Muguet de Paris

Far from the glamorized version served to us by Hollywood, where an elegant, clever gentleman-thief relieves the rich of their often ill-gotten gains, art crime is in reality a big business, the third largest criminal enterprise in the world, ranking just after drugs and arms. In fact, the proceeds are often laundered and used to buy the latter two or funneled into terrorist activities. The perpetrators are usually low-level criminals who have been hired by someone in organized crime.  They make a small percentage, with most of the profit going to the middleman.

I’ve been reading up on it, not because I’m entertaining the idea of a career change, but as part of a project I’m doing. The stories are fascinating, often funny, as in the case of the 84-year-old gentleman in England, known in the press as “The Artful Codger,” who managed to deceive institutions for more than 17 years, earning more than £850,000 through the family business.

His son produced counterfeits of such virtuosity that one piece was authenticated by both the British Museum and Christie’s. The father would then go off in his wheelchair to art houses or museums with the goods that he claimed to have found or inherited, accompanied by the “proper” documentation. Their downfall came via lack of attention to detail, when they tried to sell three Assyrian marble reliefs. British Museum staff noticed a spelling error, and then realized that the horses were wearing 20th-centuryharnesses and that the stone originated in Wiltshire.

We hear of the high-profile cases, such as the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911 or that (considered the largest art theft in U.S. history and still unsolved) of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where thieves entered, disguised as police officers, and made off with a Vermeer, three Rembrandts, and works by Manet and Degas, as well as others. However, most art crime goes unreported. 

There are several reasons for this. Museums are often reluctant to show their vulnerability and risk not getting donations in the future. Experts don’t like to admit that they have been fooled by forgeries. A number of thefts are commissioned. Dealers and collectors have engaged in fraud to inflate value and inflate costs.

In the case of antiquities, which account for 75% of art crime, the looters are often locals who moonlight as tomb raiders. The recovery rate here is especially low, as the freshly unearthed pieces have never been seen by experts nor photographed nor documented, and thus their existence is unknown, so they are not listed as stolen.

Art crime is estimated to bring in more than $6 billion a year, but it is difficult to be more precise, as most police departments have historically not differentiated between art crime and other types of crime. As of 2004, the FBI mans an art crimes unit comprised of 13 agents and three trial attorneys. The Italians have devoted the greatest amount of resources to the problem, with 255 agents dedicated to art recovery.

As to the victims, they are individuals; dealers and auction houses; museums; and churches are especially vulnerable, by nature accessible to the public and rarely able to afford the security and insurance to which a museum has access. But, in the end, with the disappearance of a part of our cultural heritage, it is we who are the victims.

There are many sites dedicated to the subject. A good place to begin, if this interests you, is that of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, a Rome-based think tank founded by Noah Charney, a young American art historian (www.artcrime.info).

Jan del Monte, blogging from the rue du Cherche-Midi, Paris, France

© 2008 Jan del Monte

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~ by Jane del Monte on October 24, 2008.

Posted in Art Crime, Books and Films, Exhibitions, Salons, Museums