Angela S Chiu
@chiuangelas.bsky.social
Independent scholar of the market for Asian antiquities, especially Khmer and Thai. PhD Buddhist art and literature of Thailand. Author of The Buddha in Lanna (U of Hawai'i Press, 2017)
Erik Davis is an important scholar of Cambodian Buddhism. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
The professor facing prison in ‘antifa’ case: ‘They want to scare all who oppose ICE’
Erik Davis is accused by the government of a ‘conspiracy’ to obstruct ICE – experts say it’s part of a pattern to criminalize lawful organizing and ruin activists’ lives
theguardian.com
Looters scrambling down a dark chamber in a 1000-year old brick temple in the Cambodian jungle. A refined dinner party in 1950s Bangkok hosted by a Belgian aristocrat. The breakfast table of Thomas Hoving, a former head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/739182...
The Man Who Stole the Gods by Matthew Campbell: 9780593716007 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the gilded halls of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, a tale of stolen treasures and the battle to reclaim a nation’s soul. Amidst the chaos of...
penguinrandomhouse.com
📅Mark Your Calendar📅 For an exclusive event co-hosted with New America AC Executive Director Tess Davis, Peter Bergen, and Matthew Campbell will discuss 'The Man Who Stole the Gods' in-person/online on June 10, 12 PM EST. Register here: https://lnkd.in/esxUSwaP
This summer, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) is proud to offer a bundle-annual conference+week-long workshop on provenance research. The conference is slated for 19-21 June 2026 and the workshop starts the following week. www.artcrimeresearch.org/provenance-a...
Provenance Research Training Course in Italy | ARCA – Association for Research into Crimes against Art
artcrimeresearch.org
Cambodia announced that a private collector in Asia has returned 20 stone and bronze cultural artefacts to the country. "We are profoundly grateful for the return of these souls to their homeland," commented the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.
The Reading Public Museum received a 10th-c. Khmer sculpture thru a recent bequest. Its staff instantly flagged it as a high-risk item, did research, & contacted Cambodia about repatriation. Three cheers for the Reading Public Museum! A wonderful example for all museums. www.wfmz.com/news/area/be...
Cambodia's Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts (MCFA) has announced that it has received 74 Khmer antiquities from the collection of the late Douglas Latchford, in accordance with the 2020 agreement between the MCFA & the Latchford family. Here are photos released by the MCFA of some of the objects
The Man Who Stole the Gods is award-winning journalist Matthew Campbell's exploration of the career of trafficker Douglas Latchford who looted Cambodia's ancient heritage with the complicity of some of the world's most prestigious museums. Preorder for 6/2 www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/739182...
"When Provenance, Policy, and Limited Museum Due Diligence Rings Old (Alarm) Bells." Comparing the Denver Art Museum's Douglas Latchford donated Dong Son bell (later restituted to Cambodia, with another in the Netherlands purchased via Marcel Nies. art-crime.blogspot.com/2026/02/when...
When Provenance, Policy, and Limited Museum Due Diligence Rings Old (Alarm) Bells
"A blog about art crimes, illicit trafficking, forgery, art theft and cultural heritage protection."
art-crime.blogspot.com
This “South East Asian Art Inventory” of Leon Black and his Narrows trust, dated 30 April 2014, appears in the Epstein Files. It suggests Black assembled an extraordinary collection of Khmer antiquities. THREAD www.justice.gov/epstein/file...
"Artworks — both high-market pieces and archaeological artefacts of unclear provenance — have become full-fledged components of criminal infrastructure, used to hide capital, construct money-laundering mechanisms and transfer funds across different segments of organized crime"
Damien Huffer@damienhuffer.bsky.social · 9mo ago
The #CoinLaundry’s deep dive into the ways criminals exploit the mechanisms and vulnerabilities of decentralized finance comes at a critical time in the global debate over how to stanch the flow of dirty money in cryptocurrency. Learn about our reporting:
About The Coin Laundry investigation
The investigation reveals how crypto companies profited from crime while victims were financially ruined.
buff.ly
The Art Tycoon, The Textile Company, and His Nephew on Trial in Colombia .. an investigation through public & leaked private documents of one of the dealers who made the market for Warhols by Malia Politzer & Iván Ruiz of Finance Uncovered www.financeuncovered.org/stories/jose...
The Art Tycoon, The Textile Company, and His Nephew on Trial in Colombia — Finance Uncovered
financeuncovered.org
The Smithsonian is returning 3 antiquities to Cambodia. It has no smoking gun directly evidencing their looting, but under its 2022 policy, the museum weighed the lack of export licenses, the items' handling by middlemen known to skirt legalities, & the likelihood they were stolen during wartime.
Asian Art Museum returns 4 ancient bronze statues to Thailand after Thai researchers linked them to indicted looter Douglas Latchford. www.sfchronicle.com/entertainmen...
After 50 years, looted Thai sculptures head home from San Francisco museum
The pieces were looted in the 1960s from a temple in northeastern Thailand and later entered the museum’s collection through its founding donor.
sfchronicle.com
Cambodia is seeking access to the notebooks of the late Emma Bunker, the Denver Art Museum consultant who assisted indicted smuggler Douglas Latchford in the sale of illicit Khmer antiquities www.denverpost.com/2025/12/04/e...
Cambodia seeks records from family of late Denver Art Museum consultant Emma Bunker
Bradley Gordon, an American attorney who serves as a legal adviser to the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, called the documents a “missing roadmap.”
denverpost.com
Devastating. Trump admin selling off historic public art to the highest bidder. "It is a tragic irony that murals meant to represent the contract between the government and its citizens would be sold to the highest bidder rather than preserved for posterity." www.alternet.org/trump-destro...
Trump admin selling off historic public art to the highest bidder
Painted figures haunt an empty building. A boy leaning on a pair of crutches. A father and son wandering a barren railroad track. A nuclear family at a picnic table. These poignant scenes were painted...
alternet.org
Hoa Hakananai'a translates loosely as "the lost, stolen or hidden friend" ❤️🩹
Benjamin Alvarez@benjalvarez1.bsky.social · 10mo agoEmotional scene at the @britishmuseum.bsky.social as a Rapa Nui delegation paid tribute to the Hoa Hakananai'a Moai that was stolen from the island in 1868. People calling for its return are once again flooding the museum's comment section on social media. #devuelvanelmoai
After years of negotiations, collector István Zelnik has agreed to return to Cambodia hundreds of artefacts including textiles, prehistoric jewellery & tools, and sculpture. Most of the items had been looted decades ago during Cambodia's civil war. www.phnompenhpost.com/national/hun...
Denver Post confirms what we’ve been hearing: nearly all federal HSI agents with expertise on cultural property crimes have been reassigned to immigration duties in recent months. Major loss of law enforcement capabilities in the world’s largest art market. www.denverpost.com/2025/11/06/u...
The U.S. was a leader in cultural heritage investigations. Now those agents are working immigration enforcement.
Homeland Security Investigations, the department’s investigative arm, once had as many as eight agents in its New York office investigating cultural property cases.
denverpost.com
Four minutes after we published this I had to edit to add in another theft this week of gold and silver pieces from the musée de la Maison des Lumières Denis Diderot.
ARCA@arca-artcrime.bsky.social · 11mo agoThe Louvre museum is not the only museum which has been robbed of its gold and jewel finery, here are 16 others. art-crime.blogspot.com/2025/10/fran...
Thank you to the Antiquities Coalition @combatlooting.bsky.social for interviewing me on Douglas Latchford's "first big heist," of Thailand's Prakhon Chai bronzes, and how he successfully marketed them by exploiting particular art world practices theantiquitiescoalition.org/inside-the-h...
Inside the Hunt for the Prakhon Chai Hoard: AC Interviews Dr. Angela Chiu - Antiquities Coalition
New evidence about the Prakhon Chai Hoard reveals the origins of one of the world’s most notorious antiquities trafficking rings. How did Douglas Latchford—who for decades was a “one-man supply-and-de...
theantiquitiescoalition.org
New Case: Goddess of Transcendent Wisdom In 2021, the Denver Art Museum returned this statue and several other Khmer artifacts to Cambodia after investigators revealed they had been trafficked by Douglas Latchford.
NEWS: The Manhattan DA has issued an arrest warrant for a California antiquities collector, Aaron Mendelsohn, alleging he knowing bought a bronze sculpture looted from Bubon, Turkiye and conspired with prominent experts to disguise its illicit history. A thread... www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/a...
Arrest Warrant Says Buyer of ‘Nude Emperor’ Bronze Knew It Was Looted
nytimes.com
A Still Life in Buenos Aires: Misattribution, Mystery, and (more) Nazi-Era Shadows. art-crime.blogspot.com/2025/09/once...
BBC Radio 4 broadcast a segment on looting of Cambodian artefacts and efforts to recover them from foreign collections. Hear from former looter "Blue Tiger" as well as restitution team members Brad Gordon and Thida Long. Starts around 19:20: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Museums are hilarious "Yes, we stole it, why don't YOU reflect on that?"
Caroline Dodds Pennock@carolinepennock.bsky.social · last yr.A gobsmacking amount of stolen Indian treasures in the stunning Ancient India exhibit at the British Museum. Many have a caption saying effectively ‘stolen by the East India Company and transferred to the BM when their museum closed down’. And yet they feature this quote without irony…
An amazing story.
The Wiener Holocaust Library@wienerlibrary.bsky.social · last yr.“I knew nothing about my family history until then...Nobody ever spoke about it.” But that day, she explains, she knew she wanted to find the truth, no matter how dark and shameful. 📰Our latest exhibition was featured in this weekend's @telegraphnews.bsky.social www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/8752340...
