The wide effects of art theft.

On the International Spy Museum's SpyCast, historian Andrew Hammond talks with Robert Wittman, a founder of the FBI's Art Crime Team who has recovered more than $300 million of stolen art and similar items over the course of his career, including a Rodin sculpture. Wittman discusses some of his past experiences that often involved undercover work and states that 90 percent of art thefts in U.S. museums were found to be inside jobs.

Scotland Yard Investigator (1946).

In Scotland Yard Investigator, a German collector plans a heist when the Mona Lisa is moved to England for safekeeping during World War II. C. Aubrey Smith, Erich von Stroheim, and Stephanie Bachelor costar.

"The Blue Landscape" (1955).

Illustration of Peter Lorre,
ca. 1935

In this episode of The Star and the Story, inspector Peter Lorre of the Sûreté takes on a case involving murder and the theft of a painting. Hillary Brooke costars as an insurance investigator. The script is a product of screenwriters DeWitt Bodeen (Cat People), Frank Burt (Dragnet), and Lou Rusoff (Terry and the Pirates).

The Happy Thieves (1961).

Today would have been the 99th birthday of Richard Condon, who was born in 1915 and died in 1996. He is probably best known for the chilling The Manchurian Candidate (1959) and Prizzi's Honor (1982). His debut novel was The Oldest Confession (1958), which became the film The Happy Thieves. Rex Harrison and Rita Hayworth star as a pair of art thieves plying their trade in Madrid; apparently Hayworth thought little of the film.

Stolen (2006).

Stolen, a documentary by Rebecca Dreyfus, delves into the 1990 heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, with special attention to the role of art detective Harold Smith.

Behind the theft of the Mona Lisa.

In this blog post, Catherine Sezgin of the Assn for Research into Crimes against Art discusses the film The Missing Piece: Mona Lisa, Her Thief, the True Story. The film by Joe and Justine Medeiros, which won Best Historical Documentary at the San Antonio Film Festival in June, looks at the 1911 theft of Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting from the Louvre.

Meet Howard Spiegler, art lawyer.

Voice of America profiles attorney Howard Spiegler, who works to reunite stolen artworks with their rightful owners.
(Hat tip to ARCA blog)

Loot: Inside a US Customs warehouse of stolen antiquities.

The History Blog discusses the New York Post's peek inside a US Customs warehouse that stores stolen antiquities.

New: Journal of Art Crime.

Art thefts are, sadly, big business, and the subject of reader interest, as can be seen in the reception of R. A. Scotti's Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa (2009). Now the nonprofit Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA) has announced the establishment of an academic journal, Journal of Art Crime, that will explore the subject, its history, and its aftermath. Although ARCA's Web site states that the first issue was due to be published in spring 2009, there are no articles, abstracts, or a table of contents posted.

Praeger also has recently published Art and Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World (edited by ARCA director Noah Charney). In addition, ARCA has an interesting blog here, and podcasts, such as this one on the 1961 theft of Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington (1812–14). There are sobering art theft statistics posted as well, such as:

• Estimate of annual criminal income through art crime: $6–8 billion

• Estimated value of artworks stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston: $300-500 million

• Minimum number of reported art thefts worldwide each year: 50,000