The Amelia Conference – 2023
ARCA’s Annual Interdisciplinary Art Crime Conference

Please join us on June 23-25, 2023, for our 12th annual conference on art and antiquities crime.

Amelia, Italy

23-25 June 2023

Chiostro Boccarini
Piazza Augusto Vera, 10
05022 Amelia TR
Italy

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The Amelia Conference:
ARCA’s Annual Interdisciplinary Art Crime Conference

Conference Dates – June 23 – 25 2023
Conference Sessions – Collegio Boccarini Conference Hall
Adjacent to the Museo Civico Archeologico e Pinacoteca Edilberto Rosa
Amelia, Italy

Register here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-amelia-conference-arcas-2023-interdisciplinary-art-crime-conference-tickets-616396487487

Held in the beautiful town of Amelia, Italy, the seat of ARCA’s summer-long Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection, the Association’s annual Amelia Conference is back at its original June time-slot this summer.

In keeping with our annual tradition, this year’s conference weekend will kick off with an opening “James Bond” themed icebreaker cocktail on Friday, June 23, 2023.  This evening networking event gives all Amelia Conference attendees time to leisurely arrive to the city, check in to their lodgings, and to start their weekend off with an entertaining and relaxed social event designed to allow everyone to connect and get to know one another before the start of the busy weekend.  This Friday evening event includes heavy hors d’oeuvres and presents a chance for our attendees to catch up with old colleagues and acquaintances and to network with new ones, prior to the serious discussions to be had during the weekend’s presentations at the conference venue.

At the heart of the Amelia Conference will be two days devoted to presentations on Saturday and Sunday, June 24-25, 2023, held in the Collegio Boccarini Conference Hall on topics of common concern in the field.

Confirmed Speakers

“Partners in the fight: A needs-based public-private approach against the illicit trafficking of cultural property in Lebanon”

Samer Abdel Ghafour, Ph.D.
Founder of ArchaeologyIN
Cultural Heritage Expert, PROTECT-HERITAGE

Paulo Roquete Vitorino
Project Manager at B&S Europe
Project Manager, PROTECT-HERITAGE

 

“Perspectives on Police Specialisation in Art Theft”
Richard Bronswijk
Head, Dutch Politie Art Crime Unit

 

“Proactive Protective Training – A Crime Reduction Strategy for All”

Frank Andrew Davis, MSc., CSyP, FSyI, CPP.

Managing Director, Trident Manor Limited

 

“Cultural Heritage: The Canary in the Coal Mine”

Colonel Andrew Scott Dejesse

US Army CENTCOM CCJ5, Program Director, Strategic Initiatives Group

Gabriella Corey

Restitution Researcher, Christie’s New York

 

“The Mitigation of Protests and Activism in our Museums”
Wesley De Smet
Ghent Museum of Fine Arts

Kim Covent
Ghent Police

 

“Non-Fungible Tokens: Art and Crime in a Virtual World”

Saskia Hufnagel, Ph.D.

Reader in Criminal Law, School of Law, Queen Mary University of London

Colin King, Ph.D.

Professor, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London

 

“Crime groups as criminal entrepreneurs. Stealing heritage and cultural property: A case study”
John Kerr, Ph.D.
Head of Policing and Criminology. The University of Law

 

“The Mediterranean Antiquities Provenance Research Alliance (MAPRA): Managing unprovenanced antiquities in academic collections”
Mireille M. Lee, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Foundation for Ethical Stewardship of Cultural Heritage

 

“The destruction, laundry and sale of Egypt’s cultural heritage”
Marcel Marée, Ph.D.
Assistant Keeper, Egypt and Sudan, The British Museum

 

“The Fate of the Adolphe Schloss Collection – Lessons learned from provenance research during the Pandemic”

Marc J. Masurovsky, MA

Co-founder, Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP), Washington DC, USA

Claudia Hofstee, MA

Independent Art Historian and Provenance Researcher, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Saida S. Hasanagic, MA / Postgraduate Certificate in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection (ARCA)

Independent Art Historian and Provenance Researcher, London, United Kingdom

 

 

“Papyrus and Provenance, solving more than an ancient puzzle: The case of the Artemidorus papyrus and its controversial seller, Serop Simonian”

Roberta Mazza, Ph.D.

Papyrologist and ancient historian, University of Bologna, Cultural Heritage Department – Ravenna

 

“Investigation and Prosecution of Museum Thefts from a Half-Century Ago”

K.T. Newton, J.D.

Assistant United States Attorney, United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

 

“The Ruffini Affair: Investigating the Art World’s Biggest Mystery”
Vincent Noce
Art Journalist

 

“A Report from Italy’s Carabinieri”
Maj. W.O. Monica Satta
The Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage

 

“Provenance and Publishing in Practice: Cases and Considerations”
Loes Schouten, MA
Senior Publishing Director, Brill Publishers

 

“Presumed Guilty: Is it still possible to create a private collection of archeology?”

Massimo Sterpi, J.D.

Partner and Head of the IP and Art Law at Gianni & Origoni, Rome

 

“Museums: Accountability?”

Yasmine Zahir

Barrister-at-Law, Liberty Chambers, Hong Kong

Each year ARCA’s annual Amelia Conference serves as an arena for intellectual and professional exchange and highlights the nonprofit’s mission to facilitate a critical appraisal of the need for protection of art and heritage worldwide. Over the course of this one weekend each summer, our art crime-focused event serves as a forum to explore the indispensable role of detection, crime prevention, and scholarly and criminal justice responses, at both the international and domestic level, in combatting all forms of crime related to art and the illicit trafficking of cultural property.

Geared towards international organisations, national enforcement agencies, scholars, cultural institutions, and private sector professionals in the art and antiquities protection fields, the Amelia Conference follows a long-established commitment by the Association to examine contemporary issues of common concern in an open, non-combative, multi-disciplinary format in order to promote greater awareness and understanding of the need for better protection of the world’s cultural patrimony.

Given the success of the Amelia Conference over the past decade, it is important to recognise the growing interdisciplinary and international nature of this emerging field, the growing complexity of art and heritage crime, and the disciplines and subject matter experts who follow along and contribute within their areas of speciality.  With that in mind, this year’s conference will build upon topic-specific sessions designed to stimulate discussion and share learning on a series of topics of common concern. Some conference panels may feature more active panel debate about a session topic, or present various and/or contrasting perspectives about a topic. 

FINAL NOTE
ARCA is a small civil society organisation.  Due to our extremely limited operational budget, all participants and presenters attending the Amelia Conference are responsible for their own registration fees, travel and accommodation expenses travelling to, and while in, Italy.  

 

Conference Attendee Profile:

The 2023 conference is open to attendees from different disciplines, practitioners, and policy- and decision-makers as well as anyone with an interest in the protection of art and the complexity of art crimes. Registration for the event will remain open until June 22, 2017 subject to space limitations.

Conference Registration Fees for 2023:
€160 for both days’ sessions for professionals, includes icebreaker cocktail.

€110 for both days’ sessions for university students providing proof of current enrolment in an academic program, includes icebreaker cocktail.

€80 for both days’ sessions for university students providing proof of current enrolment in an academic program.

All registration fees include entry to all conference panel sessions plus complimentary morning and afternoon refreshment breaks with coffee and light pastries on Saturday and Sunday.

Our Eventbrite conference registration is now open and can be accessed here.

 

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