Students in Professor Justin Walsh’s “Cultural Heritage and the Art World” seminar recently had two unique opportunities to hear from participants on both sides of the illicit antiquities trade.

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Bruce McNall tells students about his past.

On Monday, March 10, 2014, Bruce McNall, who has worked as a film producer and at one point owned the Los Angeles Kings hockey franchise, came to class to describe his work as an antiquities dealer in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Mr. McNall freely admits the illegality of his activities, and offered students a window into the processes by which institutions such as the J. Paul Getty Museum came to possess looted objects from Italy, Greece, Turkey, and elsewhere. Students challenged McNall with tough questions, and in later classes analyzed the rhetoric behind his rationalizations.

A further counterpoint to McNall’s visit was a presentation by Razmik Madoyan, a federal investigator with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Mr. Madoyan has worked on multiple cases related to the theft and smuggling of antiquities by dealers since 2008, including the seizure of 15,000 objects from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Pacific Asia Museum, the Bowers Museum, and the Mingei Museum. He has also participated in the restitution of looted objects to countries such as Thailand and Cambodia. Madoyan explained the laws which can be used by investigators to charge smugglers with crimes, and the process investigators go through to understand the trade.