As the third largest criminal enterprise, art theft is not only lucrative and pervasive, but also culturally debilitating. In fact, art crime has grown by 10% annually, with only 5-10% of the 50,000-100,000 yearly stolen artworks being successfully recovered. This increase in art crime can be tied to the increasing popularity of using stolen artwork as currency in other illegal activities, such as drug transactions.
Beyond museum art thefts, artworks can also be stolen from private homes and places of worship. These stolen artworks include a wide variety of items ranging from paintings and statues to jewelry and musical instruments. To better understand the story behind art theft, we explored data on stolen artwork to identify trends and relationships between their various attributes, including geographical location, artwork material, and more. In doing so, we answer the following research questions:
Are there patterns or trends in art theft globally and in the US?
What is the context around these stolen artworks?
These questions guide our analysis throughout the remainder of this article to help uncover a clearer picture of the art theft industry.
For our data, we sourced our information from two main data sources: the FBI’s National Stolen Art File and the INTERPOL’s Stolen Works of Art Database.
The FBI’s National Stolen Art File is a publicly available online listing of culturally-significant stolen artwork. Our team web-scraped the online database using the Requests and BeautifulSoup Python libraries. Through this, we were able to collect data on over 4,000 stolen artworks from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s database. This data consists of information on the artwork’s maker/artist, materials, measurements, estimated time period of production, and more.
Additionally, we used the INTERPOL’s Stolen Works of Art Database to further supplement our data. This database is not publicly available and requires an approved account. As such, our team did not receive permission to web scrape the data or directly export the data. Instead, our team manually collected and aggregated data of summary statistics to gain insights on the database’s 52,000 items.
Using data from INTERPOL, we can compare various aspects of art theft around the world, identifying the most pertinent global trends.
Comparing the number of stolen artworks across countries, we see that most stolen artworks are reported in North American countries like the US and Canada, in many South American countries, in European countries including Russia and parts of the Middle East, and in China. In contrast, there are a lack of stolen artworks reported in African countries, potentially due to a weaker monitoring and reporting system available.
INSIGHT 1
Majority of art theft is concentrated in European and Middle Eastern countries.
France, Italy, and Turkey lead by far.
INSIGHT 2
African countries have much less reported art theft, likely due to weaker monitoring and
reporting systems available.
However, the vast majority of stolen artworks are concentrated in a few European and Middle Eastern countries. In Europe, France and Italy lead by far in the global arena of art theft, with 8,133 and 7,721 reported thefts respectively at the time of data collection. Turkey comes in third place with 3,034, an abrupt decrease in comparison to the European art giants. When people think of art in its traditional or classical sense, French and Italian paintings or sculptures often come to mind first.
French and Italian museums are home to some of the most valuable and famous cultural artworks. Their high value makes them a prime target for theft as the global underground black market of art objects and antiques expands. French museums often fall victim to art theft, with an average of 35 museum thefts occurring annually over the last 15 years. These art heists are often the orchestrated work of connected groups of criminals and gangsters who boast deep knowledge about security systems and seasonal museum trends, allowing them to pull off perfect, traceless thefts. Italy, which is also known as an art theft playground, has assembled an elite police squad to battle the illegal excavation of antiquities, looting of unguarded centuries-old churches, and smuggling of precious artworks.
In southwest Turkey, Roman shrines in Bubon were uncovered by farmers more than 50 years ago as archaeological treasure troves hosting valuable bronze statues and antiques of Roman emperors. Artifacts from archaeological sites in Turkey have been the persistent target of looting and have been circulating across the globe for decades. These antiques are slowly being returned to Turkey as the country demands restitution for its cultural works. Just this year, the Manhattan district attorney’s office conducted a string of raids seizing and returning looted Turkish art from American museums valued in the millions.
After extracting and filtering stolen art by item type in the INTERPOL Stolen Works of Art Database, paintings and sculptures/statues totaled roughly 50% of all stolen art. Entries that made up less than 1% of stolen art totals were omitted.
INSIGHT
The most common types of objects stolen were paintings and sculptures,
with paintings being disproportionately stolen.
REASONING
Paintings and sculptures tend to be more well-known and valuable.
The reasoning behind this clear imbalance of paintings being disproportionately stolen was revealed upon examining the Smithsonian Collections Database, which records data on historical and cultural artwork globally. The distribution of object types in the Smithsonian database shows a similar story, in which paintings and sculptures constitute the majority of artworks created and recorded to date. This explains why these object types are the most recorded stolen artworks are they tend to be the most popular, widely available, and valuable.
To see how the distribution of stolen art object types in the US compares to INTERPOL's global data, we turned to the FBI's National Stolen Art File which hosts data on stolen artworks reported to American authorities.
INSIGHT
Physical art has greatest theft; observational tools have least theft.
REASONING
Physical art such as paintings usually have a greater market value. War relics and observational
tools are more niche categories, with likely fewer items or fewer reports.
Similar to INTERPOL's database, this database provides information on the object type of reported stolen art. These object types were grouped into larger categories for simpler analysis. From the data, we found that physical art was the most stolen art form, leading by a significant amount. Physical art includes items such as paintings, books, and print. Observational tools were the least stolen art form. It is important to note that because some of the categories provided by the dataset were so niche and contained only one item, we sorted these categories into broader umbrella categories. Observational tools for instance include items such as navigational instruments, binoculars, and telescopes.
Physical art may lead in the number of artworks stolen because physical art usually has a more significant market value, making them a more lucrative target for theft. Categories such as war relics and observational tools may have less theft because they are more niche categories with possibly fewer items; additionally, this data was taken from the FBI, and less well-known items that likely lie in these categories may not have been reported.
INSIGHT 1
Canvas and Oil were the most common materials in stolen art. This trend is mostly likely due to the
prevalence of paintings in stolen art.
INSIGHT 2
The 19th and 20th centuries have a more wider array of materials which may imply that a more diverse
assortment of materials are being used in art.
Similarly, we wanted to investigate any patterns in the materials of stolen artworks. Canvas and oil were the most common materials in stolen artworks reported to US police authorities, with paper and bronze being significantly less. This can be attributed to the high volume of paintings being created and stolen, as indicated in our exploration of object types earlier. This trend remains consistent throughout the 17th to 20th centuries, though the 19th and 20th centuries appear to have a more even distribution of materials used in stolen art.
INSIGHT 1
Artworks created after the 15th century have higher rates of reported theft.
REASONING
The 15th century marks the start of the Renaissance, which saw a “rebirth” of art as new art techniques and styles were created.
INSIGHT 2
There is a peak in the volume of stolen artworks created in the 20th century.
REASONING
Better technology and tracking records could lead to more pieces of stolen art being recorded.
The line graph above shows the number of stolen art pieces by their time of creation. Stolen art that did not have a known time of creation or were created before the 1st century were excluded. Starting from a creation time of the 15th century, there appears to be an increase in the volume of reported stolen art, likely due to the style of art predominant at the time. The 15th century saw a rebirth of art techniques, known as the Renaissance, during which some of the most high-value pieces were produced. There is also a noticeable peak in the number of stolen artworks created in the 20th century, likely due to better technology, tracking, and monitoring methods that lead to more stolen art pieces being recorded.
INSIGHT
The 1930s (233 stolen works) sticks out when compared to the adjacent ranges.
REASONING
Sudden uptick in stolen artwork can be attributed to the Nazi plunder (Raubkunst) that occurred during World War II.
Hitler was vehemently against modern art movements.
Zooming in on artworks created after the 1500s, the above graph further depicts the robbery of artworks based on their creation date for each decade. We see a strong increase in stolen artworks that were created in the 20th century. This can be for a multitude of reasons, including better data-keeping abilities and technology that makes it easier to track theft, but also simply an increase in the amount of art created over the years. For instance, The Met’s collection features over 330,000 pieces from after 1600, while less than 110,000 pieces from before the 17th century. The museum’s 20th century collection features the highest number of artworks as compared to their collections from other centuries. This implies that over time there should be a steady increase in artwork created, and thus artwork available to steal. While the graph features a generally continuous augmentation in count, the bar representing the 1930s (233 stolen works) sticks out when compared to the adjacent ranges.
This sudden uptick in stolen artwork can be attributed to the Nazi plunder (Raubkunst) that occurred during World War II. As Hitler was vehemently against modern art movements, when the Nazi’s spread their occupation across Europe, much of art that did not fit Hitler’s ideals was either looted or destroyed. Given that most of the war transpired in the early half of the 1940s, it makes sense that there would be a significant increase in stolen art that was created just before this period, as it was these pieces that featured modern elements that went against Hitler’s artistic beliefs (as compared to older, traditional pieces).
Looking within the FBI database, the history of Paul Klee’s 1932 painting, Initial Landscape (German: Initial Landschaft) can also provide specific insight into the abnormal 1930-39 data.
Paul Klee was a German artist who was influenced by the expressionist, cubist, and surrealist movements, all of which went against Hitler’s artistic ideals. Though born in Switzerland, Klee spent much of his artistic career in Germany, including teaching at Dusseldorf Academy, a fine-arts school. However, when Hitler came to power, as a modern artist, Klee was dismissed from his position at the Academy in 1933, and both his house and studio were raided by the Gestapo. Furthermore, a 1937 Munich show featuring Hitler’s proclaimed “degenerate art” featured 17 stolen artworks from Klee, and in that same year, 102 of his works in public collections in Germany were seized. While there is no evidence of Klee’s Initial Landscape being stolen by Nazis, its fitting year of creation accompanied by the history of Klee’s art provides a strong reason for Hitler’s regime to be the reason why it (among other pieces from this time) were stolen.
This line of reasoning goes beyond solely German artists, as on May 27, 1943, “degenerate” paintings by the aforementioned Klee, but also by Pablo Picasso (Spaniard) and Fernand Léger (French), were destroyed by Nazis in a bonfire in the garden of the Jeu de Paume. With this history in mind, the works of Picasso and Leger that are found within the FBI’s list of 1930s stolen paintings are recontextualized, implying evidence of the Nazi regime’s global influence on stolen art, and ultimately providing reasoning for the sudden increase in stolen 30s art. However, with limited documentation of the possession history of these pieces, like the art itself, much of these implications are read between the lines.
Stories like these demonstrate the importance of art in telling the stories of historical events and global cultures, and it's through data that we can begin to paint the full picture.