The Mallawi Museum in Egypt right after being looted in July 2013.

The Antiquities Coalition is excited to announce its role in a newly launched collaboration to establish the Museum Digitization and Documentation Center in Egypt – which will safeguard the country’s rich history, while building capacity among a new generation of heritage professionals.

This join project with the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) was featured in today’s Art Daily:

NEW YORK, NY.- The Antiquities Coalition and American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) are working with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities’ to secure the nation’s ancient legacy through 21st century technology that will document the complete holdings of its museums in a digital registry. In collaboration with international partners, they will design and implement a museum registrar training program for Ministry staff to bring state-of-the-art best practices to a professional cadre of Egyptians tasked with securing and preserving the nation’s unparalleled patrimony.

The project is the foundational step toward a comprehensive system of increased security, staff capacity building, and technological innovations to document the vast antiquities collections of multiple museums. A major target of looters since the 2011 Revolution, Egypt’s collections deserve a gold-standard system to assist government and law enforcement officials in identifying objects that belong to Egypt.

“This project is invaluable, because it aims to establish standard documentation and collections management procedures for the entire Ministry of Antiquities (MoA), building upon ARCE’s successful Egyptian Museum Registrar Training Project,” said Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh El-Damaty. “The project will ensure that MoA staff is trained, according to international standards, to document museum collections and be able to transfer their knowledge to others. We look forward to cooperating with ARCE and the Antiquities Coalition in this exciting initiative.”

The project will be housed at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, a 130-acre complex on the archaeological site of El Fustat in Cairo, which tells the story of the Nile Delta region from prehistoric times to present day. In addition to the Ministry, project partners include the world-renowned British Museum, who will also be training early-career archaeologists in the digital documentation of artifacts.

“This collaboration is a key outcome of the historic 2014 public private partnership between the Antiquities Coalition and the Arab Republic of Egypt, as well as the 2015 Cairo Declaration, in which ten nations pledged to work across borders to preserve the region’s irreplaceable heritage,” said Deborah Lehr, Chairman of the Antiquities Coalition. “Registries are a proven solution in the fight against cultural racketeering, and we look forward to supporting our Egyptian partners in this endeavor as well as the broader fight against antiquities trafficking.”

“This proposed initiative builds on ARCE’s successful project to establish a registrars department at the Egyptian Museum,” said ARCE’s Director Dr. Gerry Scott. “ARCE’s Egyptian Museum Registrar Training Project created a database of the museum’s collection and trained registrars in best practices with a focus on object documentation and inventory. Since the completion of the project, the Egyptian Museum registrars have been instrumental in providing training on museum collections database management to not only the curatorial staff at the Egyptian Museum, but to others in the museum sector in Cairo.”

Registries are a core resource for museums worldwide. They include basic information about each object in the collection, including material, description, location and provenance. They also provide a critical level of security, as an inventory of objects, an index to objects’ location, and through written and photographic records of each collection object. All this data is consolidated in a digital collections management system for each museum.

Increasing the number of well-trained registrars increases operational capacity for collections management implementation. It also serves as a “train the trainers” initiative. New registrars will train other Ministry and museum personnel in data management, photographic documentation, and collections management, accelerating the project’s benefits to a broader constituency.

“By training registrars and building this technological infrastructure, we are putting best practice into place,” said Peter Herdrich, Co-Founder of the Antiquities Coalition. “By building capacity for the Ministry and insuring interoperability on the tech side, we can make a great contribution to Egypt’s cultural heritage.”

Beyond recovery of stolen treasures, the national registry will promote the educational value of Egypt’s collections for students and scholars alike. It will also contribute to economic development through enhanced tourism opportunities, as such thorough documentation will enable people around the world to engage with the history and heritage of Egypt.

We look forward to starting work with our great partners, the Ministry of Antiquities and ARCE, on this critical effort to preserve Egypt’s part for future generations.

This article is cross-posted from the Art Daily article “Antiquities Coalition Initiative Supports Egypt’s Museums in Securing Priceless Patrimony”.

The Antiquities Coalition is pleased to congratulate our friend and colleague Rick St. Hilaire, whose blog Cultural Heritage Lawyer has again been selected as one of the American Bar Association’s BLAWG 100!

The ABA Journal grants this honor every year to the very top of legal field’s thousands of blogs. As the magazine “is read by half of the nation’s 1.1 million lawyers,” this recognition brings art and cultural property law to a wide and important audience. St. Hilaire, a 15 year veteran prosecuting attorney and adjunct professor, started the blog in 2010 to report on “cultural property law, heritage trafficking, art crime, and museum risk management.” It now has a wide readership, both in and outside the field, which will only grow with this latest award.

Congrats again to Rick St. Hilaire and Cultural Heritage Lawyer!

Click here to visit Cultural Heritage Lawyer

Click here to visit the full BLAWG 100 List

#CultureUnderThreat: Before and After

With the rise of a violent campaign targeting the Middle East and North Africa’s people and their heritage — by religious extremists from Ansar Dine in Mali, to ISIS in Iraq and Syria, to the Al Qaeda insurgency in Yemen — the fight against cultural cleansing and racketeering is more important than ever. The human toll from these conflicts is beyond measure.  There is likewise no way to adequately measure recent losses to our shared history, but in this case, a picture may be worth a thousand words.

In a new online resource, #Culture Under Threat: Before and After, the Antiquities Coalition pays tribute to heritage lost in the region since the 2011 Arab Spring. By illustrating iconic masterpieces and sites then and now — before and after this period of turmoil, terrorism, and outright war — we hope to begin to convey the enormity of the ongoing crisis. For while much has been lost, much still remains to be saved.

Explore this Interactive Resource Now

Credit: The American Academy of Rome

The American Academy in Rome, the oldest American overseas center for independent study and advanced research in the arts and humanities, hosted an evening of Converzatione focused on the “Collective Responsibility” of heritage institutions during times of crisis. Brian Rose, James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, moderated the panel that included Deborah Lehr, Chairman and Founder of the Antiquities Coalition, James Cuno, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and Navina Haidar, Curator, Department of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In Ms. Lehr’s presentation, she discussed the use of culture by ISIS as part of its campaign of terrorism across the Middle East, Europe and now threatening the US.

You can find a synopsis of Deborah Lehr’s discussion and solutions in the Huffington Post, “Culture: ISIS’ New Tool of Warfare”:

ISIS has developed a new tool of warfare that is being deployed in its deadly strategy for the creation of an Islamic Caliphate: destruction and trafficking of culture.

It is a tool that lands them on the front page of global newspapers and in social media, strikes at the economy of its victims, intimidates the local population and eradicates the past — all while bringing in millions of dollars to fund their deadly cause.

Not since the looting by the Nazis have the world seen a more calculated and widespread use of antiquities looting and destruction to do harm.

Certainly, looting has been occurring since there was buried treasure. But ISIS and its sympathizers have taken it to a new level. They are intentionally targeting the symbols that define our culture as a means to destroy our spirit.

Illicit antiquities are one of the top sources of funding for ISIS — along with oil and kidnapping.

There is a definite pattern emerging.

ISIS has targeted the spirit of French culture: food, sports and music. Fearful of the potential economic impact, France has launched a fund to support culture in wake of the attacks. Cultural Minister Ms. Pellerin announced, “Culture is our greatest shield, and our artists are our best weapon,” in the fight against terror.

In Egypt, a bomb was disarmed at the Great Pyramids in October. This summer, a suicide bomber was captured before entering the Temple of Karnak in Luxor. The bombing of a plane coming from the beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh halted one of the largest sources of economic revenues — Russian tourists.

In Tunisia, ISIS targeted the Bardo Museum — killing 20 foreign tourists and injuring many more. Tourism, a top source of revenue source for the country, has declined precipitously.

In Mali, Yemen, and Libya, historic libraries have been raided, artifacts pillaged, and ancient structures razed: all are targets of ISIS and its partners.

And nowhere has culture been a greater victim than in Syria and Iraq. The list of destruction is a long one. Palmyra, Mosul, Nineveh and hundreds others — names famous from our studies of the Cradle of Civilization — have all been attacked.

Many ask if we need to make a choice between saving lives or saving stones. The director of National Museum of Iraq answered this question eloquently when he explained: “Yes, they’re just statues. But for us, they’re living things. We came from them; we are part of them. That is our culture and our belief.”

These attacks are so much more than the destruction of stones. It is the eradication of a shared history. It is the elimination of economic opportunity. It is use of our culture to fund their terrorist activities. It is a strike at freedom of expression and religion.

So then what can be done? There is actually a lot that we can do – as individuals and institutions.

➢ Don’t buy conflict antiquities

➢ Shut off the U.S. as a market for one of the top sources of ISIS funding: The U.S. government can negotiate cultural agreements with the countries in conflict as well as major transshipment countries.

➢ Use of Military Force: We are a long way from boots on the ground to save antiquities, but targeted military air strikes, as part of an existing mission against ISIS, would be a deterrent.

➢ Capacity Building in Conflict Countries: Training for border police and customs agents to recognize antiquities, as well as creating digital records of what has been excavated to track looted items.

➢ Create Economic Opportunity: Provide jobs and opportunities related to historic sites through incentive programs for the local population to create a vested local interest in protecting the sites and artifacts.

➢ Raise Awareness: Raise global awareness that purchasing conflict antiquities could be funding terrorism.

➢ Launch a Heritage Protection Fund: Managed by the United Nations with public and private funds which countries in conflict can draw upon for site security and other necessary protective measures.

We have a collective responsibility to save lives and to protect our shared heritage. And in doing so, it is a contribution, even in some small way, to preventing these terrorists from threatening our universal rights to express ourselves through our religion, our free speech, and our artistic works.

This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post on November 22, 2015

A report released today from the Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, “Monumental Fight Countering the Islamic State’s Antiquities Trafficking,” chronicles the breadth of looting and destruction at the hands of Daesh and other militant groups. The report coauthored by Yaya Fanusie and Alexander Joffe reveals the extent of cultural racketeering in the Middle East and North African region and its implications in the global market.  Fanusie and Joffe also present potential efforts toward solutions to these issues.

To see details of the report, you can find the full version here.

James Cuno, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, which operates such programs as the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute, gave an interview to the Antiquities Coalition during the September 24 “Culture Under Threat: Antiquities Trafficking and Terrorist Financing” forum in New York. In this video, Cuno iterates the imperative to police borders and sites through on-the-ground security forces such as the United Nations’ Blue Helmets, and to distribute the risk posed to conflict antiquities by instituting a system of partage and safe-harbor zones such as universities and museums. James Cuno has served in his current capacity at the J. Paul Getty Trust since 2011, and is a former director of the Harvard Art Museums, the Courtauld Institute, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He holds an A.M. and a Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard University and an M.A. from the University of Oregon.

On November 3, Antiquities Coalition Executive Director Tess Davis joined Restoring Trust, Curbing Illicit Trade, and Improving Transparency in the Global Art Industry, a briefing and discussion in Washington, DC, hosted by ARIS Title Insurance.

ARIS provides art title insurance to market players including museums, collectors, auction houses and financial institutions and assists the art market as well as non-profit community in mitigating the legal and financial structures of the market. It has recently made international headlines for its newly launched i2M Standards initiative, which in simplest terms, aims to create “vin numbers for works of art.” The technology, developed with State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, seeks to set about creating roadblocks for art forgery by infusing paintings, sculptures and other artworks with a form of uniquely identifiable DNA created in a lab. SUNY and ARIS developed it to address a pressing need of artists, collectors, museums, dealers, and lawmakers: the proliferation of fakes, forgeries, and stolen artworks on the international market.

Yaya Fanusie, the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Director of Analysis, and Colette Loll, Art Fraud Insights’ Founder and Director, at ARIS’ November 3rd Event.

While created primarily with fine art in mind, i2M has much potential for regulating other forms of cultural property, including antiques and antiquities. With the federal government now warning that ISIS is making millions from the illicit antiquities trade, this news could not come at a more critical time, a fact which has not been lost on ARIS. The insurance company itself has recognized “the market opacity that has historically plagued buying, selling, and tracking of art, artifacts, and antiquities has taken on new significance” due to the “growth in illicit trade of stolen artifacts and its links to increasingly complex criminal networks including terrorist organizations.”

The need to cut off criminal and terrorist financing from cultural racketeering was a recurring theme at the November 3 event, as was obvious from its participants, which included federal agents, analysts, and attorneys, as well as experts in asset tracing, finance, money laundering, and trade. Throughout the discussion, they examined i2M as a possible tool for law enforcement, which could be used both to counter transnational crime (especially illicit trafficking and money laundering) and safeguard cultural heritage. Despite the challenges inherent in launching such an initiative, the attendees were optimistic that a system like i2M could eventually be successful. 

Similar technology is already being used to regulate the international movement of goods ranging from from food to pharmaceuticals to timber, but some at the November 3 event questioned whether the art market is ready to expose itself to this same amount of scrutiny. Larry Shindell, Chairman of ARIS, believes it is, especially given the increasing role of terrorist networks like ISIS in cultural racketeering. He stressed that “greater transparency helps everyone” in the art market, and moreover, “better and more accurate information maximizes value for everyone.” 

Of course, there is an exception to this rule, and one group that will be significantly harmed should i2M be successful: criminals. If and when this technology becomes widespread, art crime could become that much more difficult. At the #CultureUnderThreat forum in New York on September 24, the Antiquities Coalition joined our partners the Asia Society, Middle East Institute, and UNESCO in calling for such high tech tracking to combat cultural racketeering. These and other technological advances should be widely adopted by both the public and private sectors, in order to staunch the illicit trade, while allowing a legitimate trade to continue. 

We thank our friends at ARIS for inviting us to learn more about this initiative, and looks forward to seeing how it develops in future. 

His Excellency Chan Tani, Secretary of State, Council of Ministers, Royal Government of Cambodia spoke to the Antiquities Coalition during the September 24 “Culture Under Threat: Antiquities Trafficking and Terrorist Financing” forum in New York. Here he discusses the preservation lessons Cambodia learned from its own decades of war as well as its efforts to recover “conflict antiquities” through partnership with the United States government. H.E. Tani has successfully negotiated the return of six Cambodian masterpieces from major museums and auction houses in the United States, all of which are now on display at the National Museum in Phnom Penh.

Watch H.E. Chan Tani’s interview here!

Dr. Parcak (right) with the Egyptian Embassy’s Hani Nagi and Antiquities Coalition team members Deborah Lehr, Katie Paul, and Peter Herdrich (left to right)

The Antiquities Coalition is delighted to congratulate our friend and colleague Dr. Sarah Parcak, recipient of the 2016 TED Prize for her work to combat looting in Egypt through the innovative use of satellite technology!

Yesterday, the New York Times first broke the news that TED has awarded its prestigious honor to Dr. Parcak, who is an associate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and founding director of UAB’s Laboratory for Global Observation. The TED Prize is an annual $1 million grant to “a bold leader with a wish to spark global change.” Dr. Parcak won the award for her use of infrared imagery from satellites to find and protect ancient sites in the Middle East. The fund will be used to continue and expand this important work.

The International Coalition to Protect Egyptian Antiquities – an Antiquities Coalition initiative – commissioned research from Dr. Parcak to quantify and qualify cultural racketeering in Egypt. Her satellite analysis, confirmed by on-the-ground surveys at select sites, found that illicit digging at previously known archaeological sites had increased 500-1000% since the January 2011 revolution. She also estimated that cultural racketeering has cost Egypt $1 billion each year in stolen goods since that time.

Armed with this data, the Antiquities Coalition has been working to build the political will needed to tackle the cultural racketeering crisis, as demonstrated by the 2015 Cairo Conference and New York Forum. We thank Dr. Parcak for her support and again offer her our congratulations. Dr. Parcak’s TED Prize ‘wish’ will be revealed on February 16, 2016, and you can register for updates on her TED Prize Journey here.

Learn how Sarah Parcak’s satellite research contributed to the Antiquities Coalition’s work to #CombatLooting here.

With the destruction and looting of cultural heritage in the Middle East and beyond a constant headline in the press, it is important to understand not only the threats facing our world heritage, but how to combat them. On October 25, Tess Davis, the Antiquities Coalition’s Executive Director, presented Tomb Raiders and Terrorist Financing: Cutting off the Illicit Traffic in “Blood Antiquities” to the Orange County, California, society of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA).  The talk was part of the AIA’s National Lecture Series. and joined by local archaeologists, university students, and members of the general public.

The crimes committed by ISIS are not only a matter of losing history and heritage but also a matter of financing terrorism through the illicit sale of antiquities on the black market – often called “blood antiquities.” The United States and UK are among the largest markets for antiquities, and as the crisis in the region grows artifacts stolen from the Middle East are making their way to the west.

The threats to these cultural objects are threats through both finance terror and threatening security. Groups like ISIS not only profit from the illicit sale of antiquities but also use those profits to finance their continued destruction for political gain.

Using her previous experience in tracking the connections between the illicit antiquities trade and terror financing by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during the 1970’s, Tess Davis has been able to draw parallels between the looting and trafficking of objects for criminal financing in Cambodia to the current situation in the Middle East. These crimes are repeated across decades, continents, and cultures and they will take a global effort to combat.

The AIA’s National Lecture Program holds lectures across the AIA’s 110 local societies between the US and Canada. The Lecture Program has been a central part of the AIA’s mission for more than 100 years to bring the public new developments in the field of archaeology.

Tess Davis’s next lecture for the National AIA Lecture Series will be in Portland, Oregon on Friday, April 29, 2016 – 7:30pm. Click HERE for more details