Buyer Beware: The U.S. Market for Ancient Asian Art Is Still the Wild, Wild East

Art and antiquities have financed some of the last century’s worst actors from the Nazis, to the Khmer Rouge, IRA, al-Qaeda, Taliban, and ISIS. While the UN has taken commendable action against the traffic in “blood antiquities” from Iraq and Syria, US art collections and sales still remain full of suspect pieces from further East, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Cambodia. In this lecture, Tess Davis will explore a recent government crackdown on the illicit trade in Asian antiquities—which has implicated top figure in New York’s art world.

Tess Davis
Executive Director of the Antiquities Coalition