In 2009, when ARCA started the first of its kind, interdisciplinary, approach to the scholarly study of art crime, no one was being trained to look closely at the  underbelly of the art world.   Noticing that gap, represented a unique opportunity for the association, to provide  individuals interested in intensive training in a structured and academically diverse format, a summer-long postgraduate program developed  around the study of the dynamics, strategies, objectives and modus operandi of criminals and criminal organisations who commit a variety of art crimes.    

Turn on the news (or followARCA's art crime blog) and you will see over and over again examples of suspect acquisitions, museum thefts, forgeries, antiquities looting and illicit trafficking of cultural goods.  Intentional heritage destruction during armed conflict, once a modern-day rarity, now affects multiple countries and adds to regional instability in many areas of the globe.  

Looted art, both ancient and Holocaust-related, continues to find its way into the prestigious galleries of respected institutions, while auction houses and dealers continue to be less than adept at distinguishing smuggled and stolen art, from art with a clean provenance. Thus making dealing with art crime an unrelenting problem and one without any easy solution.

Taken incident by incident, it is difficult to see the impact and implications of art crime as a global concern, but when studied across disciplines, looking at the gaps of legal instruments, country to country, one begins to have a clearer picture of the significance of the problem and its impact on the world's collective patrimony.

The world's cultural heritage is an invaluable legacy and its protection is integral to our future. 

Since 2009, other short and long programs have come and gone, and yet, ARCA remains, the longest running, and most comprehensive programming of its kind. 

Here are 11 reasons why you should consider joining us this summer in Amelia, Italy for ARCA's 13th edition of our professional development program. 

At its foundation, ARCA's summer-long program in Italy draws upon the overlapping and complementary expertise of international thought-leaders on the topic of art crime – all practitioners and leading scholars who actively work in the sector. 

In 2023, participants of the program will receive 220+ hours of instruction from a range of experts actively committed to combatting art crime from a variety of different angles.

One summer, eleven courses.

For more information please see ARCA's website here.

To request further information or to receive a 2024 prospectus and application materials, please email:

education (at) artcrimeresearch.org

Apulian vases Antikensammlung Berlin - Accession no. 1984.39-59

Anyone who admires the moveable heritage of Magna Graecia and Apulian red-figure artefacts in particular, and who has visited the Altes Museum located on Berlin's Museum Island will likely have come across "their" phenomenal set of grave artefacts dating back to the 4th century BCE.  Extremely carefully executed and very elegant, the grouping are housed together in one extremely large glass showcase.  The so-called Phrixos crater, a volute crater with mask handles and the Rhesos crater, a high volute crater with three-wheel handles has been attributed to the Darius painter.  The Persephone crater, a volute crater with spiral handles, the Gigantomachie crater, a volute crater with mask handles and the Priamiden-Krater are ascribed to the painter of the Underworld.  Two other volute craters with mask handles are attributed to the Loebbecke painter and the painter from Copenhagen,

What makes this group spectacularly surprising is not that these strikingly beautiful artefacts are believed to possibly represent a single burial grouping, used to furnish a rich chamber tomb north of Taranto, Italy, but rather, that at the time of their purchase, no one seemed even a smidge concerned about the improbability of their purported provenance. Or, that years later, they continue to be displayed in Germany, and not in Italy, despite longstanding proof, now two decades old, that demonstrate their likely illicit origins. 

In the late 1980s, taking Christoph Leon, an Austrian archaeologist-turned-dealer living in Basel at his word, the director of the Berlin archaeological museum (at the time located in West Germany), Wolf Dieter Heilmayer, purchased the grouping of artefacts while completely ignoring the red flags in Leon's implausible story.  Despite having no proof whatsoever, beyond the word of the restorer, Fiorella Cottier-Angeli, who relayed that she had put the vases back together and they had been found in fragments in very old chests belonging to a Swiss family named Cramer, and had reached Geneva "in the nineteenth century," Heilmayer quickly shelled out 3 million marks without demanding any substantiating proof that the artefacts he was purchasing had, in fact, left Italy and entered into Swiss territory before Italy's law n.364 of 1909, entered into force.

Likewise, neither Wolf Dieter Heilmayer, nor Luca Giuliani, curator of the German archaeological museum at the time, seemed interested in questioning the flimsy backstory of how such a large grouping of funerary artefacts could have ended up smashed into bits and stashed into said trunks.  

Did the purported Cramer family have all their ancient treasures lined up on one overloaded shelf that at some point in history came crashing down?  And did said nineteenth century family conveniently have the foresight to stow each and every swept up fragment into trunks in the hopes that years later,  someone like Ms. Cottier-Angeli might put them all back together again like some precious group of Apulian Humpty Dumpties? 

Flash forward to September 13, 1995 when alarm bells really sounded.  

On that date, Swiss authorities notified Giacomo Medici that they would execute a search warrant at his storage facilities/office of Editions Services located on the fourth floor of the Ports Francs & Entrepôts de Genève, specifically Corridor 17, Room 23.  There, a search party consisting of a Swiss magistrate, three Swiss police, headed by an inspector, three Carabinieri TPC officers, an official photographer, and the deputy director of the Ports Francs & Entrepôts de Genève seized and documented contradictory evidence to the provenance story provided for the Berlin tomb-group artefacts.  

Carefully recorded by Medici were three sets of Polaroid images, depicting four of the artefacts purchased earlier by Heilmayer for the German museum's collection:

one grouping of fifteen photographs,

one grouping of six photographs,

and one grouping of two photographs.

The preponderance of this evidence seems to contradict the fabricated provenance given to the museum, which made no mention of the antiquities dealer who at that point found himself embroiled in a complex investigation by the Swiss and Italian authorities. 

Jumping forward to the last two years.  

On 11 October 2021, Alessandro Arturi, the judge of the preliminary investigations at the Court of Rome, ordered the confiscation of all 21 of the Berlin museum's tomb-group artefacts sold by Leon.  In his ruling Arturi, cited Jacques Chamay, at the time director of the archaeological museum in Geneva (who displayed the vases at the time of they were offered for purchase), and Fiorella Cottier Angeli's well known and fully established complicity with the by now-convicted antiquities dealer Giacomo Medici.  And in describing the photographic evidence in the seized Medici archive, the judge spelt out clearly that the Polaroids in the archive depict four of the craters in the Berlin museum "first in the condition of mere fragments soaked in earth, then in the subsequent phases of restoration, up to their current integral recomposition." 

Which leads me to the next question...

Dr. David Gill has been writing about his concerns regarding these vases for years, see articles here and here. The Italian authorities have thoroughly researched their problematic provenance and have documented evidence suggesting they were extracted illegally from Italian soil and exported without the benefit of an export license to Switzerland. All of which begs the question of why, a quarter of a century later, Italy has needed to resort to a court ruling, to put pressure on Germany to get on board and consider relinquishing the Apulian funeral pieces. 

What is known is that the Italian Ministry of Justice, perhaps having lost patience, has launched an international rogatory, to which Germany has yet to formally reply. 

At the time of his arrest, on August 6th,  Sadigh's warrant listed a host of alleged crimes including:

Sadigh also admitted to manipulating his gallery's satisfaction ratings on ratings platforms, by having contacts post false positive reviews as well as hiring a specialised reputational defence firm to manipulate Google's ratings so that negative comments from bilked clients complaining about their purchases or that Sadigh Gallery was a font of fakery were harder for the average Joe to find. 

In our previous article, we posited the assembly-line nature of Sadigh's fakes, which he admitted to in his court hearing.  The dealer openly admitted that he aged modern reproductions to make them appear plausibly authentic, by adding layers of paint, grime, and chemicals to their surfaces. 

Having been caught red-handed and having admitted to crimes that stretched for decades, the Manhattan District Attorney's office, through their Antiquities Trafficking Unit, filed what some might see as a relatively lenient sentencing memorandum.  Citing Sadigh as a first offender, the District Attorney's Office recommended five years probation and a ban on businesses related to the antiquities or reproductions trade.  

While some of the general public are angry that the prosecutor didn't recommend jail time, given that he has likely ripped off hundreds or thousands of people, others have commented that they were happy that the dealer was selling fakes rather than plundering actual archaeological sites to fill his client's burgeoning demands. 

Here at ARCA were are more sanguine. 

The Jewish Museum’s current exhibition Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art is dedicated to the art objects coveted by some of history’s greatest villains: the Nazi regime. Walking into the museum lobby on a cloudy Saturday afternoon (admission is free on the Jewish Sabbath), I found myself at the end of a long line awaiting entry into the exhibition space.  Surrounded by groups of all ages and backgrounds, we waited in an orderly fashion, taunted by the glimpse of a large Franz Marc canvas hanging just beyond the glass doors.

Image Credit: Jewish Museum

Once granted entry into the exhibition space, the dramatically lit gallery introduces viewers to the idea of an artwork’s biography, not just its creator, but the journey the physical item takes throughout its existence from creation to owners, to looters, to restitution. Following the trajectory of curation, visitors are given a preliminary introduction to the destruction and sacrifice that arose from the Nazi’s systematic plunder of cultural objects. The wall texts and audio guide address topics ranging from the experiences of “degenerate” artist’s to Rose Valland’s valiant efforts working for the Nazis at the Jeu de Paume to the Jewish Museum’s own role in safeguarding the orphaned Judaica of the Danzig Collection. 

In support of this narrative, many of the artworks on display are presented with wall texts that offer a paragraph of art historical analysis followed by a brief description of how the artwork was looted and restituted. Other items on display, such as August Sander’s photographic portraits of his Jewish neighbors seeking to escape persecution, and a concentration camp ledger recording the names of thousands who perished at the hands of the Nazis.  This sobering reminder of the context of this exhibition adds an extra layer of gravitas to the exhibited art objects.  Of the 3478 human beings recorded in this single ledger, only 11 survived. Viewers are not just reading fantastical stories or art historical analyses. They are witnessing the afterlife of the attempted annihilation of Jewish culture and faith. 

Max Pechstein’s Landscape (Nudes in a Landscape), 1912

The exhibition culminates with a display of contemporary works by artists Maria Eichhorn, Hadar Gad, Dor Guex, and Lisa Oppenheim. Each of the aforementioned artists seeks to shed light on the enduring legacy and ramifications of Nazi plundering while simultaneously shedding light on restitution efforts. Maria Eichhorn even put together a dossier of philosopher Hannah Arendt’s field reports, memoranda, and other primary documents from her time as an emissary for Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc. (JCR). This dossier offers a documented view into the restitution efforts that took place in the wake of the Second World War. Visitors are encouraged to take a copy of the dossier with them. The unassuming booklet serves as a tangible record of plunder to take with them back into the real world.  

Image Credit: Aubrey Catrone

* Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art is on view at the Jewish Museum in New York until 9 January 2022

On December 3rd a new book called Provenance Research Today: Principles, Practice, Problems is being released by Lund Humphries, an independent imprint which publishes books on art, architecture, and design.  The book is divided into five sections with articles written by 20 contributors including book editor Judge Arthur Tompkins.  Judge Tompkins is a District Court Judge based in Wellington, New Zealand.  This is the third book he has worked on with Lund Humphries, the first being Art Crime and Its Prevention: A Handbook for Collectors which he also edited, and his own book, Plundering Beauty all of which deal with the subjects of art, crime, and plunder.  

Judge Tompkins was nice enough to talk with us about this upcoming book, giving us some further insight into the topic of provenance research.  We first asked what brought about the desire to develop a book on the topic of provenance; he stated that the idea first began during the process of writing his book Plundering Beauty saying that his research “triggered a realisation that the 'social life' of an artwork - where it had been, who had had it, how it got to where it now is, and all the twists and turns along the way - is always an unavoidably intrinsic part of a work of art, and cannot properly be ignored or overlooked when looking at or discussing or researching a work.”  

The first two sections of the book will delve into the ‘History, Purpose, and Challenges of Provenance Research’ and ‘Best Practices in Provenance Research’.  One of the challenges of provenance research today is that in the past it was often unnecessary, or even undesired, to ask for provenance details in the art world, and as such large institutions and collectors have many pieces with no known history.  

Building a provenance from nothing is a daunting prospect and the advice Judge Tompkins gives to institutions wishing to fill in the blanks in their collections is simply to “do the work!  Go down into the basements and the storage rooms and the off-site warehouses and blow the dust off and open the files, open the cupboards, pull out the drawers to see what's there, and then sit down and work out how it got there ... But I understand entirely that limited and stretched budgets, and limited time, conspire to make that difficult. Good provenance work is careful, detailed, painstaking, and time-consuming, and diverts resources of all kinds from other compelling demands on those same scarce resources.”  The difficulties of solving the mystery behind long-held pieces of art often fall secondary to the more pressing concerns of new acquisitions.   

The third section of the book discusses ‘Provenance Research, Museums, and the Art Market’.  The topic of proper provenance research and the art market is still a controversial issue.  Many auction houses do not require provenance history for their pieces.  We asked Judge Tompkins what he felt could be done to encourage better practice from institutions in this field.  His advice was directed towards buyers and collectors as he asks them to “ignore pieces offered for sale without a full and proper provenance.  If such offerings are publicly highlighted and appropriately criticized, and then remain unsold (if not pulled from sale before being offered), then gradually vendors will be compelled both to research their own holdings and to make provenances public.”  At the end of the day, the disapproval of the academic community will not mean as much to them as the loss of income from suspect pieces with no previous collection history, that buyers walk away from. 

The final two sections deal with two of the areas which are most complex to deal with in the world of provenance research today: ‘Nazi-era Provenance Research’ and ‘Provenance Research and the Illicit Antiquities Trade’.  We asked Judge Tompkins to elaborate on the issues faced with provenance research in these areas.  He explained that “with respect to Nazi-era issues, the relentless march of times inevitably obscures or conceals a lot of evidence, and institutional inertia (or an unwillingness substantively to confront and acknowledge a tragic past, although that is slowly changing) often compounds the problems.”  

The issues faced with the illicit antiquities trade are very different, he explained that “with respect to antiquities, any form of provenance is often completely missing, especially for plundered and smuggled antiquities deriving from looted archaeological sites, including graves, in war zones or areas of conflict.”  The end goal of provenance research in these two scenarios is often the restitution of the items to their proper owners, heirs, or country of origin.  

Because of Judge Tompkins’ legal expertise, we asked him what he felt was the biggest legal gap needed to overcome with regards to restitution.  He responded that “the irreconcilable inconsistency between how (to adopt a very broad generalisation) the common law and civil law worlds treat prior ownership and/or possession of a stolen work.  The common law world (including the USA, the UK, and Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) generally rule that a thief cannot convey good title, no matter what happens after the theft, whereas the civil law world (most of Europe and other Napoleonic Code countries) say that a genuine and honest subsequent buyer can get good title, despite an original theft.  Given that most legal issues involving an artwork have to be resolved in the national courts of the place where that artwork ends up, that can often be an insurmountable legal hurdle for a claimant to overcome - even if they know an artwork has ended up there, in the first place, which is often down to sheer luck.”  The process of restitution of artworks is long and complicated and continues to be an important topic of discussion in the art world.  

This book release coincides with the International Catalogue Raisonné Association’s annual conference on the 3rd of December which will feature a series of lectures on the topic of Provenance and the Catalogue Raisonné.  Given the current pandemic, the conference will be held virtually this year and includes presentations from twenty-one leading scholars and experts from around the world.  

The program will run from 10:30 AM to 6:30 PM CET with sessions on various topics including: A How-to Guide to Research Techniques, Restitution: Research Questions and Perspectives, the Legal, Moral and Ethical Implications of Provenance Research, Provenance in Museums, Artists’ Estates and their Approach to Provenance, and the Future of Provenance and the Catalogue Raisonné.  Tickets for the event are available through Eventbrite for £100, this fee is waived for ICRA members, students, and the unemployed.

Link to the book's Table of Contents.

Link to the ICRA Event info for: Provenance and the Catalogue Raisonné.

By: Lynette Turnblom