About us

Hi, we are Jamie and Alex! As art lovers and students, we accidentally noticed that the topic of art crime is not so widely covered and while we were trying to get more information, only more questions were arousing.

What exactly is Art Crime? It seems like a bit of grey area, that means little to none to some people, as oftentimes only the most “exciting” cases reach into the public eye. Due to this and the common representation of art crime in movies, when many of us hear the term, we start imagining movie plots involving a famous painting stolen from a museum. Perhaps an exciting action conspiracy, where the heroic character would start chasing the trail, while trying to catch the bad guys and eventually retrieve the piece of art. In other instances, like in the movie “The Thomas Crown Affair” with the gorgeous Pierce Brosnan, we find ourselves quite fond of the main character, despite that he is doing something wrong. Let there be no mistake, as we absolutely adore the movie! The point we are trying to make is that once you try to get deeper into the subject of art crime, it seems like it rather quickly loses its charm. More pressing than ever, when it comes to the massive loss of cultural property this global “business” has been causing for decades.

Art crime is truly representing an illegal industry, that is one of the world’s largest criminal activities, similarly to the trafficking of weapons and drug trade. With approximated annual losses of billions of dollars, art crime involves all crimes against art and cultural property. We know of the numerous historical cases of looting during wars, riots or natural disasters, resulting in many pieces of art, archaeological and cultural properties being taken away without retrieval.

The conquest of Latin America, for example, resulted in one of the best-known plunders of the world. In order to sustain the ambitious goal of spreading Christianity among the native people of the New World, the Spaniards needed major financing. Deeply religious and pioneering that world, they felt the moral obligation to do so. The vast gold resources of the indigenous people became apparent to them and while being motivated by the gold, Christianization, slaves and fame, they began the colonization. Hernán Cortés was the leader of the expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire. He and his men destroyed Aztec temples and laid hands on so much gold, silver, jewels and priceless pieces of Aztec art.

In the same way as Cortés, a distant cousin of his, Francisco Pizarro, followed the trail of fortune and adventure and sailed to the New World. After few attempts and manoeuvres from his side he managed to capture the Incan emperor, whom he released for the ransom of large amount of gold, that would fill up one whole room, plus twice the same amount in silver. He did eventually execute Atahualpa, the Incan Emperor, despite the fulfilment of the ransom. Following this, he continued to Cusco, the capital of the Inca and he completed his conquest of Peru.

The provided above examples are just two of the many lootings of culturally and historically important objects. What happens with the items after? Where do they go? How can we be certain that the item we’ve laid our eyes on has not been illegally required? We would like to explore the subject deeper and try and shed some light for everyone who wants to learn more about it, like us!