Erin L. Thompson holds a PhD in Art History and a JD, both from Columbia, and is an associate professor of art crime at John Jay College (City University of New York). She is an expert in the deliberate destruction of art, analyzing the ways in which this destruction has sometimes harmed and sometimes benefited communities, and in the looting and smuggling of cultural property.

Besides traditional scholarly publications, she has also written for The New York Times, Paris Review, Hyperallergic, and Smithsonian Magazine, and has spoken at many universities as well as on CNN, NPR, BBC, TEDx conferences, and the Freakonomics podcast.

Her first book, Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors (Yale University Press) was named an NPR Best Book of 2016. Her second book, Smashing Statues: On the Rise and Fall of American Public Monuments, was published by Norton in 2022. Erin is currently working on a book about art forgery.
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