Footnotes

“Modern Rome—Campo Vaccino”, by JMW Turner was purchased by the Getty recently for $44.9 million in London.  Will the UK match the purchase price and prohibit export?

Lots of developments in the news while I was teaching in Italy, here are a few of the high points:

• Funding cuts for culture in the United Kingdom mean a rush of works of art are now going on the market, with the UK seemingly less able to match any purchase prices under the Waverly Export regime. 
• A work by Candido Portinari, the Burial, has been stolen from the Contemporary Art Museum in Olinda, Brazil.  
• Spain has emerged as the latest nation to have acquired objects from the Medici dossier.  Some 22 objects acquired in 1999 by Madrid’s National Archaeological Museum were potentially looted. 
• Sadly, more looting in Iraq, with thousands of archaeological sites unprotected.
• The New York Times looks at the neglect at the Iraqi Museum of Contemporary Art as well.
• Is a resolution imminent in the Wally case?
• Eleven works stolen by a US soldier at the close of WWII are being returned to Germany.  The soldier’s grand-niece returned the works to ICE after she learned they were stolen.