On this week’s art crime blotter: Turkish police seized Muammar Gaddafi’s $10-million dagger, “some feminists” attacked a mural of Bettie Page, and a pair of Spanish thieves amassed a trove of 10,000 artifacts.
Art Theft
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Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: a Chinese artist was reprimanded for his “sexual calligraphy” videos, a $20-million trove of stolen art was seized in Istanbul, and a relic containing a drop of Pope John Paul II’s blood was stolen from Cologne Cathedral.
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Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: a solid gold and diamond-encrusted statue of an eagle was stolen, a subversive Malaysian street artist was charged with “violating multimedia laws,” and a gnome sculpture went missing.
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Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: Spanish police arrested seven people for Francis Bacon heist, a Picasso thief preyed on a Chelsea gallery, and an artist lost his head after someone stole his guillotine sculpture.
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Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: an SFMOMA café started selling half-baked copies of art-themed desserts, torch-carrying protesters raided Stonehenge, and cops got in trouble for a making a sand sculpture of a nude murder victim.
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Old Master Paintings Snatched from Verona Turn Up in a Forest in Ukraine
After six months, 17 Old Master paintings stolen from Verona’s Museo di Castelvecchio have turned up on an island in Ukraine.
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Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: a psychedelic zebra sculpture was stolen and recovered, an arts organization shuttered following an embezzlement fiasco and lye attack, and vandals smashed a David Bowie painting.
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Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: an MFA student’s sculpture about campus gun laws violated campus gun laws, collector Aby Rosen forked over $7 million in unpaid taxes on art, and the painter of the Donald Trump micropenis portrait was attacked by one of the candidate’s supporters.
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Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: artists demand their work back from LA’s bankrupt Ace Gallery, a billionaire collector realizes she’s been missing a Picasso since 2009, and art dealer Perry Rubenstein is arrested and charged with embezzlement.
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France Lost Track of 23,000 State-Owned Artworks and Historic Objects
Nearly 23,000 works of state-owned art are missing in France and its overseas territories, lost over time from museums, town halls, and major institutions largely due to poor documentation and even theft.
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Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: police took down a noose art installation, the leader of a Chinese antiquities looting ring was sentenced to death, and someone stole a public sculpture of a porcupine.
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Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: seven Andy Warhol prints went missing from a museum, two men were arrested as authorities recovered a stolen Edvard Munch, and a Russian cultural critic was murdered.
