Stolen Art

Last week, a book of Picasso valued at 11 million dollars was reported stolen from the National Picasso Museum in Paris. It is no secret that the recession has affected the art market, but now I wondered how it was affecting the market for black art? Would values declining art of dissuading criminals seize the art as currency?

Apparently not. A news article search for "stolen art" led to several reports in recent months: a few paintings collected from a private collection in Sao Paulo, Brazil, two major art heist in the Netherlands in ten days of each other, a New Haven heroin looting of art collections to support her habit.

There is something really sexy about the theft of art, perhaps because people familiar with the matter as is through the representation of the Hollywood underground art world in films such as entrapment and The Thomas Crown Affair. Who would not want to get in on the art market black when you're belaying skyscrapers with Catherine Zeta-Jones or bamboozle the cops with Pierce Brosnan?

I shyly admit that it was these films that have stimulated my interest in the field as a student fresh-faced undergraduate art history. I started research on organizations or agencies tracking stolen art. The Art Loss Register , according the site, the world's largest private art tracking service. ALR website read as a student, I was captivated by the list of high profile cases they had resolved a recovered Picasso, Manet, Cedzanne. I must not have been the only one, because in a few months, the Art Loss Register in place a warning on its website that the majority of cases it was their search for stolen jewelry (read: this work is much less sexy than you think it is, people).

There are also government-sponsored efforts of Interpol and our own Federal Bureau of Investigation. I read a memoir by Thomas McShane, who has worked in the division of the FBI's stolen art since its inception three decades ago. In the book Stolen Masterpiece Tracker (yes, not the most inspired name), McShane recounted some of his biggest cases with the help of a mystery novelist best-selling travel book, as well, sexy. Although the stories are interesting, they also reveal the realities unglamorous and downright hilarious that activity of stolen art: tiny budgets and purely stupid mistakes Rooky made some really poor quality operations for the FBI.

One of my favorite stories was when they had an agent (brother of actor Brian Dennehy's) dress in a costume rented Sultan and look like a potential buyer of oil, rich with a thug on the art Top of the list of persons wanted by the FBI. During their meeting to sit down, the tape that was recorded under the Scotch coffee table fell to earth, happily kicking someone out of sight before the art thief has been identify the sounds. But the highlight of the exchange was certainly justified by the suspicion that this seller Arab Sultan has served him a kosher spread of a Jewish caterer. Dennehy was able to squirm on the forehead-smacking faux pas in declaring a Jewish food guilty pleasure that he could not satisfy her in Islamic countries.

It would also be wrong to believe that the robbers were themselves the art Coy that people like Sean Connery. Although some breakages are controlled by wealthy art lovers, many masterpieces are crooks, thieves unfortunate opportunities: one of.