[MSN] Charney: ‘Sexy’ art crime not just in movies

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Charney: ‘Sexy’ art crime not just in movies

Noah Charney thinks a lot about stealing expensive art.

Dressed in a sports coat and shiny leather shoes, Charney, a leading 
researcher of art crime and the author of the novel “Art Thief,” spoke 
to a room of about 25 at a Calhoun College Master’s Tea on Monday, later 
offering signed copies of his new novel for sale.

Charney said he hopes to dispel the misconception that Picassos are only 
stolen in movies. In Italy alone, for example, 20,000-30,000 art thefts 
are reported each year, he said.

After money laundering and the trafficking of weapons and drugs, art 
theft is the fourth most-common criminal activity worldwide. They result 
in more than $6 billion per year in stolen goods, assets which may fund 
organized crime or even terrorism, according to the Association for 
Research into Crimes against Art, an international consortium on art 
crime that Charney founded.

“Eighty percent of ‘sexy art crimes’ are funding other illicit 
activities,” Charney said.

The 27-year-old, who was born in New Haven, earned graduate degrees in 
art history from the Courtauld Institute in London and Cambridge University.

He said he has used his art history degrees in a nontraditional way — to 
become a pioneer in the study of art crime.

“My work is largely theoretical,” he said. “I see artwork as a visual 
riddle, with the act of intellectual engagement as part of the viewer’s 
sense of enjoyment. … That’s a very bombastic way of saying you learn 
s--- by looking at art.”

His mother, Diane Charney, a professor of French literature at Yale, 
said her son’s work may help bring an easily marketable but 
underrepresented subject to a wide audience.

“I’m a big fan of art theft adventure films like ‘The Thomas Crown 
Affair,’” she wrote in an e-mail. “But until I learned from Noah about 
the magnitude and severity of art crimes and their link to international 
terrorism, organized crime and the drug trade, I never really imagined 
the importance of what Noah was undertaking.”

By conducting research into the mentality of art criminals using the 
principles of psychology, criminology and deductive logic, he said he is 
planning to construct a database on past thefts. In order to maintain 
their reputations and attract art donors, some museums are hesitant to 
contact police when their security systems have been breached, he said, 
a trend which has caused a deficit of evidence on art thefts. For this 
reason, he hopes to assemble data independently in order to “extrapolate 
trends” into what motivates art crime.

He said an international organization is needed to track missing 
artwork, since art stolen from one nation often surfaces in another.

Charney said he has collaborated with investigators from the FBI, 
Scotland Yard, the Spanish Policia and the Italian Carabinieri to 
understand and possibly help improve their responses to art crime, an 
area often overlooked by the authorities, especially in the United 
States. While the Carabinieri employs 300 full-time agents specializing 
in art crime, the FBI has only eight.

Some students at the talk said Charney’s comments highlighted the 
pertinence of the subject.

“[Charney] is leading the way on efforts that should have been running 
long ago,” Pete Martin ’10 said. “I’m surprised the public fascination 
with crime hasn’t settled on art crime yet.”

Martin is a staff columnist for the News.

Stolen art can be used as collateral for illicit goods or bribes for 
political favors, or can be held for ransom, Charney explained. He said 
police once raided a deal in which a painting was being traded for weapons.

With the solution rate of art crimes at a comparatively low 10 percent, 
Charney said he hopes his research will help investigative organizations 
and better train the personnel attending to museum security systems.

“The poor recovery rate is not helped by the lack of complicity between 
museums and police,” he said. “An alarm is only as good as the 
responsiveness of the guards meant to attend to it. We don’t need to 
throw money at high-technology security.”

The author discussed his novel as an attempt to bridge non-fiction with 
high-suspense entertainment, explaining that many of his novel’s twists 
and turns can be figured out by “looking deeper” into the dialogue.

Several students said Charney’s talk piqued their interest in reading 
his book.

“It is hard to reach the general public with an esoteric, rather dry, 
nonfictional literary account, which is why I liked his idea of 
converting facts about art crime into a readable novel,” Elizabeth Ralph 
’10 said. “It would be great if he could bridge the gap between art 
history textbooks and entertaining but inaccurate beach-trash like ‘The 
DaVinci Code.’”

Despite Dan Brown’s international success for writing “The DaVinci 
Code,” Charney called it “an annoying book” because of what he called 
its arrogant tone and many inaccuracies.

Charney said he hopes his novel portrays the art world more accurately, 
since he has spent years studying the field and has interned at auction 
houses.

In addition to the release of his new novel, Charney has a number of 
projects slated for release in the coming year, including a documentary 
television series and an art-crime drama.

Charney will give a reading and book-signing at Atticus Bookstore and 
Café on Thursday.

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