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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️

@dfincham.bsky.social
407 followers 1.2K following 133 posts

Law professor at STCL Houston, writing about art and heritage crime at illicitculturalproperty.com Off the clock: bikes, walking Bruno, BBQ, and a healthy dose of frivolity.

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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 44m
Just wondering, have you visited? The policies involving the movement of art have many facets, but I found Crystal Bridges to be a really stunning institution...
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Professa Murray @kalimurray.bsky.social · 10h
Again, OMB is using the apportionment mechanism to stop funding. Here it is the Smithsonian. I would note: they are not legally binding if exercised out of the scope of the President’s authority.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 13h
The student hasn't yet learned how to prompt effectively or put enough of their own humanity into an AI-assisted request. That's a teaching opportunity! Do we want more young journalists interested in covering art crime, or do we want to gatekeep an increasingly niche field into irrelevance?
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The Great Pumpkin Papers 🎃🎃🎃 @professormusgrave.bsky.social · 23h
There’s a lot of talk about “shadow CVs”, in which you show your overt failures to normalize failure (airplane survival bias meme), but sometimes academics should also just admit that there are parts of our job that are pass/fail
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 21h
What came back: 335 objects of the Lombok treasure, seized when Dutch troops sacked the Cakranegara palace in 1894, and four 13th-century Singhasari statues, removed from a Javanese temple around 1804. Both handed over in Leiden on July 10, 2023.
Two grey volcanic-stone statues of Hindu gods, photographed side by side against white museum walls. Left: Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, stands upright on a round pedestal in front of an arched back slab. He wears a tall ornate crown and jewellery, his trunk curls toward a bowl held at his round belly, and two more arms rise at his sides. Right: Brahma, carved in high relief against a broken back slab, wears a tall crown. Three of his four faces are visible: one facing front, two turned to the sides. He has a pointed beard and holds his hands together in front of his waist above a richly decorated sarong. A slender vase appears on the slab beside him.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 21h
Why it still matters: it moved restitution from case-by-case goodwill toward a stated national policy, and it set up the Netherlands' 2023 returns of the Lombok treasure and Singhasari statues to Indonesia.
Objects from the Lombok treasure against a black background. On the left, a gold kris (dagger) hilt shaped as a crouching demon-like figure, studded with dark blue gemstones, rising from a gold collar set with large pink and red cabochon stones. In the centre, a pale hilt carved in ivory as a grimacing, wild-haired figure with one arm raised behind its head and a small gem set at its waist, on a matching gold collar with red cabochons. On the right, five small round gold ornaments, each with a red stone at the centre ringed by tiny clear stones.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 21h
The report, "Colonial Collection and a Recognition of Injustice," chaired by Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You, also urged an independent committee to judge claims and a national centre for provenance research. The government adopted its approach in 2021.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 21h
On this day in the Art Law Almanac: Oct. 7, 2020. A Dutch advisory committee told the government the Netherlands must be willing to return, unconditionally, cultural objects looted from its former colonies if the source country asks. #ArtLawAlmanac
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 23h
If you or a student is affected: the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund is taking cases (www.ialdf.org/post/from-as...), and NIAC is collecting confidential accounts for possible legal action (secure.everyaction.com/HBgmRcFj_k2K...).
ialdf.org
From Aspiring Lawyer to Legal Limbo
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 23h
Credit where due: reported by UH student journalists Bowen Zaunbrecher and Celene Boureslan at The Daily Cougar, now on @chron.com via a new partnership. Thanks to Gwen Howerton @kissphoria.bsky.social for flagging it. Read it 👇 www.chron.com/news/article... #StudentJournalism #LegalEd
chron.com
Why Texas may see fewer Iranian lawyers
“The administration can’t just ban a whole race or ethnicity from taking the LSAT.”
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 23h
The legal profession is supposed to be open to anyone willing to do the work. Screening out would-be lawyers by ancestry cuts against everything we teach. And outside the legal trade press, this has gotten almost no attention. That should bother all of us.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 23h
A test is not a weapons shipment. For years, a rule let Iranian nationals take university entrance and professional exams because education was understood to be outside what sanctions should touch. The government has now suspended that rule. #LSAT
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 23h
Americans can eventually clear it. Applicants who aren't US citizens may simply be shut out. And no other group has to prove where they live before they can sit for a standardized test.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 23h
One US-born Iranian-American on Reddit laid out what that looks like: account locked, told to email compliance, then asked to sign a residency attestation, send a passport photo, and wait days for access. Some applicants hit this during their test week.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 23h
Iranian citizenship passes automatically through the father, wherever the child is born. So American-born Iranian-Americans are getting their LSAC accounts flagged. They're being treated as a sanctions risk for wanting to sit for an entrance exam.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 23h
As someone who teaches law, I find this one hard to stomach. New Treasury sanctions mean the Law School Admission Council will no longer let Iranian citizens or residents take the LSAT. The barrier lands on people who want to study law. 🧵 #LawSky
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Piero Castellano 🇪🇺 @pierocastellano.com · 07/10/2026
Great story by the usual suspect @aylajean.bsky.social - ellerine sağlık! www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/10/05/h...
theartnewspaper.com
Behind Turkey’s race to save Gallipoli’s vanishing shipwrecks
A recently launched project called Deep Heritage aims to slow the disintegration of dozens of warships sunk off Turkey's coast during the devastating First World War campaign
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
NEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light. My reporting:
science.org
‘Complete devastation’: How NSF gutted its social sciences research
Agency body that funds sociology, linguistics, and archaeology studies in U.S. gave 90% fewer new grants this year
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Holly Brewer @earlymodjustice.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
The demographic cliff is such a problematic term. It’s actually only - a 13-15% decline in college student populations over a fifteen year period (to 2041) — so less than 1% a year. It excuses a lot of administrative poor decisions. www.npr.org/2025/01/08/n...
npr.org
A looming 'demographic cliff': Fewer college students and ultimately fewer graduates
The long-predicted downturn in the number of 18-year-olds is almost here. And it isn't just a problem for higher education. It's a looming crisis for the economy.
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conifergirl.bsky.social @conifergirl.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
An American senator travels to the Persian Gulf to see what his country is spending billions on and finds the gates locked. The Defense Department would not let Chris Murphy onto the heavily damaged base from which the Iran war is being
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Fereidoun Biglari @fbiglari.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
At ICAHM 2026, Sonia Shidrang reported the 40-day war damaged 149 historical sites across 20 provinces, including five UNESCO World Heritage properties. She urged international law, documentation, and a protection plan. www.tehrantimes.com/news/530771/...
tehrantimes.com
Heritage is identity: Iranian archaeologist exposes scale of war destruction to historic sites
TEHRAN – An Iranian archaeologist, Sonia Shidrang, highlighted in a global webinar hosted by the International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management (ICAHM), a scientific committee under ICO...
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Jim Wallace @jwallit.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Archaeology’s Silence On Israel’s Destruction of Palestinian Cultural Heritage avigail.substack.com/p/archaeolog...
avigail.substack.com
Archaeology’s Silence On Israel’s Destruction of Palestinian Cultural Heritage
If archaeology can’t speak up about the destruction of cultural heritage, what hope is there for the people?
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Joanne Freeman @jbf1755.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Hi folks: Today's the deadline for public comments on the proposed removal of federal protection for nat'l forests Hundreds of endangered species will be affected Here's info from the American Bird Conservancy, & the link for comments: abcbirds.org/news/roadles... www.fs.usda.gov/managing-lan...
fs.usda.gov
Roadless Areas | US Forest Service
What's NewOn Aug. 18, 2026, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brook L. Rollins announced that the proposed rule and draft environmental impact statement that recommends removing the 2001 Roadle...
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
However good you think this is going to be, it’s better. Steve just has Alito dead to rights.
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Cambridge University Press - Archaeology @cambup-archaeology.cambridge.org · 06/10/2026
📢 'Consequences of decentering the State in international law: a comparison in the field of cultural heritage': a new Call for Papers from the International Journal of Cultural Property! Send in your abstracts by 1 November Learn more: 🔗 cup.org/4y59zAG #archaeology #culturalproperty
Call for Papers: Consequences of decentering the State in International Law. International Journal of Cultural Property.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Why it still matters: it's a live test of whether cultural-heritage protections in armed conflict are enforced. HRW's report: hrw.org/news/2020/12/16/azerbaijan-attack-church-possible-war-crime
hrw.org
Azerbaijan: Attack on Church Possible War Crime
Azerbaijani forces attacked a church in the city of Shushi on October 8, 2020 during the Nagorno-Karabakh hostilities, in what appears to be a deliberate targeting in violation of the laws of war.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Weapon remnants pointed to munitions that can be aimed precisely; both strikes hit within about two meters on the same roof section. The second wounded three Russian journalists. The laws of war give religious buildings and historic monuments special protection.
The cathedral was bombed twice on 8 October 2020 by Azerbaijani armed forces during Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Also on this day in the Art Law Almanac: Oct. 8, 2020 — two strikes hours apart hit Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shusha (Shushi) during the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Human Rights Watch later found it was likely targeted deliberately, a possible war crime. #ArtLawAlmanac
View of the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral with the renovated yard in 2018
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The law was enacted Dec. 24, 2020; the 26 works were back in Benin by Nov. 2021. What changed since: a May 2026 framework law lets France return objects taken illicitly in 1815–1972 by decree, with no special statute needed. Inalienability remains the rule.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Among them: royal thrones of Kings Ghezo and Glèlè, carved palace doors, three bocio statues and six asẽn altars. Dodds gave 26 pieces to Paris's Trocadéro ethnography museum in 1893–95. They moved to the Quai Branly in 2003.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The backstory: on Nov. 17, 1892, a French column under Col. Alfred-Amédée Dodds entered Abomey, capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey, after King Béhanzin fled. Troops occupied the palace and carried off royal objects as spoils of war.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
On this day in the Art Law Almanac: Oct. 6, 2020 — France's National Assembly unanimously backed a bill to return 26 Abomey royal treasures to Benin and El Hadj Omar Tall's sabre to Senegal, a carve-out from the inalienability of French public collections. #ArtLawAlmanac
Group of statues from royal palaces in Abomey, Benin, as exhibited in Quai Branly museum, Paris, in May 2021
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Palmyra shows both the reach and the gap: strong norms, very few defendants in the dock. Replicas of the arch have toured the world; the original is gone. Here's a replica in Geneva in 2019 #CulturalHeritage #ArtLaw
Marble replica of the Palmyra Arch on April 14, 2019, Place des Nations Geneva
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
In 2016 the ICC convicted Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi for destroying Timbuktu's mausoleums, the first case centered on heritage destruction. In 2017, UN Security Council Resolution 2347 followed.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Legally, intentionally attacking historic monuments that aren't military objectives is a war crime under the Rome Statute, building on the 1954 Hague Convention's protections for cultural property.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
It followed ISIS's August 2015 destruction of the Temples of Baalshamin and Bel, and the murder of Palmyra's retired antiquities chief Khaled al-Asaad. The pattern was deliberate: erase the site, then broadcast the erasure.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
On this day in the Art Law Almanac: Oct 5, 2015, Syria's antiquities director Maamun Abdulkarim told AFP that ISIS had detonated explosives around Palmyra's Monumental Arch, a Roman gateway ~1,800 years old. Only its columns were left standing.
The Monumental Arch at Palmyra, Syria, photographed in 2010, five years before ISIS destroyed it. The weathered, honey-colored limestone gateway has a tall central arch flanked by two smaller side arches. Its faces are carved with bands of ornate decoration. Rows of Roman columns from the city's Great Colonnade stretch away on either side, under a clear desert sky.
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The Wiener Holocaust Library @wienerlibrary.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
On 5 October 1938 it was agreed by Nazi leaders that all German Jewish citizens should have their passports stamped with an identifying letter ‘J’. The marking of their passports alienated the Jewish community and constituted an important part of the campaign of persecution.
German passport page from 1939 titled Deutsches Reich Reisepass, bearing Nazi eagle-and-swastika stamps and a prominent red "J" stamped to indicate Jewish designation.Formal 1929 studio portrait of a man dressed in hunting regalia—double-breasted coat with medals, ornate ceremonial chain and feathered hat—standing by an upholstered chair and holding white gloves. The man is Ernst Kamm and the photo is held in the archive collection of the Wiener Holocaust Library
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Roberta Mazza @robertamazza.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
More papyri for sale through InLibris and the threats it faces facesandvoices.wordpress.com/2026/10/05/t...
facesandvoices.wordpress.com
The Nile flood papyrus: Provenance, private collections and the trade
After the two Oxyrhynchus papyri at the centre of my last post, I wish to discuss another papyrus offered by Vienna based InLibris, the so–called Nile flood or inundation papyrus (P. Michael. 4 = T…
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Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Lucien Lazare, Jewish fighter in the French Resistance, has died at 101. After fighting the Nazis, he was rejected by his synagogue later in life for translating an article saying “Israel, today, is nothing but a formless mass of corruption, oppression and injustice.” www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/w...
nytimes.com
Lucien Lazare, Jewish Resistance Fighter in Occupied France, Dies at 101 (Gift Article)
He and a small troop of French Jews worked with the Allies to distribute supplies and fight the Nazis, ambushing a German train and liberating a city in the south.
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
A pretty key & funny theme in Rome worship is that the statues look very austere and white, ie “classical”. And arguably “white” in racial sense, tho I think that’s overstated. But most were originally painted. And they looked very different, more florid and certainly to modern eyes more eastern.
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Open Art Data @openartdata.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Bogdanos ‘pointed out recurring artifact seizures at the Met. “The question has to be asked, ‘Why are we the ones doing this?’” he told the Times’
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Open Art Data @openartdata.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
‘All of these objects were “smuggled into the United States and laundered by dealers and collectors through false provenance, exhibitions and museum donations,” according to the D.A. The office seized them from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’
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Elizabeth Wrigley-Field @wrigleyfield.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
My Minnesota friends have already seen this, but I keep thinking about it and want more people outside our state to, too.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The remains were found in a Greek border region in the 1960s, and the deal took years to negotiate. Mitsotakis framed the return as part of the same push to recover the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum. Meanwhile North Macedonia claims Samuel as its own ruler.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Dead since 1014, Bulgaria's Czar Samuel got a fighter-jet escort home, swapped for 48 objects Greece lost in WWI. Heritage diplomacy never forgets. #Repatriation #CulturalHeritage www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10...
aljazeera.com
Remains of Bulgaria’s Czar Samuel return ‘home’ after 1,000 years
The emperor is a symbol of Bulgarian national identity whose repatriation stoked tensions with Greece.
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Kristof Smeyers @kristofsmeyers.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Tenure track position for a social/cultural anthropologist here in Leuven, apply before 1 December: www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...
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Tanya Pia Starrett @tanyapiastarrett.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
You know what to do @britishmuseum.bsky.social Greece returns priceless relics – and suggests UK should follow suit with Parthenon marbles | Bulgaria | The Guardian share.google/yjU53wh7wwwu...
share.google
Greece returns priceless relics – and suggests UK should follow suit with Parthenon marbles
Greek PM hopes handover of Tsar Samuel to Bulgaria will persuade Britain that time has come for ‘truth, reason, justice and morality’
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Damien Huffer @damienhuffer.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
www.abc.net.au/news/science... Thanks for the good reporting on this important topic. Domestic markets represent exploitable loopholes. @peterdekruijff.bsky.social @counteringcrime.bsky.social
abc.net.au
Ivory still legal to sell in Australia despite 2019 promise to ban it
A new study has found hardly any of the $1.2 million worth of elephant ivory sold or advertised in a six-month period in Australia came with paperwork proving its origin.
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Derek Fincham 🌵🗿🏛️🖼️🏴‍☠️ @dfincham.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Bonus: the Brooklyn Museum's fun movie connection. In The Hot Rock (1972), Robert Redford plays a thief hired to steal a diamond from the museum, one taken from an African nation in colonial times. A repatriation plot, two years after the 1970 UNESCO Convention. end/x
Cover of the Coronet movie tie-in paperback of Donald Westlake's novel The Hot Rock. Below the title in chunky 3D block letters, four men in early-'70s clothes lean against a New York street pole under a "Don't Walk" signal. One holds a bottle with a fuse, another a power tool. Red text reads: "One elusive emerald, four elusive thieves, one hilariously exciting story." Bottom: "Now a great film starring Robert Redford, George Segal and Zero Mostel."
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