With support from the Payne Fund in the Arts, the Art History Department is pleased to host Erin Thompson. Erin L. Thompson holds a PhD in Classical Art History and a JD, both from Columbia University. She is an associate professor of art crime at John Jay College (City University of New York), where she studies the damage done to cultural heritage and communities through looting, theft, and deliberate destruction of art (as well as its deliberate preservation). She is the author of Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors (Yale, 2016) and Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of American Monuments (Norton, 2022). She is a member of the Advisory Committee for the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign.