On one end, Dutch officials unveiled the recovered Coțofenești helmet and two gold bracelets at a press conference in Assen, flanked by heavily armed officers in balaclavas. The helmet, stolen from the Drents Museum in January 2025 while on loan from Romania, was recovered with minor damage; though one bracelet remains missing. The recovery appears to have come as part of an agreement with suspects ahead of trial.

On the other end, just days earlier, thieves entered the Magnani-Rocca Foundation near Parma and, in about three minutes, made off with works by Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse. Reports describe a fast, organized raid by four men who forced entry and targeted highly recognizable names.

And then, in Zurich, Switzerland quietly transferred ownership of 28 Benin Bronzes from three museums, with 18 expected to travel physically to Nigeria in June. That return followed provenance research and was framed, quite rightly, as another step toward reuniting Nigeria with material taken in the 1897 British plunder of Benin.

Three stories, one week, and each says something slightly different about how the cultural heritage world performs security, legitimacy, and justice.

The Dutch press conference was the most visually obvious example. The object had been recovered. Great! That part matters most. But the staging mattered too. Armed guards. Masks. Cloth lift. The careful unveiling of a rescued national treasure. It was a display of regained control. One could almost hear the subtext: yes, it was stolen, but look how seriously we take it now.

That is what struck Donna Yates so clearly in her reaction to the event: the oddity of the whole performance. The recovery of a cultural object becomes not just an announcement, but a kind of theatrical rebuttal to the earlier embarrassment. The state is not merely returning the object; it is staging authority. And perhaps staging reassurance too.

The Italian theft, by contrast, stripped away the theatre. There is no ceremonial dignity in a three-minute smash-and-grab. Only a broken entry point, a short timeline, and the uncomfortable reminder that museums remain vulnerable to ordinary criminals with planning, nerve, and a few minutes to spare. Anthony Amore’s point is useful here: three minutes is not some cinematic anomaly. It sits squarely within the normal range for many museum thefts. That should worry people more than the headline itself.

The most important lesson from Parma may be the least glamorous one. Famous art is easier to steal than to monetize as Anja Shortland details. Freshly stolen museum objects are extraordinarily difficult to sell on the legitimate market because dealers, auction houses, and registries check title, provenance, and stolen-art databases. That does not mean theft makes no economic sense; it means the economic logic is usually murkier than the movies suggest. These works may be held, moved through criminal networks, used as bargaining chips, or dangled in hopes of some later leverage. The hard part is not the theft. The hard part is cashing out.

And that, in turn, makes the Dutch recovery more interesting. If a stolen object can later become useful in plea bargaining or sentence reduction, then it acquires a kind of underworld value quite apart from its cultural value. That is not a comforting thought. The helmet is priceless to Romania; it may also have become useful to suspects once prosecutors made clear that recovery would matter.

Then there is the Swiss Benin return, which points in a different direction entirely. No broken door, no emergency unveiling. Instead, a transfer of ownership after provenance work, a public ceremony, and a clear acknowledgment that access to cultural heritage means more than a paper change in title.

But even here, where the moral and historical case is much clearer, ceremony still does important work. Returns like this are also public performances—just of a more attractive kind. They signal fairness, accountability, and institutional maturity. They tell a story not about how we have secured this object, but about we are finally doing the right thing. Switzerland’s transfer of 28 objects, and the expectation that 18 will physically move to Nigeria in June, is meaningful precisely because it joins symbolism to substance.

Still, the Swiss story also comes with a caution. Returns create expectations. Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments has had notable success in securing repatriations, but it now faces the harder question of display, stewardship, resources, and internal politics. Justice is not finished when the ceremony ends. Sometimes that is where the real work starts.

Taken together, these stories reveal a familiar pattern in cultural heritage disputes. We are very good at paying attention to dramatic moments: the theft, the raid, the recovery, the unveiling, the handover. We are less good at attending to the quieter work in between: preventive security, provenance research, institutional due diligence, funding, and conservation. Yet that unglamorous middle is where most of the work actually happens.

In Assen, security was performed after failure. In Parma, failure arrived in three minutes. In Zurich, legitimacy was sought through return. None of those performances are trivial. But none should distract from the underlying question either: are institutions actually getting better at protecting and returning cultural objects, or are they just getting better at staging the moment?

Anthony Amore, The Italian Job – A Profile, Big Security, https://anthonyamore.substack.com/p/the-italian-job-a-profile (last visited Apr. 3, 2026).

Eileen Kinsella, Experts Break Down the Brazen $10 Million Museum Theft in Italy, Artnet News, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/magnani-rocca-foundation-heist-experts-2761113, archived at https://perma.cc/9M2G-CZJY (last visited Apr. 3, 2026).

Senay Boztas, ‘A Wow Moment’: Ancient Romanian Gold Helmet Returned in Plea Deal with Theft Suspects, the Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/apr/02/stolen-romanian-gold-helmet-recovered-netherlands, archived at https://perma.cc/74V4-PWVR (last visited Apr. 3, 2026).

Claire Moses, Ancient Artifacts Stolen in Dutch Museum Heist Are Recovered, The New York Times (Apr. 2, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/world/europe/museum-heist-netherlands-helmet-romania.html.

Barnaby Phillips, Switzerland Returns Benin Bronzes, Institute of Art and Law (Apr. 2, 2026), https://ial.uk.com/switzerland-returns-benin-bronzes/, archived at https://perma.cc/2F52-DU6R.

Anja Shortland, Selling Stolen Art is Tricky, so Why Even Bother Heisting It? An Expert Explains, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/selling-stolen-art-is-tricky-so-why-even-bother-heisting-it-an-expert-explains-279700, archived at https://perma.cc/D9EX-5R2M (last visited Apr. 3, 2026).

Ali Watkins & Josephine de La Bruyère, Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse Artworks Are Stolen in 3-Minute Museum Heist, Police Say, The New York Times (Mar. 30, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/world/europe/parma-art-heist-renoir-matisse-cezanne-italy.html.

Donna Yates, Performance of Security at the Drents Museum Helmet Return Press Conference, Anonymous Swiss Collector (Apr. 2, 2026), https://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2026/04/performance-of-security-at-the-drents-museum-helmet-return-press-conference.html, archived at https://perma.cc/6X68-JZ6J.

Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse Works Stolen in ‘Three-Minute’ Italian Museum Heist, The Art Newspaper – International art news and events, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/03/30/renoir-cezanne-matisse-works-stolen-in-three-minute-italian-museum-heist, archived at https://perma.cc/563Y-H7LT (last visited Apr. 3, 2026).

So this is a bit of a welcome back, and a bit of a statement of purpose. For now, I’m going to aim for weekly posts: short roundups of developments in cultural heritage, art crime, restitution, museums, the antiquities trade, along with the occasional oddity.

There is, unfortunately, no shortage of material.

A recent Guardian piece on the side hustles of artists felt like a fitting way back into things after my own administrative detour. I’ve spent the last few years buried in meetings, spreadsheets, and the assorted dignities of academic administration, so it was a pleasure to be reminded of some people’s extracurricular labors, some legal, some not. French writer Jean Genet, for example, allegedly stole books from family, from friends, and eventually became remarkably skilled at it, reportedly even devising a special briefcase for taking valuable books and reselling them after he had read them.

Cultural sites in Iran have sustained damage during recent American and Israeli strikes. The Art Newspaper reported damage to Tehran’s Golestan Palace. Located near Arg Square in Tehran’s historic district, the 400-year-old palace reportedly suffered shattered windows, debris strewn across the complex, and damage to its distinctive mirror work. UNESCO joined other United Nations bodies and senior officials, including Secretary-General António Guterres, in condemning the strikes which also have allegedly struck a girls school. These episodes tend to expose just how fragile legal and institutional protections for heritage become once armed conflict accelerates.

The damage in Ukraine also continues to mount. UNESCO’s running tally now reports 523 cultural sites verified as damaged as of 11 March 2026, including religious sites, museums, monuments, libraries, archaeological sites, and an archive. The scale of that number is numbing.

On the art-crime front, The Art Newspaper reports that Yves Bouvier will stand trial in Paris over the alleged disappearance of dozens of Picasso works belonging to Catherine Hutin, Picasso’s stepdaughter. The case has been grinding along for years.

March also brings the annual return of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft to public attention. Tom Mashberg rounds up the current state of the likely theories and speculation. The theft remains one of the foundational myths of American art crime, and it has now been thirty-six years since those works were taken.

And in a fitting anniversary of another kind, a major Brazilian museum theft from 2006 remains unsolved just as the legal window for prosecution has expired. As The Art Newspaper notes in its report on the Museu da Chácara do Céu heist, works by Monet, Matisse, Dalí, and Picasso were stolen in Rio two decades ago and have still not been recovered. No one, it seems, will serve prison time for the theft.

The International Journal of Cultural Property has now published Volume 32, Issue 4, and the issue includes a number of open-access pieces worth a look. These include an article on underwater cultural heritage in the World Heritage framework by Arturo Rey da Silva, Elena Perez-Alvaro, Martijn Manders, Mariano J. Aznar, and Christopher Underwood; an essay by Alberto Frigerio asking whether cultural heritage might be understood through the language of legal personhood; and an article by Errol Francis, Chloe Asker, and Victoria Tischler on ethical disagreement over ancestral human remains in museums. The issue also includes reviews of recent books by Maud Webster, Patty Gerstenblith, and Shea Elizabeth Esterling.

I also want to keep an eye on current fights over the built environment and public symbolism. PBS NewsHour recently ran a piece on efforts to slow the Trump administration’s sweeping redesign ambitions for federal buildings in Washington, including interventions touching places like the Kennedy Center and even the White House itself.

And one final note: assuming I can navigate the TSA shutdown, survive the reportedly epic airport lines, and actually make it to Newark, I’ll be speaking this Friday, March 27, at the Rutgers International Law and Human Rights Journal symposium, Law, Heritage, and Identity: International Legal Frameworks for Cultural Preservation. I’ll be joining Anne-Marie Carstens and James K. Reap on a panel on “Trafficking, Destruction, and Institutional Protection of Cultural Property,” and the day also features a keynote by Matthew Bogdanos and panels on intangible cultural heritage and ocean heritage. The event is free and available by Zoom if you are not in the area.

In any event, I’m glad to be back. Thanks for still being here.

***

Mason Currey, Shoplifting, Sex Shows and Sheepdog-Breeding: Great Artists and the Side-Hustles They Did to Get By, the Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/mar/24/artists-side-hustles-john-cage-jean-genet-kathy-acker-shoplifting-sex-shows-sheepdog-breeding, archived at https://perma.cc/N43N-42C9 (last visited Mar. 25, 2026).

Farnaz Fassihi, Strikes on Iran Damage Cultural Heritage Sites, Infuriating Iranians, The New York Times (Mar. 11, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/world/middleeast/iran-heritage-sites-damaged.html.

Tom Mashberg, Got an Idea About Who Robbed the Gardner Museum? Get in Line., The New York Times (Mar. 18, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/arts/design/gardner-museum-heist-theories.html.

Deadly Bombing of Iran Primary School ‘a Grave Violation of Humanitarian Law’: UNESCO | UN News, United Nations, https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/03/1167063, archived at https://perma.cc/B26H-3NXX (last visited Mar. 25, 2026).

Tehran’s Unesco-Listed Golestan Palace Reportedly Damaged by US-Israeli Strikes, The Art Newspaper – International art news and events, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/03/03/us-israeli-strikes-damage-unesco-listed-golestan-palace-tehran?fbclid=IwY2xjawQT5NNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeY5canXmpJAol6Tp2X-yRcTAW1NVzIp94iyOreGnfibYNbuxcsuYHrrj0XtA_aem_PLVrty3ueJmU8pgEMoNIGw&ref=pasts-imperfect.ghost.io, archived at https://perma.cc/3K5C-DQYC (last visited Mar. 24, 2026).

Major Brazilian Art Heist Still Unsolved as Statute of Limitations Expires, The Art Newspaper – International art news and events, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/03/05/museum-heist-2006-museu-chacara-ceu-rio-statute-limitations, archived at https://perma.cc/AVV8-XB62 (last visited Mar. 24, 2026).

Dealer Yves Bouvier to Stand Trial in Paris over Missing Picassos, The Art Newspaper – International art news and events, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/03/13/yves-bouvier-to-stand-trial-in-paris, archived at https://perma.cc/97MH-2EWD (last visited Mar. 24, 2026).

Damaged Cultural Sites in Ukraine Verified by UNESCO | UNESCO, https://www.unesco.org/en/ukraine-war/damaged-cultural-sites?hub=180699&ref=pasts-imperfect.ghost.io, archived at https://perma.cc/UL6L-QWP5 (last visited Mar. 24, 2026).

US-Israeli Strikes Damage Iran’s Cultural Heritage Sites, dw.com, https://www.dw.com/en/us-israeli-strikes-damage-irans-cultural-heritage-sites/a-76350565, archived at https://perma.cc/3U4F-PMBE (last visited Mar. 24, 2026).

An ancient Roman bronze bust has been seized from the Worcester Art Museum. The seizure is the latest recovery by the Manhattan district attorney’s office Antiquities Trafficking Unit, which also includes material from the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Met, Fordham University and Christie’s. Details on the seizure from Worcester are difficult to ascertain, as we are left mainly with a press release from the Museum, and a “no comment” from the Manhattan DA. The Museum will “transfer ownership” to the New York County District Attorney’s Office” so that it can then be returned to its country of origin. Ownership is the wrong term here, possession would be more appropriate.

The transfer of possession was prompted with the benefit of “new information about the object’s history of ownership”. It had been acquired in 1966, reportedly from the late antiquities dealer Robert Hecht. And may belong to the collection of ancient Roman bronzes from the Bubon area of Turkey.

The initial question is why did the museum voluntarily return the object? Perhaps it considered mounting a legal challenge, yet the Museum’s statement would seemingly have us think that it would return all other similarly improperly imported and acquired objects. It asks forgiveness on the basis that it has not been able to prioritize provenance research of its existing collection due to limited resources. The likely speculation goes then that had it had such an initiative in place, it would have sent the object back. That adds an interesting wrinkle to the difficult task of Museum publicists when forced to account for the presence of illicit material for so many decades.

The Antiquities Trafficking Unit has made a considerable dent in the number of illicit objects in various museum and private collections. The objects are returning to where they were illicitly removed from, but the prosecution of the individuals responsible remains elusive.

Tom Mashberg, Manhattan Prosecutors Seize a Bronze Bust Valued at $5 Million, The New York Times (Sep. 3, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/03/arts/design/manhattan-prosecutors-seize-3rd-century-bust.html.

Malcolm Gay Globe Staff et al., How Could Smuggled Roman Art Have Ended up at the Worcester Art Museum? – The Boston Globe, BostonGlobe.com, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/09/05/arts/how-could-smuggled-roman-art-have-ended-up-worcester-art-museum/ (last visited Sep. 7, 2023).

Worcester Art Museum Transfers Ownership of Bronze Bust, https://www.worcesterart.org/news/press-room/press-releases/PR/worcester-art-museum-portrait-of-a-lady-press-release.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/7QX4-GT2D (Sep. 2023).

Roman Bust Seized from US Museum in Investigation into Stolen Pieces, the Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/sep/06/stolen-art-massachusetts-worcester-museum (last visited Sep. 7, 2023).

Ancient Roman Bust Seized from U.S. Museum in Trafficking Probe, Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/art/2023/09/06/worcester-art-museum-roman-bust/.

Some Key Facts on the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Portrait of Septimius Severus and the Corpus of Bubon Bronzes

The over-life-sized bronze head of Septimius Severus at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen has been much in the news lately. Turkish officials are calling for its return because for the last 50 years (up to and including the museum’s own website), the museum has asserted that the head originally belonged to an over-lifesized bronze body [2] that, until recently, had been on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The body was seized by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in March, and has now been returned to Türkiye. 

I have been researching these artworks for several years and am in the process of preparing a large publication (on an open-access, updateable, bilingual website) of all that I have learned. I offer here a brief summary of the main evidence concerning the Glyptotek head with the goal of ensuring that all parties involved in the discussions, including journalists, have the relevant facts at their disposal (something that has not been the case in all of the recent reporting). My main concern is that the discussions seem to be focusing on the wrong issue. The question of whether the museum’s bronze head can be proven to go with that particular body is a secondary matter. The key issue is whether it comes from a particular Roman site in Türkiye whose looting in the 1960s is a matter of well-established fact. I’m grateful to Derek Fincham for sharing his Illicit Cultural Property platform with me for the purpose of presenting the evidence on this question. 

In May, 1967, Turkish authorities, acting on a tip about a large-scale act of archaeological looting, arrived at the village of Ibecik, where they discovered a large, ancient bronze statue hidden in a local house. Eventually, the police persuaded the homeowner, together with a number of other villagers, to reveal where the statue came from. In the following days, archaeologists from the nearby museum at Burdur conducted an emergency excavation at the site, known in antiquity as Bubon, and found a large three-sided platform and several free-standing statue bases [3].

These were inscribed with the names of fourteen Roman emperors and empresses, suggesting that this room had once been filled with statues, and that it may have been a shrine for the worship of the emperor and his family, a practice we call the “imperial cult.” But the statues had all disappeared, with the exception of the one the authorities had recovered (this statue is today in the Burdur museum) [4].

The Turkish archaeologist Jale Inan investigated, and was told by  the villagers that they’d been selling the statues as they found them to a dealer, netting as much as 90,000 Turkish lira for the largest and best-preserved figures. Their accounts are vague and contradictory, but they admitted to selling at least nine or ten statues as well as many additional fragments, including heads, arms and legs. Most were nude male figures, they reported, but one was clothed, and at least one was female. One of the male nudes, the largest of the group, was nearly 9 feet tall, and was the only figure in the group that was completely intact. 

Meanwhile, starting in the mid-1960s, a number of bronze figures, portrait heads, and body parts began showing up on the art market. We now know that at least two of these were trafficked by the same person: both a bronze female head at the Worcester Art Museum (whose bust may not belong to the original work) and the head at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek were first sold by the notorious Robert Hecht. (The latter piece of information had been a tightly-kept secret in Copenhagen, and only became public knowledge earlier this month thanks to reporting by Camilla Strockmann.) It is very possible that Hecht – who had been barred from Türkiye in 1962 for trafficking in looted antiquities – was behind the entire group.

There are today approximately ten bronze heads and a dozen bronze bodies currently residing in public and private collections around the world (mostly in the U.S.) that almost certainly came from Bubon. I say “almost certainly” because of course the networks that move illegally plundered antiquities from the ground, smuggle them across borders, and deliver them to the high-end galleries of Europe and the U.S. are designed to cover their tracks. These are laundering operations – the original stain is supposed to be invisible by the end. But fortunately in the case of Bubon, enough facts are known about the looting and the pieces themselves that we can identify some clear criteria for determining whether a particular bronze was almost certainly looted from the site: 

• Does it depict a Roman emperor or family member, or could it have been part of a statue that did? (There may have been non-imperial statuary that was also looted from the site, but for now I’m focusing on pieces that can be associated with the imperial shrine.)
• Did it surface on the market at some point between 1964 and the early 1970s?
• Does it feature small square bronze patches on its surface? These patches, typically a couple of centimeters long, are the hallmarks of the local bronze workshop that produced these works. The ancient metalsmiths laid the patches in  sawtooth patterns along the seams when they soldered together the individually-cast components of these large bronze statues, and they also used them singly to strengthen weak spots in the bronze surface [5].

As far as the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek’s portrait of the emperor Septimius Severus is concerned, there is no doubt that it meets these criteria. The museum purchased it from Hecht in 1970. The line of square patches around the neck where the head was originally attached to the body in antiquity is very visible [6].

We can also add to the evidence the fact that one of the statue bases at Bubon is inscribed with the name Septimius Severus, so we know there was a portrait of that particular emperor at the site. These are the key facts that should be determining whether the museum is going to return the head to Türkiye. Whether or not we have correctly identified which of the headless Bubon bodies the head went with is a separate question. We know it almost certainly went with one of the bodies from the site. 

There is also the fundamental fact that the head has to have come from somewhere – from some over-life-sized bronze statue of Septimius Severus that was produced in the ancient workshop that used the unusual patchwork technique. What is the likelihood that there was another such discovery by looters, right during the very same period that the looters at Bubon turned up their bonanza of imperial bronzes? It’s worth remembering how extremely rare statues like these are in the modern world; for every bronze portrait or statue that has survived from the ancient Mediterranean, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of surviving marble works. That is because bronze is precious and can be melted down. Over the centuries the vast majority of ancient bronzes were recycled and turned into things like coins, weapons, nails and the like. 

And even if this is all just an extraordinary coincidence, and the Ny Carlsberg head comes from some other looted site, the patchwork itself still strongly ties the piece to Türkiye. This means that unless the head came to the museum with an export license from the Turkish government, it has to have been smuggled out of the country in violation of Turkish cultural heritage laws. Public and private collectors in Europe and North America sometimes suggest that countries of origin didn’t care about their ancient artifacts and did little to protect their cultural property during this period, and that by collecting ancient art, they are “saving” it. But in fact, Türkiye’s deep concern around these issues is evident in its efforts to keep Hecht out of the country, by the police intervention at Bubon in 1967, and by Jale Inan’s tireless efforts over the course of her career to draw attention to the tragic history of this site, whose market-fuelled plundering destroyed what would have been one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of the century. 

In sum, we know the Septimius Severus head was looted from Türkiye and trafficked by one of the art market’s shadiest characters. Why is the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek defending its right to own stolen property? What are the museum’s ethical principles?

* * *

Even though it is a secondary matter as far as the choice facing the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is concerned, while we’re here, here is the evidence that connects the Copenhagen head with the body that was recently seized at the Metropolitan Museum and returned to Türkiye:

• According, again, to Jale Inan, the feet of the Met statue fit the indentations on the statue base with Septimius Severus’ name. So the head that was attached to this body has to have been a bronze portrait of Septimius Severus. No other viable candidate has turned up in the 56 years since the body surfaced on the international market.

• In recent statements to the press, the director of collections at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Rune Frederiksen, has suggested that the association between the head and the body was just an idea that his predecessor, Fleming Johansen, had come up with out of nowhere at some point in the mid-1970s after the museum had acquired the portrait. In fact, the link between the two pieces had long been known among experts. The Met body was referred to as Septimius Severus as early as 1967, the same year it was acquired (along with several other Bubon pieces) by the Boston dealer Charles Lipson. Cornelius Vermeule, the curator of Greek and Roman art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, discussed Lipson’s statue as a portrait of Septimius Severus in a presentation that year at the annual meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America. He mentions it again as Septimius Severus in an addendum to his 1968 book, Roman Imperial Art in Greece and Asia Minor (Belknap Press, p. 546). There is, of course, no valid reason to identify this headless body as Septimius Severus without the connection to a portrait head of that ruler. It is highly unlikely that Vermeule would have done so in front of his colleagues at the archaeologists’ conference if he didn’t know that the evidence behind it was solid. 

• Of the eleven heads that have been associated with Bubon, only the Copenhagen head is broken off from its body well below the ancient seam that joined the head and body at mid-neck. If the head indeed comes from this site (see evidence above), it must go with one of the few Bubon bodies that is missing the entirety of its neck. There are only two candidates that meet this criterion. One is the statue recently seized at the Met. The photo that was produced when the head and the body were briefly brought together in Copenhagen in 1979 certainly looks awkward [7].

• But the awkwardness may be due to the incorrect positioning of the head (Inan hypothesized that it may have been turned to the right, toward the raised arm; at any rate it certainly would have been lower) and to the deformations of the metal caused by the violent process that ripped the head from the body so far below the ancient seam. The other potential candidate for a match with the Copenhagen head is a bronze body in an identical pose as the Met statue, and likewise bearing the tell-tale bronze patches, that was recently resold by Royal-Athena Gallery (it is listed in the 2006 catalog, along with a female body, as originating at Bubon). I have seen this privately-owned body in person. My impression is that it is too small for the Copenhagen head. Of course, a sustained scientific examination is needed to know for sure. 

Frederiksen is right to emphasize that more research must be done to determine which statue the head belongs with; as he told the Turkish paper the Daily Sabah, “we have to compare the breaks of the torso and the head.” It is noteworthy, however, that Frederiksen has not tried to deny that the Septimius Severus head came from Bubon. That, and not its association with the Met head, is what should determine where it belongs today. Indeed, the only way we will ever be able to compare the breaks as Frederiksen advocates is to reunite the pieces. 

Key Bibliography:

İnan, J. 1979. “Der Bronzetorso im Burdur-Museum aus Bubon und der Bronzekopf im J.-Paul-Getty-Museum,” Istanbuler Mitteilungen 27/28 (1977/78) [1979], pp. 266-287.

İnan, J. 1994. “Neue Forschungen zum Sebasteion von Bubon und seinen Statuen,” in Akten des II. Internationalen Lykien-Symposions Vienna, 6.-12. Mai 1990, ed. J. Borcchardt, J. and G. Dobesch, Vienna 1993, pp. 213-239.

İnan, J. 1994 . Boubon Sebasteionu ve Heykelleri Üzerine Son Arastirmalar, Istanbul.

Kozloff, A. P. 1987. “The Cleveland Bronze: The Emperor as Philosopher,” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, 82-113.

Lubos, M., 2016, “Bubon Bronzes – New Perspectives,” Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress on Ancient Bronzes, Izmir.  Monographies Instrumentum 51, 2016, 265-73 (to be used with caution).

Vermeule, C. 1980. “The Late Antonine and Severan Bronze Portraits from Southwest Asia Minor,” in Eikones. Studien zum griechischen und römischen Bildnis. Hans Jucker zum sechzigsten Geburtstag gewidmet (Bern, 1980), 185-90.

Spencer Woodman and Malia Politzer first reported that 27 objects have been seized from the Met. 21 objects in July, and an additional six this week. The objects include Greek or Roman pottery, a marble head of Athena, and Hindu material. The seizures are largely the result of investigations by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Art Trafficking Unit and the Department of Homeland Security-Homeland Security Investigations. Given such a large amount of material, you might wonder what the Met’s response will be. Based on the comments of Met spokesperson Kenneth Weine, more of the same:

“The museum is a leader in the field in comprehensively reviewing individual matters, and it has returned many pieces based upon thorough review – oftentimes in partnership with law enforcement and outside experts,” Weine said. “The norms of collecting have changed significantly, and The Met’s policies and procedures in this regard have been under constant review over the past 20 years.”

By now the Met must understand the illicit nature of so much of its collection. While a wonderful institution in many ways, its original sin remains its base instinct to compete with the grandest museums in the world. It has bought objects that simply cannot legally be bought, sold, and transported. The urge to be grand has meant that it has acquired so much that is stolen. There really is no other way to put it. They can point to dates and inconsistent laws and norms, but by now any reasonably informed observer knows the Met has dodgy material in its collection. No matter how much spin they want to put on their reputation as being a leader in reviewing their collection, the fact remains that so often it has been prosecutors forcing them into good behavior.

Flurry of Seizures Intensify Pressure on the Met over Artifacts Linked to Accused Traffickers – ICIJ (Aug. 31, 2022), https://www.icij.org/investigations/hidden-treasures/flurry-of-seizures-intensify-pressure-on-the-met-over-artifacts-linked-to-accused-traffickers/.

Lauren del Valle CNN Liam Reilly and Alaa Elassar, Dozens of Artifacts Seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, CNN, https://www.cnn.com/style/article/met-museum-artifacts-seized-new-york-looting/index.html (last visited Sep. 3, 2022).

Tom Mashberg & Graham Bowley, Investigators, Citing Looting, Have Seized 27 Antiquities From the Met, The New York Times (Sep. 2, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/arts/design/met-museum-looting.html.

Elaine Velie & Elaine Velie, Manhattan DA to Seize Looted Hindu Artifact From Met Museum, Hyperallergic, http://hyperallergic.com/757491/manhattan-da-to-seize-looted-hindu-artifact-from-met-museum/ (last visited Sep. 3, 2022).

One of the smashed objects was this amphora, and according to the DMA website, it dates to the 6th Century and depicts a battle between Achilles and Prince Memnon of Ethiopia.

Another smashed object was this lovely more recent effigy bottle depicting an Alligator Gar by the artist Chase Kahwinhut Earles.

Details released by police about the incident seem to indicate the perpetrator was just really frustrated after an argument with his girlfriend. Motion sensors inside the Museum alerted security to the intruder, but he apparently also called the police himself.

In a statement the DMA noted “This was an isolated incident perpetrated by one individual acting alone, whose intent was not theft of art or any objects on view . . . However, some works of art were damaged and we are still in the process of assessing the extent of the damages.”

So hopefully then enough fragments were recovered that these pieces may be put back together again. And if so, who knows, maybe the cool Alligator gar effigy bottle will become world famous, like the Mona Lisa, which suffered an attack from an attention-seeker last week. Remember, it was the theft of that painting in 1911 by artist Vincenczo Peruggia which first sent that work into art stardom.

Tommy Cummings, $5 Million of Ancient Art Destroyed at DMA in Overnight Break-In, The Dallas Morning News, https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/visual-arts/2022/06/02/5-million-of-ancient-art-destroyed-at-dma-in-overnight-break-in/ [https://perma.cc/H3TD-NEWT] (last visited Jun. 2, 2022).

Elizibeth Marlowe reviews The Brutish Museum for the International Journal of Cultural Property:

Dan Hicks’s new book, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, has made a splash. Designated by the New York Times as one of the best art books of 2020, featured on blogs, podcasts, webinars, and in mainstream newspapers, the book and its author, the professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford and curator at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, are suddenly everywhere. This Zoom-enabled ubiquity can be understood in the context of the larger historical reckonings of 2020 and 2021 – a global pandemic fueled by global capitalism, climate change, and incompetent governance; a breaking point in the long saga of police brutality against racial minorities and white indifference to it; a toppling of statues to colonialist and Confederate leaders around the world; and, as I was finishing the book, a final attempt to impeach a hate-mongering US president for fomenting rebellion against the very democratic institutions he swore to serve. In its passionately argued call for the restitution of cultural artifacts looted in one of the most notoriously brutal episodes of colonial violence, The Brutish Museums encapsulates the zeitgeist.

Continue reading, no paywall…

• Bookshop.org link for Dan Hicks’, The Brutish Museum’.
• Elizabeth Marlowe, Review of Dan Hicks, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. 345 Pp. Pluto Press, 2020., International Journal of Cultural Property 1 (Cambridge University Press).

I want to praise the terrific reporting done by Peter Whoriskey, Malia Politzer, Delphine Reuter, and Spencer Woodman. Their piece titled “Global Hunt for Looted Treasures Leads to Offshore Trusts” gets so many of the details about the illicit trade in antiquities right, and is thoroughly sourced and researched. The longread details the extent to which the super-rich have turned to offshore trusts and asset havens in order to avoid the increasing object-focused investigation and regulation of the art and antiquities trade. The piece is fantastic, with a beautiful kicker at the end, don’t miss it.

The great detail about the antiquities trade, the wealthy collectors who fuel it with money, and the damage done to sites and heritage are a real highlight of the reporting. Here’s a glimpse:

“Latchford’s infatuation with Khmer artwork coincided with a hot market for antiquities looted from Cambodia and neighboring Thailand and Laos. All three countries were part of the Khmer Empire, which flourished from the 9th to 15th centuries.

Beginning in the 1970s, amid the tumult of civil war and Pol Pot’s genocidal regime in Cambodia, the temple complexes of the Khmer Empire — including three designated by UNESCO as World Heritage sites — fell prey to massive bouts of ransacking. Organized networks, often headed by members of the military or the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot’s radical communist movement, broke statues from their pedestals. Dynamite blasted other relics loose. Entire walls were trucked away. Proceeds from this pillaging, experts say, helped fund the fighting. The looting continued into the 2010s.

One particular target was the ancient city of Koh Ker, with its 76 temples and aqueducts, statuary and a seven-level pyramid. The statues of Koh Ker were distinctive and revolutionary for their time: Artisans carved sandstone masterpieces that were intricately detailed, larger-than-life and often infused with dynamic movement.”

The Pandora papers are the name given a consortium of hundreds of news organizations around the world who have done a terrific job of making the investigation into the 12 million documents that reveals hidden wealth, tax avoidance, and even money laundering. The data was obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). It focuses on the collection of art of the late Douglas Latchford, and the efforts by Federal Prosecutors to seize looted art from him and even indict him personally. The documents reveal that these offshore trusts are the mechanism used when investigators and prosecutors investigate, seize, or forfeit this looted material and the proceeds. As investigation and prosecution has advanced in recent decades, so too have the strategies used to evade the law.

One of the interesting details of the piece is how many museums still have pieces linked to Latchford or his associates:

• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Denver Art Museum
• British Museum
• Cleveland Museum of Art
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Asian Art Museum, San Fancisco
• Brooklyn Museum, New York
• National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
• Walter Art Museum, Baltimore
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Many of these of course are museums which have often been connected to the illicit trade in art and antiquities. The piece also offers a rundown of responses by these museums which range from LACMA’s ‘no comment’; to the MET’s empty claim that it ‘is committed to the responsible acquisition of archaeological art’.

Peter Whoriskey et al., Global Hunt for Looted Treasures Leads to Offshore Trusts, Washington Post (Oct. 5, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2021/met-museum-cambodian-antiquities-latchford/ [https://perma.cc/5ZAG-5E67].

Responses from Museums to Pandora Papers Antiquities Investigation, Washington Post (Oct. 5, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/05/museums-response-pandora-papers-antiquities/ [https://perma.cc/SCG9-CHK2].

Pandora Papers: A Simple Guide to the Pandora Papers Leak, BBC News (Oct. 5, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58780561 [https://perma.cc/574Y-PNNF].

The Italian Senate’s Culture Commission has unanimously approved a resolution to renew the call for the return of the ‘Bronze Statue of a Victorious Youth‘ currently in the possession of the Getty Foundation at its Villa in Malibu. The call has also been taken up by the mayor of Fano, Massimo Seri. Seri has been a dogged champion for the return of the Bronze, noting that Italian forfeiture decisions give Italy a right of recovery, and even trying unsuccessfully to make the Bronze a discussion at the Italian meeting of the G20 later this year.

The resolution by the Italian Senate Committee was according the the Art Neewspaper crafted by Senator Margherita Corrado. The resolution will involve streamlining the efforts to seek the return of contested objects of cultural heritage:

[T]o assign a smaller pool of district magistrates to restitution cases “to allow for greater specialisation”, favour the training of magistrates in cultural heritage law, and encourage universities to teach legal archaeology in relevant courses. Furthermore, the government will collaborate with the Rai public broadcasting service to raise general awareness among citizens about restitution through programming, the resolution states.

It is not clear how that streamlining will link up with the current framework created by the 1970 UNESCO Convention, the companion 1995 UNIDROIT Convention, or the various bilateral agreements currently in place. Specialized training and courses at University are a welcome step, but Italy already has world class legal experts at its Universities, so I look forward to learning more about what this new initiative will actually look like. And I’m most interested in the impact of an Italian Senate Committee resolution, and if it will unlock funding and substantial change. If so, it could be a most welcome development for the obligations Italy and other Nations have under International Cultural Heritage Law.

The Art Newspaper also reported on what may be a more impactful mechanism, which would be to shut the Getty out of future efforts. In 2020 an internal culture ministry communication absolutely foreclosed the facilitation of the stunning Torlonia marbles collection: “After the refusal of the Getty Museum to recognise the sentence of the Court of Cassation [. . .] the Ministry has limited relations with the American museum to projects that have already been initiated.”

The ancient greek Bronze, likely made between 300-100 BCE was most likely hauled up by Italian fishermen in the 1960s, on a vessel based in the fishing town of Fano on the Adriatic Coast. A full account of the likely journey of the Bronze can be found in the terrific investigative book on lots of the acquisitions by the Getty Foundation, Chasing Aphrodite by Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino. Italy has persistently asked for its return, and the Forfeiture ruling in Italy’s Court of Cassation gives Italy a domestic right to the return of the marbles.

The only hurdle then would be to have a compatible decision which would be enforced by American Courts. As I wrote in a 2013 Piece for Cardozo’s Arts and Entertainment Law Journal, United States Federal Law has such a mechanism, Italy simply needs to request its application.

James Imam, Italy Strengthens Case for Return of “Victorious Youth” Bronze from Getty Museum in Heritage Feud that Has Lasted Decades, The Art Newspaper, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/victorious-youth-getty-italian-senate [https://perma.cc/296Y-D5X7?type=image] (last visited Jul. 21, 2021).

Lisippo: sindaco Fano, risoluzione Senato aiuta ritorno Italia – Marche, Agenzia ANSA, https://www.ansa.it/marche/notizie/2021/07/19/lisippo-sindaco-fano-risoluzione-senato-aiuta-ritorno-italia_4f3315c4-d193-433f-80a4-ad2545c33632.html [https://perma.cc/5R87-RPVH] (last visited Jul. 21, 2021).

I have been enjoying immensely the excerpts from this book, Forget the Alamo, which have been appearing in the Houston Chronicle and Texas Monthly in recent weeks. Today the book is published, and you can order a copy from bookshop here if you are interested. And I think you should be.

It seems that Phil Collins (yes, that Phil Collins) has been an avid collector of Alamo knives, belts, and memorabilia for decades. As you might expect, his appetite for acquiring the artifacts has created a kind of Collins-centered Alamo artifact trade. And as with any collector-driven trade without safeguards, much of the material may be fake.

These writers are focused mainly on how politicians in Texas are trying to tell the story of the Alamo, and how efforts to incorporate a full and rich telling have been met with Republican in-fighting between the newest rising politician with the last name Bush, George P., and the state’s super-conservative Dan Patrick. But the excerpt in Texas Monthly has some really wild details. Like when you are acquiring material you have to just trust your gut:

Nesmith gave McDuffie some out-of-the-box advice: documents proving an artifact’s authenticity are important, but in the end, you have to trust your gut. “Why do you care what other people think?” McDuffie recalls Nesmith saying. “What do you think? What does your gut tell you?” It was advice McDuffie took to heart. “When I started listening to my own gut, that’s when I really started finding pieces that were just really great,” he says.

Another detail that was just astounding is a collector/dealer named Joseph Musso claims to have acquired not one but two artifacts he claims were owned by James Bowie. And how did he know? He just applied some cleaner to them and held them up to the sun to reveal the initials ‘JB’. Not once but twice! And this is apparently not ever how initials on older weapons get revealed!

Also, he felt the need to authenticate that this was the personal knife of Bowie, so what did he do? Took it to a psychic, as you do of course. But not just any psychic, he didn’t believe in the paranormal so he wanted a really really good psychic, the late Peter Hurkos who passed away in 1996. What’s better object history than an anonymous collector? A superstar deceased psychic!

Hurkos, who had worked on the Charles Manson and Boston Strangler cases, agreed to a meeting, Musso says. After Musso handed him a brown paper bag with the knife inside, Hurkos reportedly named the man who had sold the knife to Musso. Musso says he then laid out several photos facedown and Hurkos pointed at one, which Musso then flipped over. It was Bowie’s portrait; Hurkos declared the knife had belonged to him. To Musso, this was just another piece of evidence that would help him build a case for authentication. 

The Alamo is enshrined on the World Heritage list, not by itself, and not because of a warped version of history, but as part of a mission system created by Catholic colonizers from the 17th century. The book has jumped to the top of my reading pile, and I’ll post a full review when I’m finished. It promises to tell a full accounting of how the State of Texas is trying to scrounge up the astounding $300 million needed to revitalize the Alamo and its surrounding area and create a museum full of Phil Collins’ and his dodgy Alamo purchases. While some of that material sounds as if it may actually be authentic. We absolutely can make an educated guess that a lot of the material will be fake, will be found out, and will be a colossal embarrassing waste of tax revenue. What might that funding go for instead? Solving the State’s homelessness crisis? Arts education? Environmental regulations?

Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth (Jun. 2021).

Abigail Rosenthal, Does Phil Collins Have a Huge Collection of Fake Alamo Artifacts?, Chron, https://www.chron.com/politics/article/phil-collins-alamo-dan-patrick-16190841.php (last visited Jun. 8, 2021).

The Next Battle of the Alamo!, Texas Monthly, https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/next-battle-of-alamo/ (last visited Jun. 8, 2021).