Erin L. Thompson

Erin L. Thompson is a professor of art crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. Her book, Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors (Yale, 2016), looks at the reasons people collect antiquities, and her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Paris Review Daily, The Kenyon Review, and others. For more, find her at www.artcrimeprof.com and on Twitter @artcrimeprof.

“It’s the Black House Now!”: Mansoor Adayfi’s Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo

Surely the most surreal celebration of Barack Obama’s election happened in the military prison camp known as Guantánamo Bay. In …

Aug 25

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Erin L. Thompson

The Museum as Weapon

Curators affectionately refer to the label describing an artwork as its “tombstone.” Like a tombstone, it contains only the most …

Sep 23

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Erin L. Thompson

Smashing Statues, Building Community

On February 26, 2015, Aaron Tugendhaft saw his Facebook feed overrun by posts of a video of ISIS members smashing …

Aug 10

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Erin L. Thompson

Susan Stewart’s The Ruins Lesson: Looking at “unswept stone besmear’d with sluttish time”

Apr 11

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Erin L. Thompson