Earlier this week, a lone thief wearing a mask broke into the Paris Museum of Modern Art through a window and stole five paintings worth an estimated 100 million euros, or 124 million USD. The paintings included a Picasso, a Matisse, and a Braque. One expert, Alice Farren-Bradley of the Art Loss Registry in London, said the heist “appears to be one of the biggest” ever. This made us curious. Was it? The FBI projects that as much as $6 billion is lost every year to art and culture property crime. Since both art and burglars have been around for as long as we can remember, we decided to take a look at other high-profile art heists throughout history to find out.
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A compelling polemic by Philly-based Don Argott, The Art of the Steal looks at the bitter, decades-long fight over the Barnes Foundation and its singular, $25-billion-dollar art collection.
Created in 1922 by Albert C. Barnes, an early 20th-century industrialist and voracious art collector whose bio reads like Horatio Alger, the Barnes Foundation made its Merion, Pennsylvania home a mecca for aesthetes, with eyefuls of brand-name paintings (i.e. 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos) and only-here ephemera such as Native American ceramics. Barnes passed away in 1951, but his will declared that the works never be loaned, moved, or sold — that is until a few powerful figures in Philly saw the dollar signs in the impressionistic swirls.
Argott employs gabbing partisans, graphics, and archival footage to present a case that continues to open fault lines in the art world.
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