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Showing posts with label stolen art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stolen art. Show all posts

March 14, 2012

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - ,,,,,,,,,,,, 1 comment

Joshua Knelman Launching "Hot Art" at The Flag Art Foundation in New York on March 22

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

"Interpol and UNESCO listed art theft as the fourth-largest black market in the world (after drugs, money-laundering, and weapons).  But what did that mean? ... one point was clear: don't look at the Hollywood versions of art theft -- the Myth.  This is a bigger game, with more players, and the legitimate business of art is directly implicated.  A lot of the crimes are hidden in the open.  Stealing art is just the beginning.  Then the art is laundered up into the legitimate market, into private collections, into the world's most renowned museums." -- excerpt from Joshua Knelman's Hot Art

Toronto journalist Joshua Knelman, author of Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detective Through the Secret World of Stolen Art (Tin House Books, 2012), will launch the American Trade Paper version of his  book from 6 to 8 p.m. on March 22 at The Flag Art Foundation in New York.

Knelman’s four year investigation of stolen art began with a local story about a burglary at a gallery in Toronto and ended with an international perspective. His nonfiction book begins in Hollywood in 2008 with the Art Theft Detail of the Los Angeles Police Department in a ride along with Detectives Don Hrycyk and Stephanie Lazarus who are investigating the robbery of an antiques store on La Cienega Boulevard.  Knelman immediately contrasts the meticulous and steady work of the police (he describes Hrycyk working art theft cases "with the patience of a scientist") with the images of glamorous heist movies such as The Thomas Crown Affair (1999).

In the first two chapters ("Hollywood" and "Law and Disorder") he links organized crime with art theft: the Los Angeles District Attorney's office had identified an Armenian gang for the antique-store job on La Cienega. In the second chapter, Knelman describes his coverage for The Walrus, a Canadian magazine, on a burglary at a small art gallery in 2003 and how the thief threatened him, tried to hand over stolen property to him, and then tries to educate him "about how art theft worked as an industry" as a way of distracting Knelman for the thief's own crimes:
He discussed how poor the security systems were at most of the major cultural institutions and of course at mid-sized and smaller galleries.  That made his job easier.  So there was that angle -- art galleries and museums weren't adequately protecting themselves against pros like him. 
Then he veered in another direction. 
"Okay, this is how it works," he said.  "It's like a big shell game.  All the antique and art dealers, they just pass it around from one to another."  He moved his fingers around the table in circles and then looked up.  "Do you understand?" He looked very intense, as if he had just handed me a top-secret piece of information, but I had no idea what he meant.  What did art dealers have to do with stealing art?  But our meeting was over.
Knelman published an article in The Walrus in 2005, "Artful Crimes", about international art theft.

In his book, Hot Art, Knelman meets cultural property attorney Bonnie Czegledi (author of Crimes Against Art: International Art and Cultural Heritage Law (Carswell, 2010) who introduces him to the roles of Interpol; the International Council of Museums; the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) and the Art Loss Register.  Knelman traveled with Czegledi to an International Council of Museums conference in Cairo, at his own expense, getting shaken down by a conference organizer for additional hotel fees above and beyond what he had agreed to pay the hotel manager.  Knelman meets Canadian police officer Alain Lacoursière and speaker Rick St. Hilaire, then a county prosecutor in New Hampshire who lectured on the impact of art theft in the United States and "knew a lot about the impact of art theft on Egypt." He visits the Egyptian Museum in Cairo with St. Hilaire and provides a great history of the collection and Napoleon's visit in the 19th century.

Knelman provides a personal account, both thrilling and dangerous, and admirable.  The book contains primary information for research into the black market of art, including a few chapters with an art thief, Paul Hendry, in England.

The book also provides a detailed profile of Don Hrycyk at the LAPD and the history of the Art Theft Detail, beginning with the work of Detective Bill Martin and includes information about Hryck's investigation of a residential art robbery in Encino in 2008; other cases ("his work was the most detailed example I found of a North American city interacting with the global black market"); a tour of the evidence warehouse which included fake art that had been the subject of a string operation into a Dr. Vilas Likhite; and an anecdote of an attempted theft at an unnamed major museum under renovation in Los Angeles.  In 2008, Knelman also interviewed artist June Wayne, founder of Tamarind Lithography Workshop (now the Tamarind Institute), who had a tapestry stolen in 1975; Leslie Sacks, owner of Leslie Sacks Fine Art in Brentwood, who discusses security measures and two burglaries; and Bob Combs, director of security at The Getty Center.

Both Hrycyk and Czegledi reference art historian Laurie Adams' book, Art Cop, about New York Police Detective Robert Volpe, the first detective in North America to investigate art theft full-time (1971 to 1983) after his role as a undercover narcotics cop in the late 1960s in a famous case memorialized in the film The French Connection about a ring of heroin dealers importing the drug from France.

Knelman also interviewed Giles Waterfield, director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London when a Rembrandt was stolen in 1981; Richard Ellis, founder of Scotland Yard's Art and Antiques Squad; and Robert K. Wittman, the first FBI agent to investigate art theft full-time, when Wittman was six months away from retirement; and Bonnie Magness-Gardiner from the Art Crime Team at the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Alain Lacoursière, Montreal police officer investigating art crimes in Quebec, including the unsolved 1972 robbery of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

The book features the anonymous blogger Art Hostage (Paul Hendry) that turns out to be Knelman's source on art theft; Jonathan Sazonoff and his website The World's Most Wanted Art; and Ton Cremers and The Museum Security Network (MSN).

Joshua Knelman will also be speaking at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 20, at Book Soup in Los Angeles.

April 28, 2011

Thursday, April 28, 2011 - , No comments

Forging News (Part three of four): The News Media's Misrepresentation of the Art Criminal

by Katherine Ogden, ARCA Alum 2009

A Face That Only a Mother Could Love?

When publishing an article on a stolen painting who is the victim? While understanding that there is always victim when it comes to art crime in the form of a museum, a gallery, or an unnamed collector, not to mention the fact that that priceless piece of culture is forever taken away from the general public; there is usually a lack of a face. Should the news media outlets focus on the artist, who is obviously a victim since their piece has been taken? Should the news media focus on the collector(s)? Or should the news media focus on the fact that the world is the victim for the loss of a cultural artifact?

This perplexing situation shows the problem with reporting art crime; a faceless victim represents its target. Perhaps it is because of this that news media outlets have a problem reporting on these stories, they lack the perspective that the media usually thrive upon. In the case of art crime, they are unable to get a picture of the grieving mother asking for her child back from kidnappers, because in this case the owner of the lost work wishes to not be named or photographed to protect not only their identity, but more importantly the rest of their collection. This highlights the fear that most institutions and private owners have - once stolen from they do not want to publicize the theft in order to protect their reputation and the rest of their collection. If a theft occurs it outlines a weak link in that institution’s security, a fact better kept unpublicized. Furthermore, without a face of a victim there lacks the ability to create a gripping dichotomy between a visual representation of the victim and criminal.

The faceless nature of art crime is what leads to its under-representation as a crime. How can you report on art crime if you cannot picture the face of a victim, a criminal or even an investigator? One of the leading art investigators in the world, the now retired United States FBI agent Robert Wittman, credits much of his success in recovery largely on his ability to blend into any situation and assume different personas (Worrall). It is because of this that it is impossible to find a picture of his face (Worrall). By creating this faceless persona while continuing to broadcast the cases of recovery that he has worked on, Agent Wittman is unwittingly assisting news media outlets in creating a view of art crime as fascinating and mysterious.
Charley Hill

On the other hand, one cannot mention Agent Wittman without mentioning his British counterpart, Charley Hill. Prior to his retirement to the private sector, Detective Hill was one of the most successful detectives in the Art and Antiquities unit of Scotland Yard (Cole, Art Detective Charles Hill). The main quality that differentiates Detective Hill from Agent Wittman is that you can easily find pictures of Detective Hill with a quick internet search.

So how does Detective Hill succeed in catching criminals? Through a seemingly endless supply of disguises and accents. It seems as though the faceless nature of the art investigator has the capacity to be both good and bad, but in the case of Detective Hill, good. When criminals are not able to pinpoint the “look” of an art investigator, the investigators are able to transform themselves just enough to garner minimal suspicion. In one well-known case Detective Hill posed as a curator from the Getty Museum in California and brokered a deal for the purchase of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, which had been stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo (Cole, Art Detective Charles Hill). The success of this recovery and countless others leads one to believe that perhaps it is best if the face of the art investigator maintains an air of illusion, as it is quite common in all crime reporting to not see the face of the investigator. This should also serve to strengthen the need for public display of the criminals responsible for these crimes, the more the criminals are put in front of the public, the faster the illusion of the sexy criminal will erode.

Sexy Art Crime: Fact or Fiction?

No discussion of the representation of the art crime criminal is complete without a look at an actual art crime criminal. What do art crime criminals look like if they do not look like the representations seen in print, movies and on television shows? Every season there is a new television show that focuses on heists, if art crime criminals aren’t well-dressed, educated, and cultured people then who are they? In order to answer this we could look at a wide range of convicted art crime criminals, we could start with Rose Dugdale the former debutante turned IRA sympathizer who robbed the Russborough House in Ireland, or we could look at Robert Mang, an alarm specialist turned thief who decided that since he could he should steal the Cellini salt cellar from Vienna’s Art History Museum just because he felt like it (TIME, IRELAND: Renegade Debutante)(Pancevski). For the purpose of our discussions we will focus on Myles J. Connor Jr., a media darling in the regional papers around Boston, and a self professed and convicted art crime criminal (Connor). [Read a 2009 article on Rose Dugdale "Tiaras to balaclavas" in The Sun here]

Myles J. Connor, Jr.
The things we need to know about Connor for this discussion are as follows: while only convicted of a handful of robberies, in his autobiography Connor admits to robbing other institutions, though he will not name the institutions nor the items he stole (Connor). He has admitted to shooting a cop, worked with the mob in the Boston area, frequently brought weapons along on heists, was convicted of robbing banks and used artwork to procure his first shipment of drugs that he intended to sell in order to get the piece of artwork back (Connor). Connor freely admits to all the above in his autobiography, and yet he is still not an instantly recognizable bad guy in the face of art crime. Returning to the group of sixteen peers mentioned earlier, they were all shown a photograph of this man, and not one person could identify him. This is why a faceless criminal is detrimental to art crime. In order for art crime to be taken as seriously as it should, the general public needs to understand that convicted felons like Connor are committing the thefts, not fictional photogenic characters. Until this bias can be corrected art crime will continue to be seen as a frivolous crime in the eyes of the general public, the news media, law enforcement, and other industry experts.

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