Plunder! European Art Looting Through the Centuries
Plunder! European Art Looting Through the Centuries, a new series by art history lecturer James Grebl, Ph.D. The four part series will be on Thursdays through the month of October.
The plundering of art has been a normal feature of warfare for millennia, beginning with the ancient conflicts in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, and Greece and continuing through World War II. In addition, since the late 18th Century, the more “civilized” looting of artworks by antiquarians and archaeologists has been a widespread practice.
In this series, Grebl will focus on four significant aspects of art plunder perpetrated against the Near East and throughout Europe: the plunder of the Greek world in ancient and modern times, the looting of Egypt and the Near East from the Roman era until the present, Napoleon’s plunder of conquered lands, and the looting of Europe by the Nazis and the Soviets during the Second World War.