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Lost art: stolen culture on the Web
Last month, Brazil's famed Carnival celebration was marred by the shocking armed robbery of a Rio de Janeiro museum. Four men threatened museum guards and tourists with grenades, stole paintings (including works by Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso) valued at more than $20 million, and then escaped into a crowd of revelers. No arrests have been made, and the paintings have not been recovered.
Films like "The Thomas Crown Affair" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0155267/) may glamorize the practice, but the black market for stolen art carries a hefty price: the Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates that international losses could be as high as $6 billion per year. The FBI has even devoted a team of eight special agents to investigate and prosecute art crimes. The Art Theft Program (http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/arttheft/arttheft.htm) maintains a geographical database of theft notices and recoveries, along with informative news stories regarding recent thefts. Its "Top Ten Art Crimes" page, much like the FBI's famous "Ten Most Wanted" fugitive list, provides background information on current unsolved crimes, including the Rio de Janeiro heist.
The FBI's Art Theft Program works closely with other national police forces, as well as Interpol, which also maintains a page about stolen works of art (http://www.interpol.int/Public/WorkOfArt/Default.asp). Like the FBI page, Interpol provides news stories and recent theft reports. Interpol's current major focus is the recovery of antiquities that were looted from the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad during the ongoing war. The University of Pennsylvania Museum also maintains a site about the lost cultural heritage of Iraq (http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/research/iraq/overview.shtml), with a photo gallery and related links. Cultural heritage is especially vulnerable in times of war: during World War II, the Nazis looted a massive stockpile of artwork from museums, as well as from private homes. Modern museums are still trying to determine the provenance (origin) of pieces acquired during that time period with searchable databases like the Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal (http://www.nepip.org/) and the Art Loss Register (http://www.artloss.com/).
In 2004, the BBC outlined some of the greatest heists in art history (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3590106.stm), detailing 10 20th-century robberies, some of which remain unsolved. The BBC list includes perhaps the single most brazen museum heist in modern history: the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa, removed in broad daylight from its wall in the Louvre. PBS also recounted that tale in its 1999 series "Treasures of the World"; the accompanying Web site (http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld
/a_nav/mona_nav/main_monafrm.html) provides detailed background on the painting, the theft and the eventual recovery. Court TV also lists major art crimes throughout history in its Lost and Found page (http://www.courttv.com/heist/lost_found.html), as well as a lighter look at stupid art crimes (http://www.courttv.com/heist/stupid_crimes.html).
Visit the UB Libraries for more information on the history and impact of art theft. The page Resources by Subject: Art & Art History (http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/infotree
/resourcesbysubject.asp?subject=Art+%26+Art+History) links to numerous electronic resources that provide articles and encyclopedia entries on art-related topics (note that a UB username and password may be required for off-campus access). For some weekend reading, also try a search in BISON—The UB Libraries Catalog (http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/bison/), with the subject heading "art thefts," to locate titles like "The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War" or "The Art Stealers."
—Jennifer L. Behrens, University Libraries