There has been more than the usual number of articles about church theft in the past few years. This leads us to believe that theft of religious artifacts around the world is up considerably, because, like all art theft, what is reported is a fraction of what occurs. This may be particularly true because of the perceptual differences of religious art and artifacts. The relationship a worshiper has to a piece is more spiritual than esthetic. That distinguishes it in several ways from artwork the public has access to in museums or galleries. First, its appeal to the viewer is the intimacy one has with the work in its religious context. Placing it behind glass or roping it off has a tendency to underline the monetary value of the work, diluting the religious experience. As much as a monetary value may not be placed on it by the religious institution, that doesn’t remove its sale value to a thief. There is still a very active market and it can still be sold.  Second, historical conservation restrictions in older buildings can prevent the installation of more sophisticated security equipment in the stone, brick or wood-panel construction that was used at that time. The configuration of the architecture may also have produced isolated rooms and hallways, complicating security efforts even further. Lastly, by not operating as a space that displays art as its function, the safeguards afforded art in galleries and museums, is simply not there. There are no security personnel present to view activity and to act as a deterrent. In a sense, the grab-and-run theft that accounts for the majority of art loss could not be easier.

Through conversations with church officials, we have learned that there is rarely a budget for security and almost never a program in place to train personnel in what to look for in the comings and goings of the public. We suggest churches look more carefully at simple measures. Securing pieces to the wall permanently may be necessary if other measures are not taken. Posting someone near the entrance, a volunteer if necessary, provides a deterrent if that person appears to be alert to what people are carrying or concealing.

Of the products on the market, short of expensive sensing and tracking systems and cameras, there are few that provide adequate protection and are affordable. Inexpensive off-the-shelf products designed mostly for home protection can sometimes be modified to allow attachment to a piece of art, but it is a modified application. The only product on the market that is specifically designed to protect hanging art and can fit any budget is Art Guard. The battery operated alarm device can be adapted to most methods of hanging, and any tampering or attempt at theft is met with an alarm loud enough to be heard even in the discreet reaches of a stone building.

In the cultural heritage of any country, its religious art ranks very high. Theft can be reduced if a few small measures are taken.  But, like many galleries and insitutions that are in denial about their vulnerability, a theft may have to occur before any action is taken.

Crime and art appear to be becoming ever-closer bedfellows in our contemporary world. You only have to look at sky-rocketing values to understand why. Prices soar as markets expand, as investors from Russia and India and the Far East all compete.

These are the sort of audacious heists that get lots of attention because, involving world-famous names, they acquire a patina of glamour. But there are thousands of robberies that go all but unreported.

The art world is a rarefied place. Discretion is prized. Dealers prefer not to discuss client lists. Collectors can be very secretive. On top of that, art works are usually whisked out of the country a few days after being stolen. Often they will not emerge again for years. When they do they may well be in the hands of a bona fide person. Investigators will have to pick their way backwards through an often impenetrable succession of contacts. Besides, criminals are quick to benefit from different jurisdictions. Each country has a different statute of limitations for theft. In the Netherlands the thief becomes the owner after 21 years. In Italy the art work is yours if you buy it at public auction.

Art theft is frequently connected with the crimes with which it competes for police attention. It is used as a surety for loans or as currency to be exchanged for a fraction of its legitimate value for drugs, guns or other contraband. Criminals in Dublin, for instance, pulling off a spectacular heist in a country estate, corralled Rubens, Vermeer and Goya into providing venture capital for a drug-dealing ring. In Buenos Aires at the time of the Falklands conflict, Cézanne helped a brutal dictatorship to pull off an illicit arms deal.

What’s the answer? “If everybody in the art trade searched or insisted that the seller had searched the Art Loss Register, it would become impossible to sell unique items of stolen art,” says Julian Radcliffe, the chairman of the register. “That is what happens with stolen vehicles database. That’s why 70 per cent of stolen vehicles are recovered. Only 1 per cent of stolen art works are found.”

Until this sort of checking becomes an international legal standard, some of our loveliest and most beautiful creations will continue to serve our ugliest schemes.

Excerpted form an article by Rachel Campbell-Johnston

Police have issued an international alert for a dozen paintings by masters such as Marc Chagall and Diego Rivera stolen from a wealthy couple’s Los Angeles home during a daytime break-in. The pictures, together worth millions of dollars, include rare works by early 20th century artists Emil Nolde and Kees van Dongen.

Authorities warned auction houses, the FBI and Interpol to be on the alert for anyone trying to sell the paintings and a $200,000 reward for help recovering the pictures was offered. One expert described as among the biggest ever art snatches in Los Angeles and estimated the pictures range in value from $800,000 to as much as $4 million.

“These are world-class pieces,” Richard Rice, senior consultant at Beverly Hills Gallerie Michael, told the Associated Press. “Every single one is museum calibre.”

Police said the thief or thieves got into the house in Encino, a wealthy area of the San Fernando Valley, on August 23 after a maid went out leaving a door unlocked. The artworks were removed from the walls of two adjacent rooms.

The owners, an elderly couple who had amassed their collection over 60 years, were elsewhere in the house at the time. The husband is bedridden and the wife was asleep.

The stolen paintings included pictures by Chagall, Rivera, Hans Hofmann, Chaim Soutine, Arshile Gorky, Emil Nolde, Lyonel Feininger and Kess van Dongen.

Pictures: http://snipurl.com/3oyqe  [www_telegraph_co_uk]

This Japanese bronze sculpture, standing 5 ¾ inches high, was lifted from the Winter Antiques Show. http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/27586/artful-dodgers/.

At the Winter Antiques Show at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in January, Japanese-art dealer Joan Mirviss, alone in her booth while her assistant took a break, had her back to a 19th-century bronze sculpture of two frolicking dogs she had just sold for $8,450. When she turned around, the piece had disappeared. Mirviss dashed to the nearby entrance to alert security, but the thief had escaped. Two months later, at the TEFAF fair in Maastricht, robbers made off with a €1.2 million ($1.9 million) vintage diamond necklace from London jeweler Hancocks.

Art theft may bring to mind midnight break-ins at museums or country manors, but fairs have become enticing targets as well. The Art Loss Register (ALR) keeps no precise count of how many heists occur at these events, but a representative says they probably account for around 5 percent of the annual total. Although that figure is nominal compared with the percentage that occurs in private homes (42 percent in 2007), a partial list of art-fair robberies provided by the ALR reveals that even the major shows are vulnerable.

In November 2006, a Max Ernst painting and an A. R. Penck sculpture were stolen from Art Cologne, and last October an $80,000 sculpture by Simon Starling was swiped from New York dealer Casey Kaplan’s booth during the Frieze Fair, in London. Frieze representative Camilla Nichols declines to offer details but says the “security measures we put in place are in full force as soon as, and as long as, artworks are at the fair, outside the tents, inside the tents and at each exit.”

Fairs also continue to expect dealers to look after their own goods. “Each exhibitor is primarily responsible for the security of his own objects during transportation and presentation of the objects during the fair,” says TEFAF spokesperson Titia Vellenga. Organizers, however, will sometimes help dealers with extra security. A few years ago at the Stockholm International Antiques Fair, five paintings were taken from the booth of Stockholm-based Verner Amell, one of them a landscape by Jan Brueghel the Elder worth €2.6 million ($3.4 million). The burglar hid inside a cabinet before closing and emerged during the night to make off with the booty in a backpack, eluding security guards who gave chase. The following year, the fair offered additional guards to Amell.

Mirviss suspects that her sculpture was concealed under a coat and suggested to Winter Antiques officials (who didn’t return calls for comment) and to Anna Haughton, who runs four fairs at the Park Avenue Armory, that all visitors be required to check their outerwear. Haughton says that can be a touchy issue. “You could get a man coming from his office who wants to spend half an hour at the fair,” she says. “With a long coat-check line, he might just leave. If you want people to buy, they must feel comfortable.”

Haughton adds that after the theft at Mirviss’s booth, she spoke at length with her security team about how far one can go without violating visitors’ civil rights. Her fairs allow guards to search purses and other totes—but not pockets—at the exits. The Armory Show in Manhattan had a mandatory bag inspection a couple of years ago, says director Katelijne de Backer, but dealers complained, and now bags are checked sporadically.

Mirviss speculates that some stealing at fairs is more impulse shoplifting than the planned theft of valuable art objects. Last year, for example, a reveler at the Winter Antiques Fair’s Young Collectors’ Night snapped a butterfly—valueless in itself—off a 19th-century cast-iron statue of Cupid on offer in the booth of New York dealer Barbara Israel.

There was one time, Mirviss recalls with amusement, that she wouldn’t have minded having a few pieces filched. At a show in the Midwestern U.S. some 20 years ago, a prominent woman in the community—and a known kleptomaniac—had to be trailed by an assistant who discreetly wrote checks for the objects her boss swiped. “Unfortunately for me,” says Mirviss, “she didn’t like Japanese art.”

Article originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Art+Auction.