Art theft is such a costly crime since art is meant for everyone to enjoy, and stealing it and selling it for profit only limits that joy to only one person. Which makes the art truly worthless.

Makes it a federal offense to obtain by theft or fraud any object of cultural heritage from a museum. The statute also prohibits the “fencing” or possession of such objects, knowing them to be stolen.

Today, the pilfered works are part of the National Stolen Art File, a database of looted treasures curated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The 23 agents in charge of this effort are part of the FBI’s art crime team. Created in 2004, the team’s mandate is to track down and return stolen art.

Art theft isn’t a victimless crime. It is a seedy, sordid business, linked to drug deals, money laundering and the criminal underworld.

Drug traffickers have been known to use stolen artwork for loan security, and artwork can be traded for weapons. In these cases, McKeogh says, “it is always hoped that the thieves know how to stabilize or care for what are usually fragile items.”2020年8月24日

History’s greatest art heist occurs at a Boston museum (1990) In the early morning, on the day after St. Patrick’s Day, thieves entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, subduing guards who were watching the Boston institution’s grounds at night

The largest-value art theft occurred at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, when 13 works were stolen in 1990 worth a combined $500 million.

1994 theft After the gallery refused to pay a ransom demand of US$1 million in March 1994, Norwegian police set up a sting operation with assistance from the British police (SO10) and the Getty Museum and the painting was recovered undamaged on 7 May 1994.

The National Museum

Depicted by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch in 1893, The Scream is the most famous representation of the modern man facing an existential crisis. However, the 1895 pastel-on-board version of the painting holds the record of the most expensive work of Art sold at auction!2019年6月18日

Munch painted four versions of “The Scream” from 1893 to 1910, depicting a skeletal figure on a bridge holding his face while screaming in agony. The first version, painted in tempera on panel with pastels, is the one owned by the National Museum, and is the only one that bears this inscription

According to Edvard Munch, the inspiration for this painting was drawn from a past event. “The Scream” was a result of the anxiety and fear he felt on a day while walking with two friends. The serene atmosphere, which he had hoped to enjoy, was suddenly interrupted by changes in the sky, caused by the setting sun.

The Scream is part of a larger art collection series that Edvard Munch called The Frieze of Life. In The Scream’s timeless image is a genderless person with a pale face, standing beside a railing with an expansive view of a chaotic environment….

The Scream was not simply a product of stress, or an uncharacteristic moment of panic. It symbolizes the darkly troubled times Munch was experiencing as he dealt with mental illness and trauma, and his attempt to rationalize and explain his experience through what he knew best; painting

As such, The Scream represents a key work for the Symbolist movement as well as an important inspiration for the Expressionist movement of the early twentieth century. Symbolist artists of diverse international backgrounds confronted questions regarding the nature of subjectivity and its visual depiction.

Munch used a mixture of media in his works of art. The two versions of The Scream studied here were found to include oil paints and oil paints thickened with beeswax and also oil crayons containing beeswax and Japan wax, as well as casein pastels, a paraffin wax crayon and at least one gum-bound paint.

EDVARD MUNCH’s famous painting, The Scream, was sold for $119.9 million (£73.9 million) at Sotheby’s in New York last week – making it the most expensive artwork ever sold at an auction

30,000 pieces