The plundering of art, as highlighted by the new George Clooney movie, The Monuments Men, is a centuries old issue and a key area of exploration for students taking Arcadia in Rome’s course in Cultural Studies: Looters, Thieves and Forgers: Stealing Cultural Treasures.
This movies draws attention to specific World War II efforts by the U.S. military to recover precious cultural treasures stolen by the Nazis. Dr Vicky Kyrnogiopoulou’s course at Arcadia in Rome explores such issues in-depth: from a historical, cultural, economic and international perspective.
According to UNESCO the illicit trafficking of antiquities is estimated to be more than US$6 billion USD per year, much higher than transnational crimes of cocaine, arms, heroine and cybercrime.
Italy has forever figured prominently in art trafficking both because of its geographical position and its political position over the centuries, figuring at times as the centre of an underworld as well as the centre for training of special forces to combat the “Stealing of Cultural Treasures.”
“Current students on our Spring semester program are electrified with curiosity,” says Tina Rocchio, Arcadia’s Resident Director in Rome. “All of our courses, for summer and semester programs, have a very strong experiential field study component and this spring the class will visit Turin under the expert guidance of Dr. Kyrnogiopoulou. Summer program field studies are prolonged and intensified; this course will head to Sicily.”
As a native of Athens, educated in England & Scotland as a Special Advisor to the U.N. organization for Cultural Heritage, UNESCO, Dr Kyrnogiopoulou’s experience and expertise enhances the depth of study students achieve and provides context for that study in current issues. For the past two years, Dr Kyrnogiopoulou has been part of special envoys to Syria to assess damage and inform UNESCO reports.
Arcadia’s Stealing Treasures: Looters, Thieves and Forgers course focuses on issues of authenticity, identity, ownership, enterprise, trafficking and looting of art and antiquities. Students examine cultural patrimony in relation to both the private and the public sectors and debate legal and ethical issues relating to the trade in art and antiquities, restitution and repatriation. Students discuss a wide range of ethical dilemmas presented by the practice of trafficking, forgery and looting throughout the ages.
Arcadia in Rome’s current spring semester students are eager to see the movie The Monuments Men and discuss Hollywood’s exposure of war time art stealing, which the movie reflects as: “Cultural Heritage speaks of the identity and its formation of any given nation; to obliterate or abscond with that heritage, is to deconstruct its identity.”