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The Professionals

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Females in the Frame

Abstract

Professional staff at museums, galleries, and libraries commit white-collar crimes. For the most part these are the theft of collection items with the thief hoping to sell them. Fortunately some are caught. Professionals have insider knowledge about the location of collection items, their value, and when they might be audited or exhibited next. Lapse security systems, in some institutions, make theft relatively easy. Other professional women have paid the price for authenticating works that are fraudulent. The Professionals considers the ramifications of professional art crimes within the museum context. The chapter concludes with an acknowledgement of the all-time heroine of women, art, and crime—Rose Valland—who worked at the Jeu de Paume during World War II and saved thousands of art works from being sold, lost, or destroyed by the Nazi.

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Correspondence to Penelope Jackson .

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Jackson, P. (2019). The Professionals. In: Females in the Frame. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20766-3_8

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