Description

Here are stories of high-stakes, brazen art crimes from around the world with new insights on ongoing cases by two journalists counted among the most 100 influential people in the art business.

"True crime fans and aficionados of culture will appreciate this dive into the dark side of the art world." —Publishers Weekly

The art world is one of the most secretive—and largely unregulated—of global businesses, and the list of its crimes run long and deep. The extent of the economic and cultural damage that results from criminality in the global art scene rarely comes to light. By turns thrilling, disturbing, and unbelievable, the cases explored in this book include "artnapping"—stealing art to collect a ransom—tax fraud, forgery, money laundering, and illegal excavations. The book includes coverage of:

• The 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre
• A 2017 sensational case of a 220 lb Canadian gold coin from Berlin's Bode Museum
• The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist
• A section on the thriving market for Mondigliani forgaries
• The ill-gotten art collection of former First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos
• Art stolen by the Nazis during WWII, and the enduring business of forgeries of Hitler's own paintings
• President Donald Trump's practice of using his charitable fund to buy art, including a portrait of himself

About the Author

STEFAN KOLDEHOFF, born in 1967, is culture editor at Deutschlandfunk in Cologne, and writes for Die Zeit and art - Das Kunstmagazine among other publications. In 2008 he received the Puk journalist prize for his investigative research. In 2012, he and Tobias Timm published False Pictures, Real Money on the Beltracchi case. The book was awarded the Prix Annette Giacometti and the Otto Brenner Prize. Galiani also published his books The Pictures Are Among Us: The Nazi-Looted Art Business and the Gurlitt Case (2014) and Me and Van Gogh: Pictures, Collectors and Their Adventurous Stories (2015). TOBIAS TIMM, born in 1975 in Munich, studied urban ethnology, history, and cultural studies in Berlin and New York. He has written for Die Zeit's feature pages from Berlin on architecture, art, and crime. In 2012, he and Stefan Koldehoff published False Pictures, Real Money on the Beltracchi case. The book was awarded the Prix Annette Giacometti and the Otto Brenner Prize. TIMM and KOLDEHOFF were recently counted among the 100 most influential people in the art business by the national German magazine monopol.
PAUL DAVID YOUNG’s previous translations from German include The Art of C.G. Jung (Norton, 2018) and, with Carl Weber, Heiner Müller: After Shakespeare (PAJ, 2014).Young’s 2019 play All My Fathers, presented at La MaMa E.T.C. in New York, directedby Evan Yionoulis, was praised as "hilarious" by The New Yorker.