Stolen, Smuggled Sold: On the Hunt for Cultural Treasures tells the dark and compelling stories of iconic cultural objects that were stolen, smuggled or sold, and eventually returned back to their original owner. There are many books about museum heists, Holocaust artwork, insider theft, trafficking in antiquities, and stolen Native American objects. Now, there's finally a book for the general public that covers the entire terrain. The book includes full-color photos of the objects. Stolen, Smuggled, Sold features seven vivid and true stories in which the reader joins the author as she uncovers a cultural treasure and follows its often-convoluted trail. Along the way author and reader encounter a cast of fascinating characters from the underbelly of the cultural world: unscrupulous grave robbers, sinister middlemen, ruthless art dealers, venal Nazis, canny lawyers, valiant academics, unstoppable investigative reporters, unwitting curators, and dedicated government officials. Stories include Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer 1, the typset manuscript for Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, a ceremonial Ghost Dance short from the massacre at Wounded Knee, the theft of 4,800 historical audio discs by a top official at the National Archives, a missing original copy of The Bill of Rights, the mummy of Ramses I, and an ancient treasure from Iraq. While each story is fascinating in and of itself, together they address one of the hottest issues in the museum world: how to deal with the millions of items that have breaks in the chain of ownership, suspicious ownership records, or no provenance at all. The issue of ownership touches on professional practices, international protocols, and national laws. It's a financial issue since the illicit trade in antiquities and cultural items generates as much as $4 billion to $8 billion a year.

'The scientific techniques described encompass relevant examples of forgery detection and of authentication. The book deals, to name a few, with the Chagall, the Jackson Pollock and the Beltracchi affairs and discusses the Isleworth Mona Lisa as well as La Bella Principessa both thought to be a Leonardo creation. The authentication, amongst others, of two van Gogh paintings, of Vermeer's St Praxedis, of Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine and of Rembrandt's Old Man with a Beard are also described.'Over the last few decades there has been a disconcerting increase in the number of forged paintings. In retaliation, there has been a rise in the use, efficiency and ability of scientific techniques to detect these forgeries. The scientist has waged war on the forger.The Scientist and the Forger describes the cutting-edge and traditional weapons in this battle, showing how they have been applied to the most notorious cases. The book also provides fresh insights into the psychology of both the viewer and the forger, shedding light on why the discovery that a work of art is a forgery makes us view it so differently and providing a gripping analysis of the myriad motivations behind the most egregious incursions into deception.The book concludes by discussing the pressing problems faced by the art world today, stressing the importance of using appropriate tools for a valid verdict on authenticity. Written in an approachable and amenable style, the book will make fascinating reading for non-specialists, art historians, curators and scientists alike.

This new text provides practical guidance on the modern law relating to cultural objects which have been stolen, looted or illegally exported. It explains how English criminal law principles, including money laundering measures, apply to those who deal in cultural objects in a domestic or international setting. It discusses the recovery of works of art and antiquities in the English courts where there are competing claims between private individuals, or between individuals and the UK Government or a foreign State. Significantly, this text also provides an exposition of the law where a British law enforcement agency, or a foreign law enforcement agency, is involved in the course of criminal or civil proceedings in an English court. The growth of relevant international instruments, which include not only those devoted to the protection of mankind's cultural heritage but also those concerned with money laundering and serious organised crime, provide a backdrop to this discussion. The UK's ratification of the UNESCO Convention on Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970 in 2002 is considered. The problems posed in attempting to curb trafficking in art and antiquities are explored and the effectiveness of the current law is analysed.

Roger Atwood knows more about the market for ancient objects than almost anyone. He knows where priceless antiquities are buried, who is digging them up, and who is fencing and buying them. In this fascinating book, Atwood takes readers on a journey through Iraq, Peru, Hong Kong, and across America, showing how the worldwide antiquities trade is destroying what's left of the ancient sites before archaeologists can reach them, and thus erasing their historical significance. And it is getting worse. The discovery of the legendary Royal Tombs of Sipan in Peru started an epidemic. Grave robbers scouring the courntryside for tombs--and finding them. Atwood recounts the incredible story of the biggest piece of gold ever found in the Americas, a 2,000-year-old, three-pound masterpiece that cost one looter his life, sent two smugglers to jail, and wrecked lives from Panama to Pennsylvainia. Packed with true stories, this book not only reveals what has been found, but at what cost to both human life and history.

Through much of its history, Italy was Europe's heart of the arts, an artistic playground for foreign elites and powers who bought, sold, and sometimes plundered countless artworks and antiquities. This loss of artifacts looted by other nations once put Italy at an economic and political disadvantage compared with northern European states. Now, more than any other country, Italy asserts control over its cultural heritage through a famously effective art-crime squad that has been the inspiration of novels, movies, and tv shows. In its efforts to bring their cultural artifacts home, Italy has entered into legal battles against some of the world's major museums, including the Getty, New York's Metropolitan Museum, and the Louvre. It has turned heritage into patrimony capital-a powerful and controversial convergence of art, money, and politics. In 2006, the then-president of Italy declared his country to be "the world's greatest cultural power." With Ruling Culture, Fiona Greenland traces how Italy came to wield such extensive legal authority, global power, and cultural influence-from the nineteenth century unification of Italy and the passage of novel heritage laws, to current battles with the international art market. Today, Italy's belief in its cultural superiority is evident through interactions between citizens, material culture, and the state-crystallized in the Art Squad, the highly visible military-police art protection unit. Greenland reveals the contemporary actors in this tale, taking a close look at the Art Squad and state archaeologists on one side and unauthorized excavators, thieves, and smugglers on the other. Drawing on years in Italy interviewing key figures and following leads, Greenland presents a multifaceted story of art crime, cultural diplomacy, and struggles between international powers.

Hildebrand Gurlitt zahlte zu jenen Kunsthandlern, die sich an dem Verkauf der 1937 in deutschen Museen als "entartet" beschlagnahmten Kunstwerke beteiligten. Rund 400 Kunstwerke aus dem Kontext der Einziehung verblieben in seinem Besitz. Sie befinden sich heute als Legat Cornelius Gurlitt im Kunstmuseum Bern. Der Band basiert auf umfangreichen Forschungen zur Entstehung des Kunstbesitzes Hildebrand Gurlitts. Die Beitrage thematisieren die Positionierung des Museumsleiters und Kurators Gurlitt zur deutschen Moderne und seine Rolle als Kunsthandler wahrend des Nationalsozialismus und in der Nachkriegszeit. Die Autor:innen analysieren Gurlitts Rolle im Kontext des Kunsthandels, der nationalsozialistischen Kunst- und Verfolgungspolitik und problematisieren die Strategien des Kunstbetriebs nach 1945. Der Katalog enthalt alle Kunstwerke im Legat Cornelius Gurlitt mit belegtem Bezug zur Aktion "Entartete Kunst" sowie Reproduktionen zentraler Dokumente.

How do experts spot masterpieces? Paintings are not always signed or noted in historical records, so how can we tell an obscure gem from an altered image? Scientists, conservators and art historians use a range of methods to examine the physical nature of pictures and unravel their hidden histories. Through a series of intriguing examples and clearly explained processes, this new addition to the National Gallery's popular Closer Look series will draw the reader into the complex issues-not all of them fully resolved-confronted by gallery professionals. Published by the National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

In August 1939, curators at the Louvre nestled the world’s most famous painting into a special red velvet-lined case and spirited her away to the Loire Valley as part of the biggest museum evacuation in history.

As the Germans neared Paris in 1940, the French raced to move the masterpieces still further south, then again and again during the war, crisscrossing the southwest of France. Throughout the German occupation, the museum staff fought to keep the priceless treasures out of the hands of Hitler and his henchmen, often risking their lives to protect the country's artistic heritage. Saving Mona Lisa is the sweeping, suspenseful narrative of their struggle.

"[P]rovides a treasure trove of information that will engage readers intrigued by but new to the subject of art forgery as well as those with an art or art history background." Booklist, Starred Review Forgery is a provocative presence in the art world that captures attention in the press and inspires books about the exploits of famous fraudsters as well as scholarly articles and monographs. But missing until now has been a big-picture look at the phenomenon of art forgery. The Many Faces of Art Forgery provides a unique treatment that features historical highlights, philosophical insights, psychological profiles, economic theories, and legal statutes and cases. Key features include: -The story of art forgery from antiquity to the present, including 80 named forgers, the tricks of their trade, and the social forces that ensure the existence of their enterprise. -How scientific analysis is both effective and limited in exposing art fakes. -Multiple definitions for the term "forgery" as applied to art. -The effect on authenticity in legal terms, philosophical terms, and public opinion when an artwork undergoes extensive restoration, or artists hire surrogates to make their works, or they appropriate images from other artists or styles from indigenous cultures. -Forgers' mentalities: their motivations, rationalizations, and strategies. -The ethics of art forgery: from criminality to esteem for fooling experts. -The possibility and aesthetic worth of a "perfect fake." In all, readers will understand the substantial place forgery occupies in the realm of art, as well as that what constitutes authentic versus inauthentic is not always clear-cut, nor are legal and moral judgments about forgery. In conveying this message, the author provides a wealth of information in an accessible and engaging style suitable for experts and general readers alike.

This first comprehensive analysis of the Third Reich's efforts to confiscate, loot, censor and influence art begins with a brief history of the looting of artworks in Western history. The artistic backgrounds of Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering are examined, along with the various Nazi art looting organizations, and Nazi endeavors to both censor and manipulate the arts for propaganda purposes. Long-held beliefs about the Nazi destruction of "degenerate art" are examined, drawing on recently developed university databases, new translations of original documents and recently discovered information. Theft and destruction of artworks by the Allies and looting by Soviet Trophy Brigades are also documented.

Not only Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering utilized the occupation of France during the Second World War to procure artworks for their collections - German museums also made acquisitions at the time. The advantageous foreign exchange rate and the large range of artworks, for instance, from seized Jewish property, afforded favorable opportunities. French museums like the Louvre also expanded their holdings during this time. Many purchases by German museums were restituted to France in the postwar period, while some have remained in the collections until today and are first now becoming a focus of research. The essays in the volume from German and French perspectives analyze the similarities and differences in the activities of museums on the French art market during the occupation for the first time. Adolf Hitler et Hermann Goering ne sont pas les seuls a avoir profite de l'Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale pour acquerir des oeuvres d'art pour leurs collections - les musees allemands y ont egalement fait des acquisitions. Le taux de change avantageux et l'offre importante d'oeuvres d'art provenant par exemple de proprietes juives spoliees ont offert des opportunites favorables. Les musees francais, comme le Louvre, ont egalement elargi leurs collections a cette epoque. De nombreuses acquisitions de musees allemands ont ete restituees a la France dans l'apres-guerre, mais certaines sont restees dans les collections jusqu'a ce jour et n'ont attire l'attention des chercheurs que recemment. Les contributions de ce volume analysent pour la premiere fois, des points de vue francais et allemand, les points communs et les differences entre les activites des musees sur le marche de l'art francais pendant l'Occupation.

The world was stunned when eighty-year old Cornelius Gurlitt became an international media superstar in November 2013 on the discovery of over 1,400 artworks in his 1,076 square-foot Munich apartment, valued at $1.35 billion. Gurlitt became known as a man who never was - he didn't have a bank account, never paid tax, never received social security. He simply did not exist. He had been hard-wired into a life of shadows and secrecy by his own father long before he had inherited his art collection built on the spoliation of museums and Jews during Hitler's Third Reich. The ensuing media frenzy unleashed international calls for restitution, unsettled international relations, and rocked the art world. Ronald reveals in this stranger than fiction tale how Hildebrand Gurlitt succeeded in looting in the name of the Third Reich, duping the Monuments Men and the Nazis alike. As an "official dealer" for Hitler and Goebbels, Hildebrand Gurlitt became one of the Third Reich's most prolific art looters. Yet he stole from Hitler too, allegedly to save modern art. This is the untold story of Hildebrand Gurlitt, who stole more than art - he stole lives, too.

'The scientific techniques described encompass relevant examples of forgery detection and of authentication. The book deals, to name a few, with the Chagall, the Jackson Pollock and the Beltracchi affairs and discusses the Isleworth Mona Lisa as well as La Bella Principessa both thought to be a Leonardo creation. The authentication, amongst others, of two van Gogh paintings, of Vermeer's St Praxedis, of Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine and of Rembrandt's Old Man with a Beard are also described.'Over the last few decades there has been a disconcerting increase in the number of forged paintings. In retaliation, there has been a rise in the use, efficiency and ability of scientific techniques to detect these forgeries. The scientist has waged war on the forger.The Scientist and the Forger describes the cutting-edge and traditional weapons in this battle, showing how they have been applied to the most notorious cases. The book also provides fresh insights into the psychology of both the viewer and the forger, shedding light on why the discovery that a work of art is a forgery makes us view it so differently and providing a gripping analysis of the myriad motivations behind the most egregious incursions into deception.The book concludes by discussing the pressing problems faced by the art world today, stressing the importance of using appropriate tools for a valid verdict on authenticity. Written in an approachable and amenable style, the book will make fascinating reading for non-specialists, art historians, curators and scientists alike.

Over the past two centuries, abuse of antiquities and fine art has evolved from the "spoils of war" into a medium for conducting terrorism which strives to erase the cultural heritage of "the other". At the same time, the growth of the art market over the past fifty years has created opportunities for exploitation of cultural property. Since World War II, there has been maturing international awareness that armed conflict and looting pose a threat to cultural property; but simultaneously, art trafficking and the politics of cultural property create opportunities amidst risks in developed "collecting nations" and emerging "source nations".This is the first book in the literature that touches on the interrelation of the financial value, politics, and security of cultural property and suggests the implications for the power of culture in global affairs. The intersection of these issues forms the basis for a new field which this book examines - cultural security. As part of the changing significance of cultural property in foreign relations, Cultural Security assesses corresponding security threats and opportunities for diplomacy.This book will take readers through the concepts and issues surrounding cultural property, cultural currency and cultural power, leaving readers with invaluable insights on the political economy of cultural property and the resulting source of "alternative power" in global affairs.

This book offers a revealing look at the full scope of criminal activity in the art world—a category of crime that is far more pervasive than is generally realized. Forgeries, fakes, fencing, and felony theft—all are pervasive problems in the world of art, where the stakes are high, the networks wide, and the consequences profound. In recent years, suspicious acquisitions, unreliable provenances, and shady dealers have found their way into the headlines as museums and private collections have been confronted with everything from fake pieces to stolen antiquities to plain old theft and vandalism. Crimes of the Art World captures the full scope of this staggeringly lucrative field of criminal conduct, showing how its impact reaches well beyond the walls of the museum. Filled with fascinating stories of crime and greed, this revealing volume looks at case after case of thefts, forgeries, fakes, and illicit trafficking, as well as the political/religious victimization of art, white-collar art crime, and vandalism. The book examines each type of crime in terms of frequency, losses, and characteristics of victims and criminals. Concluding chapters focus on preventive measures, art crime investigation, and security issues.

This book examines the ancient origins of debate about art as cultural property. What happens to art in time of war? Who should own art, and what is its appropriate context? Should the victorious ever allow the defeated to keep their art? These questions were posed by Cicero during his prosecution of a Roman governor of Sicily, Gaius Verres, for extortion. Cicero's published speeches had a very long afterlife, affecting debates about collecting art in the 18th century and reactions to the looting of art by Napoleon. The focus of the book's analysis is theft of art in Greek Sicily, Verres' trial, Roman collectors of art, and the later impact if Cicero's arguments. The book concludes with the British decision after Waterloo to repatriate Napoleon's stolen art to Italy, and an epilogue on the current threats to art looted from archaeological contexts. Margaret M. Miles is an archaeologist and art historian, now Professor of Art History and Classics at the University of California, Irvine. She has held fellowships at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the American Academy in Rome. She has excavated at Corinth and Athens, and did architectural fieldwork at Rhamnous in Greece and at Selinunte and Agrigento in Sicily. Her earlier publications include a study of the Temple of Nemesis at Rhamnous (Hesperia, 1989) and a volume in the Agora excavation series on the City Eleusinion, the downtown Athenian branch of the Eleusinian Mysteries (The Athenian Agora, Vol. 31: The City Eleusinion, 1998).

Nazi art looting has been the subject of enormous international attention in recent years, and the subject of two history bestsellers, Hector Feliciano's The Lost Museum and Lynn Nicholas's The Rape of Europa. But such books leave us wondering: What made thoughtful, educated, artistic men and women decide to put their talents in the service of a brutal and inhuman regime? This question is the starting point for The Faustian Bargain, Jonathan Petropoulos's study of five key figure in the art world of Nazi Germany.

Petropoulos follows the careers of these prominent individuals that like Faust, that German archetypechose to pursue artistic ends through collaboration with diabolical forces. Readers meet Ernst Buchner, the distinguished museum director and expert on Old Master paintings who "repatriated" Van Eyck's Ghent altarpiece to Germany, and Karl Haberstock, an art dealer who filled German museums with works bought virtually at gunpoint from Jewish collectors. Robert Scholz, an art critic in the Third Reich, became an officer in the chief art looting unit in France and Kajetan Muhlmanna leading art historianheaded looting agencies in Poland and the Netherlands. Finally, there is Arno Breker, a gifted artist who exchanged his modernist style for monumental realism and became Hitler's favorite sculptor. If it is striking that these educated men became part of the Nazi machine, it is equally is striking that most of them lived comfortably after the war.

Based on previously unreleased information and recently declassified documents, The Faustian Bargain is a gripping read about the art world during this period, and a fascinating examination of the intense relationship between culture and politics in the Third Reich.

This is the only book by a criminologist to look at the full range of crime involving works of art: forgery, fraud, theft, smuggling, and vandalism. It is up to date, drawing on much material from the boom years of the art market in the 1980s and continuing up through the 1990s, and assimilating information from a variety of sources: art magazines, newspaper accounts, and the relatively small amount of scholarship on art crime by art historians and criminologists. In addition to considering the motives of thieves, the book looks at the way art theft is socially organized: the types of thefts that are committed, the ways thieves locate art to steal and how they gain access to it, their use of insiders and fronts, and the way they launder stolen art. The relationship between art theft and organized crime, especially drug traffickers, is investigated. After looking at explanations of art vandalism and the way vandals explain their behavior, the book concludes with a consideration of policies to curb art crime. The entire book is written in a highly entertaining way, packed with case studies of numerous crimes and stories of smuggling, grave-robbing, and skullduggery, that will appeal to a general audience as well as professionals and academics in criminology, sociology, and art history.

Forgeries are an omnipresent part of our culture and closely related to traditional ideas of authenticity, legality, authorship, creativity, and innovation. Based on the concept of mimesis, this volume illustrates how forgeries must be understood as autonomous aesthetic practices - creative acts in themselves - rather than as mere rip-offs of an original work of art. The proceedings bring together research from different scholarly fields. They focus on various mimetic practices such as pseudo-translations, imposters, identity theft, and hoaxes in different artistic and historic contexts. By opening up the scope of the aesthetic implications of fakes, this anthology aims to consolidate forging as an autonomous method of creation.