Modern Antiquities: The Looted and the Faked

Art crime—from theft to forgeries and fraud—is so prevalent in Los Angeles that the LAPD has its own Art Theft Detail unit that only focuses on solving the city's art capers. At this special lecture, David A. Scott—professor in the department of art history at UCLA and the founding director (2003-2011) of the UCLA/Getty Master's Program in Archaeological and Ethnographic Conservation—discusses issues surrounding the acquisition of art and the different philosophical views regarding the reclaiming of art by nation states. (He'll delve into some famous examples from the Getty and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) And he'll also discuss looted art (Mom: that broken piece of the Acropolis you smuggled home in your suitcase was not "finders/keepers") and the ever-increasing number of fakes, offering examples of pre-Columbian objects and classical antiquities. This event is free and takes place at LACMA's Brown Auditorium.