Erin Thompson is a professor of art crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York, where she studies the damage done to cultural heritage and communities through looting, theft and deliberate destruction of art, as well as its deliberate preservation. She’s the author of “Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of American Monuments” and “Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors.” A member of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign’s advisory committee, Thompson speaks and writes widely about art and crime, with publications including Art in America, Smithsonian Magazine and The New York Times. She has also been a public scholar at the New York Council for the Humanities, attorney for the NYC Conflicts of Interest Board and an associate at Hogan Lovells.
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The pressure on cultural institutions to return artifacts to their places of origin is growing in intensity, but some argue that repatriation threatens the preservation and st...