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MOLA

@museumofloot.bsky.social
1.3K followers 949 following 1.5K posts

Museum of Looted Antiquities is a virtual gallery that collects, displays and studies looted antiquities – and the trafficking networks behind them. MuseumOfLoot.org

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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
In 2014, the French government agreed in principle to return the foils to China. Pinault returned the four gold foils to the Chinese embassy on April 13, 2015. Learn more: mola.omeka.net/items/show/1...
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This evidence, together with their stylistic similarity, presented a strong case that the foils were looted from the same site.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
In 2010, SACH formally requested the repatriation of the ornaments, followed in 2014 by a formal notification that the objects may have been stolen. Chemical testing showed that the foils’ isotopic composition matched that of gold foils excavated from the Dapuzishan Mountain Range tomb site.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Deydier later sold four foils representing the bird of prey to the French billionaire and collector Francois Pinault, who in turn donated them to the Musée Guimet. Deydier then donated the remaining 28 foils to the same museum, reuniting his original collection.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The ornaments, most likely to have adorned the coffin of an elite individual, were from collector Christian Deydier, who had purchased them from a Hong Kong antiquities dealer in 1993.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
In 2015, People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of Culture and State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) launched an investigation into 32 gold foils held at the Musée Guimet in Paris.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
New Case: Four Gold Foil Birds of Prey from the Chinese Eastern Zhou culture’s Spring and Autumn period, contributed by Allison Casaly.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
All three idols first appeared on the art market in the late 1980’s-early 1990’s under New York-based gallery owner Edward Merrin, and then sold to Steinhardt. Merrin provided Steinhardt with a photograph of one of the idols broken and covered in dirt just after it had been looted.
mola.omeka.net
Michael Steinhardt Collection · Museum of Looted Antiquities
The Museum of Looted Antiquities collects, displays and studies ancient art and artifacts that have been repatriated to their countries of origin since 1950.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
NEWS: Among 180 objects valued at $70 million seized by the Manhattan DA, four antiquities were from Michael Steinhardt, one of the world’s largest ancient art collectors. Three of the objects are female Syro-Hittite Idols crafted in northwest Syria during the 2nd millennium B.C.E.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This Palmyran Relief was trafficked from Palmyra when ISIS organized, facilitated, and controlled the systematic looting of archaeological sites in Syria. Lotfi, a Lebanese pharmacist turned antiquities trafficker, is the subject of a Red Notice by INTERPOL. mola.omeka.net/items/show/1...
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The Manhattan DA has seized and returned 36 antiquities, collectively valued over $5 million, to the people of Syria. Among the returned objects, including a Palmyrene sculpture and mosaics, are 31 Middle Eastern and North African antiquities allegedly trafficked into New York by Georges Lotfi.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Article link here: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/a...
nytimes.com
A Collector’s Art, on Loan to the Met, Will Be Owned by Nigeria
Novel collaborations with countries of origin allow objects in private U.S. collections to be repatriated and head for the Met on loan.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
"[...]while navigating an environment in which opinions on best practices have sometimes changed significantly within short periods.”
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
“Leaders at the Met, which has relinquished works in response to requests from overseas governments or actions by law enforcement agencies, see the arrangement with Ms. Pulitzer and the NCMM as providing a model they and administrators at other museums can use in the future[...]."
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
NYT: The Met worked with a collector, Ceil Pulitzer, and with officials of the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) to return three African masterworks with insufficient provenance while ensuring that they will be accessible to audiences and scholars in New York.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The museum did not say how they were acquired by the Met or why these later objects were being returned now. Read their press release here: www.metmuseum.org/press-releas...
metmuseum.org
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The Archaic Cretan bronze armor is believed to have been deposited in an Archaic Greek sanctuary at the site of Afrati, where rescue excavations were undertaken by the Greek archaeological service in 1968-1969.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The returns include a Hellenistic gold and garnet amphora, a Middle Helladic beak-spouted jug, and a Roman marble head of a veiled man from the first half of the first century CE. The Met is also returning two helmets and three mitrai that come from the site of Afrati in north central Crete.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
NEWS: The Met Museum has returned eight additional antiquities to Greece. Three of the objects were returned after new evidence emerged through the Manhattan DA’s ongoing investigations of antiquities dealers.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
How did these objects get from an important Neolithic archaeological site in Pakistan to the Met in 2001, with no documented provenance? We're digging in.... whc.unesco.org/en/tentative...
whc.unesco.org
Archaeological Site of Mehrgarh - UNESCO World Heritage Centre
UNESCO World Heritage Centre
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
He was also a collector known for his passion for Mesopotamian cylinder seals. He famously donated 10,000 cuneiform tablets to Cornell that were returned to Iraq in 2013.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Mehrgarh was first discovered by archaeologists in 1974 and subsequently faced rampant looting. Rosen, a Manhattan real estate mogul, was a longtime business partner of antiquities trafficker Robert Hecht. chasingaphrodite.com/2013/11/03/t...
chasingaphrodite.com
The Rosen Connection: Cornell Will Return 10,000 Cuneiform Tablets to Iraq
On the front page of Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Jason has the scoop on Cornell University’s decision to return 10,000 cuneiform tablets of unclear provenance to Iraq. The tablets were …
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Dating to 3000 BCE, they are "among the earliest human-crafted figurines in the world" and thought to represent a mother goddess or another cultic figure for worship, according to the Manhattan DA's press release. www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
metmuseum.org
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Among a new wave of seizures from the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a remarkable group of 34 terracotta fertility figurines from Mehrgarh, donated by Jonathan Rosen in 2001 with no documented provenance.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
After 18 months of negotiations, the Cleveland Museum agreed to return the krater and 12 other antiquities to Italy in exchange for a loan of comparable antiquities and the promise of future collaboration. Learn more: mola.omeka.net/items/show/1...
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Purchased by the museum in 1988, the krater was later linked to antiquities traffickers Giacomo Medici, Robert Hecht, and Gianfranco Becchina following the 1995 Geneva Freeport raids.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
New Case: An Apulian Volute Krater attributed to the Darius Painter, contributed by @livelizabeth.bsky.social The 2008 return of this krater attributed to the Darius Painter from the Cleveland Museum of Art shows that antiquities smuggled through the notorious Medici ring continue to surface.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
In October 2021, the Gilbert Trust formally transferred the ewer to the Turkish Ministry of Culture, who placed it in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. Learn More: mola.omeka.net/items/show/3...
mola.omeka.net
Hattian Golden Ewer · Museum of Looted Antiquities
The Museum of Looted Antiquities collects, displays and studies ancient art and artifacts that have been repatriated to their countries of origin since 1950.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
In 2018 the museum concluded McNall had failed to disclose the provenance to Gilbert at the time of sale. The Trust shared its findings with the Turkish Ministry of Culture, which found the vessel most likely originated from excavations at Alacahöyük or Mahmatlar in north central Türkiye.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
In 1995, Gilbert transferred his collection to the United Kingdom and established the Gilbert Trust for the Arts, which subsequently arranged for the collection to be placed on long-term loan at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
In 1994, McNall was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to five counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, and bank fraud that involved false invoices from his antiquities gallery, Numismatic Fine Arts.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
McNall for years worked closely with the notorious trafficker Robert Hecht, one of his principal suppliers. McNall claimed to have acquired the ewer from the Zurich-based restorer Fritz Burki, who worked closely with Hecht laundering recently looted antiquities.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
New Case: A Hattian Golden Ewer from the Gilbert Collection, contributed by Simon Dade. Sir Arthur Gilbert, a British-born American real estate developer, acquired this golden ewer, a funerary vessel from the Anatolian culture of Hatti, in 1989 from the Los-Angeles antiquities dealer Bruce McNall.
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Damien Huffer @damienhuffer.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/w... (paywalled) @museumofloot.bsky.social
nytimes.com
English Museum to Repatriate Colonial-Era Human Remains
The skeletal remains will go back to the Indigenous Naga people of the Indian subcontinent, six years after formal repatriation efforts began.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The city of Nashville finalized the repatriation of the Montgomery collection, along with additional Pre-Columbian objects in the Parthenon collection, to Mexico's INAH. Learn more: mola.omeka.net/items/show/2...
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Proactive provenance research led by the Parthenon's Bonnie Seymour revealed that Montgomery's sons visited Mexico to source and smuggle artifacts into the US, donating them to museums for tax write offs.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
In 2024, the museum returned a large collection of Pre-Columbian antiquities, specifically of the West Mexican Shaft Tomb Culture, that it had acquired from Oregon doctor John L. Montgomery in 1966.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
New Case: The Nashville Parthenon Pre-Columbian collection, contributed by Jasmine Gloria The Parthenon in Nashville Tennessee, an art museum and life-sized replica of the temple in Athens that was plundered by Lord Elgin, has been proactive in returning looted antiquities in its collection.
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Damien Huffer @damienhuffer.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/art... @museumofloot.bsky.social
ctvnews.ca
2,000-year-old Peruvian cultural artifact recovered in Montreal
A small, pre-Hispanic bowl, believed to be roughly 2,000 years old, is returning to Peru after being located in Montreal.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
The Art Loss Register celebrated the returns but declined to publicly identify the auction house, the consignors or any details about how the stolen seals had arrived in London. No criminal charges were pressed in the case. Learn more: mola.omeka.net/items/show/2...
mola.omeka.net
Two Akkadian Cylinder Seals · Museum of Looted Antiquities
The Museum of Looted Antiquities collects, displays and studies ancient art and artifacts that have been repatriated to their countries of origin since 1950.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
The auction requested a search of the Art Loss Register, a commercial register of stolen art, which flagged the cylinder seals as coming from the Iraqi museum, permitting their seizure by the Metropolitan Police. Repatriations of the seals occurred in November 2025 and March 2026.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Details of their theft and smuggling are unknown, but they emerged on the art market in London in 2025, when they were to be offered for sale at an unnamed auction auction house.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
New Case: Two Akkadian cylinder seals, contributed by Roma Aatifi. These two stone cylinder seals are more than 4,000 year-old and date to the Akkadian Empire, circa 2350-2150 BCE. Both were stolen from Iraq's Duhok Museum in 1991 during the first Gulf War.
mola.omeka.net
Two Akkadian Cylinder Seals · Museum of Looted Antiquities
The Museum of Looted Antiquities collects, displays and studies ancient art and artifacts that have been repatriated to their countries of origin since 1950.
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Damien Huffer @damienhuffer.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Very cool paper by Dr. Schattke and colleagues on Colonial violence and human remains acquisitions for early museums. @museumofloot.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Assessing Violence in a Museum Collection of Human Remains | Cambridge Archaeological Journal | Cambridge Core
Assessing Violence in a Museum Collection of Human Remains
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Iraq's restitution claims were supported by testimony from two Polish archaeologists on the original field team. However, repatriation was delayed for 22 years as a legal dispute played out in court. It finally returned to Iraq in 2024. See more: mola.omeka.net/items/show/3...
mola.omeka.net
Neo-Assyrian Winged Genie · Museum of Looted Antiquities
The Museum of Looted Antiquities collects, displays and studies ancient art and artifacts that have been repatriated to their countries of origin since 1950.
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
During the first Gulf War, the relief was stoled from the site museum and disappeared into the art market until 2002, when it surfaced in London. But sometimes even well-documented cases takes decades to return...
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
New Case: A Neo-Assyrian relief depicting a winged genie, contributed by Emily Primmer-Pyke This sandstone relief depicts a human-headed winged genie figure next to a sacred tree. It was scientifically excavated at King Ashurnasirpal II's palace at Nimrud, near Mosul, Iraq, in the 1970s.
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Damien Huffer @damienhuffer.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07... @museumofloot.bsky.social
abc.net.au
Unlawful excavation of river cliff disturbs Aboriginal ancestral remains
A cliff site in South Australia's Riverland, home to Aboriginal ancestral remains, has been excavated without authorisation.
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Getty @gettymuseum.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Ancient mosaics in the Mediterranean faced an uncertain future until organizations around the world came together to protect them. Called MOSAIKON, this initiative supported training for 200+ conservation specialists. A new report on the impact of this 15-year initiative: gty.art/mosaikon-report
A person crouches on a floor mosaic to examine its condition. Text: How to keep ancient mosaics safe. Reflecting on a 15-year initiative to protect these vulnerable treasures in the Mediterranean. Read full report: gty.art/mosaikon-report
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MOLA @museumofloot.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
A formal request for return was only lodged in April 2014, as Canada required further proof of theft and provenience from India. A year later, return was authorized and Prime Ministers Steven Harper and Narendra Modi held a restitution ceremony. Learn more: mola.omeka.net/items/show/1...
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