Looted Art Detector: Custom Indicator File Art Traffickers

The list below contains the last names of antiquities trafficker who were investigated by the Manhattan DA, the FBI or other criminal investigators for their role in trafficking looted cultural heritage.

It is easy to check art provenances and references for names of known art traffickers and their networks using publicly available text analysis tools. 

Below are several lists of words that can be useful, no matter what the tool (Voyant-Tools, Rstudio, Python, ChatGPT, Lootedart Detector, etc.)

The user can analyse provenances for any names or words that seem interesting.

See also: Looted Art Detector 

and Using Custom Indicators

The list below contains the last names of antiquities trafficker who were investigated by the Manhattan DA, the FBI or other criminal investigators for their role in trafficking looted cultural heritage. To add your own words, simply copy or download the CSV and add your content and save as your own file.

word	type of flag
Hecht	HeritageFlag
Symes	HeritageFlag
C. T. Loo	HeritageFlag
Latchford	HeritageFlag
Klejman	HeritageFlag
Sperling	HeritageFlag
Wiener	HeritageFlag
Marion True	HeritageFlag
Frel	HeritageFlag
Becchina	HeritageFlag
add your own names	HeritageFlag
add your own names	HeritageFlag

If you want to have each name counted SEPARATELY? (not lumped together), you can a line for each name, like this:

Phoenix Ancient Art: selected provenances

detail of Marble female figure Cycladicca. 3200–2700 BC (on loan to the Met)

 Phoenix Ancient Art has been in the news quite a bit lately, and art crime experts are advising museums to verify their collections.

French government report 2022: The looting of works of art in France during the Occupation, organized, large-scale actions

Below is a translation into English of the following document:

 Le pillage des oeuvres d'art en France pendant l'Occupation  des actions organisées et de grande envergure  

https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Media/Thematiques/Musees/MNR/Le-pillage-des-aeuvres-d-art-en-France-pendant-l-Occupation.pdf

Holocaust victims and refugees in art provenances

Museums and auction houses rarely mention that a name in a provenance of an artwork corresponds to a person who was robbed and murdered by the Nazis or a Jewish refugee fleeing to escape the Holocaust.

This Wikidata Sparql query displays a few of the art collector whose names are absolutely to be considered red flags in provenances because they either died in the Holocaust or were forced to flee to survive.

Wikidata query run 18 May 2024: Short link: https://w.wiki/A7pr

Table: Art Collectors and Dealers who died in the Holocaust or were forced to flee

Osthaus Museum Hagen restitutes Renoir "View of the Sea from Haut Cagnes" to heirs of Jakob Goldschmidt (1882-1955)

Jakob Goldschmidt (1882-1955) was one of the most important bankers of the Weimar Republic. Persecuted by the National Socialist regime, Goldschmidt fled Germany in the spring of 1933 and emigrated to the USA via Switzerland in 1936. His German citizenship was revoked in 1940 and his assets were confiscated the following year. 

Goldschmidt's art collection was auctioned off on September 25, 1941 at the Hans W. Lange auction house in Berlin. 

The Renoir painting Blick von Haut Cagnes aufs Meer (cat. no. 45) (View of the Sea from Haut Cagnes) was purchased by Hildegard Diehn, the wife of Wehrmacht officer Wilhelm Diehn. In 1960 the Renoir was at the Nathan Gallery in Zurich, where it was acquired by Prof. Gustav Stein from Cologne, a member of the Federation of German Industries. He passed the painting on to Fritz Berg, President of the South Westphalian Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Hagen in 1948 and the first BDI President from 1949. After the death of his widow, Hildegard Berg, the Berg art collection was transferred to the Osthaus Museum Hagen. 

- source: press release from Osthaus Museum Hagen https://www.osthausmuseum.de/web/de/keom/presse/renoir2023.html