A fine article, but could have more words on issues of ownership at the heart of this story. Vesting ownership in an individual rather than the Nigerian state was always fraught. Thought in Feb. joint ownership was established, the mob at MOWAA suggests the Oba is fine blowing such arrangements up.

What a time to decide to learn less about the world. dailytarheel.com/article/univ...

Rob Reiner was a good guy. He made a lot of movies about good guys, in worlds where not everyone was good and you didn’t have to be good. He made movies about people trying. He was angry, as many hopeful people are. He knew the world could be better and he wanted it to be. His death is devastating.

In late 2020 a Chinese man called Guan Heng travelled to Xinjiang with our BuzzFeed map of detention facilities to provide ground truth for our work - he provided the first corroborating evidence for many sites. He escaped to the US - then ICE detained him. www.wsj.com/world/china/...

Disgusting. This person took huge risks and now is again at risk. Man who filmed Uyghur concentration camps now fights for his own freedom in the US hrichina.substack.com/p/man-who-fi...

A timely article that examines some of the narratives around the 'Prakhon Chai' bronzes and begins to untangle the trade in Southeast Asian antiquities from Douglas Latchford, a trade that began decades before him and in which he was only one of many actors. www.academia.edu/145262131/A_...

Even with the year almost over, another museum burglary to add to the disturbingly long list of thefts this year. Are all these thefts pure coincidence, or did the success of the Drents Museum theft in January encourage copycats across Europe? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

“In recent days, Ms Amsi's team was able to use heavy equipment to uncover more badly damaged manuscripts. She says it is now clear that the library's archive - seen as an invaluable record of Palestinian history, with many Ottoman records - was totally burned.” www.bbc.com/news/article...

The All-Russian Cossack Society turns school clubs into pipelines for state-sponsored militarisation and recruitment for war in Ukraine. Bellingcat shows how they shape an alternative mobilisation force: www.bellingcat.com/news/2025/12...

Frank Gehry, masterful architect who transformed L.A.’s urban landscape, dies at 96 www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

As the Sudan war rages on, curator Shadia Abdrabo is on a yearlong research grant in France with one mission: to build an online database of the African nation’s archaeological sites, museum collections and historical archives. abcnews.go.com/Internationa...

I’ve written for the FT on art and AI. Can we use it to find lost Rembrandts? www.ft.com/content/8f07...

We’re delighted to announce that the newly remodeled Getty Provenance Index has won Digital Innovation of the Year in this year’s Apollo Awards. [🧵10/10] Learn more: www.getty.edu/tracingart/

The secret mission to save Gaza's historical artefacts

Are the operation's photos meant to be a joke? Perhaps they actually seized $116 million dollars in antiquities, but what is pictured here is a medley of low value pawn shop items. Law enforcement often inflates the value of seized antiquities for media coverage, but the disconnect here is absurd.

NEW Stratigraphy from two of the 51 Aketala sites in the Tarim Basin of north-western China. The westernmost Bronze Age settlements discovered in China to date, they indicate cultural connections across Central Asia c. 4000 years ago. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

The Uzbek gov't has spent decades destroying Uzbek heritage without any consequences, and continues to do so. UNESCO may complain but they will do nothing, just as they did nothing when Karimov gutted Shahrisabz's UNESCO-designated old city—a useless organization. thediplomat.com/2025/11/dest...

Great news for open source art crime researcher: The International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR)'s publications are now digitized & free at the Internet Archive. Congrats to our MOLA colleague Lisa Zeballos and team on this important preservation effort!

The Directorate-General for Antiquities and Museums (DGAM); has published photos of the six stolen artefacts taken during a weekend burglary at the National Museum of Damascus. All of the six small marble statuettess, are representatives of the goddess Venus, the Classical deity of beauty. 1 of 2

Screened this film about the repression of Uyghurs last night at Cornell. A powerful and tragic account of how the colonial project in northwest China continues to destroy lives www.allstaticandnoise.com

More terrible news in a terrible year for museums. Especially disheartening given how hard Syrian museum authorities worked to protect the collections throughout the entire Syrian Civil War. I hope the thieves are quickly caught and the statues returned.

The problem of the decolonial lens the scholars in this article use is not only is it based on no evidence, it minimizes the agency of those it champions. The gem trade in Eurasia was thriving for millennia before the 19th century and did not need Europeans to develop it. apnews.com/article/jewe...

Nakadai's unmatched acting talent drove so much of Japan's great post-war cinema. "The Human Condition" trilogy, "Harakiri," "The Sword of Doom," "The Face of Another," "Kagemusha," "Ran"; the list goes on and on. A true legend of cinema has passed.

Renowned actor Tatsuya Nakadai, best known for his role in Akira Kurosawa’s “Ran,” has died at the age of 92.

The problem of the decolonial lens the scholars in this article use is not only is it based on no evidence, it minimizes the agency of those it champions. The gem trade in Eurasia was thriving for millennia before the 19th century and did not need Europeans to develop it. apnews.com/article/jewe...

Even a museum in Benin City not under the Oba's control is too much for his supporters. This is a result of the Nigerian State's foolish decision to give the Benin Bronzes to the descendant of slaver autocrats rather than holding them in trust for all Nigerians. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

The average SNAP benefit per month is $177 a person. The average ACA benefit per month is up to $550 a person. People want us to hold the line for a reason. This is not a matter of appealing to a base. It’s about people’s lives. And working people want leaders whose word means something to them.

It is sad, but unsurprising, that the new head of UNESCO is one who presided over intentional cultural heritage destruction in Egypt. UNESCO from Azerbaijan to China ignores heritage destruction and States should view it as having little legitimacy. www.reuters.com/world/africa...

Egypt has a gov't engaged in the destruction of disfavored heritage, in this case Islamic heritage. Perhaps el-Sisi's regime might stop destroying the heritage entrusted to it before baselessly claiming that which legally and ethically belongs to others. www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menaso...

The organizer of the inaugural IndieChina Film Festival in New York said he was forced to cancel after facing a "relentless" pressure campaign, and that he may be unable to travel back to China. "I did think it might be better here....It turns out I was wrong."

A unique fire worshipping scene for #BonfireNight 🔥 Reconstructing a wall painting from the Sogdian palace of Sanjar-Shah, Tajikistan reveals a procession of priests approaching a large fire altar, offering a rare insight into ancient fire worship. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

A powerful 6.3 magnitude earthquake shook northern Afghanistan before dawn Monday, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 640 others, as well as damaging the historic Blue Mosque, officials said. https://to.pbs.org/47HUdXL

This sort of complicity with the Chinese state is in culture heritage orgs too. @combatlooting.bsky.social founder and chair Deborah Lehr was advising companies on how to do business in Xinjiang as late as 2021 and still publicly endorses Chinese heritage policies in the midst of cultural genocide.

Sheffield Hallam University complied with Beijing demand to halt research about human rights abuses in China, leading to a major project on supply chains and forced labour being dropped. It was reinstated after threat of legal action but chilling effect remains www.theguardian.com/education/20...

US government allowed and even helped US firms sell tech used for surveillance in China, AP finds – AP: ‘China is getting around export bans on the sale of powerful American AI chips by renting them through U.S. cloud services instead.’

A new heist at a far less famous museum than the Louvre, and of objects of smaller individual value, but given the scope of heritage stolen this is a terrible loss for both Oakland and California. Hopefully this theft will be treated with the gravity it warrants. www.latimes.com/california/s...

A flurry of videos shows Rapid Support Forces in Sudan carrying out extrajudicial killings and attacking apparent civilians fleeing North Darfur’s capital El Fasher following the takeover of the city by the RSF. Urgent international action is needed.

Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab says satellite images seem to show mass killings in Sudan's western city of el-Fasher.

Again the Louvre theft is framed with baseless claims that the jewelry was the product of colonialism in an attempt to downplay the crime. This time the claims are offered by someone who is self-described as being the author of revenge fantasies celebrating such acts. These are not serious people.

Here we have a criminologist downplaying a crime because it was committed against the wrong victim. The hypocrisy while not surprising, is disappointing. Dr. Smith could not wait a week to instrumentalize the theft to attack Western museum collections and score an ideological point.

Important and detailed analysis on the extent of looting and cultural heritage destruction in the Sudanese Civil War and the heroic work done to document the destruction and protect Sudan's heritage. Also reveals that this year a list has finally been drafted of known looted antiquities from Sudan.

NEW Sudan is a diverse country with a rich cultural heritage that is under threat from conflict. In a guest editorial, Habab Idriss Ahmed & Geoff Emberling discuss the brave efforts of the Sudanese antiquities department (NCAM) to protect Sudan's #archaeology 🏺 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

It's sad to see an expert in art law joke about the theft and likely destruction of heritage for likes. Between this, the Drents Museum theft, and the revelation of the scope of the looting of Sudan's National Museum, 2025 has been a terrible year for heritage in museums. It's no laughing matter.

In case you missed it last week: We gathered a few friends and colleagues to write about the extraordinary life of Jerome A. Cohen (1930-2025), renowned lawyer and scholar of Chinese law.

Mongolian has some wild Eurasian etymologies! 🥰 My favourite one is nom ᠨᠣᠮ ('book'), from Greek νόμος, via Sogdian and Old Uyghur. The semantic shift 'custom, law' > 'scripture' > 'book' is lovely. Btw nomos also has a Syriac > Arabic result, nāmōsā ܢܳܡܘܿܣܳܐ > nāmūs ناموس 😀 @kebuhcah.bsky.social

New today: my essay in @jodemocracy.bsky.social on The Golden Age of Transnational Repression: www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the...

The decline of language study in the US makes our country weaker, less capable, less intelligent, and increasingly myopic. Language opens up the world while knowing only English closes off much of the world. If you agree, contact your government officials to tell them to reinstate Title VI.

UNESCO's new Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects ironically has no discussions of antiquities theft or trafficking. None of the objects in the 'museum' have context of when, how or why they were stolen; only the below boilerplate explanation as to why an object is included. museum.unesco.org

We are saddened to hear of the passing of Jerome A. Cohen, the eminent scholar of Chinese law. Our condolences to his family and all those who loved him. He authored many books, most recently the memoir, "Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law." (1/2)