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SATURDAY EVENING POST
June 22nd, 2024
© 2019 Musée du Louvre/Nicolas Guiraud
Did you know that art crime is the third highest-grossing criminal trade in the world? Following only drugs and weapons, art theft, forgery, and ransom accounts for a black-market industry estimated to be worth upwards of $8 billion USD a year, approaching 15% of legitimate worldwide art sales. Included in this figure are the nearly fifty-thousand artworks stolen every year, of which less than 10% are ever recovered. Many nations have dedicated art crime divisions which have been receiving increasing attention as its connection to organized crime and money laundering has become more understood.
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German soldiers in front of Palazzo Venezia in Rome in 1944 with a painting taken from the Naples National Archaeological Museum. © Giovanni Paolo Panini
Historically, aside from your run of the mill art caper, art has been frequently and dubiously acquired during wars, conflicts, and occupations of foreign nations, the most infamous being that of Nazi occupation of European countries during World War II. During this period, it’s estimated that nearly twenty percent of Europe’s historical art and artefacts were looted during World War II.
Beginning as early as 1933 with the plundering of Jewish possessions, the Nazi party looted and sold gold, religious items, and artworks of historic significance. Adolf Hitler considered himself an expert in art and took issue with modern works of the time, declaring movements such as Cubism and Futurism to be “degenerate” art. As part of his campaign, any works deemed unfit in his eyes were removed from German museums and either sold or destroyed.
During World War II, Hitler’s crusade against art and its use as a tool of oppression continued throughout German occupied countries. Countless works were appropriated by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce, a Nazi party whose focus was the looting of cultural items. Opposing this group was the “Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section Unit,” a group of the Allied Forces colloquially known as the “Monuments Men,” who worked to protect the locations of important historical monuments throughout Europe. As the war came to a close, their duties expanded to include the recovery of works stolen by the Nazi party. Wherever possible, works were returned to their original owners, but the chaos and destruction of WWII rendered this difficult, and efforts to return works from this period are a point of controversy to this day.
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American soldiers recover paintings looted by the Nazis at Füssen, Germany in May 1945. © Bettmann/Bettmann Archive
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LEFT: Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1517
RIGHT: The Missing Mona Lisa, Unknown author - "The Two Mona Lisas" by Walter Littlefield, article from Century Magazine, February 1914.
Even history’s most famous painting, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (1517), has been the victim of artnapping. The painting made its way from Italy to France in 1524 when it was sold by the original owner, Giulianode Medici, to King Francis I for his Palace at Fontainebleau. From there it graced the walls of other famous Frenchmen, including Louis XIV at Versailles, and a brief stint on Napoleon’s bedroom wall before finding its way to the Louvre in the 1820’s.
After nearly a century on display here, the Mona Lisa mysteriously disappeared one Monday while the museum was closed. After some initial confusion about whether it had been removed for documentation or cleaning, the museum directors closed the Louvre and brought in French authorities in the hopes of recovering the work. For two years officials chased down leads and suspects, investigating high profile figures of the art world such as Pablo Picasso and American collector J.P. Morgan for the potential commission of the theft.
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The Mona Lisa in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, 1913. Museum director Giovanni Poggi inspects the painting.
In actuality, a Louvre employee by the name of Vincenzo Peruggia absconded with the work through means that wouldn’t have made it into any Hollywood film. After hiding out in a broom closet Sunday evening, Peruggia left the Louvre through the museum’s staff entrance with one of the world’s most famous paintings. Perguggia, an Italian patriot, believed that the painting’s rightful home was in Italy and kept the painting in his bedroom fortwo years before attempting to sell it to the Uffizi Gallery of Florence in1913. The director of Uffizi, Giovanni Poggi, was immediately suspicious and kept the painting at the gallery for two weeks until Peruggia was arrested, and the Mona Lisa was returned to the Louvre. Whether his motivation was profit or patriotism, Italian courts saw it as the latter and sentenced Peruggia to one year in prison, of which he served 6 months.
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NORVAL MORRISEAU, Androgyny, 1983, acrylic on canvas, 132” x 240”.
Image courtesy of the Indigenous Art Collection, Crown–Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada
Norval Morrisseau in studio, CP Images Archive
Canada has been in the news recently regarding one of the largest forgery rings in history. The controversy surrounds forged versions of Norval Morrisseau, a famous indigenous Anishinaabe painter who became known as the “Picasso of the North.” Shortly before his death in 2005, Morrisseau’s work became mired in controversy as potential forgeries came to light which, in an even more Canadian twist, was initially brought to public attention by Barenaked Ladies’ keyboardist, Kevin Hearn. Hearn purchased what he believed was an authentic Morrisseau work, Spirit Energy of Mother Earth (1974), but after concerns were raised by the AGO in 2010 when the piece was on loan to them he grew suspicious of its origin. These suspicions quickly heightened when the gallery he purchased it from was unable to provide any proof of authenticity. Eventually, Hearn would take the gallery to trial and was awarded $60,000 in damages when the forgery was confirmed.
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Kevin Hearn of the Barenaked Ladies in the 'There Are No Fakes' art documentary. Cave 7 Productions Inc.
In even more recent news, the ringleader of the Morrisseau fraud ring, David Voss of Thunder Bay, Ontario, pleaded guilty to operating a forgery ring that produced fake works in the style of the artist. Dating back to 1996, Voss and his team produced thousands of forgeries and documents, generating millions of dollars. To date, over 1,500 forgeries generated by the ring have been identified and nearly 500 have been seized. The Canadian Conservation Institute has been working with the authorities to identify forged works, citing that the forgeries have identifiable pencil outlines viewable through infrared photography that the original works do not.
While art crimes are often considered to affect primarily the wealthy, the Morrisseau case shows far reaching effects through many communities. Many middle-class families who purchased works they believed to be authentic from the famed Canadian artist were devasted to learn that they had lost significant amounts of money in what they hoped would be a good investment. Morrisseau himself was the target of the forgery ring not only because of his status in the Canadian art world, but also because the forgers knew that his personal struggles and less than meticulous record keeping would obscure their crimes.
Even though many law enforcement agencies are allocating more resources to the area of art crimes, there still is a long way to go in the efforts to reduce their impact on communities around the world. Each recovered work and unmasked forgery is a step toward reconnecting people with their heritage and culture, and it is a testament to the enduring power of art that we endeavor to do so. It is part of our responsibility as a gallery to provide authentic and ethically acquired works for the next generation of custodians for whom they will bring joy and insight of their world and of those who live in it.
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