STEFAN KOLDEHOFF, born in 1967, is culture editor at Deutschlandfunk in Cologne, and writes for Die Zeit and art - Das Kunstmagazine among other publications. In 2008 he received the Puk journalist prize for his investigative research. In 2012, he and Tobias Timm published False Pictures, Real Money on the Beltracchi case. The book was awarded the Prix Annette Giacometti and the Otto Brenner Prize. Galiani also published his books The Pictures Are Among Us- The Nazi-Looted Art Business and the Gurlitt Case (2014) and Me and Van Gogh- Pictures, Collectors and Their Adventurous Stories (2015). TOBIAS TIMM, born in 1975 in Munich, studied urban ethnology, history, and cultural studies in Berlin and New York. He writes for Die Zeit's feature pages from Berlin on architecture, art, and crime. In 2012, he and Stefan Koldehoff published Fake Paintings, Real Money on the Beltracchi case. The book was awarded the Prix Annette Giacometti and the Otto Brenner Prize. Both authors were recently counted among the 100 most influential people in the art business by the national German magazine monopol.
"In Art & Crime, German journalists Stefan Koldehoff and Tobias
Timm detail the doings of a rogue’s gallery of art scammers,
rascals and outright thieves. The action ranges from European
watering holes to the New York townhouse of Imelda Marcos to the
free port warehouses of Geneva and Singapore, where works of art,
legally obtained and otherwise, can be discreetly traded."—The
Washington Post
"The tales they tell in Art and Crime are hair-raising. Some
are well known and go back decades; others are more recent and
involve prominent international figures. "—Financial Times
"In this engrossing account, Koldehoff and Timm (False Pictures,
Real Money) survey the link between art and crime, starting with
the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and including such
recent sensational cases as the 2017 theft of a 220-lb. Canadian
gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum. The authors make the case that
in today’s unregulated art world, many crimes are committed for
laundering drug money or hiding stolen assets. (To this day, the
FBI suspects the Mafia was behind the unsolved 1990 robbery of 13
works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.)
While most readers know about the art stolen by the Nazis during
WWII, it will be news to many that forgeries of Hitler’s own
paintings, most of them fake according to one expert, remain a
lucrative business. One chapter, “The Fakes President,” describes
how President Trump siphoned funds from his charitable fund to buy
art, including a portrait of himself. The authors also cover how,
when Trump had the Bonwit Teller building demolished to build Trump
Tower, he reneged on his promise to preserve the building’s Art
Deco friezes and donate them to the Metropolitan Museum of
Art—which was technically not a crime. Assured prose bolsters these
fascinating tales. True crime fans and aficionados of culture will
appreciate this dive into the dark side of the art world.
(Dec.)"
—Publishers Weekly
"The theft of the Mona Lisa and Hitler's collection of looted art:
both figure in this tome byjournalists Stefan Koldehoff
and Tobias Timm. The book mulls the art world's obsession with
crime, stopping along the way to peel back the mystery surrounding
a charitable fund from which Donald Trump allegedly diverted
money in order to buy paintings."
—ArtNews
"There are so many exciting stories in this book that read like any
crime thriller by Agatha Christie."
—WDR 5
"An incredible book...It's as exciting to read as any thriller and
is yet so carefully researched that none of it can be attributed to
the imagination of Stefan Koldehoff and Tobias Timm" —Laura Helena
Wurth, Der Freitag
“A clearly organised, sharply written and engaging addition to the
genre of art-market crime compendiums.”
—Ben Lewis, The Art Newspaper
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