1. Russia Returns to the Venice Biennial

If you ask Russia’s delegate for international cultural exchanges, Mikhail Shvydkoy, Russia never left the Venice Biennial. The presence of the Russian Pavilion, closed or occupied by allied countries, is equivalent to the presence of Russia.

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In 2022, Russian curators pulled out of the Biennial to protest their country’s invasion of Ukraine and organizers’ decision to allow the Russian Pavilion to reopen in 2026 has led to widespread backlash. One day before the 61st Venice Biennial was set to open, the entire international jury stepped down to protest the inclusion of both Russia and Israel. The feminist groups Pussy Riot and FEMEN staged protests at the festival’s opening. Protest posters around the Biennial highlight the devastating impact of Russia’s invasion, announcing the cancellation of imaginary events for Ukrainian authors and artists killed by Russia. Over 100 artists have threatened legal action if their work is not removed from consideration for the visitor’s choice award. For the first time in the Biennial’s history, Italy’s culture minister has refused to participate in the opening of the festival.

This is not the first time global events have led to protest and institutional turmoil at the Biennial. Anti-war protests in Europe and the United States led to a similar mass resignation in 1968, and in 1974 the president of the Biennial altered the location and organization of the festival due to protests. 2026 marks another year in which the Venice Biennial doubles as a stage for geopolitical discourse and protest.

This flies in the face of Ukrainian activists documenting Russia’s large-scale theft and destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage. Russia has looted over 10,000 works of art from the Kherson Art Museum alone. Unlike other instances of looting in Ukraine, the objects stolen from Kherson are thoroughly documented, meaning Ukrainian heritage professionals know exactly what was lost. A number of looted objects have appeared in exhibitions in Moscow, including those by Ukrainian artist A. S. Havzdynskyi whose work appeared in the 2024 “Always New Kakhovka” exhibition in Moscow. Recently, Ukrainian Intelligence released the names of 14 individuals linked to the illegal expropriation of Ukrainian heritage to Russian or Russian occupied territories.

Russia’s inclusion in the 61st Annual Venice Biennial legitimizes their flagrant disregard for human rights, including the systemic theft and destruction of Ukrainian heritage in an effort to erase and appropriate Ukrainian identity.

This spring was a busy one for those tracking Nazi-linked restitutions. Rather than separate entries for each case, I have organized them into categories: Restitutions, Repatriations, and Structural Developments.

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2. Nazi-linked Restitutions

Tänzerinnen-Brunnen (Dancers’ Fountain) by Georg Kolbe stood at the center of the Georg Kolbe Museum’s courtyard for decades. Commissioned in 1922 by German-Jewish businessman Heinrich Stahl, recent provenance research revealed that Stahl sold this sculpture under duress during WWII. Due to Nazi race laws, the Stahl family was forced to sell their home and possessions before their deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Heinrich Stahl was murdered in the camp, while his widow survived and emigrated to the United States in 1950.

The sculpture remained missing until the 1970s, when it surfaced in the garden of the Georg Kolbe Museum. After a convoluted legal battle, the parties reached an amicable agreement and ownership of the statue was returned to the heirs in February 2026.

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Similarly, the heirs of British-Jewish dealer Oscar Stettiner conclued an 11-year legal battle to reclaim Modigliani’s Seated Man With a Cane. Nazis seized the painting from Stettiner’s Paris gallery during their occupation of France. After surviving the war, Mr. Stettiner filed a successful claim in 1946 and a French judge ordered the painting be returned to him. The subsequent owner claimed they had since sold the painting, and it was never returned to Mr. Stettiner. Over a decade ago, Oscar Stettiner’s grandson Philippe Maestracci enlisted the company Mondex to assist him in recovering the painting.

Billionaire David Nahmad purchased Seated Man With a Cane through Christie’s in 1996. In response to Maestracci’s claim, Nahmad argued that he purchased the painting in good faith and denied it was the same one taken from the Stettiner family. When scrutinized, his arguments failed with the judge in this case saying, “the evidence shows a straightforward and persuasive chain of ownership/right of possession flowing directly from Mr. Stettiner to Nazi seizure to a forced sale.”

In Germany, the Bavarian State Paintings Collections restituted a painting by Lesser Ury titled, Interior with Children (the Siblings) (1883) to the heirs of German-Jewish banker and art collector Curt Goldschmidt. This follows a multi-year scandal in which collection officials were accused of concealing knowledge of the Nazi-looted works in their collection. This painting in the tenth to be restituted following the resignation of the collection’s director last year.

Germany also restituted a number of rare books and manuscripts to the heirs of French resistance fighter Marc Bloch shortly before his internment at the Pantheon in Paris. The French ambassador to Germany has called the move “a strong sign of Franco-German friendship.”

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3. Nazi-linked Repatriations

This spring, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Poland continued their repatriation efforts across 18 countries. Over the past few years, multiple works have returned to Poland through both litigation and private negotiations. However, Russia continues to ignore the 20 diplomatic resolutions submitted by the Polish government regarding Polish objects believed to be in Russia.

One of these objects is a twelfth-century liturgical manuscript looted from Poland during WWII. It was last recorded in the Archdiocesan Archive in Poznań in 1939 before being marked as missing in 1966. It appeared on the London rare book market in the 1990s and then entered the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale (through which one can still view a digitized copy of the manuscript). Poland formally requested its repatriation in 2024 and after two years of research, the manuscript returned to Poland in January 2026 after a repatriation ceremony in New Haven.

In addition to seeking repatriations, Poland is participating in the repatriation of looted objects taken into their territory. In March 2026, Poland repatriated 91 objects to Greece which are now held in the Jewish Museum of Greece in Athens. This marks the first such repatriation from Poland, a country which lacks comprehensive legislation addressing the restitution of Nazi-looted property. These 91 objects include a pair of ornate finials, used to decorate the rollers of a Torah scroll, and other ritual pieces.

Greece’s Jewish community was devastated by the Shoah, in which the Nazis murdered 83% of Greece’s Jewish population. Polish officials hope this restitution is “the beginning of a consistent, systematic approach to historical justice.”

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4. Legal and Structural Developments Regarding the Return of Nazi-looted Property

The United States and the Netherlands have both made strides in their long-standing efforts to improve processes related to the restitution of Nazi-looted art.

After passing the House of Representatives and Senate, Donald Trump signed the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (Hear) Act of 2025 into law on April 13, 2026. This law updates the 2016 version of the bill, making it more difficult to dismiss cases based on procedural grounds such as statutes of limitations. For more on the impact of this law, see Thompson Hine LLP’s writeup here.

The Netherlands passed legislation in 2021 that was also favorable to Jewish claimants and established a national restitution committee. This committee has since made recommendations regarding the stewardship of “orphaned” Nazi-looted art. These works of art were looted by the Nazis but lack any know heirs to whom they can be restituted.

Currently, the objects are part of the Nederlands Kunstbezit-collectie (Dutch Art Collection or NK Collection) at the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency. However, the committee has recommended that the ownership of this collection be transferred from the Dutch government to a foundation created by the Dutch Jewish community, who would be entrusted with its stewardship. Through this setup, the Jewish community would dictate how and when the works are exhibited, and to whom and where the works might be loaned.

Critics suggest the government has failed to act in good-faith regarding the “orphaned” art in their possession. The heir of Benjamin and Nathan Katz argue that the courts have ignored the 2021 updates to Dutch restitution law, and recently appealed a decision denying the return of 222 objects looted by the Nazis. Another heir claimed the government has failed to make even “minimal” efforts to restitute art in this collection, an accusation that data corroborates with fewer than 500 works being restituted since the Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets in 1998.

As additional works surface on the art market and in Dutch private collections, time will tell whether this legislation is able to “[do] justice to [this] history and to the Jewish community.”

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There are nascent worries about the future of provenance research and Nazi-linked cultural heritage in Germany. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party hopes to win control of Saxony-Anhalt in the fall, where the German Lost Art Foundation (DZK) is located. The AfD is campaigning against funding the DZK and the so-called “baseless general suspicion of all museum inventories.” While the AfD has attracted media attention in recent years, the German government continues broader efforts to repatriate and restitute looted art with the German Lost Art Foundation (DZK) recently celebrating its 10,000th work restituted.

The recent scandal at the Bavarian State Paintings Collections (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen) highlights the continued necessity of Holocaust-era provenance research in Germany and beyond.

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5. Heritage Destruction Continues in Gaza

As of March 2026, UNESCO has verified damage to 164 heritage sites in Gaza, but the geographic stratification of this data hints at a radical undercount. 153 of these sites are located in the Gaza Governorate, while heavily impacted areas such as Rafah and Khan Yunis have numbers in the single digits.

Critics argue that UNESCO’s response to Israel’s assault on heritage in Gaza is muted and ineffective, and exhibits a pattern of “omission and understatement.” While UNESCO has issued statements regarding Gaza, and assisted in the protection of select sites, it has failed to name Israel as the party responsible for this destruction, nor has it worked with the International Criminal Court to initiate proceedings against Israeli officials. In contrast, UNESCO engaged in all of these activities in relation to Syria during its civil war, and Russia during its current war with Ukraine.

UNESCO relies on voluntary contributions from the international community. The outsized influence of the United States appears to have left officials at UNESCO hesitant to confront the U.S. or its close allies when they flagrantly violate international law. This sets a dangerous precedent that threatens to normalize widespread heritage destruction during wartime.

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1. German Art Gallery specializing in Nazi-owned art sparks controversy by advertising on Truth Social.

German Art Gallery (GAG) is a privately-owned gallery specializing in art previously owned by the Third Reich. This week, they sparked controversy by advertising on Donald Trump’s far-right Truth Social platform. The founder, a Dutch national operating under the pseudonym Marius Martens, has called the decision, “provocative…yet bold and deliberate.”

The story begins with a Truth Social user reaching to the The Art Newspaper (TAN) after seeing advertisements for “Art of the German Elite, 1933-1945” on the platform. Worried that GAG was valorizing Nazism, the user sought out professionals in the art world to analyze the ad. Speaking to TAN, GAG’s owner insists that the term “elite” is not meant to signal moral or cultural value, but demarcate those in German leadership between 1933–1945. The purpose of him gallery is not to valorize Nazis, but the highlight the often-overlooked aesthetic and historical value of art prized by the Nazi regime.

Martens purchased almost all works formerly owned by Nazis that came onto the market in the past 15 years, amassing one of the largest private collection of Nazi-owned art in the world. Unlike many tales of Nazi art, issues or looting and spoliation are not the central ethical quandary. This “totalitarian art” was favored by the regime, and often commissioned by Nazis themselves. Initially, Martens claimed that he had no interest in selling his collection. However, the ballooning prices buyers were willing to pay for this art led him to change his tune. He has sold works for as much as €200,000 to collectors in Europe, the US, UK, and Australia.

This story raises vexing ethical questions. Much of GAG’s art lacks explicit Nazi symbolism. In order to remain compliant with Articles 86 and 86a of the German Penal Code and in compliance with Article 137c, d and e of the Dutch Penal Code, users who wish to view works depicting Nazi figures or symbols are required to register with the gallery’s website. While legally compliant, this is a small hurdle to clear for online Neo-Nazis, and does nothing to stop the sale of this art to those with far-right aspirations.

The GAG argues that openness and transparency around Nazi art increases public awareness and betters discussions of this “tragic period in European history.” In line with this, the GAG has also loaned works to European institutions and Martens has served as an consultant for exhibitions such as the Museum Arnhem in the Netherlands 2023–4 exhibition, Art in the Third Reich: Seduction and Distraction. This was the first time since 1944 that these works were displayed together, and there is no doubt the exhibition and subsequent publication contributed to scholarship on the Third Reich and fascist aesthetics.

The global rise of far-right ideologies and revival of Nazi sentiment makes the GAG’s most recent advertising move audacious and troubling. Martens argues that he has no far-right ties, and that this advertising decision is simply meant to reach an American audience, as half of all Americans are conservative. Perhaps he is unaware of political dynamics in twenty-first century America, but it should not shock those who follow American politics to know that the user-base of Truth Social is not comprised of the average conservative American. Only 10% of self-identified republicans use Truth Social, and its popularity has declined since 2020. The subset of Truth Social users trends farther to the right than most other platforms.

In my view, Martens arguments in defense of this advertising choice are disingenuous. The focus on advertising to conservative Americans, rather than a broad American audience, suggests that Martens is aware that his client base’s political leanings trend to the right. By advertising on Truth Social, he is knowingly engaging with an audience that includes adherents to Nazi ideology and that these Neo-Nazis might seek out this art as an expression of their views. This undercuts his assertion that GAG’s transparency around Nazi art leads people “to a better understanding of the period and helps to prevent similar events from happening again.” There is no world in which selling Nazi-owned art to Neo-Nazis achieves this goal.

Of course, this leaves us with an unresolved central issue: how should institutions and private collectors approach these works? Should they all remain locked away? Or should we only hide away those with explicit Nazi imagery? Alternatively, should institutions exhibit them? If so, who should be permitted to do so, and how does one do this responsibly? I would love to hear yours in the comments!

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2. The Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) to restitute watercolor by Félicien Rops to heirs of French-Jewish collector.

After more than five years, the Royal Library of Belgium (La Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, KBR) announced it would restitute La Buveuse d’absinthe by Félicien Rops to the heirs of Armand Dorville.

Armand Dorville was French-Jew and lawyer who acquired a collection of over 450 paintings prior to the outbreak of WWII. After fleeing occupied France in 1940, he settled in Cubjac before dying in 1941. According to his will, Dorville left his art collection to his sisters and nieces. Hoping to avoid confiscation of this collection by the Vitchy government, Dorville’s heirs planned to auction the collection in Nice in 1942. Their plan was unsuccessful, and the Vitchy government confiscated and sold the collection in 1942. It was only after the end of the war that Dorville’s only surviving heir, a niece named Marie-Thérèse, received any compensation for the sale. Armand Dorville’s three sisters and three other nieces were all deported and murdered in concentration camps.

The KBR insists that they were unaware of its dubious provenance, having purchased the painting from a French dealer in 1968 “in good faith.” Yet critics argue the library failed to conduct basic due diligence given that the painting’s documentation and inscriptions clearly indicate it was auctioned off in Nice in 1942.

In 2020, De Standaard published that the KBR was in possession of this painting, and that it was sold under duress during the Nazi period. Heirs of Armand Dorville immediately approached the KBR to request restitution. For five years, these requests remained unanswered until Minister Vanessa Matz publicly commented on the situation. In December of 2025, Matz announced the restitution of La Buveuse d’absinthe, and this month lawyers for the heirs will meet with KBR officials to work out the logistics of this return. Regarding this restitution, the minister said, “Unlike institutions that dispose of controversial works by announcing they are ‘returning’ them, I insist on the term ‘restitute’. Talking about restitution is essential! It confirms the spoliation and acknowledges the harm. When we describe things as they are in relation to a victim, we’ve already taken part in their recovery process.” It is unclear if the heirs will request physical custody of the painting, or choose to allow its continued display at the KBR.

Unlike most of Europe and North America, Belgium does not have a formal restitution commission or legal framework for addressing Nazi-looted art. Matz hopes to change this by establishing a commission to create a “clear, research-based procedure and a coherent doctrine” for addressing Nazi-looted cultural property.

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3. Trial begins in Nice for 10 defendants involved in France-based art theft ring.

A 2017 tip led French authorities to seize 20 works of art, including two by Pablo Picasso, in Côte d’Azur. Undercover police posed as a Swiss buyer and his secretary to investigate the illegal sale of art in the south of France. After making contact with the dealer, he led them to a house in Peillon, north of Nice. What they discovered amounted to a “makeshift museum” of stolen art, including Picasso’s Le vieux roi and Le clown.

Some of the works traced to robberies in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in October, 2017 Èze in November, 2017. The ring of thieves moved stolen art through a networks of private channels to avoid scrutiny and evade authorities. The current trial combines all preliminary investigations into a single case. Prosecutors argue that the defendants partook in a sophisticated scheme involving the theft, storage, sale, and transfer of stolen art and that the Peillon estate served as a logistic hub for these activities.

The trial is set to conclude January 19, 2026, and authorities hope it will bring clarity to the path these works took before being intercepted by police.

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4. “Smiling Medusa” discovered in Turkey

Turkish authorities announced the discovery of an unusual Medusa carving on the ceiling of the Roman stoa (covered walkway) in the ancient city of Amastris. Typical depictions of Medusa appear frightening and according to scholars, may have provoked fear within enemies and discouraged invasion. Yet this Medusa carving has a “childlike” expression, and resembles contemporary depictions of Eros. Professor Fatma Bagdatli Cam has interpreted the carving as reflecting peace and prosperity during this period of Amastris history, as there was no need to discourage invasion when invaders were absent. This carving is located on a ceiling tile from the stoa, meaning that Medusa was smiling down over those walking beneath the stoa in ancient Amastris.

The Roman stoa (a covered walkway) at Amastris is one of the largest monumental structures discovered in the Black Sea region of Northern Turkey. It likely corresponds to an agora, or marketplace, suggesting that ancient Amastris was a bustling commercial hub in the Roman Period. Led by Professor Fatma Bagdatli Cam of Bartin University’s Archaeology Application and Research Center, this excavation is working to rebuild the stoa to its former glory as part of the Turkish Ministry of Culture’s “Heritage of the Future” initiative.

Excavations and restorations continue, and the archaeological team is optimistic their work will reveal additional finds and further illuminate the lives and activities of those in ancient Amastris.

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5. Questions of provenance annul sale of Chinese vase.

French courts ordered Galerie Kraemer in Paris to refund €2.8 million to Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani due to the precarious provenance of a Chinese vase he purchased in 2012.

According to The Art Newspaper, investigators believe the vase was sold in Brazil 20 years ago, before passing through Paris flea markets and three private collectors. Eventually, Laurent Kraemer purchased it for €180,000 before consigning it to Galerie Kraemer, from whom Sheikh Hamad purchased it at the Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris in 2012.

After a series of furniture forgeries rocked the gallery in 2016, Sheikh Hamad reevaluated his purchase. Sheikh Hamad hired experts to evaluate the vase, who concluded that Galerie Kraemer’s 18th-century date was “highly improbable,” or even “impossible” due to questions around its gilded bronze mounts. Other experts, however, disagreed. These contradicting expert opinions led a commercial court to rejected Sheikh Hamad’s claim in 2021. In 2022, the judge overseeing a criminal case into this sale commissioned additional testing. According to the results of this testing, the composition of the bronze mount was “not incompatible” with the original 18th-century date, but evidence of artificial aging and the use of a 19th-century mold technique raise serious doubts regarding the validity of this date. Ultimately, the courts agreed to annul the sale and ordered Galerie Kraemer to repay Sheikh Hamad €2.8 million.

If there is one thing I have learned in my time studying the art world, it is not to underestimate the sophistication of criminal networks dealing in art or antiquities. Since the 90s, multiple large-scale theft and trafficking busts have illuminated the lengths people will go to when dealing in illicit cultural property. Perhaps I am preaching to the choir, but a robust demand for verifiable provenance from both private collectors and public institutions could halt this industry. Forgeries too are increasing in sophistication, and it is not always possible to distinguish between forgery and artifact–particularly when dealing with antiquities. Comprehensive and verifiable provenance is the primary mechanism through which these forgeries could be flagged.

It has taken decades, and most museums and other cultural institutions were dragged kicking and screaming, but the tide is shifting in the museum world. Yet private collectors continue to buy and sell unscrupulously. Wealthier individuals have even set up privately-funded museums in America and abroad where they can display their loot-filled collections. While this move leads to increased scrutiny, I worry it will also lead to an ever widening divide between the private and public markets for art and antiquities. While institutions and ethical collectors refrain from purchasing unprovenanced materials, unscrupulous private collectors will simply move underground. How can officials combat a market they cannot see? What does responsible legislation look like in these situations? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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1. Advisory Commission on Nazi-Looted Art in Germany offers model that new Arbitration Tribunal should follow.

In November of 2025, the Advisory Commission on Nazi-Looted Art in Germany (ACNLA) mediated a restitution agreement between the heirs of two different victims of Nazi persecution. In 1937, Max Stern was forced to dissolve Galerie Stern in Dusseldorf under the order of the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture). Research concerning the Deutsche Zentrum Kulturgutverluste (German Lost Art Foundation) and Galerie Stern’s clients has uncovered a large Jewish clientele, many of whom appear to have sold works under duress through the gallery. One of these works is Peasant Breakfast by Pieter van Plas (c.1595-1650). Hugo Heinemann owned this work prior to being murdered by the Nazis in a concentration camp.

This is a unique case, as the ACNOLA diverged from their guidelines, which state that the dealer who sold the work in question should be considered the “primary victim.” In this case, that would be the Galerie Stern. According to the settlement agreement, restitution to the heirs of the “primary owner,” (the heirs of Galerie Stern) did not constitute a “fair and just solution for all victims of National Socialist policies” as stated in the 1998 Washington Principles. Rather than offer a non-binding recommendation, the Commission assisted heirs through mediation, and reached an “amicable agreement” with all of the parties.

The ownership of Peasant Breakfast is now shared equally between the Dr. and Mrs. Max Stern Foundation, the heirs of Hugo Heinemann, and an government association, Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR). LVR will retain physical custody of the work until it is released to the other two parties, who must jointly agree on where it goes next.

This was the last decision handed down by the ACNLA before it was disbanded at the end of 2025. The Schiedsgerichtsbarkeit NS-Raubgut (Arbitration Tribunal of Nazi-looted Cultural Property) is now in effect, but critics worrying this new structure will favor institutions over victims. Yet officials at the Max Stern Restitution Project remain hopeful that the tribunal will follow the Advisory Commission on Nazi-Looted Art’s example and continue to render decisions “guided by the ethical and moral frameworks entrenched in the Washington Principles.” Time will tell if the Arbitration Tribunal of Nazi-looted Cultural Property will live up to these aspirations.

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2. Beyond valuable art and manuscripts–returned Nazi loot includes family heirlooms and keepsakes.

The flashiest stories of Nazi-looted cultural property involve works of significant financial or cultural value. Yet the majority of victims and heirs did not lose collection of art or valuable libraries, but everyday items. Wallets, jewelry, or clothing seized in concentration camps. Heirlooms, furniture, or household items left behind by fleeing families. Many of these objects hold immense emotional value, yet remain in archives and other institutions.

Few researchers or institutions focus on these items and the reason for this neglect is not difficult to identify. There are vanishingly few records of what the average person in Nazi-occupied territory owned prior to the National Socialist regime, or lost during the war. A recent piece by Milton Esterow and Michaela Towfighi in the New York Times sheds light on the stories of people seeking the change this.

The Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in Vienna recently identified the heirs of the “Mautner collection.” This collection contained sheet music, printed folk art, and patterns designed by Konrad Mautner. A provenance researcher at the museum traced the Mautner family and was able to identify two living heirs of the Mautner collection: Konrad and Anna Maunter’s grandson, Stephen, and a cousin.

After the heirs visited the museum to view the collection, they decided to donate it back to the museum. It remains at the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in Vienna with an additional placard telling the Mautner family story.

Beyond individual institutions and researchers, there are other movements aimed at restituing Nazi-loote property. The #StolenMemory project at the Arolsen Archives aims to returning items seized at concentration camps to their rightful heirs. The wallet of a french resistance fighter. A ring. Books.

The Arolsen Archives, which holds over 30 million documents and pertaining to the victims and survivors of Nazi Germany, and there are still over 2000 items in the Arolsen Archives waiting to be returned. At times, it is the item rather than heirs that remain elusive. One example of this is a shofar owned by the Glattstein family from the town of Edelény, Hungary.

Sharon Glattstein Levine believes her relatives hid this item, along with other valuable, in their attic before being shipped to concentration camps. In 2014, Sharon believes she saw the item displayed at a local library in Edelény and she now believes it is in the possession of the family of a local historian. Her 97-year-old cousin, Erika Jacoby, remembers celebrating the High Holy Days in Edelény with the shofar, and has not seen it since leaving Hungary and surviving several concentration camps. “One of my biggest pains,” she said, “is that they stole everything.”

Efforts to contact town officials and restitute the shofar have thus far been unsuccessful. For more information on #StolenMemory and to join the effort of track down heirs and items, head to the #Stolen Memory website.

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3. British Museum plans to hire a “treasure hunter” to track down missing gold.

Disgraced former curator at the British Museum, Peter Higgs, was accused of selling uncatalogued jewelry from the 15th–11th Century BCE as well as later Hellenistic and Roman pieces beginning in 2016. He denies these allegations. The scheme was uncovered in 2023, and Higgs was subsequently fired.

The items include late-Bronze Age gold jewelry and Greek and Roman gemstones. All of these are small, moveable pieces and the lack of cataloguing makes them are easy to sell on the private market. Much like the Louvre Heist, officials worry that items made from precious metals will be melted down, and that gems will be removed from their setting and sold.

Since 2023, the British Museum has assigned five staff members the task of recovering the estimated 1800 missing items. The team has recovered over 600 items, yet progress has been painstakingly slow. According to reporting by ArtNews, the British Museum will hire additional personnel in 2026 to accelerate their investigation.

If you have any information regarding the missing items, please contact recovery@britishmuseum.org.

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4. India unveils repatriated artifacts in Delhi.

After successfully lobbying to stop the sale of the Piprahwa relics by Sotheby’s Hong Kong, the Indian government has unveiled a number of these artifacts as part of an exhibition titled, “Light and the Lotus: Relics of the Awakened One.”

In 2025, Sotheby’s Hong Kong was set to auction a number of Piprahwa artifacts owned by the grandson of British imperialist William Claxton Peppé. Peppé had laid claim to the land these items were excavated from in 1898, and the government of India claimed Sotheby’s was continuing British “colonial exploitation” by selling the objects. Eventually, Sotheby’s cancelled the sale.

India’s Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, said that the opening of the exhibition was a “very special day” and that the “sacred relics of Lord Buddha are India’s heritage.” His stance has drawn criticism from those who accuse his government of exploiting cultural heritage to push a Hindu-nationalist agenda.

The exhibition is ongoing at the Rai Pithora Cultural Complex in Delhi.

5. France and Mexico Mark 200th anniversary of diplomatic relations with manuscript exchange.

Two pre-Hispanic illustrated manuscripts are set to make separate journeys across the Atlantic to celebrate the 200th annicersary of diplomatic relations between France and Mexico. This agreement was reached in May of 2025, when French President Emmanuel Macron made his first official visit to Mexico to meet with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

The Codex Azcatitlán will travel from Paris to Mexico City, while the Codex Boturini will make the journey in reverse. Due to conservation concerns, they are rarely exhibited, and travel even less frequently, markingn a rare opportunity to view each Mesoamerican codex.

Restitution activists hope this loan will tip the scales in their favor, as Mexico has long sought the repatriation of Mesoamerican objects and manuscripts from European collections. Given the history of colonization in Mexico, the majority of these objects left the country long before the 1970 UNESCO convention. This means that Mexico and other formerly-colonized countries have little legal recourse to ask for repatriation, and must rely on the goodwill of those currently in possession of their heritage.

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Unless you took a break from the news over the holidays, you are aware of the United States’ belligerent actions in Venezuela over New Years Eve and Day. Early on January 1, 2026, US forces began bombing Caracas and “captured” Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.

As of January 4, Maduro has arrived in New York where he is expected to face charges of “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machine guns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machine guns and Destructive Devices against the United States,” according to Attorney General Pam Bondi. The death toll in Venezuela has risen to 40, with both military personnel and civilians losing their life, and President Trump announced that the United States will “run” Venezuela for the foreseeable future. I would call this modern-day colonialism, but the tactics are far from modern. It is just colonialism.

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In addition to bombing military sites, some are reporting that the United States bombed Cuartel de la Montaña 4F, a military museum and mausoleum dedicated to the late Venezuelan leader Huge Chávez. Details on this are opaque, with posts on social media purportedly showing the bombing were the primary source for this news in the early hours of the attack. Later, Colombian President Gustavo Petro shared a list of sites targeted by US forces on X, which has not been independently verified, and includes Cuartel de la Montaña 4F. Cuban and Korean outlets have raised alarms about this story as well. The Cubans worry that their heritage, including the mausoleum of Che Guevara and the grave of Fidel Castro, could be next, and The Chosun Daily called the bombing of Cuartel de la Montaña 4F an act of “psychological warfare.” However, some outlets are reporting that video’s circulating on social media do not show the bombing of Cuartel de la Montaña 4F, but the Cagigal Observatory in Caracas that is currently a military barrack. No outlet have independently verified damage to Cuartel de la Montaña 4F as of January 4, 2026, and time will tell if initial reports are accurate.

Cuartel de la Montaña 4F was converted into a military museum in 1981, though it doubled as barracks until the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013, when it was converted into a mausoleum. The potential destruction of this site has both political and symbolic significance for Venezuela, as it is the location of Chávez’s first attempted coup on February 4, 1992, and widely considered to be the origin place of the left-wing Chavismo movement, founded by Chávez.

Venezuela is home to three UNESCO recognized World Heritage Sites with an additional three on the “Tentative List.” The City of La Guaira, on the Tentative List, was bombed by US forces. Due to its status as the primary port of Caracas, and therefore of potential military value, the port of La Guaira likely qualifies as a valid military target under international law. The arguments defending the bombing of Cuartel de la Montaña 4F have less to stand on. If Cuartel de la Montaña 4F has been bombed, it would violate the 1987 additions to Article 53 of the Geneva Convention, which states that it is prohibited to “commit any acts of hostility directed against the historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples.”

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In spite of what recent American actions might signal, the decolonization movement has been growing in Central and South America. Repatriation is a central part of this movement, as it makes it possible for current and future generations to access to their cultural heritage. This is central to both individual and communal identity formation, and often forms a central part of the national building project. This is especially felt among previously-colonized communities, whose heritage if often scattered throughout North America, Australia, and Europe.

In Central and South America, these issues remain pertinent. Since the early 2000s, artifacts from countries such as Peru, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico and more have slowly made their way back to their home countries and communities. Due to the legal infrastructure of colonization, the mechanism through which items return often differs from the return of looted materials in Europe and the Middle East.

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While looting and theft did (and still does) occur in Central and South America, a large number of artifacts were removed from during the colonial period, when there was nothing “illegal” about removing objects from unowned or “public” lands. Seeking gold and mineral deposits, “explorers” frequently collected ancient objects as they sought out new avenues to exploit the land and people of Central and South America. Additionally, colonizers and stole many objects during acts of colonial violence.

This differing context is reflected in case studies. When the Brooklyn Museum repatriated over 900 objects to Costa Rica in 2011, and 1300 in 2021, they did so without having received a formal request from the Costa Rican government or undergoing any judicial processes. These objects were looted by the 19th-centruy American business tycoon, Cooper Keith, who traded in ancient American artifacts prior to the passage of a 1938 law restricting their export from Costa Rica. While his antiquities trading was “legal” on paper, the Brooklyn Museum’s restitution signals a recognition that legality and morality are often misaligned.

The nature of these repatriations is complicated by the political and social structures of countries and communities. The question of who should receive returning artifacts is not an easy one to answer. Indigenous communities and politicians have been known to disagree. For example, the return of a feathered cloak belonging to the Tupinambá people was met with praise from both indigenous and political leaders. This cloak is believed to have been taken to Europe by the Dutch around 1644, before their expulsion from Brazil by Portuguese colonizers, and Tupinambá leaders were unaware of its existence until a temporary exhibition brought it to Sāo Paulo in 2000.

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There is disagreement over the final location of this cloak. While the national Museum of Denmark formally gifted the cloak to the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, indigenous leaders believe it should return to Ilhéus, in the region of Bahia, and to the Tupinambá Olivença in Bahia, from whom it was taken. The president of Brazil voiced support for this by saying that the cloak’s location at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro should be seen as a “temporary,” but a representative of the museum said that the museum was gifted the object “on a permanent basis,” and has not received any requests for transfer.

10 similar cloaks of equal cultural importance remain in museums outside of Brazil. Thee National Museum in Rio de Janeiro says that there are no current efforts to bring these objects home, but Chief Jamopoty of the Tupinambá Olivença in Bahia says that other museums “must return what rightfully belongs to us. Our heritage strengthens our identity.”

This, of course, raises questions about the proper handling of objects taken from other colonized communities and countries. The Dutch recognized that, though Brazil lacked legal justification for requesting the return of this object, it was the ethical path to take. Similar instances of cultural dispossession have occurred throughout South and Central America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Colonial loot is still displayed in museums throughout the countries of formal colonizers. Will they follow Denmark’s example?

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1. The Louvre Heist

I have to start off with the Louvre heist. Brilliant? Or amateur and sloppy? It depends on who you ask.

On October 19, 2025 a group of men disguised as construction workers broke into the Apollo Gallery of the Louvre and stole nine pieces of the French Crown Jewels in a brazen daytime heist, dropping during their escape. It’s the stuff of movies! Yet it happened in Paris, and the jewels have yet to be recovered.

In under ten minutes the thieves used a vehicle-mounted lift to extend a ladder up to the gallery window, broke through the exterior window, and employed power tools to gain access to display cases and snatch the irreplaceable artifacts. Accomplices waited outside and whisked the thieves and the jewels away on motor scooters. The team who completed the theft comprised of four individuals, and French police have made a number of arrests so far.

The thieves had done their homework. They targeted a gallery with an accessible exterior window and weakened security, bringing power tools to cut through the bulletproof display cases. While the vehicle-mounted lift slowed their entrance and escape, the individuals who entered the Apollo Gallery were in and out of the building in under four minutes.

The ease with which the thieves made off with the artifacts has led to critiques of the Louvre’s security apparatus. Labor unions representing the security staff have criticized the shrinking number of guards in comparison to the growing number of tourists. France’s Court of Arbiters critiqued the continued delay in security updates of France museums writ large, with the Louvre spending increasing amounts on art acquisitions without a comparable increase in security measures.

The value of the theft is estimated to be around €88 million, or $102 million. Thefts of this magnitude are rare, as objects of this and comparable value cannot be sold on the open market. The thieves likely stole the objects for one of two reasons:

1. They already had a buyer lined up. This is the best case scenario, and the jewels are likely to remain relatively unharmed in an illicit private collection. At some point, potentially decades from now, they will resurface.

2. They want to disassemble the artifacts and sell them for parts. This is, unfortunately, a common motive in jewel heists. In their last known form, the jewels are unsellable. But the raw materials (the gold, diamonds, pearls, and other jewels) carry significant value and the thieves stand to make a heft profit if they melt down the metals and sell the gems.

The Louvre was far from the only museum to experience shocking thefts in recent years. In France alone, thieves stole three pieces of Chinese porcelain worth and estimated €9.5 million from the the Adrien Dubouché institute in Limoges in September. On a more hopeful note, five bejeweled snuffboxes stolen in 2024 from Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris were recovered in October of 2025. In spite of arresting four suspects, neither the French nor international law enforcement agencies have recovered the jewels.

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2. The Drents Museum Heist

Less In January, the Drents Museum in Assen, the Netherlans was robbed. Thieves stole the gold Coțofenești helmet and three Dacian royal bracelets. Around 3:45 in the morning the assailants used an explosive device to gain access to the museum. Armed with a duffle bag, a crowbar, and flashlights they entered the Drents Museum and stole the four artifacts. The estimated value of the theft is around €6 million.

Officials have made a number of arrests. One suspect was caught on camera purchasing a sledgehammer at a hardware store, which officials suspect is the same sledgehammer used in the robbery. Additionally, DNA evidence was recovered from the scene, along with bags containing gold and glass particles, likely from the objects and their display cases.

Much like the Louvre heist, the thieves could have stolen these items for a particular collector or their raw materials. Dutch businessman Alex van Breeman has offered a reward for tips leading to their safe return, raising it from an original offer of €100,000 to €250,000 ($284,870 USD) in February. Additionally, Dutch prosecutors have gathered evidence suggesting that, as of August 2025, the objects had not been melted down or otherwise destroyed. Time will tell if they survive intact.

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3. Nazi Loot Uncovered in an Argentine Real-Estate Ad

In a slight topic-shift from recent thefts to historic ones, we have another movie-worthy story!

In August, the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (AD) reported that a missing 18th-century portrait was spotted in an photograph for a real-estate listing in Argentina. Portrait of a Lady by Italian artist Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi was owned by the Amsterdam-based Jewish art dealer, Jacques Goudstikker1 before he died while fleeing the Nazis in 1940. The parts of his collection in Nazi-occupied territories were sold within weeks, with Hermann Göring purchasing a majority of the works. After WWII, over 200 works from Goudstikker’s collection remained in the Rijkmuseum until their restitution to his daughter-in-law and sole heir, Marei von Saher, in 2006.

According to records uncover by AD, documentation suggested that Portrait of a Lady was in the possession of SS Officer and close associate of Hermann Göring, Friedrich Kadgien, at the end of the war. Kadgien left Germany for Switzerland and eventually Argentina via Brazil, where his family remains to this day. The photograph above shows the painting hanging in the living room of a home belonging to one of Kadigan’s daughters, Patricia Kadgien.

After AD published the story, Argentine police raided multiple properties belonging to Patricia Kadgien and her husband to no avail. For a short period of time, the painting had yet again disappeared. Kadgien was placed under house arrest and the Argentine police conducted raids on multiple properties owner by Patricia Kadgien and her sister, seizing multiple other works of art in these raids, but not Portrait of a Lady. Eventually, Patricia Kadgien and her husband returned the painting voluntarily, though not before being placed on house arrest under suspicion of hiding the painting from officials. All the while, researchers at the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art uncovered additional potentially-looted works in Patricial Kadgien’s Facebook photos. Some of these appear to have ended up at the the Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo in Buenos Aires, where they remain today.

Originally, Portrait of a Lady was listed as “unreturned” by the Dutch government, but its current status is now listed as “not applicable.” Jacques Goudstikker’s heir has made a formal restitution claim at the FBI’s New York office and the case remains ongoing.

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4. Heritage Under Attack: Gaza and Ukraine

The fall of Assad in Syria brought with it a decline in Syrian antiquities with dubious provenance–or none at all–popping up on the antiquities market. Yet the world continues to turn and human beings continue to maim, torture, and kill each other in war, bringing with it devastation to local and global cultural heritage. While this is a roundup of stories from 2025, both the Gaza Genocide and the war in Ukraine began before the start of 2025.

In the Gaza Genocide, Israel does not limit itself to the killing of human beings. The Israeli government is actively partaking in cultural genocide through the destruction of heritage sites, museum repositories, and heritage professionals.

Human beings have lived in the Gaza strip since the late Neolithic period, and it served as an important locus for trade between Europe and Eurasia throughout much of history. There are hundreds of sites of archaeological significance within the Gaza strip, and multiple museums and repositories for cultural heritage. Using satellite imagery and rapid on-site assessments when possible, UNESCO has verified damage to 145 sites of cultural significance in Gaza since October 2023, while the Arab Regional Group at the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) puts the number at more than 200.

According to International Council of Museums-Arab (ICOM-Arab), two of Gaza’s four museums have been completely leveled: The Rafah Museum and Al Qarara Museum (also known as the Khan Younis Museum). Al Qarara Museum contained 3,500 objects of archaeological, historical, and cultural significance. It was hit by Israeli airstrikes in 2023, and again in August of 2024. According to a report by PEN America, a staff member reporting in the immediate aftermath of the 2024 attacks said that the majority of its collection was destroyed, though a 2024 Facebook post by museum staff indicates that they saved a significant number of objects. As with any conflict zone, it is difficult to obtain accurate data.

After the Great Omari Mosque and its library were destroyed by an airstrike in December 2023, a Palestinian restoration team from Gaza’s Ministry of Religious Endowments went to work rescuing manuscripts. As of October 2025, they have recovered 123 out of 228 manuscripts and 78 manuscript fragments. In addition to the destruction wrought by Israeli forces, the manuscripts were also damaged due to mold and moisture while buried under the rubble awaiting re-excavation. A small silver lining lies in the digitization of these manuscripts by HMML prior to October 2023.

The ideological underpinning of this cultural violence is a far-right belief that Palestinians and Palestine do not constitute a historically distinct ethnicity or peoplehood, and that Palestinians are inherently inferior to Jews. The destruction of Palestinian heritage serves to both undermine contemporary Palestinian identity, and disrupt historical continuity in order to support the historical claims and political goals of the far right in Israel. The intentional destruction and theft of Palestinian heritage is part of a larger far-right project intent on erasing Palestinian identity and culture. The most recent assault on Gaza is more severe in scale and intent than any previous attack, marking a horrific moment in Palestinian history.

Russia is engaged in a similar attack on Ukrainian identity through the large-scale theft and destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage. This is part of Moscow’s long-term goal of suppressing Ukrainian national identity through a brutal campaign of russification. This war is not merely about territory, according to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, but “an organised (sic) outrage against the nation’s collective memory.” Russian troops have looted and destroyed thousands of art and objects of cultural significance. Some of these works are now appearing in Russian museums, and museums in occupied Crimea.

Much like the Monuments Men and Women of WWII, Ukrainian officials evacuated many works early in the war, and their current locations remain a secret. Yet immovable heritage and provincial museums remain at particular risk and as of December 10, 2025, UNESCO has verified damage to 514 cultural sites in Ukraine.

International partners have stepped up when possible. The European Union launched its Team Europe initiative for Cultural Heritage in Ukraine in July, which recently published recommendations for establishing a Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Fund to combat the destruction wrought by Russia. Member states have also contributed a combined €50 million to support Ukraine’s cultural and creative sectors. In August of 2025, the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council hosted an event titled, Examining Russia’s Assault on Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage. UNESCO has funded multiple programs in support of Ukrainian cultural heritage through their Heritage Emergency Fund and UNESCO-Aschberg Programme for Artists and Cultural Professionals.

Russia’s assault on Ukrainian identity stretches back centuries, as tsars and later emperors of Russia sought to promulgate an all-encompassing “Russian” identity throughout their territories. This impulse has taken on an almost mythic quality, as Putin and his ideological allies understand themselves to be the inheritors of both the Kyivan Rus’ and Byzantine civilizations, and entitled to the art and artifacts of these civilizations throughout modern-day Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere in eastern Europe.

Many Palestinians and non-Palestinians working to protect and preseve cultural heritage in Gaza have rightly noted the divergent reactions from the international community toward heritage destruction in Gaza and Ukraine. In comparison to Ukraine, international organizations have been slow to act in protection of Gaza’s heritage. Part of this is due to Israel’s refusal to allow international journalists or heritage professionals into the Gaza strip. Yet the refusal of some organizations and most governments to speak or act stands in stark comparison to the rallying of of the international community around Ukraine’s efforts to protect and reclaim their heritage. While European countries piled sanctions onto Russia and Russian oligarchs, it took months and sometimes years to initiate sanctions against Israeli figures, let alone Israel as a country.

There are notable and laudable exceptions to this trend. A French NGO called Première Urgence Internationale has been working to preserve Palestinian cultural heritage since 2017 through its Intiqal initiative. When Israel alerted them to the imminent bombing of the the storage facility of the French Biblical and Archaeological School (EBAF) in Gaza City, they were able to assist Geneva Museum of Art and History and other organizaitons in the relocation of 80% of the objects. This only occurred after negotiations between France, UNESCO, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and Israeli authorities to grant a brief reprieve from fighting to evacuate objects.

While I can tell the other stories on this list with an air of brevity, the horrors that Russia and Israel continue to inflict on the Ukrainian and Palestinian people refuses to permit such brevity. The total damage done to the heritage of Gaza and Ukraine is impossible to measure at the current moment. Additional documentation and data will allow us to assign a monetary value to these losses in the future, but this cannot adequately capture nor rectify the damage done to the Ukrainian and Palestinian people.

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5. UNESCO’s Virtual-Reality Museum of Looted Cultural Objects

A bit of hope to round out our 2025 list! In September of 2025, UNESCO launched their Virtual-Reality Museum of Looted Cultural Objects. This museum is “designed to vanish” once all these objects of immense cultural importance return to their rightful owners. For now, it is expanding as it records reported thefts, and the “Return and Restitution Room” tells stories of objects that have been returned to their communities of origin.

Designed to raise awareness of the illicit trafficking of cultural objects, UNESCO says that the scourge of illicit trafficking “deprives people of their history and culture” and weakens social ties and cohesion over the long-term. This initiative targets younger audiences in an effort to spread awareness of the crime among a population that might otherwise remain uninformed. Additionally, the initiative is designed to support member states as they work to combat looting and trafficking of cultural heritage within their borders and work to restitute or reclaim objects that have been lost.

The museum also serves as a digital repository of stolen objects. Using 2D and 3D technology to bring missing objects back into the public sphere, the museum allows people to engage with objects in the virtual world that are currently missing in the physical world.

For more on UNESCO’s work to combat the trafficking of cultural heritage, see their Illicit Trafficking Hub.

As we move into 2026, I remain alarmed by the rising tide of fascism in the world. While nationalistic impulses can motivate some groups to protect cultural heritage (I am looking at you, Turkey), more often than not it leads to the destruction of material heritage, communities, and human beings on the “wrong” side of nationalistic fervor.

While material greed was behind the flashy museum heists of 2025, they pale in comparison to scale of destruction in Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Somalia, and other conflict zones around the world. It is not greed, but ideological extremism and ethno-nationalism that currently pose the most risk to heritage around the globe.

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1. Germanisches Nationalmuseum returns Nazi-looted objects to heirs of the Lion Brothers.

After completing comprehensive provenance research on five objects, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg has returned five works to the descendants of German-Jewish art dealers the Lion Brothers. Louis, Hans and Fritz Lion were forced to give up their collection due to pressure from the National Socialist government.

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The museum has re-purchased one object at a “fair and reasonable price,” and it will remain accessible to the public at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. The object is a processional cross created in 1310 near Regensburg; it has art-historical significance due to the unusual presence of a crucified Christ painted on both sides.

The other objects include an 18th-century gilded vase and a six-paneled screen from the 19th-century. The heirs have praised the restitution process as honoring “the fate of the persecuted Lion brothers and represent[ing] an important act of historical justice in Nuremberg.”

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2. Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich returns painting purchased by Herman Göring in 1941.

The heirs of Ernst Magnus’ restitution claim for The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (c 1522–1525) was rejected in 2010. However, the newly instituted Court of Arbitration for Nazi-looted Cultural Property reevaluated this decision, and recently approved its restitution.

Originally from Hannover, Ernest Magnus fled to Switzerland to escape Nazi persecution. Due to the Jewish Property Levy and the Reich Flight Tax, he was forced to sell additional parts of his collection to fund his family’s visa application to Cuba. He consigned The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne to the Fischer Galerie in Lucerne 1940 and Herman Göring subsequently purchased it in 1941 through the dealer Walter Andreas Hofer. The painting was recovered by Americans at the Munich Central Collecting Point after WWII, and eventually entrusted to the government of Bavaria before being transferred to the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in 1961. In 2025, it returns to the Magnus family.

This case highlights the intricacies of conducting Nazi-era provenance research involving “flight assets” (Fluchtgut). Many persecuted people sold their collections in Switzerland due to Nazi pressure both before and during WWII. Yet art sales in Switzerland often fall outside of the scope of legal frameworks designed to address the restitution of Nazi-looted property. Recent innovations in international legal frameworks, including the Court of Arbitration for Nazi-looted Cultural Property, are attempting to address these issues and create a more just system for the restitution and repatriation of Nazi-looted cultural heritage.

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3. The Vatical returns 62 objects to indigenous communities in Canada.

The Inuvialuit Regional Corporation (IRC) recently negotiated the return of 62 cultural artifacts to indigenous communities in Canada. These negotiations began under Pope Francis in 2017, and reached their conclusion this month under Pope Leo XIV.

These objects include a rare Inuit sealskin kayak, and a set of embroidered gloves from the Cree Nation.

Most of these objects were seized from indigenous communities and removed to Europe in the early 20th Century. At this time, Canadian law and Catholic canon law prohibited the practice of “native spiritual practices” and banned certain ceremonial objects. During this period, indigenous children were also taken from their communities and forced into residential schools, where they experienced abuse, forced conversion, and death.

Originally part of the Vatican Museums’ ethnographic collection, Anima Mundi, Pope Leo XIV gifted the artifacts to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops for immediate transfer to their respective indigenous communities. This gesture is meant to continue the Catholic Church’s reconciliation for the horrors done to indigenous people at residential schools in Canada.

In a joint statement, Pope Leo XIV and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said they hope this action “represent[s] a concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity.”

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4. US Senate unanimously passes the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of 2025.

The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of 2015 addressed legal barriers in the United States relating to the restitution of property looted or spoliated by the Nazi government, such as state-based statutes of limitations. It is set to expire in 2026, and the US Senate unanimously passed the HEAR Act of 2025 to extend these provisions. The HEAR Act of 2025 now heads to the House of Representatives, where it is expected to pass, and then to the desk of President Trump to sign into law.

The HEAR Act of 2025 strengthens the provisions set out in the 2015 HEAR Act, and clarifies some additional roadblocks. Under the 2015 Act, there is a federal six-year statute of limitations from the date a plaintiff discovers certain aspects of their claim, rather than divergent state-based statutes of limitations that could begin at the time of theft, or the time of discovery. Additionally, this 2025 act eliminates the ‘international comity’ doctrine, which allows US Courts to decline to hear cases involving foreign nationals or foreign legal decisions.

Organizations working to restitute stolen Jewish property, such as the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) and Art Ashes, have applauded the move saying it will “assist Holocaust survivors and their families who are seeking the return of artwork now held in museums and collections across the United States.”

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5. Rothschild family to sell restituted 15th Century mahzor.

A 15th Century mahzor, or prayerbook for the Jewish High Holidays, is set to be sold at Sotheby’s in 2026. It is expected to fetch between $5 and $7 million.

The Rothschild Vienna Mahzor is a parchment manuscripts created in 1415, and contains the prayer services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, along with various illuminations throughout. Little is known about its creation and history before Salomon Mayer von Rothschild purchased it in Nuremberg as a gift for his son in 1842.

The mahzor remained in the possession of the Austrian branch of the Rothschild family until 1938, when the Nazis forcibly confiscated the collections of the Vienna branch of the family. Soon after the war, the Rothschild family recovered parts of their collection. A change in Austria’s restitution laws in 1999 led to an additional wave of restitutions in the early 2000s. Without bearing any physical signs of its confiscation and unbeknownst to the Rothschild family, the Rothschild Vienna Mahzor remained at the Austrian National Library for decades.

Its existence came to light in 2021, when the Jewish Museum in Vienna mounted an exhibitions called, “The Vienna Rothschilds: A Thriller.” For this exhibition, the Austrian National Library loaned them this mahzor, and the descendants of Alphonse and Clarice Rothschild requested its restitution. Following additional provenance research, the Austrian National Library agreed to voluntarily restitute the book in 2023. It will be actioned by the heirs at Sotheby’s New York on February 5, 2026 and experts hope the buyer will make it accessible to the scholarly community as well as the public.

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6. Ukraine publishes list of art looted by Russia from the O. Shovkunenko Kherson Regional Art Gallery in Kherson.

A little over three years ago, Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson from Russian occupation. Since then, heritage professionals have worked to identify the works of art stolen from the O. Shovkunenko Kherson Regional Art Gallery as part of Russia’s strategic attacks on Ukraine’s national and cultural identity.

On the third anniversary of Ukraine’s recapture and liberation of the city, the Ukrainian government has published a list of over 1000 objects illegally stolen or destroyed by Russian forces. After their initial theft in 2022, Ukrainian authorities believe they were removed to Crimea. It is unclear where all of the objects are now, though some are at the Simferopol Central Museum of Tavrida.

These objects include sculptures, paintings, drawings, and religious icons. View the complete list of objects stolen from Kherson here.

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7. Manhattan DA’s Office announces the return of 43 objects to Turkey.

On December 10, 2025 Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Jr. announced the return of 43 objects looted from the ancient city of Bubon in modern-day Turkey. This is the most recent repatriation in an ongoing investigation into the systemic plunder of Bubon by an international smuggling network.

These objects include 41 ancient polychrome terracotta relief fragments from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, a Byzantine capital with bust of the Archangel Michael (1250-1300) and a marble head of Demosthenes (2nd century CE) from the MET.

In the 1960s, individuals began looting ancient shrines in and around Bubon and selling these antiquities to traffickers in the Izmir area. Known traffickers George Zakos and Robert Hecht assisted in smuggling these objects out of Turkey via Switzerland and the UK where they were sold to buyers in the US and Europe. Through officials at the Royal-Athena Galleries and the Merrin Gallery, the traffickers were able to craft provenance narratives and launder the objects into the open market, where they ended up in both private and public collections.

Objects trafficked from Bubon have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Getty Museum, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Worcester Museum of Art, and the Fordham Museum of Art.

Previous repatriations of objects looted from Bubon occurred in March and September of 2023, 2024, and earlier in 2025.

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1. Update on Ghislandi painting discovered in Argentine real estate advertisement

We have been following the story of the rediscovered Portrait of a Lady by Giuseppe Ghislandi since August. After internet sleuths alerted authorities to its presence in a real estate advertisement, the painting disappeared for a short period of time before its owner, the daughter of a Nazi SS officer, surrendered it to Argentine authorities. In September, Patricia Kadgien and her husband were charged with “aggravated concealment” for attempting to hide the painting’s whereabouts. The couple insists that they were unaware of the painting’s illicit provenance, and did not intentionally hide it but removed the photo from the advertisement and the painting from the wall due to harassment. The case is working its way through the courts.

Recently, Reuters published the story of Paul Post, a Dutch retiree whose father, Will Post, worked as a diamond trader near Amsterdam when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. In 2010, Post rediscovered his father’s diaries from this period, which contain an account of the 1942 diamond confiscation in which traders were forced to hand over their precious stones. From there, Post began researching the Nazi looting of Amsterdam’s diamonds in the Netherlands’ national archives. Cyril Rosman worked with Paul Post and broke this story in the Dutch newspaper, Algemeen Dagblad.

What began as an exercise in family history and diamond crime quickly grew. Again and again, he came across the name Friedrich Kadgien, a Nazi officer tasked with overseeing the looting of diamonds and gold in occupied territories. In hopes of tracking down lost diamonds, Post began researching Kadgien’s movements after the war. While no diamonds were uncovered, Post managed to trace Kadgien through Switzerland and eventually to Argentina.

In 2020, Post discovered that the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands believed Friedrich Kadgien owned looted art, including Portrait of a Lady by Giuseppe Ghislandi. Over the years, both Post and Rosman made repeated, unsuccessful attempts to contact Kadgien’s heirs and inquire about both diamonds and art. Rosman eventually hired a Buenos Aires-based freelance journalist named Peter Schouten to visit Patricia Kadgien’s home. This visit would prove pivotal.

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Schouten noted a for-sale sign in the front yard of Kadgien’s property. While checking the online advertisement for this property, he was shocked to see Portrait of a Lady hanging prominently in the living room. Since this discovery, the Connecticut-based heirs of Jacques Goudstikker, who owned the painting at the time of its acquisition by Kadgien, have filed a claim on the painting with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Argentine authorities have searched four properties connected to Patricia Kadgien and recovered additional works of art, including 22 prints believed to be from a first edition of Henri Matisse’s Seize peintures 1939-1943 and a missing still-life by Abraham Mignon (for more on this, see the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art’s excelledn investigative work here). Authorities are currently working to sort out which works were also looted by the Nazis.

Patricia Kadgien maintains that she legally owns the painting, claiming that her father’s sister-in-law purchased it from the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne in 1943. The Wallraf-Richartz Museum denies that the painting was ever part of their collection.

The serendipity of this story reveals the complexities of Nazi-era provenance research. Without Post’s retirement and the time it gave him to research his family history, his father safeguarding his diary for decades, or Patricia Kadgien listing her house, none of this would likely have come to light.

The four raids on Kadgien properties did not recover any jewels, but Paul Post remains committed to uncovering information about the missing diamonds. Read more about his work here.

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2. Missing Roman funerary inscription discovered in New Orleans backyard

Daniella Santoro and her husband, Aaron Lorenz, were clearing the undergrowth in the yard of their historic home at 1106 Cambronne Street in New Orleans when they came across a peculiar object. Buried under the weeds was a flat marble stone bearing a Latin inscription. Worried they may have uncovered a forgotten cemetery, the couple contacted local Anthropology professor and member of the Louisiana Slavery and Ancestral Burial Grounds Commission, Dr. Ryan Gray.

Given the location, Gray deduced that the object was probably not from a historic New Orleans cemetery. Working from the Latin inscription, Santoro contacted Dr. Susann S. Lusnia, an Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Tulane. Dr. Lusnia confirmed that this was a Roman funerary inscription for a sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus. Even more shocking: a stone with this exact inscription and dimensions had been reported missing from the city museum in Civitavecchia, Italy. All parties agreed: the stone should return to its rightful owners.

The group began with contacting the city museum in Civitavecchia and consulting with Tess Davis at the Antiquities Coalition. They then contacted the FBI’s Art Crime Team, who agreed to take custody oof the stone while the repatriation process moves forward.

While their research has not uncovered the precise path this stone took from Civitavecchia to New Orleans, they have a theory. The city museum in Civitavecchia was heavily bombed during WWII, and many items from its collection remain lost. There is a 1954 inventory listing this stone, but Dr. Lusnia’s research concluded that the inventory was not created from first-hand observations, but from earlier documentation. This makes it possible–and perhaps likely–that the stone was removed from the museum in the chaos of WWII.

There is no evidence to tie the twentieth-century owners of the home to Italy. While the next-door neighbor served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he was only ever stationed in the Pacific region. However, the 34th division of the Fifth Army of the U.S. travelled through Civitavecchia after liberating Rome in 1944. They theorize that an American soldier acquired the stone at this time, and placed it in this yard sometime after returning to America. Equally plausible is that the person who removed this inscription from Italy kept it for some time before it was placed in the yard–perhaps passing it down to their children who eventually placed it there. At this point, it is impossible to know. What we do know is that this inscription, lost for over 75 years, is finally returning home.

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3. UNESCO launches first-ever virtual-reality museum of looted cultural objects

At UNESCO’s World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development in Barcelona last month, the organization launched the first-ever virtual-reality museum of stolen cultural objects. The UNESCO Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects (MSCO) aims to “protect the world’s common heritage and fight against the looting and illicit trafficking of cultural property.”

After UN member states called for a more coordinated strategy to raise awareness around the illicit trafficking of cultural heritage, UNESCO began working on a digital museum of looted heritage. The museum is now live, offering a powerful tool for education, transparency, and international cooperation.

In the “Return and Restitution Room,” viewers can explore the provenance stories of objects, learning how they were taken, who helped recover them, and what steps were involved in returning them to their rightful homes. One such object is the fossil of a trilobite, a marine arthropod from the Devonian period, which was repatriated to Morocco in 2024.

Due to their rarity, it is illegal to export trilobite fossils from Morocco. Between 2018–2022, Chilean officials seized 117 fossils originating in Morocco, including multiple trilobites. After Moroccan authorities confirmed that this fossil was exported illegally and belongs to Morocco’s “protected geological patrimony,” Chile initiated its repatriation.

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Many objects highlighted in the MSCO remain missing. The museum gives member states an immersive platform to educate the public about their missing heritage, and expound on the communal grief that heritage loss causes. Additionally, the virtual format allows a global audience to engage with these stories from around the world, reinforcing the importance of cultural heritage and the global effort to protect it from trafficking and theft.

4. Heritage professionals in Gaza begin to rebuild

After two years of fighting and genocide, which killed over 64,000 Palestinians, there is a tentative ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. In those two years, nearly 55% of Gaza’s heritage sites were damaged or destroyed.

One such site is the fourth-century Monastery of Saint Hilarion, one of the largest and earliest known monasteries in the Middle East. St. Hilarion of Gaza, a fourth-century ascetic dubbed the “founder of Palestinian Monasticism” by Jerome, founded this monastic center in the fourth century. Within it are churches, accommodations for monks, a baptistry, chapel, and crypt. Through international funding, a shelter and aerial walkways were installed in 2022 allowing for visitors to view the site. Before the war, it was an education hub training future Palestinian archaeologists and serving as a destination for school field trips.

The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has held meetings with local and international partners to formulate a plan for heritage reconstruction in Gaza. The first step is to update their preliminary damage assessment, which was completed during the last ceasefire, before beginning emergency conservation efforts. They estimate it will cost around $192 million USD.

Like many, Palestinian archaeology graduate Leena Majed Yassin hopes that this ceasefire will be permanent and allow for holistic reconstruction of Palestinian society, saying, “When I speak of reconstruction, I don’t mean only stone and cement, I mean rebuilding the human being. Because what has been destroyed inside people may be harder to repair than the walls that have fallen.”

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5. Jewelry heist at the Louvre

France’s Culture Minister has described the Sunday morning theft of priceless Napoleonic jewels as a “professional operation.” In just seven minutes thieves broke into the Galerie d’Apollon, which housed the French crown jewels, and made off with eight items valued at an estimated $102 million. These items include Empress Eugénie’s large corsage-bow brooch, reliquary diamond brooch, and her diamond and pearl tiara. The empress’ crown was found damaged outside of the museum. Additionally, thieves stole a sapphire and diamond set worn by Queen Hortense, Queen Marie-Amélie and Isabelle of Orléans, and an emerald necklace and earrings belonging to Marie-Louise of Austria.

Using a forklift to reach the window, the thieves broke into the gallery and escaped with the priceless artifacts in under seven minutes. In their hasty escape, they dropped the crown of Empress Eugénie, damaging it but ultimately allowing authorities to recover the item outside the museum.

In my view, there are three potential motivations for this theft.

1. Collateral or leverage. A large criminal organization or wealthy individual ordered the heist to obtain collateral for a loan involving illicit activity, or to use as leverage in potential legal negotiations.

2. Theft-to-order. A wealthy collector may have financed the heist in order to obtain items for their private collection.

3. Resell value of raw materials. The thieves might melt down the precious metals and remove gems for their settings and cut them to erase their provenance. This allows them to sell the metal and stones on the grey or open market.

The third option appears to be the most likely, as jewelry alone was targeted. For this reason, experts and I are cynical about the jewels’ recovery. Unless the thieves are apprehended quickly, it is unlikely the public will see these objects anytime soon—or ever again.

For more on this story, see the BBC coverage here.

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For more on the intersection of art and organized crime, see the work of Donna Yates.

One of these gems was 1986.17.2, an intaglio (meaning the image was incised into the stone, creating a concave image) acquired from Ambassador and Mrs. William L. Eagleton, Jr., the former American ambassador to Syria (among other places) and his wife. We have no provenance beyond this, which is particularly sad given its iconography.

1986.17.2 depicts a four-horse-drawn chariot and likely dates from the first or second century CE. This composition is called a quadriga in art historical terms and often depicted the Sun God, Sol Invictus, the goddess of Victory, Nike, or an emperor as steering the chariot during this period of history.

There is a third-century mosaic in the Tomb of the Julii beneath Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome that might depict Jesus as Sol Invictus (see image above). The identification of this as Jesus is, in part, due to the biblical tales depicted around it.

If we knew the find-spot of 1986.17.2, we might have a better idea of the figure it was meant to depict. Could it be Sol Invictus? Nike? Jesus? This information is now lost to the vicissitudes of history.

In addition to 1986.17.2, I was able to view other gems acquired from Ambassador Eagleton: 1986.17.1, 1986.17.21, 1986.17.22, 1986.17.25, 1986.17.27, and 1986.17.30.

Each has iconography and material aspects that their provenience (find-spot) and archaeological context could inform. I will highlight some of these stories below.

1986.17.1 is stunning for a number of reasons. The stone is sardonyx, a relatively sturdy gemstone with banded coloration, which you can see on the beveled edges in the photograph above. The beveled edges indicate that it was likely set in a ring, though the fate of its original setting is unknown. Its octagonal shape is also highly unusual, with very few published gems exhibiting the same shape.

Without archaeological context, there is very little we can say about these idiosyncrasies. Was it found near other, similarly shaped gems? Perhaps among other examples of sardonyx stones? Was it found in a ring setting that its excavator (in all likelihood, its looter) deemed insignificant or low-quality? Or was it loose in a workshop, surrounded by other gemstones? Did these gemstones depict Eros as well? Again, this information is lost.

In a pleasant turn of events, Yale does have some gems with secure and documented provenance from Dura-Europos. One of these is 1938.2394, a white agate stone preserved in an ancient silver setting.

This stone originates from the Yale-French Excavations at Dura-Europos. Based on the context of its discovery as one of 26 intaglios, scholars are able to tell us more about this stone than those lacking provenance. For example, the convex shape of the stone was unusual, with most stones from Dura being flat.

Its iconography shows a male figure holding a long staff and a round object. Given the presence of similar iconography on intaglios at Dura, scholars can tentatively identify this ambiguous iconography as a scepter and a cup for libations. Additionally, the presence of a temple to Jupiter Dolichenus at Dura also allows scholars to tentatively identify the figure as Jupiter.

Damage to the bottom of the stone directly under the figure suggests that it may have been placed in a prior setting before being damaged during removal and re-set into this silver ring. The use of silver is informative, as the use of silver for ring settings grew in popularity in the second and third centuries.

Another stone from Dura, 1929.405, depicts similar iconography but is set within a silver bracelet rather than a ring. This object was excavated along with a hoard of coins near the Palmyrene Gate on the western wall of Dura-Europos. The style of this setting indicates a third-century date, and the presence of third-century coins in the hoard confirms this. However, this style of gemstone engraving was popular in the second century as well, so the stone itself could be earlier.

The above examples give a small insight into how the provenience and archaeological context of these gemstones add to our scholarly knowledge.

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The issues highlighted by Ambassador Eagleton’s collecting habits are far from novel. The size and portability of Roman gemstones, much like ancient coins, make them popular among collectors.

In 2007, the leading expert in the study of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine gems and current Senior Curator of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum the first comprehensive catalogue of all known engraved gems of the late antique period. This is an invaluable resource for scholars interested in the field of ancient gemstones, but it also proved useful to a less scrupulous crowd: forgers.

Since 2007, forgeries imitating the gems pictured in this text have flooded the market. With the lack of provenance for most legitimate Roman gemstones, it can be difficult to identify a well-executed forgery. In addition to the scholarly value that provenience and provenance writ large provide to the scholarly community, it is also valuable for institutions and collectors who want to authenticate their acquisitions and avoid forgeries.

How then should scholars approach the authentication and publication of such gemstones? In the world of papyri, professional associations have published guidelines instructing scholars to refrain from publishing unprovenanced papyri. Would a similar strategy be advised here? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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Nota bene: Here are some additional photographs from my recent viewing of the gemstones. Photos are my own unless otherwise noted.

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Researchers at the Monuments Men and Women Foundation believe they have discovered two Nazi-looted paintings in a sale of unclaimed items from safety deposit boxes in Ohio.

The two floral still-life paintings are believed to be the work of Dutch painter Ambrosius Bosschaert, one of the first artists to specialize in flowers as the subject of still-life paintings.

The Monuments Men and Women Foundation believes these paintings belonged to the Adolphe Schloss Collection before World War II. This collection was targeted by the Nazis, who succeeded in seizing it in 1943. Of the 333 paintings, 262 were sent to the Führerbau, or Leader’s Building, and marked for inclusion in Hitler’s proposed Führermuseum in Linz, Austria. The two Bosschaert paintings were then stolen from the Führerbau in 1945.

There is a mountain of evidence to suggest that these two paintings are indeed from the Adolphe Schloss Collection. In addition to the striking similarities to archival photos, the measurements of the two paintings in Ohio match those in the Schloss records. Additionally, a German inventory of the Schloss Collection listed two Bosschaert paintings as numbers 16 and 17, and these two paintings have “S-16” and “S-17” inscribed on their backs.

Once the Monuments Men and Women Foundation alerted the auction house facilitating this sale, Apple Tree Auction Center, they halted the sale. If they can be authenticated, the paintings will likely be returned to the Schloss family heirs in the near future.

2. Painting in Belgium Parliament returning to Germany.

A German painting seized by Belgium’s Sequestration Service after WWII is set to return to Germany.

The Belgian Parliament owns around 2,500 works of art, the majority of which are Belgian in origin. One of these was a painting by Friedrich von Nerly, seized from the German Embassy by the Sequestration Service in the immediate aftermath of WWII.

The Sequestration Service office seized and managed the property of enemy companies, governments, and individuals. Hundreds of works the Belgian government seized were subsequently auctioned off. However, there is no record that this painting was ever on the art market after WWII. Rather, it appears to have remained under the stewardship of the Government of Belgium since its seizure.

According to Belgium Federal Parliament’s curator, Sophie Wittemans, the painting “is no longer German property due to the forfeiture. But because the Chamber sets an example, we will return it to the museum at the end of this month.”

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3. Excavators race to save Gazan artifacts ahead of Israeli airstrike.

This week, officials raced to carry out a last-minute and high-risk operation to evacuate 30 years worth of archaeological finds from a storehouse in Gaza City that was under imminent threat of an Israeli airstrike.

This operation required the cooperation of France, UNESCO, and the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem to secure a short reprieve in order to evacuate materials. Given the limited resources and lack of infrastructure in Gaza after two years of war and genocide, this was no easy task.

The Gaza genocide has devastated Gaza’s museums and cultural heritage sites, which include UNESCO World Heritage Sites such as the Monastery of Saint Hilarion. The French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem’s (EBAF) storehouse is one of the last significant repositories of cultural objects left in Gaza. While participants could not save everything, their efforts preserved a significant amount of heritage that would otherwise be lost.

With the possibility of a ceasefire seeming farther and farther away, the future of Gaza’s cultural heritage remains in a precarious spot.

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4. “Jean-Pierre, we have a new Rubens!”

French auctioneer Jean-Pierre Osenat discovered a long-lost Peter Paul Rubens painting while preparing an estate sale in Paris last year.

The painting is a striking image of Jesus’ Crucifixion, painted by the Old Master in 1613. Since its discovery, German art historian Nils Büttner has authenticated the work, and X-ray imaging and pigment analysis have further solidified its authenticity.

The painting will be auctioned off on November 30.

A quick announcement:
The Weekly Roundup is moving to every other week during the semester.
As you know, I am a PhD student. I do not feel like I have the time or space to write this well if I am writing it every single week.

Thank you all for understanding, and please do drop a comment with your favorite of the above stories!

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For the past few weeks, the story of a Nazi-looted painting showing up in a real estate advertisement in Argentina has gripped the artsy side of the internet. In a delightfully swift turn of events, the descendants of Nazi officer Friedrich Kadgien handed the painting over to Argentine authorities this week and filed a petition to maintain ownership of the work.

Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker owned Portrait of a Lady by Giuseppe Ghislandi until his death in 1940 while fleeing the Nazis. This painting is one of over 1,000 works from his collection believed to have been looted by the Nazis, and Goudstikker’s heirs say they plan to reclaim the painting.

For more on this story, check out my Weekly Roundup from August 31, 2025.

2. Association for Research into Crimes Against Art uncovers another looted painting in Argentina.

After the Kadgien story broke, Lynda Albertson and Alice Bientinesi at the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA) began investigating the social media activity of Friedrich Kadgien’s heirs. In doing so, they believe they have uncovered additional Nazi loot in Argentina’s Museo de Arte Decorativo.

They believe that a painting shown in a Facebook photo published by Patricia Kadgien in 2011 is, in fact, Bloemstilleven (Flowers Still Life) by Abraham Mignon (1640–1679), a painting listed as missing by the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed.

This painting is now at the Museo de Arte Decorativo. After utilizing a digital overlay technique, Albertson and Bientinesi have little doubt that the painting in Patricia Kadgien’s Facebook photo is the same one in Museo de Arte Decorativo.

Additionally, when one compares a 2020 photograph of the ‘Ruysch-named’ painting at the museum with a lower-quality photo of the missing work, it is clear that they are the same painting.

This raises a number of important questions. If it is the same painting, how did the Museo de Arte Decorativo acquire it? How was its presence on the Netherlands’ list of missing works overlooked during the acquisition process? Does this point to a more systemic ignoring of Nazi-looted works in Argentina, where many Nazi officials settled after the war? Leave your thoughts in a comment below.

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3. Civil war in Sudan puts heritage at risk.

Since the civil war erupted in Sudan in 2023, cultural heritage institutions have been devastated. A new organization hopes to change that and shift the way international actors address heritage crimes.

Supported by ICCROM, UNESCO, and FAR (First Aid and Resilience for Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis), Ali Nour and other heritage professionals began organizing an emergency response to document, protect, and recover cultural heritage in Sudan. They called their project Blue Shield Sudan, now listed as a National Committee Under Construction by Blue Shield International.

Blue Shield Sudan is now calling for three urgent changes in the ways the international community addresses heritage crime:

1. Recognise cultural heritage professionals as frontline responders. They must be granted protective status under humanitarian law, entitled to safe corridors, security guarantees, and inclusion in emergency response protocols.

2. Embed rapid-response funds within national heritage institutions. Small, immediately accessible grants can determine whether a collection is packed or left behind. Timing is everything.

3. Centre local actors in every decision. Global plans fail without local knowledge. Those who know the terrain, the languages, the risks—and who have something to lose—must lead safeguarding efforts.

As Nour points out in her piece, heritage emergencies require an immediate response to prevent the irreparable loss of material heritage. If not addressed, the slow speed at which bureaucracies move will continue to rob the Sudanese people of their rich and ancient heritage.

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4. Former start of BBC’s Bargain Hunt

After Bonhams pulled a Roman bust from auction due to its ties with convicted antiquities trafficker Gianfranco Becchina, auctioneer and TV personality Tim Wonnacott is under fire for promoting its sale at another auction house.

Having appeared on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, Antiques Road Trip, and Bargain Hunt, as well as a stint as director of Sotheby’s, Tim Wonnacott is a well-known British auctioneer. As such, Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis thinks he should know better than to promote looted antiquities. Tsirogiannis has argued that the Roman bust of Emperor Hadrian was likely trafficked by Gianfranco Becchina and should be removed from auction.

The evidence he has put forth relies on the archives of Becchina that are not publicly available, and raises interesting provenance questions. What level of due-diligence is expected when incriminating evidence is difficult to find? Should we rely on mediators such as Tsirogiannis, or should we push for the digitization of these and similar archives?

To learn more about Becchina’s prolific trafficking, see Watson Peter, and Todeschini, Cecilia (2007), The Medici Conspiracy (New York: Public Affairs).

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5. Critics question the Manhattan D.A.’s aggressive approach to antiquities trafficking.

This one is less about a case and more a question: what is the just way to go about repatriation?

Since 2017, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit at the Manhattan D.A.’s Office has seized over 6,000 artifacts from collectors and institutions in the Northeast. Critics now argue that this could have negative ramifications for the art market in New York and deserves further scrutiny.

What are your thoughts on this article? Drop a comment below!

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Historic event or heritage crime? After the announcement that France will loan the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum in 2026, French historian Didier Rykner started a petition to stop the loan. So far, over 66,000 people have signed.

Rykner argues that any transportation of the tapestry risks “catastrophic damage” to the fragile 11th-century textile. Its fabric is weakened due to its current display being suspended from a rail rather than laying down on a flat surface. There are thousands of weak spots, made further vulnerable by the removal of the tapestry’s stabilizing lining in preparation for its storage while the museum undergoes renovations. A full restoration was planned for the tapestry prior to the museum’s reopening, and conservators are now voicing their dismay at the possibility of moving the tapestry while it is in such a state.

Even the president’s advisor for the project, Philippe Bélaval, stated that the tapestry is “untransportable”, yet the current government of France decided otherwise. In response to the government’s dismissal of experts concerned about the loan, Rykner said, “any artwork is transportable. The question is, in what condition will it arrive?”

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2. Trafficker foiled at JFK in 2019 goes to prison.

Five years ago, Ashraf Omar Eldarir attempted to smuggle over 500 Egyptian artifacts into the United States through John F. Kennedy Airport. This week, he was sentenced to six months in prison by American courts.

These objects included a Roman limestone relief (left) that later sold for $1,200, a terracotta figurine of Isis Aphrodite (middle), and an ancient polychrome fragment (right).

The US Attorney’s Office described Eldarir as a “prolific trafficker.” While attempting to smuggle these artifacts through customs, federal agents discovered a trove of evidence corroborating this statement. In addition to the artifacts themselves, Eldarir had with him supplies to forge customs documents. This included a trove of Egyptian government stamps from various periods in history, decades old Egyptian paper, and black-and-white photographs purporting to prove that the objects were excavated decades ago, and therefore legal to import and sell.

For years, Eldarir forged provenance documents and claimed that his grandfather left him a large collection of antiquities that had been removed from Egypt prior to 1948. If this claim were true, it would be legal to import the artifacts to the United States and sell them. However, the totality of the evidence points to a darker picture. For decades, Eldarir has been illegally excavating objects, or purchasing illegally excavated objects, and laundering them abroad with forged provenance documents in order to sell them for an exorbitant profit.

While brief, officials hope that his prison sentence will dissuade other traffickers.

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3. Nazi-looted painting spotted in Argentina disappears.

A realtor in Argentina accidentally featured a Nazi-looted painting by Giuseppe Ghislandi in their advertisement.

Portrait of a Lady by Giuseppe Ghislandi (also known as Fra Galgario) was owned by Jewish collector Jacques Goudstikker who died while fleeing Nazi persecution in 1940. His family later sold his collection of Old Masters paintings under duress and fled to the United States. Portrait of a Lady ended up in the possession of SS Officer Friedrich Kadgien, who eventually settled in Argentina after World War II. This painting was subsequently listed on the Lost Art Database, and had been missing for over 70 years.

This week, a relator working for the daughters of Friedrich Kadgien posted an advertisement for their home that featured this painting. A Dutch newspaper, Algemeen Dagblad, reported on the advertisement and attempted to contact the family. The family denied that they owned this painting, and the realtor quickly deleted the advertisement. As of August 31, the painting has not been recovered, but Argentinian officials announced that they will continue searching for it.

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4. France returns colonial-era human remains to Madagascar.

French colonial forces killed King Toera of Madagascar in 1897 and brought his remains along with the remains of others back to France. The skulls of these human beings were displayed at Paris’s National Museum of Natural History. In a bid to right historic wrongs, France is returning the remains.

France’s Culture Minister Rachida Dati described the presence of these remains in France as the result of “circumstances that clearly violated human dignity and in a context of colonial violence.” On August 26, they remains returned home.

This is one of the first restitutions since France introduced a bill meant to accelerate the return of objects and human beings removed due to “illicit appropriation” between 1815 and 1972. This is in line with French President Emmanuel Macron’s broader attempts to address the lasting damage caused to African nations due to French colonialism.

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5. Trump meets with Smithsonian leadership after threats of content review.

The Trump administration is continuing their attacks on the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC. Last week, the White House appeared to denounce a number of works by simply listing and describing them in an article titled, President Trump is Right about the Smithsonian. Among these works are paintings and sculptures that have never been displayed at a Smithsonian museum. Previously, the White House also issued an executive order targeting federal museums for promulgating “a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth” and calling on the Smithsonian to abandon its “divisive, race-centered ideology.”

This week, President Trump had lunch with the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Lonnie G. Bunch III. In spite of previous attacks on Bunch himself, along with other Smithsonian officials, this open channel of communication could signal a softening of the administration’s stance toward federal museums.

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That last topic is much larger than the Weekly Roundup can cover. The Trump Administration’s continued attacks on museums has the power to radically change our national museums for the worse. I struggle to offer constructive feedback as to what museum officials can do to resist this administration. What would you do in Bunch’s position? Leave a comment below.

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1. Germany returns Nazi-looted work by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller.

Germany has returned an oil painting by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller to the heirs of Jewish entrepreneur Greta Klein. The Klein family fled Vienna for Palestine in 1938 due to Nazi persecution and this painting along with the family’s villa and remaining art collection were seized by the Nazis. The Nazis marked the painting in question, Hansl's erste Ausfahrt (Hansel's First Journey), for the Führermuseum in Linz.

After WWII, Ttis painting entered Germany’s national collection. While experts estimate that over 200,000 works looted by the Nazis in Germany before and during WWII remain missing, the German government has restituted less than 100 since the 1998 Washington Principles.

2. The Antiquities Coalition adds Ukranian antiquity to their “Ten Most Wanted Antiquities” list.

The Antiquities Coalition has added the Mariupol Bull Figurine to their “Ten Most Wanted Antiquities” list. Settlers near the Azov Sea carved this figurine from animal bone around 6000 BCE, and it was likely used in a ritual context or as a children’s toy.

The Mariupol Bull Figurine’s precise location is unknown, but it has appeared in photographs in a Russian museum exhibition depicting the Azov region as historically Russian. This raises concerns that this object and others are being used as propaganda to justify Russia’s territorial claims.

While the number of cultural institutions the Russian Army has looted increased significantly after the full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been systematically looting Ukrainian cultural heritage since they invaded Crimea in 2014. Since then, over 1.7 million objects have been lost as Russia seeks to justify their territorial expansion by destroying Ukrainian cultural identity, and profit off of this destruction by selling antiquities on the black market.

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3. Antonio Solario’s Madonna and Child returns to Italy.

In 1973, a thief broke into the Civic Museum of Belluno and stole half a dozen works. Among these was Antonio Solario’s Madonna and Child, which Baroness Barbara de Dozsa acquired from her ex-husband upon his death. Baron de Dozsa purchased the painting shortly after this theft in 1973. It’s whereabouts were unknown until Baroness de Dozsa attempted the sell the painting in 2017.

A researcher flagged the work as listed in the Italian Carabinieri’s database of stolen artworks, setting off a years long battle to return the painting. UK Police were hesitant to seize the work, so the founder and CEO of Art Recovery International, Christopher Marinello, stepped in to negotiate a civil resolution. Eventually, he convinced Baroness de Dozsa that the work was a legal liability, and she agreed to return the painting. The Civic Museum of Belluno displayed the painting from July 21–27 alongside two other paintings, both Madonnas by Bartolomeo Montagna, that were also stolen in 1973. It is now undergoing restoration and will remain in the museum’s permanent collection moving forward.

4. Manhattan D.A.’s Office repatriates a 17th-century manuscript to Hungary.

Austrian Jesuit Zacharias Traber (1611–1678) published his manuscript Nervus Opticus Sive Tractatus Theoricus in Tres Libros (The Optic Nerve, or a Theoretical Treatise in Three Books) in 1675. The copy in question was illicitly removed from Eötvös József Collegium’s library in Budapest during WWII, where it is now set to return. This copy is one of the precious few surviving examples dedicated to Archbishop György Szelepcsényi (1595–1695).

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Multispectral imaging confirmed that a stamp of Eötvös József Collegium was deliberately removed from the codex, securing the identity of this manuscript as the one lost during the war. On July 23, 2025 the Manhattan D.A.’s Office returned the manuscript to Hungarian authorities.

5. Manhattan D.A.’s Office returns Visigoth Pendants to Spain.

The Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU) in Manhattan continues to make headlines this summer with the repatriation of two sixth-century Visigoth pendants.

The MET purchased these objects from known trafficker, Robin Symes, in 1990. Earlier this year, the ATU seized these two pendents from the MET and on July 24, 2025 the Manhattan D.A.’s Office announced the repatriation of both pendants to Spain.

6. Sotheby’s returns the Piprahwa Gems to India.

After public outcry, Sotheby’s agreed to return the Piprahwa Gems to India. One of the “most astonishing finds of the modern era,” this collection of gems contains over 1,800 pearls, rubies, sapphires, and patterned gold sheets.

Englishman William Claxton Peppé unearthed the gems from a colonial estate in northern India in 1898. Buried alongside the gems were bone fragments and an inscribed urn linking the fragments to the Buddha himself. Peppé eventually handed most of the find off to the colonial government, but the kept soe of the gems. They remained in the family’s possession for over 100 years. After Sotheby’s Hong Kong announced their intent to sell the gems in May of 2025, Buddhist leaders and Indian officials protested to halt the sale. In July 2025, Sotheby’s cancelled their sale and agreed to return the gems to India.

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7. Loon Dancing Hat returned to the Kitikmeot region of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.

Canadian company Imperial Oil returned a 100-year-old dancing hat to the indigenous people of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. Made with caribou hide, sinew, loon feathers and a loon beak, this hat was used in the Akkuarmiujut freestyle dance, which elders in the community remember their fathers and grandfathers participating in.

Imperial Oil currently owns an undisclosed number of indigenous objects. It is unknown how Imperial Oil acquired this hat, but for the last year they have been working with the Calgary's Glenbow Museum to return indigenous objects to their communities. On Wednesday, Aug. 6, a repatriation ceremony was held at Luke Novoligak Community Hall.

8. Apollo Auctions sells Guennol Grasshopper for £340,000.

Created with wood and ivory around 1350 - 1340 BCE, the Guennol Grasshopper is an ancient cosmetic container with a contested provenance history.

Alastair Bradley Martin (Gwennol being Welsh for Martin) acquired this object from New York dealer Joseph Brummer sometime in the 1940s. Brummer acquired it from Egyptian dealer Maurice Nahman, who bought it from Howard Carter. Accorder to Brummer’s records, this object was originally found in the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Controversy around Carter’s illicit removal of objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun has long been an “open secret” among Egyptologists and collectors. Museums such as the MET have moved to return objects taken by Carter. In recent years, an increasing awareness of provenance and the ethical stewardship of antiquities has shifted the tide away from purchasing or displaying objects with potentially illicit histories. When asked by Apollo Magazine about the provenance of this object, Apollo Auctions said they conducted “extensive due diligence before listing the piece for auction and received a certificate of clearance confirming that the item had not been stolen or looted.” Yet they also listed the object as potentially originating from the tomb of Tutankhamun, and once belonging to Howard Carter.

It is unclear who purchased this object, but on July 27 it sold for £340,000.

9. Bishop Museum begins phased return of over 10,000 objects to the Mariana Islands.

The board of the Bishop Museum in Hawai’i unanimously voted to deaccession and return over 10,000 objects to the Mariana Islands. These objects were acquired both licitly and illicitly by Hans Hornbostel between 1920–1927, and were previously part of their permanent Cultural Resources collection.

These objects include Latte Stones, or guma’ latte, which were indigenous home structures often build atop the graves of elders, which remain an important marker of CHamoru identity to this day.

Aug. 9, 2025 marks the beginning of a phased return of these objects. Indigenous leaders have labeled this an act of “rematriation” rather than repatriation. While repatriation is the return of physical objects to communities, rematriation focuses on “restoring Indigenous peoples’ relationships with their ancestral lands and cultures” and represents a meaningful restoration to wronged communities that supports cultural continuity.

10. First-century marble bust of Alexander the Great returned to Italy.

The Manhattan D.A.’s Office announced the return of 31 objects to Italy on Aug. 5, 2025. Included in these objects was a first-century marble bust of Alexander the Great.

This bust was excavated in the early 20th Century and originally housed at the Antiquarium Forense Museum. At some point prior to 1974 it was stolen and subsequently laundered through multiple individuals and institutions in New York before Safani Gallery purchased it in 2017. After the Safani Gallery included the bust in an advertisement for a 2018 art fair, someone tipped off Italian and American authorities of its illicit past. The Manhattan D.A.’s Office seized the sculpture in 2018, kicking off a seven year legal battle in which Safani Gallery argued they should receive compensation for the bust because they purchased it in “good faith.” Ultimately their claim was denied and the bust was repatriated to Italy on Aug. 5, 2025.

There were many more than 10 stories I could have included in this week’s Roundup. If I missed something interesting, please drop it in the comments! Also, what do you think about the differentiation of repatriation and rematriation?

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While stationed in Naples during WWII a Nazi officer acquired a stunning Roman mosaic. It is unknown whether the officer stole the piece himself or purchased it from someone else, but he was the conduit that brought a Pompeiian artifact to Germany for almost 80 years. The travertine (or limestone) tile depicts a pair of lovers, with a Roman soldier reclining and reaching his arm out to a nude woman facing away from the viewer. Scholars believe it decorated the floor of a bedroom in Roman Pomeii and dates between 100BCE–79CE—the terminus ante quem being the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

The Nazi officer gifted the mosaic tile to an unnamed German citizen during the war. After this person passed away, their heirs contacted the Italian Police with the hopes of repatriating it. Provenance research subsequently confirmed the mosaic originated in Pompeii, and it was repatriated to Italy in 2023. Officials kept the mosaic at the Pompeii Antiquarium for a year and a half for further study and conservation. This week, it returned to the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

The director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park said in a statement that, “Every looted artifact that returns is a wound that heals.” and thanked the Italian authorities for their cooperation.

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2. Cleveland Museum returns Roman Bronze to Turkey.

This week, the Cleveland Museum returned a Roman bronze statue to Turkey. This statue was looted from the ancient city of Bubon in the 1960s, and then smuggled into Switzerland by the notorious trafficker Robert Hecht. In 1978, Turkish archaeologist Jale Inan matched the statue to a base in Bubon and published her findings. While the base she initially identified was incorrect, the subsequent press and uncertainty around the statue’s provenance made it difficult to sell. In a shocking move, the Cleveland Museum of Art purchased it in 1986 and made no effort to obscure its illicit provenance, listing its provenience as ancient Bubon.

In 2009, the Turkish Government requested additional provenance information on the statue, and in 2012 they formally requested its repatriation. The museum resisted, even suing the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office after they seized ownership of the statue in 2023—though the statue remained on display during the adjudication of this lawsuit. After conducting lead isotope analyses on soil found on the statue and in Bubon, along with 3D analysis of the shape of the statue’s feet in comparison to a base, researchers definitively identified this sculpture as having originated in Bubon. While the museum agreed to return the sculpture to Turkey in February, it was not until this week they removed it from public view to begin its physical return.

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3. Smaller museums in Saxony uncover Nazi loot in their collections.

Smaller museums are not immune from the horrors of Nazi looting. While they often lack the funds to purchase flashier works of art or the most renowned antiquities, new research suggests they too hold Nazi-looted materials. Funding through the German Lost Art Foundation and supported by provenance researchers from the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD) has uncovered the presence of Nazi-looted art within smaller collections in Saxony. So far, they have found materials they suspect were looted in two of six museums this funding supports.

These objects include fragments of Hebrew manuscripts at Mylau Castle Museum, likely looted from eastern European Jewish communities, and a company sign from the Jewish Ringer family at the Werdau Town and Steam Engine Museum. This company was looted during Kristallnacht, and the sign is one of the last remaining physical testimonies to its existence. Researchers have since reacher out to the Ringer family heirs.

This research represents preliminary findings, and is set to continue until the totality of the six participating museum collections are examined.

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4. For the first time in nearly 1000 years, the Bayeux Tapestry will go on display in England.

As part of a cultural exchange between England and France, the Bayeux Tapestry will be loaned to the British Museum in 2026. In 70 meters of linen cloth and wool thread, the Bayeux Tapestry showcases William the Conqueror’s conquest of England in 1066.

The Tapestry has an astonishing provenance narrative. It was likely commissioned in 1077 by William the Conqueror’s half-brother, Bishop Odo, to decorate the cathedral of Bayeux. We can be relatively certain it remained there for hundreds of years because a 1476 inventory of the cathedral Treasury lists the tapestry in its collection on artifacts. No other document mentions it again until the 18th century when the Arts Commission for the Bayeux district seized the tapestry in 1794 in order to protect it during the French Revolution.

While Napoleon prepared to invade England in 1803–4, the tapestry was displayed at the Napoleon Museum and then the Louvre. While the invasion never occurred, scholars theorize Napoleon sought to use the tapestry as propaganda to rally French citizens with the historic tale of the last time France conquered England. For the rest of the 19th century, it was kept at Bayeux’ city hall and displayed to the public each September.

As with many famous works, the Nazis took a keen interest in the Bayeux Tapestry. From 1938–1940, the tapestry was hidden in Hotel du Doyen. Despite France’s best efforts, the Nazis began Sonderauftrag Bayeux (Special Project Bayeux) shortly after conquering France in 1940. The goal of this project was to prove the Normans who conquered England were actually Vikings, and thus, Germanic. SS officer and textile expert Karl Schlabow was tasked with conducting the initial research for Das Ahnenerbe, the Society for the Study of Ancestral Heritage, but Germany lost the war before this project was complete.

In March of 2025, the Schleswig-Holstein State Archive announced that they recovered a fragment of the Bayeux Tapestry in the papers of Karl Schlabow and returned it to France. Upon the Bayeux Museum’s reopening in 2027, it will be reunited with the tapestry.

After WWII, the Bayeux Tapestry went on display in Hotel du Doyen. It was then moved to the former seminary of Bayeux in 1983, now the Bayeux Museum, where it is housed today. In September 2025, the museum will close for renovations until 2027 and the tapestry will be displayed in England.

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5. UPDATE: Martian Meteorite sells for a record $5.3 million at Sotheby’s New York.

In last week’s Weekly Roundup, I reported on Sotheby’s New York auctioning the largest known Martian meteorite on earth, NWA 16788. The meteorite was expected to sell for between $2 and $4 million, but after a 15 minute bidding war it sold for a record $5.3 million to an anonymous buyer.

Critics worry the sale of NWA 16788 will render it inaccessible to scientists and the public. It is unclear whether the buyer plans to loan or gift it to an institution for public display, or allow researchers’ access.

Final Thoughts

Increasing access to archives and the death of private collectors continues to uncover unknown or lost art and artifacts. Shifting cultures both inside and beyond the museum have helped increase the rate of return for these objects. However, museums continue to resist this shift through obfuscation and litigation. How do you think the museum world can combat this? Is the answer simply more stringent acquisition policies? Or should museums adhere to more specific policies around the return of unprovenanced art and artifacts? Perhaps the American Alliance of Museums and similar organizations have a larger role to play…

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With only a nose sculpted on the center vertical, their faces were smooth and elongated and many figurines stood with their arms crossed in front of them. The human form, reduced to its most essential parts carved with simple but precise craftsmanship. In antiquity they were painted and buried with people in graves. Today, they are bare and superterranean.

Getz-Gentle snapped photos and pressed Koutoulakis on the provenance of his stock. Some, he said, came from the island of Keros. In time, this assemblage would be known as the Keros Hoard, and Koutoulakis and other dealers would distribute it to collectors and museums around the world. Getz-Gentle’s photographs would later be used to identify objects from this hoard in part because Koutoulakis’s ties to the illicit antiquities trade led some to obscure the provenance of objects that passed through his hands.

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The 1950s–60s were calamitous years for Cycladic art. The first explorers to return to mainland Europe with Cycladic figurines in the nineteenth century categorized them as “primitive” due their abstracting proportions and divergence from classical ideals.1 In the Twentieth Century, “primitive” art influenced modern artists such as Arp, Brâncuși, Modigliani and Picasso. These artists sought to distance their styles from the conventional realism of the western canon in favor of abstraction and surrealist distortions. While scholars have thoroughly explored the influence of African art—also labeled as “primitive”—on modernist figures, the influence of Cycladic art is less studied. As the esteem for these artists grew, so did the demand for ancient works within the same aesthetic framework.

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This shift in aesthetic preferences in “market-countries” such as America, France, and Germany was one of a few historic coincidences that came together to wreak havoc on Cycladic art. Prior to the 1970 UNESCO Convention, there were no international agreements concerning the international trade of antiquities during peacetime.2 This, combined with the end of Greece’s civil war, their entrance into NATO, and a lack of domestic archaeological infrastructure made looting both easy and profitable. The very market countries driving the demand for Cycladic sculpture were now formal economic allies with Greece. These conditions contributed to the widespread looting of Cycladic art in the 50s and 60s, which Archaeologist Christos Doumas recalled in a 1993 episode of For Love or Money:

On moonlight nights they were digging everywhere, and so I was running behind to rescue what I could. There must be hundreds of cemeteries from the late 1950s, early 1960s onwards and some of them, they have been totally ruined. We don't know any existing cemetery that has not been touched

Today, scholars see the consequences of this looting in the provenance narratives of Cycladic art in museums worldwide. A minority of Cycladic sculptures in museums have a verifiable provenience, or find-spot, such as a documented excavation. Some provenance narratives claim an island of origin. These read, “perhaps from Keros” or “said to be from Naxos,” indicating a word-of-mouth transmission of information that did not come from a licit archaeological dig. Prior to the 1960s, there were fewer than 10 legitimate and documented excavations in the Cyclades. Yet there are thousands of Cycladic objects in museums and collections worldwide that cannot be traced back to these excavations. Often, their provenance narratives claim they (conveniently) left Greece during or prior to the 1960s, landing in private collections in Switzerland or America before being sold to museums. These claims are difficult to verify without documentation, and an unverified pre-1970 provenance outside of Greece should be viewed with suspicion.

If these objects end up in museums rather than private collections, why does the provenience matter? The former director of the MET from 1977–2008 Phillipe de Montebello did not think it mattered. In response to criticism over the MET’s handling of the Euphronios krater he told the New York Times, “Ninety-eight percent of everything we know about antiquity we know from objects that were not out of digs. How much more would you learn from knowing which particular hole [it] came out of? Everything is on the vase.”

But is everything on the vase? As an historian of antiquity, de Montebello’s claim reads as laughably ahistorical, reductionist, and just plain wrong. Knowledge of the assemblage of objects something is found with can tell us just as much, if not more, than the object itself. In the case of the Euphronios krater, was it found with a set of vessels? Were these vessels made by the same artists? If it was in a grave, whose grave? What other graves were near it? Were there frescoes on the walls and were they related to the art on the vase? The questions could go on, but you get the point. Modern humans can never fully know the world of the people who created and used antiquities, but we can know significantly more about these worlds when we know the archaeological context of an antiquity.

This problem of collectors—and even renowned museum professionals—valuing these objects as exalted works of art, rather than archaeological objects with specific functions in a particular culture, has harmed our knowledge of Cycladic society. When one encounters an unprovenanced Cycladic sculpture in isolation, there are a plethora of questions that scholars can simply never know the answers to. Where was it found? Both which island, and in what context? If it was in a cemetery, whose tomb was it in? Can we ascertain the date of this tomb? Were there other sculptures in the same tomb, or nearby tombs? Were these sculptures similar or different? Were there other grave goods? The answers to these questions could offer us significant insight. Yet this and other knowledge rooted in archaeological context is permanently lost.

The rampant looting during the mid-twentieth century was not the only thing disrupting scholarship concerning the Cyclades. The growing demand for a particular kind of antiquity incentivizes forgeries. There is an inelastic number of Cycladic sculptures that survived to the present day, and for some creating forgeries is easier than looting antiquities. While archaeologists and looters may continue to discover more sculptures, they will eventually run out of surviving antiquities. Forgers, however, can always create more.

Unlike looting, which leads to a loss of knowledge, the presence of forgeries corrupts knowledge by distorting our evidence of the past. While scholars know some Cycladic sculptures are forgeries, there is no agreed upon estimate of the total number of forgeries in the corpus of known Cycladic sculpture. This makes it increasingly difficult to draw conclusions based on the objects alone, as any chronology or typology of the sculptures could be based on modern inventions.

This makes comprehensive studies of Cycladic sculpture difficult. Recent studies have attempted to propose chronologies and typologies based on the limited number of sculptures they can authentic, including a large number of recently excavated pieces, but this remains a subset of the larger canon of Cycladic sculpture. In spite of the limited data, these works have radically expanded our understanding of Cycladic society and highlight the importance of context for interpreting archaeological finds and understanding history.

The shifting of aesthetic trends, increasing awareness around cultural heritage, international cooperation, and the proliferation of domestic laws protecting heritage in source countries have all contributed to a decline in the looting of Cycladic sculpture. However, the problem will persist as long as auction houses continue to sell, collectors continue to buy, and museums continue to exhibit unprovenanced objects.

Partner at Mendelssohn Bank and instrument collector Franz von Mendelssohn entered one of his prize pieces, a 1709 Stradivarius violin, into storage at the Mendelssohn bank before his death in 1935. It disappeared after WWII. After being lost for 70 years, it reappeared in Tokyo.

When the Nazis liquidated the Mendelssohn Bank in 1938, the violin was acquired by Deutsche Bank and moved to a storage unit there. Soviets then took control of the bank after the Nazi’s fell in 1945. It is unclear whether the violin disappeared before of after Soviet occupation, but Franz von Mendelssohn’s heirs have sought its recovery and return ever since.

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An affiliate of the Lost Music Project Carla Shapreau noticed a strikingly similar violin in a 2018 exhibition of Stradivarius instruments at the Mori Arts Center Gallery in Tokyo. While its creation date is listed as 1707 rather than 1709, the identical wear and tear on the back of the instrument led Shapreau to believe it is the lost Stradivarius. After inquiring with its current owner Eijin Nimura about the identification of the instrument, their attorney denied that this violin was the missing Stradivarius.

According to Nimura, its provenance was described as “in the possession of a noble family which has been living in Holland since the times of the French Revolution.” This could not be independently verified. There is no evidence to suggest Nimura was aware of the illegitimacy of this provenance, and it is unclear when and by whom this provenance entry entered into the record.

David Rosenthal is the current representative of the Mendelssohn heirs. In response to Rosenthal’s inquiries, Nimura’s attorney said that his messages were “causing tremendous distress and anguish to Mr. Nimura and his rights and well-being” and described the inquiries as harassment.

It is unclear if the parties will come to a private agreement or attempt resolve the issue through legal channels. Japan lacks WWII-specific heritage laws, but Mendelssohn heirs still have hope they can recover the instrument.

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2. “Art Detective” Arthur Brand recovers documents stolen in 2015.

An employee of the Netherlands’ National Archive in the Hague stole 25 historic documents in 2015, some of which are listed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. These include early documents from the Dutch East India Company, a 15th-century letter from a knight, and French imperial court negotiations. Recently, the documents were rediscovered by a good samaritan while cleaning out an in an elderly relative’s attic.

After discovering the documents, the finder reached out to Arthur Brand with photos of the documents. Brand is known for a series of high profile recoveries including Van Gogh and Picasso paintings. He quickly realized the significance of this find, took possession of the archives, and returned them to the proper owners, Netherlands’ National Archive.

The Netherlands’ National Archive revealed that they thought the documents could have been misplaced. The sheer number of documents within the archives make it impossible to label and track each one. With the discovery of these documents in an elderly person’s attic and their subsequent return to Amsterdam police, it is now clear they were removed intentionally.

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3. Largest known Martian Meteorite goes to auction at Sotheby’s.

A 54lb Martian meteorite, believed to be the largest on earth, will be auctioned at Sotheby’s New York on July 16. Marketed as the “most valuable meteorite ever offered at auction,” NWA 16788 was found in Niger in November 2023. This meteorite alone makes up 6.5% of all martian material on earth.

NWA 16788 is on view at Sotheby’s until July 16, and expected to sell for more than $2 million.

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4. Manhattan D.A.’s Office returns 31 antiquities to Indonesia and Turkey.

Earlier this month, D.A. Bragg announced the return of three objects to Indonesia and 28 object to the Republic of Turkey. This repatriation is the result of an ongoing investigation into an international trafficking ring involving Subhash Kapoor and Robin Symes.

The Turkish objects include a Silver Oinochoe and Silver Phiale from the so-called “Lydian Hoard.” This grouping comprises of over 350 objects of gold and silver dating to around 600BCE. They were looted from western Turkey in the 1960s, and these two objects were laundered into the open market before being sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in 1980.

The Indonesian objects are a War Shield from the Asmat people of South Papua, a Klebit Bok (shield) made by the Kayan Dayak people, and a Tunggal Panaluan ceremonial staff from the Batak people.

While the handover ceremony has occurred, the objects have not yet returned to Indonesia. According to a counselor at the Directorate of American Affairs I at the Foreign Ministry of Indonesia, they will return at the “right time.”

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5. American couple could face charges in France over gold stolen from 18th-century shipwreck.

Le Prince de Conty was a French trading ship that sunk off of the northern French coast in 1746. It was rediscovered by archaeologists in 1974 and in 1975 divers descended on the shipwreck and looted its gold ingot and Chinese porcelain pottery. Now, an American couple is under scrutiny for their role in the trafficking and attempted sale of these looted materials.

After gold bars from Le Prince de Conty showed up in a 2018 auction in San Francisco, the head of France's underwater archaeology department, Michel L'Hour, spotted them and alerted US authorities. Law enforcement then seized the objects and ultimately returned them to France in 2022.

Eleonor "Gay" Courter, 80, and her husband Phillip, 82, are accused of aiding the original looters in the illegal sale of these gold bars. Prosecutors in France have requested the American couple be tried for their crimes, and an investigating magistrate must now decide whether to take the case to trial. If the French decide to move forward, a trial is expected in the fall of 2026.

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In 2020, the library of Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main began a project to uncover which books in their collection were looted or otherwise unlawfully confiscated by the Nazis. This week, they announced the findings for the first phase of this project. Funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, this project was only scheduled for two years. The discovery of an “alarming” number of looted books, as much as 10% of their holdings, caused them to extend the research into 2025. The second phase of this project will focus on finding just and fair solutions for restitution or repatriation. The presidents of Goethe University Frankfurt, Professor Enrico Schleiff, stated that the university launched this project as an effort to own-up to the institution’s role in historic injustices, and begin to make amends.

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The implementation of laws and regulations around Nazi-looted heritage has focused on works of art, and the staggering number of books and manuscripts looted by the regime remain understudies. This project showcases why a turn toward the Nazi looting of libraries is necessary and urgent.

2. David W. J. Gill’s review of the Leonard N. Stern Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) questions the legitimacy of pieces lacking provenance.

David W. J. Gill highlights the problem of provenance in the long term loan of the Leonard N. Stern Collection of Cycladic Art to MET in his recent review of the exhibition.

This collection has a complicated and disjointed history, culminating in an unprecidented international agreement. Stern approached the MET about donating his collection in 2020, and the MET subsequently inquired with the Greek Ministry of Culture as to whether they were aware of the collections existence. It appears they were not, as they immediately began negotiations before coming to a novel and complicated agreement with the MET. It was agreed upon that the ownership of the objects would pass to the Greek state, in accordance with their cultural patrimony laws. The majority of the collection would be given on long-term loan to the MET, with a subset of artifacts returning to Greece immediately, and objects returning to Greece temporarily every 10 years for exhibitions. At the end of these 25 years, Greece can either renew the loan or bring the entire collection home.

Much of the collection originated in well-documented American and Swiss collections, but some pieces passed through the hands of known traffickers such as Robin Symes, Frieda Tchacos, and Michael Ward.1 In his review, Gill highlights the lack of a reliable provenience (find-spots) for 55% of the collection. This increases the likelihood that these objects were removed from Greece illicitly, and opens up the possibility that some of the objects are modern forgeries introduced into the market at a later date. These issues, Gill states, should be openly discussed within the exhibition. Furthermore, the author points out that this lack of provenience hinders the scholar’s ability to garner knowledge from the objects, and exhibiting them in an institution as renowned as the MET further incentives the looting that likely brought some of these objects to Stern.

This review raises important questions about the stewardship of historic collections with troubled histories. How culpable are collectors for the looting of archaeological heritage? Could this agreement be a model for the stewardship of future collections with troubled pasts? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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3. A nominee for UNESCO’s World Heritage List under threat by nearby development.

The Murujuga Rock Art gallery in Western Australia is home to over a million marni, or aboriginal petroglyphs, depicting humans and animals—including the extinct Tasmanian Tiger.

After its formal nomination to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023, UNESCO drafted a decision that would require Australia to increase their protective measures at the site. In 2025, the Federal Environment Minister of Australia approved the extension of Australia’s largest gas project until 2070. As recently as 2020, the same Minister approved the destruction of aboriginal caves in Juukan Gorge, drawing international ire. Critics worry that the Murujuga Rock Art gallery could face the same fate. Indeed, reports suggest exposure to emissions has already damaged the site.

4. The Museum of Rescued Art (Museo dell'Arte Salvata) reopens in Rome.

The Museum of Rescued Art first opened in 2022 as a space to display looted art and antiquities recovered by Italian authorities. After closing for several years during an urban redevelopment project, it reopened on June 26 in the Octagonal Hall of Rome’s Diocletian Baths. According to Italy’s director of the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage and Landscape Luigi La Rocca, this museum exists to return these works to the public, and provide an “active platform for restitution and knowledge.”

5. Researchers call for increased protections of indigenous heritage sites in coastal regions.

As part of a broader study on protecting coastal landscapes from the impacts of climate change, researchers at Florida State University found that the most effective methods involve managing natural heritage and cultural heritage together. Many indigenous sites are tied to the coastal region, yet are often left out of the planning and funding decisions around coastal landscapes. In Florida’s Big Bend region, 142 mound and midden sites are endangered by rising sea levels, and 11 are already submerged. Without an integrated approach to coastal landscape management, FSU researchers argue that we will continue to lose these heritage sites and further harm “biodiversity, local resilience and cultural sovereignty.”

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Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkish-backed “Syrian National Army” (SNA) took the international community—and many Syrians—by surprise in December 2024 when they launched a shockingly effective assault that toppled the Assad regime. This brought an end to a protracted civil war that had devastated the people, cities, and heritage of Syria.

Conflict is cyclical, and it is difficult to determine whether Syria has truly entered a period of peace. As others with more expertise than I have pointed out, this will depend on a multitude of factors: the decisions of the current government, the reliability of sanctions relief, international support, and more.

What I hope to address here is the future of Syria’s cultural heritage. Many would scoff at such a statement: How can you worry about things when there are people in need? But this is a false dichotomy.

The Syrian people are the primary stakeholders in their heritage, and there cannot be a sustained and resilient heritage sector separate from the people themselves. There is a shallow way to read this statement: that Syrian cultural heritage wouldn’t exist without the people who have lived there in the past and live there today, but I mean something more. Cultural heritage is about more than the warm, fuzzy feelings of tradition and belonging. In the right hands, it can serve as a foundation for community building and belonging, and as a pathway to social and political opportunity that contributes to a more resilient and just Syria. I am of the opinion it should play a central role in reviving life and livelihoods in devastated areas by reconnecting people to the crafts and traditions of their heritage through economic and social opportunity.

This is not a new idea. NGOs adopted this approach in Syria during the Civil War. For example, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) organized a multi-year stonemasonry training program. Due to the Assad regime, the program operated largely in Jordan and Lebanon, within Syrian refugee communities. With multifaceted goals, it built professional capacities within the Syrian diaspora. Graduates of the program acquired the skills necessary to reconstruct monumental heritage, as well as bombed-out homes and shops. Some became instructors themselves, training the next generation of stonemasons, while others opened their own shops selling carved objects such as bowls and decorative items. This program directly contributed to the economic development and prospects of its participants. This “capacity first” model highlights the intersection of heritage work and human development as mutually beneficial and interdependent endeavors within conflict zones.

I and other heritage professionals are not advocating to prioritize heritage over humans in Syria’s reconstruction, because they are not mutually exclusive goals, nor is this a zero-sum endeavor.

Of course, the term “reconstruction” is a misnomer as it implies that the conflict is over, rather than cyclical and multifarious. After Bashar al-Assad and his family fled to Moscow, Israel invaded the buffer zone in Syria adjacent to the occupied Golan Heights, and the U.S. bombed ISIS strongholds in central Syria. In March, Syrian forces massacred members of the Alawite minority, to which the Assad family belongs; a suicide bomber targeted a Greek Orthodox church near Damascus; and President Ahmed al-Sharaa filled the immediate caretaker government with members of his former rebel administration in Idlib, many of whom share his Islamist affiliations.

However, he has also signaled his desire to create a more inclusive Syria by creating a more diverse interim government, abandoning his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, and enshrining minority protections into the 2025 Interim Constitution of Syria.

Still, Kurdish Syrians protested the designation of Syria as an “Arab” republic and the use of Islamic law as the foundation for future Syrian legislation.

All of these developments underscore a central point: conflict does not end when war ends. It is multifaceted and cyclical, and must be constantly navigated. “Reconstruction” is not something that must wait until a conflict is definitively over. It, too, is an ongoing and cyclical process.

The Interim Government

It is difficult to know how the current Interim Government of Syria will approach the question of cultural heritage. President al-Sharaa has a violent history as the former leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist group previously affiliated with al-Qaeda, and many interim government officials are either former HTS members or have other Islamist ties. HTS and some of the other factions now represented in the interim government were involved in the destruction and looting of cultural heritage during the war. However, there was a notable shift in HTS’s policy toward cultural heritage following its break with al-Qaeda, and based on the group’s previous actions and evolving stance, we can begin to make a few cautious inferences about the direction the interim government might take.

In July 2016, Jabhat al-Nusra (an earlier iteration of HTS) announced its disengagement from al-Qaeda, rebranding first as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and later as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). This break marked a notable shift in the group’s actions and policies toward antiquities and archaeological sites. Prior to this disengagement, the group actively targeted heritage sites for destruction and profited from the looting and trafficking of antiquities. While their heritage crimes were not as systematic or widespread as ISIS’s institutionalized looting, Jabhat al-Nusra did implement a permitting system that allowed others to loot sites and generally failed to intervene when sites were looted or damaged. They also targeted so-called “heretical” heritage, such as the Armenian church in Deir ez-Zor in northeastern Syria, which was dedicated to the victims of the Armenian Genocide and was bombed by Jabhat al-Nusra in 2014. While still deeply damaging, the group’s approach to cultural heritage was comparatively less involved—described by some as “hands off”—especially in contrast to ISIS’s deliberate and large-scale heritage destruction.

This “hands-off” approach extended to activities related to cultural heritage protection. In some areas, local NGOs were able to implement heritage protection programs, such as the Mosaic Protection Project in Ma’arat al-Numan Museum and the restoration of damaged artifacts by the The Syrian Heritage Center in the same museum. International organizations supported local NGOs in both of these projects, which were permitted under the Jabhat al-Nusra government in 2014 and 2015.

After Jabhat al-Nusra’s disengagement from al-Qaeda and its rebranding as HTS, the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) was formed in 2017. The precise relationship between HTS and the SSG is unclear, but the SSG managed the civilian population in HTS-controlled territory. Some regard it as the civilian administrative arm of HTS, while SSG officials insist they operate independently.

In 2018, the SSG established a Directorate of Culture and the Idlib Antiquities Department to oversee the protection and restoration of antiquities and archaeological sites within HTS territory.

The SSG adopted a starkly different stance toward antiquities. In a statement issued in April 2018, Prime Minister Muhammad Ahmed al-Sheikh declared that antiquities are “part of the human heritage and express the historical identity and civilization of the region.” The SSG also outlawed the excavation of antiquities for any purpose other than scientific research, required excavators to obtain approval from the President of the Council of Ministries, and coordinated with state officials and international aid organizations to crack down on looting at archaeological sites and to initiate conservation and reconstruction efforts.

The Directorate of Culture, together with the Idlib Antiquities Department, established an authoritative legal framework to prosecute those who violated the new antiquities laws. This marked a significant internal policy shift in HTS’s approach to cultural heritage following its break from al-Qaeda.

HTS was, and remains, a designated terror organization according to the UN Security Council, but this shift in policy and rhetoric toward antiquities differentiated HTS from its former iteration as Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist groups. In particular, their antiquities policy stood in stark opposition to ISIS’s industrialized pillaging of cultural heritage, which was widely condemned by the international community. By distancing their public rhetoric and methods from those of ISIS, HTS sought to reframe its image from that of a jihadist terrorist organization to a legitimate governing body with a stake in Syria’s future. Whether driven by conviction or pragmatism, this policy shift softened HTS’s image in the West and helped garner local support for its government.

However, this shift was not implemented smoothly. Despite attempts to coordinate with the SSG, local archaeologists clashed with HTS security forces on multiple occasions, resulting in the continued looting and destruction of archaeological sites. This conflicting reality has led some scholars and heritage professionals to question HTS’s true motives, suggesting that the group exploits antiquities as a tool to rehabilitate its image, solidify its role in Syria’s future governance, and ultimately shed its terrorist designation.1

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The Present Day

That brings us to today. Assad has fallen. Formed HTS leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa became president of the Syrian Caretaker Government, and later the Syrian Transitional Government. The Syrian Transitional government wrote and signed a constitution meant to build a “modern state based on justice, dignity, and true citizenship.” President al-Sharaa quickly embarked on a media tour of states he hope will be allies, urging the countries to lift their sanctions on Syria. Thus far, the EU has lifted all economic sanctions on Syria, with the US, UK, and other countries embarking on significant sanctions relief.

Concerning cultural heritage in post-Assad Syria, there are some hopeful developments. In a speech before taking office, the Minister of Culture, Mohammad Yassin Saleh said that cultural development but be balanced with humanitarian need, and that “Damascus is ours, and that means it belongs to everyone, regardless of race, color, or religion.” This signals his desire to build an inclusive cultural sector in Syria that prioritizes the Syrians living there now.2

UNESCO has resumed work in Syria, beginning with a project to restore National Museum of Damascus, as well as a broader “Action Plan” to support Syria’s Transitional Government. Additionally, the president of Aleppo University met with Italy’s ambassador to Syria to discuss academic and cultural cooperation between the countries, and Syria’s Director-General of Antiquities and Museums met with Director of the German Archaeological Institute in Damascus to explore ways to cooperate in the documentation and restoration of Syria’s archaeological sites and museums. Leaders of Syria’s Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Tourism have also met and begun planning collaborative initiatives to increase tourism to ancient sites.

Some, however, have criticized the new government’s elite-led reconstruction efforts thus far. Joseph Daher of the Carnegie Middle East Center argues that there are three necessary prerequisites for successful reconstruction in Syria.

First, an inclusive political transition creating conditions for participation by different sectors of society. Second, the establishment of a counterweight to those in power that deepens the democratization of Syria’s political space. And finally, an improvement in socioeconomic conditions to increase participation from below, particularly among the most vulnerable classes of society facing difficult living conditions.

According to Daher, the government is failing to achieve these three goals. Its neoliberal economic policies are further impoverishing an already poor population while propping up the private sector. The expansive power delegated to the executive branch in the Syrian Interim Constitution undermines efforts to create a counterbalance to those in power, and little effort has been made to build up civil institutions. Daher fears that these shortcomings will lead to continued cycles of sectarian violence in Syria.

Cultural heritage work is one way the Syrian government and international partners can support an inclusive political transition and improve socioeconomic conditions to increase political participation. The WMF’s pilot project, Building Conservation Capacity in Syria and Jordan, provides a framework for this. As previously mentioned, this program took a “capacity first” approach by training Syrian refugees in the art of stonemasonry, a craft at risk of dying out. Conducted in two phases, it trained 42 Syrian and Jordanian participants between 2017 and 2019. The overarching goal was to equip students with skills to both improve their livelihoods and contribute to heritage restoration.

With no end in sight to the Syrian Civil War, the former took precedence. The market for stonemasonry work was smaller than expected, but the skills taught did increase participants’ professional opportunities in related fields. Students are now employed at British NGO, Turquoise Mountain, UNESCO, and freelancing, using the certificate gained from the program to increase their commission charges by as much as 30%. Others have opened their own small businesses or work on set creation for television and private events.

In addition to professional opportunities, the program increased participants’ understanding and appreciation of their heritage and contributed to broader social cohesion through the diversity of the training cohort. Syrian participants expressed a strong desire to bring these skills back to their homeland and assist in reconstruction efforts.

The increased economic opportunities, care for their heritage, and social cohesion are all positive developments that contribute to the essential social and economic shifts needed to rebuild Syria. Doing so in a way that benefits reconstruction, conservation, and the social appreciation of Syrian cultural heritage among Syrians is one path for the country to restore its heritage while uplifting the broader community through its monuments. A rising tide lifts all boats, and by investing resources in the development of Syrian professionals to participate in the reconstruction of their own heritage, the government can simultaneously raise the tide and provide the boats.

Syrian officials have already begun talks with multiple state and non-state actors to discuss cultural development, which can serve as starting points for capacity-building projects. For example, the President of the University of Aleppo has expressed interest in creating partnerships with Italian academic institutions. One possible collaboration could be an exchange program, where Syrian students study architecture and archaeology at Italian universities in exchange for Italian students and professors gaining access to some of Syria’s sites—or even leading excavations alongside Syrian students.

Syria’s Ministries of Tourism and Culture could collaborate on a capacity-building project to teach students about Syria’s history and archaeological sites, as well as English or other language skills, to prepare them for opportunities in the tourism sector as the country (hopefully) begins attracting visitors again.

Discussions between Syria and the German Archaeological Institute in Damascus have focused on training and capacity building, presenting significant opportunities for programs that both benefit Syrians and protect cultural heritage.

Conclusion

The neoliberal turn in government policy is worrisome, as private sector investors are unlikely to allocate capital toward training and capacity building for local populations to employ in their projects. Developing and executing programs like the WMF’s stonemasonry initiative is costly and time-consuming. Rather than relying on business partners, the government should collaborate with local and international NGOs, as well as foreign governments, to consult on and assist with the development of projects that benefit local communities while protecting and restoring Syrian cultural heritage.

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After provenance research revealed that two objects in the MFA Boston’s collection were stolen, the museum returned the objects to His Royal Majesty Omo N’Oba Ewuare II, Oba of Benin. In 1897, British soldiers stole Relief plaque showing two officials with raised swords and Commemorative Head in the infamous attack on the Kingdom of Benin in 1897. This week, the objects were returned in a ceremony at the Embassy of Nigeria in Washington. The National Commission for Museums and Monuments will collaborate with embassy staff to deliver the objects to the Oba in Nigeria.

The two objects returned are a bronze relief plaque showing two figures with swords, and a commemorative head made of terracotta and iron. Provenance research on three additional Benin objects was inconclusive, and the objects will remain in the MFA’s collection. This highlights the difficulty of heritage work. While these objects have left their country of origin, without conclusive evidence of how they left, the law is powerless to enforce repatriation and institutions are hesitant to offer solutions.

For more on provenance issues in the antiquities trade see my write-up, The Problem of Provenance.

2. EU implements heritage regulations introduced in 2019.

In response to the increasing presence of looted antiquities from conflict zones in western markets, the EU introduced additional regulations in 2019. This week, they went into effect.

June 28, 2025 was the implementation date of Regulation (EU) 2019/880 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on the introduction and the import of cultural goods. This regulation requires the presence of import licenses or importer statements for the import of all cultural goods as defined by a previous regulation, No 952/2013. It also calls for the use of a centralized electronic system to track these imports. Regulators hope that this will curb the import and export of illicit antiquities within EU countries.

Read the full text of Regulation (EU) 2019/880 here.

3. Settlement reached in the ownership dispute of La route montante by Paul Gauguin.

Due to Nazi persecution and a global financial crisis, German-Jewish collector and businessman Richard Semmel lost much of his wealth after 1929. He then fled Berlin for the Netherlands in 1933 and sold part of his art collection in the years that followed. This included the sale of La route montante at the Galerie Moos in Geneva on March 20, 1937, where it was purchased by Emil Bührle. It is now in the possession of the Bührle Foundation.

Recently, Semmel’s heirs made an ownership claim on the painting due to Semmel’s emigration being a result of Nazi persecution. This week, Semmel’s heirs and the Bührle Foundation reached a settlement. The painting will remain in the Bührle Foundation collection, and will continue to be exhibited at the Kunsthaus Zürich. The precise details of the settlement remain confidential.

This work is one of five disputed Gaugin works from Emil Bührle’s collection.

4. Kunstmuseum Bern announces comprehensive Nazi-looted art principals.

This week, the Kunstmuseum Bern released comprehensive principals to govern their response to Nazi-looted art. This comes on the heels of the restitution of Alfred Sisley’s Le Chemin des Bois à Ville-d'Avray to the heirs of Carl Sachs.

These principals broaden the definition of “Nazi-Persecution-Related Loss” to include both the direct seizure of art, as well as sales under duress, including sales that occurred in other countries. They pledged to address provenance gaps, and assume a “factual presumption in favor of the victims.” Lastly, they released a categorization schema to identify objects with a high, medium, and low likelihood of having been displaced due to the Nazis.

The Kunstmuseum Bern has multiple restitution decisions pending, which will surely end up in future Weekly Roundups.

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In February, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) published accusations that the Bavarian State Painting Collection was hiding over 200 Nazi-looted paintings including pieces from Picasso and Klee. Many of these originated from persecuted Jewish collections. According to SZ’s reporting, the newspaper presented the institution with an internal list of 200 paintings marked in red—indicating that the museum itself was aware they were looted during the Nazi era.the Bavarian State Painting Collections has repatriated only 24 works and publicly marked 94 as “red” on its website. The Painting Collection denied these accusations in a press release, but Blume quickly dismissed the collection’s director, Bernhard Maaz, and announced the formation of a task force led by art historian Meike Hopp, along with a roundtable and two investigative commissions to address the scandal.

The task force was expected to investigate potential failures in provenance research within the Bavarian State Painting Collections before the start of the summer. However, with no updates released to date, heirs, politicians, museum professionals, and legal experts are growing increasingly frustrated by the ongoing legal stalemate in which they find themselves.

For more on this story, see SZ’s most recent publication avaliable in English through Lootedart.com.

2. First repatriation under new law in France

In July of 2023, France enacted Law No. 2023-650 of July 22, 2023 relating to the restitution of cultural property that was the subject of spoliation in the context of anti-Semitic persecutions perpetrated between 1933 and 1945. The law aims to facilitate the return of artworks that belonged to Jewish collectors persecuted under the Nazi regime and permits the deaccessioning of Nazi-looted art from French public collections. After years of lagging behind other European countries in restitution efforts, this legislation was hailed by museum professionals, heirs, and legal experts as a significant step in the right direction.

On June 13, the first restitution under by this new statute took place in France when the Bibliothèque nationale de France returned Vittore Carpaccio: The Life and Work of the Painter by Gustav Ludwig and Pompeo Molmenti to the daughter of German-Jewish collector and curator, August Liebmann Mayer.

In 1942, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg looted August Liebmann Mayer’s Paris apartment. Mayer had fled Nazi persecution in Germany in 1936 and settled in Paris before relocating his family to Nice in 1941. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and died in Auschwitz later that year.

In 1945, French forces discovered Vittore Carpaccio in Hermann Göring’s second home and it later entered France’s national collection. After what has been described as “close cooperation” between all involved parties, the volume is now being returned to its rightful owner, Angelika Liebmann, more than 70 years after her father originally gifted it to her.

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3. Spain Supreme Court orders two Romanesque sculptures returned to the City of Santiago de Compostela.

After a five-year legal battle, Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that the descendants of dictator Francisco Franco must return two Romanesque sculptures to the city of Santiago de Compostela. These 12th-century sculptures originally stood on the “Portico of Glory” at the entrance to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. In July 1954, Franco’s wife, Carmen Polo, reportedly took a liking to them—leading to their removal and eventual transfer into the Franco family’s possession.

The mayor of Santiago subsequently sent them to Franco’s collecting hub, Pazo de Meirás, as a gift for the dictator’s wife. At the time, the sculptures were owned by the City of Santiago, which had purchased them in 1948 from the Count of Ximonde under the condition that they remain in the city. In court, the city argued that these sculptures were sent to Pazo de Meirás “without any formal agreement and solely to please the dictator’s wife,” and therefore should still be considered municipal property. Franco’s heirs, however, claimed that he had purchased the works from an antiques dealer and maintained that the family should retain ownership.

This week, the court ruled that the sculptures must be returned to the City of Santiago, marking an end to the lengthy legal battle.

4. Open Call: Case Studies for the 2025 Museum Summit by the American Alliance of Museums

The American Alliance of Museums is hosting The Museum Summit On October 15–16, 2025. This year’s themes are “Mission, Values, and the Politics of Pressure” and “The Next Era of Volunteerism.” Participants are invited to submit proposals for a 20-minute presentation on a case study related to either theme and are encouraged to develop their projects with a view toward eventual digital publication.

The call for proposals is open until June 27, 2025.

5. Cultural heritage on the Moon?

The World Monument’s Fund sparked controversy by adding the Moon (yes, that moon!) to their 2025 World Monuments Watch List, and they aren’t the only ones concerned about human heritage in space.

Holocaust art recovery specialist, lawyer, and professor M.C. Sungaila recently published a piece for SpaceNews calling for the creation of a Space Cultural Heritage Commission to protect the “very objects and events that tell the story of humanity becoming a spacefaring civilization.” She proposes two viable paths for establishing such a commission. The first is to build on a preexistent U.N. treaty, such as the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, which which promotes cross-border legal cooperation. The second is leveraging the Artemis Accords, a set of principles developed by NASA to guide responsible space exploration, which is currently endorsed by 55 nations as of June 2025.

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The professionalization of provenance began in earnest in the 1990s. In 1994, Lyn H. Nicholas published her now classic, The Rape of Europa and Holocaust survivors and heirs brought a number of now famous claims against American museums to reclaim lost art. Goaded by the realization that Nazi-looted art had likely made its way to public collections, a coalitions of governments, led by the United States, created and adopted the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. This marked a turning point in provenance research: rather than focusing solely on confirming a work’s authenticity or prestigious history, the field began to address the legal and ethical implications of a work’s potentially illicit past.

More recently, museum and heritage professionals have worked to decolonize museums by de-centering white, colonial narratives and instead amplifying Indigenous, minority, and POC voices and artworks. This movement involves not only diversifying collections and exhibitions but rethinking curatorial practices, governance structures, and collecting strategies. Decolonization calls for greater transparency about how objects were acquired, the return of looted or unethically obtained artifacts, and collaborative efforts with source communities to reinterpret collections in ways that honor their cultural significance. This trend has also impacted pop-culture. For instance, the opening scene to Black Panther shows Killmonger and Klaue stealing Wakandan artifacts from a museum gallery after confronting a so-called “expert” about the historical looting of African art by the British.

The fact that artifacts reside in European and North American museums due to colonial violence is a problem the museum world has yet to satisfactorily address. Famous cases such as the Benin Bronzes and Parthenon Marbles are often mired in prolonged legal and diplomatic disputes, with progress stalled by political resistance and institutional pushback. When repatriations or restitutions do occur, they are the result of litigious, often years-long negotiations.

In 1970, UNESCO began attempting to address this with the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (henceforth, the UNESCO 1970 Convention). The convention sought to re-balance power between “source-states,” from which antiquities are smuggled, and “market-states” where buyers are located. In doing so, it provided a framework for participating countries to combat the illicit trade of cultural property across borders and to strengthen domestic laws against trafficking. While it is enforced inconsistently due to the voluntary nature of participation, the UNESCO 1970 Convention represents a pivotal moment in the international community’s efforts to protect cultural heritage and combat antiquities trafficking.

To date, 147 countries have ratified the convention, including the United States, which did so in 1983 while simultaneously enacting the The Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CCPIA or CPIA). National cultural patrimony laws take precedence over the UNESCO 1970 Convention, but the year 1970 is still widely regarded by dealers, collectors, and heritage professionals as a critical benchmark in provenance research. If there is no evidence that an antiquity was exported legally or left its country of origin before 1970, the current owner or buyer opens themselves up to legal liability, particularly if it is later revealed that the object was illicitly removed.

And yet, auction houses continue to offer unprovenanced or poorly-provenanced antiquities for sale on a regular bases. With far less oversight and public scrutiny than large institutional collections, private collectors are often able to acquire antiquities with questionable provenance at nearly every major antiquities auction.

To evidence this, one only needs to look at the lots in Christie’s upcoming antiquities auction on July 2, 2025. Of the 110 lots, only 43 claim to have pre-1970 provenance outside of their source country, and some of those claims are paper thin. For example, lot 90, a first-century BCE Roman Marble Head of Venus, estimated to sell for 80,000–120,000 GBP, has the following provenance narrative:

Swiss private collection, Zurich, acquired circa 1930s-1950s.

Auktionshaus Stuker, Bern, 9-25 November 2000, lot 3200 (catalogued as 19th century).

with Galerie Rhéa, Zurich, acquired at the above sale.

Dutch private collection, acquired from the above in 2004 at TEFAF, Maastricht.

The claim that a “Swiss private collection” acquired this object sometime in the 1930s to 50s is as a bright red flag. As briefly mentioned in After Assad: Part 1, Geneva is home to one of the most famous freeports in the world, which are customs- and tax-free zones that traffickers frequently exploit to launder artifacts and obtain seemingly legitimate export documentation. “Anonymous Swiss Collector” show up so frequently in fraudulent provenance narratives that that antiquities trade scholar Donna Yates even made it the title of her website!

This red flag at the beginning of a provenance signals that additional research is necessary. However, the nature of this antiquity makes the task of provenance research quite complex. In the First Century BCE, Rome was expansive and stretched out over territories in Asia Minor, Northern Africa, and western Europe. With the information given, it is impossible to know the object’s country of origin.

This uncertainty carries significant legal risk. Without knowing the object’s country of origin, it is difficult to determine whether it was exported legally. If the sculpture was removed from a country with strong cultural patrimony laws without proper documentation, its current possession or sale may violate international agreements such as the UNESCO 1970 Convention, and the domestic laws of both the source country and the country in which it is currently held. In such cases, the object may be subject to seizure, repatriation, or legal dispute.

The above sculpture is an example of the Arles Type of Aphrodite/Venus, of which similar sculptures have been found in Vienna, and Athens. For the sake of this exercise, let’s assume it originated in Greece, which has some of the oldest cultural patrimony laws of any modern nation. It was the first nation to vest ownership rights of all antiquities to the state in 1899, and has had a ban on exporting antiquities without a permit since 1834. If this sculpture was indeed excavated in Greece, one would need to provide documentation to prove it was exported legally. In the absence of an export license there is no way to verify whether this object was legally exported. Moreover, the vague date range of tje acquisition raises further concerns. Without a precise acquisition date and verifiable documentation, it seems unlikely that Christie’s, or any involved party, is in possession of an export license from Greece or elsewhere.

Another persistent issue with antiquities provenance at large auction houses is their lack of transparency. While Christie’s has a restitution team and probably conducted some provenance research in preparation for this auction, it is unclear if they disclosed the findings of that research. What is clear is that they either do not know or do not feel the need to publish enough of the object’s provenance to establish that it was not looted or smuggled out of its country of origin.

The vague and superficial approach to provenance is not limited to a single lot. Rather, it reflects a broader trend within auction houses to prioritize profits over due diligence, leaving gaps in the ownership history of objects that may have been trafficked. These actions allow for the continued circulation of questionable antiquities on the open market, and prolong the struggle of source countries that are fighting for the return of their heritage.

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Another example of frustratingly slim provenance is lot 27, A Laconian Black-glazed Column-Krater:

Art market, Lucerne, December 1967.

with Ars Antiqua SA, Geneva.

Swiss private collection, acquired from the above in 1987.

This object was reportedly seen on the “art market” in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1967, although it was not acquired by the current Swiss private collection until 1987. The black-glazed pottery originates from Laconia, in what is now southern Greece. Due to extensive trade networks in the Archaic-period Aegean, similar examples have been found throughout the Mediterranean, including in Etruscan graves in southern Italy. Notably, this Column-Krater bears striking similarities to another example held at the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia in Rome, which was excavated in Italy.

For the purposes of this second exercise, let us assume that the find-spot for this Krater was indeed in Italy. If so, the legal implications are substantial, as Italy has some of the most comprehensive cultural heritage protections in the world. In 1909, Law No 364 vested the ownership of all archaeological discoveries to the state, and strictly regulated the export of antiquities. Any object removed from Italy after these protections were enacted, but particularly after Italy’s ratification of the UNESCO 1970 Convention in 1975, should require a valid export permit to be sold abroad.

Given the lack of documentation concerning this object’s whereabouts prior to 1967, and the absence of a verified export license, it is impossible to determine if it was legally removed from its country of origin, whether that be Italy or elsewhere. As with the previous example, this raises significant concerns regarding the object’s provenance and leaves open the possibility that it was illicitly excavated and trafficked.

Knowing the names of collectors gives researchers a critical starting point for provenance investigations. For instance, the work of Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis has led to the identification of over 1,700 looted antiquities on the market, often by matching objects to photographs and records found in the archives of known traffickers. The inclusion of any named party in an object’s provenance narrative significantly aids researchers in tracing its path by offering them a starting point. Christie’s and other auction houses could facilitate this research by adopting stricter provenance standards, and a more stringent level of transparency in their published provenance narratives.

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The last example is lot 40, a Large Carthaginian Glass Head Pendant with the following provenance:

with Kojiro Ishiguro (1916-1992), Tokyo, prior to 1966, stated on 1981 invoice.

with Sakae Art Gallery, Japan, prior to 1981, from whom acquired by the present owner.

Once again, we are left without any clear provenience for an object created by a civilization that once spanned the territories of multiple modern states. Complicating matters further, we have a convenient “1966” provenance entry recorded on a 1981 invoice, a document that is not contemporary with the 1966 claim. The first rule of provenance research is to independently verify all third-party claims. This is particularly important when the information is conspicuously convenient, as it is in this case.

If one could verify this 1966 date, it would establish this object as outside of its country of origin before 1970, and thus outside the statutes of the UNESCO 1970 Convention. Without supporting documentation, a note on a 1981 invoice claiming that this object belonged to Ishiguro before 1966 does not constitute reliable evidence for its pre-1970 location. Should a scholar of Carthaginian art confidently identify its country of origin, conversations around applicable cultural patrimony laws, provenance, and even restitution could begin in earnest.

Though insufficient, these three examples at least claim to have pre-1970 provenance. They represent the minority of lots in this auction, as more than half lack mentions of pre-1970 provenance in their published provenance narratives.

The antiquities market relies on its participants looking the other way when unprovenanced or poorly-provenances objects arrive at their door. While flagship museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian system have hired dedicated provenance researchers to mitigate legal risks and facilitate repatriations, the private sector remains less discerning.

Christie’s and other major auction houses often have in-house restitution teams, but critics argue that they fail to perform adequate due diligence when researching the provenance of objects in their sales. In recent years, Christie’s has withdrawn multiple works from auction after research uncovered connections to known traffickers, including the Basel-base trafficker Gianfranco Becchina. Unless auction houses commit to greater transparency in their provenance narratives, improve the rigor of their provenance research, and refrain from selling objects with insufficient documentation, source countries around the world will continue to lose irreplaceable cultural heritage to the shadows of the private antiquities market.

In a world where cultural heritage is increasingly endangered by looting, trafficking, and elusive market practices, we cannot view provenance research as a formality, but a fundamental ethical responsibility. While international cooperation and institutional reforms have made progress, insufficient attention to provenance and demand from the private antiquities market in America and Europe remain significant barriers to this progress. Until transparency, accountability, and rigorous provenance research become standard practice across all sectors of the art and antiquities market, the cycle of trafficking and loss will continue. The burden lies with auction houses, collectors, and institutions to prioritize provenance and protect the past for present and future generations.

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