Art Crimes

A young boy talks to U.S. Army military police as the exhibit visited Toledo, Ohio.

Americans Flocked to See This Controversial Exhibit of Berlin’s Art Treasures in the Wake of World War II

Discovered in a salt mine in Nazi Germany, these artworks toured the United States in a questionable move that raised serious ethical concerns

Artifacts on display at Don Miller's farm in 2014. For more than seven decades, Miller unearthed cultural artifacts from North America, South America, Asia, the Caribbean, and in Indo-Pacific regions such as Papua New Guinea.

The F.B.I. Is Trying to Return Thousands of Stolen Artifacts, Including Native American Burial Remains

Five years after the F.B.I.'s six-day raid on a rural Indiana home, the agency is turning to the public for help identifying and repatriating the artifacts

Adolf Hitler's signature pictured on June 11, 2015 in the Weidler auction house in Nuremberg, southern Germany.

There Is a Market for Artworks by Hitler. Many of Them Are Fakes

More than 60 works suspected to be forgeries attributed to the Führer have been seized from a German auction house

The painting was donated to the church by a former Belgian senator 16 years ago.

Possible Michelangelo Painting Disappears From a Belgian Church Days Before Authentication

Pastor Jan Van Raemdonck had observed similarities between the canvas and a 1538 sketch by the Old Master

The predator and her prey

Very Naughty Kitty Slashed 17th-Century Portrait

Apparently Padme is not a fan of Baroque artist John Michael Wright

The virtual museum features seven rooms focused on themes such as correspondence, music and flirtation.

Explore Vermeer’s Surviving Paintings, Together After All This Time, in One Virtual Exhibition

The augmented reality “Meet Vermeer” experience details the Dutch Old Master’s artistic style, life and enduring legacy

Two of the recovered artifacts feature depictions of winged serpents

Authorities Recover Three Moundville Artifacts Stolen in Devastating 1980 Heist

Nearly four decades, ago, the theft claimed 264 Native American items dating back 800 years from the Erskine Ramsey Archaeological Repository

See L.A.'s Strangest Sculpture Shine Bright Once Again

Built in the 1970s, the Triforium was designed to sync light and music but the costly venture was ahead of its time

During World war II, the original Monuments Men rescued more than five million works of art, including Jan and Hubert van Eyck's 1432 "Ghent Altarpiece"

British Army Revives Monuments Men to Salvage Art in War-Torn Countries

The 15-person squad, formed to combat loss of cultural heritage in the Middle East, will specialize in art crime, engineering and archaeology

Watch This $1.4 Million Banksy Painting Shred Itself As Soon As It's Sold

The street artist hid a built-in shredder in the frame of the artwork when he created it in 2006

The unabashed depiction of violence seen in Caravaggio's "Judith Beheading Holofernes" underscores its creator’s bestial inclinations

Caravaggio May Have Died of Infected Sword Wound, Not Syphilis

The Italian Old Master had a notoriously mercurial temperament and was forced to flee Rome in 1606 after killing his rival in a duel

Charles-Dominique-Joseph Eisen, Preparatory sketch with a drawn frame for an illustration of the "Comedy Les Moissonneurs," 1768

Cornelius Wasn’t the Only Gurlitt Sibling to Inherit Nazi-Looted Art

Nicoline Benita Renate Gurlitt received 18 works from her father’s trove of stolen art, and four of these works were just returned to their rightful owners

Egon Schiele, "Woman Hiding Her Face," 1912

63 Works By Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele Are at the Center of the Latest Nazi-Looted Art Dispute

The German Lost Art Foundation removed the artworks from its database, suggesting they were saved by a collector's relatives rather than seized by Nazis

Image of the 12th-century Buddha statue

Crime-Fighting Art Expert Helps Bring Stolen Buddha Statue Back to India

The statue comes home 57 years ago after being stolen

Circumstantial evidence links Rita and Jerry Alter to the 1985 heist.

Did This Couple Steal a $160 Million de Kooning?

The Thanksgiving snapshot places Jerry and Rita Alter in Tucson, Arizona, just a day before the 1985 heist

The sculpture of St. George before and after

Restorationist Botches 16th-Century Spanish Statue of Saint

Reports indicate a local priest hired an art teacher to restore the polychromatic wooden statue, with cartoonish results

An authentic copy of a letter written by Christopher Columbus as displayed at the Vatican. The United States is returning to the Vatican Library a letter written by Christopher Columbus in 1493 announcing his discovery of the New World that was stolen and replaced with a forgery.

Stolen Christopher Columbus Letter Returned to Vatican, But Mystery Persists

The letter, which had been printed in 1493, was replaced with a convincing fake—and investigators still don’t know who committed the crime

Works by artists including Wassily Kandinsky, Emil Nolde and Ernest Kirchner were featured in both the 1937 "Degenerate Art" exhibition and the 1938 British show

How the Brits Refuted Nazi Germany’s ‘Degenerate Art' Exhibition

The 1938 show celebrated works by German Expressionists, defended artists on world stage

Theories on the painting's fate include destruction by fire, earthquake, and gnawing rats in an abandoned barn

New Clues Emerge in Search for Stolen Caravaggio

The nativity scene taken from Sicilian chapel in 1969 may have ended up in Switzerland

"Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan" by Ilya Repin

Man Attacks Ivan the Terrible Painting, Blames Vodka

The painting has been a focal point of recent debate around the notorious tsar’s image

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