The Denver Art Museum must address the “Looted” antiquities scandal

via Denver Post, 12 December 2022: Following last wek’s expose by the Denver Post on the Denver Art Museum and the connections to Douglas Latchford and Emma Bunker, the newspaper’s editorial calls the museum and its director to account.

We have heard rumors that the Denver Art Museum is among the worst institutions in America in terms of their willingness to accept plundered and looted art. But The Post’s investigation was the first time hard evidence of such bad behavior has been laid out so cleanly and so irrefutably.

We are dismayed that Christoph Heinrich, the director of the Denver Art Museum, has not publicly responded to the scandal. We worry the institution is hoping the storm will blow over without having to address the fact that not only is the museum housing artwork that was likely smuggled into the U.S. by art dealer Douglas Latchford and then legitimized by The Scholar Emma C. Bunker, but the Denver Art Museum’s complicity also helped give these two people legitimacy in the eyes of other buyers.

“The Denver Art Museum became one of Latchford’s primary landing spots as he sought to burnish his reputation,” The Post’s investigation found. “The institution housed more looted pieces of his than any other collection aside from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the ‘Pandora Papers’ investigation found last year.

“All told, the Denver museum spent more than a half-million dollars on Latchford pieces, and he loaned, gifted or sold the museum more than a dozen ancient artifacts — deals made possible and shepherded along by Bunker, court records and previously unreported emails show.”

This is not a scandal that Heinrich can ignore.

Source: The Denver Art Museum must address the “Looted” antiquities scandal