The museum just opened its newest temporary exhibit called Art Crimes: Crimes in the Arts, which may lead some to wonder “What is art crime?”. There are many different types of art crime, including smuggling art, looting archaeological digs/sites, and theft from collections. Art comes in many shapes and forms; art is not just a painting hanging in a museum or a sculpture adorning a pedestal, art can be a fossil, a rare book, an ancient samurai sword, or a comic book. Art, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.
What most people don’t know is that most art crimes are committed not by individuals but mostly by organized groups, or organized crime families. This is because it takes a lot of resources to commit major art crimes. Though it may be easy to steal a piece of art work it is not easy to then find a way to successfully ransom it or to smuggle it out of the country in order to attempt a sale on the black market . An individual would not have the connections or pull to be able to successfully gain anything from stealing art, except maybe a prison sentence.
To learn more about Art Crime check out the museum’s exhibit, on display until April 26, 2010. To read more about Art Crimes click here.
Read our entry about art forgery
Tags: Art Crimes, Crime, Evidence, Museum, National Museum of Crime & Punishment
