On this week’s art crime blotter: thieves take Taco Bell painting, vandals critique Kant, and a man mistaken for Banksy sues six NYPD officers.
Art Theft
Posted inNews
Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: Uncanny canine sculpture goes for a walk, German art dealer gets six years, and Navy veteran accused of improper flag use in baby photo shoot.
Posted inNews
Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: Brothers trying to offload fake Goya get conned, gallery manager siphons off $450,000 from Botero sale, and French thieves make off with the King of Siam’s crown.
Posted inNews
Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: Cops don’t care for anti-cop mural, misattribution embarrasses Toronto art detectives, and an ice sculpture smasher is on the loose.
Posted inIn Brief
Thomas Kinkade and the Jesus of Zionsville, a Christmas Tale
’Twas a few weeks before Christmas, and all through Zionsville, Indiana’s Thomas Kinkade Gallery,
Many creatures were stirring, shoppers out for Small Business Saturday…
Posted inArt
The Art Trophies from When the White House Went Up in Flames
The 200th anniversary of the burning of the White House passed without much hullabaloo last week, aside from the British Embassy in Washington, DC, having to apologize for their tweet that in questionable taste joked they’d only be lighting the President’s home with sparklers on a cake this time.
Posted inIn Brief
Baroque Masterpiece by Guercino Stolen from Italian Church
This week, a large 17th-century Baroque painting by Italian artist Guercino went missing in the northern Italian city of Modena.
Posted inIn Brief
Criminals Love Weapons, Drugs, and … Art
Art theft is the third-highest grossing criminal trade in the world, preceded only by drugs and weapons. This claim comes from a smart, extensive Newsweek article covering a three-day conference held at New York University Law School last month called “Art Crime and Cultural Heritage: Fakes, Forgeries, and Looted and Stolen Art.”
Posted inIn Brief
Stolen Matisse Returned to Venezuela
A Matisse painting valued at $3 million was returned to Venezuela yesterday, after disappearing from an art museum there at least a decade prior, Reuters reported.
Posted inBooks
Gathering the Phantoms of Lost Art
Art history is very much a haunted field, with the specters of works obliterated, lost, hidden, or just vanished floating around it. Our visual culture is defined as much by destruction as it is by creation.
Posted inNews
Three Arrests Made in Major Holland Art Heist
In October, seven works of art worth tens of millions of dollars, by artists ranging from Picasso to Matisse, Gauguin, and Lucian Freud, were stolen from the Kunsthal Rotterdam in Holland at 3 am. Three people have now been arrested in connection with the heist.
Posted inOpinion
A New Possible Lead in Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft [UPDATED]
The Hartford Courant reports that one of the world’s great unsolved art thefts may have a new lead.
