Art Thieves and Detectives

Another book I picked up at the Portland Art Museum in September was “The Rescue Artist,” by Edward Dolnick.

An entertaining whodonit about the theft of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” from the National Gallery in Oslo, I’d put the book down in the middle–distracted by the myriad other things in my life–until NetFlicks delivered “Stolen,” a very weird documentary about the theft of $300 million worth of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

In 1990, thieves absconded with 13 masterpieces — including works by Rembrandt and Vermeer — from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, pulling off the greatest art heist in U.S. history. Rebecca Dreyfus’s investigative documentary delves into this modern mystery, piecing together clues gleaned from archival documents, art critics, historians, collectors and informants (both credible and dubious) to shed light on the as-yet unsolved case.

The documentary was a disappointment, but “The Rescue Artist” was a hoot. Read like a nice tight mystery and I could “see” the screenplay for this story. The saving grace for the video was that it illustrated just how strange and put a face to the interactions between the rich, the dark underbelly on both sides of “the pond,” and the police. The book is genuinely funny as well as interesting. I guess it woudl be of most interest to those who frequent museums and ownder about the security of the housed artwork and the value of what is exhibited.

For me it was fun to read about paintings I had viewed both in Boston and Norway. Felt rather cosmopolitan!

Just last night on the phone, my dad told me he’d been doing the The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle and one clue was about “The Scream” and how Munch was painting the aftershocks from the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. And most people simply thought he was crazy…

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