Arthouse Crime Scenes is the first book to address the relationship between art cinema and crime, contributing to the study of both categories. Case studies are provided of works by celebrated filmmakers including Lucretia Martell, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Bong Joon Ho, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Hirokazu Koreeda, Jia Zhangke, Andrey Zvyagintsez and Lee Chang-dong. How is crime represented in art cinema? And how can this be understood in the context of global sociopolitical and film-industrial trends? Arthouse crime scenes draw on variable combinations of elements associated with art cinema and crime genres. Crime might be shown or lurk only at the edges. It might be left unresolved or unexplained. Crime can be petty and small scale or raise big questions associated with the arthouse sector: political issues, the nature of humanity, truth and knowability. In this book, close textual analysis is combined with focus on social and industrial contexts. A recurring theme is the situation of arthouse crime films within differing manifestations of broader processes of late-modern neoliberal globalization and cultural hybridity. Approaches examined range from the oblique to social realism and other mixtures of crime and arthouse tendencies.

"The crime of art looks at Kota Ezawa's oeuvre using crime as a topical lens. The book presents photographs and reproductions from Ezawa's exhibitions at Mead Art Museum and SITE Sante Fe, featuring remakes of paintings stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. In addition, the book draws connections from this project to other works by Ezawa from 2002 to 2017 that contemplate crime.".

One museum, two thieves, and the Boston underworld--this account tells the true story behind the lost Gardner masterpieces and the art detectives who swore to get them back. b&w illustrations throughout.

This book offers a revealing look at the full scope of criminal activity in the art world—a category of crime that is far more pervasive than is generally realized. Forgeries, fakes, fencing, and felony theft—all are pervasive problems in the world of art, where the stakes are high, the networks wide, and the consequences profound. In recent years, suspicious acquisitions, unreliable provenances, and shady dealers have found their way into the headlines as museums and private collections have been confronted with everything from fake pieces to stolen antiquities to plain old theft and vandalism. Crimes of the Art World captures the full scope of this staggeringly lucrative field of criminal conduct, showing how its impact reaches well beyond the walls of the museum. Filled with fascinating stories of crime and greed, this revealing volume looks at case after case of thefts, forgeries, fakes, and illicit trafficking, as well as the political/religious victimization of art, white-collar art crime, and vandalism. The book examines each type of crime in terms of frequency, losses, and characteristics of victims and criminals. Concluding chapters focus on preventive measures, art crime investigation, and security issues.

In the world of law enforcement art and antiquity crime has in the past usually assumed a place of low interest and priority. That situation has now slowly begun to change on both the local and international level as criminals, encouraged in part by the record sums now being paid for art treasures, are now seeking to exploit the art market more systematically by means of theft, fraud and looting. In this collection academics and practitioners from Australasia, Europe and North America combine to examine the challenges presented to the criminal justice system by these developments. Best practice methods of detecting, investigating, prosecuting and preventing such crimes are explored. This book will be of interest and use to academics and practitioners alike in the areas of law, crime and justice.

This is one in a series of true life crime and forensic science books. Each book includes archive photographic imagery throughout including images of the crime scenes, the evidence and the investigation.

Since the Second World War, art crime has shifted from a relatively innocuous, often ideological crime, into a major international problem, considered by some to be the third-highest grossing criminal trade worldwide. This rich volume features essays on art crime by the most respected and knowledgeable experts in this interdisciplinary subject.

Through the use of case examples and careful examination, this book presents the first interdisciplinary essay collection on the study of art crime, and its effect on all aspects of the art world. Contributors discuss art crime subcategories, including vandalism, iconoclasm, forgery, fraud, peace-time theft, war looting, archaeological looting, smuggling, submarine looting, and ransom. The contributors offer insightful analyses coupled with specific practical suggestions to implement in the future to prevent and address art crime. This work is of critical importance to anyone involved in the art world, its trade, study, and security. Art crime has received relatively little attention from those who study art to those who prosecute crimes. Indeed, the general public is not well-aware of the various forms of art crime and its impact on society at large, to say nothing of museums, history, and cultural affairs. And yet it involves a multi-billion dollar legitimate industry, with a conservatively-estimated $6 billion annual criminal profit. Information about and analysis of art crime is critical to the wide variety of fields involved in the art trade and art preservation, from museums to academia, from auction houses to galleries, from insurance to art law, from policing to security. Since the Second World War, art crime has evolved from a relatively innocuous crime, into the third highest-grossing annual criminal trade worldwide, run primarily by organized crime syndicates, and therefore funding their other enterprises, from the drug and arms trades to terrorism. It is no longer merely the art that is at stake.

The past few years have been tough on Edvard Munch. First the Norwegian Expressionist's iconic painting The Scream was stolen in 1994. Then it was recovered, and a different version was stolen in 2004. It seems that Munch is getting more than his fair share of attention from thieves, but he's not alone. These days, no artist's work is safe. The international police agency, Interpol, currently lists as stolen more than twenty-five thousand works of art. This figure includes sculptures, furniture, clocks, and antiquities, as well as paintings. The number of paintings alone is staggering. Rembrandts, Renoirs, Van Goghs, Picassos. You could fill a museum. In Museum of the Missing , journalist Simon Houpt investigates the fascinating story of modern art theft. What started as looting of art treasures by invading armies, including the Nazis during World War II, has exploded into a sophisticated international operation. But grand art thefts are only part of this fascinating story. Houpt takes the reader into the backrooms of Scotland Yard, the FBI, and Interpol as crack art-recovery squads mount surveillance operations and elaborate stings. He also leads readers into a tangled underworld of money laundering, drugs, illegal arms trading, and terrorism-where the stakes for both sides are very high. The stakes for lovers of art are just as high. Many of the world's stolen masterpieces will probably not be recovered in the foreseeable future. Some may never be seen by the public again. Museum of the Missing offers an extraordinary glimpse of these lost treasures. Praise for Museum of the Missing : "This fabulous book is a must-read for any art lover."- Hello! magazine "[Houpt] also takes readers behind the scenes of the crack art-recovery squads working to retrieve the paintings and looks as the underworld where much of the art is being hidden."- Ottawa Citizen "Fascinating and fun, this book is full--not surprisingly--of great art... It's a delicious, intriguing romp through the high-stakes world of art crime: part history lesson, part art class, part true crime story. Houpt is a good writer and a good journalist, with a way of packaging a lot of information and ideas into easily digested pieces. "- Winnipeg Free Press " Museum of the Missing is one of the first books to chronicle the history of stolen art. The author explores the war looting, organized crime, and crack recovery squads involved in the centuries-old world of art theft "- Atikokan Progress " Museum of the Missing , a history of art theft, makes for fascinating if depressing reading. Houpt covers notorious heists like the 1990 St. Patrick's Day looting of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (a Vermeer and three Rembrandts are among the items still missing), art theft in time of war and flamboyant art detectives like Harold J. Smith. Art theft, Houpt reports, is big business."- Chronicle Houston "In this breezily readable volume, [Houpt] introduces us to famous art thieves and their exploits, along with concise portraits of the detectives who try to catch them. He also provides a partial catalog of famous stolen art, although some of the works in it -- such as Munch's "The Scream" -- have since been recovered. "- The Chicago Sun Times

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first century: the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser. • “The Art Thief, like its title character, has confidence, élan, and a great sense of timing."—The New Yorker A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Lit Hub "Enthralling." —The Wall Street Journal In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, the best-selling author of The Stranger in the Woods brings us into Breitwieser’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them. For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down. This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.