The Amelia Conference - June 23-25, 2023 - Registration is now open

Conference Date:  
June 23-25, 2023

Location: Amelia, Italy

Celebrating more than a decade of academic conferences addressing art and antiquities crimes, ARCA will host its 12th summer interdisciplinary art crime conference the weekend of June 23-25, 2023.

Known as the Amelia Conference, the Association's weekend-long event aims to facilitate a critical appraisal of art crimes and the protection of art and cultural heritage and brings together researchers and academics, police, and individuals from many of the allied professions that interact with the art market, coming together to discuss issues of common concern. 

The Amelia Conference is an annual ARCA event, held in the historic city of Amelia, in the heart of Italy's Umbria region where ARCA also plays host to its Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection.

The conference includes a weekend full of multidisciplinary panel sessions, and plenty of time to meet others who are working towards the protection and recovery of cultural heritage.

Confirmed Presentations (additional names will be added as speakers confirm)

Dutch Perspectives on Police Specialisation in Art Theft

Richard Bronswijk,

Head, Dutch Politie Art Crime Unit

"Proactive Protective Training – A Crime Reduction Strategy for All"

Frank Andrew Davis, MSc., CSyP, FSyI, CPP.

Managing Director, Trident Manor Limited

"Cultural Heritage:  The Canary in the Coal Mine"

Colonel Andrew Scott Dejesse

US Army CENTCOM CCJ5, Program Director, Strategic Initiatives Group 

Gabriella Corey

Restitution Researcher, Christie's New York

"The Mitigation of Protests and Activism in our Museums"

Wesley De Smet

Ghent Museum of Fine Arts

Kim Covent

Ghent Police

"Non-Fungible Tokens: Art and Crime in a Virtual World"

Saskia Hufnagel, Ph.D.

Reader in Criminal Law, School of Law, Queen Mary University of London

Colin King, Ph.D.

Professor, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London

"The Fate of the Adolphe Schloss Collection – Lessons learned from provenance research during the Pandemic"

Marc J. Masurovsky, MA 

Co-founder, Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP), Washington DC, USA 

Claudia Hofstee, MA 

Independent Art Historian and Provenance Researcher, Amsterdam, Netherlands 

Saida S. Hasanagic, MA / Postgraduate Certificate in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection (ARCA)

Independent Art Historian and Provenance Researcher, London, United Kingdom

"The destruction, laundry and sale of Egypt’s cultural heritage"

Marcel Marée, Ph.D.

Assistant Keeper, Egypt and Sudan, The British Museum

"Papyrus and Provenance, solving more than an ancient puzzle: The case of the Artemidorus papyrus and its controversial seller, Serop Simonian"

Roberta Mazza, Ph.D.

Papyrologist and ancient historian, University of Bologna, Cultural Heritage Department - Ravenna 

"Investigation and Prosecution of Museum Thefts from a Half-Century Ago"

K.T. Newton, J.D.

Assistant United States Attorney, United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

"Title Forthcoming"

Loes Schouten

Senior Publishing Director, Brill

"Presumed Guilty: Is it still possible to create a private collection of archeology?"

Massimo Sterpi, J.D.

Partner and Head of the IP and Art Law at Gianni & Origoni, Rome

"Museums: Accountability?"

Yasmine Zahir

Barrister-at-Law, Liberty Chambers, Hong Kong 

Registration:

To register for this event, please go to our Eventbrite page located here.

Conference Networking Events

Saturday and Sunday's conference sessions include complimentary morning and afternoon coffee breaks, with coffee, juices and light pastries or afternoon hors d'oeuvres to allow time for networking. 

Friday, June 23rd - James Bond themed Icebreaker Cocktail "Cena" at the Country House Monastero le Grazie  

NB: To attend this event, please select the correct registration payment option during your conference registration.

ARCA will open its conference weekend with this relaxing icebreaker cocktail at the Country House Monastero le Grazie, an enchanting centuries-old Cistercian monastery adjacent to the Church and Sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Grazie, built in 1300.  This unique conference venue is located in the hamlet of Foce, just a few kilometers outside the centro storico of Amelia and will also play host to Saturday's Gala Dinner. 

Saturday, August 6 - Cloister Buffet Luncheon in the centro storico of Amelia**

Saturday, August 6 - Italian Slow Food Conference Dinner at Il Ristoro del Priore, Country House Monastero le Grazie  (Please RSVP by 20 June 2023). **

Sunday, August 7 - Cloister Buffet Luncheon - in the centro storico of Amelia**

** Ticketing to the optional Gala Dinner and Conference Lunches can be paid for directly at the conference venues:

Please note: The Amelia Conference has sold out in 2019 and 2022.  We recommend that those interested in attending reserve their tickets in advance to ensure availability.   Seating is limited and fire-safety and COVID prevention rules prevent us from overbooking.

If you have any questions regarding this conference, please contact the ARCA conference organisation team at:

italy.conference [at] artcrimeresearch.org

Summer Course in Provenance Research, Theory and Practice

Photo taken by Nazi authorities during World War II
showing a room filled with stolen art
at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris

Recognizing that reclaiming looted cultural assets can feel like a Sisyphean task, and that restitution cannot be accomplished without the practical knowledge of how to conduct critical research, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) and the US-based Holocaust Art Restitution Project, [Inc.] (HARP), have teamed up to offer its 4th annual stand-alone provenance course which tackles the complex issues of cultural plunder.

Course Title: “Provenance and the Challenges of Recovering Looted Assets,”
Course Dates: June 26 - 30, 2023
Course Location: Amelia, Italy

Exhibition in the library of the Collecting Point, summer 1947
© Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte

Open to applicants interested in exploring the ownership history of looted cultural objects, their trafficking and their restitution/repatriation, this 5-day course will provide participants with exposure to research methodologies used to clarify and unlock the past history of objects likely to have been displaced in periods of crisis. It will also examine the complex nuances of post war and post conflict restitution and repatriation, as well as its ethical underpinnings.

This course is taught by Marc Masurovsky, who cofounded HARP in September 1997 and currently serves as its Director of Research. 

Since 1980 Marc has examined the general question of assets looted during the Nazi era and has worked as an expert historian on a class-action lawsuit filed by Jewish claimants against three leading Swiss banks, accusing them of having expropriated the property that their families had deposited in their safes and bank accounts. 

As a consultant and historian for the Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations, Masurovsky, has investigated alleged Nazi war criminals living in the U.S. and post-war relations between former Nazi officials and Allied intelligence agencies. Mr. Masurovsky earned his M.A. in Modern European History from American University in Washington, D.C. For his Master's thesis, he researched "Operation Safehaven: the Allied response to Nazi post-defeat planning, 1944-1948". He is also the co-author with Fabrizio Calvi of Le Festin du Reich (Editions Fayard, 2006).

This course will provide participants with the opportunity to engage in an intensive, guided, dynamic exchange of ideas on research methods while highlighting the multiple diplomatic, political and financial challenges raised by restitution and repatriation claims. Special emphasis will also be placed on the contextual framework of provenance research in an era increasingly reliant on digital tools.

With an emphasis on an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, this provenance course will benefit anyone with an interest in art, art history, art collecting, the global art market writ large, museum and curatorial studies, art and international law, national and international cultural heritage policies.

As an added bonus participants accepted into this 5-day course will automatically registered be registered to attend ARCA’s Amelia Conference, the weekend of June 23-25, 2023.  This weekend-long forum of intellectual and professional exchange which explores the indispensable role of research, detection, crime prevention and criminal justice responses in combating all forms of art crime and the illicit trafficking in cultural property. 

For more information on the course, course fees and how to apply, please see this link.