via Denver Post, 01 December 2022: Last week the Denver Post ran a series of stories by Sam Tabachnik about the Denver Art Museum, looted antiquities by Douglas Latchford and his close associate Emma Bunker. All the stories are long and detailed, and worth reading – rather than clumping them into one post, I wil l will feature them one at a time. The first story focuses on Emma Bunker.
This email clearly shows Bunker helping to create fake provenances, using fake signatures, to enable Latchford to move his looted pieces, Gordon said.
“For many people, she could have been a respected scholar,” the lawyer said. “But I see the emails and I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ They’re like Bonnie and Clyde or something.”
The Sotheby’s and Wiener cases exposed the inner workings of the international art market in a way not previously seen by the general public. More and more, issues of provenance and how museums or collectors acquired antiquities started coming into focus.
And this put Bunker and Latchford increasingly on the defensive. In emails, the two complained about news articles, mocked references to “blood antiquities” and questioned their once-unbreakable relationship with the Cambodians.
Source: Colorado scholar Emma Bunker helped a prolific art smuggler flourish
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