The Wall Street Journal called him “a living legend.” The London Times dubbed him “the most famous art detective in the world.” In Priceless, Robert K. Wittman, the founder of the FBI’s Art Crime Team, pulls back the curtain on his remarkable career for the first time, offering a real-life international thriller to rival The Thomas Crown Affair. Rising from humble roots as the son of an …
Rising from humble roots as the son of an antique dealer, Wittman built a twenty-year career that was nothing short of extraordinary. He went undercover, usually unarmed, to catch art thieves, scammers, and black market traders in Paris and Philadelphia, Rio and Santa Fe, Miami and Madrid.
In this page-turning memoir, Wittman fascinates with the stories behind his recoveries of priceless art and antiquities: The golden armor of an ancient Peruvian warrior king. The Rodin sculpture that inspired the Impressionist movement. The headdress Geronimo wore at his final Pow-Wow. The rare Civil War battle flag carried into battle by one of the nation’s first African-American regiments.
The breadth of Wittman’s exploits is unmatched: He traveled the world to rescue paintings by Rockwell and Rembrandt, Pissarro, Monet and Picasso, often working undercover overseas at the whim of foreign governments. Closer to home, he recovered an original copy of the Bill of Rights and cracked the scam that rocked the PBS series Antiques Roadshow.
By the FBI’s accounting, Wittman saved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art and antiquities. He says the statistic isn’t important. After all, who’s to say what is worth more –a Rembrandt self-portrait or an American flag carried into battle? They’re both priceless.
The art thieves and scammers Wittman caught run the gamut from rich to poor, smart to foolish, organized criminals to desperate loners. The smuggler who brought him a looted 6th-century treasure turned out to be a high-ranking diplomat. The appraiser who stole countless heirlooms from war heroes’ descendants was a slick, aristocratic con man. The museum janitor who made off with locks of George Washington’s hair just wanted to make a few extra bucks, figuring no one would miss what he’d filched.
In his final case, Wittman called on every bit of knowledge and experience in his arsenal to take on his greatest challenge: working undercover to track the vicious criminals behind what might be the most audacious art theft of all.
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This is the true story of FBI agent Robert K. Wittman. I love stories about art theft, so this non-fiction book grabbed my attention right away. It’s as exciting as a novel, but everything Mr. Wittman writes about actual happened and that makes it ten times more nail biting than a novel.
If art theft and the people that steal and deal in priceless treasures is your thing than I definitely recommend this page-turner.
Art crime doesn’t usually score as a tip-of-the-tongue subject in the true-crime genre. Perhaps it should; trafficking in stolen art is one of the top three international crimes (along with drugs and weapons). Priceless is a good, easy introduction to the subject as it follows the exploits of co-author Robert Wittman, founder of the FBI Art Crime Team, in tracking down missing artworks around the world.
Wittman (assisted by co-author John Shiffman) makes for an earnest, personable guide through the world of art thieves and smugglers, the often rococo bureaucratic wrangling inside the FBI, the push-me-pull-you relations with foreign and domestic law-enforcement agencies, and the dealers, museums, collectors, lawyers and brokers who slip back and forth across the fuzzy gray lines between legality and criminality. He avoids much of the impenetrable jargon associated with both the art world and the FBI, meaning a non-specialist reader can enjoy this as a cat-and-mouse tale. The specialist reader may want more meat, but that’s what Stealing the Mystic Lamb is for.
According to Wittman, FBI bureaucratic infighting and grandstanding blew the best chance yet to recover the masterpieces stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 (the largest property-theft case in U.S. history) and caused him to retire the moment he was eligible. If true, the claim echoes others about the FBI and closely parallels the same rap often laid on the CIA (as in The Human Factor, Blowing My Cover and The Company We Keep). It’s a story no less depressing for its familiarity.
Like many of its ilk, Priceless is episodic; luckily, there’s just enough variation in the cases Wittman describes to keep this from becoming Groundhog Day (a problem Max Hardberger’s Seized flirted with). It would’ve been nice had the authors described more than one of the team’s failures so we could get an idea why these investigations often go on so long with so little payoff. Some more detail about fences, doctored provenances, and the use of stolen art as payment for illicit goods would fill in the larger context of the illegitimate art trade. The authors clearly aimed for brisk storytelling rather than encyclopedic coverage of the subject – not a bad decision, but one that leaves a lot of food on the plate. Consider this the gateway drug into art-crime books.
Fabulous book. Nonfiction that kept me turning the pages. I’ll be rereading this one.
I loved this! If you are at all interested in art, art history, art crime, heists, true crime, etc., READ THIS BOOK!
Great book about recovery of stole art.
Fascinating insights into the world of art thieves and people who try to catch them. Very engaging.
Interesting. Not a page turner, but ok reading.
Very interesting life he has led and to use his skills in later life. To know about antiques and the fake ones has proven to be a wonderful career.
I enjoyed the book because it gave insite into the art theft world from the prevention point of view. A lot of inside tidbits. Also a hint at changing structure and internal focus in the FBI as perceived by the author.
I enjoyed the read.
Excellent