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A review by sarahcoller
Museum of the Missing: The High Stakes of Art Crime by Simon Houpt, Julian Radcliffe
5.0
I really love reading about art history mysteries---I can't get enough! This book was super interesting and will be going straight into my permanent collection. I found myself looking up each work and notating in the book whether they'd been recovered since publication. Happily, I found quite a few that had!
I was pretty disgusted with the way museums and governments refuse to give up obviously stolen property. The British handling of the art property of other nations, in particular, is despicable. I'm planning a trip in March and Selah really wants to see the Natural History Museum/V&A/etc. --- not so sure I'll enjoy it as much now as I have in the past. As the author points out, how many pieces in our museums are even the spoils of war? Quite the moral dilemma there...
Even though I'm always rooting for the good guys, I do have to admit several of the heists were pretty genius. The whole story surrounding the fictional Thomas Alcock collection was pretty impressive.
Great read---glad I took the time!
I was pretty disgusted with the way museums and governments refuse to give up obviously stolen property. The British handling of the art property of other nations, in particular, is despicable. I'm planning a trip in March and Selah really wants to see the Natural History Museum/V&A/etc. --- not so sure I'll enjoy it as much now as I have in the past. As the author points out, how many pieces in our museums are even the spoils of war? Quite the moral dilemma there...
Even though I'm always rooting for the good guys, I do have to admit several of the heists were pretty genius. The whole story surrounding the fictional Thomas Alcock collection was pretty impressive.
Great read---glad I took the time!