Three Old Master paintings of “very high value” were stolen from a University of Oxford gallery this week. The audacious heist follows a spate of smaller gallery thefts across the UK in the last few months, including the attempted burglary of Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. Continue reading
In the early hours of Monday morning, exquisite diamond jewellery of “immeasurable worth” was stolen from the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden. The dramatic heist is possibly the largest post-war art theft in history. Continue reading
An art detective has criticised a criminal court in Bristol for focussing on “conspiracy theories” surrounding around a multi-million pound art heist that took place at the Bulmer Mansion in Bruton, Somerset. Continue reading
“It may sound ridiculous, but please do not dig any holes on the Kalandeberg”, the Mayor of Ghent instructed its citizens on Friday (15 June) after it emerged that a missing masterpiece may be buried under the cobbled square in the city centre. Continue reading
Anti-mafia investigators in Italy are closer than ever before to solving one of the world’s top 10 international art crimes. Continue reading
“Art galleries, auction houses, academic institutions and collectors must be vigilant about recognizing and identifying signs of theft and trafficking”, New York lawyer, Cyrus R. Vance, said following the repatriation of several stolen artefacts from the United States to Italy last Thursday (25 May).
Looted from archaeological sites in Italy in the 1990s, the objects were smuggled overseas to the US. Six of the seven items were seized from a Manhattan gallery in April this year while the seventh object was located in another gallery in Midtown Manhattan. They include a Greek bronze from the 3rd or 4th century BC, an oil flask from 340 BC and a wine jug from 650 BC. Continue reading
Researchers expect a host of new restitution claims will arise out of an investigation into the expropriation of art in post-war East Germany.
The German Lost Art Foundation, the organisation established by the German government in 2015 to fund research into art theft perpetrated by the Nazis, is to receive public funding to investigate the looting of cultural property during the Soviet Occupation and the Cold War. Continue reading
A new US art restitution law is being put to the test by the heirs of a Holocaust victim to recover two watercolours by Egon Schiele.
‘Woman in a Black Pinafore’ (1911) and ‘Woman Hiding Her Face’ (1912), which have a combined estimated value of US$5 million (£4.04 million) are said to have been among 449 artworks confiscated by the Nazis from the collection of Fritz Grünbaum during World War II. An Austrian Jewish entertainer, Grünbaum was murdered at Dachau concentration camp in 1941. Continue reading
Police have arrested two men in Folkestone in connection with the theft of a copy of Banksy’s graffiti artwork ‘Art Buff’, The Guardian reports.
The original piece was the subject of a groundbreaking legal dispute in 2015. Dreamland Leisure Limited, the tenant of the property on which the mural appeared in 2014, cut it out of the wall and sent it to a New York gallery for sale. Determined to save ‘Art Buff’ for Folkestone, arts charity the Creative Foundation took legal action against Dreamland on the advice of specialist art lawyers Becky Shaw at Boodle Hatfield and Tim Maxwell now at Charles Russell Speechlys. Continue reading
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