The British Museum is suing its former senior curator Peter Higgs, alleging he stole or damaged at least 1,800 objects and sold them over 10 years to 45 buyers around the world over eBay, the BBC reports.

bbc.com/news/entertain… A 1993 audit of a British Museum storeroom of ancient art showed that there were 1,449 unregistered items present.

During another audit in 2023, more than 80% of those items -- 1,161 in total -- were missing from the same storeroom.

How do you buy $69 million in stolen antiquities and not face criminal charges?

A short thread with some additional thoughts (and reporting) on the Shelby White investigation...

https://twitter.com/ChasingAphrodit/status/1680942682930302976

First, some clarification on the seriousness of this case.

Antiquities are often seized under civil forfeiture law, which allows the government to grab things if there is a preponderance of evidence that they were stolen.

The Shelby White case was not that. It was criminal.

A decade ago, in December 2012, I wrote about the @DenverArtMuseum troubling ties to Emma Bunker and Douglas Latchford, from whom the museum had acquired a number of dodgy antiquities.

See: chasingaphrodite.com/?s=Denver+&sub…

So its outrageous they’re only today claiming that the issue… …is a “top priority” for the museum, which claims it is “deeply troubled” by documents that, as The Denver Post’s @SamTabachnik notes, had long been publicly available.

American museums need to do better.

denverpost.com/2022/12/19/den…

Sicily’s anti-mafia unit confirms seizure of property belonging to Gianfranco Becchina, who for forty years headed one of Italy's most notorious antiquities trafficking cells.

Becchina sold hundreds of those antiquities to ⁦the Getty and others art-crime.blogspot.com/2022/05/justic… 10 million euros confiscated from art dealer in Castelvetrano trapanisi.it/mafia-la-dia-c…

Many have asked about "agreement" announced yesterday between billionaire antiquities collector Michael Steinhardt and the @ManhattanDA which spent years investigating Steinhardt for criminal activity in the art market.

I have answers! And new ?'s.

A brief thread... @ManhattanDA First, the document:

Read it. Think about it. Tell me what you think.

Did Steinhardt get off easy? Was the DA's case doomed at trial? Post your thoughts below.
documentcloud.org/documents/2115…

Big news: MICHAEL STEINHARDT, one of the world’s largest ancient art collectors. agrees to a *lifetime ban* on buying antiquities to resolve a multi-year criminal investigation brought by the Antiquities Trafficking Unit @ManhattanDA and @HSINewYork

manhattanda.org/d-a-vance-mich… @ManhattanDA @HSINewYork Steinhardt also surrendered 180 stolen antiquities worth $70M

"The pieces were looted and illegally smuggled out of 11 countries, trafficked by 12 criminal smuggling networks, and lacked verifiable provenance prior to appearing on the international art market," sez @ManhattanDA

Breaking: The US government is returning 10 looted antiquities to India today valued at more than $1 million.

They were seized in recent years from Nancy Weiner Gallery, the Maitreya Gallery and @ChristiesInc auction house after investigations by @ManhattanDA and @ICEgov @ChristiesInc @ManhattanDA @ICEgov Several of the objects were seized during the March 2016 raids at Asia Week, which we covered here:

chasingaphrodite.com/2016/03/17/bus…

and here: chasingaphrodite.com/2016/03/18/asi…