Each day ARCA is made aware of between five and fifty
art crimes, and those are only the ones which are reported. Here
is a sample of headlines from the past week in art crime.
Selected Art Crimes from the week ending Dec.
18, '07:
- In a legal strategy that is spreading in the art world, the
Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
jointly asked a federal court yesterday to declare them the
owners of two Picasso paintings that a claimant says were sold
under duress in Nazi Germany.
- A PURPORTED $150 million masterpiece stolen in what has been
billed as Australia's biggest art heist was bought for $20 at a
northern NSW antiques shop, a court was told yesterday. The owner maintained the painting, Boy in a High Chair, was by 19th century French impressionist Paul Cezanne and had been in his family for generations. But who is lying? The owner was recalled to the witness box yesterday after sensational claims the so-called Cezanne had been bought by him from a Lismore antiques shop just before the break-in. Antiques dealer Howard Dooley said the painting had been in his shop for up to seven years and produced a receipt showing that it was sold to Opit in late January 2004.
- Picasso & Chagall Masterpieces Stolen. Metro Police are
searching for who broke into the Galerie Lareuse of Georgetown
stealing two expensive works of art. The suspect broke through the front door with a crowbar shortly after 4 a.m. Monday morning. The suspects took off with a Pablo Picasso 1936 signed blakc and white original etching entitled, "Faune d?voilant une Femme" which is valued at $115,000. Also stolen was a Marc Chagall 1960 entitled, "The Meeting of Ruth
& Boaz" which is a signed color lithograph valued at $14,500.
- Chinese terracotta
soldiers on display in Hamburg's Museum of Anthropology may
be fakes and an inquiry into their authenticity is under way,
the museum said. DPA yesterday reported that Chinese authorities
hadn't approved the export of the warriors for the Hamburg
exhibition, and that the state office for cultural property
in Beijing said the exhibits were probably illegal copies.
The only current exhibition in Europe of the figures approved
by Chinese authorities is in London, DPA said. The British
Museum is showing the 2,200-year-old soldiers in ``The First
Emperor: China's Terracotta Army,'' which runs through April
6, 2008.
- Art Institute of Chicago discloses Gauguin
sculpture in fact a forgery. For about a decade, "The Faun," a
ceramic sculpture, has been at the Art Institute of Chicago,
presented as a work of the 19th Century French master Paul
Gauguin. On Tuesday, the museum announced that the work, which
it bought in 1997, is a forgery. "The Faun" has been confirmed
to be one of a long string of contemporary forgeries by the
Greenhalgh family, which Scotland Yard had been investigating
for 20 months.
- Concealed weapons don't get much bigger than the one a boy smuggled
out of the Strathroy Museum on Wednesday.
The boy took a sword used in the Battle of Waterloo from a museum
cabinet. He hid the 200-year-old sword behind his back as he walked
out of the building. But his theft of an artifact worth more than
$4,000 was foiled when a passerby saw him throw the sword in the
bushes, Strathroy-Caradoc police said. A 13-year-old faces a charge of
theft under $5,000.
ARCA
recommends the excellent service provided by the Museum Security
Network for compiled, in-depth information about art crime
every day.
