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The True Crime Story of a Notorious Looter

How Douglas Latchford got away with it; plus, Frank Stella’s Navajo weavings.

Hyperallergic

May 29, 2026 — 3 min read

British dealer Douglas Latchford trafficked looted Cambodian antiquities on a massive scale before his death in 2020, selling objects to institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Emiline Smith brings us into the pages of a new book about the criminal network that supplied and transported these works — as well as the museum professionals and scholars who enabled it.

You might not have known that midcentury minimalist Frank Stella held a breathtaking collection of textiles made by Diné women — now on view for the first time on Manhattan’s Upper East Side — but take a look at their bold color and striking geometric patterns, and it’ll click. Also today, we honor Jay Milder, abstract painter and co-founder of City Gallery, who died this week at the age of 92.

—Lisa Yin Zhang, associate editor

The Looter Who Built Your Favorite Museum

At the center of Matthew Campbell’s The Man Who Stole the Gods (2026) is British dealer Douglas Latchford. To Latchford, Khmer sculpture was a luxury asset to be exploited, an “intense hobby” that turned into “a real business.”

Statues were decapitated and dismembered, stripped from their sanctuaries, yet somehow these objects arrived immaculately and spiritually deodorized in New York galleries and London auction houses. | Emiline Smith

Fred Tomaselli: Blooms Disrupted at James Cohan’s 48 Walker Street Gallery

James Cohan presents an exhibition by Fred Tomaselli, on view through June 27. In Blooms Disrupted, the garden is Tomaselli’s primary subject, which he uses to consider the natural world as a counterweight to the urgent rush of news and media that so often interrupts our private realities.

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Artists Up Close

David Humphrey Is Allergic to Style

A few months ago, in the middle of a studio visit with the painter, sculptor, and critic David Humphrey explained that he was going to transform the Kate Werble Gallery into a room by painting a sofa, plant, cocktail table, standing lamp, and other pieces of furniture and decoration onto the walls.

While Humphrey’s casual, playful setting did not make the actual works on paper better or worse, it did do something unexpected: It made this viewer rethink the paintings I had looked at in his studio, the drawings I had previously seen, and his work as a whole. | John Yau

A Look Into Frank Stella’s Mesmerizing Collection of Diné Textiles

The late artist’s trove of Navajo weavings is on public display for the first time at Arader Galleries in NYC ahead of a sale. Stella’s collection is on display through June 10 at Arader Galleries on Madison Avenue alongside a rare selection of the artist’s early geometric drawings, establishing the connection between Diné weaving history and Stella’s own visual language. | Rhea Nayyar

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