Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft

by Simon Houpt

Book Overview

Priceless masterpieces...Brazen thefts: The true story behind the blank spaces on the museum walls. What kind of person would dare to steal a legendary painting--and who would buy something so instantly recognizable? In recent years, art theft has captured the public imagination more than ever before, spurred by both real life incidents (the snatching of Edvard Munch's well-known masterwork The Scream ) and the glamorous fantasy of such Hollywood...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1402728298
• ISBN13: 9781402728297
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Sterling
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 2.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.4" x 10.2"

Customer Reviews

Notes for the "Art Thief"

This books seems to serve as the underlying notes for the novel and just published book, "The Art Thief", by Noah Charney, which is a very twisty and complicated "Who Done It" about multiple art thefts. This one is an interesting read. However, I would leave "The Art Thief" on the shelf for someone else to steal.

Museum of the Missing

Noiw this is better than fiction! Exciting! Real life adventures of missing art and I enjoyed this book immensley and purchased several for friends. Don't miss it.

Beatifully Made Book

This is a book you will pick and and leaf through just for the art history if nothing else. What makes it so much more than just your average coffee table book is the little known details of famous art thieves and their craft. I loved the glimpse into the world of auction houses and collectors who are too rich to be famous in the usual sense. The subject matter is fascinating when presented in such a lucid and well organized manner. The illustrations are top-notch. A must for serious museum goers and art history aficionados.

Excellent book on the rarified world of art crime

This book gives a fascinating view into the rarified and exclusive world of art collection, art theft, and art recovery. This book is well written and the lithographs that accompany the text are excellent. There are side explanations throughout the book about the more fine points of the art collections, artists, thieves, and art investigators. The author has done a good amount of research into the most famous and most recent art crimes and he provides details of how it all happened and whether the works were recovered or not. In the popular culture, the topic of art theft and recovery is seen almost as a glamorous enterprise. Indeed, Hollywood films such as "The Thomas Crown Affair" have helped to boost that image. In this book we learn that, aside from some exceptional cases, most of the time art theft is perpetrated by true thieves and criminals. Correspondingly, the effort of art recovery is done by normal law-enforcement agents, whose lives are sometimes on-the-line during the sting operations. It was somewhat shocking to learn that in spite of the large monetary value of the thefts, when the thieves are apprehended and prosecuted, they often receive sentences of less than two or three years.