men guilty forging selling fake royal furniture versailles 1234745018

An antiques expert and a cabinet maker have been found guilty of forging and selling nine imitation 18th-century armchairs that they falsely claimed belonged to French royalty, including Marie Antoinette. Georges "Bill" Pallot, a leading furniture expert, and Bruno Desnoues, a former Versailles restorer, sold the fakes through Paris galleries and Sotheby's to the Château of Versailles and private collectors, including Qatari Prince Tamim ibn Hamad Al Thani and an Hermès family heir. Pallot was sentenced to four years in prison (44 months suspended), fined €200,000, and banned from working as an expert for five years; Desnoues received three years (32 months suspended) and a €100,000 fine. Both must pay €1.6 million in indemnities. The gallery Laurent Kraemer was acquitted, with the court ruling it was also a victim.

David Nahmad maintains that his Modigliani was not looted by the Nazis

David Nahmad is continuing his legal battle to prove that his Modigliani painting, *Seated Man with a Cane* (1918), was not looted by the Nazis from the Jewish dealer Oscar Stettiner. Despite a recent New York ruling against him, Nahmad’s lawyers have filed a motion to review the case based on new eyewitness testimony. Two witnesses claim the painting they saw in the Van der Klip family—which bought the Nazi-looted work in 1944—is completely different from Nahmad’s painting, lacking a seated man or a cane. Nahmad’s legal team also cites a 1946 French bailiff report and a recent catalogue raisonné by Marc Restellini to argue that Mondex, the restitution firm working for Stettiner’s heirs, misidentified the work.

Meet the global taskforce working to recover stolen cultural heritage

The London Metropolitan Police's Art and Antiques Unit, in collaboration with the Heritage Crime Task Force (HCTF) of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), is processing over 300 recovered cultural artefacts. The objects—including statues, frescoes, chainmail armour, and stucco heads—were voluntarily handed over by an individual who had kept them for over a decade. Experts are conducting forensic analysis, photography, and archaeological assessment to determine authenticity and origin, with initial findings suggesting items from Cambodia's Angkor Period, the Gandhara region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Indus Valley civilisation, and possibly a mosque in Syria or Iraq.

60% of Sudan’s National Museum Looted, Report Says

60% of Sudan’s National Museum Looted, Report Says

Over 60% of the holdings of the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum have been looted during the country's ongoing civil war. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which controlled the capital for two years, deliberately targeted high-value portable objects like gold and jewelry, stripping storage areas while leaving less portable artifacts behind. Although the museum building remains standing, tens of thousands of antiquities from its collection of 150,000 objects were plundered, with some appearing for sale online.

ohio dutch paintings looted nazis monuments men foundation 1234751711

The auction of two 17th-century Dutch still-life oil paintings of flowers was halted at Apple Tree Auction Center in Newark, Ohio, after the Monuments Men and Women Foundation and the Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project identified them as Nazi-looted art. The paintings, originally part of Adolphe and Lucie Haas Schloss's collection, were seized in 1943 and later stored in Hitler's Führerbau before being looted again. Foundation founder Robert Edsel traveled to Ohio to alert the auction house, which cooperated by removing the works from sale and placing them in a vault. The consignor's identity remains undisclosed, and the foundation is working to return the paintings to the Schloss family.

ancient rome new orleans tombstone 1234755754

A 2nd-century Roman gravestone inscribed for a sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus was discovered in March 2025 by Daniella Santoro and Aaron Lorenz while doing yard work at their New Orleans home. University of New Orleans archaeologist D. Ryan Gray, working with colleagues at the University of Innsbruck and Tulane University, traced the stone to a missing object from a museum in Civitavecchia, Italy. Researchers believe it was brought to the U.S. as a souvenir by a member of the 34th division of the Fifth Army after the liberation of Rome in 1944. The FBI’s Art Crime Team is now involved in repatriating the headstone to Italy.

UK’s Brighton & Hove Museums to return 45 artefacts to Botswana

Brighton & Hove Museums in southern England will return 45 artefacts to Botswana. The objects, including clothing, accessories and hunting implements, were acquired by English reverend William Charles Willoughby in the 1890s and will be housed at the Khama III Memorial Museum in Serowe, where they will form part of a permanent exhibition opening on 27 May. A team from Brighton & Hove Museums is working with Botswanan curators on the return, which is scheduled for April.