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.
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.
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.
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).
