A controversial painting and everything weird in the art market
Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby by Candida R. Moss and Joel S. Baden [Review]
Posted on 22 August 2020
Essential background to the scandals that plague the Museum of the Bible
Stealing the Show: A History of Art and Crime in Six Thefts by John Barelli [Review]
Posted on 15 August 2020
Inside view of art crime at the Met from the person tasked with preventing it
Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife by Ariel Sabar [Review]
Posted on 11 August 2020
Strange story of a fake artefact and the people who needed it to be real
The Art Industry and U.S. Policies that Undermine Sanctions, U.S. Senate Report [Review]
Posted on 10 August 2020
Judoligarchs! Money is laundered via art and more regulation is needed.
Auction Review: Christie’s Antiquities, 14–15 May 2002
Posted on 17 February 2020
Join me as a browse an antiquities sale from the past
Audrey Hepburn, Mexican Antiquities, Cultural Capital (Funny Face 1957)
Posted on 24 September 2017
No 1950s Bohemian Parisian philosophy flat is complete without an ancient Mexican figurine.
Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery by Jennie Erin Smith
Posted on 4 August 2017
“Enclosed were photos of two Fijian iguanas, preserve in alcohol”
Winged Obsession: The Pursuit of the World’s Most Notorious Butterfly Smuggler by Jessica Speart
Posted on 14 May 2017
“I am the Indiana Jones of insects”
The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez by Laura Cumming
Posted on 2 November 2016
Is it real, is it fake, is it stolen, and where IS it? A vanishing painting and an interesting story.
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith
Posted on 20 May 2016
A female Dutch Golden Age painter, a 1950s art forgery and theft, what I want in a novel.
Hitler’s Art Dealer (Hitlers Kunsthändler) by Meike Hoffmann and Nicola Kuhn
Posted on 13 May 2016
A new biography of the now-infamous art dealer, Hildebrand Gurlitt