Tag: Restitution

From Viking Silver to Washington: Who Gets to Decide What Survives?

It has been an unusually revealing week for cultural heritage law.

In Iran, conservators are racing to stabilize historic buildings damaged during the war. In Denmark, a homeowner digging a new terrace discovered the largest known Viking Age silver hoard in the country. In Florida, federal investigators are beginning the daunting work of identifying more than 22,000 antiquities seized in an ongoing smuggling investigation. And in Washington, the physical fabric of national cultural institutions continues to be remade, from the demolished East Wing of the White House to the removal this week of Joel Shapiro’s Blue from the Kennedy Center.

These stories arise from very different legal settings. Together they offer a useful reminder of what cultural heritage protection actually requires: good rules, capable institutions, expertise, and enough time to act before something important disappears.

The most sobering story comes from Iran. Sarvy Geranpayeh reports in The Art Newspaper that Iranian heritage officials have recorded damage to 149 historic monuments across 18 provinces and 29 cities following the US-Israeli strikes that began in February. Among the damaged sites are the Golestan Palace in Tehran, the seventeenth-century Chehel Sotoun Palace in Isfahan, and part of the Trans-Iranian Railway, all associated with UNESCO World Heritage inscriptions.

At Golestan Palace, a team of specialists collects, sorts and codes shattered wooden and decorative fragments Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts

The details of the conservation work are especially striking. At Golestan Palace, specialists are collecting, sorting, and coding shattered wooden and decorative fragments. Damaged roofs are being repaired before autumn rain causes another round of harm. At Chehel Sotoun, crews have stabilized damaged sections and removed hazards. Specialists repaired the Trans-Iranian Railway quickly enough to restore operations. Iranian officials estimate damage to the heritage sector at about 7.5 trillion tomans, roughly $40 million at current exchange rates. This is the less glamorous side of cultural heritage protection.

Iranian officials have been communicating with UNESCO, the secretariat of the Hague Convention, and other international bodies. They are also compiling technical documentation for possible compensation claims and international legal proceedings. Farhad Azizi Zelani, Iran’s director general of national and world heritage sites, draws a broader lesson from the experience: international instruments need effective implementation and a rapid response when cultural property is threatened.

That is an important point for the broader law of armed-conflict heritage protection. A treaty supplies a framework. The resilience of cultural property also depends on institutions capable of using it.

Photo: North Jutland Museums / Nordjyske Museer

A very different story from Denmark: A homeowner in Rebild set out to build a terrace and instead found enough Viking silver to make archaeologists everywhere reconsider the attractions of yard work. The newly discovered hoard contains about 700 tenth-century objects and fragments weighing nearly 18.5 kilograms, including silver bars, bracelets, 47 whole coins and coin fragments, a small Thor’s hammer, and pieces of cut silver. The Art Newspaper reports on the discovery here, while Nordjyske Museer provides an excellent account of the find and its archaeological significance.

The objects reveal an economy tied to a very large world. The hoard contains both Arabic and Anglo-Saxon coins. Much of the silver was apparently valued by weight rather than by the identity of the object itself. The bars, broken jewelry, coins, and silver fragments offer evidence of trade networks linking Scandinavia with England and the Islamic world during a period when the Danish kingdom and Christianity in Scandinavia were taking shape.

The legal response is almost as interesting as the discovery. Under section 30 of the Danish Museum Act, objects from the past that possess valuable material or special cultural-historical significance can constitute danefæ, or treasure trove. Qualifying finds belong to the state and must be turned over to the National Museum. The finder receives compensation based on the material value and rarity of the objects and, importantly, “the level of care” used in securing the find. The National Museum of Denmark explains the reward system here.

That last factor matters. Denmark has built an incentive into the law for a finder to protect archaeological information rather than simply extract valuable objects from the ground. The Rebild finder realized he had encountered something significant, proceeded carefully, and the find entered an archaeological and museum system. The result preserves the objects and much of the knowledge they carry.Compare that sequence with what happens after antiquities have entered illicit commercial channels.

ICE Seizes 22,000 Antiquities in Florida

Hyperallergic reported this week on the extraordinary seizure of more than 22,000 artifacts by Homeland Security Investigations in Florida. HSI announced the seizure on August 28 and described it as among the largest in the agency’s history. Preliminary assessments suggest some of the objects are between 1,000 and 5,000 years old and originated in Europe, Africa, the Levant, and the eastern Mediterranean. Researchers from the University of South Florida and the University of Pennsylvania are assisting with identification, authentication, and conservation.

At this stage, there is still a great deal we do not know. Authorities have said little publicly about the suspected trafficking network, the provenance of individual objects, possible source countries, or eventual repatriations. With 22,000 objects, sorting those questions will take considerable time.

This is the recurring difficulty with antiquities enforcement. Recovery gets the object back into responsible custody. Archaeological context may already have vanished. Investigators and scholars then have to reconstruct histories of excavation, ownership, export, and import from whatever evidence remains.

The institutional juxtaposition identified by Hyperallergic is also difficult to miss. HSI has developed considerable expertise in cultural-property investigations and repatriations. Elsewhere within the Department of Homeland Security, border construction has recently damaged the Las Playas Intaglio archaeological site in Arizona, while preservation and environmental requirements have been waived for other border projects that may affect archaeological resources. Somehow, one federal department can simultaneously contain sophisticated cultural-property enforcement and activities that put cultural resources at risk.

Which brings us to Washington D.C. The East Wing of the White House was demolished between October and December 2025 as part of the project to construct a new East Wing containing a ballroom and underground military facilities. Adam Gopnik’s essay on the demolition in The New Yorker remains one of the better pieces of writing about why the loss generated such a strong response. His central insight is that architecture carries political meaning. The White House accumulated meaning because presidents inherited it temporarily. Alterations to a building like this therefore implicate process, stewardship, and institutional continuity as well as architectural taste.

There is an especially revealing legal wrinkle now. On August 31, the Supreme Court divided 5–4 in National Park Service v. National Trust for Historic Preservation and stayed a lower-court injunction that had restricted above-ground construction. The Court’s per curiam opinion emphasized standing. It concluded that the government was likely to succeed in showing that the National Trust lacked a sufficiently concrete and particularized injury to challenge the project and that the remaining stay factors favored the government. The Court expressly said that it was not deciding the legality of the East Wing project itself. The Court’s opinion is available here.

Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, dissented. His opening conclusion was unusually direct: “That construction is likely unlawful.” Roberts pointed to 40 U.S.C. § 8106, which prohibits construction of a building or structure on federal public grounds in the District of Columbia without express congressional authority. In his view, Congress had supplied no such authority for the ballroom project.

The standing dispute may prove important for preservation law well beyond this particular building. Historic-preservation organizations often rely on members whose use and enjoyment of historic places supply the injury necessary to get into federal court. A rule that treats an architectural or historic injury largely as disagreement with government aesthetics could make some preservation challenges considerably harder to bring. There is also a simpler lesson here. By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, the East Wing was already gone. Preservation law has always struggled with remedies because demolition can happen quickly.

Another removal in Washington this week raises a related set of questions. On Wednesday, September 2, National Park Service crews dismantled Joel Shapiro’s Blue, the 24-foot painted-aluminum sculpture installed at the Kennedy Center’s REACH campus in 2019. Shapiro had described the animated, angular figure as a “celebration of possibility.” He gifted the sculpture to the Kennedy Center as a permanent installation. The Washington Post’s reporting on the removal is particularly useful, as is Hyperallergic’s account of the deinstallation.

Critics Slam “Petty” Removal of Joel Shapiro Sculpture From Kennedy Center

The Kennedy Center offered no advance public explanation for the decision. It said that the Joel Shapiro and Ellen Phelan Foundation would decide where the sculpture is installed next. Former Kennedy Center curator Josef Palermo gave the Post a more pointed account. He said he had previously been instructed to “get rid” of outdoor artwork because President Trump wanted an entirely new collection when the Center reopened after renovations. Palermo did not recall Blue being singled out individually.

The photographs of the sculpture being taken apart invite a moral-rights question, and I may return to that issue in a separate post.

There is an important wrinkle at the outset. Shapiro died on June 14, 2025. For a work of visual art created after the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) took effect, 17 U.S.C. § 106A provides that the federal rights of attribution and integrity last for the life of the author, with the statutory term running through the end of the calendar year in which it otherwise expires. Shapiro’s VARA rights therefore expired at the end of 2025, months before Blue was removed.

That makes Blue a potentially useful case study in the limits of American moral rights. Had Shapiro still been alive, the facts would invite questions about destruction or modification, removal from a site for which a work was given as a “permanent installation,” and the uneasy treatment of site-specific art under VARA. The First Circuit’s decision in Phillips v. Pembroke Real Estate—which of course does not bind courts in Washington—famously concluded that VARA does not protect site-specific art as such. Those questions deserve more space than I can give them here.

For now, the larger pattern is enough. Cultural heritage law is sometimes treated as a field concerned with old things: temples, archaeological sites, ancient coins, museum collections, historic buildings. Yet heritage becomes vulnerable in the present. The differences among these stories matter. So does the common question beneath them: who gets to decide what survives, and through what process?

Good heritage law creates time for expertise before an irreversible decision. It records what has been found and what has been lost. It creates incentives for responsible behavior. It gives institutions the authority and resources to conserve. And, at its best, it recognizes that stewardship carries obligations to people who will encounter these places and objects long after the present decision-makers are gone. Once the bulldozers arrive, or an archaeological context has been scattered, the law has considerably less to work with.

Sources and Further Reading

A New Handbook, a Dutch Trial, and the Mona Lisa on Stage

A new Research Handbook on Art, Culture and Heritage Law has just been published by Edward Elgar, co-edited by Sophie Vigneron, Janet Ulph, and Antoinette Maget Dominicé. The volume is a substantial one — 682 pages — and it brings together an impressive range of scholars to examine art, culture, and heritage law through four broad challenges: sustainable development, intergenerational equity, decolonisation, and cultural rights. The publisher describes it as both interdisciplinary and practical, with chapters addressing the definition, protection, and contestation of cultural heritage, alongside subjects such as provenance research, repatriation, trafficking in peacetime, wartime looting, and the intentional destruction of heritage.

The table of contents alone gives a good sense of the range. There are chapters by Patty Gerstenblith on the 1970 UNESCO Convention, Emma Cunliffe on the 1954 Hague Convention, Anne-Marie Carstens on international cultural heritage crimes, Sophia Labadi on world heritage and sustainable development, Neil Brodie on EU Regulation 2019/880 on the import of cultural goods, Emily Peacock and Donna Yates on the online antiquities trade, Evelien Campfens on cross-border restitution, and Andrea Wallace, Francesca Farmer and Mathilde Pavis on restitution beyond the object. My own contribution is a chapter on “Cultural heritage law in the United States.”

In a field that often splinters into separate conversations — market regulation over here, armed conflict there, restitution somewhere else — there is real value in a volume that tries to gather these debates into one place.

For those interested, the publisher’s page is here: Research Handbook on Art, Culture and Heritage Law.

The more immediate news item is the start of the Dutch trial over the theft of major Romanian gold artefacts from the Drents Museum, including the celebrated Coțofenești Helmet, a 5th-century BCE object, and three Dacian gold bracelets. Dutch prosecutors have reportedly sought sentences ranging from 44 to 66 months, and specifically asked for three years and eight months for Jan B. (21) and Douglas Chesley W. (37) after plea agreements aimed at securing the return of the helmet and two of the bracelets.

That cooperation matters. Dutch prosecutors said earlier this month that the Coțofenești Helmet and two of the three bracelets were recovered after discussions with defence counsel and agreements with the suspects; the Public Prosecution Service made clear that a condition of those agreements was the return of the artefacts. Reuters likewise reported that the recovery came with the help of information from the suspected thieves. One bracelet is still missing.

The case is a useful reminder that criminal prosecutions in cultural objects are often doing more than assigning blame after the fact. Sometimes they are structured, explicitly, to recover objects first and punish later. That may be unsatisfying in one sense — especially where the penalties sought do not seem especially severe given the cultural stakes — but it also reflects a hard truth: once an object like this disappears, the first priority is often simply getting it back before it is damaged, dispersed, or lost entirely. In this instance, the helmet was recovered slightly dented, though museum officials say it can be restored.

And then, because the art world never misses a chance to become faintly ridiculous just when things have turned serious, there is this: Andrew Lloyd Webber is apparently working on a musical about the theft of the Mona Lisa. According to The Art Newspaper, the project is based on the 1911 theft by Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia, who removed the painting and it later resurfaced in Italy. Lloyd Webber described it as “the true story” of how the painting disappeared for roughly three years and ended up in Italy.

Sophie Vigneron et al., Research Handbook on Art, Culture and Heritage Law (Edward Elgar Publishing, Incorporated Mar. 2026).

Stealing the Show: Mona Lisa Heist Inspires Andrew Lloyd Webber Musical, The Art Newspaper – International art news and events, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/04/13/stealing-the-show-mona-lisa-heist-inspires-andrew-lloyd-webber-musical (last visited Apr. 14, 2026).

Dutch Prosecutors Urge Long Jail Terms for Romanian Helmet Theft, France 24, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260414-dutch-trial-over-theft-of-golden-romanian-helmet-begins (last visited Apr. 14, 2026).

Security, Spectacle, and Return

It has been an oddly revealing week for cultural heritage.

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

A Geto-Dacian helmet dating from the first half of the 4th century BC, uncovered by chance. View from the front.
By © Radu Oltean / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14615152

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

“Odalisque on the Terrace” by Henri Matisse.
“Still Life With Cherries” by Paul Cézanne.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Les Poissons (1917)

By Chiara Saffioti – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72469676

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

***

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).

Germany sued over Nazi-era Medieval art sale

The 13th-century Dome Reliquary, part of the Welfenschatz or Guelph Treasure, is displayed at the Bode Museum in Berlin
The 13th-century Dome Reliquary, part of the Welfenschatz or Guelph Treasure, is displayed at the Bode Museum in Berlin

“Any transaction in 1935, where the sellers on the one side were Jews and the buyer on the other side was the Nazi state itself is by definition a void transaction”.

So argues Nicholas O’Donnell, an attorney representing descendants of the Jewish art dealers who sold a collection of medieval artworks known as the “Guelph” or “Welfenschatz” Treasure, allegedly under duress and threat of persecution. The complaint for the two heirs was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. to recover yesterday afternoon. The objects were part of the treasury of the Braunschweig cathedral and were used to store and display relics. The claimants allege that a group of Jewish art dealers were forced to sell the objects in 1935 to the German state of Prussia.

One unfortuante aspect here is that the German commission charged with resolving the claims of Nazi-era claimants was unable to achieve a satisfactory result for the claimants and the German government. One of the likely issues in this dispute will be one the timelinesss of this suit, whether a court will examine the circumstances surrounding an alleged forced sale nearly 80 years after it took place. The complaint alleges that the objects were sold under persecution for 4.15 million Reichsmarks (RM). If we do some rough back-of-the-envelope calculations, the exchange rate was 2.45 RM for $1. So that means the objects were sold for just shy of $1.7 million in 1935 dollars, which be nearly $28 million today. Considering the treasure may be worth as much as $226m, the German State seems to have received a pretty good bargain. The legal question will be whether that sale was under duress.

O’Donnell argues in his blog this morning:

Continue reading “Germany sued over Nazi-era Medieval art sale”

Roodt on the limits of art restitution

Repatriated Etruscan objects, part of the Nostoi exhibition
Repatriated Etruscan objects, part of the Nostoi exhibition

Dr. Christa Roodt has written a piece for the International Law Journal of Southern Africa titled “Restitution of art and cultural objects and its limits”. She is a Research Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. Her piece is available from Trafficking Culture.

The abstract:

Art and cultural objects have a complex nature and status. A legal approach cannot escape having to state which objects come within the scope of the definition, but an objective legal definition in abstracto is difficult to provide. Because the flows of licit and illicit objects are so intermixed, both the legitimate and underground art markets are implicated in the trade involving these objects. Global legal diversity further complicates the distinction between the licit and the illicit trade. This article takes stock of restitution and suitable dispute settlement mechanisms against this backdrop. Restitution processes have become more openly policy-oriented, and the meaning of ‘restitution’ now extends to overcoming the legal obstacles in the way of return. Law can provide the framework for negotiation and dispute settlement in many cases, but the ethical dimension is a particularly powerful agent for restitution of Nazi spoliated art and human remains.

 

 

Roodt, C. (2013) ‘Restitution of art and cultural objects and its limits’, Comparative and International Law Journal of Southern Africa XLVI, 286-307.

Massive trove of modern art discovered

The apartment block in Munich where 1500 were discovered in 2011
The apartment block in Munich where 1500 were discovered in 2011

The recovery rate for stolen art may take a dramatic shift towards original owners. The German magazine Focus has broken the story of an incredible find. One of the most remarkable discoveries of stolen art that I can think of. A reported 1,500 works of art by artists including Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Klee, and others was stored in an apartment in Berlin for years. The works were likely spoliated by Nazis during the 1930s-40s.

When authorities executed a search warrant they found the works stacked in a dark room in a flat in this apartment block in Munich. They were hidden there by Cornelius Gurlitt, now 80, who was the son of a Munich art dealer.

The works were discovered after tax authorities executed a search warrant of Gurlitt’s apartment in 2011. He was stopped on a train bound for Switzerland with 9,000 euros in cash, and had plans to deposit the money in undeclared Swiss accounts. When the authorities searched his home they found what must be one of the largest ever single recoveries of stolen art.

Continue reading “Massive trove of modern art discovered”

Restitution and Repatriation Symposium, DePaul, Nov. 14, 2013

I’ve been forwarded on details of a promising conference coming up at DePaul’s Center for Art, Museum & Cultural Heritage Law in November. From the announcement:

The conference, Restitution and Repatriation: The Return of Cultural Objects Symposium will be held at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago on Thursday, November 14, 2013. The program will address the underlying legal, ethical and moral reasons and policies behind the return of cultural objects. Panels will discuss provenance research, museum acquisitions, historical appropriations, and the ethical issues that come into play when requests for repatriation are made.

Our Featured Lecturer will be Jack Trope, Executive Director of the Association on American Indian Affairs. Other speakers include: Lori Breslauer, Acting General Counsel of the Field Museum of Natural History; Steve Nash, Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Curator of Archaeology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science; Rebecca Tsosie, a Willard H. Pedrick Distinguished Research Scholar and Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University; Richard M. Leventhal, the Director of the Penn Cultural Heritage Center; Charles Brian Rose, a James B. Pritchard Professor of Mediterranean Archaeology in the Department of Classical Studies and Curator-in-Charge of the Mediterranean Section of the Penn Museum; Marc-André Renold, Director of the Art-Law Centre at the University of Geneva; Frank Lord, an associate at Herrick Feinstein LLP; Thomas R. Kline, Of Counsel in the Washington, D.C. office of Andrews Kurth LLP; and Simon Frankel, a partner at Covington & Burling LLP, as well as several other leaders in the art, museum, and cultural heritage fields.

Be sure to check out the events page for this and other heritage events coming up, or to alert me about upcoming conferences.

2nd Circuit Rules for the Met in a Bolshevik-era restitution suit

“Portrait of Madame Cezanne”, Pierre Cezanne (1891)

Pierre Konowaloff has lost a bid to secure the return of some art confiscated nearly a century ago. Konowaloff is the successor in interest of a Russian art collector who had his art collection confiscated in the 1917 Russian revolution. The 2nd Circuit held the claim is barred by the act of state doctrine, upholding a 2011 dismissal of the claim in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. In its simplest form, the doctrine protects the U.S. Executives dealings with foreign nations by requiring claimants like Konowaloff to seek a remedy with the state doing the expropriation. The doctrine states that separation of powers requires that federal courts not challenge the validity of decisions by recognized foreign sovereign governments.

In 1911, Ivan Morozov purchased the work. Morozov was a Russian art collector, and lost this work and another Van Gogh currently held by Yale University after the Bolshevik seizures during the Russian revolution. Konowaloff is the great-grandson of Morozov. The Soviet Union in 1933 needed funds and decided to deaccession (if I can use that term in this context) the painting. The paintings were purchased by Stephen Clark, an American who bequeathed the Cézanne to the MET and the Van Gogh to Yale University. Yale decided to initiate a declaratory suit, getting ahead of the lawsuit, and is still ongoing.

So the Bolshevik-era claim has been extinguished. One wonders though if the way courts treat the act of state doctrine in this context may be different from the ways it might treat foreign ownership declarations of other works of art. That’s a question I don’t have the answer to. It may be there are peculiar aspects of the doctrine. But on balance this seems like nations are given the benefit of the doctrine when it comes to situations where museums have long possessed these objects, but they aren’t given the same advantages in other repatriation cases. That may be because of problems baked-in to the doctrine, or not. I’m not aware of any direct act of state doctrine argument which bends for claimant-nations, it seems primarily to assist current museums attempting to fend off suits arising from Nazi-era takings.

  1. Philip Boroff, Met Museum Sued Over Cezanne Painting Stolen by Bolsheviks From Collector, Bloomberg, December 8, 2010.
  2. Konowaloff v. Metropolitan Musem of Art 11-4338-cv (2nd Cir. 2012)
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

A New Museum Position: Curator of Provenance

A Medallion looted during WWII

Geoff Edgers had a terrific piece over the weekend profiling Victoria Reed, curator of provenance at the MFA Boston. Her position was created in 2010, and is unique in the museum community. She is according to the piece the only curator of provenance at an American museum, a post which can put her in an uneasy position, recommending that the museum should not acquire objects with insufficient history.

Enter Victoria Reed, the MFA’s curator of provenance. Her job, which is almost as rare in the museum world as is the medallion, is to research works with questionable histories both in the collection and on the MFA’s shopping list. As a result, Reed’s other job is to break curators’ hearts. Through months of research, Reed traced the medallion to a museum in Gotha, Germany, that she knew had been looted during the Nazi era. With that information, the MFA’s jewelry curator, Yvonne Markowitz, put the brakes on its purchase. And in September, the Art Loss Register announced that S.J. Phillips Ltd., the dealer who had offered the medallion, would be returning it to the Castle Friedenstein museum.

This can’t be an easy position to be in, but as more scrutiny attaches to museums, their collection, and their acquisitions, this kind of position will likely become more and more common. The market and dealers have not been adequately accomplishing this painstaking but necessary task, but perhaps they should be.

Paying for a position like this can be difficult given the funding climate for many museums. The piece notes that the position was funded by an MFA Boston donor, Monica S. Sadler, who stipulated that her position should not be cut from the museum’s budget. So other benefactors to museums out there, if you are concerned with the practice at your local museum, give a gift with similar stipulations. Easier said than done of course, but all parties involved should be praised for undertaking an important piece of reform which really could continue to substantially change the importance of provenance research. The piece deals primarily with works of art and paintings, but a position like this which examines antiquities could have even more far-reaching consequences for repatriation and acquisition.

  1. Geoff Edgers, A detective’s work at the MFA, The Boston Globe, December 11, 2011, http://bostonglobe.com/arts/2011/12/11/detective-work-mfa/6iaei4YOQOj83s9u3YfDXO/story.html?s_campaign=sm_fb (last visited Dec 13, 2011).
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com