Transcript: Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, program manager,
FBI Art Theft Program
My name is Bonnie Magness-Gardiner. I am the Art Theft Program
manager for the FBI.
The art crime team was established in 2004, partly as a result
of the problem with the Baghdad Museum and the looting of the Baghdad
Museum.
The U.S. government understood at that point that they really
needed a rapid deployment team to go in and investigate this particular
event, and one that was trained especially to look at stolen and
looted art.
Now it took a year or so to get that together, but in 2004 the
rapid-deployment Art Crime Team was put together here at the FBI,
initially with eight special agents and a program manager. Now
we have 13 special agents and myself as the program manager.
There is specialized training involved for the Art Crime Team.
We need to get them familiar with the periods of art, the vocabulary
of art, art history, but more importantly with the business of
art. Most often when we identify stolen art we identify it as it’s
coming back into the marketplace.
The FBI has jurisdiction over certain kinds of cultural property
cases—two, or rather three in particular.
First is interstate transportation of stolen property. And we
have specialized art law, art legislation, and that is the theft
of
major artwork statute. Now this is directed specifically at museums.
Cases come to the FBI in two major ways. One: through local police
departments. When there’s a theft at a museum or a theft
at a residence, the local police are always the first on the scene
and they make the report.
Now if it is within FBI jurisdiction—the object has travelled
across state lines or it’s from a museum—then the local
police often contact the FBI and get in touch with our local Art
Crime Team member and investigate that particular case.
More often, however, we get tips from the public. And I would
like to encourage the public, if they have any knowledge of stolen
art, looted art, art fraud that meets the criteria for our investigation
to submit a tip via the tip line or call their local FBI office.
The National Stolen Art File is the other half of the Art Theft
Program here at the FBI. The National Stolen Art File is, in fact,
exactly what it says. It is a series of entries on objects that
have been stolen—usually within the United States—that
are valued at over $2,000.
Art theft … it’s hard to characterize the problem
absolutely because we don’t really have very good statistics.
Not all art thefts are reported. Many art thefts are actually lootings
from either institutions or from archaeological sites, sometimes
from churches; they don’t even know what’s missing
and therefore it is very hard to evaluate.
That being said, however, it’s estimated that it’s
between four and six million dollars worldwide every year. And
much of that stolen art actually ends up in the United States because
we are a market for art, for cultural property here.
In the U.S., the problem usually centers around residential burglaries
for private collections. That is the normal pattern for a theft
here. However, we also have thefts from museums and may many thefts
form archaeological sites and Native American burials.
The Top Ten list was created really to publicize the problem of
cultural property theft, cultural property looting as well. So
the number-one on our list, though these are not categorized in
order of importance, is the looting of the Baghdad Museum.
We are still looking for this material. It is archaeological material
from 5,000 years ago up to the medieval period that comes from
the center of civilization.
Some of the other thefts on the list include thefts from a major
museum in Switzerland, the Bührle Collection, and that was
in the early part of 2008. There were four paintings stolen, modern
impressionist masters. Two of those were almost immediately returned,
but two still remain unidentified1 and missing.
This is a way of publicizing those specific thefts and asking
the public also that if they have information to provide it to
the FBI.
We have had a great deal of success with the Art Crime Team. Since
our inception we’ve recovered over 850 items valued at over
134 million dollars.
Some of the most important of these would be form a burglary,
a theft, in Sweden in the year 2000, where three paintings were
taken: a Rembrandt and two Renoirs. One of the Renoirs was immediately
recovered, or almost immediately recovered. And the other two were
recovered after a few years, in fact in 2005.
Protecting your own art is really a matter of care and due diligence.
First and most importantly is to have an inventory of those valuable
things that you own, and by valuable I mean valuable to you.
Keep a list, even if it’s as simple as a thimble collection
or as important as modern masterpieces, you have to have a list
with the names of the artists and the titles and the dimensions,
and very importantly images—photographs or video—of
the individual works of art.
Now in terms of safeguarding yourself against buying stolen art,
here’s where you need to do your due diligence. That is,
always buy from a reliable dealer. Make sure through the Better
Business Bureau, through contacting other people in the field,
that this person has a good reputation.
It’s also important that once you identify a specific work
of art that you’re interested in to check out the provenance—that
is the history of ownership. Ask for that from the dealer, but
not only ask for that, check it yourself. Go through the list of
addresses and contact information and make sure that the people
who are named on that list actually did own this work of art, that
it hasn’t been sort of a fictional history of ownership,
and verify for yourself that indeed this is not a stolen work of
art.
1According to Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, the paintings
were identified, but still missing.
More information:
Art
Theft Program
Expert Advice
Art Crime Stories
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