ARCA Blog Posts Articles by Students of Art Crime Course

I have posted on ARCA, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art in the past on the AW Blog. They have interesting international courses on art crime and great statistics of art crime on their website.

From the ARCA website on a Spring 2009 class on art crime, Noah Charney is a visiting lecturer at Yale this semester, teaching a seminar on art crime. Selections from lectures will be available as podcasts over the course of the semester. Feel free to look at the syllabus for the course. Noah will be teaching an altered version of this course during ARCA's Masters Program this summer, in Italy. I have checked the website and have not been able to find the podcasts. When I do, I will post on how and where to find them.

The ARCA blog will be posting some of the student papers from Noah Charney's class. The current publication is by Elizabeth Sebesky and is entitled The Art Market: How Lending Fuels Art Crime.

Sebesky states in her paper The psychology that fuels the acquisition of material wealth also drives art collection: “the acquisition of art, a tangible ‘consumption good’ with ‘social capital’, is also seen as a positive addiction.” Furthermore, the characteristics of art crime are quite similar to those of financial over-extension to the point of bankruptcy and white collar crimes, such as investment fraud, security fraud, and money laundering. In fact, Interpol has recently reported that “financial crime[s] such as money-laundering” are believed to be “intimately connected in many cases [with] the drugs, arms and the illicit art and antiquities trades.” Although there are many overlaps between art crime and national and international financial markets, the impact of art lending companies, that turn art into collateral, has been relatively unexamined and is pertinent today and in other times of economic downturn. By presenting a case study on the recent upsurge in this financial practice, pointing out some of the problems and pitfalls of art lending and the art market more generally, and then recommending some preventative measures and solutions, this paper will help raise consciousness on the ways in which art lending practices can contribute to and enable art crime.

To read the full article, which is very interesting, click HERE.