As
peaseblossom can attest, I've been reading a lot of stuff on art and antiquities looting lately. For a while I've been contemplating a new lexicon, so I've decided to merge the two together (this isn't the first time the
thought has percolated). And thus
Museum of the MissingArt theft has been done for the purpose of resale or ransom; stolen art is also often used between criminals in an underworld banking system as collateral for drug and weapons deals, or to barter for those items. Even more worrisome is the state sponsored looting, such as that from 1933 through the end of World War II, of the Nazi regime which maintained a policy of looting art for sale or for removal to museums in the Third Reich.
Art Recovery is serious business, the FBI, London's Metropolitan Police, and a number of other law enforcement agencies worldwide maintain "art squads" dedicated to investigating thefts of this nature and recovering stolen works of art. In 2007 a consortium of these agencies met to discuss some of the most long-standing, strangest and down right weird cases on their files. This Lexicon is the report of those proceedings.
I'm thinking 8 round Lexicon, telephone style, each entry is a piece of art thats been stolen (real or made-up) or a region or style or what have you (for example, I could see a fun entry on Peru or the Getty Museum) thats relevant.
Any interest out there?
EDIT: Looks like there might be critical mass out there. What do folks think about starting on Monday the 12th?