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UPDATED: Documents Suggest More Stolen Idols At National Gallery Of Australia
UPDATED BELOW WITH STATEMENT FROM MUSEUM Last week we revealed documents suggesting the $5 million $2 million bronze Dancing Shiva purchased by the National Gallery of Australia in 2005 had been...
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Coming Clean: Australia’s Art Gallery of New South Wales Releases Kapoor...
The Art Gallery of New South Wales has released provenance information for one of the six objects it purchased from Subhash Kapoor, the New York antiquities dealer currently facing trial in India for...
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Lost and Found: Images Show Art Gallery NSW’s Sculpture Was Stolen From An...
A 900-year-old Indian statue at Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales was stolen from an Indian temple sometime after 1974, newly identified images show. Last week, the Art Gallery NSW released...
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At Looted Temple In India, Locals Unwittingly Worship a Fake
Earlier this month we revealed that a 900-year-old Indian sculpture at Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales (above) was stolen from an Indian temple and sold to the museum in 2004 by Manhattan...
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Optical Due Diligence: Art Loss Register Claims To Vet Ancient Art. Does it?
Thirty years ago, a Getty antiquities curator coined the phrase ”optical due diligence” – creating the appearance of caution while continuing to buying suspect antiquities. Today, that continues to be...
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Gloves Come Off: Amid Accusations of Deceit, Sotheby’s Lawsuit Reveals How...
Last week the tables were turned on the U.S. government as documents filed in court by Sotheby’s revealed the private deliberations of American investigators, whose zeal for the return of an allegedly...
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A Family Affair: Kapoor’s Sister Charged With Hiding Looted Idols
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has charged the sister of Manhattan antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor with attempting to hide from federal authorities four stolen bronze sculptures worth $14.5...
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The Rosen Connection: Cornell Will Return 10,000 Cuneiform Tablets to Iraq
On the front page of Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Jason has the scoop on Cornell University’s decision to return 10,000 cuneiform tablets of unclear provenance to Iraq. The tablets were donated and...
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Untold Millions: The National Gallery of Australia Won’t Say What They Paid...
The National Gallery of Australia has refused to tell Australia’s Senate how much it paid (with public money, in some cases) for the 21 objects it acquired from New York antiquities dealer Subhash...
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Steinhardt Redux: Feds Seize Fresco Looted from Italian World Heritage Site,...
UPDATED with a statement from Andrew Baker below. Federal agents in New York have seized a looted fresco fragment destined for Michael Steinhardt, the billionaire hedge fund titan turned antiquities...
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UPDATED: Guilty Plea: Kapoor’s Gallery Manager Cops to Six Criminal Counts
UPDATE: The National Gallery of Australia announced Thursday that it is seeking to return its stolen Shiva, purchased from Kapoor in 2008 for $5 million, and will pursue a lawsuit against Kapoor. See...
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Blood Antiquities: After Lengthy Fight, Sotheby’s Agrees to Return Looted...
Sotheby’s and a private collector agreed on Thursday to forfeit a 10th century statue of a warrior to Cambodia, ending a lengthy legal fight that exposed the trafficking of looted Khmer antiquities to...
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False Provenance: Indictment of Kapoor’s Girlfriend Reveals Fake Ownership...
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office criminally charged the girlfriend of Manhattan antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor on Friday, alleging she participated in a decades-long conspiracy to launder...
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UPDATED: Fordham’s Folly? Some Answers, Many More Questions about Acquisition...
UPDATED below on 1/26 with comments from Peppard. Last week, Fordham University announced it had accepted a gift of nine early Christian mosaics from an anonymous donor. The mosaics formed part of a...
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Unprecedented: Australia’s National Gallery Sues Kapoor Over $5 Million...
The National Gallery of Australia has filed a $5 million lawsuit against Manhattan antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor alleging the dealer and his staff committed fraud when they sold the museum an 11th...
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UPDATED > Trouble in Toledo: Feds Investigate Stolen Ganesh, Other Objects...
Let the Lotus Feet of Lord Ganesha, from whom scriptures sprout, confer on us unmixed blessings. Like thunderbolts, let them shatter away hurdles that are heaped like mountains. ─ Prayers to Ganesha...
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Sleeping Beauty: Seizure of Sarcophagus in New York Shows Value of Becchina...
Federal authorities seized a $4 million Roman sarcophagus lid from a New York warehouse on Friday, alleging it had been looted, smuggled out of Italy and sold to convicted Italian antiquities...
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Radford Speaks: Director of Australia’s National Gallery Is In Denial
Ron Radford, the embattled director of the National Gallery of Australia, sat down last week for his first media interview since the Subhash Kapoor scandal broke. He likely wishes now he hadn’t....
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Reckless: In Pursuit of Shiva, the National Gallery of Australia Ignored the...
The National Gallery of Australia ignored the advice of its own attorney when buying the $5 million bronze sculpture of Shiva, according to a damning confidential document uncovered by the Australian...
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Rebuilding Koh Ker: A 3D Reconstruction Restores Context to a Looted Khmer...
Cambodia is quietly negotiating the return of several important 10th century sculptures that were looted from the temple complex of Koh Ker in the 1970s. Officials from the Norton Simon Museum in...
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