Hobby Lobby’s owner returned thousands of artifacts to Iraq. How did he get them in the first place?
In late July, 17,000 potentially looted antiquities were returned to Iraq from the United States. Most came from the vast collection of Middle Eastern artifacts that Hobby Lobby President Steve Green had acquired for the Museum of the Bible in Washington. The saga of the mogul’s collection illustrates how dabbling in the gray market for antiquities has become riskier, thanks to fundamental changes in the laws, norms and institutions regulating the trade in stolen and looted art over the past three decades.
It used to be simple to collect gray-market artifacts
Green started his collection in 2009. At first, he was looking only for a few objects related to the Bible, but word quickly got around about a new billionaire collector.… Seguir leyendo »