art crime

Now this is an interesting dilemma: art is violently stolen from the home of an elderly woman and her caretaker in 1976. The police can’t solve the crime, so the insurance company pays out $45,000 on the claim for the stolen art. Fast forward to the present day. The art is found — in the home of a former college professor, who got the art in the place of a debt owed to him by his shady brother.

Now begins a classic battle of tug-of-war over the three paintings now valued at more than $1 million.

But the story (see the full version on The Boston Globe’s Web site) raises an interesting question: who should get the art? The elderly woman’s heirs? The insurance company who paid out the claim? The man who has owned the paintings for the past few decades?

Surely if the elderly woman were still alive the paintings would be returned to her, but does that change now that she is no longer alive? 

The current owner will likely not be allowed to keep the stolen art, but should he be compensated in some way? Given an award for turning the art in?   

What stake does the insurance company have — if any — over the art? Does paying out a small settlement (compared to the current value of the art) give them the right to turn a profit on the art?

I have far too many questions to decide, but someone will have to. This month, the U.S. attorney’s office in Providence filed a civil action, asking a U.S. District Court judge to determine who owns the paintings.

I eagerly wait for their conclusion to this dilemma.

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On a completely unrelated note..

Speaking of tug-of-war, did you know there are competitive tug-of-war leagues?

An art collection at The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, showcases important art looted by the Nazis from France during World War II. While the 60,000 or so pieces of art looted (some by Hitler himself for the Third Reich) were returned after the war, some of it was never reclaimed, presumably because the owners were killed in the Holocaust, according to a New York Times article.

Over the years, the 2,000 unclaimed works have been stored and/or displayed at some of France’s most-famous museums, including the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, and Centre Georges-Pompidou. But in 1997, an exhibit that would showcase much of the art in one place was recommended in order to aid French government’s restitution efforts.

“Looking for Owners: Custody, Research and Restitution of Art Stolen in France During World War II” is the result.

I only wish I had the ability (money, time and an airline ticket) to view the exhibit. I imagine viewing the artwork would be an emotional experience regardless of whether you had any personal connection to those involved in the Holocaust.

James S. Snyder, the director of the Israel Museum, puts it best. He told the New York Times, the exhibition “is a kind of memorial to our loss in Europe.”

The Foreign Policy Journal has a Q&A with “Art Hostage,” a former dealer in stolen art and antiques, who now assists with stolen art investigations.

Here are five things I learned about art crime from the article –

1. The majority of art theft is from the private citizen.

2. For every $20 million Picasso painting that is stolen, there are hundreds of paintings stolen worth $20,000.

3. Stricter penalties, such as a mandatory sentence of 10 years may be the best way to deter art thefts.

4. If someone walked into a museum and stole a Rembrandt, they would get around three to five years in prison. But if you equate the value of the Rembrandt to other commodities the penalty would be much harsher — 25 years to life.

5. Before staging a heist, thieves would consider the blank spots in security, the location, the size and movability of the articles and the estimated response time of law enforcement.

For more from “Art Hostage,” visit his blogs Stolen Vermeer and Art Hostage.

Two of paintings nabbed in the large art heist in Zurich last week have been recovered.

“Poppies near Vétheuil” by Claude Monet and ”Blossoming Chestnut Branches” (1890), by Vincent van Gogh were found in perfect condition in the backseat of an unlocked car in a parking lot of a mental hospital just a few hundred yards from the scene of the crime, according to this Associated Press story.

The museum director suspects the two paintings were abandoned because they were the largest of the four and their size made them too hard to transport.

Though the museum is very happy to have them back, they are anxiously waiting for news on Cezanne’s “Boy in the Red Waistcoat,” the most valuable painting in the collection.   

What is of particular interest in this story is that art experts have suggested the robbers were knowledgeable about the art world.

“Art experts have suggested that the robbers took advantage of what appeared to be an easy mark — a low-security museum — without knowing much about art or how difficult it can be to sell such well-known works.”

As said in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Art To Go blog, “The question that pops up after the theft of prominent artworks rarely has an answer: What motivates these sticky fingers? Famous art is too hot to handle and impossible to move into the market.”

Listen to an audio interview with Susan McMenamin, manager of the Maple Avenue Gallery in Evanston, Illinois. Since opening in November of 2001, the Maple Avenue art gallery has had two thefts — both bronze sculptures. Susan speaks about how these thefts occurred and what measures the gallery now takes to prevent art crime.

Art Crime Podcast 

Here is a transcript of the interview –

Kayla Webley: Is art crime something that is a concern of yours here?

Susan McMenamin: Not art crime – not in the way you think of it where they go in, hold a heist and walk out with a number of paintings. We’ve had two pieces of sculpture stolen here so in a way on a much smaller scale, but we don’t carry Matisses, Cezannes, anything like that so it’s quite different for us.

KW: How did the thefts – the two sculptures – how did that happen?

SM: Oh one happened, and it was a big one too – a heavy bronze piece. There were three people that came in one morning and one distracted me and the other had a big coat that had a lining, it must been a lining that they put that in, and how they walked out with it I don’t know because it was a very heavy piece. But it had to have been something they were coming in specifically to take because they went to it and as I said two of them went there and somebody distracted me. Somebody must have special ordered it I presume.

KW: What do you think the motivation for stealing something like that is? Does it have street value?

SM: I don’t think there is any street value to it, but I have a feeling that someone had come in and maybe seen it and wanted it and didn’t want to pay for it and maybe had some friends who you know this was their sideline of work or something, maybe he paid them $500 or something. But it was a piece of sculpture that cost about $3,000, so it doesn’t seem to me that it would be worthwhile for someone to come in and take something like that.

KW: Do you take any preventative measures against art theft?

SM: Well, we’ve got some hidden cameras in here and I try to be observant but our paintings most of them are big enough that it would be way too obvious if someone tried to walk out with one of those. The sculpture some of them now I have almost glued down on the sculpture stands. But other than that you can’t do too much. We don’t buzz people in and out because we want to be a little friendlier gallery than that.

KW: Are the works that you show here insured?

SM: They’re insured by the gallery because most of our pieces here are on consignment and that’s part of what the gallery is responsible for.

KW: I’ve heard, just this week since the large art theft in Europe, that there is some debate about insurance. If the thieves were to come back and say oh they want some sort of payoff, if the insurance companies should pay them to get the art back or if that might encourage future theft? Have you heard anything about that?

SM: Personally I think they probably would pay something to get it back and then hopefully they can mark the money and trace it. You hate to deal with criminals but in a case like that, a situation like that; I think it would probably be the thing to do.

KW: When you had the sculpture stolen here did you hear anything or it was just gone?

SM: It was just gone. The police came and they looked at our videos but there’s not too much you can do about it. It’s gone.

KW: They couldn’t identify anyone from the video?

SM: Unfortunately, no. So we got a few better cameras than that. But at that time they just couldn’t see anything, and as I said, the value isn’t enough to warrant a lot of policemen to go out looking for it.

KW: Right. You said it was $3,000 or so?

SM:  Right. So our insurance did cover that.

In light of recent art thefts in Europe and Latin America, I was wondering which artist has had the most works stolen. Turns out, I’m not the only one.

This blogger found that Picasso unsurprisingly tops the list with 572 of the artist’s works registered as missing or stolen with the Art Loss Register database. Three Picasso’s have made the top ten stolen art list: Maya With Doll, Portrait of Jacqueline (worth a combined $66 million) and Head of a Woman (worth $8 million).

It was the second multimillion dollar art theft in Switzerland in less than one week. The stolen paintings were by impressionist artists, Cézanne, Degas, Van Gogh and Monet. And, together the art was worth an estimated $163 million. And, so understandably, the news and blogosphere are bustling with theories of who did it and why.

Here is a round-up of the two main theories out there:

 –One blogger speculates that Saudi collector sent his thugs out to steal the artwork for his own private collection. Evidence backing this theory is that one of the suspects in the theft two months ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil, told detectives the paintings were to be delivered to a Saudi collector, whose name was not released by authorities. Another blogger follows this theory and names a Saudi prince as the would-be owner or the stolen prints. His post includes a memo to Prince Al-Waleed, urging him to turn over his stolen art collection as a public service. 

–Another theory mentioned in a New York Times article on the theft, draws possible links between the theft and the Balkan crime ring. 

One detail that has drawn attention here is that one of the three Zurich robbers, according to the police, spoke German with a Slavic accent, increasing fears among the Swiss that their country has become a destination for foreign criminals.

While such fears may be overblown, a leading expert on stolen art said Balkan organized crime rings represented a genuine and significant threat to the invaluable art collections of wealthy European countries.

“Organized criminals from Serbia, Albania, Montenegro and other parts of the Balkans steal art through gangs which they send out to Western Europe,” said Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register, the world’s largest private database of lost and stolen art, based in London.

The art world is a buzz with one of the largest art heists to ever take place in Europe. It was right out of a movie scene — three men in ski masks, walking into a private museum in Zurich, grabbing four 19th-century masterpieces, tossing them into a van and speeding off.

The estimated value of the art? $163 million.

So, my first question was, “Ok, so they stole it. But how can they sell it?” Turns out my thoughts were right in line with the rest of the art community which is talking in the aftermath of the heist about how stealing the paintings, by Monet, Degas, van Gogh and Cezanneart, was one thing, but selling them could be much harder.

An expert quoted in a New York Sun article says that there is no way the art could be sold in a legitimate art market. They’re just too famous. Instead, thieves may use the artwork as collateral for a drugs or an arms deal.

In other cases thieves may hope to collect on a reward or negotiate a payoff, especially when the work is insured. I didn’t know this before, but apparently there is debate in the art world about whether insurance money should be used to buy back stolen art, as doing so could encourage further thefts.

A New York Times article suggests that museum curators are so greedy to build their collections that they will accept artifacts even though they might be tainted. One deputy director of collections admitted to an undercover investigator that she was supposed to feign resistance, but eventually accept antiquities, even without proper paperwork.

“Museums are in a sense just turning a blind eye to what everybody knows in their heart of hearts is going on,” said the specialist, Patty Gerstenblith, a professor of law at DePaul University.

“By not thinking about what they buy, they are putting money into an international network of smugglers, looters, thieves and destroyers. As educational institutions, museums have a responsibility to look beyond that particular object” that they may be acquiring.

I could not agree more.

The same day as four Southern California museums were raided, authorities searched the private museum of Barry MacLean, a trustee of the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago. A Los Angeles Times article said:

The affidavit suggests that MacLean built his well-known art collection with substantial help from Robert Olson, an alleged smuggler of illicitly excavated American Indian, Thai and other Asian artifacts.  In a phone interview Monday, Olson confirmed that MacLean was his biggest client, saying the Chicagoan purchased as much as $50,000 to $100,000 in Asian antiquities a year during the eight to 10 years they did business.