Jim Fitton has been in custody since March, when Iraqi officials found 12 small shards of pottery in his luggage.
Iraq
Posted inNews
US Restitutes 17,000 Looted Artifacts to Iraq
“This is the largest return of antiquities to Iraq,” said Iraq’s culture minister Hassan Nazim.
Posted inArt
Michael Rakowitz Makes a Life Out of Fragments
Rakowitz has installed at the Wellin a partial reconstruction of “Room H” within the Northwest Palace of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud.
Posted inFilm
Michael Rakowitz’s Recreations of Art Taken From Iraq
Hyperallergic has the exclusive premiere of Art21’s Haunting the West, a short film about Rakowitz’s artistic efforts to end the marginalization of West Asian art and history.
Posted inNews
Artist Edmund de Waal Donates 2,000 Books to Iraqi Library Decimated by ISIS
The artist donated his “library of exile” to the Mosul University Library, once one of the largest libraries in West Asia, housing over a million books and rare historical materials before it was destroyed.
Posted inNews
1,500-year-old Archway Partially Collapses in Iraq, Prompting Urgent Calls for Help
The director of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage said the Taq Kasra is in “dangerous and critical” condition and needs immediate support to prevent further collapse.
Posted inOpinion
The British Museum Isn’t Doing Enough to Fight Illegal Antiquities Trafficking
While the museum presents its attempt to identify trafficked antiquities as an altruistic enterprise, its policing of the antiquities market also distracts from its historic role in acquiring looted objects.
Posted inArt
Iraqi Performance Artists Use Silence as a Gesture of Dissent
The Vienna-based group Iraqi Autumn draws attention to the international community’s silence regarding the outbreak of violence in Iraq over the past two months.
Posted inArt
In Response to the British Museum, an Exhibition Demonstrates the High Cost of Iraqi Oil
An exhibition at P21 gallery highlights the human consequences of the exploitation of Iraq’s oil reserves, among them, environmental crises, state corruption, and youth unemployment.
Posted inNews
After $31 Million Sale of 3,000-Year-Old Assyrian Relief, Experts and Artists Denounce Christie’s
Critics call the recent sale, which shattered previous world records for Assyrian art sales, a callous example of the art market profiting from suffering in the Middle East. Experts speculate that ISIS’s destruction of cultural heritage sites may have boosted the value of the work.
Posted inArt
A Tragedy Inspires an Impromptu Art Intervention in Iraqi Kurdistan
For a week after the Iranian Army’s deadly missile attack on an Iranian Kurdish community, artist Shorsh Ahi and his family slept among the ruins, expanding upon his installation.
Posted inArt
Highway to Conflict: A Photographer Maps Out One of Iraq’s Deadliest Routes
“You think of Mosul and you think of a dangerous warzone, when actually 90 percent of it is open green fields, beautiful landscapes, dogs playing, kids out,” the artist says