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CRIME AND PICASSO: The Shadowy Underworld Of Art

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Bianca
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« on: May 31, 2009, 06:16:19 am »









Most stolen art ends up slipping into the criminal netherworld. Crooks will hide the item in an attic and wait for a good time to sell it, or an enterprising rogue might trade the pilfered work to other criminals for guns and drugs as a sort of underworld currency. And through dedicated investigative work and good relationships with art dealers and collectors, the bureau has been able to track down more than 1,000 stolen objects over the past four years.


The FBI often recovers artworks when they come up for sale, as oblivious criminals regularly bring hot art into Christie's or Sotheby's not knowing that the auctioneers vet objects before they go under the hammer. It helps, too, that crooks don't typically have much of an understanding of art and art history. A handyman once swiped a painting from a home in Connecticut and sold the canvas to a local antiques dealer for $100. He later told investigators that he was hoping to make a little cash. But it turned out that French artist Henri Fantin-Latour had created the work, and it was worth more than $1 million.


Still, many art theft cases take years, decades, even more than a century, to crack. During the final days of the Civil War, Union Army soldiers stole North Carolina's Bill of Rights out of the state Capitol. Commissioned by President George Washington, the document was one of only 14 copies created after Congress proposed the first amendments, and for more than 140 years, it remained missing. Then, in 2003, two antiques dealers tried to peddle the work for $4 million. A millionaire philanthropist showed interest in the document, claiming that he would buy the artifact on behalf of Philadelphia's Constitution Center. But the philanthropist was actually an undercover FBI agent, and investigators seized the document. "It was like touching history," one agent said.


As for the Kingsland paintings, Wynne continues to look for the rightful owners. The caper grew more curious when, after Kingsland's death, a mover hired by New York State to haul the collection from Kingsland's apartment to a warehouse stole two Picasso sketches, each valued at $30,000. "Those works had been stolen themselves. They had been stolen in the '60s and they were in Kingsland's apartment, and then the movers came, and then they were stolen again," says Wynne. After some sleuthing, agents learned that a Manhattan-based art broker had tried to sell one of the drawings, and law enforcement eventually recovered the works from the mover's mother-in-law. And so, at least for now, there's one art world mystery fewer waiting to be solved.



Ulrich Boser, a former U.S. News reporter, is the author of

"The Gardner Heist:
The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft."



http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20090529/ts_usnews/crimeandpicassotheshadowyunderworldofart
« Last Edit: May 31, 2009, 06:17:29 am by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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