Despite the United States’ status as an art market leader with a 42% share of the global pie today, the FBI Art Crime Team wasn’t founded until 2004. The small program crystallized in response to the looting of some 15,000 antiquities from the National Museum of Baghdad in April 2003. - Hyperallergic
"A German-Egyptian team of researchers, led by archaeologist Hourig Sourouzian, discovered the artifacts half-submerged in water during their restoration of the funerary temple of the pharaoh and the Colossi of Memnon, two monumental statues in his likeness." - ARTnews
Bondil’s claim alleged the board “orchestrated, led, and continues to lead an intentional campaign of defamation and destruction of her reputation.” Now, the museum has walked back its criticisms of its former leader. - Artnet
The Standard-Bearer (1636) is being purchased from the Rothschild family via a trust in the Cook Islands which is owned by a holding company in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — this while the government's official policy is (supposed to be) to crack down on tax avoidance. - The Guardian
She painted the mural For The Women's House at the women's wing of the New York City prison complex back in 1971. She visited Riker's in 2019 and found the mural was in a spot where few people could see it, so she requested the transfer. - The New York Times
Strip away the diverting celebrity names, and what’s left is just a museum show of a corporate collection. Corporate art collections are not a rare thing — although this format is certainly unusual — but exhibitions of them at major museums are. - Los Angeles Times
"The estate, known as Villa Aurora, had a price tag of €471 million ($546 million) and could have become the most expensive residential property sold at auction. But instead of a flurry of international bidders, the sale was met with crickets." - Artnet
Italy formed its Carabinieri Art Squad back in 1969, but the US didn't create a dedicated equivalent until 2004. Yet since then, the unit has recovered more than 200,000 items worth more than $900,000, investigating everything from museum thefts to forgeries to money laundering to shipwrecks. - Hyperallergic
The topic of the Nazi role in antiquities looting is increasingly drawing attention, in part through the work of scholars who are peeling back the mysteries of what happened to the objects that were excavated or seized eight decades ago. - The New York Times
In past centuries, it had some notable visitors: Galileo, Goethe, Stendhal, Gogol, Tchaikovsky and Henry James. At the top of the hill stands the 30,000 square foot Villa Aurora. Built in 1570, it's recently undergone some restoration. - NPR
"With the aid of curators and artists from Native American backgrounds, curators across the U.S. are broadening narratives, questioning stereotypes, and collapsing categories." - Artnet
The far-right National Rally party released a 3½-minute video this weekend showing its presidential candidate speechifying to the camera while walking back and forth in front of the Paris museum — whose management is very unhappy at being dragged directly into politics like this. - Artnet
Government officials have tried to grapple with the best course of action for monuments that are symbols of both divisiveness and history, balancing the need to confront America’s past without glorifying it. - The Daily Beast
The shockwave of the series, and later the book, "Ways of Seeing reframed the conversation about how art is interpreted, focusing on the nature of ownership and the language of appreciation as well as the ways in which advertising appropriates the motifs of painting." - The Economist
