Art theft
Art theft, sometimes called artnapping, is the stealing of paintings, sculptures, or other forms of visual art from galleries, museums or other public and private locations. Stolen art is often resold or used by criminals as collateral to secure loans.[1] Only a small percentage of stolen art is recovered—an estimated 10%.[2] Many nations operate police squads to investigate art theft and illegal trade in stolen art and antiquities.[3]
This article is about theft of physical works of art. For plagiarism of art, sometimes also called "art theft", see Plagiarism § In the arts.Some famous art theft cases include the robbery of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911 by employee Vincenzo Peruggia.[4] Another was theft of The Scream, stolen from the Munch Museum in 2004, but recovered in 2006.[5] The largest-value art theft occurred at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, when 13 works, worth a combined $500 million were stolen in 1990. The case remains unsolved. Large-scale art thefts include the Nazi looting of Europe during World War II and the Russian looting of Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[6]
In the public sphere, Interpol, the FBI Art Crime Team, London's Metropolitan Police Art and Antiques Unit, New York Police Department's special frauds squad[3] and a number of other law enforcement agencies worldwide maintain "squads" dedicated to investigating thefts of this nature and recovering stolen works of art.
According to Robert King Wittman, a former FBI agent who led the Art Crime Team until his retirement in 2008, the unit is very small compared with similar law-enforcement units in Europe, and most art thefts investigated by the FBI involve agents at local offices who handle routine property theft. "Art and antiquity crime is tolerated, in part, because it is considered a victimless crime," Wittman said in 2010.[11]
In response to a growing public awareness of art theft and recovery, a number of not-for-profit and private companies now act both to record information about losses and oversee recovery efforts for claimed works of art. Among the most notable are:
In January 2017, Spain's Interior Ministry announced that police from 18 European countries, with the support of Interpol, Europol, and Unesco, had arrested 75 people involved in an international network of art traffickers. The pan-European operation had begun in October 2016 and led to the recovery of about 3,500 stolen items including archaeological artifacts and other artwork. The ministry did not provide an inventory of recovered items or the locations of the arrests.[12]
In 1969 the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism formed the Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale (TPC), better known as the Carabinieri Art Squad. In 1980, the TPC established the database Leonardo, with information about more than 1 million stolen artworks, and accessible to law enforcement agencies around the world.[13]
In December 2021 Michael Steinhardt, an American hedge-fund billionaire, was ordered to surrender 180 looted and illegally smuggled antiquities valued at 70 million U.S. dollars. The antiquities will be returned to their rightful owners and Mr. Steinhardt is banned for life from acquiring any other relics.[14]
State theft, wartime looting and misappropriation by museums[edit]
From 1933 through the end of World War II, the Nazi regime maintained a policy of looting art for sale or for removal to museums in the Third Reich. Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, personally took charge of hundreds of valuable pieces, generally stolen from Jews and other victims of the Holocaust.
In early 2011, about 1,500 art masterpieces, assumed to have been stolen by the Nazis during and before World War II, were confiscated from a private home in Munich, Germany. The confiscation was not made public until November 2013.[15] With an estimated value of $1 billion, their discovery is considered "astounding",[16] and includes works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann and Emil Nolde, all of which were considered lost.[17]
The looted, mostly Modernist art was banned by the Nazis when they came to power, on the grounds that it was "un-German" or Jewish Bolshevist in nature.[18] Descendants of Jewish collectors who were robbed of their works by the Nazis may be able to claim ownership of many of the works.[17] Members of the families of the original owners of these artworks have, in many cases, persisted in claiming title to their pre-war property.
The 1964 film The Train, starring Burt Lancaster, is based on the true story of works of art which had been placed in storage for protection in France during the war, but was looted by the Germans from French museums and private art collections, to be shipped by train back to Germany. Another film, The Monuments Men (2014), co-produced, co-written and directed by George Clooney, is based on a similar true-life story. In this film, U.S. soldiers are tasked with saving over a million pieces of art and other culturally important items throughout Europe, before their destruction by Nazi plunder.
In 2006, after a protracted court battle in the United States and Austria (see Republic of Austria v. Altmann), five paintings by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt were returned to Maria Altmann, the niece of pre-war owner, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. Two of the paintings were portraits of Altmann's aunt, Adele. The more famous of the two, the gold Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, was sold in 2006 by Altmann and her co-heirs to philanthropist Ronald Lauder for $135 million. At the time of the sale, it was the highest known price ever paid for a painting. The remaining four restituted paintings were later sold at Christie's New York for over $190 million.
Because antiquities are often regarded by the country of origin as national treasures, there are numerous cases where artworks (often displayed in the acquiring country for decades) have become the subject of highly charged and political controversy. One prominent example is the case of the Elgin Marbles, which were moved from the Parthenon to the British Museum in 1816 by the Earl of Elgin. Many different Greek governments have called for the repatriation of the marbles.[19]
Similar controversies have arisen over Etruscan, Aztec, and Italian artworks, with advocates of the originating countries generally alleging that the artifacts taken form a vital part of the countries cultural heritage. Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History is engaged (as of November 2006) in talks with the government of Peru about possible repatriation of artifacts taken during the excavation of Machu Picchu by Yale's Hiram Bingham. Likewise, the Chinese government considers Chinese art in foreign hands to be stolen and there may be a clandestine repatriation effort underway.[20]
In 2006, New York's Metropolitan Museum reached an agreement with Italy to return many disputed pieces. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles is also involved in a series of cases of this nature. The artwork in question is of Greek and ancient Italian origin. The museum agreed on November 20, 2006, to return 26 contested pieces to Italy. One of the Getty's signature pieces, a statue of the goddess Aphrodite, is the subject of particular scrutiny.
In January 2013, after investigations by Interpol, FBI and The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, police in Canada arrested John Tillmann for an enormous spate of art thefts. It was later determined that Tillmann in conjunction with his Russian wife, had for over twenty years stolen at least 10,000 different art objects from museums, galleries, archives and shops around the world. While not the largest art heist in total dollar value, Tillmann's case may be the largest ever in number of objects stolen.
Since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has stolen tens of thousands of art pieces.[6] Experts state that this is the largest art theft since the Nazi looting of Europe in World War II.[6]
Pablo Picasso:
Le pigeon aux petits pois (1911). Stolen from Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Amedeo Modigliani:
La Femme à l'éventail (Modigliani) (1919). Stolen from Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
![Amedeo Modigliani: La Femme à l'éventail (Modigliani) [fr] (1919). Stolen from Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Amedeo_Modigliani%2C_1919%2C_Woman_with_a_Fan%2C_oil_on_canvas%2C_100_x_65_cm%2C_Mus%C3%A9e_d%27Art_Moderne_de_la_Ville_de_Paris.jpg/76px-Amedeo_Modigliani%2C_1919%2C_Woman_with_a_Fan%2C_oil_on_canvas%2C_100_x_65_cm%2C_Mus%C3%A9e_d%27Art_Moderne_de_la_Ville_de_Paris.jpg)
Vincent van Gogh: Vase with poppies/Vase with Viscaria/Vase with Lychnis (1886) stolen from the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum, Cairo in 2010
In style of Jan Davidsz. de Heem: Vanitas still life with books, a globe, a skull, a violin and a pocket watch c. 1650, stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1972
Images of some artworks that have been stolen and have not yet been recovered.