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July 14, 2017

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Recipe for a museum theft: 5 seized vehicles, 4 shotguns, a six-figure sum of money, and a pinch of organized crime.


When a giant gold coin, weighing 100 kilos was stolen from the Bode Museum in the early morning hours of March 27, 2017 it was pretty obvious that there might be insider involvement.  Even if the group of burglars had entered the Berlin museum through a forced window, evading the prestigious museum's alarm system, hacking their way through the exhibit's attack-proof glass case and then carting the heavy coin away in a wheelbarrow.

But this week's raids, carried out by authorities in Neukölln, Berlin’s most impoverished district, turned up an interesting wrinkle; three of the four men taken into custody, Abdel R. (18), Ahmed R. (19), and Wissam R. (20) appear to have ties to a Middle Eastern crime syndicate referred to as the “R. family*. The fourth suspect, Dennis W. was German and had just gotten a subcontracting job at the Bode Museum as a supervisor shortly before the robbery.  Nine others, individuals, older members of the same “R” clan, are also under investigation with the German authorities.    

Al-Zein, Fakhro, Omeirat, Osman, Miri, Remmo

These are grandfamilies of Lebanese-Kurdish descent who immigrated to Germany during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war. Many moved to immigrant neighborhoods like those in Kreuzberg, Wedding, and Neukölln where this week's raids took place.  Some of these families originate with the Mhallami community, a tightly-knit group of families with origins in the Mardin Province of Southeastern Turkey who had previously lived in Beirut, Tripoli, and the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon.

Members of several of these families have been criminally conspicuous, gaining reputations for trafficking, racketeering and robbery, some of which have been spectacular in their execution. 

While searching 20 apartments and making yesterday's arrests, authorities seized four firearms, five vehicles and "a low six-figure sum" in cash. 

Given that all four of the arrested co-conspirators are under 21 years old, the case will be tried in the regional Jugendstrafkammer, Germany's regional youth criminal court.

By Lynda Albertson




Friday, July 14, 2017 - , No comments

EC Proposal on Plundering, Smuggling and the Importing Illicit Cultural Heritage in the European Union

Image Credit: European Commission Audiovisual Services



If adopted by the EU's 28 member nations and by the European Parliament, the measures would enter into force in 2019.  

Reinforcing the powers of customs authorities the commission’s plan focuses on:
  • A common EU definition for 'cultural goods' at importation which would cover objects such as archaeological finds, ancient scrolls, the remains of historical monuments or artworks that are at least 250 years old at the moment of importation.  This material would be divided into two principal categories:
        --archaeological objects, parts of monuments and ancient manuscripts and               books,

        --goods such as artwork, collections, and antiques.
  • A licensing system for the import of these object classes which would require importers to have obtained import licences from the competent authorities in the EU before importing objects into the EU.
  • Applying a more rigorous certification system by submitting a signed statement or affidavit as proof that the goods have been exported legally from the third country.
  • Customs authorities having the power to seize and retain goods when it cannot be demonstrated that the cultural goods in question have been legally exported.
  • Increasing public awareness, specifically targeting those who both trade in and purchase cultural goods as their personal or economically driven desire to own ancient art, frequently fails to put emphasis on an object’s origins or legality during the purchasing decision making process. 
All this sounds good in concept, but implementing future regulations and then enforcing them is another thing.  

New Regulations, but the ability to inforce them? 

According to 2016 annual trade data on art and antiques, sales at auction and through private sales and by art and antique dealers for classical antiquities in Europe were estimated at $66.7 million, larger than the U.S. market ($51.56 million).

In contrast Belgium's federal police unit dedicated to fighting illegal trafficking of cultural property, once part of the central directorate against serious and organised crime, made up of five persons in 2006, was reduced to two investigators and then quietly eliminated in 2016. 

Per a recent email in London, a city where one of the Europe's busiest antiquities art markets resides, the city's Art & Antiques Unit of SCO7, with the Metropolitan Police has been operationally suspended since June 19, 2017 in light of the recent incidents in London.  The unit's automated email reply states the unit has been redeployed for three months and they are therefore unable to accept any new enquiries at this time, adding "we hope to be back in the Autumn."

ARCA hopes so too. 

July 8, 2017

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Thou Shall Not Covet thy Neighbor's Cuneiform

Op/Ed By:  Lynda Albertson

As the US press and social media came alive in condemnation as a result of the Hobby Lobby smuggling case, I couldn't help but notice that while the hashtag #HobbyLobbyisISIS is noticeably attention-grabbing, (as well as probably inaccurate), the more important facet of the "is-that-object-looted" puzzle was still being overlooked. 

I asked myself, instead of simply rewording the press release announcement released by the government, why hadn't US news organizations dug deeper into the development of the Green Collection in ancient art.  Especially since everyone now seems hellbent, (excuse the pun) on crucifying the fundamentalist Christian collector or finding some way to tie Hobby Lobby to Da'esh.

This is a case that has been widely publicized since 2015, and it's not the only time the Greens or their large collection have come under scrutiny or been accused of acquiring objects through untrustworthy channels with illicit ties.  

In June 2014 Dr. David Trobisch, Director of Collections for the Museum of the Bible even attended ARCA’s annual art crime conference where he heard concerns made by Dr. Roberta Mazza, a papyrologist and ancient historian from the University of Manchester about the Green Collection's unprovenanced papyrus fragments.  Those fragments however were not mentioned in this current civil complaint. 

While this US civil forfeiture case underscores that illicit traffic in cultural objects contributes to the despoliation of a country's ancient heritage and causes irreparable loss to the world's heritage knowledge, why is it then that the public only wakes up and takes notice when ISIS ties are tangentially inferred?

Are trafficked Middle East artifacts only worthy of the world's indignation when they are looted to fund terrorism?  


As the general public responded to the press coverage over the last two days most of the grumbling I've come across was either ISIS-funding related or centered on whether or not the punishment fit the crime.   I use the word "crime" here loosely because no criminal charges were filed for the looting and theft of the 450 ancient cuneiform tablets and 3,000 ancient clay bullae which ultimately were the subject of this civil forfeiture.  

In civil cases, the object of the law is the redress of wrongs by compelling compensation or restitution.  As those following this case closely are painfully aware, civil law deals with the disputes between individuals, organizations, or between the two, in which compensation can be awarded to the victim.  Criminal law is the body of law that deals with crime and the legal punishment of criminal offenses.

A civil fine is not a criminal punishment.  

Civil case fines are primarily sought in federal investigations in order to compensate the state for harm done to it, rather than to punish a wrongful conduct, something many like myself would have liked to have seen happen given the Green's less than stellar record when it comes to vetting antiquities for inclusion in their collection.   In this case, Hobby Lobby only suffers so much harm as is necessary to make good the wrong they have done (to the state). 

Civil penalties, in this case a $3M fine, do not carry any jail time or other legal penalties.  This fact illustrates why no one from Hobby Lobby was criminally charged, despite the large number of objects seized and subsequently forfeited.

This may also explain the absence of any noticeable public remorse on Hobby Lobby's part for their role in this antiquities smuggling affair.  The lack of regret can also be seen in the unrepentant statement by Hobby Lobby President Steve Green, in his company's press release after the federal civil ruling was publicized. 


Was new to the world of acquiring these items?  Did not understand the correct way to document and ship these items?

Let's look at his statements more closely.  

While Hobby Lobby, may be "new" to the world of acquiring antiquities, the fact that it has purchased more than 40,000 objects since November 2009 does not in any way make it a neophyte collector of ancient art.  

In addition to the cuneiform tablets seized in this well publicized case, the Green Collection already had in its possession the third largest holding of cuneiform tablets in North America (over 10,000 pieces). This means Green and Hobby Lobby by proxy had ample prior opportunity to explore what could and should go on any customs declaration for objects that contain writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia between 3500-3000 BCE.  

In 2010, a year before the seized cuneiform tablets arrived in Memphis, the Greens had also already consulted with Dr. Patty Gerstenblith, a cultural heritage law expert with DePaul University 's College of Law, about import restrictions for ancient antiquities who is reported to have advised them about their need for deeper due diligence in their collecting.   Given Gerstenblith's impeccable familiarity with the cultural heritage law, it can be assumed that the Greens as collectors were not as ignorantly naive to the road they were embarking down as the firm's press statement this week seems to imply.

But setting aside the intricacies of import and customs documentation specifically related to ancient antiquities coming from Iraq, Hobby Lobby itself has some 32,000 employees, 750 stores in forty-seven states, and $4 billion in yearly revenue, much of it based on imported items. 

It's corporate headquarters include a 9.2 million-square-foot manufacturing, distribution, and office complex in Oklahoma City.  Its warehouse has an hourly employee base of 2500+ employees with 80+ members of management, headed by an Assistant Vice President of Warehouse Operations, who reports to the Senior Vice President of Distribution.

When importing merchandise from foreign countries Hobby Lobby is fully aware there are certain trade laws and regulations, and that U.S. Customs oversees the compliance of those laws. They even have an international department responsible for training and compliance to ensure the import process go smoothly, not to mention a manual outlining laws and regulations, valuation, assists, and country of origin requirements which can be downloaded here. 

So to imply to the public that Hobby Lobby "imprudently relied on dealers and shippers who, in hindsight, did not understand the correct way to document and ship these items" seems a bit unapologetic coming from an apologist.   

Especially given Green's business thrives on supply-chain distribution members in its shipping department who would have to have, given the large scale operation of receiving imported cargo from across the globe in support of Hobby Lobby's national operations, sufficient knowledge of what the legal requirements are for import.  If they didn't, they certainly knew who to ask. 

As I have mentioned in a previous post, the estimated 40,000+ objects in the Green Collection equates to acquiring 6,666 objects per year or collecting a whopping 18 new objects per day.  Compare that acquisition rate to the number of employees working on the Green's or the Museum of the Bible's payroll who are tasked with historic object provenance and one can easily surmise that an object's ethical collection history has never been either group's overriding priority.  

Emphasis instead has been on filling the Museum of the Bible, Washington DC's about-to-be-opened 430,000-square-foot, eight story massive red brick museum located over the Federal Center SW Metro station.  To put that into perspective, one NFL football field is 57,600 square feet.  The Museum of the Bible has seven and a half football fields of space it needs to fill. 

Given the scale of archaeological theft in biblical area source countries and the number of objects with questionable origins which have already been identified by various researchers following the Green Collection prior to this forfeiture, it's time for Hobby Lobby's founders to do more than just open their wallets, purchase, and if caught, pay civil fines and forfeit the objects in question.

Opening their wallets has been the crux of the problem, as the Green's appetite for unprovenanced antiquities, and the profits to be had from this appetite, have likely been a motivating factor for others to loot, thereby destroying whatever context the objects may have had.

It's time for the Greens to fulfill the promise previously made by their employee. 

In 2014 the director of Collections at the Museum of the Bible, David Trobisch, informed Dr. Roberta Mazza that the Green Collection was going towards full digitisation and open access.  This has yet to happen. 

They should also make every effort, before making any further acquisitions, to ensure that the objects they are purchasing have been legally obtained and been legally exported from their country of origin.  

If the Greens truly want to make amends, they should fill their future Museum of the Bible with acquisitions collected ethically, and make the details of their past purchases open to researchers and investigators so that they can start to set things right by restituting any objects previously purchased without sufficient moral and ethical consideration. 

Exodus 20:15 and 17 King James Version (KJV): 

“Thou shalt not steal." 

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.”

I think that includes cuneiform tablets, clay bullae, incantation bowls and papyrus fragments.

July 6, 2017

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Civil Complaint requires forfeiture of thousands of cuneiform tablets and clay bullae, but is that enough?

Cuneiform Tablet - Image Credit U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York
By: Lynda Albertson


At the heart of the investigation, were import irregularities related to ancient artifacts shipped to Hobby Lobby, Mardel, Inc. and Crafts, Etc! The firms Mardel, Inc. and Crafts, Etc! were affiliates of Hobby Lobby and both maintained their principal corporate offices adjacent to Hobby Lobby’s headquarters in Oklahoma City.  

The antiquities were shipped to Hobby Lobby and their associates by dealers in Israel and the United Arab Emirates (“UAE”), all of whom have been left unnamed in the civil complaint.  The objects were shipped without required customs entry documentation being filed with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and bore shipping labels that falsely and misleadingly described their contents and their value, in some cases as “ceramic tiles” or “clay tiles (sample).” In truth, the mislabeled objects were ancient clay and stone artifacts that originate from the area of modern day Iraq, which had been smuggled into the United States after their contracted purchase in the Middle East. 

Hobby Lobby's growing Green Collection is purported to be the largest private collection of rare biblical texts and artifacts worldwide and is estimated to be made up of more than 40,000 biblical-related antiquities, purchased and assembled by the Green family, who are founders of the national arts and crafts chain.  The bulk of this collection is intended to be displayed in their 430,000-square-foot Museum of the Bible, which is scheduled to open in Washington DC in November of 2017.

As is often the case with illicit antiquities smuggled around the globe, the intercepted packages, destined eventually to join the museum's collection, had their shipping labels intentionally mislabeled, stating the country of origin as imports from Turkey and Israel, not Iraq.  The shippers also used multiple shipping addresses for objects destined for a single recipient.  This too is a technique used by smugglers of all types, not just illicit antiquities, as it is a means of avoiding scrutiny by customs authorities. 

In the DOJ press release Bridget M. Rohde, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Karin Orenstein, Assistant United States Attorney, of counsel, announced that Hobby Lobby Stores has agreed to pay a $3 million federal fine and forfeit thousands of ancient Iraqi artifacts believed to have been smuggled in 15 shipments, 5 of which were stopped by the CBP on their way to the Greens.   

Hobby Lobby had executed an agreement to purchase the objects, despite their likely illicit origins, in 2010 for $1.6 million.  They paid for the antiquities via wire payments to seven personal bank accounts held in the names of five individuals.  This despite noticeable suspicious irregularities in the objects purported provenance and no direct contact with the objects' "owner.  The civil complaint also outlines conversations related to the purchase and import which indicate intentional changes to invoices and shipment to disguise the objects' value, and in some cases to change to purported seller. 

As DOJ documents state Title 19, United States Code, Section 1595a(c)(1)(A) provides that “merchandise which is introduced or attempted to be introduced into the United States contrary to law . . . shall be seized and forfeited if it . . . is stolen, smuggled, or clandestinely imported or introduced.”

Legal measures specific to Iraq also make it a violation of U.S. law to import any cultural objects removed from Iraq since August 1990, unless exported with the permission of Iraqi authorities.  Illegally importing objects that meet this criteria are subject to criminal penalties and fines.

Equally important Under Article 3 of Iraq’s Antiquities Law No. 59 of 1936 (as amended in 1974 and 1975), all antiquities found in Iraq, whether movable or
immovable, on or under the ground, are considered property of the state. Under Article 16 of Antiquities Law No. 59, private persons generally cannot possess antiquities. Article 26 of the same antiquities law prohibits the export of Iraqi antiquities and defines “antiquities” as movable possessions which were made, produced, sculpted, written or drawn by man and which are at least 200 years old.  Southern Mesopotamian objects definitely fall into this category as any collections management expert in Near East antiquity would be aware of.


Is a $3 million fine and the forfeiture of 450 ancient cuneiform tablets and 3,000 ancient clay bullae enough?

As a result of this investigation, Hobby Lobby has agreed to adopt internal policies and procedures governing its importation and purchase of cultural property, provide appropriate training to its personnel, hire qualified outside customs counsel and customs brokers, and submit quarterly reports to the government on any cultural property acquisitions for the next eighteen months.


So much for remorse. 

NB: No one has faced criminal prosecution (read: jail time) for their actions. 

Thursday, July 06, 2017 - ,, No comments

ARCA's 8th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Art Crime has been a great success

By: Edgar Tijhuis

ICOM Red Lists Highlighted at the 2017 Amelia Conference
Last weekend ARCA held its yearly conference in the beautiful town of Amelia, seat of its Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection. With a record number of attendees from  international organizations, law enforcement agencies, academics, cultural institutions, and private sector professionals in the art and antiquities fields – the conference, in its 8th year offered a unique meeting point for those interested in art related crimes. 

Feint of Art

Judith Harris, Image Credit: Nour Abdel Ghafour
The first panel brought a number of new perspectives on fakes and forgeries. Mustafa Ergül, a librarian and archivist at SALT in Istanbul, Turkey, offered an overview of painting forgery in Turkish art scene since the 1990s, and the cultural, economic and legal aspects around it. Judith Harris, an American freelance journalist working in Italy, continued and initiated the audience into the con acts of of Christian Parisot, convicted in Italy as well as in France of fraudulent authentications of Modigliani works. Liliana Wuffli, from the University of Lausanne, pointed at the lack of resources aimed at fakes and forgeries and discussed her research project that seeks to build a tool to prevent fakes and forgeries from entering the market. Finally, Andrea Borroni, a professor at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, discussed the seemingly legal quagmire that comes from mistakes in attributions, like for example, this event which occurred this year when specialists at the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum discovered that the painting, The Braunschweig Terrier, attributed for more  than 250  years to  a  little  known  German painter, had actually been authored by Rembrandt.

The Gift of Our Fathers: Cultural Heritage Crime and its Regional and Transborder Consequences in Current and Former Conflict Zones

Maamoun Abdulkarim, Image Credit: Nour Abdel Ghafour
While the destruction and smuggling of cultural heritage from war zones usually only comes to us through the general media, this year’s conference included a unique panel with experts from Syria and Iraq and Bosnia & Herzogovina. Maamoun Abdulkarim, of the Directorate-General for Antiquities and Museums (DGAM), provided his first-hand look at the fight against trafficking in antiquities in Syria.  Samer Abdel Ghafour, founder of ArchaeologyIN, continued this discourse on looted Syrian antiquities with a further analysis of a specific case of trafficking in the country before the start of the present conflict and his organization's role in identifying the object and notifying the authorities as to its trafficking. 

Layla Salih, from the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage at the Ministry of Culture in Iraq (SBAH), followed with an overview of the realities on the ground in Northern Iraq, especially in territories once occupied by Da'esh. Finally, Dženan Jusufović and Senad Begović from the Centar Protiv Krijumčarenja Umjetninama (CPKU) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, discussed their country's impediments in fighting trafficking in art.

ARCA 2017 Minerva Scholars, Image Credit: Nour Abdel Ghafour
This panel also highlighted ARCA's Minerva Scholarship, which allows scholars from conflict countries to study with the Association's postgraduate program each year.

$acred $ites and Buried Trea$ure: Alternative Approaches to Mitigating Trafficking
Vijay Kumar, Image Credit: Nour Abdel Ghafour
In this panel, some innovative new approaches were presented to counter illicit trafficking. Vijay Kumar, founder of the India Pride Project, explained how the project aims to bring India’s cultural treasures home by leveraging the power of social media  – a grassroots movement that pushes for restitution with impressive results so far. Sam Hardy, Honorary Research Associate with the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, followed with a presentation on metal detecting and its impact on portable antiquities find sites. Finally, Jessica Kamphuis, graduate of ARCA’s 2015 program, drew an interesting comparison between the trafficking cultural heritage and endangered species from the perspective of border security.

The Thin Blue Line: Art Crimes from the Perspectives of Law Enforcement, Prosecutors and Private Investigators

Captain Rapicavoli from the Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale, Italy's Art and Antiquities Squad elaborated on the online market in illicit art and the way the Italian Art Squad deals with this new challenge. Next was Martin Finkelnberg, head of the Art and Antique Crime Unit, National Criminal Intelligence Division at the National Police of the Netherlands spoke on the one day law enforcement plenary, which stressed the the need for dedicated public prosecutors for art-related criminal investigations and prosecutions and emphasized that under present constraints, often the focus in law enforcement is on the recovery of stolen and plundered works of art, and after that on trying to catch and or convict the related perpetrators.

Finkelnberg also pointed out the complications of the enormous diversity of legislation in Europe in combatting art crimes. Lastly he reminded attendees that analytical estimates on how much money ISIS is making on plundered antiquities as a means of financing terrorism is based on very limited evidence and base assumptions, though there is evidence that ISIS does tax antiquities and excavating.

Saturdays session concluded with Steve Cook, co-founder of Tagsmart, explaining how advances in nano-technology, applied to artworks as an identifier, along with a unique code which links directly to the artwork’s online record has proven successful and effective in authenticating artworks and deterring art crime.  

Art Proves a Refuge

In this panel Katharina Stoll, a Senior Consultant with Protiviti GmbH, explained how specific anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures,  the process of a business identifying and verifying the identity of its clients as a preventative measure necessary to monitor for money laundering, could also be applied when vetting art market actors. She applied her experience in AML cases and practices to bridge the academic and art market dialogue on this topic. The author of this blogpost, an independent writer and consultant from Amsterdam, continued with a presentation on the MOSE Project in Venice, a multi-billion euro project, which has been plagued by corruption, that may not be able to protect Venice from flooding and could potentially be an art crime in the making. 

Ownership History - Asset or Liability for the Art Market? 

Through a selection of case studies of organisations participating at TEFAF Maastricht 2017, Gareth Fletcher, from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, presented a comparative analysis of provenance information provided for objects for sale and the relationships between its dissemination, complexity and the market performance of the objects. Yagna Yass-Alston, an independent researcher on the plunder and destruction of Jewish Collections in Poland during the WWII followed with the remarkable history of paintings from the collection of Leon Holzer, Kraków,  lost in wartime between 1939 and 1945.   Finally, Marc Masurovsky, acting director of the ERR project, spoke to the audience about one of the most unusual art thefts of World War II from the Führerbau - translated as "the Führer's building", Adolf Hitler's administrative building on Arcisstraße in Munich.

It was in the Führerbau that the Nazis amassed more than 700 confiscated or stolen paintings, mostly Old Masters, taken throughout Europe during World War II by the Sonderauftrag Linz, to fill the Third Reich's planned Führermuseum in Hitler's hometown of Linz, Austria. While the US 3rd Army met light to moderate resistance as it overran Munich, unknown individuals made off with
some 650 paintings on April 29, 1945, of which, 70 years later, only a few have been located. 

Thou Shall Not Covet Thy Neighbour’s Goods

Lucia Patrizio Gunning, a teaching fellow at the Department of History at the University College London, started this panel with a discussion of past perspectives on collecting in the Near East, examining the circumstances that allowed western museums and collectors to amass Assyrian, Greek and Egyptian antiquities, the motives that brought the nations, museums and individuals to the area, the means by which they were able to excavate and remove archaeological finds, and the outcomes of their activities on the personal and institutional level.  Giovanna Carugno, Ph.D., Candidate at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, and tutor at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II elaborated on the evolution of EU legislation, beginning from the Treaty of Rome through the new Directive 2014/60/EU relating to the return of cultural objects unlawfully removed from the territory of a Member State. Finally, Marco Seghesio, from the University of Milan, discussed the destruction of cultural property as a war crime, using the Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi case as example. 

Whose Property? Whose Culture? The Role of Institutions 

Jamie Perry from the US Department of Justice, outlined the investigatory, prosecutive and police work of the Human Rights Special Prosecutions Section. After that, Dorit Straus, of Art and Insurance Advisory Services, spoke about the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) of the US Department of State,  Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) which was established by Section 306 of the 1983 Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act to advise the president (or his designee) on appropriate U.S. action in response to requests from State Parties for assistance in protecting their cultural heritage, pursuant to Article 9 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention.

Aperna Tandon
Image Credit: Nour Abdel Ghafour
Lastly, the day was concluded with a presentation by Aparna Tandon, risk management and emergency recovery expert at ICCROM, who focused her talk on the organization's international capacity development programme on disaster risk management and its evacuation of heritage collections in case of emergencies.

Conference Venue,
Image Credit: Nour Abdel Ghafour
The conference weekend concluded Sunday afternoon and over the next few days attendees made their way homeward.  Those already looking forward to next years conference can mark their calendars for the weekend of June 22-24, 2018.  

We thank the organization for this unique gathering of experts from all over the world in the tranquil and inspiring environment of Amelia. 

May 19, 2017

Friday, May 19, 2017 - ,,,, No comments

Look into my eyes, but also into my collection history.

Collecting ancient art can be an extension of a personal passion, a status symbol or a piece of cultural currency but it also serves as a defacto calling card for the current-day purchaser's own collecting ethics.

As this new video, produced by the UNESCO Beirut Office in the framework of the Emergency Safeguarding of the Syrian Cultural Heritage project, underscores, conscientious and ethical antiquities collectors can and should demand that their source dealer or auction house provide a full and complete provenance record before making a purchase. 


UNESCO reminds collectors to keep an eye out for these red flags:

- Is there dirt on the object? 
- Does the object seem like a broken fragment of what could be a larger artifact? 
- Is there a reference number painted on the base of the object that could indicate it was looted from a museum? 
- Does the object's price seem too good to be true?

and finally...
- Can the seller provide you with the object’s provenance paperwork?

Likewise, ARCA reminds its readership that an object's reported collection history as reported by a dealer or auction house should not always be taken as complete or accurate.  Collection histories can, and often are, faked.

As this blog has reported frequently, many consignors and auction houses omit passages that sometimes reflect irregularities in acquisition or fail to advise would-be purchasers that an antiquity they wish to purchase has passed through the hands of a tainted individual or art dealer already known to have a reputation for illicit trafficking in the antiquities art market. 

The art market’s appetite for antiquities, and the profits to be had from this appetite, will always be a motivation for others to loot them.

It is ultimately up to the collector to demand ethical selling practices from the dealers or collectors they purchase antiquities from.  Prospective buyers should demand to see import and export licenses for the object they are considering and they should require the seller/consignor/auction house make those documents available.

The prudent purchaser should vet the trophy works that they purchase for their collections, cross checking all of the accompanying documentation.  Is there an export license? Does that document look authentic? Has the license been falsified?  Has the country of origin been falsified? Does the country of export match with the country of the object's origin?  Does the object have a find spot?   How far back does the chain of ownership go? and are there any other red flags like "property of an anonymous collector"?

Collectors should not discount the unacceptable buying and selling habits of those profiting from the ancient art market and they should especially be careful when purchasing antiquities from regions of conflict.

Just as property investors thoroughly vet the status and ownership of a property they are interested in, before entering into a business transaction, so should art collectors remember that it is their responsibility to conduct adequate due diligence on the artworks they purchase. 

May 17, 2017

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Blast from ARCA Program Pasts: ARCA'13 Alum Summer Clowers asks: Is the ARCA program for you? Really now.

A medieval town & its secret passageways
by Summer Clowers, ARCA 2013

WARNING: this essay is a work of satire.  It is best understood when read in the haughty voice of the Dowager Countess of Grantham, from Downton Abbey.

As an ARCA alumna, I have come to warn you about all of the things that you will hate about this small program on art crime. With that in mind, I here offer a list of the woes of living in a small Umbrian town the likes of which will keep you up at night as you scroll through old Facebook photos.  A hue and cry, as it were, to any prospective ARCA-ites. Should you choose to ignore my advice, I cannot be responsible for the consequences.

Your first few days in Amelia will leave you with an intense urge to explore and make friends.  The town is ancient, surrounded on most sides by a Neolithic wall, and even more ancient history buried beneath it.  There are secret passages and hidden rooms and you will want to grab a new-found "buddy" as the Americans are saying and sneak through every one of them.  DON’T.  The more you explore, the more you will love the town, and it will make it all that much harder to leave.  Yes, there is a secret Roman cellar underneath one of the restaurants.  No, I will not tell you which one.  Yes, the town’s people do scatter the roads with rose petals in the shape of angels every June. No, pictures do not do it justice.  Yes, there quite possibly is a hidden room in your classmate's flat.  All of these things are beside the point.  Walk steadily on the path and avoid all temptations to adventure.

As for friends, stick with those gentle people that live near to you back in the real world.  I know Papa di Stefano is fantastic, and yes, he will befriend you in a way that transcends language, but do you really want to miss him when you’ve gone?  And your fellow students?  Well, most of them are going to live nowhere near you.  Who needs to have contacts in Lisbon and Melbourne and New York and Amsterdam?  Certainly not you.  No, you don’t.  It’s so damp in the Netherlands and we all know London is just atrocious.  I mean really, all those people. I do try to stay out of the south. Take my advice, ignore anyone that lives far from you.  You are here to learn and leave, not make connections that will last you the rest of forever.

You will also want to be wary of the town’s locals.  Amelia is tiny, so getting to know most of its shopkeepers and inhabitants will not be very hard, but you must resist the urge to do so as it is deeply improper to fraternize with the proletariat.  It is true that Fabio will know your coffee order before you get fully through his door, and the Count will open his home with a smile to show you around his gorgeous palazzo, but these things are not proper.  Do not mistake their overflowing kindness and warmth for anything other than good breeding.  And when you find yourself sobbing at the thought of saying goodbye to Monica, you can just blame your tears on the pollen like the rest of us.

Your instructors are going to be just as big of a challenge.  The professor’s are really too friendly.  I know that Noah Charney says that he’s available for lunch and Dick Ellis will happily have a beer with you, but is getting to know your mentor's socially, really appropriate?  I mean, we’ve all attended seminars where you barely see the speaker outside of stolen moments during coffee breaks, and that’s the best way for things to go, isn’t it?  Sterile classroom experience with little to no professorial interactions has been the way of academia for generations.  I know I never saw any of my professor’s outside of class.  And I certainly don’t keep up with Judge Tompkin’s travels through his hilarious emails; that would just be gauche.

And then there’s the conference.  It lasts an entire weekend.  Why would I want to attend a weekend long event where powerhouses in the field open up their brains for plebeians?  I mean honestly, meeting Christos Tsirogiannis at the conference will be a high point in your year, and it will be too difficult to control your nerdy spasms when Toby Bull sits down next to you at dinner.  And then, when you find out that Christos joined ARCA's teaching team in 2014, you’ll find yourself scrambling to come up with a way to take the program a second time just so you can pick his brain. Think about how much work that will be.  This should be like the grand tour, a comfortable time away from home so that you can tell others that you simply summered in Italy. 

And the program would be so much better served in Rome.  I mean, just think on it.  You would never have to learn Italian, because you’d be in a city full of tourists.  You’d get to pay twice as much for an apartment a third of the size of the one you rent in Amelia, and you wouldn’t have to live near any of your class mates.  A city the size of Rome is big enough that a half hour metro ride to each other’s places would be pretty much de rigueur.  This means you wouldn’t have to deal with any of those impromptu dinner/study sessions at the pool house.  And there certainly wouldn’t be random class-wide wine tastings at the Palazzo Venturelli. It's too much socializing anyway.  It really is unseemly.

And finally, let’s talk about the classes.  Do we really care about art crime? Sure, Dick Drent is pretty much the coolest human you’ll ever meet, and Dorit Straus somehow manages to make art insurance interesting, but really, do you care?  Isn’t that better left to one’s financial advisor?  And the secret porchetta truck that the interns will show you as you study the intricacies of art law, could surely be found on one’s own.  Couldn’t it?  I think we would all be much better served by just watching that  Monuments Men movie, fawning over George Clooney and Matt Damon, and thinking about the things we could be doing all from the safety and comfort of our own homes.  I do so hate leaving home.  The ARCA program involves work, and ten courses with ten different professors, and classmates that will quickly become family. It’s all so exhausting.  I mean really, tell me, does this sound like the program for you?

ARCA Editorial Note:  If you would like more information on ARCA's Postgraduate Certificate Program, please write to us at: education (at) artcrimeresearch.org 

 We will put you on the list to receive application materials when the 2018 application period opens in Autumn 2017. 

May 15, 2017

Monday, May 15, 2017 - ,, 2 comments

Art Held Hostage: Italy's Carabinieri issue its new online bulletin of stolen works of art


Since 1972 Italy's Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale has published a periodic bulletin that has proven to be a valuable tool towards raising awareness and working to combat illicit trafficking and the theft of works of art.

In his opening comments on their 38th edition, released today, Brig. Gen. Fabrizio Parrulli, Carabinieri TPC Commander stated

"We believe that what has been stolen must not be considered as lost forever. On the contrary, we regard it as held hostage by offenders who can and must be defeated by the Italian and the international police force, together with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage Activities and Tourism, the art dealers and all the citizens."

Under the general's guidance and oversight, this year's "Art Held Hostage", was coordinated and developed by Lt. Col. Roberto Colasanti, the Carabinieri TPC Chief of Staff working with Maj. Luigi Spadari, the Carabinieri TPC Data Processing Unit Commander.  Targeted towards those who protect cultural heritage, academics working in the field and the art market itself, the Art Squad's bulletin includes descriptions and images of the main works of art stolen in Italy during the past year which have not yet been recovered.

Objects in the bulletin are sorted in categories, identifying
- the artist or school (such as "attributed to", "workshop of", "copy by", etc.);
- title or subject of the work;
- material and technique;
- size;
- The Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage database reference number.

and where possible, images of whatever quality is available in the objects documentation records.  

This year's bulletin highlights a total of 99 stolen works of art.  It also lists an additional 40 objects that have been recovered during the last year from bulletins 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 18, 21, 22, 23, 25, 35 and 37.   Not a bad recovery rate and one that proves having good documentation increases the probability that a stolen work of art can be located and recovered. 

Fabrizio Rossi
Luogotenente presso Arma dei Carabinieri
Image Credit: UNESCO
Several of the objects listed as recovered in today's bulletin, like the Castellani jewellry collection, stolen in a dramatic theft to order heist from the Museo Nazionale di Villa Giulia in Rome and the marble head of Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus stolen from Hadrian's Villa, and recovered in the Netherlands, have been covered on this blog.  

Ancient Roman sarcophagus worth $4 million returned to Italy in 2014 after being stolen in 1981.


“Sansone” by Jacopo Tintoretto stolen November 19, 2015 from the
Verona Civic Museum of Castelvecchio with the exhibition curator

Peplophoros Statue Stolen from the Villa Torlonia in Rome in 1983



May 11, 2017

Thursday, May 11, 2017 - ,,,, No comments

Working canines: Can customs dogs be trained to sniff out smuggled antiquities?

Image Credit and litter of working canine puppies
from parents Zzisa (TSA) X Ffisher
at the Penn Vet Working Dog Center
Customs dogs have long been trained to sniff out narcotics, firearms or explosives hidden in strange places or wrapped in layers of plastic.  Some have even been trained to sniff out large amounts of undeclared cash. 

In Australia, labradors, selected for their steady temperament, motivation, adaptability to challenging environments, and non-threatening appearance, are purpose-bred by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection at their Customs National Breeding and Development Centre.  At the age of two, these eager juvenile pups begin sniffer training with a handler.  


The United States TSA’s Puppy Program, started in 1999 was modeled after the Australian Customs Service National Breeding Program and selects dogs with the abilities and temperaments suited to customs authorities needs.  Many of these working canines are earmarked for explosives detection canine teams, trained and certified by the TSA for the purposes of transportation-related security.  

Detector dogs are routinely tasked to search air and sea cargo, aircraft, cargo containers, luggage, mail, parcels, structures, vehicles, vessels, and most importantly, people.  But what if multi-response detector dogs, already being trained to sniff out multiple substances, could be trained to also detect smuggled antiquities which might be hidden in those same crates, packages, and cargo containers?

That's what the folks at the Penn Vet Working Dog Center and the Penn Museum, of the University of Pennsylvania, partnering with the nonprofit Red Arch Cultural Heritage Law & Policy Research want to know.  To that end they have started a GoFundMe crowdsourcing campaign called the K-9 Artifact Finders Project to help explore ways to combat this top-priority problem.


You can also read more about the K-9 Artifact Finders working canine project by consulting the project webpage at the Red Arch Cultural Heritage Law & Policy Research website.

April 29, 2017

Saturday, April 29, 2017 - ,,,,, 2 comments

Auction Alert: Christie's New York and the Guennol Stargazer

Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism,  Nabi Avcı 
Jussi Pylkkänen, global president of the auction house Christie's has indicated that at the behest of a request by the Turkish authorities and following the interim judgement of the United States District Court, his firm will apply precautionary measures regarding the sale of the 9-inch, 5,000-year-old female sculptor the "Guennol Stargazer."  Turkey's Culture Minister Nabi Avcı told the press that the auction house will abide by the Court's recommendation for a temporary 60-day hold on the antiquity while an investigation into the object’s provenance is conducted. During that time period, the purchaser’s hammer price + buyer's premium bid of $14,471,500 USD is confirmed but not collected. 

As spoken about in Dr. Sam Hardy's blog, the Guennol Stargazer is a rare 3rd millennium BCE idol, likely from the Akhisar district of Manisa province in Anatolia.  The object first kicked up a fuss when Özgen Acar wrote of his concerns about the object's origins in Hurriyet Daily News.


An investigative journalist, Acar has crusaded for the return of Turkey's cultural patrimony for decades.  He is probably most famous for his dogged quest for the repatriation of the Metropolitan Museum's Karun Treasure, alternatively known as the Lydian Hoard, a name given to 363 Lydian artifacts that once belonged to a courtier of King Croesus of Lydia dating back to the 7th century B.C.E., originating from the Uşak Province in western Turkey.  In the case of the Guennol Stargazer, Acar openly questions the licit or illicit origin of the idol and its legitimacy in the New York auction house's April sale, in light of stringent Turkish antiquity laws.

This 60 day status will allow the Turkish government the opportunity to put forward evidence to convince the consignor to voluntarily forfeit the ancient idol, or if necessary, facilitate a court order of restitution.

Not a great start to Christie's Classic Week

In advance of the auction, Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism,  Nabi Avcı learned of the upcoming sale of the Anatolian Kilia sculpture and contacted the country's cultural representatives through the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Turkish embassy in Washington DC and the country's New York consulate. The Turkish authorities wanted to ensure that any potential buyer was completely aware that the idol was likely looted from Turkey. 

In a battle for hearts and minds - whose outcome will affect ancient art connoisseurs worldwide, the ministry also took out a full-page advertisement depicting the idol in the New York Times discouraging the collecting community from purchasing items that irretrievably damage a tangible link to the past.


In that open letter, pictured above, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey stated: 

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey extends its appreciation to the institutions and individuals that have helped to repatriate lost artefacts to the Anatolian origins.  

We thank the Dallas Museum of Art for returning the 194 A.D. “Orpheus Mosaic” to promote an international cultural exchange of art and ideas in 2012.  

We thank the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston which in 2011 returned part of the 1,800-year-old sculpture “Weary Herakles” that was excavated from the Turkish site of Perge. 

And we thank all the private collectors, auction houses and universities for returning 4272 pieces of cultural heritage, including marble pieces, ancient coins, marble inscriptions, amphoras, statues, and a Roma-era bronze horse harness piece.  

The good faith shown in each instance is an example of how countries and cultural communities can work together to preserve the archaeological record. 

The trade and sale of cultural assets are governed by international conventions and domestic legislations, like UNESCO’s global “Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export,and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property” in 1970, as well as Turkey’s national Asar-1 Atika Regulation of 1884 that prohibits the export of any newly-found or yet-unearthed artwork.  

In the spirit of cultural cooperation, we embrace continued collaboration with the arts community to discover the archaeological context of such historic works, and have good faith that any current or future custodians of Anatolian relics will likewise work with the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism to return such pieces to their ancestral homes. 

 The Business of Ancient Art for the Modern Collector

Christie's biannual auctions in London and New York offer some of the world's finest ancient art, but as the stakes for the art market go higher with each sales cycle, one has to question why auction houses prefer the potential customer embarrassment of the "identified as illicit" by an academic, country or journalist approach rather than simply conducting more intensive research into an ancient object's background before accepting a piece for an upcoming auction.

Bidding for bidders and it's about the money.

With plenty of money earmarked for Christie's April 28, 2017 ancient art sale coming from the best name purchasers, it's not a mystery why auction houses and antiquities dealers spend inadequate time worrying about a smudge-free pedigree when sourcing eye-poppingly priced antiquities for collectors. 


When an antiquities collector is willing to fork out $14 million for a purchase, you follow them around like a puppy, catering to their desires because you know in the end the auction house is going to make some decent money out of the sale. To achieve those "record prices" specialists spend significantly more time getting to know their collectors, listening to what they are interested in buying and what they already own, than they do researching where an ancient object came from and whose clean or dirty hands it passed through before arriving to its current consignor.

In the high-stakes art world with high commissions at stake, auction houses focus on wooing and wowing their customers in advance of potential purchases, not pointing out the holes in their consigned object's collection history. The market's focus is on the next bang of the auctioneer's gavel.  It's not on highlighting the murky backwaters an object may have passed through on its way to the auction block.

An auction house's competitive advantage in the marketplace rests as much on their knowledge of their big ticket buyers and sellers as it does on knowing where to source the objects these collectors want.  When someone is willing to offer $14 million for tiny object, an auction house or antiquities dealer will bend over backwards to get one for them.  

Given all of that, we shouldn’t wonder that the auction houses and antiquities dealers behave the way they do.  The bigger question haunting the ancient art market is how do we change the paradigm of "I don't care where it came from, it's pretty and I want it" to "I want something pretty, but I absolutely do care" and I won't buy anything without an ironclad well-documented provenance.

We do it by changing the minds of the collector. 

Collecting ancient art can be an extension of a personal passion, a status symbol or a piece of cultural currency but it also serves as a defacto calling card for the current-day purchaser's own collecting ethics. Deep-pocketed collectors can and should demand that their source dealer or auction house examine and not hide the provenance of the trophy works they are interested in acquiring.  They should also not discount the unacceptable buying and selling habits of the fading old guard of the art market.

If buyers behave conscientiously, the market will be forced to change its practices to keep up with their connoisseur clientele's ethically motivated demands. If only because it is the auction house’s job to know and to cultivate the sale of objects which their customers crave. That demand is what pushes the selling price past the guarantee.

If the antiquities art market really wants to clean itself up, it may be forced to accept in the not too distant future, that the priciest bombshells from the final “hammer price” tabulations may not simply be the rarest and most compelling, historically significant work of art, but also and equally importantly the one that hasn’t funded a war, or destroyed the archaeological record in a source country.

By:  Lynda Albertson

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