Art Theft: A Very Lucrative Business | Secrets of the Exhibit | Perspective

paper was light gold in medieval times i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] if you were to open up a museum or art gallery of all the stolen artwork you would have an amazing institution with like 166 rembrandts 167 renoirs it appears that some individuals had been casing the museum and that they were truly professionals they knew exactly how to get into the case work they knew what they were after whoever was the thief he had very good taste because it's a very beautiful pair of shoes it was a bold theft with a lot of clumsiness involved they would have taken a knife and just sliced along what's called the sight edge one painting can go for over a million dollars [Music] the black pool by french painter gustav corbay [Music] ornate 200 year old slippers that were worn by an indian prince the coming storm by dutch artist cornelius krieghoff [Music] these are all rare and beautiful objects of art and antiquity they were also all stolen victims of one of the most mysterious illegal activities in the world art theft in hollywood films professional art thieves are stylish and the heist they devise are high tech but few of us know much about the reality of this shady business how do thieves dupe sophisticated security systems to steal from art galleries and museums and who's buying priceless original art that can never safely be shown again with each piece that is taken from a public gallery a little part of history disappears every year about ten thousand works of art are reported stolen around the world a hundred thousand art objects and antiquities have been stolen from museums in the last two decades alone the recovery rate is 20 percent but the weight for their return may be as long as 30 years and then recovered objects are often badly damaged and require extensive restoration museums and galleries primary objective must be to protect the art and antiquities to keep them safe and sound even still fbi reports estimate that the market in stolen art and artifacts is massive ranking only behind drug and gun trafficking [Music] i think you can speak to anyone in law enforcement and there's especially an international community but uh art theft is certainly recognized as a major crime international major crime the last figures i saw i think were from the fbi and interpol that that stated that the the international trade of not just artwork but artifacts antiquities was about six billion u.s i mean a thief is going to steal artwork for one reason and one reason only and that's to make money whether they sell it at a ridiculous price whether they already have a buyer right because there are people throughout the world who are who are obsessed with their art collections and maybe it's bragging rights to show off to their rich friends that they have this art piece if you were to open up a museum or art gallery of all the stolen artwork you would have an amazing institution with like 166 rembrandts 167 renoirs and the list goes on and on and on in the past art galleries and museums did not have the kinds of high-tech security systems that are in use today thinking 45 years ago or more security then would have been very crude probably mostly door contacts on exterior doors maybe door alarms that sounded an audible alarm so if you were nearby you could hear the the alarm go off so this would be i would think very archaic compared to today's standards even still art thieves needed to be clever and well informed to pull off a heist a high-profile robbery in hamilton ontario in 1960 was only possible because thieves knew enough about the existing security system to find weaknesses in it helen hadden has been a volunteer at the art gallery of hamilton for almost three decades she vividly recalls events surrounding the robbery it was a bold theft with a lot of clumsiness involved but they were crafty enough to come in a rear door which did not set off any kind of alarm because the the minimal alarm system there may have been a door or doors that were not alarmed a door contact could be easily circumvented not to cause an alarm or a wire cut and they would not know it so yes it would been easily done back then the art gallery of hamilton is no longer situated in the building that was robbed the original gallery was opened in 1913 in the space formerly used as the city's public library it was a very modest one floor gallery composed of six rooms but the thieves elected to break in through a lower panel of the rear emergency exit door which therefore brought them right into the room called the jewel box room which contained the masterpieces of the gallery the stars of the collection were all conveniently located in this one wing of the gallery so it was a natural target for the thieves dating mostly from the 19th century the paintings that were stolen are invaluable pieces in art history created by important artists these are their stories well gustav corbay along with man a uh considered the two great heroes of french realism in the 19th century um which was an avant-garde movement um as corby said i've never painted an angel because i don't see angels so this um total revolution in art whereas before there was the academy telling painters to paint historical subjects and mythological subjects a very finished style corby rebelled against that and painted ordinary life in a very broad manner and prided himself on his thick handling of the paint so her revolutionary style and approach to subject matter lipui noir was from his native region which is ornate in eastern france near germany and he actually made very many versions of that particular subject basically a gorge with a river flowing from it called le pui noir probably a better translation would be black pool well the coming storm was painted by a dutch-born artist called cornelius kriekhoff well it's small and quite meticulously painted and it shows uh um for booting looking sky at the right and the rushing river at the lower right and uh a canoe being hurriedly carried up a bank uh into the forest so it's a typical creek off but he rendered atmosphere beautifully he was a good well-trained artist well he painted exclusively in quebec province and he painted between quebec and montreal because he lived in both places so a lot of his scenes are uh they're rather he's rather like a canadian bruegel you know bruegel painted in europe peasant scenes and cornelius kriekhoff could be considered our canadian bruegel this is an important piece that was handled brutally in the theft its return and restoration was a critical priority for the gallery so this is a wonderful portrait uh by henry phantom island tour of fitz james painted in 1867. okay well it's a wonderful work to have um because really fantastic his career divides itself interestingly into several different subject categories floral and fruit still lives which he mainly did because they were so commercially popular amongst his english audience and these imaginative fantasy subjects based on opera or mythology but also portraiture and it really is in portraiture where he excels and so this is a portrait that really underlines his technical observation his skill at painting and then that quiet reserve yet intense presence that he gives to his sitters and it's an interesting work as well in terms of the fact that it is rare work um it's related to a commission for a large group portrait of the dowager duchess to fitz james and her 15 grandchildren that was never realized um supposedly the artist found it difficult to pose that many small children and keep them still long enough to paint them um but for me phantom tours always had a special place in my heart because of his skill and that quiet uh presence that he gives to his portraits so it's wonderful for me to have this portrait in our collection then the other canadian artist involved was james wilson maurice of montreal who grew up in a with a wealthy background and was trained in the law but largely lived his night his life abroad in europe largely in france but he was also sort of a bird of passage and he painted in other countries like morocco with matisse and and his works are are small but exquisite and there was our works that were stolen were largely venetian subjects so there were three in the theft by maurice one is uh the corner of the doches palace in venice and one is called etude venice which shows a woman with auburn hair in the foreground and the other is uh another venetian subject some of the stolen works were created in very significant art communities and movements still life by george brock from 1926 and george brock again a major european modernist of the 20th century who along with paolo picasso invented cubism in the early part of the 20th century this particular work comes from later in his career but you can certainly still see the influence of cubism with the flat decorative shapes and the form abstracted forms of the objects whether the fruit or the cup on the table the bremner is a building with lots of trees in the foreground and a beautiful treatment of shadow he was a major canadian artist and it was painted in france and it's called martig we own numerous works by william bremner in the collection he's a traditional painter i would say in the conservative tradition all these works of art were high profile and big money it's amazing that they were vulnerable to theft in any way the thieves may have been monitoring this gallery for some time to find a weakness in its security system seems the general consensus from the newspaper reports at the time would suggest that that particular gallery it was a quick way to take some very valuable works they were in and out possibly within the half hour and they did limit themselves to the precious paintings so it's possible they had been reckon ordering it's possible with such a small amount of time to execute the crime the thieves were brutal with the art despite knowing the value of these masterpieces a great deal of damage was done they treated everything so badly that it's hard to know what respect they had for what they were doing as well they cut virtually eight works out of their frames with a knife as an expert conservator a critical part of sandra lawrence's job description is forensic analysis of damage to artworks what we have on the screen are two of the paintings that were in the group that were stolen the one on the the left is the young fitz james by ari fanta latour and this is the still life by georges brock the fontanto tour was actually cut out of its frame so if the thiefs said come along here's the painting in the frame they would have taken a knife and just sliced along what's called the site edge this would be if you can just look in the corner here what a painting would be like in the frame ignoring the cut lines of course uh the painting would sit like this so that when the thieves came into the gallery rather than trying to take the whole painting away in the frame they simply cut around like this now just to look at the back of this so that we can see what it looks like you can see that the painting rests inside the frame on this little ledge and that little edge is called the rabbit or the rebate they cut the painting off rolled it up to take it away and what was left behind was this stretcher with the residue of the painting on it they smashed all the frames they were hindered by the fact that one of the very large french works was backed with plywood and it resisted their efforts so it was thrown to the floor and uh smashed and another smaller work but very valuable work was snapped in two so all the frames were broken and the works were removed rolled up the next morning the gallery's superintendent arrived at work and discovered the devastating evidence of the theft in gallery six ten frames lay broken and empty most pieces were on canvas and were cut out of their frames presumably for ease of transport and concealment but one painting proved too much of a challenge for the thieves martin luther's doubts by james tissot was savagely slashed down the middle when frustrated thieves couldn't remove it from its backing sadly this piece would prove too badly damaged to ever be displayed again upon investigation the police soon concluded the thieves had sawed a rough hole through a bottom panel in the rear door of the gallery the 1960s rudimentary security system had failed to activate the thieves must have known the alarm was intended to ring only if the door was opened by force police combed the gallery for fingerprints and uncovered very little detectives suspected the thieves belonged to a nationwide art theft ring although these suspicions were never confirmed months later newspaper tip-offs hinted that the thieves had attempted to make a deal with the gallery's insurance company but this was only more speculation there was an anonymous call me to the police a few days after the theft asking if there was a reward and one newspaper account hinted at the fact they were attempting to negotiate with the insurance adjusters because at the time of the theft the dozen works that were stolen or damaged basically the insurance value was about 55 000 in the case of james wilson maurice and we own a number quite a number of marie's works in the hamilton collection at that time in the evolution of canadian art there were not high evaluations on a lot of canadian artworks several in the in the theft were only valued at fifteen thousand dollars each in 1995 at a joyner auction in toronto a work of his called bull ring marseille sold for 529 000 so that gives you an idea of the escalation in canadian art prices very esteemed and we're lucky to have as many as we do in the collection as and when you think today a work by brock a painting by brock alone one painting can go for over a million dollars u.s but those there was a lot of speculation and because so much of the whole thing is shrouded in mystery it's very difficult to know in april 1960 ten paintings were cut out of their frames and stolen from the art gallery of hamilton after a year of exhaustive police work there were very little leads to go on it would seem that detectives and the art gallery had given up the search the assumption was that the thieves had found a buyer or had destroyed the works after the insurance settlement of 52 300 the gallery had given up on the missing paintings it seemed that the whereabouts of the masterpieces and the identity of the thieves would remain a mystery but long after everyone had given up hope an anonymous call had surprising results five years later on the 2nd of july 1965 there was another anonymous phone call and a voice said to the police are you still interested in those paintings stolen from the art gary of hamilton and the police were directed to a location uh out near at king's forest area near uh mount albion and uh ironically across the road from the police rifle range and the works were recovered rolled up because they'd all been taken out of their frames the gallery was ecstatic to recover the pieces but concerned about their condition after five years without proper treatment and protection so when they were recovered it was found that many of them had dobs of crude color applied to them and for what reason it's impossible to know it was a clumsy kind of thing and it's really astounding after five years that they would come back in relatively good condition i remember reading a report and in paper at the time that t.r mcdonald the director then said that basically gone for two years probably destroyed because again if they were stolen and then the thieves realized they couldn't get rid of them easily typically they would just destroy them but somehow they were kept intact because the works became officially the property of the insurance company there had to be quite a bit of negotiation and strategy involved for the va before the gallery to recover the ownership of the works but through various strategies uh involving different kinds of payments that was accomplished so they were fairly quickly the property of the ark area of hamilton once again but the important thing is they came back that's the most important thing although the works were returned many were too damaged to be displayed and needed extensive conservation luckily the gallery had the foresight to retain the pieces left in the gallery after the theft this allowed conservators to join the pieces back together [Music] it was a painstaking procedure requiring exceptional expertise [Music] works went off to the national gallery of canada conservation laboratory but i do have to say the conservation of the works was superb and even though the thieves had dobbed many of the works with a crude color there's no no evidence whatsoever except for the fountain later that anything was ever destroyed or interfered with sandra lawrence explains the meticulous work that was required to restore the stolen paintings in addition to the damage that was caused by simply cutting the paintings out of the frame they were also rolled and we don't know how they were stored or handled over the five years that they were away from the gallery so a number of other damages did happen to the paint layers on all of the paintings and this is probably one of them here probably actual paint losses and what you're seeing here is retouching so it's not original paint it would be painted slightly differently than the original on purpose so that it could be detected later as a restoration during restoration the materials used by the conservator should always be distinguishable from the original materials that makes them easy to remove without damaging the original paint if the work ever needs a new treatment the idea is that for the standard viewer or the normal viewing distance that it would be not detectable so that it doesn't interfere with your enjoyment of the painting but that on very close inspection or examination that it is detectable that's one of the principles of conservation treatment every material ages in a different way so a color match or a restoration that is a perfect match today might not be in the future conservators can use high-tech tools to detect different layers of treatment what we've got here in front of the painting is what's known to most people as a black light or i would call it an ultraviolet light what it is is a fluorescent light with special gases and a special coating in the tube so that the light that is coming out of it is basically the ultraviolet section of the visible light spectrum or just beyond the visible-like spectrum in the ultraviolet area in this case it's a fluorescent tube and what happens here is there's a certain energy that comes from the ultraviolet light that when it hits certain materials it causes some electrons to bounce about in those materials and when they go back to where they belong they emit energy and that energy is seen by us as fluorescence so that kind of greeny glow that we're getting from the varnish on the surface of this painting that kind of greeny patchy glow that you can see that is the varnish fluorescing and as soon as i take the black light away from it the energy source is gone and the fluorescence ceases what using this black light helps us see is for example the fluorescing of the varnish it tells us that it's a natural resin varnish and that it's been on this painting for some time in order to have achieved a state where it's fluorescing like this it also can give us a lot of information about old damages and retouches up here on the little boy's head and a little above that are quite dark these are all damages that have been retouched probably retouched over over top of some very old varnish and also they're done in a very different using different pigments and different medium than the original painting we see some more here by the collar over to this edge and all along this edge there's a very dark line that suggests to me that that is actually a line that was the cut line and we're seeing the retouches so this retouching or in painting is what shows up as dark in this view it isn't a definitive tool but the information that we get from using it can be very very helpful in diagnosing the actual condition of the painting in the case of the fantan le tour the damage was extensive the process of restoration was a huge challenge for the conservators you can still see some lines that are probably related to where the earlier damage was looking at the painting in a slightly different lighting conditions helps us to see anomalies that are on the surface that under perfect lighting we would not see and right now you're probably seeing it with reflected light and with that you're probably seeing a line that runs around the painting right about here i think you can just see it above my finger here comes up the right edge and runs again a little bit across the top that could be the original line where it was cut another possibility if you look very closely along the top edge you can just barely see another line and that also could be the line where the cut happened the painting the bra seemed to have been pulled out of the frame totally on its stretcher in this case the stretcher was left behind in in the damaged frame and only the part that was cut was taken away so when the two pieces were reunited you could match up how they fit together and then do a kind of a mending job and then retouching to make it all look good with great foresight not ever knowing that the paintings would someday come back to the gallery the art gallery actually retained these stretchers with the residues of the paintings on them so that when the paintings were recovered it was possible to match them up again and how that happened was the pieces that had been returned which would be this piece here was sent to a conservator along with the piece that was left behind which we will take off the stretcher like this the next step would be to take what was left of the painting and to flatten it and then to take the part that had been stolen and try and match it up again but if you can imagine that these pieces had been separated for five years the bits of canvas that especially that had been away from the gallery would have been expanding and contracting edges would have been fraying so the match up was not a hundred percent the next thing would be to take something called a facing tissue which is very much in conservation terms like a band-aid these facing tissues are applied to the front of the painting with a kind of adhesive that holds it into place the pieces then transferred like so onto another piece of fabric and it's actually completely adhered or stuck down to that other piece of fabric this piece of fabric here is called a lining and then finally the entire structure would be re-stretched over a new stretcher this whole piece would then be brought over placed onto the new stretcher like so and so you have your original painting and you have the lining canvas so if you look at the back you will only see the lining canvas so that in a nutshell is the process in 1960 ten paintings were stolen from the former art gallery of hamilton five years later they were mysteriously recovered and meticulously restored since these paintings were stolen over four decades ago much has changed in the line of gallery and museum security today most galleries like the newly renovated art gallery of hamilton employ a sophisticated combination of highly trained guards and modern security technology individual paintings often have their own security system while carefully planned architecture makes thefts more and more difficult thieves operate in a mysterious underworld so museums and galleries need some security secrets of their own when i think of the movies i think of the thomas crown affair and how sometimes you can associate art thieves being true gentlemen which is wrong they're quite violent today as far as technology goes uh someone busting through the glass roof of an institution would probably only get that far before they're detected so as far as the lasers go they have been employed but i think for most applications it's a little far-fetched cont considering what's available on the marketplace today for protection for cultural property and any time a museum or an art gallery is designed there are architectural considerations and standards now in the museum in our gallery community for design sight lines there is the international console on museums which we call icon back in the 80s started developing standards for museums and galleries a lot of museums and galleries adopted those standards and still do to this day over and above that there is certainly much more higher level of training for security staff the sophistication of alarm systems and camera systems the technology that's available today is second to none [Music] even with technological advances in security technologies theft prevails it isn't only artwork that is on the list for thieves antiquities and cultural artifacts are also prime candidates as was witnessed in toronto ontario in early 2006. [Music] that's when this pair of ornate slippers was boldly stolen from its casement in the bata shoe museum in broad daylight in fact we we couldn't believe it why people would want to do steel shoes and they they stole a shoe which looks very glittering with gold and has has precious stones on it the slippers that were worn by the needs of hyderabad i think have particular importance to us here at the museum not only because they're spectacular in and of themselves but because they have historic provenance one of the things that's incredibly hard is to find the wearer or to know anything about the wearer for shoes that date back 200 years really the value on the market is not there except to the collector who knows that the shoes was worn by a very famous person and that it's a part of of history the bata's shoe museum specializes in collections of shoes that have historical and cultural significance it is truly one of a kind the intriguing building which was designed to suggest an opening shoe box houses one of the largest shoe collections in the world inside there are over 12 000 objects which span a history of over 4 000 years visitors learn that a shoe isn't just a link to the foot but a link to our varied histories and cultures give a message with our shoes we try to show various cultures and various beards and history through the shoes and i traveled all over the world and the first collection i did was really a market research collection trying to figure out why shoes were so different in different parts of the world because after all the foot is the same same number of bones and tendons and ligaments and there the shoes are so different from japan or india or latin america and i was fascinated to find out more about it why are shoes so different in different parts of the world [Music] we keep on adding to the collection all the time and the collection goes way back to 2800 before christ [Music] it is fascinating to learn about the evolution of shoes over time but what can the study of shoes tell us about human history and culture oh shoes tell us a great deal in fact this is the one artifact in material culture that probably tells you more about people than anything else number one we have two different feet so you by looking at the shoes you even can tell how tall the person was and the gate of the person and looking at the design and the pattern of the shoes you learn about the culture and you learn about the activities of the society the issues came from you learn about status symbol sometimes you can't even tell what religion the people are let's say we had an exhibition on chinese bound feet and a lot of children from the chinese community they came to look at it what their grandmothers wore and to get an explanation why bound feet were so important to them and what was the beauty of bound feet so i think we really made a contribution to explain their own culture to some of these people we had an exhibition on india on paducah the tone-up sandal which is really a sign of hinduism and again what to me is so very exciting that you have this artifact and people through the artifact they learn so much more about another culture so so there are many things like a detective which you can detect if you are studying shoes and i think where we are very different we are not just a shoe museum that examines to shoes and the actual history of the shoes but we are using the shoe as the key to show the visitors different cultures of the world and most people love shoes they can relate to footwear so it seems to work very well the thieves that stole the golden slippers certainly knew something of the potential value of well-documented antiquities the slippers originate from an interesting place and time in history and have been thoroughly researched as a result they were assessed with a monetary value of over and sixty thousand dollars the wearer of this particular pair of shoes seems to be i think we can pretty firmly establish that it was sekander jaw the nizam of hyderabad and you can imagine that if those were his shoes what the rest of his outfit might have been like hyderabad was the center of incredible opulence in the early 19th century hyderabad was its own independent kingdom at the time that these shoes were would have been worn but today it is part of india hyderabad at that time was such an opulent kingdom and so it helped us actually to tell the story of the show because for us the show was important because it reflected the power of the nizam of hyderabad and he lived he had wonderful policies he had an elephant army and you know he had some sensational items these shoes would have been worn for courtware i don't believe that they were bedroom slippers i think that they really were for show being so spectacular but one of the hallmarks of hyderabad was that the nissans had fabulous wealth and so one of the best ways to sort of promote one's social standing is through clothing and one of the best places to promote social standing is by having incredibly lavish footwear having heavy gold encrusted jewel encrusted footwear sort of shows what you don't have to do and in this case it was walk around a lot these shoes are incredibly heavy in part because they are embroidered with real gold wire um not even gold wrap thread the sequins are all gold and the throat ornament which is just around the top part of the shoe is sort of um not high grade but certainly they're still diamonds rubies and emeralds and so there's a decorative grade gemstones that are set in beautiful examples of indian cloisonne these lavishly adorned slippers were one of the bada museum standouts and were on display in one of the main galleries it would seem that someone other than sonia batta understood their allure and significance [Music] on january 22nd 2006 they were stolen happened last january was of course an incredible shock to to all of us uh it appears that some individuals had been casing the museum and that they were truly professionals they knew exactly how to get into the case work they knew what they were after and they were able to accomplish their task quite quickly and so when it was discovered that the theft had occurred of course we immediately shut everything down and began the search the museum staff was shocked sonja batta offered a 25 000 reward for the return of the slippers when i got the telephone call i i it was very strange i just it was difficult to believe because it must have been a highly professional in the individual because there are other things where you could get a higher price for it but whoever was the thief he had very good tastes because it's a very beautiful pair of shoes on january 22nd 2006 beautifully adorned 200 year old slippers that had belonged to the nizam of hyderabad were stolen from the bata shoe museum [Music] a reward of 25 000 was offered for their safe return still after exhaustive police work and abundant media coverage the search for the stolen shoes turned up little concrete evidence or connections but a strange encounter and a complete blunder by the thieves provided enough information to solve the case and eventually lead to their arrest the way that they were recovered we do know but why and the pressures brought to bear to lead to their recovery we're still unclear about it seems as though one of the individuals who had the shoes in his possession took photos of them and then just by coincidence he took them to the photo lab that we use all the time to process images of our shoots and so it was kind of a our stars were aligned so to speak in the hopes of recovering these shoes he apparently was trying to process the photos by himself but one of the people who worked at the color lab realized that the shoes had come up on the digital screen and so a plot was hatched by them to try to identify this perpetrator and they were very clever in the way that they did that the employees at the photo lab secretly photographed the thief while he was in the store this photograph was passed along to the police and eventually to the media the widespread media attention had immediate results ultimately what they were able to achieve led to the recovery of the shoes it was a little cloak and dagger um we received an anonymous phone call and the receptionist picked up the phone and was asked if she knew the church across the street from the museum thinking it was just a visitor she said yes of course and then he said the shoes are in a white plastic bag across the street in the hallway and so the director immediately went across the street to retrieve the shoes he called the police and indeed the shoes were there we couldn't open the bag that was one of the hardest things the police said don't touch the evidence so we sort of felt around a little bit we knew that the shoes were there we were both mrs bata and the director were very excited to get to the police station and have the bag open where in fact the shoes were fine and they were returned the color lab owner and his daughter and his employee split a 25 000 reward the return of the slippers was not the end of this story a little more than a month after the photos were released to the media police arrested a 35 year old man in connection with the theft ironically the museum also received more positive recognition with the general public oh we all celebrated it was really a little miracle that happened and we were absolutely delighted and also we got fantastic publicity and many more people know where we are now because of this pair of stolen shoes the slippers were back in their rightful home but as with all thefts involving art or antiquities there was concern about the condition of the shoes on their return they needed to be thoroughly assessed for any possible damage before being placed back on exhibit the shoes needed some time uh we wanted to make sure that they were okay you know one of those the nerve-wracking aspects is that the value in these shoes is the fact that we know who wore them i suppose now we have the fear that a criminal has warned them potentially as well so we wanted to make sure that they were still in good shape they absolutely were they actually were handled quite well and so we gave them some time and looked at them carefully and they are going to go back on view in an exhibition called a chronicle of riches treasures from the battleship museum the intense media attention and eventual fallout from the theft gave the public an opportunity to reflect on the value of art and antiquities to general society [Music] i think many things came from this theft one was an actual community sympathy there were people who realized oh my goodness i mean who would think that a pair of shoes could create such a ruckus could be such objects of actual thievery and be of interest to the public and so this idea that they had monetary value and then i think our museum reaction of that's not the point it's that they have historical value has actually helped people to realize that the shoes that we have here we house here for a purpose a real historic purpose [Music] when i personally was assessing the theft i i looked in the case and what i saw my real feelings were that that the individuals who stole these shoes were interested in their bling factor that they weren't actually stealing for a collector which was our deepest fear our fear would be that somebody had actually funded this crime to benefit their private collection i feel very strongly that the value in this pair of shoes is actually unrelated to the materials with which they were made it's the fact that they were born by a specific historic individual of great fame and the shoes themselves it's the quality of the workmanship you you have not only the wearer but you see sort of into royal workshops and how something like this would have been created well it's not the monetary laws because these things you can't replace them it's a part of history that's gone forever and and that is the upsetting part of it and it's so rare that you find shoes which have a wonderful promenade that you really know when they were worn by whom they were born because that is what brings history alive and this is why these artifacts are so precious and at the same time why they are so valuable [Music] if you took these shoes apart and tried to disseminate the gemstones or melt down the gold you'd end up with a paltry sum of money really the value is in its history this case drew a lot of public attention to the value of antiquities the ensuing media coverage played a key role in solving this crime the media reaction was huge i think just the sheer surprise that shoes could be worth monetarily so much money um piqued a lot of people's interests and then i think there is something personal about shoes as a personal artifact and many of the reporters that i spoke to actually had that kind of emotional reaction but these are his shoes these are there was something much more intimate about them as an artifact than say a painting that has always hung in the public sphere i tried very much through the media to make the case that the value in these shoes was historic not in its parts and the other thing too was the buyers for these shoes were us i mean i didn't know who the customer might be for these shoes if in fact they were going to try to sell them as historic artifacts every pair of shoes that we have has almost all of them have been worn and so there's always the implied wearer and that's one of the poignant aspects of this institution is that you can think about who stood in the shoes in this institution what were their lives like but oftentimes it's a very anonymous story and you have to sort of try to recreate that story based on their footwear alone and so when you are able to flesh that out a little bit more with historic documentation with actual knowledge of who the individual was that becomes an even more compelling story that can be told and so to have lost that and to have lost such a significant artifact from our institution i think would have been a real tragedy and so to have them back i think ultimately as i mentioned there have been many positives that have come from it and probably the biggest positive is that we here also realize the depth of our appreciation of some of these artifacts when we talk about art and we talk about the value of losses in in dollar sense i think we all lose sight that art has another value and that is the historical value a cultural value it's it's sad that people steal artifacts from museums and let's say in europe even in the churches they protect now some of the artifacts in in a church where you really wouldn't think that people would steal anything and so to lose part of that history forever that's it's sad for galleries well and in museums our intent is to preserve the cultural part of our history that's our mandate so yes when you know when a museum an art gallery suffers a loss we all suffer it

Channel: Perspective

Views: 62,150

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, secrets of the exhibit, series 1, episode 1, art theft documentary, art theft story time, art theft stories, art theft internet historian, art theft documentary bbc, art stealing, hamilton gallery

Id: ElU6p_0-r-0

Length: 52min 13sec (3133 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 31 2021

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[u/MonsieurMcGregor]

This is an episode of "Secrets of the Exhibit" and is from 2007, not 2021.