In the Fall 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, Editor-in-Chief Noah Charney features 10 artworks to protect in Florence: Michelangelo's David; Verrochio's David; Donatello's Mary Magdalene; Pontorno's Capponi Altarpiece; Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo; Giambologna's The Appenine; Michelangelo's Laurentian Library Steps; Masaccio's Holy Trinity; Cellini's Perseus; and Perugino's Pazzi Chapel Altarpiece.

LOS ANGELES - Museum Security Network disbursed the headline, "FBI Art (?) Crime Team - Wine collector accused of fraud, trying to sell fake French vintages." According to an article on The Los Angeles Times blog by Andrew Blankenstein, a resident of Arcadia, a suburb in the San Gabriel Valley, was arrested March 8 "by FBI agents assigned to the Los Angeles office after a years-long investigation by the FBI Art Crime Team".

The FBI's National Stolen Art File Search categorizes objects from "Altar" to "Wine Cooler" and includes traditional fine art (paintings, watercolors) and other valuables such as musical instruments, guns, prayer mats, and even ice pails.  The FBI's Top Ten Art Crimes range from Iraqi Looted and Stolen Artifacts to Theft from the E. G. Bührle Collection, Zurich.

In the fourth issue of The Journal of Art Crime (Spring 2011), James Charney reviewed The Billionaire's Vinegar (Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009) which discusses the issue of authenticating fine wines.

In the most recent issue of The Journal of Art Crime (Fall 2011), Noah Charney interviews Stuart George, an expert on fine wines, and the crimes committed in the wine world.

In the Fall 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, publisher Noah Charney takes a break from his regular column "Lessons from the History of Art Crime" to include a chapter from his recent book, The Thefts of the Mona Lisa: On Stealing the World's Most Famous Painting.  This is the first book published by ARCA Publications, a new endeavor of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.  All profits from the print edition of this book, which is available on Amazon, go to ARCA and support ARCA's non-profit activities.  The sample chapter includes the story of Picasso and Apollinaire's involvement in theft from the Louvre.  "While they were accused of having stolen the Mona Lisa, of which they were innocent, they were guilty of the theft of other artworks from the Louvre," Charney writes.

Noah Charney, ARCA founder and president, published on ArtInfo an interview with Sandy Nairne, the director of London's National Portrait Gallery and author of "Art Theft and the Case of the Stolen Turners (Reaktion, 2011)."

Charney and Nairne discuss symbolism of the Turners, the morality of ransom versus payment for information, and similar art thefts.

You may also read more about Sandy Nairne on previous ARCA blog posts here and here.

By Noah Charney for ArtInfo

ARCA’s Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies is now taking applications for its fourth season as the first, and only, interdisciplinary program of study in the field of art crime and cultural heritage protection. Featured in The New York Times mid-way through its first year, in the summer of 2009, it is a good moment to reflect on the founding of this new and unusual academic program.

The idea for the program began with a conversation at a restaurant in Ljubljana, Slovenia with two trustees and friends, both professors of criminology. The problem was how to attract world-renowned faculty without the infrastructure or funds for a year-long program of study. It was important to retain quality-control by not simply running this unique program through a university, and yet we wanted to include as many of the best of the relatively few world experts in art crime and its related fields as we could. We also wanted a program that would be post-graduate level, and which would include as many or more course hours as normal, year-long European masters program. Having completed two European MA programs myself in art history (at The Courtauld Institute and University of Cambridge), I realized that the taught component to these programs actually took a relatively concise amount of time that was spread over 9-12 months. At The Courtauld Institute, the MA included twice-weekly meetings of 4 hours each over around 7 months (plus 2 months to write the dissertation), while at Cambridge the only required coursework was one 2-hour lecture per week—the rest of the time was one’s own, largely meant for research and writing of a substantial dissertation.

We decided that the scattered lecture hours, distributed over the course of many months, could reasonably be condensed into a concise period of time, for instance three months. By concentrating on intensive but acceptable 5-hour work days (2.5 hours in the morning, a generous lunch break, and 2.5 hours in the afternoon), we could create what is, logistically, a summer-intensive program that would run 10-11 weeks.  This format also allowed us to invite world-class faculty, from professors to professionals, who would come to Italy to teach a short, intensive course. This worked with faculty schedules, because it did not require them to be on-site for more than two weeks at a time (our courses are 25 hours long, divided over 5 days within a two-week period). Coming up with this highly unusual format (10 professors each summer, two teaching in each two-week period, one Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning, the other Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, and Friday), allowed us to recruit the best faculty we could, and to allow students (who in many cases are older professionals using this unique program as a means of further professional training) to undertake the program over a reasonable period of time, one summer. We also allow students to divide the program over two consecutive summers, 5-6 weeks each, with the understanding that this would ideally fit into active professional schedules, or indeed could be taken by students enrolled full-time in another post-graduate program, but with a summer free.

Such was the discussion that we had in Ljubljana back in 2007, that led to the ARCA Postgraduate Certificate Program.

The program was established in 2009 when ARCA and its trustees realized that there was not one academic program available anywhere in the world in which students and professionals could study art crime. Individual courses had existed, but appeared rarely on curricula. But one of the difficulties, and exciting aspects, of studying art crime is that it is inherently interdisciplinary. To understand art crime, one must approach it theoretically as well as practically. A purely theoretical, scholarly program which provided no sense what was happening in “real life,” in the field, at night in the museums and countryside churches so often the victim of theft. But a course of study which solely explored the practical side of things, such as Italian police investigation techniques, ran the risk of being overly specific, teaching only based on the experience of the teacher and the country in which they worked. The ideal course of study would embrace the inherent interdisciplinary nature of the field, and would complement theoretical/historical courses with practical experiential courses. For example, last summer’s program includes courses on art policing and investigation taught by the former head of Scotland Yard’s Arts and Antiques Unit (Dick Ellis) and the current head of Chubb International Art Insurance (Dorit Straus); but students also took a course on criminology, art, and organized crime taught by a world-famous criminology professor (Petrus van Duyne).

ARCA has become a point of union for the relatively few scholars, police, security experts, lawyers, archaeologists, insurers, and others around the world affected by art crime. The Postgraduate Certificate Program is a unique opportunity for students to learn from the top professionals and professors in the fields relevant to art crime and cultural heritage protection.

Because of its unique and ground-breaking nature, the ARCA Postgraduate Program was featured in The New York Times (21 July 2009), midway through its first year. It has since established itself and continues to attract passionate students and adult professionals from around the world to spend a summer studying with the world’s leading art crime experts in Italy.

The program provides in-depth, masters-level instruction in a wide variety of theoretical and practical elements of art and heritage crime: its history, its nature, its impact, and what can be done to curb it. Courses are taught by international experts, in the beautiful setting of Umbria, Italy. The topics taught include the history of art crime, art and antiquities law and policy, criminology, the laws of armed conflict, the art trade, art insurance, art security and policing, risk management, criminal investigation, law and policy, vandalism and iconoclasm, and cultural heritage protection throughout history and around the world.

Recent lecturers and faculty include: Maurizio Fiorilli (Advocate General of Italy), Francesco Rutelli (former Italian Minister of Culture and Mayor of Rome), Vernon Rapley (Director of Scotland Yard Arts and Antiques Unit), Col. Luigi Cortellessa (Vice-Comandante, Carabinieri Division for the Protection of Cultural Heritage), Matjaz Jager (Director of the Institute of Criminology, University of Ljubljana), Anthony Amore (Security Director, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), Stefano Alessandrini (Head of Italy’s Archaeological Group), Dennis Ahern (Security Director, Tate Museums, UK), Paolo Giorgio Ferri (leading attorney in the Giacomo Medici case and in repatriation cases with the Getty and the Met), and Peter Watson (acclaimed author and former undercover investigator against art theft). At the heart of the program is the ARCA International Conference in the Study of Art Crime (this year 23-24 June 2012), which gives students a chance to meet with top professionals in the field.

Past program graduates include art police and security professionals, lawyers, insurers, curators, conservators, members of the art trade, and post-graduate students of criminology, law, security studies, sociology, art history, archaeology, and history. About one-third of the students are adult professionals, while two-thirds are post-graduate students, ranging in age from 21 up to 65.

The 2012 program runs from June 1 to August 12. We have received more interest than ever for the program this fall, and students should apply early for better chance of admission. For a complete schedule and prospectus, or with any questions, you can email education (at) artcrimeresearch.org

Noah Charney, founder and president of ARCA, has recently published three articles covering the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 (The Patriotic Thief); an Interview with Martin Kemp on How to Spot a Lost Leonardo; and on the Los Angeles Time's Op Ed Page, The 'Lost' Leonardo, about London's National Gallery's exhibition of 'Salvator Mundi' in a show of paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci.

In the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, Editor-in-Chief Noah Charney writes "The Art We Must Protect: Top Ten Must-See Artworks in New York City."

Art historian Noah Charney selects works of art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Kouros, Edgar Degas' Nude Woman Bathing, Rembrandt van Rijn's Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer); the Brooklyn Bridge; Edward Hick's The Peaceable Kingdom at the Brooklyn Museum; Kazimir Malevich's Untitled Suprematist White-on-White at the Guggenheim Museum; Robert Campin's The Merode Alterpiece at The Cloisters; the Chrysler Building at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue; Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon at MoMA; and Bronzino's Portrait of Lodovico Capponi at the Frick Collection.

Find out why you should run all over NYC to see these artworks by subscribing to The Journal of Art Crime through ARCA's website or by purchasing this issue through Amazon.com.

In an editorial essay for the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, editor-in-chief Noah Charney writes about the 50th anniversary of "the only successful theft from London's National Gallery", when a "brazen thief" stole Goya's 'Portrait of the Duke of Wellington' on August 21, 1961.

Since Kempton Bunton, who had been fined twice for refusing to pay the license required to watch television in the UK, claimed that he had always intended to return the painting, he was taking an advantage of an 'odd loophole' in British law. To read further about this case, you may subscribe to The Journal of Art Crime through the ARCA website or purchase the issue through Amazon.com.

Williams College's Professor Alan Hirsch spoke with Noah Charney for a Q&A column for the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime.

Hirsch is author of For the People: What the Constitution Really Says About Your Rights (Free Press, 1998) and Talking Heads: Political Talk Shows and Their Star Pundits (St. Martin's, 1991). His most recent book is The Beauty of Short Hops: How Chance and Circumstance Confound the Moneyball Approach to Baseball (McFarland, 2011).

Hirsch addresses the issues of art history, law, and true crime as involved in the Goya Theft. You may read this interview in the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime by subscribing through ARCA's website or purchasing individual issues through Amazon.com.