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The Light Fingered

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Females in the Frame

Abstract

The female art thief works alone, as a couple, or as part of a group. She is motivated by money, politics, or to add to her personal collection. This chapter surveys well-known women art thieves such as Dr. Rose Dugdale and Imelda Marcos as well as the lesser known, such as Kim Roberts Watson who, like others, took advantage of her elderly employer helping herself to a Picasso and Ben Nicholson. Australian Joan Howard quickly rose to fame for her ‘collecting’ of cultural property from the Middle East during the 1970s, causing an outpouring of anger in late 2017 when her story became public. The Light Fingered concludes with the quirky, and sometimes political, phenomena for stealing Baby Jesus statues from Nativity scenes.

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Correspondence to Penelope Jackson .

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Jackson, P. (2019). The Light Fingered. In: Females in the Frame. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20766-3_6

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