Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, Chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, has received the 2026 Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History for his lifelong dedication to safeguarding cultural artifacts. Awarded by the vilcekfoundation, the prize honors art historians, curators, and fine arts professionals whose work has a profound impact on their institutions, in their scholarship, and on arts and culture in general. Colonel Bogdanos has helped recover thousands of looted antiquities worldwide, seeing the protection of cultural heritage as a matter of global security. “Once you erase a people’s historical identity,” he warns, “the next step is to erase the people themselves.” In 2003, Bogdanos led a multiagency recovery effort into the looted Iraq Museum, launching an investigation that recovered more than 9,000 antiquities from eight countries, including the 4,500-year-old gold helmet of King Meksalamdug. He received the 2005 National Humanities Medal for this work. Since re...