The Manhattan federal court has charged two antiquities dealers, Erdal Dere, the owner of the Manhattan, based antiquities gallery Fortuna Fine Arts Ltd, and his business partner Faisal Khan, with fraud by using fake provenance records to sell antiquities. The dealers each face two counts of wire fraud, which each carry a maximum prison term of 20 years, and Dere is also charged with aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory two years in prison. In 2018, the Manhattan DA’s office seized an ancient Etruscan terracotta vessel, Hare Aryballos (c. 580–560 BC), from Fortuna Fine Arts over concerns about its export license from Italy.
Once a place where sea, desert, and palm groves coexisted in rare harmony, Tunisia’s Gabès Oasis stands today as one of the world’s most fragile cultural-environmental sites. At its heart is artist Mohamed Amine Hamouda, whose ecological practice offers a form of resistance—one built on memory, materials, and a return to ancestral knowledge.