Journal of Art Crime Publishes Article on Québec Art Crime Squad

Quebec's Art Crime Squad

The Journal of Art Crime (Spring 2011) published an article on Québec's Art Crime Squad. The ARCA blog ran the Q&A with the team in April here.

Jean-François Talbot recently emailed me to thank the ARCA Blog for recent coverage on art reported stolen (see the post here) and to inform me that the team is now being led by Sargent Alain Dumouchel.

Photo (left to right): Jean-François Talbot, Alain Gaulin, Alain Dumouchel, and Sylvie Dubuc.

ArtInfo's Benjamin Genocchio raves about the expanded MMFA

Benjamin Genocchio for ArtInfo has done a flattering and intelligent critique of the new wing of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.  The photo above is from the ArtInfo website; the building on the left is the one that was robbed in 1972.  One of the questions about Canada's largest art theft could be how it affected the museum in Montreal? Well, after closing for three years to renovate, and moving from a fairly Anglophile base some 150 years ago to a bilingual institution provides inexpensive access to Canadian and European art -- it's doing just fine, merci beaucoup!

Montreal Gazette Has Photos of New Wing of Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

The glass is Tiffany, the building of the new wing of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is gorgeous and will hold musical events.  Montreal Gazette published photos online in April.  The official opening is scheduled for October 15.

The Blue Bird Cafe fire 39 years later

Blogger, journalist and Montreal historian Kristian Gravenor has written an excellent post on "Coolopolis" about the fire at the nightclub two days before the theft of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. When I was doing research on Canada's largest art theft, I had the impression that news of the 37 deaths from the arson fire had eclipsed the museum theft. When I was visiting friends in NDG, they remembered the nightclub fire but not the museum theft. Then of course a few days later 11 Israeli athletes were murdered in Munich at the Olympics which dominated the headlines internationally and was memorialized in subsequent books and movies.

Alain Lacoursière Featured in Joshua Knelman's article in Globe & Mail: Art Theft Linked to Organized Crime

In Joshua Knelman's article in the Globe and Mail, Police cracking down on a hotbead of hot art in Quebec, Alain Lacoursière cites a link between stolen art and organized crime. Hell's Angels held "caches" of stolen art and a forged Cézanne that was headed for an auction house for a money laundering scheme.

Joshua Knelman is author of the book Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives through the Secret World of Stolen Art, published this month by Douglas & McIntyre. I have ordered it through Amazon.ca and look forward to reading it.

The Associated Press: "Greek police recover stolen Rubens painting"

The Associated Press has reported the slimmest of details that police in Athens have recovered a Rubens painting likely taken by three masked robbers from the Fine Arts Museum in Ghent in 2001. The painting may be "The Hunt for the Caledonian Wild Boar". Two people were arrested in association with this painting, but in a second raid six more were arrested and a mix of antiquities recovered. Officially, the police are not being specific.  It appears to be some kind of 'organized' crime network.

The painting was allegedly worth less than the second painting grabbed and lost during the heist, according to a 2001 article in the Independent ("Bungling art thieves let masterpiece slip").

Journal of Art Crime publishes "The Skylight Caper", the story of Canada's largest art theft, in the Spring 2011 issue

The Journal of Art Crime, ARCA's peer-reviewed academic journal on the interdisciplinary study of art crime, has published "The Skylight Caper", the story of Canada's largest art theft. You may read more about it here on the ARCA blog.