The Antiquities Coalition

08/12/2026

📊 Effective heritage protection starts with good data.

Between April and June 2026, Saudi Arabia's Heritage Commission documented 55 cultural heritage violations across the Kingdom—including unauthorized excavations and illicit sales of antiquities.

The AC commends the Heritage Commission and its officers for not only detecting these crimes, but also making the data public.

Detailed reporting helps law enforcement:
🔸Identify emerging trafficking trends
🔸Strengthen customs and online monitoring
🔸Hone future protection efforts

In short, better data leads to better decisions—and ultimately, better protection for our shared cultural heritage.

Read more:

The Heritage Commission recorded 55 violations involving cultural heritage sites and artifacts across several regions of the Kingdom during the second quarter of 2026.

08/09/2026

🖼️🤝💰 Links between antiquities trafficking and financial crime? Count on it.

AC Executive Director Tess Davis talks AML, market integrity, and the fight against with AML RightSource.

Explore how art & antiquities trafficking fuels money laundering, sanctions evasion, organized crime with Antiquities Coalition Executive Director Tess Davis.

08/06/2026

👏 Congratulations to our friend and colleague Dr. Patty Gerstenblith on the establishment of the Patty Gerstenblith Legal Fellowship in Art, Museum, and Cultural Heritage Law at the Field Museum.

For decades, Patty has helped shape the field of cultural property law. Her work strengthens legal frameworks, informs policy, and inspires generations of students and practitioners dedicated to this mission.

We applaud the Field Museum for honoring her remarkable legacy in-the-making and investing in the next generation of attorneys who will advance cultural heritage protection, museum stewardship, and repatriation efforts. �

Read more:

The Field Museum today announced the creation of the Patty Gerstenblith Legal Fellowship in Art, Museum, and Cultural Heritage Law, a new endowed, two-year fellowship honoring Dr. Patty Gerstenblith’s extraordinary contributions to cultural heritage law and her decades of leadership at DePaul Uni...

07/31/2026

🏺 A miner's cart brimming with dirt-encrusted antiquities.
💼 A shell company brazenly named after an ancient Egyptian city.
🤐 A long-overdue confession.

→ In her latest investigation, art crime investigator Erin Thompson reconstructs the storied career of antiquities dealer Ali Aboutaam, tracing what law enforcement has uncovered about his network and the role of Phoenix Ancient Art in moving suspect antiquities through the market.

But Thompson's story does not end with the investigation. It turns to a more pressing question: what responsibility do museums have to report suspicious artifacts in their collections?

As more trafficking networks come to light, silence becomes increasingly difficult to justify.

After The Met returned a Roman bust connected to Phoenix Ancient Art, the question of what will happen to other works sold by the gallery to dozens of US institutions remains open.

07/29/2026

🏛️Museums have an opportunity to shape the future of .

If your institution is reviewing collection provenance, strengthening stewardship policies, or working to address ownership questions, consider participating in the Penn Cultural Heritage Center's National Survey of Museum Collecting.

Open through August 20, the survey examines how U.S. institutions acquire, borrow, deaccession, conduct provenance research, and resolve ownership questions surrounding cultural objects.

As museums increasingly embrace transparency and accountability, initiatives like this help identify best practices, strengthen public trust, and build a more ethical and resilient cultural sector. Every institution that participates contributes to a clearer understanding of where the field stands—and where it can go next.

→ Learn more and participate before the survey closes:

Museums across the United States are navigating evolving standards for acquisitions and collections management, growing public attention to the provenance of their collections, increasing restitution and repatriation requests, and constraints on staffing and funding. Our field needs clearer insight....

07/27/2026

Last week, Financial Times released a profile on Matthew Bodganos and his Antiquities Trafficking Unit at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

The feature highlighted international dimensions of the illicit antiquities trade—and how demand in the U.S. art market serves as a hub for this crime. Bodganos and his team are a real testament to law enforcement's power to protect antiquities, the American consumer, and the U.S. art market at large.

a pervasive global problem. Working out of a single New York Office, Bogdanos partners with source countries from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, and beyond to identify and recover stolen works hiding in plain sight—sometimes in America's largest museums.

🗞️ Read the FT article: https://ow.ly/zYCX50Zsogk

🏺 Visit the AC Blog to learn more about the Manhattan DA's recent recoveries: https://ow.ly/CR5150Zsogj

07/21/2026

$95 million—the estimated value of looted antiquities surrendered by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York following the seizure of additional objects from its collection this June.
→ https://ow.ly/hZye50Znzhg

💸 This figure is staggering and points to an important reality: changing the may seem costly; but the status quo comes at much higher price.

Museums aren't just stewards. They're .

Institutions that embrace accountability today will define the ethical standards of tomorrow.

→ Museums have the expertise and the influence to lead. Rigorous provenance research, transparency, and proactive collaboration with law enforcement and source countries help build public trust while protecting our shared heritage.

Our 2026 campaign challenges American museums to question their collections: Where did these objects come from? Who lost them? How did they get here?

🏛️ Learn more: https://ow.ly/72oe50ZnziV

Several ancient sculptures and vessels acquired between 1971 and 2001 were among the objects extracted from The Met's collection this June.

07/17/2026

is rarely an isolated event.

More often, it sets in motion a chain of discreet ownership transfers, fabricated provenances, competing narratives, and rewritten histories.

Once an object is removed from its archaeological and cultural context, it can be repurposed to serve almost any story.

The latest episode of 'The Stuff the British Stole,' featuring the , explores just how complex the lives of displaced cultural objects can become. More than a story about one famous artifact, it examines the intertwined histories of archaeology, empire, diplomacy, museums, and the enduring calls for return.

Award-winning journalist Marc Fennell takes viewers on a globe-trotting investigation across the Caribbean, Asia, and Egypt, tracing remarkable objects and the communities still fighting for their return.

📺

From Egypt to France and on to Britain, Marc decodes the story of the Rosetta Stone: how it ended up in London, who really took it, where it belongs, and why it remains one of the British Museum's most contested treasures.

07/15/2026

Just months ago, the Antiquities Coalition had the honor of engaging colleagues from across on how the illicit trade in cultural property threatens Southeast Asia's heritage, and the power of international cooperation to get it back.

🏺 Its a delight to hear the The United States Department of Justice announcement of another return from the Douglas Latchford Network, this time, to . The returned antiquities—two 8th-century bronze standing sculptures of Avalokiteshvara, (16 and 20 inches tall)—were voluntarily forfeited by an anonymous U.S. private collector.

This case serves as a reminder that voluntary cooperation from collectors and museums can do far more than facilitate individual repatriations. Information they provide can help investigators
🔸 Trace trafficking networks
🔸 Identify additional looted objects, and
🔸 Recover cultural heritage that might otherwise remain lost.

The Antiquities Coalition applauds Homeland Security Investigations' Illicit Finance and Money Laundering Unit and all of the partners whose collaboration made this recovery possible.

→ The Return: https://ow.ly/lRIV50Znz0t

→ U.S.-ASEAN Cooperation to Fight : https://ow.ly/2PMS50Znz0s

Jakarta, Indonesia — The U.S. Department of State, in partnership with the Antiquities Coalition, convened a high-level U.S.-ASEAN event, “Safeguarding Southeast Asia’s Heritage: Strengthening ASEAN–U.S. Cooperation to Combat Cultural Property Trafficking,” […]

07/10/2026

Another victory against .

Last month, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office returned three sacred Khmer sculptures to Cambodia—recognizing the Antiquities Coalition for its support of these ongoing investigations.

The repatriation includes a Guardian Deity from the ancient capital of Koh Ker and two rare 7th-century sandstone sculptures, all trafficked out of Cambodia through networks linked to Douglas Latchford.

While every return is a major step toward justice, many of Cambodia's most important cultural treasures remain missing—including Uma, Consort of Shiva, one of the country's most significant lost antiquities.

Read about this landmark recovery, ways the AC supports law enforcement, and how you can help bring Cambodia's stolen heritage home through our Top Ten Most Wanted Antiquities campaign:

Manhattan DA Acknowledges Antiquities Coalition in Latest Recovery On June 9, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office Antiquities Trafficking Unit announced the return of three looted Khmer sculptures to the Kingdom […]