AUSTRALIA.- Art theft is a global business worth billions of dollars annually, writes Andrea Petrie. On March 18, 1990, two men masquerading as police officers walked into Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and convinced security guards they were responding to a disturbance call. Despite no knowledge of any such disturbance and it being contrary to museum regulations, the guards let the officers in. Within minutes the guards were bound, gagged and taken to separate areas of the museum’s basement. Other than a "panic" button behind the guards’ desk, the museum alarm system was internal. Since the button was not pressed, police were unaware of what had taken place until after the heist unfolded between 1.24am and 2.45am.
This gave the thieves plenty of time to escape with art worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including Vermeer’s The Concert, three Rembrandts, four paintings by Degas and four other valuable works. Almost 14 years later, the haul remains missing. In Australia, art thieves are continuing their rich pickings. While some experts have cast doubt on this week’s reported theft of paintings said to be worth $67 million - including an 1873 work by Paul Cezanne - from the workshop of a NSW north coast art restorer, the Australian Institute of Criminology has estimated that up to $20 million of art is stolen in this country each year. The NSW incident comes two months after two Rembrandt etchings valued at up to $2 million each were stolen from a home at Mount Eliza in Melbourne’s outer south.
Ken Polk, professor of criminology at Melbourne University, told ABC radio last week that people known as "gloaters" ordered the theft of valuable art throughout the world. "I would say every year there are about one or two of these kinds of thefts in Australia," he said. "Half of the time I think the works surface because it was opportunistic... They think they can steal it and make some money, but it turns out you simply cannot sell on the open market a work of this stature."
Since 1979, there have been up to 20 major art robberies across Australia, many of them in Melbourne. A group of radicals stole Picasso’s Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria in August 1986, and held it for two weeks before it was recovered at Spencer Street station. Five paintings worth more than $100,000 were stolen from a museum at Donald in 1986. The same year, Sidney Nolan’s Glenrowan, a 1955 Kelly series subject, was stolen from the Broome holiday resort of British peer Lord MacAlpine.
The cousins of businessman Victor Smorgon lost 24 paintings in a $1.5 million raid on their Melbourne home in 1988. Five of the works were found in the possession of disgraced Sydney chief magistrate Murray Farquhar, who was later exonerated of theft and receiving. And in July 1990, River Scene by Dutch artist Jacob van Ruisdael was removed from Melbourne University.
However, Australia is not part of the international art loss register that covers more than 145,000 missing artworks, antiques and valuables. The register, which has offices in London, New York and Cologne, was set up in January 1991 to combat art theft. Families affected by cultural and political upheavals are increasingly using it to locate missing art belonging to their families. And while many items were stolen from homes, register chairman Julian Radcliffe said valuable works were also taken from churches, libraries, schools, universities and museums. The register estimates worldwide theft amounts to about $11.7 billion a year.
"Many of the items stolen are ones which people say, ’Gosh that’s so well known they’ll never be able to get any money for it’, but they keep it for a number of years and then put it on the market not as ’by Picasso’ but ’copy of’," Mr. Radcliffe said.
"Quite often the thieves don’t expect to get the full value for it, but in many cases a dealer comes along with a good eye and says, ’I think that is a Picasso so I’ll buy it’."
The register provides recovery and search services to collectors, the art trade, insurers and law enforcers on an international scale. By screening auction house catalogues against the database as well as fielding ad hoc inquiries it has helped recover items worth in excess of $180 million, some within hours, others decades later. Mr. Radcliffe said the most valuable item recovered so far was a Cezanne painting worth $43 million.
