File: CAD 000.4 (3-25-43) (1), Sec. 2, Security Classified General Correspondence, 1943-July 1949, General Records, Civil Affairs Division, Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs, RG 165.

Duncan Chappell’s publications include two coedited texts: Crime in the Art and Antiquities World. Illegal Trafficking in Cultural Property (2011) Springer: New York (With Stefano Manacorda) and Contemporary Perspectives on the Detection, Investigation and Prosecution of Art Crime (In Press) Ashgate: London (With Saskia Hufnagel). He has also had published a number of journal articles and book chapters on various aspects of art crime including fraud and fakery in the Australian Indigenous art market; the impact of corruption in the illicit trade in cultural property; and the linkages between art crime and organized crime.

In addition to his research and writing on art crime Duncan Chappell has acted as an expert in regard to court proceedings involving art crime and also been a strong supporter of  measures to enhance public awareness of the evils of looting behaviour and to strengthen the engagement of law enforcement agencies in investigation and prosecuting those responsible. In his present capacity as Chair of the International Advisory Board of the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence in Policing and Security, he has sought to foster a far more proactive approach to the prevention and detection of art crime both in Australia and its neighbouring countries within the South East Asian region.

Under Mr. Esterow's direction, ARTnews became the first magazine to consistently apply rigorous standards of investigative reporting to the art world.  Mr. Esterow received a special award for lifetime achievement from the College Art Association, the national organization of educators, artists, art historians, curators, critics, and institutions in 2003. He was cited for “his exceptional contributions to art journalism and investigative art reporting” and for having “overseen the magazine’s financial success while enhancing its reputation and influence in the visual-arts community and beyond.”

In Italy and abroad, he has covered the “Six Day War” (1967) and the war in Lebanon (1982); the death of Mitterrand and the election of Chirac; the murder of Rabin; the voyages of Pertini, Cossiga and Scalfaro, the ascension of eight italian governments and two Popes; the trials of Piazza Fontana, the Lockheed scandal, the Ardeatine massacre and the “Mani Pulite” political corruption scandal of the 1990s in Italy.  Since 1980, he has been dedicated to writing about cultural heritage protection, with an emphasis on historic preservation not only in Italy, but worldwide.

Lyndel Prott AO (1991), Öst. EKWuK(i) (2000), Hon FAHA; LL.D. (honoris causa) B.A. LL.B. (University of Sydney), Licence Spéciale en Droit international (ULB Brussels),  Dr. Juris (Tübingen) and member of Gray’s Inn, London, is former Director of UNESCO’s Division of cultural Heritage and former Professor of Cultural Heritage Law at the University of Sydney. She has had a distinguished career in teaching, research and practice, including co-operation with COM and INTERPOL to improve co-ordination between civil and criminal law to deal with illicit traffic.

At UNESCO 1990-2002 she was responsible for the administration of UNESCO’s Conventions and standard-setting Recommendations on the protection of cultural heritage and also for the negotiations on the 1999 Protocol to the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict 1954 and the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage 2001.  She contributed as Observer for UNESCO to the negotiations for the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects 1995. She has authored, co-authored or edited over 280 books, reports or articles, written in English, French or German and translated into 9 other languages.

Ralph Frammolino: Prior to Chasing Aphrodite, I was among the blissfully ignorant art-loving masses who regarded museums with a sort of hushed awe while delighting in their inspiring displays of ancient pieces. I accepted without question the good intention of curators, academics and museum officials, never giving a thought to the back story of how they obtained their trove of Greek and Roman pieces (my favorites). Then, as an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, I had the rare opportunity to examine this world through a different prism. Jason and others at the paper had just finished an investigation into the finances of the Getty Trust, the richest art institution in the world. The editors at the LA Times teamed me up with Jason to look at problems with the antiquities collection, a move that happened about the time a Roman court indicted Getty antiquities curator Marion True for trafficking in looted artifacts. What we found was shocking, the equivalent of steroids in baseball and pedophile priests in the Catholic Church. The museum world had its own dirty little secret – that it was feasting on the fruits of an illegal trade – and justifying it through sham acquisition policies, temporized denials and archly worded statements about serving posterity. To me, the protection of antiquities became a proxy for cultural colonialism. While I would like to think that the Getty scandal marked a change, I’m no longer sure. In my mind, the Getty’s selection of James Cuno as CEO and Timothy Potts as Museum Director – two openly avowed collecting hawks – marks a giant step backward from the enlightened, culturally sensitive stance the Getty adopted after it was caught with looted masterpieces. Now Cuno and Potts say they want to start to aggressively acquire Middle Eastern antiquities – coincidentally as war, terrorism and regime change have triggered wholesale looting of such artifacts, which will no doubt start bobbing up through the market in the coming years.