The old-white-malest of crimes

I highly recommend Erin Thompson’s (possibly the only professor of art crime in the US) recent piece in Eidolon entitled The Old-White-Malest of Crimes: Insider Theft from Libraries and Archives. While focused mainly on the recent revelation of thefts of papyri from the Egypt Exploration Society, it digs deeper into how people like Dirk Obbink can get away with such thefts, mainly in that their privileged positions (as old white men) give them more access to potentially valuable material. What’s especially scary is how easily they can cover their tracks; the EES, for example, really has no way of knowing how many papyri were purloined because there isn’t a comprehensive catalog. Also there’s a castle in Texas…