This article presents the perspective of a professional within the antiquities trade on the evolution of the market since 1989. It is based on an article that will be published by UNIDROIT later in 2021.

This is Part 2 of a three-part article and contains the following sections:

Archives – Medici, Becchina and Symes

Transparency

Changing practices

Fighting illicit activity

The CircArt Project

“Millions” and “Billions” and supposed terrorist financing

Is art crime second only to drugs and weapons?

International seizures

The Internet

Part 1 : definitions, academic relations, orphan antiquities, the 2000 date, and source country export licenses

Part 3 : the law, European Union and U.S. developments, art fair seizures, legal trade, orphans and fair compensation, and the way forward.

When the auction house brought a 6,000-year-old, nine-inch marble sculpture of a female figure to sale in 2017, Christie’s had touted it in a promotional video as a “strong art historical statement and truly the definition of a masterpiece.” The object ended up selling for $14.4 million at auction, despite the Turkish government trying to halt the sale claiming ownership.

Now, the marble figurine, known as the “Guennol Stargazer,” is the subject of a bench trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan to determine ownership. In the meantime, the buyer who was to pay the $14.4 million has backed away from the sale, and the sculpture is being held in the vault at Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza salesroom, according to a report in the New York Times.

It is an astonishing fact that the overwhelming volume of data used to promote the idea of the art market as a haven for international crime is bogus. Of equal concern is the fact that it is the authorities themselves – from law enforcement to law makers – who often propagate this bogus data, giving it the credence it does not deserve, and so clearing the way for it to influence policy. The result is that vital time and resources are spent on inflicting serious damage to legitimate interests while overlooking significant problems that need attention. This report provides primary source evidence to show this, as well as explaining how and why this happens.

Having never found evidence of any kind of the art trade being tied to terrorist funding in their own or several other intensive studies, UNESCO nonetheless went ahead and smeared both private collectors and museums at once with a libelous ad campaign. UNESCO has now pulled back images from an advertising campaign intended to highlight international trafficking in looted artifacts after facing complaints that it misrepresented the provenance of the works in pictures. Among the objects used in the campaign were three from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without their consent. The pieces of course were legally acquired long ago, like the majority of antiquities held in private and public collections.

Erin Thompson, an assistant professor of art crime at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice and vocal critic of the antiquities trade, gives reckless advice to her twitter followers on how to illegally topple a statue of Christopher Columbus in Minnesota.

The 166 page report by one of the most respected independent research organizations in the United States claims that current thinking on illegal trafficking of antiquities is mostly wrong. Its findings have prompted it to propose a radical reassessment of the illicit trade in cultural objects. It blames bloggers, journalists and advocacy groups for exaggerating the problem to attract headlines, funding and to effect policy change. It singles out one of the highest profile crusaders against trafficking, New York Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, stating that the widely held but inaccurate belief that antiquities are linked to trafficking in drugs and weapons can mostly be traced back to him as the source of the misinformation.

An ancient art dealer offers an authoritative academic peer reviewed rebuttal of the many weak arguments that are put forth to call for still further legislation and regulation of the antiquities trade.

Sotheby’s is taking Greece’s ministry of culture to court over the ownership of an ancient Greek bronze horse, in a highly unusual legal attempt by the auction house “to clarify the rights of legitimate owners” amid a surge in spurious claims by countries of origin.