The Psychology of Art Thieves
Ahhh I love me a very good detective story..
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Introduction (Via Boston)
Twenty years ago this week, two men dressed as police officers duped the guards at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and took off with three Rembrandts, a Vermeer, and a handful of other works. It remains the largest theft in the history of the art world, and the daring midnight heist still captures our imagination: Who stole them? Was it for money, or to trade for an IRA prisoner? What kind of black market netherworld did the stolen paintings vanish into?
Charles Hill, a former Scotland Yard detective who has followed the world of art theft closely for decades, says that world doesn’t deserve the air of glamour and mystery that books or movies give it. To steal great works like the Gardner paintings, he says, is less a daring act than a sign of an unimaginative thief, since it’s nearly impossible to sell a stolen iconic work for anywhere near its true value. A far bigger problem for the art world is the peddling of fakes, or the outright destruction of art.
Hill, who has helped recover a museum’s worth of stolen art over the years — including paintings by Vermeer, Goya, and the iconic “The Scream” by Munch — says he expects the Gardner paintings to turn up again someday. But he’s skeptical about the newfangled, CSI-inspired techniques that are being pitched as the ultimate art crime solver. When art vanishes, it doesn’t leave helpful hairs or bloodstains. And to track it down, he said, there’s no match for the old-style work of the traditional gumshoe.
“What I do is I talk to people,” says Hill. “I seek out criminals in a one-to-one manner. Just talk to them straight.”
Hill spoke to Ideas by phone from his home office in southwest London.
IDEAS: How is the psychological makeup of an art thief different from, say, that of a bank robber?
HILL: You’ve got to distinguish what I think are three categories of art thief. The first is the one who makes the money. That’s the thief who steals by deception, frauds, and fake forgeries. The people who do that, and there are a lot of them, make money. They’re also reasonably highly sophisticated and exceptionally bright.
Then there’s the trophy-hunting art thieves. They don’t make much money at all and cause themselves endless aggravation. But they enjoy doing it. It gives them a buzz.
There’s a third category now. These are thieves with purpose. Roughly six months before 9/11, in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar ordered the destruction of the Bamyan statues. A few years ago, his chief acolyte in Pakistan destroyed others. Again, he just destroyed it for the sake of destroying it. They’re prepared to steal by destroying art. The problem with this war on terror we’re fighting is that people look at the fighting. They don’t realize that underneath it is destructiveness of anybody else’ s way of thinking. That theft by destruction is a serious problem and will grow.
