Art Crime Research Paper

Did you know that the FBI had its own art crime fighting team? Even though art theft might not be all around the news all the time, does not mean it does not exist. There are thousands of stolen property around the world and the FBI is fighting to deter crime and hopefully get the stolen artifacts back. “The FBI established a rapid deployment Art Crime Team in 2004. The team is composed of 16 special agents, each responsible for addressing art and cultural property crime cases in an assigned geographic region. The Art Crime Team is coordinated through the FBI’s Art Theft Program, located at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Art Crime Team agents receive specialized training in art and cultural property investigations and assist in art related
investigations worldwide in cooperation with foreign law enforcement officials and FBI legal attaché offices.The U.S. Department of Justice provides special trial attorneys to the Art Crime Team for prosecutive support.” The FBI is trying to prevent art thefts from occurring and their number one goal is always to return the stolen antiquities to their owners.
The United States set up an Art Loss Register which focuses on deterring art crimes. “The origin of the ALR was The International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR), a not-for-profit organization based in New York. In an attempt to deter international art theft, IFAR established an art theft archive in 1976 and began publishing the ‘Stolen Art Alert’ ” (“Our History”). The ALR has two main aspects. They try to make everyone aware of the art pieces that have been stolen and make it a public site where buyers could be more cautious about buying arts on the streets. “First, by encouraging both the registration of all items of valuable possessions on the database and also the expansion of checking searches, the ALR acts as a significant deterrent to the theft of art. Criminals are now well aware of the risk, which they face in trying to sell on stolen pieces of art. Also the company focuses on returning these stolen art pieces to their owners and keeping their clients satisfied. “Second, by operating a due diligence service to sellers of art and also being the worldwide focus for any suspicion of illegitimate ownership, the ALR operates a recovery service to return works of art to their rightful owners. In recent years, the service has been extended to negotiate compensation to the victims of art theft and a legitimizing of current ownership.
There were a lot of very important and expensive art pieces that were stolen in the past.
For example In Norwegian Munch Museum, 2004. Thieves stole two paintings both from the artist Edvard Munch. “Scream” and “Madonna”. The estimated value of the two paintings together was about 19 million dollars. Both paintings were recovered in the year 2006. In 2012 a painting called “Poppy Flowers” by Van Gogh was stolen from an Egyptian Mahmoud Khalil Museum. The estimated value of this painting was 55 million dollars. The painting has not been recovered yet. The biggest art theft in history happened in Boston at the Stewart Gardner Museum, 1990. There were a variety of art pieces stolen and it has been considered the largest art theft in history because the estimated value of all items together was 500 million dollars. All of these art pieces are either a sign of history or had sentimental values worth millions of dollars. The amount of money put into these paintings have a huge
importance.
There are many different ways that having art in your possession could be illegal or sometimes legal. What is illegal you might say, “Taking someone's artwork and altering it in any way without their permission, then showcasing/uploading it. This includes cropping, rotating, changing colors, and especially removing the watermark. Taking credit for artwork that someone else created. This is considered a form of identity theft. And as most websites require you to confirm through their Terms of Service that what you've uploaded is solely your creation, simply UPLOADING the creations of others is illegal on some websites (see: DeviantArt, YouTube), even if you add the description, ‘I did not make this’ ” and it also includes stealing art and then trying to sell it. What is legal in this case, “Reposting artwork, without altering it in any way, onto websites where uploads are not required to have been made by you. The only condition is that the artist had not required a fee to view the artwork. "Free-to-view" artworks, like general submissions to DeviantArt, may legally be reposted onto image collection websites. ONLY if the artist required a fee to view the works, it becomes illegal for the artwork to be reposted for free viewing on other websites.” These are examples of simple online art thefts but that are still going on all over the world.
In conclusion, art theft is happening all over the world, even if it involves a painting by Van Gogh worth 55 million dollars or if it's just a painting sitting in the living room by your talented 16-year-old son/daughter.
Art theft is happening and no matter the price, there are some with sentimental values that can make them more valuable than a 55 million dollar painting. Art theft is very important to a lot of many and just because it does not happen to you, does not mean that it does not exist. There are many resources such as the Art Loss Register that will help many people recover their painting and help buyers make sure they are not stealing a stolen painting. Art theft is very important and it’s something that we should all try to
deter.