Posted on: March 24, 2023 by Alexander Herman
Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, is a busy man. Not only is he the one deciding whether to bring charges against former President Donald Trump, but he has also been occupied with repatriation events this week. Such handover ceremonies are of course only the final stage in longstanding investigations undertaken by the D.A.’s Antiquities […]
Posted on: January 16, 2023 by Stephanie Drawdy
In Addressing Cultural and Historic Injustices Against Native Americans In the last days of 1890, U.S. cavalry silenced the voices of approximately 250 Lakota at South Dakota’s Wounded Knee Creek during a murderous attack on the group that included a majority of women and children; opportunists then thieved their makeshift graves. The human remains and sacred […]
Posted on: October 28, 2022 by Gina McKIveen
For nearly two decades, Rick Allen, an experienced underwater videographer and professional photographer, documented the retrieval and recovery process of an 18th century pirate shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina. A dispute over the copyright in the works produced between Allen and the State of North Carolina (the “State”) is now approaching its tenth […]
Posted on: June 10, 2022 by Alexander Herman
“I’m confident in saying there will be more seizures and more prosecutions arising out of this investigation…” Those were the words of Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, speaking to Ben Lewis last year on the Art Bust podcast. He was referring to an antiquities trafficking ring he’d uncovered that had been dealing in artefacts smuggled […]
Posted on: March 17, 2022 by Stephanie Drawdy
Just a year before the Spanish flu claimed him in 1918, Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele used hues of orange and red to portray his wife as she looked away, hands folded (left). Some 20 years later in Nazi-occupied Vienna, this portrait would be looted. And now, over 80 years after that, the work is the […]
Posted on: November 13, 2020 by Stephanie Drawdy
The 5Pointz case has now been confirmed as viable authority in favor of artists’ rights in the United States. In early October, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the petition for certiorari filed by developers Gerald Wolkoff and several of his real estate entities, thereby eliminating the last appellate hope the developers had to […]
Posted on: October 1, 2020 by Alexander Herman
This comment first appeared on The Art Newspaper website on 25 September 2020. It has been reproduced with the editorial staff’s kind permission. Is the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) going to sell its Michelangelo? It seems a preposterous proposition, but these are rather preposterous times. The idea, apparently floated by a handful of Royal […]
Posted on: August 21, 2020 by Stephanie Drawdy
A collection of ecclesiastical art known as the Guelph Treasure (Welfenschatz) is at the center of a U.S. restitution claim brought by heirs of Holocaust victims who sold it during the Nazi reign, previously discussed here. Having held the highly valued collection for approximately six decades, Germany is unwilling to part with what it considers […]
Posted on: July 6, 2020 by Charlotte Dunn
The UK culture sector woke up to some good news today, with a Government announcement of a ‘world-leading’ £1.57 billion rescue package, set to benefit thousands of organisations suffering the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The funding of arts organisations has never been more relevant. With world-famous cultural institutions, such as Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, warning […]
Posted on: June 18, 2020 by Alexander Herman
Amidst the sad turmoil (for some) and the uncertainty (for all) brought on by the pandemic and the resultant lockdown, it is perhaps more forgivable than usual to miss an important anniversary. I am referring here to the fact that 2020 marks 50 years since the adoption of the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting […]