Tag: Brazil

A Return to Illicit Cultural Property

It has been a while. I’ve been writing here at Illicit Cultural Property since 2006, which has somehow made this blog one of the longer-running habits of my professional life. The site has been quiet for the last few years while I took on a big administrative role at my law school. That work was rewarding in its own way, but I’m very happy to be stepping back from it and returning to this corner of the internet.

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

There is, unfortunately, no shortage of material.

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

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

Debris at the historical monument Golestan Palace after it was damaged in an Israeli and U.S. strike, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 3, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS.

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

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

The empty frame which once held “Storm on the Sea of Galilee” at the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum

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

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

By Claude Monet – Scanned from MCM catalogue (1996), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3413164 This painting was stolen from the Museu Chácara do Céu, Rio de Janeiro, in 2006, together with three other works by Pablo Picasso (A dança, 1956), Salvador Dalí (Os dois balcões, 1929) and Henri Matisse (Jardim de Luxemburgo, 1903). The paintings haven’t been recovered yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Returning, Recovering and Punishing


Three stories caught my eye this morning:

First, Police in Sao Paulo have recovered a Pablo Picasso print that was stolen back in June (mentioned earlier here). The police have already recovered three other works. Details are thin, but what often takes place in these kinds of recoveries is thieves or their agents will offer to sell a portion of a group of stolen works, holding the remaining works as a kind of collateral against possible arrest.

Second, the FBI in its continuing investigation into the William M.V. Kingsland collection is trying to track down the owners of 300 works. This work, Riders in a Landscape by Henry Aiken (~1840) is included in the collection. You can read more about the rather bizarre Kingsland collection here. If you have any information on the Kingsland collection, you can contact FBI Agent Wynne at 7182867302, or by email at James.Wynne “at” ic.fbi.gov.

Finally, in the Mardirosian trial, Federal District Court Judge Mark Wolf dismissed a stolen transportation charge as the NSPA does not in his view apply to a transfer between Switzerland and England. He does still face a charge for possessing or concealing the stolen works though.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Art Theft and Recovery Blotter

There’s a slew of news about art theft, recovery and sentencing this morning:

First, thieves broke into a museum near Stockholm and stole five works by Andy Warhol (Mickey Mouse, and Superman) and Roy Lichtenstein (Crak, Sweet Dreams, Baby!, and Dagwood).

Second, authorities in Brazil have recovered a Picasso print, The Painter and the Model, which was stolen along with four other works back in June from the Pinacoteca do Estado in São Paulo, Brazil. Police had the men under surveillance for a planned ATM robbery, and overheard mention of the Picasso.

Third, a Vermont man has been ordered to serve a five-to-20 year prison sentence for stealing bronze sculptures to sell as scrap metal. He and two other men had stolen a number of sculptures from Joel Fisher’s studio while the artist was out of the country.

Finally, Artinfo is reporting that the Art Loss Register has recovered a Mario Carreño work stolen from a New York law firm in 1993.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Picasso Thefts in Sao Paulo


ABC News has some more on the thefts last week of Picasso’s Minotaur, Drinker and Women (1933), pictured here, and The Painter and the Model (1963). Also taken were works by two Brazilian artists, Women at the Window (1926) by Emiliano Augusto Cavalanti de Albuquerque Melo, and Couple (1919) by Lasar Segall. All four works were stolen from the Pinacoteca Museum by 3 men who paid their entrance fee, took the elevator to the second floor, drew their weapons and forced the guards to tell them where the four works were located.

Marcelo Araujo told the Folha De Sao Paulo newspaper that the security was appropriate, “In cases of armed robbery we can’t run the risk of resisting, because there could be unforeseeable consequences for the employees and for the public.” That is probably correct, and there is an inherent tension between keeping galleries an open space for the public versus protecting against armed robbery. Such robberies seem to be taking place with regularity in Sao Paulo though, which may make displaying art to the public more difficult there.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Recovery in Sao Paulo


The AP is reporting that the two works stolen last month in Brazil have been recovered in Sao Paulo. The recovered works, Portrait of Suzanne Bloch, 1904 by Pablo Picasso and O Lavrador de Cafe, 1939 by Candido Portinari were recovered in a home on the outskirts of Sao Paulo on Tuesday. The works were stolen last month, by thieves using only crowbar and a car jack. Given that, are the assualt rifles, pistols, and bullet-proof jackets worn by guards at yesterday’s press conference necessary?

Julio Neves, the president of the Sao Paulo Museum of Art said the works are “in absolutely perfect condition”, and “[t]he museum is upgrading and improving its security system to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.” There is no word on how the works were recovered, as police are still investigation as “other suspects remain at large and providing details could jeopardize the ongoing investigation.” Given the comments of the city’s chief police inspector Mauricio Lemos Freire, it seems like they are investigating this as a theft-to-order, and are still going after the buyer who ordered the theft.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Major Theft in Brazil


Thieves have stolen works by Pablo Picasso and Candido Portinari from the Sao Paulo Museum of Art. The theft was made known early Thursday morning. The stolen Picasso is pictured here, Portrait of Suzanne Bloch, 1904. Early estimates place the monetary value of the stolen works at $100 million USD. However these are major works, the Picasso is from the artist’s blue period. Portinari is a major Brazilian artist. The AP story is here.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com