Photo Credit ANP Once upon a time the individual pictured above, Jan-Dirk Paarlberg had a prominent place in the Quote 500 with a fortune according to business publications that at its peak reached 280 million euros.  A buyer and seller of works of art, his collection is said to have included works on canvas and paper by Marc Chagall, Claude Monet, Kees van Dongen, Pierre Bonnard, Karel Appel, Pablo Picasso, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, to name a few, as well a at least one sculpture, a statue by Feranando Botero.   Forty-one objects from his collection have been consigne ..read more

On 19 April 2024 Christ Church, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, announced the recovery of one of three stolen paintings, A Rocky Coast, with Soldiers Studying a Plan by the Italian Baroque painter Salvator Rosa.  This painting, along with two other Baroque Period artworks, had been stolen from the Christ Church Picture Gallery at around 11pm on Saturday, 14 March 2020. According to the college press release, the painting had been recovered in Romania after law enforcement officers in the country had been contacted by a ..read more

TEFAF Maastricht 2022 Image Credit: ARCA Earlier this week, ARCA published an article building on an announcement made by Spain's Ministry of the Interior which involved the identification of a looted Egyptian object.  This investigation involved the Policía Nacional in collaboration with the Dutch Politie, and the expertise of forensic scholars, as well as the assistance of cooperating dealers and the support of art fair personnel.  These combined efforts resulted in the voluntary handover of the trafficked artefact in the Netherlands, as well as the reported arre ..read more

TEFAF Maastricht 2020 Image Credit: ARCA According to Spain's Ministry of the Interior, following an investigation begun in 2023, the Policía Nacional have arrested Spanish gallery owner Jaume Bagot Peix, operator of J. Bagot Arqueología for allegedly committing the crimes of money laundering, smuggling, and document falsification in relation to this black granite head of a funerary monument for a high ranking official from the reign of Hatshepsut or Tuthmosis III in Egypt.  TEFAF Maastricht 2022 Image Credit: ARCA Valued at 190,000 euros, the artefact had been acquired ..read more

After a rare bas-relief appeared in an online auction, with an asking price of 210 thousand Ukrainian Hryvni, historians with the National Museum of the History of Ukraine notified law enforcement about the suspicious upcoming sale. Believed by its wear to be a wind-blown architectural element, which at some point adorned the exterior façade of the unknown 12 to 13th century "white stone" church, experts believed the stone sculpture had been removed by looters in contravention of national law, based on the fact of illegal appropriation by a person of someone else's property or trea ..read more

In early June 2021 Hobby Lobby Inc, owned by craft store mogul, David Green,  filed a Civil Complaint for fraud against former professor Dirk Obbink.  According to Civil Docket No. 21-CV-3113, the craft conglomerate alleged that as many as 32 items that it had purchased between 2010 and 2013 from the Oxford professor, to be featured in the Museum of the Bible (MOTB), were not his to sell.   Instead, the papyrus fragments the scholar sold them via Private Sale agreements had been stolen from Egyptian Exploration Society's collection.  The fragments were identified as ..read more

Sponsored by:  The New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust Date:  Saturday, 18 May 2024 Location:   RHLT3 (Lecture Theatre 3) Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus,  Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka Wellington, New Zealand. Times: 10:00 am - 7 pm The New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust’s invites you to attend their 2024 symposium.  This year’s theme is Art Crime Research Today.  Presenters Include: Detective Inspector Scott Beard The theft and recovery of two Gottfried Lindauer portraits from Auckland’s International Art Cen ..read more

Last week, after some eleven years and over one hundred and twenty hearings, the Court of Naples, presided over by Maurizio Conte, announced some lengthy sentences and penalties in the pursuit of justice for 1,500 volumes of historical interest and textual treasures pilfered from the Biblioteca e Complesso monumentale dei Girolamini.  Sentencing la banda degli (dis)onesti On 12 March 2024 the first criminal section of the Naples court sentenced six defendants (in the first degree) for a series of episodes of embezzlement.  Those convicted were: Massimo Marino De Caro ..read more

Self-Portrait – Rembrandt van Rijn As the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum prepares to mark the 34th anniversary of of one of the most infamous art heists in history, the enduring mystery surrounding the disappearance of thirteen invaluable artworks continues to captivate the public imagination.  Despite the passage of time, the mystery surrounding the stolen masterpieces, which include works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Édouard Manet, Johannes Vermeer, Edgar Degas, and Govert Flinck continues to endure, leaving investigators, art enthusiasts, and the museum itself still searching for a ..read more

The Cultural Heritage Brigade of Spain's Policía Nacional have completed an investigation into a rare, illicitly trafficked, ushabti. This statuette, holding traditional Egyptian agricultural implements reproduces the text of Chapter 6 of the Book of the Dead and would have been placed in the tomb of the deceased.  Property of the Republic of the Sudan, the funerary figurine was sold to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in the Netherlands by a "Catalan antiques dealer".  Although unnamed in the press release, the Spanish police did provide some interesting details regard ..read more