Creuzet’s exhibitions typically carry paragraph-length titles that point to the show’s underlying themes, as did this one that recently traveled from LUMA Arles in France to LUMA Westbau in Zurich: “Orpheus was musing upon braised words, under the light rain of a blazing fog, snakes are deaf and dumb anyway, oblivion buried in the depths of insomnia.”

Not unlike the mythical Orpheus, who descended into Hades to retrieve his love Eurydice only to lose her at the last moment, we too travel into Creuzet’s world, set somewhere below the surface of wakeful consciousness. There, in his reimagined version of an immersive opera, we’re invited to experience forgotten memories told in song accompanied by hanging skeletal sculptures of landscapes, spirit creatures, panel paintings, and holograms of artifacts come to new life from Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. If we peer and listen closely, pieced together narratives surface, overlapping before they too fade away, transformed into something else with every new turn.

Creuzet’s work is a hard-to-pin sensory exploration that sparks the imagination. It’s this friction between the strange and unknown that makes us question the familiar, an exercise at the heart of Creuzet’s practice. He wants us to question everything.

That is increasingly possible through Creuzet’s work, as it becomes more visible internationally, with the latest feather in his cap being the French Pavilion; he will be the first Black man to take it over. Other major exhibitions include solos at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2019) and Camden Arts Center in London (2022), as well as appearances in Manifesta 13 in 2020, the 2018 Gwangju Biennale, and the 2017 Lyon Biennale. In 2021, he was nominated for the esteemed Prix Marcel Duchamp, administered by the Centre Pompidou.

Yet, the prestigious platform of Venice seems to have no bearing on Creuzet. “For me, it’s just a title. One step. One exhibition,” he told ARTnews in a video interview earlier this year from his Paris studio. “It’s about continuing with my work, which is to share various imaginations with others. And in a sense, to question the world, our context, our history, our present. … Nothing has changed.”

In essence, he’s interested in reaching the widest audience possible—“art only exists when we give it to others to see”—because that is the way to “generate areas of space for movements of emancipation and movements of the imagination,” he added.

Within those spaces, Creuzet challenges preconceived categorizations, particularly ones that relate to his own lived experience, such as the African and Caribbean diasporas, the significance of artistic and literary voices from those diasporas, the legacy of colonialism, and the struggle to share our planet’s resources. For Creuzet, these subjects are personal and inescapable.

Born 1986 in a working-class Paris suburb, Creuzet was raised in Martinique, where he was introduced early on to artists from the Caribbean, thanks to his family’s love for culture. “Being surrounded by that [artistic] nourishment fascinated me—it made me dream,” he said. He still remembers the blue enamel ceramics by local artist Victor Anicet that are evocative of local pre-Columbian ceramics and the music of Eugene Mona. The “enigma” of his childhood is the source of Creuzet’s “imaginary reservoir,” with Martinique its “emotional heart,” said Creuzet who returned to France in 2006 when he was 20 years-old to pursue a standard educational track at French art schools; he is now a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris.

“I’m always left trapped, because the Other … endlessly boxes me into this one identity,” Creuzet said. “I try to be what I have to be. But in one way or another, I’m constantly reminded of my condition as a Black man. … It makes me realize there is still a lot to do in terms movements to emancipate and decolonize the body, knowledge, culture, and arts.”

Throughout our hour-long conversation, Creuzet often responded in open-to-interpretation metaphoric French prose (certain nuances, of course, have been lost to translation), which should come as no surprise given that he is also a prolific poet. “I answer this way, because I don’t want to reduce everything to one thing,” he said, pointing his finger into the air in front of him.

“Julien’s vision is needed right now,” said Sibylle Friche, a partner at Chicago’s Document Gallery, one of three that represents him. “The decolonial turn in recent art is not just a trend. It is part and parcel of former imperial nations like France coming to terms with the less savory aspects of their history—work that has only begun. Julien addresses colonialism poetically, which draws attention to its affective consequences as much as its material traces.”

At his LUMA exhibitions, Creuzet’s human-scale, drawing-sculptures, made of bent poles smothered in a colorful, gummy paste, at first appear abstract, but slowly reveal themselves to be spirit-like beings. In one, a fairy emerges from a dark blue ooze, as painted-over, pre-Columbian demons mock us. Elsewhere are mesmerizing holograms of African artifacts dancing bélé, a genre associated with slavery’s abolition in Martinique.

In his practice, Creuzet orchestrates self-described operatic installations using a range of mediums and collaborations with other artists, including musicians and dancers. Through those collaborations, as well as drawing from the writings of Aimé Césaire, Edouard Glissant, and André Breton, among others, Creuzet wants to “complexify … the way different African and Creole cultures have actually played an important role in the current manifestations of contemporary France, and by extension, the contemporary world,” said Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, director of exhibitions and programs at LUMA.

There’s also a sense of hope, even joy, imbued in these works, a nod to Creuzet’s own feelings about this “moment of crystallization” and “emancipation” that we are witnessing.

“We are living through a changing context,” Creuzet said, pointing to issues as wide ranging as Covid, the energy crises, and efforts in France and elsewhere to restitute looted artworks from Africa. Society is “asking individuals to try to situate themselves in terms of who they are, where they come from, how they feel in their skin and in their bodies, and heads,” he said.

In his art, Creuzet aims to discuss socio-political issues like these in a language he hopes can reach beyond the art world’s institutional boundaries. “Julien’s work feels so urgent because of the many references and transnational connections he makes, that go beyond the bubble of contemporary art discourses,” said independent curator Cindy Sissokho, who with Céline Kopp will curate the French Pavilion. “It’s a practice that is liberating, opening up imaginaries and therefore possibilities that expand discourses about the African diaspora.”

And Creuzet’s international acclaim will likely only continue to increase in the near future. In addition to the Venice exhibition, Sissokho and Kopp will also organize a solo exhibition of Creuzet’s work later this year at the Magasin in Grenoble, where Kopp is director. Co-produced with Brown Arts Institute and David Winton Bell Gallery, the show will travel to the US starting in 2024, marking Creuzet’s first major solo institutional exhibition there. Beginning this month, he will participate in the 2023 Liverpool Biennial, and in November, he will present a new commission as part of the Performa biennial in New York. His work is also featured in the traveling exhibition, “Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today,” which debuted at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and will open at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston in October.

With a method reliant on archival and on-the-ground research, Creuzet sticks to a constant, daily work ethic. “Art is deeply about daily research. I never stop nourishing and cultivating myself. I never stop learning,” he said.

His art-making is one that forces him to “se debrouiller,” or manage with what he’s got. “I always thought of art as a door to survival or fresh air, an absolute, visceral necessity,” he said. For years, and because of financial and material constraints, Creuzet’s pieces were largely composed of found objects. They still maintain that aspect, though his production means have recently expanded, and he’s incorporated new, technically advanced elements, including virtual reality.

Today, Creuzet says he “gets the most pleasure from sharing” with others. “Generosity is the most beautiful thing,” even when much of the world is currently set up to make it “difficult to share essentials, like water and food. It’s hard to share the same planet. It’s hard to simply be.”

He continued, “I’m learning not to point fingers in an inquisitive way anymore, because I don’t think it helps improve the situation. I think everyone has to do the work of emancipation and decolonization, and we still have far to go. … I’m now trying to figure out how to engage in a form of activism and denunciation, but with less pain.”

“There are very large assets … areas that have not been developed yet, especially in the tourism field, or others,” bin Salman said. “I believe that the size of these assets will be one trillion riyals.”

Bin Salman’s tourism plan centered around AlUla, a desert region that has been described as an open-air museum for the 30,000 historical sites that dot the landscape, some dating back as far as 7,000 years. The most important is Hegra, the country’s only UNESCO World Heritage site and a Nabataean wonder of more than 100 tombs carved out of sandstone cliffs. Saudi Arabia is spending more than $35 billion over the next seven years, to turn the region, and Hegra, once a crucial trading post along the Silk Road, into a new kind of international crossroad, an official told Art in America.

The Kingdom hopes to draw over 2 million visitors to the region per year, a tall order for a country that up until a couple years ago allowed visitors only for religious pilgrimages.

France has been at the center of the project almost since the beginning, signing a 10-year, €30 million ($32.4 million) per year deal in 2018 to provide “expertise” in the development of luxury lodging, fine dining, horse-related sporting activities, artistic and cultural exhibitions, and artist residencies. Already, an international airport, a 12-mile greenway and tramline, numerous hotels, and an Arab history museum have opened or are in development.

But contemporary art, set amid AlUla’s ancient ruins and ocher desert canyons, is considered key as a symbol of Saudi Arabia’s much-touted liberalization and growing activity in the art market.

While the development has already seen its share of arts initiatives, it reached a new level in mid-March when France’s premier contemporary art museum, the Centre Pompidou, announced a long-gestating contract to help develop a museum at AlUla. But the project, like France’s greater involvement in AlUla, has left all parties to navigate the delicate politics of a long isolated and repressive kingdom gradually opening to the world.

Years later, the circle returned into the artist’s life, this time drawn by S.H. Raza himself on his now iconic paintings depicting the bindu. Sanskrit for “drop,” “point,” or “grain,” a bindu is a symbol of the cosmos and the point of all creation in Indian philosophy. S.H. Raza’s black bindus burst and anchor his abstract geometric paintings in burning yellows, oranges, greens, and reds. They are setting and rising suns within interior, symbolic landscapes, where lines of poetry in Hindi or other vernacular languages sometimes emerge.

These masterpieces, including explorations of his native land, are characteristic of Raza’s paintings made primarily between the 1960s and the ’80s, and make for fiery, swift entry points into his creations. They speak their own, mysterious language in dialogue simultaneously with his Western contemporaries and his Indian heritage. They are also an overripe introduction to the often miscategorized and under-recognized universe of modern Indian art, of which S.H. Raza was a leading figure.

In a belated effort to help rectify that, S.H. Raza’s paintings have been united in a rare, though restrained gathering of some 90 paintings at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, on view until May 15. The exhibition is a first retrospective for the artist in France, where he lived from 1950 until 2011, and highlights his earlier, lesser-known experimental works. Unfortunately, his groundbreaking abstract geometric ­paintings, which reach their crescendo in the early ’80s, are introduced relatively late into the exhibition and feel under-represented as a result. Still, seeing S.H. Raza’s painterly progression, fleshed out in this chronologically organized exhibition, reveals a fascinating life of artistic question and response, battled out on canvas.

During his time in France, S.H. Raza traveled to India annually, effectively straddling both continents, and refusing to be pinned to either. He “lived with a dual belonging, and a dual consciousness,” said Roobina Karode, director and chief curator of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, a significant lender to the exhibition. “He really did not like how people said he was an Indian painter in Paris. He was trying to reach out to the cosmos, to embrace the entire thing, and break that narrow vision.”

Raza is among India’s most celebrated artists, and a co-founder of the country’s renowned Progressive Artists Group (PAG), along with M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza, S.K. Bakre, and others. Formed on the eve of Indian independence in 1947, the group rebelled against previous, colonial-era artistic movements such as the Bengal School of Painting, which focused on “true Hindu art,” or works “free of colonial infection,” as Partha Mitter writes in 20th Century Indian Art, a recent survey published by Thames & Hudson.

Instead, PAG artists explored what a new national identity might entail. They looked to Indigenous philosophical and artistic traditions, while also embracing a form of internationalism that was curious about Western art, but not derivative of it, as is often misunderstood.

PAG artists “were struggling with wanting to be seen globally, beyond India, because they felt they were equally competent, and equally involved in the practice of modernism,” Karode told ARTnews. “They were open to influences, but they were actually trying to make meaning of what it was to be modern in their own context.”

And, as Karode pointed out, Eastern philosophy heavily influenced European modernism. “This traversing of influences is happening all the time, but [historiographies tend to say] it always started from the West. What comes out of [India], doesn’t get equally acknowledged, and that acknowledgement is something these artists were passionately working toward,” she said. “It was not a one-way street.”

The Pompidou exhibition’s curator, Catherine David, agreed the “derivative question comes up for every modern artwork that is not from the self-proclaimed centers of modernity. It’s very complicated to deconstruct, but we’re working on it.” As early as the 19th century, Indian artists used their own modes of expression “that are not in any way replicas,” forming a body of modern and contemporary art that is quintessentially figurative, she explained.

Raza, however, took a peripheral course to that of his Indian peers, despite maintaining a close bond to his artistic cohort and origins. He distanced himself from their dominant figurative art, moving toward abstraction. In the exhibition, this development is illustrated from rarely seen early watercolors on paper, depicting Indian cities, female figures, and geometric landscapes devoid of people, reminiscent of Bernard Buffet, van Gogh, Gauguin, and fellow PAG member and friend, F.N. Souza.

Works in this mode brought Raza relative early recognition, particularly during the years he was more closely associated with the Paris School of artists. He was the first non-European artist to receive the Prix de la Critique in 1956, and he exhibited in major international cities, including the Venice Biennale in 1956. The gallery Lara Vincy represented him in France, and he enjoyed widespread visibility in India as well. In 1959 he married French artist Janine Mongillat (1930–2002), whom he met through friends from the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he studied on scholarship from 1950 to 1953. Unfortunately, none of Mongillat’s intriguing artworks, including strange, painted sculptures and collages made from found objects and paper mâché, are included in the exhibition to highlight another source of influence for Raza.

By the ’60s, a major change was afoot in his practice. “Raza started getting a little anxious about feeling there wasn’t much of India in him,” said poet Ashok Vajpeyi, a longtime friend of the late artist and head of the Raza Foundation. “So, he started on a different direction, and moved toward a kind of abstraction.”

He began looking increasingly to Rajput miniature paintings on paper, dating from the 16th to 19th centuries, moved by “their power, in terms of composition, space, and color,” David said. “Little by little, Raza finished with figuration, and he embarked on the process of deconstruction, toward an explosion of color, until we are left with a colored composition.”

Soon came large, flat areas of vibrating pigment, composed within linearly divided segments of canvas, informed by Mark Rothko as well as other American Abstract Expressionists. He discarded Parisian shades and opted for colors evoking hot, humid Indian summers. His childhood memories of walking alone at night through the forest led to a key series of works from the 1970s, titled “La Terre”(the land), where poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke also comes in as an influence. In these works, glowing points of light break through darkness and chaos.

Around the same time, examined roughly a third of the way through the exhibition, references to Indian spirituality become more prevalent, including early references to bindus as well asnagas, kundalini, Indian poetry, and classical music, known as ragas. As one rounds the exhibition’s last leg, Raza effectively enters his well-known “radical and symbolic geometric abstraction,” per the wall text. His masterworks titled Maa (Mother), Rajasthan, and Saurashtra, to name a few, can include bindus drawn with the perfection of a protractor, alongside dense, roughly gestural geometric forms and color, painted within rectangular strips and square marked segments. The latest works on view are pared down, cleaner, and more uniform, losing much of their vibrancy and singularity. Raza’s symbolic, ordered forms often reference renewal and a cyclical concept of time, and are a support for meditation in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist traditions.

Born into a Muslim family, Raza’s father was a forest ranger who interpreted Islam liberally, leading to his son’s interest in Hinduism and Christianity, all three of which are referenced over the course of his career. “He created an indirect narrative around elements of his own culture and civilization, that was a very important aspect of his work to me,” said artist Manish Pushkale, a mentee of Raza’s who has previously exhibited alongside his teacher.

In the last decade, demand for S.H. Raza’s works has hit record highs, rising 800 percent in value at auction between the mid-1990s and 2010s, reaching a top price of $4.45 million at Christie’s in New York in 2018. “The hardest thing for us is sourcing these incredible works,” said Damian Vesey, a specialist modern and contemporary South Asian art at Christie’s.

At a packed opening at the Pompidou, visitors, many of whom flew in for the event, dressed in a myriad of sparkling saris, lending the event a festive touch, not incompatible with the works on view.

“I think Raza had a celebrative instinct, unlike the usual modernists, where there is disruption, dislocation, tension,” Vajpeyi said. “Raza tried, on the other hand, to reach consonance, tranquility. He was trying a different kind of modernism, which undid the dichotomy between the sensuous and the spiritual. For him, they were more or less the same.”

Describing Raza as a “master colorist,” Vajpeyi added, “Raza’s legacy is that colors can speak. They can sing.”

In comparison to most other major art fairs, which almost exclusively focus on modern and contemporary art, the sheer amount of art history covered—some 7,000 years of artistic expression—is especially mind-boggling this year. The quality of jaw-dropping works on offer ranges from merrymaking drunkards in Brueghel’s crowded scenes and vibrant, dreamlike Chagalls to 17th-century trompe l’oeil, still-life masterpieces, often hung salon-style. As is tradition, TEFAF responded in kind for the preview days, with bubbling clouds made from bouquets of flowers foaming up to the ceiling and flowing champagne accompanied by seafood nibbles. For those lucky enough to snag tickets to the blockbuster, sold-out Vermeer exhibition in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum nearby, the dual events made for a thrilling exposure across centuries.

Additionally, for some visitors, TEFAF presents a more serious venue for seeing—and ultimately buying—high-caliber art, compared to some of its competitors. Sylvain Cordier, head of European art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, contrasted TEFAF to Frieze LA where “so many people are taking selfies and Instagramming everything—that wouldn’t happen at TEFAF. We’re here to work,” adding that for his focus, “TEFAF is essential.”

TEFAF hasn’t had it easy since the onset of the pandemic. It’s 2020 edition was the last in-person fair of the year, closing early after confirmed Covid cases from visitors. After an online edition in 2021, the fair returned in-person last June with fewer exhibitors than previous editions. It was also victim to a jewelry heist, suspected to be the work of the notorious Pink Panthers.

TEFAF chairman Hidde van Seggelen told ARTnews that following last year’s unprecedented theft, where “people came with so much violence into our space,” security measures have been heightened, including metal detectors at the entrance and more security personnel. Other than London’s Symbolic & Chase, the exhibitor that was robbed, all regular jewelry dealers returned, which is “proof that people trust us,” Van Seggelen said.

Though last year’s heist made headlines, security wasn’t as major of a conversation on the fairgrounds as was issues regarding provenance, restitution, and looted antiquities—three connected concerns. TEFAF is renowned for its stringent vetting of provenance, which reassures buyers, but in recent years debates around restitution of artworks to former colonies, primarily in Africa, and Indigenous communities, as well as heightened awareness around the risks of dealing in looted antiquities, have ramped up. While antiquities dealers often go through great lengths to ascertain an object’s provenance, the mood at TEFAF wasn’t one pushing for speeding up restitution efforts or cracking down on the antiquities trade. Nevertheless, Martin Clist, a director at London’s Charles Ede gallery, London, which sells Egyptian and Greek antiquities, said that increased scrutiny did help eliminate dealers “on the edges of the market who were turning a quick buck without necessarily paying much attention to authenticity or provenance.”

Below, a look at the best booths at the 2023 edition of TEFAF.

Instead, earlier this month a Paris appeals court announced it would maintain all charges pending against the men. On Thursday, the Court released their reasoning for doing so. A panel of three judges concluded that both men were indeed “closely tied” to the sale of allegedly looted Egyptian antiquities to the Emirati museum, which they helped usher through the acquisition process, despite “difficulties” and “serious alerts” regarding provenance, including what investigators have proven to be forged documents. Both men maintain their innocence, and that they were acting in good faith, based on information available at the time.

 Seven Egyptian artifacts purchased by the Louvre Abu Dhabi are at the heart of the case. They include a rose granite stele depicting the pharaoh Tutankhamun, sold for €8.5 million in 2016; a set of nested, gilded sarcophagi belonging to the Princess Henuttawy, sold for €4.5 million in 2014; a bust of Cleopatra sold in 2018 for €35 million; a bronze sculpture of the goddess Isis nursing her son sold for €135,000 in 2015; a blue glazed hippopotamus sculpture, dated ca. 1850 BCE, sold for €900,000 in 2015; a model funerary boat and crew sold for €200,000 in 2014; and a funerary portrait of a man with a cup.

The magistrates also stated that French investigators at the OCBC art trafficking unit followed correct protocol, contrary to arguments from the defense. All charges were also maintained against Hamburg-based dealer Roben Dib, who is accused of gang fraud and money laundering. He is considered a key figure in the smuggling network, and a front man for fellow dealers Simon and Serop Simonian. Dib has denied wrongdoing. To date, no charges have been brought against the Simonian family in connection to the case.

The judges’ decision came as a surprise to some. On February 2, the day before the announcement that charges would be maintained, Charnier, keen to clear his name, told ARTnews he’d be happy to meet for an interview following that decision. By the time of the ruling, he declined to speak after all. He and Martinez are appealing the February ruling to the highest French court.

Charnier’s initial, albeit hesitant optimism, was partly due to the prosecutor’s about-turn. It suggested a shift amid growing concern that the accusations against the French curators were, “bad for all French museums, the Louvre, and Louvre Abu Dhabi,” Charnier said in a phone interview. After all, France’s reputation and so-called soft power were at stake.

Soft Power and Pledges to Do Better

The case has already brought new scrutiny to some of France’s most cherished cultural institutions, as well as the nation’s methods of wielding cultural influence abroad, or soft power. Though sometimes controversial, French soft power is a source of national pride, and a highly profitable diplomatic tool. With the emblematic case of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, regularly lauded a “success” in the French media, the country has exported their museum expertise and good name, accompanied by a hefty licensing fee.

In addition, the widely reported art trafficking investigation has further exposed endemic weaknesses in France’s museum culture and its art market—with its effects being felt globally—in terms of how they deal with the acquisition of “sensitive” artifacts originating from conflict zones.

“Even if there’s no ultimate conviction, just the investigation itself is a really powerful signal,” Derek Fincham, an art and cultural heritage law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, told ARTnews. “I think this is a real undermining of whatever noble ideals France and the Louvre want to have at this point.”

Following French president Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 pledge to return African artifacts held in the French national collection to the African Continent, and some initial steps to that end, “it seemed like France was trying to turn the corner and have a more enlightened view of its collections and its relationship with these creator communities, but then to have this scandal is really not a good look,” Fincham added.

Martinez, who led the Louvre from 2013 to 2021, has reportedly said in his defense that he only had reason to doubt the origins of at least one suspect antiquity, the Tutankhamun stele, in 2019—years after its sale to the Louvre Abu Dhabi as new information became available. That year the head of the antiquities trafficking unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Matthew Bogdanos, seized a stolen gilded Nedjemankh sarcophagus from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and helped restitute it to Egypt. The coffin was sold to the Met by the same French dealers who sold antiquities with forged provenance documents, according to court documents, to the Louvre Abu Dhabi: Christophe Kunicki and Richard Semper. They have also been charged with gang fraud and money laundering as part of the French government’s ongoing investigations.

While Martinez has the right to remain silent, his decision not to alert French investigators at any point during the years from when he learned of the D.A.’s Met seizure and Kunicki’s involvement, to his indictment in May 2022 casts a shadow on his judgment and the integrity of the institutions he led.

Martinez is currently France’s cultural heritage ambassador, though his duties have been temporarily reduced, particularly in the realm of preventing art trafficking, which had been his area of expertise. During his tenure at the Louvre, he was also president of the Agence France-Muséums (AFM) scientific committee, which was tasked with vetting antiquities suggested for acquisition by the Louvre Abu Dhabi. (The AFM is a joint public-and-private museum consultant agency.)

A New Report

In the wake of the art trafficking scandal, France’s ministry of culture commissioned a report, released in November, that looked at how to improve the security and integrity of national acquisitions. Among its list of proposals is a special committee dedicated to provenance research. In its introduction, the report states, “Recent events question the quality of acquisition procedures and the functioning of its market. A reaction is necessary to guarantee France’s capacity for influence in the cultural and heritage domain.”

The report’s co-author Marie-Christine Labourdette, who heads the Chateau de Fontainebleau, outside of Paris, however, made it clear that the report was ordered “on the occasion of, but not because of,” the investigation into smuggled antiquities and should not be taken as a reckoning against the Emirati museum purchases. She noted that the current criminal investigation only deals with acquisitions by the Abu Dhabi museum, while the report strictly addresses French national museum acquisitions and systems, adding that “we’re not in a situation of putting blame on French museum acquisitions. That is not the issue.”

The French Ministry of Culture and the Louvre Abu Dhabi did not return a request for comment regarding the ongoing trafficking investigation or the commissioned report.

Corinne Hershkovitch, the lawyer for curator and archaeologist Charnier, told ARTnews that when her client was scientific director at AFM, he relied on the expertise and procedures used by AFM’s 17-museum network, which includes the Louvre. According to Hershkovitch, Charnier led a team who “functioned in complete coordination with the Louvre antiquities department to conduct their research on an object’s pedigree.”

A court document stipulates which institutions intervened prior to final purchases by the Emirati museum, listing three key steps: first the AFM completed an initial selection, then an ad-hoc scientific committee at the Louvre in Paris weighed in, followed by the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s acquisition commission.

Researchers under Charnier were “less specialized” than those at the Louvre, to whom the AFM submitted objects for review, Hershkovitch said. In fact, she argued Charnier required his staff to do “more than what was expected at the time” in terms of due diligence.

With past concerns about the Louvre “selling its soul” by licensing its name and alleged brutal labor conditions that migrant workers from South Asia have reportedly been subjected to, the road to create the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which is also a civil party in the trafficking case, has never been seamless. The latest scandal has also led to questioning of the Abu Dhabi institution’s inherent ambition to become a “universal museum” in a relatively short period.

Since Egypt declared ownership of all its artifacts per the 1983 Antiquities Protection Law, it has become increasingly difficult to legally purchase antiquities from the region on the art market. In fact, hindsight suggests the chances of avoiding legal trouble grew dangerously slim as soon as the Abu Dhabi museum set out to buy a number of major Egyptian antiquities.

“If we want to create a universal museum in Abu Dhabi, it’s going to include risks, and we can’t have one single person bear the responsibility for those risks, particularly when he did everything in his power to minimize them,” said Hershkovitch, referring to Charnier. Given her client’s background on preventing illicit antiquities acquisitions, “it’s all the more unjust that he’s the one who has been sacrificed on the public square like this,” she added.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi grew out of a 2007 intergovernmental accord, in which the UAE agreed to pay 400 million euros to use the Louvre’s name over 30 years. The agreement was recently extended to 2047, adding 165 million to the price tag. Initially, some 600 million euros were also budgeted to pay for French loans and help with building up the museum, which opened in 2017. France signed a similar agreement with Saudi Arabia in 2018, involving the sale of French expertise to develop the heritage site AlUla. That project is budgeted at $15 billion, and Charnier oversaw its cultural development through a French governmental organization prior to his indictment. In a new development, the French media reported last week of a pending Centre Pompidou satellite to open in AlUla as well.

Antiquities Trafficking in New York

In addition to the inherent risks of the Egyptian antiquities market, Fincham, the cultural heritage law professor, also argues the Abu Dhabi project was tempted by a conventional focus on crowd-pleasing acquisitions over substance.

“It’s all about the mission: Is it to be showy and flashy, and have an important masterpiece? Or is it more about history and teaching in a different way?” asked Fincham. “Museums are set in this old way of thinking that you must have permanent acquisitions in beautiful treasure houses.” A less grandiose, meaningful methodology could focus on short-term loans, while also exhibiting surplus parts of collections as opposed to “masterworks that are shiny and bring a lot of attention,” he added.

When it comes to the pressures of building splashy collections, Hershkovitch says the Louvre Abu Dhabi is no different from institutional counterparts like the Met. To date, the Manhattan D.A.’s office has seized 12 objects in the US worth approximately $8.7 million, all in connection to the same criminal investigation tied to the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Many of those objects have come from the Met. However, to date, no curators at the New York museum have been charged with crimes. The Met apologized in a statement for the purchase of the Nedjemankh sarcophagus, while promising to improve acquisition procedures. However, additional seizures from the institution of stolen antiquities, both in connection and independent to this case, continue at a regular clip.

According to Hershkovitch, the discrepancy in her client’s treatment, versus those of other museum professionals in similar positions, is further example of injustice. “It’s very interesting to put into perspective the situation in France and this person who was indicted, in comparison to what is happening around the world, where objects were proven to have been trafficked, and returned by the Met,” she said.

But Bogdanos, the D.A.’s antiquities trafficking head, told ARTnews there was no comparison. “We certainly conducted, like we always do, a thorough investigation and interviewed all of the relevant people in New York.” He explained individual responsibility in antiquities trafficking cases can depend on where and when a person intervenes along the chain of events following a theft. Along that chain, stolen goods become increasingly laundered, and more likely to fool buyers. Once a looted art piece enters the US from a place like Egypt, Bogdanos said, it typically passes through Europe first. Curators in France are therefore entering at a different stage and context than their counterparts at the Met.

Europe’s position as a key stop on the laundering route of stolen antiquities is also why “we here in New York welcome the increased awareness and scrutiny that is taking place [there] right now,” said Bogdanos.

Similarly, greater public awareness in the US about the hazards of the antiquities market and reports identifying art traffickers have led more institutions and collectors to come forward with concerns about artifacts in their possession. “We’re seeing a real dramatic change for the better in the attitude of professionals in the antiquities and cultural heritage field,” said Bogdanos.

While he could not comment on why professionals at the Met or other US museums have not been charged in the case which began with the golden Nedjemankh sarcophagus, due to this being a “very, very active criminal investigation,” Bogdanos nevertheless highlighted several “red flags” in the Met’s acquisition of it.

“The fact that this extraordinary, $4 million gold coffin appears on the market in 2015, never having been seen or photographed before—it suddenly shows up. From where? Was it hidden in someone’s attic? That’s absurd,” he said by way of example. He also noted the coffin’s shipping documents and “anything indicating when it got to Germany” from Egypt were missing, such as an insurance certificate. “If you have a $4 million coffin, I’m guessing you’d insure it,” he said.

New York law stipulates that “reasonable inquiry” must be used when determining a pedigree for the purposes of trading antiquities. A judge and jury can decide if due diligence was indeed performed.

Could US museum workers still be charged for crimes in connection to this case?

“Right now, we’re still just executing seizures and gathering evidence, which takes time in a multinational investigation. If the evidence leads us to the fair and just charging of individuals, then that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.

On Friday in Paris, Milan, and Oslo, climate activists from local organizations under the umbrella group A22 Network doused sculptures with orange paint or flour, as U.N. climate talks were taking place in Egypt. This time, the works were hit directly, and lacked protective covering. Two instances involved outdoor sculptures. Nevertheless, none of the art pieces were reportedly damaged, though some are still being monitored for possible further cleaning.

At the front entrance to the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection museum in Paris, two members of the French group Dernière Rénovation (Last Renewal) doused Charles Ray’s stainless-steel sculpture Horse and Rider with orange paint. One of the protesters also climbed the life-sized horse and put a white T-shirt over the rider’s torso. The shirt read, “We have 858 days left,” referencing a deadline for reducing carbon emissions.

The hotly debated attacks on artworks by climate activists continue at a fast pace around the world, but until now, most instances have involved art kept behind glass coverings, preventing any real damage. But fears persist that similar acts could potentially do irreversible damage. Earlier this month a joint statement by international museum directors said they “were deeply shocked by …[the] risky endangerment” of artworks in their care in light of this continuing trend.

On Friday, French minister of culture Rima Abdul Malak visited the Bourse de Commerce following the incident, and tweeted: “Eco-vandalism steps up a notch: an unprotected sculpture by Charles Ray was sprayed with paint in Paris.” Abdul Malak thanked personnel who “intervened rapidly,” adding: “Art and environmentalism are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are common causes!”

The Bourse, whose CEO Emma Lavigne was present during Abdul Malak’s visit, declined to comment about the incident. Charles Ray’s studio also did not respond to request for comment.

The same day, the 46-foot-tall Monolith (1944) by Gustave Vigeland in Oslo’s Vigeland Sculpture Park, along with surrounding sculptures by the same artist, were also doused with orange paint by local group, Stopp oljeletinga (Stop Oil Search). The Oslo monolith is a popular outdoor attraction, and depicts 121 men, women, and children intertwined and carved into a single piece of granite.

Cleaning the porous sculptures will be more complicated than other works that have been target, the museum said.

“We have done the required cleaning for now. However, we [continue to] monitor the situation to see if the paint has soaked into the granite. If so, we will, of course, consider further requirements,” Vigeland Museum director Jarle Strømodden said in an email to ARTnews. “Neither The Monolith, nor the granite sculptures in question, have been physically damaged. The sculptures are situated in a public domain, a park which is open to all 24/7 365. It’s all a matter of trust.”

The French group Dernière Rénovation explained Friday’s various protests involving artworks were done “simultaneously around the entire world,” according to the group’s Instagram post.

The same day in Milan, the local Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) poured bags of flour on Andy Warhol’s 1979 painted BMW at the Fabbrica Del Vapore art center. The group also confirmed, “the action took place simultaneously in other countries in the world, with the other campaigns of the A22 Network.”

Reached by telephone, an employee at the Fabbrica Del Vapore said the Warhol-painted BMW had been cleaned and is back on view as part of their Andy Warhol exhibition on view until March 2023.

Reactions to the dramatic methods of climate protesters are divided. Israeli writer Etgar Keret recently likened the attacks to a form of “hate crime against art,” in a November 17 editorial for the French daily Liberation. Meanwhile, political reporter Thomas Legrand, argued in the same French daily that climate activists are “in reality quite calm,” if compared to French “ultra-leftist” groups of the 1970s and ’80s. “I find them rather patient, polite and peaceful,” he wrote, given the urgent context. “How can we not understand?”

Then, the Louvre announced Monday it had petitioned to join the criminal investigation as a civil party, which could allow the Paris museum to receive monetary damages if there is a ruling in its favor that it was directly harmed by the alleged trafficking ring.

The international investigation currently involves the $56 million sale of objects to the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Metropolitan Museum of Art between 2013 and 2017.

But, as more details come to light, one scholar appears to have played an outsized role: Marc Gabolde, a French specialist on ancient Egypt and professor at Paul Valéry University of Montpellier. Gabolde, who has gained notoriety for investigating missing Egyptian artifacts, informed the Louvre years ago about the murky provenance of one object.

In 2018, Gabolde—an expert on the young pharaoh Tutankhamun—began researching an unusually well-preserved rose granite stele depicting the pharaoh, made not long before he died around 1318 B.C.E. The stele, now at the heart of the investigation implicating Martinez, had been purchased by the Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2016 for €8.5 million, with the approval of the Louvre in Paris and Agence France-Muséums, which manages France’s top public museums.

At that time, Martinez ran the Louvre and was president of the Agence France-Muséums’s scientific committee, which was charged with authenticating the provenance of artworks up for acquisition by the Louvre Abu Dhabi. He remained in both positions until last year.

By 2019, Gabolde had compiled several red flags pointing toward the stele’s questionable origins. The primary indicator was that the object was once held by Egyptian merchant Habib Tawadros in the 1930s. Tawadros is also connected to the golden sarcophagus of Egyptian priest Nedjemankh, purchased by the Met in 2017 that was seized by U.S. authorities and returned to Egypt in 2019.

“That alarmed me,” Gabolde told the OCBC in 2021, according to the French daily Libération, which obtained a copy of Gabolde’s deposition.

A Warning, But No ‘Conclusive’ Proof

Gabolde shared his initial conclusions with Vincent Rondot, the head of the Louvre’s Egyptian department; Olivier Perdu, editor of Revue d’Egyptologie, with whom he was due to publish an article on the stele; and Martinez.

In researching the stele, Gabolde compiled a list of objects believed to have been held by Tawadros and then sold to a German merchant navy officer known as Johannes Behrens. Two of the objects were “already problematic,” according to Gabolde. When he presented this to his colleagues, they considered “the results of the investigation were uncomfortable and bothersome for the stele’s pedigree,” Gabolde said.

Ultimately, Gabolde’s findings of the stele’s origins “were not conclusive,” Perdu told ARTnews, a characterization that Gabolde agreed with. Further, Perdu said that, at the time, he saw “no element that allowed me to be convinced of the fraudulent origins of the stele.”

Gabolde asked the Louvre Abu Dhabi to provide Tawadros’s receipt, but they instead provided other information that Gabolde found “unreliable (to put it mildly),” he said. To publish the Revue article, Gabolde needed consent from the museum.

“I proposed not putting anything about provenance in the article, which seemed to satisfy everyone,” Gabolde said.

Perdu said that he advised Gabolde to not mention possible issues with provenance without proof, but that “if he is convinced that the object is of suspicious or illicit origin, he must not publish his article.”

Some suspicions are common when attempting to piece together the origins of unknown, ancient artworks, explained Perdu. But proof is critical and sometimes elusive.

“It’s only now—and rightly so—that we worry more about the origin of [art] objects. When I started my work as an Egyptologist, nobody cared at all about an object’s pedigree … with the result that a lot of objects appear without a pedigree. That’s a real problem,” Perdu said.

Gabolde’s final report on the stele was published in Revue in 2019. It did not include his research about its export from Egypt or any mention of Tawadros or Behrens. (He declined to share with ARTnews the unpublished investigation he had shared with Rondot, Perdu, and Martinez.)

Now, the French satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchainé, and other French reports with access to legal documents, say Martinez is accused of dismissing Gabolde’s findings, and possibly other evidence of illicit origins, which could make him complicit in fraud and money laundering.

Perdu and Rondot were questioned by France’s Central Bureau for Combatting Trafficking of Cultural Property (OCBC), under the leadership of investigating judge Jean-Michel Gentil, but the two have not been charged with wrongdoing and were ultimately released.

Once Gabolde shared his research with Martinez, Perdu, and Rondot, the museum had the opportunity to take it further, he said.

“I thought that if they wanted to pursue the investigation to confirm or discredit the pedigree, my notes on its provenance could be useful elements, which could also be transmitted to official investigators,” he said.

That appears to have never happened.

A sail boat is anchored at sunset outside of the Louvre Abu Dhabi in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021.

Ties To Another Major Investigation

The French newspaper Libération reported on May 26 that no less than seven forged documents had been used to sell the stele in the past. In addition, it found that the stele and several other Egyptian antiques purchased by the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Met were all sold by French dealer Christophe Kunicki, the expert who headed the archaeology department at the prestigious Paris auction house Pierre Bergé & Associates.

Kunicki was charged with criminal conspiracy, gang fraud, and laundering in 2020, though he has maintained his innocence. However, in March, Pierre Bergé & Associates was charged with “complicity in fraud as part of an organized group” and “laundering,” for allowing the authentication and sale of several stolen archaeological works.

The auction house is “one of the most important vectors for this form of illicit traffic,” the OCBC stated in its report, according to a Libération article, published Tuesday.

For nearly 15 years, Kunicki served as certifying expert of archaeological works at Pierre Bergé, as well as its supplier of ancient works, for which he earned a commission.

Kunicki bought many of the suspect artworks from the German-Lebanese dealer Roben Dib, based in Hamburg, now considered an “eminent member of this criminal organization,” according to the same OCBC report. Dib was arrested in March on charges of gang fraud and money laundering.

Libération also identified another supplier to Kunicki named Ayad K., who is known to Swiss authorities for possessing archaeological objects pillaged from Yemen and Iraq.

To date, the head of Pierre Bergé & Associates, Antoine Godeau, who was questioned by police in June 2020, has not been charged with any crime.

Gabolde, for his part, does not blame his fellow experts. “The curators, Egyptologists, and Egypt are victims, not accomplices in this affair,” Gabolde told ARTnews in an email.

A Louvre spokesperson said Rondot declined to comment. Martinez’ lawyers have issued a statement contesting his indictment and insisting on “his good faith.”