Hyperallergic reports on a new book, Matthew Campbell's 'The Man Who Stole the Gods' (2026), which centers on British dealer Douglas Latchford, who trafficked looted Cambodian antiquities on a massive scale before his death in 2020. Latchford sold objects to institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the book examines the criminal network that supplied and transported these works, as well as the museum professionals and scholars who enabled it. The article also covers Frank Stella's collection of Diné (Navajo) textiles, now on view for the first time at Arader Galleries in New York, alongside an obituary for abstract painter Jay Milder, who died at age 92.
This story matters because it exposes the ongoing complicity of major museums and art-world figures in the illicit antiquities trade, challenging the legitimacy of collections built on looted cultural heritage. The simultaneous coverage of Stella's Navajo weavings highlights the complex relationship between modernist art and Indigenous craft traditions, while the obituary for Milder underscores the loss of a generation of artists who shaped New York's downtown art scene.