The most astounding result of our research was discovering how few museums had complied with the American Alliance of Museums’ simplest requirement: having a public collections policy.
Author Archives: Erin L. Thompson
Erin L. Thompson, a professor of art crime at John Jay College, is the author of the forthcoming book Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of American Monuments. Follow her on Twitter at @artcrimeprof.
Posted inOpinion
Stumbling Towards Repatriation
We need to make it clear to our museums that we do not want to walk around in galleries of stolen artworks.
Posted inArt
Sorry/Not Sorry: How Viewers Express Judgment by Touching the Art
Anyone who deliberately damages art in a museum is regarded as under a delusion, either due to mental illness or a failure to perceive the nature of what they’re doing. But in reality, people touch art all of the time.
Posted inOpinion
A Benin Bronze With Fishy Provenance Goes to Auction
While conversations about historic monuments ignite public debate, a small sculpture which was likely looted heads to auction at Christie’s Paris.
Posted inOpinion
The True Cost of Museum Fakes
The Museum of the Bible recently admitted all of its Dead Sea Scroll fragments are forgeries. But when fake antiquities are donated to museums, taxpayers lose.
Posted inArt
Stolen Deities Resurface in a Dallas Museum
A blogger’s shaky snapshots from an exhibition opening reveal where a Lakshmi-Narayana statue stolen from a temple in Kathmandu in 1984 had ended up: the Dallas Museum of Art.
Posted inOpinion
Museums Should Consider Why They’ve Become Targets of Attack and Protest
A terror plot targeting the British Museum was recently thwarted, but the reasons why it became a target in the first place go far beyond the current political climate.