Shaaban Abdel-Gawad

By Edgar Tijhuis 

When a civil war starts in a country, everyone and everything pays a price, including heritage.  In response to this ARCA initiated its Minerva Scholarship in 2015 in order to allow heritage professionals from the conflict countries of Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen to train with us as a means of analysing criminal behavior which affect the security of movable cultural heritage during times of conflict.  This ARCA scholarship has allowed participants from Middle East source countries to come to Amelia for ten weeks and to learn from ARCA instructors as well as share their experiences with other heritage peers.  Minerva scholar's time in Italy also serves to build capacity between source and market country experts as they also on hand to share their own very valuable insight and experience in protecting their country's heritage, oftentimes under extremely difficult conditions.  

This year, in 2019, with funding obtained through a successful crowdfunding campaign, ARCA has been able to extend its Minerva scholarship initiative to an important post-conflict country, Egypt. During our 11th year of producing training programs we are pleased to have welcomed Shaaban Abdel-Gawad, as our first Minerva scholar from Cairo. To hear more about him, and his plans during his time in Italy, I sat down with him at one of the local coffee bars in Amelia, right in front of the old Medieval gate, which overlooks some of the city's Neolithic walls which circle the old town in order to ask him a few questions about his work and career.

Can you tell me something about your work in Egypt?

In Egypt, I am the head of the antiquities repatriation department. The department was founded in 2002 and I have been the department's head for the last four years. Since the start in 2002 over 10.000 pieces have been repatriated, most of them in the last four years. We work in different ways to achieve these results and to protect our heritage as best as possible. First of all, we collaborate with the authorities in market countries, for example through bilateral agreements like the 2010 agreement with Switzerland concerning the illicit import and transit of antiquities.  Also through the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the United States, the first of its kind for the US with a Middle Eastern country. Under these agreements and other bilateral and formal agreements we have also collaborated with Italy, France, Switzerland, Spain, and the UAE, and when objects are seized abroad, we check all documents and decide what can and should be done.

Images of the sarcophagus recovered from Kuwait in 2018

Furthermore, we have several officers who systematically scan all planned sales of all major auction houses, online platforms like Ebay, Facebook and other channels that can be used to sell antiquities these days.  Online we find many fakes, but between all the fakes, there are also real antiquities that are sold illegally. An example of this is the case of the relic that was recently offered for sale at a London auction. The relic — a tablet carved with the cartouche of King Amenhotep I — has been recovered by Egypt, after the websites of international auction halls were scoured.

Well, one needs to go back in time a bit to at least 1911. * In that year the first Egyptian law on antiquities was adopted. It said, among other things, that foreign excavation missions could take half of the excavated objects out of Egypt. In 1951, a new law was adopted. ** Under this law export licences were required for every single object leaving Egypt and unique objects were never allowed to leave the country. Finally, in 1983 the current antiquities law was introduced. Under this law, antiquities cannot be exported anymore from Egypt.***

Are there any recent examples of repatriation of antiquities to Egypt? 

There are many and I will mention a few. After the relic in London in January of this year, we had the case of the gold-sheathed coffin from the 1st century BC. It was recovered in the United States where it had become part of the collection of the The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. According to a statement by the museum which purchased the coffin, inscribed with the name Nedjemankh, a priest of the ram-god Heryshef, in July 2017. Per the investigative work of the Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, the museum learned that it had received a false ownership history, fraudulent statements, and fake documentation, including a forged 1971 Egyptian export license for the coffin. The museum handed the coffin over to the authorities after evidence showed that it was looted from Egypt in 2011.

In February of this year, another case was handled by Shaaban. Egypt’s embassy in Amsterdam received a 2500-2000 B.C.E Pharaonic limestone statue of a standing man with hieroglyphic marks on the right arm.  The object had been consigned to an auction house in the Netherlands and was scheduled to be sold at the European Fine Art Fair in Amsterdam.  The Ministry of Antiquities, in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, succeeded in proving Egypt’s ownership of the archaeological piece and its illegal removal from the Saqqara area of Egypt sometime in the 1990s.

This month, in an important case which is still developing, the Egyptian authorities are working to stop the auction of a quartzite sculpture of Tutankhamun through Christie’s auction house in London.  This important piece is scheduled to go up for bidding in early July and the Egyptian authorities have raised concerns that the object may have been stolen, possibly from Karnak, an extraordinary complex developed over more than 1,000 years ago made up of sanctuaries, temples, chapels, pylons, and other buildings near Luxor. 

While it remains uncertain whether the Egyptian authorities will be able to successfully claim the object back, Shaaban and his team are diligently pursuing leads and have pointedly asked the auction house to provide the Egyptian authorities with all of the documentation they were given by the consignor in furtherance of the sale.

So far Christie's has continued to state the object is legitimate but has withheld the requested documentation.

How did you hear about ARCA and the Minerva Scholarship? 

When I was in Sudan for an UNESCO workshop Effective implementation of the 1970 Convention for the prevention of illicit traffic of cultural property and of the UNESCO 2015 Recommendation on museums and collections in the Cluster countries I met Samer Abdel Ghafour. Samer completed the ARCA program in 2015 as a Minerva scholar from Syria before moving on to consult with the UNESCO Secretariat within the Section for Movable Heritage and Museums, at the Unit for the 1970 Convention. So I applied and in the end was chosen to come to Italy.

From Cairo to Amelia, that must be a big change….

Yes, it surely is. Cairo is a city with around 20 million inhabitants and Amelia a little town. But actually, I grew up in a village in Egypt and worked a lot at archaeological sites outside the cities. Italian life is Mediterranean, and in many ways similar to our culture in Egypt. The people in Amelia are very friendly and welcoming, and they ‘talk with their hands’ like we do in Egypt. There is even an Egyptian shop in Amelia! Furthermore, I enjoy the company of the ARCA staff and my fellow participants in the program, who come from all over the world. I think it’s great that this special town was chosen to host the program.

Do you see any similarities between Italy and Egypt? 

Yes, there are some interesting parallels between our countries. While we are both source countries of antiquities, we also play a role in educating other countries. We have helped countries like Libya, Uzbekistan, China, Yemen and Iraq to deal with the problem of antiquities looting. And we have seized objects from Italy in Egypt, as well as objects from several other countries that went through Egypt as a transit country.

What do you expect to learn during the program? 

I expect to learn how other countries work in this field, learn more about the laws regulating the antiquities trade and establish an international network for the future.

More about Minerva Scholarships….

ARCA's Minerva scholarship is set aside to equip source country professionals with the knowledge and tools needed to build or improve heritage protection capacity at their home institutions and to advance the education of future generations. Scholarships are awarded through an open, merit-based competition, subject to available funding.

Accepted candidates must be able to speak and write, in English, at a university level proficiency. Those who do not, cannot be considered as all courses are taught in English. Beneficiaries of the Minerva will be granted a full tuition waiver to ARCA’s intensive professional development postgraduate program which runs annually in Amelia, Italy.

For further information about this multidisciplinary program and/or to request a prospectus/Minerva application form please if you are from a conflict or post conflict country, please write to us in English at education @ artcrimeresearch.org.

* Finalized on 12/6/1912 Law nr. 14 established that all antiquities found in Egypt belonged to the State, and forbade the selling of them, unless they were already part of a collection or coming from legal excavations, recognised by the State.  This law prohibited the export of antiquities from Egypt to other countries, except through a special license which only the Antiquities Department was entitled to grant or withhold.  This article further stipulated that any antiquity, illicitly removed from the territory was subject to seizure and confiscation. 

**Finalized on 31/10/51 Law nr. 215 amended by laws nr. 529 of 1953 and nr. 24 of 1965 enacted provisions which made penalties harsher for the theft and smuggling of antiquities. The law prohibited taking antiquities out of Egypt unless there were multiple items similar to them, and then solely with the approval of the Department of Antiquities, who meeting by a committee formed of museum personnel in the presence of a representative of the department of customs, could issued a license approving an object's exportation.  Failure to have obtained such a license implies that the antiquity in question was stolen or smuggled from Egypt.

***Enacted 06/08/1983 Law nr. 117 of 1983, emended in 2003 abolished completely all export of antiquities outside of Egypt.

Criminal acts against works of art happen more frequently than the public imagines. The stories of these objects range from the dramatic to the all but forgotten. Art works are plundered during war, dug up for profit, stolen from museums, laundered on the art market and sometimes held as collateral by organised crime groups.  Art will always attract criminals. Not because criminals are charmed or fascinated by it more than other people, but because with it, there will always be a market.

This week ARCA begins its 11th annual postgraduate training program in Amelia, Italy.  Here participants will begin exploring the theoretical as well as practical elements related to art and heritage crime.   During their courses they will examine art crime’s interconnected world and begin to develop a longitudinal multidisciplinary approach to the study of this type of criminal behaviour, as well as its trends and motivating factors. 

Welcome aboard class of 2019!

This year, the ARCA Postgraduate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection will be held from May 30 through August 14, 2019 in the beautiful heart of Umbria in Amelia, Italy. In the months leading up to the start of the program, this year’s lecturers will be interviewed. This week I sit down with Noah Charney, the founder of ARCA.

Can you tell us something about your background and work? 

I was trying to decide what to study--traditional art history or playwriting believe it or not--when I stumbled into the field of art crime. I originally decided to study art history but did so in London where I could also go see a lot of plays. During that time I thought I wanted to be a playwright and actually got an agent for my plays. But she said that it was far easier to make a living as a novelist than a playwright and did I maybe have a novel in mind? I didn't, but I got started writing.

It was the era of The Thomas Crown Affair and The Da Vinci Code and I thought I'd try something along those lines. As I began my research I realized that there was very little published on true art crimes, especially from an academic angle.  The outcome was I wound up writing The Art Thief, which I was very lucky with.

My interest in studying art crime was piqued at that point and eventually I shifted from art history into criminology, in order to focus on its motivating factors. Turns out I was one of the very few academics drawn to studying this type of crime. While working towards my PhD I organized a conference in Cambridge that brought together art police and academics researching art related crimes. I got lucky again and the conference and this blending of law enforcement and academia were written up in The New York Times. This really kicked things off and was the starting point for my deciding to found ARCA as a research association on art crime, in order to bring together individuals from the various disciplines and specializations that, at the time, seemed so separated from one another. 

What sets the ARCA program apart from others developed later? 

I'm very proud of ARCA's post graduate program, both in terms of what we have created, and what it has supported its graduates to gone on and do professionally.   The program itself was written up in a separate article in the New York Times specifically because of its distinctive subject matter and for it being the first program of its kind in the world, in which one could study art crime but also in a very unique and distinctive format.

The program runs every summer over 11 weeks and we bring in 11-15 world experts in varying disciplines who each teach, or co-teach, one of eleven course modules, each of which are interconnected and make up the foundation of our postgraduate-level professional development program.  Some of our lecturers include Richard Ellis, the founder of Scotland Yard's Art and Antiques Squad, Marc Masurovsky, who is an expert on Holocaust looted assets, Dorit Straus, who is an art insurance underwriting expert who also sits on the United State's Cultural Property Advisory Committee, and Dick Drent, the former director of security for the Van Gogh Museum who is a risk management consultant for museums around the globe.

We are also lucky to have a judge, three criminologists and two archaeologists as primary course professors and guest lecturers who come in every year and speak on current cases and art crime deterrent initiatives, which add to the diversity of material we cover.   This year we will have guest lecturers working in conflict archaeology and two curators from the British Museum who will be part of our opening course, lecturing on the issues of circulating illicit artefacts and due diligence. 

I myself teach our history of art crime course, which has a heavy emphasis on forgery. In developing our format, students pursuing MAs and PhDs and professionals can take the program over the course of one summer, or split the program up over two summers and still get the time to explore Italy and Europe. Setting up the program in this way also allows us to bring major experts in the fields, who otherwise have full-time jobs elsewhere, to teach with us one week or two weeks each summer, sharing their knowledge.

Since ARCA's first year of programming in 2009, we have now trained more than 260 alumni who come from 35 different countries around the world and from all different professional backgrounds.  Some of our participants go on to work on Masters degrees or their own  PhDs, and others already work in allied art industry fields.  What's interesting is that the profile of our participants cuts across all disciplines and age groups from late twenties to mature senior learners.

We have had graduates invent new careers in the field, some who have moved on to prominent roles at art law firms, consulting with UNESCO and other heritage organizations, or who blaze their own trails, working in the fields of provenance research or within museums in varying capacities. It is always a wonderfully bonded group that falls in love with the town of Amelia in Italy where the program has been held for more than a decade and who stay in touch with one another, networking long after the program concludes.  That chemistry and diversity is something that we are very proud of. 

Another thing we are proud of is our training of scholars working in conflict countries.  This month we are running a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds so we can offer more scholarships to heritage professionals from countries where cultural heritage is particularly at risk as the result of war and or poverty. Since 2015 we have been able to give scholarships to professionals working in Yemen and Iraq and Syria and we would like to be able to do more in this capacity.

What would a typical day be like in your classroom?

Our program schedule is very intensive -- 5 hours a day for 5 days a week.  But while there are a lot of lecture hours, 220 over the course of all 11 course modules, the overall feeling during the summer is quite relaxed. Classes begin at 10:30 in the morning so it is not exactly at the crack of dawn. We also have a generous 2-hour break for lunch and classes finish by 5:30 in the evening so participants still have time to adjourn to lovely gardens or cafes and to enjoy some wine and pizza. We also try to balance the quantity of home-based assignments with in classroom assignments.

For me, I love teaching and the 5 hours a day of lectures I give fly by. Teaching the history of art crime with a focus on forgery, my goal is to highlight historical case studies that help participants understand how to analyze criminal cases.   Even when we have incomplete information on the crime committed by delving into these historical examples we shed light on present and future issues.

I also always include a bonus lecture for our participants that focuses on strategies for writing their thesis or any academic journal article. If there is time and enough interest, I also include a second bonus lecture on how to get published and earn money as a freelance writer.  There are lots of lessons that I had to learn through experience that I think can really help people and it's my pleasure to offer anything I can to help our participants who are interested in writing, whatever their age or background might be.

While each year participants are very enthusiastic about your course, is there anything you learn from them in class?

I am always learning and part of the fun is the fact that art crime is both so understudied and also so multifaceted. As only a limited amount of material has been published in detail on this subject area,  and as so few people in the world have historically focused on art crime in the art world, each person who studies with us has a chance to make a real and meaningful contribution by exploring the nuances of the genre.  By the very reason that this subject area is a rare though important field of study, postgraduate scholars can make real breakthroughs that can really shake things up and contribute to the knowledge base within this sector.

As an emerging area of focus, there are lots of empty spaces and unanswered questions that need to be filled in. For example one of our earliest participants focused on the specific ways certain criminals had passed off forgeries and looted works of art as legitimate.  By fabricated documents to create a plausible collection history of the artwork, what people in the art trade call provenance documentation, this disreputable player had created a wholly fictitious backstory in order to legitimize the sale of objects on the art market.   Knowing that there was no real focus on gathering and confirming or discounting presented documentation in order to determine an object's illegitimacy, the criminals had laundered artworks onto the market with impunity.

When I talked about some of the ways that historically criminals have tricked the art trade and buyers one participant explained that in their country, in many art market situations and sales environments there isn't anyone whose job it is to verify an objects providence, or to determine whether or not the consigned object or its paperwork, were forged. The fact that an industry the size of the art market was so intentionally vulnerable, all in the name of sales, was a real eye opener. 

In anticipation of your course, what book, article, or movie would you recommend to participants?

There are so many good writers, many associated with ARCA, who have good and useful books well worth reading. I think it's also actually a good exercise to indulge in art crime entertainment. It is useful because it's fun and it also exemplifies how misleading so many films are.  This is a useful starting point for recognizing which aspects of art criminality presented to the general public are accurate and which are not.

There are many great films that are a lot of fun and that also teach viewers two things. First the films give a sense of what the public thinks, or wants to believe about art crime, and are something criminals themselves learn from about the art world as they have access to the same sources of the general public.  But films and fiction are also generally not very accurate. Second, understanding the criminals' knowledge base is very helpful in stopping them.   Films are useful for our participants because they see just how much they've learned by the end of the program by being able to think back on these pop culture touchstone's and having learned to recognize which aspects of them are plausible and which are truly just Hollywood-esque entertainment and hype.

What makes the yearly ARCA program so unique? 

The program is unique. That phrase is often used as hyperbole but in this case it is very true. ARCA's PG Cert was the very first program in the world where you could study art crime in an interdisciplinary academic way. There have since been other programs developed that have popped up long after ours was initiated but they tend to focus on specific subsections of art crime, such as criminal investigation or law as it relates to specific countries, or to the illicit trade in antiquities. Whereas ours remains the only comprehensive program out there.  So for me, if someone wants to study our crime I believe this is still the only place where one can really do it full justice as we aren't restricted to one subject discipline. 

Is there anything you can recommend for future participants to do in Amelia or Umbria? 

Amelia is a wonderful place to spend a summer and our participants inevitably fall in love with the town and the region and the people in the city and their fellow participants. Many of our alumni come back to our summer art crime conference every year not just for the interesting scholarship but also as an excuse to visit old friends and colleagues. Over the course of a summer it is also easy for participants to explore every nook and cranny of Amelia as it is modest in size but with surprising riches such as a city's spectacular Duomo.

Borrowing a car, or better still, a friend with a car, is a great thing to do because there are wonderful day trips to do near Amelia. There are many wonderful towns worth seeing in Italy, and I'm not just talking about the grand tour cities of Rome and Florence and Venice and Naples. Bomarzo, with its amazing and crazy mannerist sculpture garden, is full of these stone sculptures of giants and monsters that are much larger than life size and which is only a half hour away from where we are based. Orvieto and Viterbo, Civita di Bagnoregio, Narni, Spoleto...are also gems worth visiting. 

Maybe one of the nicest activities to do that is beyond the traditional beaten tourist path is to attend a summer sagra. This village food festivals pop up all over Italy throughout the summer. Each one has a theme focusing on a special food from their area and during these it is like a giant pop-up communal restaurant filled with local townspeople, eating at long tables.  These provide lots of camaraderie and dancing and are a cheap way to enjoy delicious speciality eats with locals.

Can you tell us something about your books outside the field of art and crime? 

While I'm known mostly for my books on art crime I've also enjoyed branching out in recent years. I just finished helping a famous Slovenian chef with his latest cookbook and I had great fun publishing a book about my adventures living in Slovenia called Slovenology.  This book has been very well received and translated into several languages.   I seem to be known for two things: art crime and for being an American expat in Slovenia. I hope I have brought some positive changes and interpretations to both of these subjects!

Edgar Tijhuis serves as the Academic Director at ARCA and is a visiting scholar at the Institute of Criminology in Ljubljana. He is responsible for the postgraduate certificate program in the study of art crime and cultural heritage protection and since 2009, has taught criminology modules within the ARCA program.

This year, the ARCA Postgraduate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection will be held from May 30 through August 15, 2019 in the beautiful heart of Umbria in Amelia, Italy. In the months leading up to the start of the program, I'm speaking with all course professors on the program as well as those who are guest lecturers or researching at ARCA. This week I speak with archaeologist and Open source intelligence analyst Sam Hardy, one of the trainers on the Countering Antiquities Trafficking in the Mashreq program in the Middle East, in which ARCA worked with UNESCO and other UNESCO partners to train heritage specialists working in the Middle East.

I did a BA in Archaeology and Prehistory at the University of Sheffield, where I developed an interest in the relationship between archaeological practice and human rights in general and the past and present of South-Eastern Europe in particular. Then I did an MA in Cultural Heritage Studies at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, where I started to focus on the treatment of cultural property during crisis and conflict.

During my MSc-DPhil at the University of Sussex, a series of accidents led me from attempting to explore peace education at historic sites in first Kosovo then Cyprus, to exploring destruction and propaganda and, since the crimes were interconnected, looting in Cyprus. As open-source research into destruction - like that done by Bellingcat - and particularly into trafficking is still an emerging field, there was no career path to follow, at least not one that was defined.

Still, I developed a specialism in open-source research (that pieces together new understandings from disparate, publicly-accessible sources), focused on conflict antiquities trafficking (trafficking of, and other profiteering from, cultural goods that finance political violence), connected with ARCA - and collaborated with Lynda Albertson in checking claims of damage to sites in Syria and Iraq - then got contracts from the American University of Rome, Global Witness, UNESCO and ICOM followed by fellowships from Koç University in Turkey and UCL Qatar.

I would like to note, it was only thanks to the support of friends from the Institute of Archaeology, and the women who've been my bosses throughout my career, that I managed to stay in the profession. For women who are considering a career in this field, they should know that they would be joining a rich history of "trowelblazers", are the majority in archaeology and heritage and are earning the same as men.

All of this has somehow led me to the dream job that I'm about to start at the Norwegian Institute in Rome, within the Heritage Experience Initiative of the University of Oslo, where I'm going to be the Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Cultural Heritage and Conflicts. Over the next three years, I'm going to explore the relationship between antiquities trafficking and political violence in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, from the politics of policing, to the involvement of organised criminals and armed groups (including state forces), to the exploitation of the refugee crisis, and to the deployment of propaganda.

What do you do at ARCA?

I've been fortunate enough to work with ARCA on the Countering Antiquities Trafficking in the Mashreq training through UNESCO for cultural heritage professionals and law enforcement agents from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, which has helped local efforts to combat trafficking across the region. I also co-taught one of the courses in 2018 on open source research methods.  When I'm not indulging my interest in the most bizarre features of the subject, like Russian propaganda, I've also been able to collaborate with others in and through ARCA to find and check evidence in ongoing research.

In anticipation of the ARCA program, what book, article, or movie would you recommend to participants?

One academic article I'd recommend is "uncovering the illicit traffic of Russian ancient icons from Russia to Germany" by Laure Coupillaud Szustakowski, who took the ARCA programme and whose paper I first heard at the ARCA conference. Some of my work depends on risky journalism. I would recommend Özgen Acar and Melik Kaylan's investigations into organised crime in Turkey and beyond from 1988 and 1990 (in English), which I still use now, but they're only really accessible as difficult-to-read archive copies. More recent investigations include those by Esther Saoub and her colleagues on looting in Syria (in German), by Mike Giglio and Munzer al-Awad on trafficking out of Syria (in English), by Benoit Faucon and his colleagues on dealing in antiquities from Syria (in English) and by Frédéric Loore on the ransoming of stolen works of art by the terrorists who attacked Paris and Brussels (in French).

Which course in the program would you love to follow yourself and why?

I've had the chance to listen and learn when Dick Drent and Dick Ellis co-taught during the ARCA-UNESCO training with me. Despite focusing on different parts of the trade in different countries and using different methods, Christos Tsirogiannis and I have developed a common interest in certain shady characters, so it'd be great to hear him explain the intricacies of his work.

Is there anything you can recommend for future participants to do in Amelia or Umbria? 

Amelia is a foodie treat for me and I'm not even a foodie. Not eating dairy can really limit your options, especially in Italy, but the Amerini (the name for local town folk) make allergy-friendly food that tastes great - and I once got to be the sous-chef for a Syrian-Iraqi feast. I'd get in trouble with one friend or another for suggesting Spritz, either because it's from Venice or because it dilutes Prosecco, but I can safely and sincerely recommend the local wines.

What is your experience with the yearly ARCA conference in June. 

There's always interesting research, new contacts and old friends - I look forward to it every year.

For a detailed prospectus and application materials or for general questions about this postgraduate program please contact us at education@artcrimeresearch.org

This year, the ARCA Postgraduate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection will be held from May 30 through August 14, 2019 in the beautiful heart of Umbria in Amelia, Italy. In the months leading up to the start of the program, this year’s professors will be interviewed. In this one, I am speaking with Arthur Tompkins from New Zealand, a judge and specialist on art crimes during war.

Can you tell us something about your background and work?

Certainly! I am a Judge in New Zealand, based in Wellington. In my day job I try both criminal and civil cases, plus I sit on the NZ Parole Board. I have been a judge for over 20 years now, and I still enjoy my job. I like the variety, the unexpectedness of each day, and the interaction with the whole cross-section of the community I serve.

I have been coming to teach Art in War, at Amelia, since 2010. I first visited in 2009, when the first ARCA program was underway, to present at the Art Crime Conference, Noah Charney asked me to come back the next year to teach my course, and the rest is history...

What do you feel is the most relevant part of your course? 

I like to think that over the five days of my course - first the historical survey when we cover 25 centuries of armed conflict, from the Classical World through to Iraq and Syria, and many conflicts in between, and then the response of the international and private legal systems to what has occurred - discerning the common features of the arc of art crime in war are very relevant. The ways in which, during war, art is displaced, lost, destroyed, stolen, and sometimes saved, vary enormously in their individual circumstances, but underlying the variety is the sameness of it: the intensely symbolic way in which art is viewed by combatants, who seek to use (or destroy) art to serve their wider purpose. So, despite the variation of circumstances, there are common features which happen over and over again - hence the need to learn the lessons of history, and to protect the art anew in the face of every new conflict.

What do you hope participants will get out of your course? 

I hope that by the end of the course the participants will have an appreciation both of the wide sweep of human history, as manifested by humankind's many conflicts, and against that backdrop the way that humankind's great art has been fought over, pursued, made vulnerable, and (perhaps not as often as we would like) made secure so that it survives the tempest swirling around it. And I hope that, when faced with the outbreak of a new conflict, thy will come to realise that the inevitable threat to the art caught up by the red-hot rake of the battle-line is not new, that there are valuable lessons to be learned from past mistakes, and that the art can, with effort and determination and will, be protected despite the clash of arms surrounding it.

What would a typical day be like in your classroom? 

We gather in the lecture hall at the start time of the day, usually with copious bottles of water and perhaps a coffee or two, and embark on a close look at whatever part of human history we have reached that day. This will usually be done via illustrated lectures from me, interspersed with short student presentations about a number of the major art works we encounter during the day. A week or so before my class starts, I ask each participant to sign up to talk to the class about one or two artworks that we will touch on or discuss during the course. Sometimes the participants will already know about the work, perhaps they have seen it, or have some personal connection to it, other times they will come to it completely fresh. Their presentations usually summarise the history of the work and the artist, perhaps talking a bit about the place the work has in the artist's oeuvre, and what happened to it during the war that engulfed it.

We have five hours of class time each day, with that being broken up by coffee (or gelato) breaks, and a long lunch break in the heat of the middle of the day. So, although it is an intense few days, we enjoy frequent time out to recharge! During the course, each participant completes a short essay, on some aspect of art crime during war. The last part of the course is then taken up with individual students giving slightly longer presentations to the class when they talk about the essay they submitted, the art work or works, the fate of the works during war, the story of their survival, or whatever it might be. I am constantly fascinated by the wide variety of subjects they come up with each year, to research and write about.

While each year participants are very enthusiastic about your course, is there anything you learn from them in class?

The most valuable thing is that I learn to look at art with new eyes, especially during the participant presentations. Often these will cover aspects of art crime during war that we do not have time to cover in class, or only touch upon very briefly. I learn a lot during these presentations, and come away with a fresh respect for the research skills and breadth of experience of ARCA's attendees!

In anticipation of your courses, what book, article, or movie would you recommend to participants?

There have been two high-profile movies in the last few years which have been based squarely on the fate of art in war. Both are worth watching before taking my course, but for different reasons. George Clooney's Monuments Men got most of the art right, but a lot of the rest of the always fascinating story of the Monuments Men (and Women) mostly wrong. Helen Mirren's Woman in Gold did much better - getting both the art, and the surrounding tragedy of the very human story of the painting's fate (within the inevitable constraints of a two hour movie), right.

What makes the yearly ARCA program so unique? 

There are a number of aspects, I think, that make the ARCA course unique. First, the setting - the wonderful ancient town of Amelia, slightly isolated because of the absence of a railway station, is the perfect setting for a summer programme - small enough to get to know very quickly, but with a labyrinthine Old Town that constantly surprising no matter how often you have walked its twisting and turning streets and alleys and tunnels and stairs. There is always something fresh and surprising around the next corner! The town has a rhythm to its daily life that quickly propels both those involved in the ARCA program into the centre of Italian town life - the casual friendliness of the locals, the evening passeggiata, the always-open (or so its seems) cafes and bars that are so central to the community's life, and the beauty of the ancient surroundings.

Then there is the multidisciplinary faculty, drawn from a very wide spectrum of disciplines and areas of expertise, who bring decades of experience and wisdom to their respective courses. And finally there is the distilling of what, in any other setting, might be a year or more of classes, into an intense and concentrated period of time spent in Amelia - where everyone in the course is there because they really want to be there, sharing a common fascination with art and the crimes committed against it, and where everyone you meet is happy to share and to learn.

Which other course in the program would you love to follow yourself and why? 

Personally, I would be fascinated by the Museum Security course - one of the by-products of teaching art crime is that you can't just visit a museum or a gallery or an exhibition without thinking about what might happen if someone else took it into their heads to commit a crime against the art you are enjoying - a theft or an attack or some other misguided venture. So I often wonder about the unseen protections that (I hope) carefully guard the art work...and the striking of the difficult balance between accessibility - making the art open and accessible and able to be enjoyed by many visitors - and protection, which often means compelling visitors to step back and not enjoy the up-close-and-personal experience of the art that might otherwise be possible, is a dynamic and ever-changing challenge that I would love to know more about.

Is there anything you can recommend for future participants to do in Amelia or Umbria? 

Learn at least some rudimentary Italian before you arrive, enough to say hello and good morning and good evening, and to order coffee and gelato and pizza! And use that to get to know some of the locals, and experience something of their lives. I now have friends who live in Amelia, and catching up with them is one of the annual joys of my visits back to Amelia.

Are there any funny or interesting things you experienced in Italy, outside class? 

The Italian railway system is a constant source of enjoyment, frustration, annoyance, wonder and humour, that almost never disappoints! And a visit to Venice, whilst we still can, is high on my list of recommendations - it is such an irrational and unexpected place, that should not exist, but defiantly does, and it hides a multitude of joys. Not the least of which are the Four Horses of the Basilica of San Marco, the artwork with the longest history of crimes being committed against them (roughly 2500 years, give or take a few centuries). Come take my course to learn their fascinating story!  Venice was also the home of the largest stolen painting on public display anywhere in the world - Veronese's Wedding at Cana, taken from the refectory of the Benedictine monastery on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore by Napoleon, transported to the Louvre (after being cut into several pieces), and hung there, up until recently, opposite the Mona Lisa, where it used to get overlooked by thousands every day!

What is your experience with the yearly ARCA conference in June?

I can't always get to the conference, but when I do the sheer breadth of experience and knowledge on display year after year is wonderful - ARCA does a great job of gathering together the foremost specialists in the fight against art crime from around the world, and provides a forum for both specialist presentations, and the free exchange of information, of views, of contacts, and renewing and making friendships. And because the conference is based in Amelia, the warmth of the welcome from the town is an added highlight - and introducing newcomers to the joys of Amelia, and discovering new joys in the process, is always memorable!

For a detailed prospectus and application materials or for general questions about this postgraduate program please contact us at education@artcrimeresearch.org

By Edgar Tijhuis 

In 2019, the ARCA Postgraduate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection will be held from May 30 through August 14, in the heart of Umbria, in Amelia, Italy. In the months leading up to the start of the program, this year’s professors will be interviewed. In this occasion, I am speaking with Dr. Duncan Chappell, a lawyer and criminologist, who also serves as Chair of the International Advisory Board of the Australian Research Council’s Center of Excellence in Policing and Security and is the former Director of the Australian Institute of Criminology.

Can you tell us something about your background and work? 

I have enjoyed a rather peripatetic and varied career which began in the remote Australian island state of Tasmania, or Van Diemen’s Land as it was originally called by its 1642 Dutch discoverer, Abel Tasman. It later became infamous as the dumping ground for most of the criminals transported by the British following Australia’s establishment as a European settlement and penal colony in 1788, all described in an entertaining and comprehensive way by the late art critic Robert Hughes in his book, The Fatal Shore.

I graduated with dual degrees in Arts and Law from the University of Tasmania in the early 1960’s and then received a scholarship with the University of Cambridge where I completed a PhD in criminal law and criminology. I should probably add that my original choice when arriving in Cambridge was to study for an international law degree with a view to perhaps joining eventually the Australian foreign service. However, on arrival at my Cambridge college in 1962 I was persuaded by my college supervisor to go and chat with Professor Leon Radzinowitz about possibly becoming a member of the then newly established Cambridge Institute of Criminology. It was at that point that I guess that I became an accidental criminologist! 

I suspect that many career choices are made in this way! But it also proved to be a happy choice because at that time there were very few lawyers who also had criminological qualifications. As a result I had no difficulty getting a job back in Australia when I graduated in 1965 where I took a job which involved teaching criminal law and criminology to law students at the University of Sydney, the academic institution where now in 2019 I remain an honorary faculty member.

During 50 years or so I have been very fortunate to live and work in a number of countries and professional settings including the United States, Canada and Italy. I think it was in part the Italian experience in the 1990’s when I was attached to the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute [UNICRI] in Rome that I first began to develop an extensive interest in art crime, as I witnessed the richness of Italy’s cultural heritage and also learned of the rampant plunder of its antiquities that was occurring as well as the measures being taken to try and prevent it. 

That interest in heritage crime has continued to the present time and led to numbers of collaborative multidisciplinary research and writing projects on topics ranging from fraud in the indigenous art market in Australia to the illicit traffic in cultural property in Vietnam.

What do you feel is the most relevant aspect of your course?

The course that I have now taught at ARCA for the past five years provides a broad based introduction to those aspects of art and cultural heritage law that relate to theft, fraud and looting. Reflecting the students who participate in the course, it is designed for a multi-disciplinary audience although much of the relevant law, national and international, does raise some rather tricky and complex legal issues.

What do you hope participants will get out of your course?

I hope they will begin to appreciate and understand some of the legal and practical challenges that exist in combating any form of art crime. To assist this process one of the key features of the course is the choice each participant makes to select a particular area of the online art market to study in more depth, as theft and fraud can be persistent problems in the digital market. The choice they make then forms the basis of a short classroom presentation, and is extrapolated on in greater detail in a formal research paper. The range and quality of the presentations and papers resulting from this process has been quite astounding.

What would a typical day be like in your classroom? 

In addition to the presentations, as much as possible I seek to stimulate discussion and dialogue throughout my classes. We also spend one day in a field class visiting the World Heritage listed Etruscan necropolis site at Cerveteri, Banditaccia.  There, entering the city of the dead of a now disappeared civilization, among the graves, we get a look at what history loses during illegal excavations, as unprotected Etruscan sites throughout Italy have been looted and robbed. This visit helps to encourage lively discussion about the complexity of protecting cultural heritage.

While each year participants are very enthusiastic about your course, is there anything you learn from them in the class? 

I have been massively impressed by, and grateful for, what I have learned from the wonderful individuals who have participated in the ARCA program over the years I have been associated with it. The richness and variety of the experience and knowledge they communicate has been one of the enduring strengths and delights of the program for me.

In anticipation of your courses, what book, article, or movie would you recommend to students?

For a rollicking account of the contemporary art market I strongly recommend reading Don Thompson’s book The Orange Balloon Dog. And for a little more detailed historical background and description of that market Phillip Hook’s Rogues Gallery which is equally stimulating and quite informative. 

For a detailed prospectus and application materials or for general questions about this postgraduate program please contact us at education@artcrimeresearch.org

Edgar Tijhuis serves as the Academic Director at ARCA and is a visiting scholar at the Institute of Criminology in Ljubljana. He is responsible for the postgraduate certificate program in the study of art crime and cultural heritage protection and since 2009, has taught criminology modules within the ARCA program.

This year, the ARCA Postgraduate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection will be held from May 31 through August 15, 2019 in the heart of Umbria in Amelia, Italy. In the months leading up to the start of the program, this year’s professors will be interviewed. In this one, I am speaking with Insurance Industry Expert, Dorit Straus, a former Vice President and Worldwide Specialty Fine Art Manager for Chubb & Son, who is now an independent Art & Insurance Advisor.

Can you tell us something about your background and work? 

My educational background is in Middle Eastern archeology. I participated in geographical and archeological surveys and excavated in Tel Hatzor  in northern Israel.  The dig was under the direction of the famous archeologist Yigael Yadin, who went on to become Israel's deputy prime minister but also helped to acquire the Dead Sea Scrolls, identified the historical significance of Masada, and made Israelis in general feel more connected to their ancient past.   I also worked with Amnon Ben Tor, professor (emeritus) at the Institute of Archaeology, the Hebrew University.

I then proceeded to work with objects at various museums such as the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. While there I curated an exhibition "Samaria Revisited,"an exhibit on Harvard University's 1918 Reisner /Harvard expedition.  I was lucky to find original field notes as well as many of the objects that were housed at the Harvard Semitic Museum.

I then changed my career course and joined the Chubb Group of Insurance companies as a property underwriting trainee - and that led to a 30 year career which culminated in creating a specialized fine arts discipline within the company  something that they did not have before.

I am very happy that after all these years I have come full circle back to my first passion, which is archeology and cultural preservation.  I was appointed in 2016 by President Obama to serve with ten other experts on the US State Department's , Office of the Inspector General "Cultural Property Advisory Committee" (CPAC), where the members, representing the interests of museums and the fields of archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, and other related areas do important work in preventing looted or illegally excavated objects from entering the US.

CPAC advises the Department on the actions the United States should take in response to requests from at risk source countries for assistance in protecting cultural property by enacting import restrictions using cultural memoranda of understanding.

We also support the source countries with resources and educational support through various mechanisms. You can learn more by checking the US State Department's web site.


What do you feel is the most relevant aspect of your course?

I think that I provide real life scenarios to explain the insurance transaction - it’s very much the way it is- not theoretical.  I think insurance touches many aspects of what people in the “arts” are involved in - they are just not aware of it.

What do you hope participants will get out of the courses?

A better understanding how insurance can be one of the tools to help them view the entire picture.  Insurance underwriters work out the risk for insuring a particular object. To underwrite insurance means to accept financial responsibility for clients’ potential losses and this is something participants come to understand through my course. 

What would a typical day be like in your classroom?

In the beginning, most participants come into the course without knowing anything about fine art insurance, so I start with the basics, illustrated by slides and actual cases. I am very open to discussion and questions as long as it relates to the subject matter. The last day of the course is the most fun with participant demonstrations of what they learned. We divide into teams and with a lot of role playing their are able to express what the enormous amount of learning they have gleaned as everything falls into place.

While each year participants are very enthusiastic about your courses, is there anything you learn from them in class?

I am impressed at how quickly they grasp things  I am particularly impressed how inventive and original the team presentations at the conclusion of the course are!

In anticipation of your courses, what book, article, or movie would you recommend to participants?

There are a lot of movies about art theft or forgery - most of them not realistic but still fun - like The Thomas Crown Affair. The movie Gambit with Cameron Diaz and Colin Firth and How to Steal a Million with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole  are good.

Which other course in the program would you love to follow yourself and why?

ARCA's Provenance course and any of the sessions which touch upon the art market itself. 

Is there anything you can recommend for future participants to do in Amelia or Umbria?

Eat the fabulous food, visits local vineyards, walk through the olive groves, travel to the nearby towns, and also further away - take the opportunity of to explore and be in Italy.