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Bonnie Magness-Gardiner: The FBI has worked on art theft cases, cultural property crimes,
for many, many years. It far precedes the creation of the Art Crime Team.
In 2003, when the Baghdad Museum was looted, the U.S. government generally,
and the FBI in particular, noted that there was a real need at that instant
to have a rapid-deployment set of law enforcement personnel who could go in
and know something about art, how to handle it, cultural property crime
and how to investigate it. Indeed, having a national investigative team
has been very valuable in the successful investigation and prosecution
of these cultural property cases.
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The Art Crime team support agents on cases and provides annual training.
The most recent training was in December in New York City.
Once a year we bring them all to New York. And the nature of art crimes
cultural property crimes, is that they tend to be national and international.
Thus it’s important for two reasons to
get the agents to a single place once a year for training.
First, to provide them with some background in the business of art
and art handling, conservation, art history, analytical techniques.
But also to allow them the opportunity to speak to each other
about their ongoing cases.
Special Agent David Kice: So I’m learning not only how other agents have
worked these cases from start to finish and taken
them to prosecution. But then I’m also learning from experts
in the art world about authentication and curation,
both in terms of an art historical perspective and a scientific perspective.
Magness-Gardiner: There is a very profound cultural significance
to these works of art. Sometimes they are Native American artifacts that
need to go back to their tribal owners. In some cases they
are masterpieces of art that have come from private collections
and they go back to those private collections.
Special Agent Geoff Kelly: For the last eight years
I’ve been the case agent for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
robbery investigation. There were 13 works of art that were taken.
There were 11 paintings, a beaker, and the finial off a
Napoleonic flag. Included in the 13 works of art
was a Vermeer, which is one of only 35 Vermeers in existence,
so that is an extremely valuable painting in and of itself,
along with some Rembrandts, some Degas sketches.
Magness-Gardiner: Art crime has a special allure
for the public. It may be because so many of these major heists
have been visualized formally in the movies and there’s this glamour
of Cary Grant or Pierce Brosnan as the thief who
is highly cultured and gorgeous and has beautiful clothes and
moves in a very high social setting. The reality,
of course, is quite different. They tend to be burglars
with no particular interest in art.
Special Agent Kelly: These items that are taken are part
of our cultural heritage, and as such it’s important
that we try and expend all available resources to get them back.