In an episode of the History Channel's “America's Book of Secrets,” Erik Nemeth discusses the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist of 1990 and the broader implications of art crime for national security.
Despite a range of legislative and policy interventions, the trade in illicit art and antiquities continues to flourish, resulting in damage to the arts, scholarship, and heritage. RAND Europe explored new ways of curtailing the illegal trade in cultural property.
Despite record museum attendance, booming commercial popularity, soaring prices for artists' work and well-publicized museum expansions, the relationship between visual artists, institutions and patrons faces significant challenges.
Surveys indicate that 72 percent of U.S. museum artworks reside in storage facilities. Experts argue that keeping many of these works in storage is not advancing the museums' missions and, additionally, that maintaining artworks in storage is costly....
