From the swift theft of three paintings from a museum in Parma to the recovery of a 2500-year-old gold helmet lifted from a Dutch museum last year, recent news has been peppered with pilfered museums and thieves with a penchant for masterpieces.
Interpol’s most recent ‘Assessing Crimes Against Cultural Property’ report, revealed that Europe is a hotspot for art and cultural theft, with over 18,000 cultural objects reported as stolen in the region at the end of 2021. But after the quick and slightly inelegant dance of glass-smashing, painting-grabbing, and high-tailing it away from a museum, what do art thieves do with these stolen artifacts?
Particularly in the case of distinct artworks like paintings, which can’t be melted down like a gold helmet or deconstructed like looted jewels, selling stolen cultural property is wrought with risk and promises little, if any, reward.
The laws governing the legal art market have changed considerably over time, and most buyers will check the provenance – the history of ownership – of an artwork before purchasing it, according to a journal article published in De Gruyter Brill.
Thieves cannot transfer a “good title” or ownership rights that belong to the legal owner, to a buyer, as Dr Anja Shortland, Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London writes in The Conversation.
Accessible records of stolen works, such as Interpol’s public Stolen Works of Art Database that is frequently updated based on reports from countries, also make it easy to verify if an artwork has been acquired illegally. Those approached with artworks they suspect to be stolen may also pass on information to relevant authorities, often incentivized by monetary ‘rewards for information’ for the return of these pieces.
With stricter laws governing the sale and purchase of artworks and international databases that are easily accessible, most will not buy looted art. Stolen artworks often reach this dead-end on the legal market.
But artworks are still frequently looted, and some do not resurface for years. So, why does it continue to happen?
“Art theft is usually a crime of opportunity,” according to Leila Amineddoleh, Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham University. Artworks are rarely stolen from displays and are instead taken from a museum or gallery’s storage units or when they are in transit.
These spaces are often less meticulously monitored. When artworks are stolen from storage, no one may notice until the next time inventory is taken, which gives a thief enough time to sell it on the legal market before the wider world knows it was robbed in the first place.
Modern illegal workarounds, like obtaining false proof of provenance, also facilitate the sale of these looted pieces.
At times, these stolen artworks serve as leverage: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence was reportedly stolen from a church in Sicily in 1969 and used by an organised crime group to push the Catholic Church to negotiate with them, according to The Guardian.
Often, however, these artworks and artefacts are peddled on the illegal market. The development of online platforms and social networks has played a significant role in the sale of stolen cultural objects like artworks, according to UNESCO.
The pilfering of cultural property is also exacerbated by conflicts, which UNESCO explains act as “catalysts for the systematic theft of antiquities, committed by impoverished inhabitants or organized criminal groups.”
For everyday people, the theft of artworks (especially those in public museums and galleries) can be parasitical to cultural enrichment.
Experts note that the recovery rate of stolen artworks is below 10 percent, with some estimating it to be as low as 2-3 percent, according to a review of art theft statistics by Smart Locks Guide. This means that once an artwork is stolen, the general public may never see it again.
In the current climate of active and widespread conflicts, cultural property is at risk. The theft of art and artifacts – which are capsules of beauty and skill as well as history and memory – threatens the heritage of local communities.