Thursday 8 April 2010

The Third Highest grossing criminal trade?

.
In a post on the Smart Planet blog, journalist Melanie Kaplan asks rhetorically "What is the third highest grossing criminal trade?" although I do not generally like seeing the looting of archaeological sites for collectables as a genuine part of the art trade, the opportunity to use an attention-grabbing thougfht-provoking headline seems too good to forego.
Art crimes make up the third most costly criminal area in the United States ($6 billion), just behind the drug and arms trades, according to the National Museum of Crime & Punishment in Washington. This month, the museum has teamed up with the Association for Research into Crimes against Art to create a temporary exhibit about art crimes, called Uncovering the Dark Arts: Thieves, Forgers and Tomb Raiders.
I like that, the "dark arts", I suppose that makes the collectors and dealers of the indiscriminate antiquities market "the Dark Side". Kaplan also has a recent article on the FBI’s Art Theft Program.

1 comment:

Damien Huffer said...

That startling, succint, and still-true statement shares a high degree of responsibility for getting me involved in anti-looting outreach/monitoring in the first place. "Dark Arts" does sum it up rather well...

 
Creative Commons License
Ten utwór jest dostępny na licencji Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Bez utworów zależnych 3.0 Unported.