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March 23, 2012

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"Hot Art" Book Launched at The Flag Art Foundation on March 22 in NYC

by Marc Balcells, ARCA 2011 Graduate

NEW YORK CITY -- A new book bringing attention to the topic of art crime is a motive for a celebration. And indeed, that was the feeling that one could perceive at the Flag Art Foundation when attending Joshua Knelman’s launching party of his new book, “Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives Through the Secret World of Stolen Art”.

Far away from the typical afternoon where audiences sit and listen to the author, the presentation of the book came with a twist. To begin with, the place served the purpose fantastically: not only is the Flag Art Foundation located in New York’s art district, but it also occupies the ninth and tenth floors of a high rise, becoming a fantastic place designed to admire contemporary art. The space is contemplative, filled with light (thanks a lot, Daylight Saving Time 2012!) and the atmosphere serves the purpose of both enjoying the art hanging in the walls and presenting a book that deals with the topic of art as a victim.

The author was there to greet the guests as they arrived and among them, a representation of ARCA students from the 2011 MA program: taking advantage of the author’s willingness and kindness, we have shared various opinions on the topic of his book.

When the moment came, Mr. Knelman addressed the audience to give a brief description of a lengthy 5-year investigation that became the book. His talk has been a reminder of important figures who were at the reception. Mr. Knelman first mentioned my dear colleague Professor Emerita Laurie Adams, with whom I had the pleasure to share conversations at our respective workplace, John Jay College, until her retirement. Professor Adams wrote in 1974 the innovative book “Art Cop. Robert Volpe: Art Crime Detective”. This mention allowed Mr. Knelman to address the lack of properly trained police officers, not only in many parts of the world, but also in a city that is known worldwide as the most important art market, referring to New York. To prove his point, he referred to the starting point of his book, where Los Angeles’ detectives Don Hrycyk and Stephanie Lazarus make their first appearance on its pages.

Another important person in the world of art crime who was among the audience members and whose figure Mr. Knelman wanted to highlight was Col. Matthew Bogdanos, author of the book “Thieves of Baghdad".  Col. Bogdanos narrated in first person his quest to recover many of the artworks that disappeared after the siege of this museum in 2003, when the building was left unprotected. Mr. Knelman not only thanked his work, ensuing a round of applause, but also pointed out the hardships of Col. Bogdano’s task as an example of the difficulty of solving these cases.

However, the book deals not only with interviewees coming from a law enforcement perspective. Mr. Knelman provided in his talk the example of Paul, aka Turbo, an art thief, whose life is explained in several chapters of the book, highlighting the complexity of the illicit art trade. 

Also, I had the pleasure to chat with Col. Bogdanos: we both share a career in courts (albeit in opposite sides: he is a prosecutor, while I devoted my time to criminal defense), and a passion for researching into art crime. He pointed out that the lack of dedicated law enforcement agents in the field of art crime was explained, in his opinion, because of the particularities of this form of crime, and how these investigations were usually lengthy and complicated. Because of the urgent need for more research into this criminal phenomenon, he stated how he admired the premise of ARCA.

In sum, a fantastic New York afternoon to congratulate Mr. Knelman’s new book. 

March 22, 2012

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Joshua Knelman Signed "Hot Art" Tuesday night at Book Soup in Los Angeles

Joshua Knelman speaking at Book Soup
by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

LOS ANGELES - Journalist Joshua Knelman, author of Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives Through the Secret World of Stolen Art, spoke before an intimate crowd at an informal book signing Tuesday night at Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard.

Recovering from jet lag after arriving from an international book fair in Beijing where he had spoken to a large crown of English-speaking expats, Knelman, settled into a corner of the bookstore, and pointed out the presence of one of the people featured in his book: Giles Waterfield.

Mr. Waterfield, an Associate Professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art, is currently a guest scholar at the Getty Research Institute (The Artist's and Photographer's Studio).  In 1981, he was director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London when on vacation in Scotland he read a newspaper headline "Rembrandt Stolen for Third Time." Rembrandt's Jacob de Gheyn III, nicknamed The Takeaway Rembrandt, had been stolen.  Knelman recounts Waterfield's recovery of the small Rembrandt portrait in Chapter 7 under the title "Headache Art".   

"The Takeaway Rembrandt"
Joshua Knelman was just 26 years old and head of research at the Canadian magazine, The Walrus, when he covered a burglarized art gallery in the Forst Hill section of Toronto.  He soon found himself having coffee at the Caffe Doria in the Rosedale area with the man who would admit to having committed the theft -- a pleasant enough person who tried to manipulate Knelman into accepting the stolen property.

One of the questions raised to Knelman from the audience was the question of legacy -- the recent murder conviction of former Detective Stephanie Lazarus, whom Don Hrycyk on the Los Angeles Police Department's Art Theft Squad had been training to succeed him in 2009 at the time of her arrest, brought up again the issue of who will continue the work of Hrycyk.  Knelman said that the LAPD has not yet found a successor and that Hrycyk is currently working without a partner.  "Detective Hrycyk, with 39 years on the LAPD, is the 8th most senior officer of 10,000 police officer," Knelman said.  "Although there is no retirement age in the LAPD, it will take years for Hrycyk to train someone."

Another question asked was as to why there were so few art crime squads in North America.  "The units are in the secondary markets of Los Angeles and Montreal and not the primary art markets of New York City and Toronto," Knelman said.  "Clearly there should be one in New York.  Recovery rates increase when detectives have the time to spend getting to know the art community, building trust with the art dealers and collectors.  Unlike other property crimes, recovery of artworks may take decades."

And where does the stolen art go? asked another person.  "That is the billion dollar question," Knelman said.  "There are two separate categories.  The very famous stolen masterpieces can be used as currency, but the other stolen artworks, 95% of the stolen art which is valued at less than $100,000 or even $25,000, is laundered back into the art market, stolen in Los Angeles, sold in New York and displayed in Vancouver."

Knelman will be discussing his book, Hot Art, tonight at 8 p.m. at The Flag Art Foundation in New York City.  You can read more about his book here on the ARCAblog.

March 21, 2012

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FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, March 2012: Noah Charney, Paul Denton, and John Kieberg on Art Theft

"Protecting Cultural Heritage from Art Theft" is an article by Noah Charney, Paul Denton and John Kleberg recently released in the March 2012 issue of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin.
When someone thinks of art crime, a Hollywood image is conjured, one of black-clad cat burglars and thieves in top hats and white gloves. But, the truth behind art crime, one misunderstood by the general public and professionals alike, is far more sinister and intriguing. Art crime has its share of cinematic thefts and larger-than-life characters, but it also is the realm of international organized crime syndicates, the involvement of which results in art crime funding all manner of other serious offenses, including those pertaining to the drug trade and terrorism. Art crime has shifted from a relatively innocuous, ideological crime into a major international plague. 
Over the last 50 years, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has ranked art crime behind only drugs and arms in terms of highest-grossing criminal trades.1 There are hundreds of thousands of art crimes reported per year, but, despite this fact, the general public only hears about the handful of big-name museum heists that make international headlines. In Italy alone there are 20,000 to 30,000 thefts reported annually, and many more go unreported.2 In fact, even though reported art crime ranks third in the list of criminal trades, many more such incidents go unreported worldwide, rather than coming to the attention of authorities, making its true scale much broader and more difficult to estimate.
You may read the remainder of the article online here which includes a discussion of art police squads around the world (Scotland Yard Art and Antiquities Unit, Italy's Carabinieri Division for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, and the Dutch Art Crime Team).

March 20, 2012

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Art Fraudster John Drewe Jailed for 8 Years Following Real Estate Fraud Trial in Norwich

Christine Cunningham reported for the Evening News on March 12 that John Drewe, 64, convicted in 1999 of art fraud, was jailed for eight years after his conviction for fraud by the Norwich Crown Court for stealing 240,000 sterling pounds from a retired music teacher in an attempt to steal her home and life savings.  You can read the article here.


Ms. Cunningham writes that the court heard that Drewe had been convicted more than a dozen years ago of "conspiracy to defraud, forgery and theft, involving a major art fraud and was jailed for six years."


Andrew Levy for the Daily Mail reports that Drewe used the stolen money to purchase luxury cars and "to pay off his son's debts":

Drewe had been jailed in 1999 for masterminding one of the biggest art frauds of the century. He made £1.8million by commissioning paintings and passing them off as rediscovered works by major artists.
Using the forgeries made by John Myatt, Drewe sold 200 fake original artworks. John Myatt, who's own website claims Myatt "was involved in the biggest art con in the UK", now sells "legitimate fakes" and claims his life will be the subject of movies and television shows.

Noah Charney wrote about John Drewe's activities in the Fall 2010 Journal of Art Crime in his column Lessons from the History of Art Crime "The Art World Wants to be Deceived: Issues in Authentication and Inauthentication":
John Myatt and John Drewe created false documents to act as provenance for the forged paintings they created, and then inserted them into real archives, so that diligent researchers would "discover" them and link them to the forged paintings.

At ARCA's International Art Crime Conference in Amelia last summer (2011), Peter Watson, author of numerous books including The Medici Conspiracy and Sotheby's the Inside Story, in a discussion titled "Some Unpublished and Unpalatable Details about Recent Art Crimes", said that John Drewe had once been suspected of burning down a house that killed a Hungarian lodger.

If John Drewe serves his full jail sentence, he will be able to pursue other opportunities at the age of 72.

March 19, 2012

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Greece, ARCA and the Art Market

Vanja Stojanovic, a terrific student at the University of Guelph put together this short interview after the ARTHattack! conference where I talk a bit about ARCA, the current situation in Greece and the art market:

March 18, 2012

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St. Patrick's Day Celebrations Provided Distraction for the Robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990

Rembrandt's The Storm on the
 Sea of Galilee is his only seascape.
by Catherine Sezgin, ARCABlog Editor

The Boston Globe highlighted the 15th anniversary.  PBS News hour noted the 20th anniversary (along with numerous other media outlets). Anthony Amore, the security director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, has his contact information plastered on the museum's website to collect the lastest leads on the masterpieces stolen from Boston on St. Patrick's Day weekend in 1990.  Despite all these efforts and a $5 million reward for information leading to the recovery of stolen paintings by such recognizable artists as Rembrant and Vermeer, empty frames continue to save the spaces on the walls from where these masterpieces were hung by their benefactor.

In 2009, Ulrich Boster published a book, The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Art Theft and a year later the Federal Bureau of Investigation used billboards to get the public to help solve the mystery of the largest art theft in American history.  The thieves removed works of art highlighted by Vermeer's The Concert; Rembrandt's A Lady and Gentleman in Black; Rembrant's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee; Rembrandt's Self-Portrait; and Govaert Flinck's Landscape with Obelisk, and Manet's Chez Tortoni. You may view the images of the missing art on the website of Stolen the Film, Rebecca Dreyfus' documentary highlighting art detective Harold Smith's efforts and obsession to find the paintings.

Just after midnight, St. Patrick's Day celebrations in America's most Irish of cities provided cover for two unarmed men to enter the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum dressed as police officers and to leave 90 minutes later with 13 stolen items worth more than $300 million.  Unconditional immunity offered to anyone who helps locate or recover these paintings.

March 17, 2012

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The Journal of Art Crime, Fall 2011: Q&A with Sandy Nairne, author of "Art Theft and the Case of the Stolen Turners"

In the Fall 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, editor Noah Charney reviews Sandy Nairne's book, Art Theft and the Case of the Stolen Turners (Reaktion 2011):
Sandy Nairne is a busy man. He is director of London’s National Portrait Gallery, lectures widely on art history and his latest area of interest, art theft, and has a new book out, Art Theft and the Case of the Stolen Turners (Reaktion, 2011). And the subject of his book will show you just how busy he was—for he is largely responsible for the recovery of two J.M.W. Turner paintings from the Tate collection that were stolen while on loan at an exhibition in Frankfurt. 
Sometime before 10pm on 28 July 1994, thieves broke into the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt and grabbed two Turner paintings (Shade and Darkness and Light and Color) as well as a Caspar David Friedrich painting (Nebelschwaden) as they hung on display. The thieves waited for the security staff to leave the gallery, closing it for the night. They bound and gagged the night watchman, but he managed to struggle free and alert the police around 10:45pm. 
It is not clear if the primary motivation was ransom or whether that was secondary after a failed attempt to find a buyer, but in October 1999, five years after the theft, a lawyer was contacted to act as a go-between in an attempt to negotiate the return of the pictures. Links to the Balkan Mafia were strongly suggested. Two members of the Metropolitan police force were involved in the ultimate recovery of the paintings, nicknamed “Operation Cobalt.” Four individuals were arrested one year after the theft, but it took many years to recover the paintings.

Noah Charney is the Founder and President of ARCA and the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Art Crime. Recently a Visiting Lecturer at Yale University, he is currently Adjunct Professor of Art History at the American University of Rome. He is the editor of ARCA’s first book, Art & Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World (Praeger 2009). His latest book is The Thefts of the Mona Lisa: On Stealing the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece (ARCA Publications 2011).

You may read the entire review by subscribing to The Journal of Art Crime.

March 16, 2012

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CNBC's "American Greed" on "Fine Art: Portrait of Fraud -- the story of Kristine Eubanks, Jimmy Mobley and "Fine Art Treasures Gallery" and Certificates of Authentication

By Angela Kumar, ARCA Class of 2011

CNBC’s American Greed aired Fine Art: Portrait of Fraud at 10 p.m. on Wednesday night.   This episode told the story of Los Angeles entrepreneur Kristine Eubanks, owner of Finer Image Editions, who in 1995 used the then-new technology, the glicée printer, to reproduce artworks and sell them to Princess Cruise Lines. Eubanks later launched “Fine Art Treasures Gallery”, a nationally televised auction of “rare” and “authentic” artworks advertised as signed by artists such as Rembrandt, Picasso, Chagall and Dali, all offered at a fraction of their market value. Eubanks along with her husband and auctioneer, Jimmy Mobley, duped thousands of viewers and scored millions on fake artworks.

Los Angeles Police Department's Art Theft Detail Detective Don Hrycyk and the FBI’s Art Crime Team Special Agent Christopher Calarco are interviewed.

A preview of the program, as well as “extras” including videos of Detective Hrycyk speaking about forged Certificates of Authenticity and Special Agent Calarco explaining how the Bureau’s Art Crime Team was created, can be found here.

Additional episodes related to art crime can be found on CNBC’s website and include the following:

Season 1
Episode #1 Maxfield Parrish Art Heist
Two Maxfield Parrish paintings -- worth $4 million -- vanish into the night!
Episode #3 Art Heist: Fine Arts Express
A museum quality art collection worth more than $4 million dollars is stolen!

Season 2
Epsiode #9 Unsolved:  $300 Million Art Heist
A dark night. A clever plan. $300 million in art is stolen from a Boston museum. Paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Manuet disappear into the night!
Episode #10 The Art of Fraud
Enter the mysterious world of art fraud. An elaborate sting operation exposes Dr. Vilas Likhite....a doctor stripped of his medical license who begins a new career as a con man selling fake art treasures!
Episode #16 Soaking The Rich at Auction
He's an art collector, the former chairman of Sotheby's and a convicted felon. Alfred Taubman takes us inside the price-fixing scandal at Christie's and Sotheby's.

March 15, 2012

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The Journal of Art Crime, Fall 2011: Noah Charney on The Art We Must Protect: Top Ten Must-See Artworks in Florence

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.

Noah Charney is the Founder and President of ARCA and the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Art Crime. Recently a Visiting Lecturer at Yale University, he is currently Adjunct Professor of Art History at the American University of Rome. He is the editor of ARCA’s first book, Art & Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World (Praeger 2009). His latest book is The Thefts of the Mona Lisa: On Stealing the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece (ARCA Publications 2011).

March 14, 2012

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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.

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