photo from The New York Times
"Art is an exceedingly dumb thing to steal." That's the conclusion of the New York Times. While art thieves may have a sexy, sophisticated reputation:
The mundane reality is that many art thieves are simply not the sharpest grappling hooks in the toolbag; the smart ones choose to steal things that can be much more easily converted into money — or just money itself.
In other words, once the Van Gogh is in your possession, where in the world are you going to fence it? It's not like there are multiple copies of the same painting lying around. If you've got the painting that just disappeared from the famous museum, it's pretty glaring.
“No one theory can fit all examples of art theft, but I think it’s often an I.Q. test for not-so-smart criminals, and a lot of them fail,” said James Mintz, the principal of a corporate investigations firm with offices in New York, London, Zurich and other cities that has handled art cases.
But . . . who's more intelligent, the collector who pays millions at auction, or the connoisseur who just lifts a painting off the wall and runs? The New York Times bursts that line of wishful thinking as well:
And while thieves in other lines of goods tend to know what they’re stealing, many art thieves often seem not to have set foot in a museum or gallery before trying to knock one off.
Mr. McShane recalled a 1986 case in which a Queens man, Daniel Kohl, the owner of an Upper East Side antique shop called Old King Kohl’s, was caught with accomplices in the act of trying to steal more than $20 million in antiquities from a Queens warehouse. In news accounts at the time, the caper sounded quite cinematic. But prosecutors later surmised that much of the art they planned to steal was probably fake. “Let me tell you,” said Mr. McShane, “Danny had about as much knowledge of art as your local hot dog stand man. ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ it was not.”
Where You Going With That Monet? [New York Times]
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