Jason Felch has a hard-hitting interview with Julian Radcliffe which raises a number of questions about the Art Loss Register when it comes to dugup antiquities ('Optical Due Diligence: Art Loss Register Claims To Vet Ancient Art. Does it?' Chasing Aphrodite blog, on August 1, 2013).
Museums, auction houses, private collectors and dealers all claim to vet ancient art to make certain it was not illegally excavated. Yet we keep learning that the vetting process failed to prevent the acquisition of recently looted art. A key facilitator of this fiction is the Art Loss Register, a for-profit registry based in London. ALR charges nearly $100 for a search of its files, touted as “the world’s largest database of stolen art.” In return, a client receives a certificate stating “at the date that the search was made the item had not been registered as stolen.” Sadly, that caveat-laden certificate has become the coin of the realm for due diligence in the art world.Felch asks"why the ALR continues to issue certificates for ancient art — and why the art world continues to accept them as evidence of anything". The answers were somewhat evasive.
