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Art Crime and the Myth of Violence

Foundational Questions for a Critical Analysis of Art Policing

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Crime and Art

Part of the book series: Studies in Art, Heritage, Law and the Market ((SAHLM,volume 1))

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Abstract

Why did site protection and conservation become the natural purview of uniformed police or military? What forms of art policing are warranted today? What are the effects of this authority structure on our perception of the value and purpose of artworks and archaeological materials? These questions are central to contemporary debates about the place of state violence in the governance of cultural objects. To answer them, I begin with an analysis of the deep cultural codes that shape collective interpretations of art crime. Next, I trace the manifestation of these codes in the Italian Art Squad. Founded in 1969, Italy’s Art Squad (Comando Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale) is the most influential and visible armed unit dedicated to enforcing cultural heritage laws. In the third section, I use art crime data from the FBI and Interpol to show that the majority of art crime is non-violent, and that the myth of violence has broader effects that should concern us. I will argue that the spread of heritage policing is symptomatic of a longer-term trend toward increased state reliance on violence to solve social problems.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The literature on the 1954 Hague Convention is vast, and it is beyond the scope of this paper to do it justice. Recent contributions to the discussion include Fox and Cunliffe (2018) and Gerstenblith (2019).

  2. 2.

    Original: “Per i provvedimenti d’ ufficio e per l’esecuzione dei propri provvedimenti, il Soprintendente si avvale del Servizio di Sicurezza dell’Amministrazione autonoma, provvedendo con propri ordini di servizio ad impartire le prescrizioni opportune,” Declaration 16, pp. 4–5.

  3. 3.

    The idea of the ‘strategy of tension’ in the context of Italian policing and public violence is developed by Ferraresi (1995).

  4. 4.

    In 1997, there were 2120 thefts reported for 23,513 objects taken, in 1998, 2032 thefts reported for 24,058 objects taken, 1999 showed 2168 reported thefts, and for 2000 the figure was 2136 reported archaeological thefts for over 30,000 objects taken. Data from 2001 onward indicate a reversal of the tendency: the number diminished to 1784 thefts for 21,316 objects taken (Demuro, 2004, pp. 124–125).

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks the volume editors as well as audiences at the American Sociological Association and the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Fiona Greenland

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  1. Fiona Greenland
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  1. Department of Arts & Culture Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Naomi Oosterman

  2. Criminal Law and Criminology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Donna Yates

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Greenland, F. (2021). Art Crime and the Myth of Violence. In: Oosterman, N., Yates, D. (eds) Crime and Art. Studies in Art, Heritage, Law and the Market, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84856-9_11

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