The Market for Stolen Art

~ Laura

Thethomascrownaffair1If I could do it all over again, I would like to work for the FBI tracking stolen artwork. 

Last week, artwork by Monet, Picasso, and Matisse museum in Rottendam was stolen. 

Robert Wittman reports that it's impossible to sell these extremely well-known masterpieces. 

The stark reality for the thieves who pull off these headline-grabbing capers is there is no market, black or otherwise, to sell a stolen masterpiece. Even in the criminal world, someone who traffics in guns or drugs would have no interest in a stolen painting that cannot be resold when they have cash-convertible goods on hand. These stolen masterpieces will languish in closets and warehouses until they are discovered and returned to their rightful owners by law enforcement operations or simply the passage of time.

Stealing art work from a major museum is not liking knocking off the 7/11. You really have to know what you're doing to get past all that security. The criminals who are smart enough to steal that work, also have to be smart enough to know that they can't fence those objects later on. So, why do they do it? It might be better to steal artwork by artists who aren't as well known as Picasso. There's always a Russian mobster or a Dubaii Kingpin who will buy that stuff. 

So, why do they do it? It's the glory. 

Published by Laura

5 thoughts on “The Market for Stolen Art”

  1. Stealing art work from a major museum is not liking knocking off the 7/11. You really have to know what you’re doing to get past all that security.
    Perhaps this is more so now, but it wasn’t necessarily the case, even quite recently. See the case of Stephane Breitwieser, almost certainly the most successful art thief of all time (if we don’t count colonial powers, at least.) Mostly he followed the plan of acting like he should be doing what he was doing, went up to pieces in broad day-light, took them down, and walked off with them. People assumed that no one would do that unless they should be doing it, so didn’t stop him for years. As with many outrageous acts, what it mostly took was the willingness to do something no one would expect- usually with good reason. I guess having no conscience and a extremely steely nerve is a sort of “knowing what your doing”, but not in any sort of “mission impossible” sort of sense. If his mother would not have destroyed a lot of very valuable objects after he was caught, the whole thing would be almost worth it, for its daring.

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  2. Mostly he followed the plan of acting like he should be doing what he was doing…
    A similar technique works for some banquets and, if it is a crowded flight, boarding early on Southwest with a six-year old.

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  3. It’s much less grand, but both some video game machines and some furniture (I’m not sure why anyone wanted the latter, really) were stole from the Student Union building at my undergad university at different times by people using the technique of having a clipboard with an invoice-looking paper on it and saying they were there to pick the things up for repair or cleaning. My understanding is that the thieves even got the staff to help carry the items out.

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