Vatican Archives and its holdings of Indigenous items, including questions of returning items to communities of origin.

"The panel will discuss items such as the broader impact of the contemporary ‘restitution revolution’, the nature and provenance of Indigenous material in the Vatican collection, institutional best practices in restitution and repatriation, and the cultural impact of return and renewal."

The webinar is free for to anyone who registers.

January also marks the month when the Association for Research into Crimes against Art will accept general applications for admission to its 2023 Postgraduate Certificate program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection.  Back in 2009, ARCA started the very first interdisciplinary program designed to study art crimes holistically, in a structured and academically diverse format which includes eleven interconnected courses focusing on important theoretical and practical elements related to identifying, combatting, and studying art and heritage crime. 

Taught in Italy, over the course of one summer, the General Applications Period runs through 30 January 2023.  Late applications will be considered after, subject to remaining census availability. 

ARCA will also post information later this month regarding its annual Amelia Conference (and its call for presenters).  This event will be held the weekend of June 23- 25, 2023 in the beautiful town of Amelia, Italy, the seat of ARCA’s summer-long PG Cert program.