From 1995 to 2009 [Andrew Wallace-Hadrill] served as director of the British School at Rome and is currently director of research of the faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge. An expert on the archaeology of the Vesuvian cities, he was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America's James R. Wiseman Award in 1995 for his book Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (1994). He has written several other books, including Rome's Cultural Revolution (2008), Augustan Rome (1993), Suetonius: The Scholar and His Caesars (1985), and most recently Herculaneum: Past and Future (2011). He has held visiting fellowships at Princeton University and the J. Paul Getty Museum, and is a frequent contributor to radio and television broadcasts. 

LOS ANGELES – Six people are awaiting arraignment this afternoon in connection with the $3.2 million theft of paintings, wine, jewelry and a car from financier Jeffrey Gundlach in September, the District Attorney’s Office announced. 

Darren Agee Merager, 43, allegedly broke into Gundlach’s Santa Monica home between Sept. 12 and Sept. 13, 2012, and stole valuable art work, jewelry and wine, said Deputy District Attorney Alva Lin with the Airport Branch office. Merager then allegedly returned hours later and stole Gundlach’s Porsche at the behest of Jay Jeffrey Nieto, 45. 

Nieto allegedly helped conceal the stolen art and other items at his Pasadena store. Pasadena police, who received a tip, and the Santa Monica Police Department investigated the case. 

Charged as co-conspirators are Merager’s 68-year-old mother, Brenda Joyce Merager, and two brothers, 29-year-old Wanis George Wahba and his 26-year-old brother, Ely George Wahba. The three allegedly tried to sell and conceal the stolen items. In addition, Wilmer Bolosan Cadiz, 40, is charged with conspiracy and receiving stolen items. 

The six, who are charged in case SA082879 with multiple counts, including first-degree residential burglary, conspiracy and receiving stolen property, are scheduled to be arraigned at the Los Angeles Superior Court, Airport Branch, in Department 144. 

Prosecutors will ask that bail be set at $10 million for each defendant. 

Merager, who has multiple prior convictions, is facing more than nine years in state prison if convicted.

The inaugural workshop of the Provenance Research Training Program was held June 10-15, 2012 in Magdeburg, Germany, with the co-sponsorship of the Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste (Coordination Office for Lost Cultural Assets), a public institution jointly financed by the Federal Government of Germany and all the German Länder (States) and housed within the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in the Land of Saxony-Anhalt in Magdeburg.  Please see the Report on the Magdeburg Workshop.

Even as cultural property faces immediate peril today in conflict zones like Syria and Mali, there is anecdotal evidence that some nations are awakening to the diplomatic and foreign policy benefits that can flow from the repatriation of cultural patrimony.

While on a different scale from World War II, historic structures, religious monuments, and other priceless antiquities continue to suffer collateral damage and exploitation in armed conflict. Antiquities have been stolen, smuggled and sold in what is a reported multibillion dollar underground market. They have become the illicit prizes of private collectors and the subject of legal claims against museums.

So it goes in Syria, where wartime damage to World Heritage Sites, such as Krak des Chevaliers, seems intractable. In northern Mali, too, religious strife has brought ruin to centuries-old, historic shrines in Timbuktu. Where is the constructive potential of cultural property?