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.
Erin L. Thompson
Erin L. Thompson, a professor of art crime at John Jay College (City University of New York), is the author of Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of American Monuments (Norton, 2022).
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.