Description
Book SynopsisThis book brings together empirical and theoretical case-study research on art and heritage crime. Drawn from a diverse group of researchers and professionals, the work presented explores contemporary conceptualisations of art crime within broader contexts. In this volume, we see ‘art’ in its usual forms for art crime scholarship: in paintings and antiquities. However, we also see art in fossils and in violins, chairs and jewellery, holes in the ground and even in the institutions meant to protect any, or all, of the above. And where there is art, there is crime. Chapters in this volume, alternatively, zoom in on specific objects, on specific locations, and on specific institutions, considering how each interact with the various conceptions of crime that exist in those contexts. This volume challenges the boundaries of what we understand as “art and heritage crimes” and displays that both art, and criminality related to art, is creative and unpredictable.
Table of ContentsIntroduction.- Assay-ssination: Reflections on the Cost of Jewellery and Gem Crime.- Design crime in context: Mass-manufactured design, design-as-art, and Chandigarh’s modernist furniture.- The Evolution of the Belgian Art and Antiques Unit.- Fossil trafficking, fraud, and fakery.- Illicit Excavations and Trade in Antiquities.- New Security Challenges at Museums and Historic Sites: The Case of Spain.- Revisiting the Looting of Site Q through Lidar: A Case Study of Illicit Digging in La Corona, Guatemala.- Securing Borders and Restraining the Illegal Movement of Cultural Property to, from, and within, the Island of Ireland.- Stealing Heritage in Canada.- The Theft of Your Soulmate: Motivations for the Theft of Rare Violins.- UNESCO Emergency Response “First-Aid” Heritage Interventions in Syria during Armed Conflict.- Yellow Journalism: Neutralisation techniques, media validation, and the Rothko vandal.
