Highly recommend Karla Ceceña’s literary tours of Mexico City! We did the Centro Historico tour and learned about 17th c. female printers, authors inspired by archeology, and ended up in this secret back room of a storied used bookshop! She’s @ciudadliterariacdmx on Instagram.

Did they really need the “no touching” sign for this terrifying god of death with his liver hanging out of the bottom of his rib cage, from Mexico City’s Templo Mayor? The holes in his skull would have held locks of curly hair. Whoever touches him gets what they deserve!

I’m thinking of theming my intro to research methods class on scams. Any suggestions for great writing/podcasts/videos/docs/etc that might inspire freshmen?

Mexico City’s anthropology museum remains unrivaled in its display of both masterpieces and lil’ guys

Did a fun interview for the Swiss legal news outlet Gotham City, which publishes invaluable reporting on art and antiquities law cases (among many other topics!)

Coline Emmel@cemmel.bsky.social · 2w ago

Alors si vous êtes comme moi, vous apprécierez certainement cette interview d'Erin Thompson, également connue sur les réseaux sociaux sous le nom de "Art Crime Professor": gothamcity.ch/2026/07/22/l...

Ok that’s a good one

If you like art law - I mean, if you really like art law - head on down to Berkeley Law School this November for four jam-packed days with some top experts (and me): www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bus...

Thoroughly unglamorous shot of the NY Board of Elections warehouse where I spent hours this week to observe a recount. My friend won their race - by 15 votes! And boy oh boy is the work of democracy boring (complimentary).

A few days before Christmas 2016, a grey Land Rover paused in front of a bank of mirrored windows at this checkpoint on the border between France and Switzerland. What happened next revealed just how looted art worms its way into museums. A 🧵 about my article: hyperallergic.com/why-do-so-ma...

Should I do a 🧵 on my just-published article on how one of the most trusted - and most expensive - antiquities dealers was faking the paperwork to make freshly looted artifacts look like they had long, legal ownership histories? I should. But I'm so tired. Tomorrow! hyperallergic.com/why-do-so-ma...

Why Do So Many Museums Hold a Convicted Antiquity Dealer’s Treasures?

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.

hyperallergic.com

At the @nychistory.bsky.social for the reenactment of the toppling of the statue of George III by New Yorkers who’d just listened to the Declaration of Independence. T minus 20. Historically accurate “getting pumped by listening to a drum and fife” is happening.

Fantastic detective work from @michaeldpress.bsky.social - tracking down the forged letter used to fake an old provenance for recently looted cuneiform tablets! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Among the details in the DA's latest repatriation press release is that an auction house disguised a red-flag name of a known trafficker of Iraqi antiquities (Hassan Rihani) by describing pieces as from the "R. Family Collection." Genius! They'll never know! manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-an...

new open access publication - free for download! - on digital approaches to tracing the illicit trade in cultural objects: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Behind-the-scenes 🧵 on this story revealing that the American Museum of Natural History in New York is holding thousands of hair samples taken from Native Americans, including children at residential schools - despite knowing their names. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/a...

Decades Late, Museum Scrambles to Return 2,700 Native Remains

nytimes.com

Dyke March NYC was incredible! (Photo by my friend, the wonderful www.instagram.com/stas.ginzburg/).

How did flailing US efforts to fight communism in SE Asia fill American museums with looted Cambodian antiquities? How have these museums fought their return? I discussed these questions with the author of a thrilling book on Cambodia's fight to reclaim its past: hyperallergic.com/inside-the-m...

Inside the Mind of an Antiquities Looter

"The Man Who Stole the Gods" author Matthew Campbell discusses Western collectors' rapacious hunger for ancient Cambodian art and the sheer violence it took to satiate it.

hyperallergic.com

Repatriation story time! Aka, how a stolen goddess of dance went from the photo on the left (on display for worship at a Nepali monastery in 1969) to the photo on the right (patiently posing with a dorky admirer in the Nepali consulate in NYC in 2026).

Repatriation story time! Aka, how a stolen goddess of dance went from the photo on the left (on display for worship at a Nepali monastery in 1969) to the photo on the right (patiently posing with a dorky admirer in the Nepali consulate in NYC in 2026).

Headed to a repatriation ceremony for stolen images of deities - will tell you what/where/how when I can! (Yes I know this whole post is “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego” coded)

Looking back through photos of my 2022 trip to Cambodia (for... reasons) and - phew. So many spectacular artworks and sites.

Three photos with me in them (research, removed from display, and repatriation ceremony) and one from today without me - the god finally back with his family in Nepal! For the story of this recovery, check out the fantastic episode from @planetmoney.bsky.social: www.npr.org/2024/04/26/1...

Geoguessr and historical design friends: any ideas whether the below 1923 photos were taken in Geneva, Glasgow, or Athens? There's a book spine and a map, both barely legible (this is the highest res I have). Argh!

Tell me you don't look at this painting and hear the soundtrack that all the little rainbow sculptures are dancing to! Jean Léon Gérôme's "Sculpturæ vitam insufflat pictura (Painting Breathes Life into Sculpture)," 1893, Art Gallery of Ontario.

Sometimes you find an especially perky ancient little guy and you need to make a gif to express it, ok?

My daughter's beloved child is the one I hold here. The one that I held on my lap While we looked at the light of the sun when we were alive, And that I still hold, now that we are both dead. - inscription on this c. 400 BCE Greek grave marker, carved with a grandmother holding a swaddled baby

Weirdly reassuring to give a talk in front of a giant Bierstadt painting - if I was tedious, the audience could just look at a badass waterfall!

Life mirroring art at the Met.

Nerd joy is matching a vague description of an antiquity in a museum to a letter in an archive, emailing the curators about it, and then seeing that they added the info to the listing! (In this case, for a wonderful vase showing Danae and the infant Perseus being sealed into a chest).