Author Visit: Anthony M Amore
Thursday, May 15 at 7:00 pm

Today, art theft is one of the most profitable criminal enterprises in the world, exceeding $6 billion in losses to galleries and art collectors annually. In Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists, art security expert Anthony M. Amore and award-winning investigative reporter Tom Mashberg reveal the actors behind the major Rembrandt heists in the last century. Through thefts are the world–from Stockholm to Boston, Worcester to Ohio–the authors track daring entries and escapes from the world’s most renowned museums.

Anthony Amore is an expert in security matters, especially those related to homeland security and cultural property protection. He is Director of Security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where he is charged with the ongoing efforts to recover thirteen works of art stolen from the museum on March 18, 1990. His work as security director has been highlighted in the book Art and Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World, which describes him as “among the most innovative, and most effective, museum security directors in the world.”

Please register if you are planning to attend this event: online or by phone at 978-774-0554.

Can’t get enough? Try one of these art heist titles:

The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft by Ulrich Boser
“One museum, two thieves, and the Boston underworld–the story behind the lost Gardner masterpieces worth $500 million and the art detective who swore to get them back.”

The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities by Peter Watson
“Filled with great characters and human drama, The Medici Conspiracy authoritatively exposes another shameful round in one of the oldest games in the world: theft, smuggling and duplicitous dealing, all in the name of art.”

The Art Detective: Fakes, Frauds, and Finds and the Search for Lost Treasures by Philip Mould
“Philip Mould has been so successful at discovering buried treasures that he’s affectionately known as “the art detective.” Now, at last, he has decided to let the eleven million fans of Antiques Roadshow in on his secrets. Each chapter revolves around a particular painting and the people who helped unmask its creator’s identity-from an ingeniously forged Norman Rockwell (good enough to fool the Rockwell Museum) to a Winslow Homer found in a dump”

Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert K Wittman
“Armed with a scholar’s passion, a con man’s smile, and a daredevil’s nerves, Wittman–former leader of the FBI’s Art Crime Team–had pulled off undercover operations all over the world. In “Priceless,” he reveals the greatest unsolved art heist of the 20th century–and the stories behind the recovery of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art and antiquities.”

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury, Aly Sujo
“Stretching from London to Paris to New York, investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo recount the tale of infamous con man and unforgettable villain John Drewe and his accomplice, the affable artist John Myatt. Together they exploited the archives of British art institutions to irrevocably legitimize the hundreds of pieces they forged, many of which are still considered genuine and hang in prominent museums and private collections today.”

Fiction:

The Art Forger: A Novel by B. A. Shapiro
“Boston painter Claire Roth has survived financially by painting reproductions. Influential gallery owner Aiden Markel arrives with a bizarre proposal: her own show if she will forge a copy of a Degas, one of the pictures stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. As she works, Claire and Aiden become lovers, but she doesn’t tell him about her discovery that the stolen Degas is itself a copy.”

The Art Thief: A Novel by Noah Charney
“While three separate thefts are simultaneously investigated in three separate cities, Rome, Paris and London, the apparently unrelated crimes have more in common than anyone imagines. In each city, the authorities enlist the help of a renowned art investigator, police inspectors, and Scotland Yard. A trail of bizarre clues and intellectual puzzles reveals forgeries, over-paintings, thefts, and double-crosses leading ever deeper into a baffling conspiracy.”

The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva
“Severing his ties with the Office to care for his traumatized wife after a violent showdown with Ivan Kharkov, Gabriel is reluctantly drawn into a case involving a murdered art restorer and discovers unsettling links between the killers and a recently discovered Rembrandt.”

Death and Restoration by Iain Pears
“Flavia di Stefano and her fiancé Jonathan Argyll are investigating a robbery that occurred at a local monastery when they begin to uncover a strange mystery that surround the ancient painting in the monastery’s chapel.”

Title links lead to the NOBLE catalog. Summaries excerpted from the publisher.