Art theft, sometimes called artnapping, is the stealing of paintings, sculptures, or other forms of visual art from galleries, museums or other public and private locations. Stolen art is often resold or used by criminals as collateral to secure loans. Only a small percentage of stolen art is recovered—an estimated 10%. Many nations operate police squads to investigate art theft and illegal trade in stolen art and antiquities.
Vincenzo Peruggia was an Italian museum worker, artist and thief, most famous for stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum in Paris on 21 August 1911.
Stéphane Breitwieser is a French art thief and author, notorious for his art thefts between 1995 and 2001. He admitted to stealing 239 artworks and other exhibits from 172 museums while travelling around Europe and working as a waiter, an average of one theft every 15 days. The Guardian called him "arguably the world's most consistent art thief". He has also been called "one of the most prolific and successful art thieves who have ever lived", and "one of the greatest art thieves of all time". His thefts resulted in the destruction of many works of art, destroyed by his family to conceal evidence of his crimes.
The Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, MBAM is an art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the largest art museum in Canada by gallery space. The museum is located on the historic Golden Square Mile stretch of Sherbrooke Street west.
Possession of stolen goods is a crime in which an individual has bought, been given, or acquired stolen goods.
The Just Judges, also called The Righteous Judges, is the lower left panel of the Ghent Altarpiece, painted by Jan van Eyck or his brother Hubert Van Eyck between 1430 and 1432. It is believed that the panel shows portraits of several contemporary figures such as Philip the Good, and possibly the artists Hubert and Jan van Eyck themselves. The panel was stolen in 1934 and has never been found.
Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris or MAM Paris, is a major municipal museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art of the 20th and 21st centuries, including monumental murals by Raoul Dufy, Gaston Suisse, and Henri Matisse. It is located at 11, Avenue du Président Wilson in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.
The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, alternatively named The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring or Spring Garden, is an early oil painting by 19th-century Dutch post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, created in May 1884 while he was living with his parents in Nuenen. Van Gogh made several drawings and oil paintings of the surrounding gardens and the garden façade of the parsonage.
SModcast is a podcast featuring filmmaker Kevin Smith. The show was initially co-hosted with Smith's long-time producing partner Scott Mosier, although over the years, Mosier's appearances have been sporadic with a series of guest hosts taking his place. New episodes were initially released each Sunday night/Monday morning, with more recent episodes being released on a much more infrequent schedule. The episodes are generally one hour in length and feature Smith and Mosier, or a guest co-host, discussing current events and other non-sequitur topics.
Yoga Hosers is a 2016 American comedy horror film written and directed by Kevin Smith. It is a spin-off of Smith's 2014 horror film Tusk and stars Smith's daughter Harley Quinn Smith, Lily-Rose Depp, and her father, Johnny Depp. The second film in Smith's True North trilogy, it had its world premiere on January 24 at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival before being released on September 2, 2016, by Invincible Pictures. The film was a commercial flop and was panned by critics, who viewed it as a low point in Smith's career.
In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, 13 works of art were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Guards admitted two men posing as police officers responding to a disturbance call, and the thieves bound the guards and looted the museum over the next hour. The case is unsolved; no arrests have been made, and no works have been recovered. The stolen works have been valued at hundreds of millions of dollars by the FBI and art dealers. The museum offers a $10 million reward for information leading to the art's recovery, the largest bounty ever offered by a private institution.
Operation Icarus is a police investigation into the organised theft and black market trade of religious and church artefacts in England and Wales. The investigation, led by West Mercia Police, commenced in 2013 and has subsequently been declared a major incident. According to ArtWatch UK—an organisation which campaigns for the protection of works of art and architecture—the investigation has uncovered "the systematic plundering of churches in England and Wales [that] has gone largely unnoticed for up to ten years." Detective Inspector Martyn Barnes, head of the operation, said: "Some of the items that have been taken are described as priceless because they are unique. Some of them may fetch tens of thousands of pounds on the black market; others go for £50, £60. We believe that some of these crimes date back to 2002—2003."
The Sripuranthan Natarajan Idol, is a 900-year-old statue of Natarajan — the dancing Shiva — that was stolen from the ancient Brihadeeswarar temple of Sripuranthan, smuggled to the United States, and then sold to the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra with a false provenance, for US$5.1 million. The statue was consequently returned by Australia to the Indian government on ethical grounds, once questions were raised on due diligence not being followed during the acquisition.
John Mark Tillmann was a Canadian art thief and white supremacist who for over two decades stole over 10,000 antiques and art objects from museums, galleries, archives, and antique shops mainly in Atlantic Canada.
The 1972 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts robbery, sometimes called the Skylight Caper, took place very early in the morning of September 4 of that year. Three armed robbers used a skylight under repair to gain entry to the museum from its roof, tied up the three guards on duty, and left on foot with 18 paintings, including a rare Rembrandt landscape and works by Jan Brueghel the Elder, Corot, Delacroix, Rubens, and Thomas Gainsborough, as well as some figurines and jewellery. One of the Brueghels was returned by the thieves as an initiative to start ransom negotiations. None of the other paintings has ever been recovered and the robbers have never been arrested or even publicly identified, although there is at least one informal suspect.
Still Life with Candlestick is an oil painting created in 1922 by the French artist Fernand Léger.
Woman-Ochre is a 1955 abstract expressionist oil painting by Dutch/American artist Willem de Kooning, part of his Woman series from that period. It was controversial in its day, like the other paintings in the series, for its explicit use of figures, which Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists considered a betrayal of the movement's ideal of pure, non-representational painting. Feminists also considered the works misogynistic, suggesting violent impulses toward the women depicted.
View of Auvers-sur-Oise is the common English name for a Paul Cézanne painting known by various French names, usually Paysage d'Auvers-sur-Oise, or in the artist's catalogue raisonné, Groupe de maisons, paysage d'île de France. It is believed to have been painted in 1879–80, several years after Cézanne's residence in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small village northwest of Paris. The painting depicts a landscape of Northern France; the exact location has not been determined.
Woman's Head is a 1939 oil-on-canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. It is a depiction of Dora Maar, Picasso's companion at the time. Picasso donated the work to the people of Greece in recognition of their resistance against the Axis during the Second World War. Woman's Head was first exhibited in 1949, alongside other donated works, at the Institut Français in Athens. It was not shown again until an exhibition starting in 1980 at the National Gallery and was on continuous show from 2011 until the gallery closed for renovation in 2012. In January 2012 Woman's Head was stolen from the closed gallery, alongside a painting by Piet Mondrian. It was recovered from a gorge near Athens in June 2021 and the alleged thief was arrested.
George Henry "Taters" Chatham was a British thief and burglar. Born to a middle-class family, he aspired to become a professional footballer but despite a trial at Queen's Park Rangers, nothing came of it. Chatham turned to crime and was first convicted of theft in 1931. By the end of that decade he was burgling the houses of wealthy Londoners, carefully selecting his targets from society magazines. His calm-headedness led to his nickname from the Cockney rhyming slang for cold.
