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John E. Conklin
Book Code: C4771
ISBN: 0-275-94771-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-94771-2
320 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 3/30/1994
List Price: $82.95 (UK Sterling Price: £47.95)
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 X 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • ...Conklin spares no group or individual in this exposé-museums, dealers, auction houses, corporate collectors, and even the artists themselves are scrutinized. His thorough research is supplemented by a lengthy bibliography. Professionals and general readers alike will find much of interest in this outstanding contribution to a realtively neglected subject.
    —Library Journal
  • Criminologist Conklin's engaging and informative study of crime in the art world is the most thorough examination of this complex subject to appear in years. Art crime includes forgery, fraud, theft, smuggling, and vandalism of fine art, antiquities, and ethnographic objects, and more often than not, it goes unreported. Experts hate to admit to being fooled by forgeries; dealers and collectors often indulge in fraud to inflate value but control costs and many thefts are actually commissioned. Conklin describes examples of each type of art crime and, in the volume's most innovative sections, analyzes the social organization of the art world and the methods by which its denizens establish the value of art.
    —Booklist
Description: This is the only book by a criminologist to look at the full range of crime involving works of art: forgery, fraud, theft, smuggling, and vandalism. It is up to date, drawing on much material from the "boom years" of the art market in the 1980s and continuing up through the 1990s, and assimilating information from a variety of sources: art magazines, newspaper accounts, and the relatively small amount of scholarship on art crime by art historians and criminologists. In addition to considering the motives of thieves, the book looks at the way art theft is socially organized: the types of thefts that are committed, the ways thieves locate art to steal and how they gain access to it, their use of insiders and fronts, and the way they launder stolen art. The relationship between art theft and organized crime, especially drug traffickers, is investigated. After looking at explanations of art vandalism and the way vandals explain their behavior, the book concludes with a consideration of policies to curb art crime. The entire book is written in a highly entertaining way, packed with case studies of numerous crimes and stories of smuggling, grave-robbing, and skullduggery, that will appeal to a general audience as well as professionals and academics in criminology, sociology, and art history.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
  • The Value of Art
  • Fakes and Forgeries
  • Fraud
  • Art Theft: Opportunities and Motives
  • The Social Organization of Art Theft
  • The Distribution of Stolen Art
  • Vandalism
  • Curbing Art Crime
  • Bibliography
  • Index
LC Card Number: 93-11869
LCC Class: N8795
Dewey Class: 364.1
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