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Art & Crime: The fight against looters, forgers, and fraudsters in the high-stakes art world
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30/99
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Scholars
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Rating
34/99
Volume
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About This Book
The art world is one of the most secretive of global businesses, and the list of its crimes runs long and deep. Today, with prices in the hundreds of millions for individual artworks, and billionaires' collections among the most conspicuous and liquid of their assets, crime is more rampant than ever in this largely unregulated universe. Increased prices and globalization have introduced new levels of fraud and malfeasance into the art world—everything from "artnapping," in which an artwork is held hostage and only returned for a ransom, to forgery and tax fraud. However, the extent of the economic and cultural damage that results from criminality in the global art scene rarely comes to light. The stories of high-stakes, brazen art crimes told by art experts Stefan Koldehoff and Tobias Timm are by turns thrilling, disturbing, and unbelievable (the imagination for using art to commit crimes seems boundless). The authors also provide a well-founded analysis of what needs to change in the art market and at museums. From the authors of False Pictures, Real Money (about the Beltracchi art forgery case), Art and Crime includes a chapter on art owned by Donald Trump. It is a thoroughly researched, explosive, and highly topical book that uncovers the extraordinary and multifarious thefts of art and cultural objects around the world.
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Reviews
"True crime fans and aficionados of culture will appreciate this dive into the dark side of the art world."
"At the end Koldehoff and Timm propose 10 simple questions...that anyone in the trade should ask themselves before any transaction, and they even venture that such questions might lead to stories that could enhance the value of a work of art."
"Readers, whether art enthusiasts or novices, will undoubtedly learn something new from this volume, but it's not as memorable an experience as it could be ..."
"Ranging as far as it does, from the classical to the contemporary art markets, and jet-setting from one continent to another, Art & Crime reads like an assemblage of short exposés cobbled together into a book."
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