FBI’s Top Ten Art Crimes
Well, I guess art crime pays.
The decision to set up an FBI Art Crimes Team in November 2004 was in part an acknowledgement of the obvious - that art crime is now big business.
By one estimation, transactions of $1bn to $2bn take place annually.
FBI’s Top Ten Art Crimes
- From 7,000 to 10,000 looted and stolen Iraqi artefacts, 2003
- 12 paintings stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1990
- Two Renoirs and one Rembrandt from Sweden’s National Museum, 2000 (two recovered)
- Munch’s The Scream and The Madonna from the Munch Museum in Oslo, 2004
- Benevenuto Cellini Salt Cellar from Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2003
- Caravaggio’s Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco from Palermo, 1969
- Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius violin from a New York apartment, 1995
- Two Van Gogh paintings from Amsterdam’s Vincent Van Gogh Museum, 2002
- Cezanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise from Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, 1999
- Leonardo’s Madonna with the Yarnwinder from Scotland’s Drumlanrig Castle, 2003