'Monet or Manet? I said again.
'Yes' he said
And I realized he didn't know the difference
Priceless: How I went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures
By: Robert K. Wittman with John Shiffman
C. 2010
I am an art history Nerd. That’s right- I capitalized the N in nerd to show you how serious I am. You want to talk about the Impressionists use of light and visible brush strokes? Sure. Want to debate Jackson Pollock’s genius? I’m your gal. Want to discuss Venetian architecture’s obvious borrowing from Arab and Asian mosques? Right-on. So when my mom (aka Super Librarian) brought home a copy of Priceless, I was loving it already. The cover was practically screaming my name. A guy in an art museum wearing a rad hat…ah, Priceless, you had me at Hello.
The sub-title of this book had my toes curling a wee bit: How I went undercover to rescue the world’s stolen treasures. You mean it’s a mystery too???? Sweet! True to that title, the guts of the book are Wittman’s details of undercover operations during which he posed as a shady Art Dealer in order to trick the bad guys into selling him the art. When the bad guys brought the art, and told Wittman their life stories, the FBI equivalent of a swat team would rush in from the next room and get the bad guys. Which brings me to a question: do these bad guys not watch movies? Seriously, in every movie with bad guys, they always tell the undercover cop how they committed the crime. Don’t give it up so easy bad guys! They’ll use it against you in court.
Bad guy idiocracy aside, if you were only mildly interested in the subject matter, this book might get boring; it’s really just one art recovery story after another. BUT if you, like me, find the pitch interesting, each story is unique and enjoyable because of the (albeit minute) twists and turns the cases take and the history of the Art and Artifacts involved. Once case centers around a flag carried during the Civil War by one of the first black regiments, another follows Masks stolen from a museum in Africa, yet another an original copy of the Bill of Rights. While all the cases follow the same pattern, Wittman peppers in enough tidbits and undercover tips to keep it fresh.
Most of the final third of the book follows Wittman’s pursuit of art stolen from the Gardner museum in Boston. In March of 1990 thieves dressed as police officers entered the museum and stole 13 works of art valued at over 500million dollars. The most note-worthy pieces are Vermeer’s The Concert and Rembrandt’s The storm on the Sea of Galilee. Did you notice that I used present tense there? The pieces have not been found/returned two decades later. Wittman worked with several individuals who claimed to have access to, or know who had the Gardner pieces. In one case, a man offers to sell the undercover agent/shady dealer a Vermeer- and as Wittman points out, ‘The world is only missing one Vermeer’. As I said, the pieces are still at large; Wittman uses the end of the book to detail how they slipped away. It seems that he largely blames the FBIs bureaucracy and individuals who were more interested in praise and face time in the media, than rescuing the pieces. Which brings me to the only downfall I found in Priceless: Robert Wittman seems to be a rather bitter/disillusioned man. He is quick to point out the short comings of other individuals within the FBI, yet never mentions a misstep of his own. However, this negativity was really only apparent in the end of the book.
So, in summary I thoroughly enjoyed this book. What’s more, I learned a great deal and it re-sparked my interest in one of my favorite subjects.
You should read this book: If you’re cool like me. Or if you want to be an FBI agent (seriously, I lost count of how many times he said ‘When going undercover you should always……’)
You should not read this book: If you hate art. You should also go sit in a corner and cry. Seriously, what’s wrong with you?
‘Before he imposed the sentence, the judge held aloft a stack of fifteen letters from museum directors….What made art theft different from most financial and property crimes, many museum directors told the judge, is the harm to society….Any theft from any museum goes beyond the crime itself-such a destructive act robs the entire community of its history, its cultural heritage’
