Strict Due Diligence

Ancient artifact collectors share a passion for history, culture, and aesthetics. The best collectors embrace their role as stewards of heritage by dutifully caring for cultural material through conservation, storage, display, and study. But as fighting in Syria and Iraq intensifies, principled collectors are asking how to avoid purchasing "blood antiquities".

Rick St Hilaire tells them: 'Steering Clear of ISIS Loot: Don't Buy, Apply Strict Due Diligence Thursday, July 30, 2015. You won't find this on the dealers' pages.

mounting evidence offers abundant reasonable suspicion that would compel an ethical collector of ordinary caution to demand clear answers from a dealer about the exact origins, export, import, transshipment, and chain of possession of art, artifacts, or antiquities believed to have originated from the Middle East.

Some dealers ascribe the notion that a dealer can ever answer such questions as due to "ignorance" of the manners of working of their trade. I would say that it is an awareness of the manner the trade works which is the reason why these answers have to be provided, or no sale.