The African Origins exhibition ignores the fact that approximately 160 objects from Benin are held by the museum under ongoing demands for their repatriation.
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.
Posted inArt
Returned to Nepal by the FBI, a Sculpture Becomes a God Again
Last week, I flew to Nepal and witnessed a ceremony to replace a looted Lakshmi-Narayan sculpture to its original location.
Posted inOpinion
What Do We Do with the Work of Immoral Artists?
Where should we “draw the line” between sacrificing great art and supporting artists who are predators and bigots?
Posted inFilm
Decolonizing the (Sitcom) Museum
What does Rutherford Falls, a new TV series that prominently features two small town museums, tell us about the way people see the contentious stories on display in history and art institutions?
Posted inOpinion
The Lax Compliance of Museums with AAM Guidelines for Ancient Art
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.
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.