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 Oct.
29, '07:
- Ptolemy Maps Stolen from Spanish National
Library.
Valued at $160,000, the Ptolemy map was stolen from Spain's National Library
and made its way to the US, where it was bought on the internet by Simon
Dewez, owner of the Gowrie Galleries in Bondi Junction, Sydney, Australia. A
second map stolen from the Spanish National Library was recovered by the
FBI from a New York collector about the same time police became aware the
Ptolemy World Map had found its way to Australia.
- Husband and Wife Forger
Team on trial over Aboriginal art sale
- Three priceless art
works and manuscripts stolen from the University of Auckland
over Christmas have been returned. Thieves stole
a $100,000 Charles Goldie painting, seven Colin McCahon poems
worth $7000 and an unbound copy of the Oxford Lectern Bible
valued at $100,000 from the library's special collections room
while the university library was closed during the Christmas
holidays. New Zealand Herald reported an "elaborate
deal" between
police and an accused criminal had been brokered in an attempt
to recver the items. Police arranged for minor
charges to be dropped against the man, who
arranged the return of the artefacts.
- The grandson of an Austrian
woman who disappeared during the Holocaust
sued cosmetics magnate Leonard Lauder on Monday, seeking
up to $20 million in damages and ownership of a Gustav Klimt
painting.
- The British government
has been asked by the RA to send a letter to the
Russian authorities assuring them that the works loaned to
the UK will be
protected from seizure by companies with a financial claim
against the
Russian state.
- Ethiopia has started
re-erecting its famed Axum obelisk 30 months
after it returned to the country from Italy where it stayed
for 70 years, a United Nations expert said on Wednesday.
Goya Thief Arrested, Bergen, NJ
- A Bergen County man was arrested
last evening on an Indictment
charging him with stealing the Francisco de Goya painting "Children
with a Cart" last
year. Steven Lee Olson, 49, was arrested at his home
in Carlstadt by Special. Agents
of the FBI Violent Crimes/Interstate Theft Task Force. Olson
was expected to make an initial appearance today at about 2:15
p.m. before U.S.
Magistrate Judge Patty Shwartz. According to the Indictment, Olson stole "Children
with a Cart," a 1778 painting by the Spanish master
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, on Nov. 8,
2006, as it was in transit to New York City from the Toledo
Museum of Art in
Toledo, Ohio.
- Famous Forger John Myatt to be Exhibited,
Cinematized
- Veneto Police Discover 12,000 antiquities
hoarded in Private Illicit Museum.
Police in the Venice region were stunned to find 12,000 items
ranging from
bronze age combs to jewellery, weapons and pottery from down
the ages --
many in display cases in the man's home. "We found this guy who was doing
his own excavations, a kind of dilettante archaeologist," said
Colonel Pier Luigi Pisano of the Venice finance police,which
made the raid.
- Bulgarian Organized Crime Art Smugglers
Arrested. Bulgaria's special police
unit combating organized crime busted Thursday a channel for
smuggling antiques in five Bulgarian cities. The
police seized hundreds of kilos of antique coins, jewellery,
agriculture tools, arrow gads and even parts of chariots. The
antiquities were exported to Western Europe and the USA.
-
Turkey Upgrades Museum Security after rash of thefts in 2006
ARCA
recommends the excellent service provided by the Museum Security
Network for compiled, in-depth information about art crime
every day.
