@chasingaphrodite.bsky.social
Researching the illicit antiquities trade for two decades as an investigative reporter, author, blogger, tweeter, investigator, founder @MuseumofLoot and now...skeeter? https://ChasingAphrodite.com/ https://MuseumofLoot.org/ https://AchillesResearch.org/
Naga-Garuda Balustrade from Banteay Chhmar, now at Battambang Museum. Late 12thC.
A Naga-Garuda Balustrade Terminal in the Battambang Museum. Carved in late 12th century it was removed from Banteay Chhmar temple to avoid it being stolen. #Cambodia
07.10.2025 13:55 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0Chasing Aphrodite was stolen by the AI monkeys.
07.10.2025 14:13 — 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Inside the Battle for The Smithsonian
Donald Trump’s unprecedented measures to take control of The Smithsonian Institution have rattled staffers, enraged artists, and even put the future of its vast collection in doubt.
www.vanityfair.com/news/story/i...
I made all these points back in 2013 and nothing has changed.
chasingaphrodite.com/2013/08/01/o...
Quiet part out loud:
“It’s evidence at the time of purchase of the best level of due diligence,” ALR’s Olivia Whitting said. “If, later on, a claim is made on the piece, the collector can show that they did their due diligence, and the documentation provided passed our checks.”
Nope!
“Optical due diligence” remains the coin of the realm in the art market, with Art Loss Register profiting off the illusion.
Looted objects are not registered as stolen, so they’re not in stolen art databases like ALR!
NYT should do better than to promote this myth
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/a...
Here’s the research on those forgeries: d2f7x7uhr2xem7.cloudfront.net/sixteen_by_n...
02.10.2025 03:13 — 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Six years after admitting its 14 fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls were forgeries, the Museum of the Bible is borrowing the real deal from Israel
www.morningstar.com/news/pr-news...
Nine days after launching a virtual museum that documents crimes by the Assad regime against prisoners, activist and journalist Amer Matar was arrested and confined overnight by Syrian authorities.
www.icij.org/news/2025/09...
So far, about 4,000 antiquities have been counted missing in Sudan. 700 pieces disappeared from museums in the cities of Nyala and El GeneinaI, where the museum’s curator was killed when the building was shelled
www.reuters.com/world/africa...
How millennia of history vanished in Sudan's war
Last spring, a group of foreigners were arrested in Sudan with antiquities in their possession. Another group in Egypt offered to return looted antiquities in exchange for money.
www.al-monitor.com/originals/20...
A Rush to Save Ancient Artifacts in Gaza Highlights All That Has Been Lost
A bombing delay enabled rescue of some objects, but archaeologists fear the wider loss of antiquities from the many cultures living there over thousands of years.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/w...
Why New York can be a risky place for dealers and museums to hold [stolen] art
Could the Manhattan district attorney's seizures be putting people off sending [stolen] artworks to the city?
www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/09/04/w...
On If Objects Could Talk, the newest series from Getty Podcasts, artifacts from Getty's antiquities collection leave the museum vault and come alive to share their side of the story.
Coming September 8, 2025.
podcastingtoday.co.uk/getty-launch...
Missing from the New York Times obit of the diamond magnate Maurice Tempelsman, who died Saturday, is his role as a conduit for some of the most important examples of looted Classical art to have survived antiquity.
A thread...
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/b...
Ashraf Eldarir, an Egyptian doctor, became involved in the “more financially lucrative” trade of smuggling antiquities into the US
Eldarir pleaded guilty to four charges of smuggling and is due to be sentenced at a court in New York today.
www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/20...
The last private owner of Sotheby’s was Alfred Taubman, a charismatic Midwestern mall developer, who bought the auction house in the early eighties and was later convicted of colluding with Christie’s to fix pricing and spent ten months in prison
25.08.2025 14:11 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
New Case: Pandava.
This sandstone sculpture of Pandava, depicting a warrior from Hindu mythology, was stolen from the Prasat Chan temple within Cambodia's Koh Ker complex, likely in the 1970s under the Khmer Rouge.
New Yorker: HOW A BILLIONAIRE OWNER BROUGHT TURMOIL AND TROUBLE TO SOTHEBY’S
Patrick Drahi made a fortune through debt-fuelled telecommunications companies. Now he’s bringing his methods to the art market.
apple.news/AXoxC9-sdSCy...
The identity documents of indigent people were purchased or stolen as part of an elaborate scheme to fraudulently circumvent a 50-year-old global ban on the rhino horn trade. www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025...
22.08.2025 03:25 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
New Case: Portrait head of Caracalla
The Manhattan DA seized this bronze portrait of the Roman emperor Caracalla from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in May 2023 as part of a sweeping investigation of the looting of the ancient site of Bubon, Türkiye.
James Baldwin’s message was simple: we’re afraid of love, because we’re afraid of exposing our true selves. To manage that fear, we “other” the groups we don’t belong to in order to avoid a reckoning with ourselves.
14.08.2025 17:47 — 👍 1187 🔁 236 💬 16 📌 14
The FBI has tracked down and returned another manuscript signed by Hernan Cortez, one of 15 pages stolen from Mexico's National Archives before 1993.
No criminal charges filed because it "changed hands several times over" in the decades since its disappearance
www.fbi.gov/news/stories...
“Only historians and trained museum professionals are qualified to conduct such a review...To suggest otherwise is an affront to the professional integrity of curators, historians, educators and everyone involved in the creation of solid, evidence-based content.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/a...
Details requested by the White House extend to organization charts, responses to visitor surveys, artists featured in galleries who have received a Smithsonian grant, a list of outside partners, and internal communications related to exhibit and artwork selection and approval.
12.08.2025 20:09 — 👍 3 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
WSJ: The White House plans to conduct a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of America’s 250th anniversary to ensure the museums align with President Trump’s interpretation of American history.
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
New Case: The Serpent King
When the National Gallery of Australia acquired this statue of Nagaraja, or Serpent King, in 2006, NYC dealer Subhash Kapoor provided an ownership document saying it had been in a Japanese collection since 1969.
RIP Maurizio Fiorilli, the Italian state prosecutor whose years-long investigation of American museums and the illicit antiquities trade changed the art world — and paved the way for other nations to reclaim their stolen culture, too.
10.08.2025 19:24 — 👍 21 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
Manhattan DA has announced the recent return of looted antiquities to several countries:
- 31 antiquities to the people of Italy;
- two 6th century C.E. Visigoth pendants to Spain;
- and a 17th century C.E. Jesuit manuscript to Hungary.
manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-an...
