Art crime is a fascinating field where the art world, law enforcement, legal studies, and ethics intersect. I love art crime. Learning about it…not doing it, of course. I was hooked when I first learned about the topic during my graduate studies. While my professional work centered around art collections management, I dreamed of working for the FBI’s Art Crime Team. Since that’s so not going to happen, I settled for reading everything I could get my hands on. As a result, I’ve compiled a list of the best books about art crime. This is part 2, which covers fakes, forgeries, war, and cultural repatriation. Part 1 focuses on introductory texts, art theft, and looting.
Brief Primer on Art Crime
According to Noah Charney, art historian and founder of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA), there are 5 categories of art crime:
- Theft of cultural property from existing collections
- Looting of antiquities through illicit archaeological excavations
- Fraud, especially fakes and forgeries
- War looting
- Iconoclasm and vandalism
Who are the criminals behind art crime? As these books demonstrate, a wide range of people are involved in the art underworld. They include thieves, tomb raiders, organized crime, terrorist groups, art dealers, artists, curators, museums, vandals, militaries, and governments.
Okay, now that you have some background, let’s dig into the best books about art crime.
Best Books about Art Crime: Fakes & Forgeries
A brief word on fakes and forgeries: they’re not the same thing. A fake is an original artwork that’s been tampered with or modified to appear like it’s by another artist. An example would be a 16th-century drawing by an unknown artist in the British Museum. This drawing has later additions intended to make people think it’s really by Hans Holbein the Younger (but it isn’t).
A forgery is an intentional imitation of a style or an artist that’s made from scratch and passed off as authentic. An example is John Myatt, a British artist, who created paintings in the style of Matisse and Chagall and passed them off as originals.
$30.16Buy NowCharney explores the many facets of art forgeries, particularly the motivations of artists and criminals. You may think monetary gain is the driving force, but there are other reasons. Criminals create forgeries out of pride, for revenge, or simply because they can. While the book reviews specific cases, the focus is on the psychology of art criminals.
Phaidon, 2015
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08/25/2026 02:04 am GMT
$16.05Buy NowInvestigative journalists Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo dive into the greatest art fraud of the 20th century. British artist John Myatt teamed up with con man John Drewe to execute one of the most elaborate and far-reaching scams. Myatt painted forgeries and Drewe falsified their provenance by planting fake documents in archives, libraries, and museums. This one had me shitting bricks as a professional archivist and collections manager because it just felt so…violating.
Provenance is the history of an object, from its ownership to where it’s been exhibited. Provenance authenticates artworks. For someone to make up an object’s history and fake a paper trail…that’s all sorts of messed up. Anyway, I learned about this case from Myatt himself, who was a speaker in my art crime course. I highly recommend this book, which provides you with all the nitty-gritty details of this roller-coaster of a case.
Penguin Books, 2010
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08/25/2026 04:07 am GMT
$12.79Buy NowArt forger Tony Tetro and journalist Giampiero Ambrosi tell Tetro’s life story as a career criminal in the art underworld. Tetro forged artworks and passed them off as Rembrandts, Caravaggios, and Miros. These paintings now hang in museums and on collectors’ walls. Even Prince Charles was duped. He accepted a Picasso, Dali, Monet, and Chagall into his collection, only later to find out they were forgeries by Tetro. Damn. Grab this book for an insider’s view into the dirty business of art crime.
Grand Central Publishing, 2022
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08/25/2026 02:04 am GMT
$14.32Buy NowArt security expert Anthony M. Amore explores some of history’s notorious but untold art scams. Using interviews and court documents, The Art of the Con takes us into eleven investigations of art forgeries and fakes. What sets this book apart is that these scams are more recent. So, unless you’re an art crime expert, you likely haven’t heard of these con artists.
St. Martin’s Griffin, 2016
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08/25/2026 02:04 am GMT
Best Books about Art Crime: War
$12.23Buy NowOof, this one is a doozie. It’s a painstakingly researched and scholarly account of how those damn Nazis purged “Degenerate Art” and stole Europe’s priceless treasures during World War II. If you feel like throwing the book against a wall because your heart can’t take what the Nazis did, keep reading. The second part dives into Allied efforts to recover Europe’s art and culture. This is a great read, but it’s highly detailed. A lot of names, events, places, and artworks are thrown at you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, Inc., 1995
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08/25/2026 02:04 am GMT
$66.96Buy NowSusan Ronald tells the tale of Hildebrand Gurlitt, one of the major players in the Nazi art looting machine during World War II. The story came to light in 2013 when it was discovered that 80-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt had over 1,400 artworks in his Munich apartment. The art was originally valued at over $1.35 billion. The question became, “Where the fuck did he get this art?” Ronald provides us with the answer: his father was Hildebrand Gurlitt, who not only looted for the Nazis but also for his private collection. This book reveals Gurlitt’s path to the dark side and illuminates the intricate inner workings of Nazi looting. It’s a well-researched and scholarly account but can be overwhelming at times with detail.
St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015
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08/25/2026 04:07 am GMT
$16.50Buy NowWhen you hear the term Monuments Men, you might think about the movie starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Bill Murray. Well, that movie was based on this book, which is a must-read for art crime aficionados. Robert M. Edsel takes us to World War II when Hitler and his Nazis were destroying and stealing art across Europe. Enter the Monuments Men – a group of civilian men and women tasked with protecting and recovering Europe’s cultural heritage. I just love a good story about kick-ass museum directors, curators, art historians, and archivists saving art from the Nazis.
Center Street, 2009
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08/25/2026 02:04 am GMT
$30.48Buy NowAnother banger by Robert M. Edsel. Saving Italy tells the story of two American civilians – artist Deane Keller and scholar Fred Hartt – as they tracked down billions of dollars of missing art during World War II. The bad guys: the Nazis (duh) and the art: Michelangelos, Donatellos, Caravaggios, Titians, and Botticellis. Give this one a read – it’s scary how close we were to losing amazing Italian masterpieces.
W.W. Norton & Company, 2014
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08/25/2026 04:16 am GMT
$20.86Buy NowAn art crime classic. Hector Feliciano writes about the Nazi pillaging of Jewish-owned artwork during World War II. More than 20,000 paintings, sculptures, and drawings by artists like Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Picasso were stolen from Jewish owners in France between 1939 and 1944. The Lost Museum focuses on the private collections of five Jewish families: Rothschild, Rosenberg, Bernheim-Jeune, David-Weill, and Schloss. Feliciano traces the lives of these artworks as they were taken by Nazis, entered private collections, or made their way onto the art market. I highly recommend this well-researched book.
Basic Books, 1998
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08/25/2026 02:04 am GMT
$10.53Buy NowYes, Timbuktu is real, and so are bad-ass librarians and archivists. Joshua Hammer takes us on an incredible journey as he recounts how Abdel Kader Haidara and his band of librarians smuggled over 350,000 manuscripts to safety in Bamako, southern Mali. Jihadists had seized northern Mali, where Timbuktu and the manuscripts were located. Al Qaeda tried to destroy everything they viewed as forbidden, including the manuscripts. I love this book because the tables have turned in this story, with the smugglers being the good guys. Haidara and his librarians prevented a major art crime in 2012: the destruction of cultural objects during times of war and terror.
Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2017
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08/25/2026 02:04 am GMT
Best Books about Art Crime: Cultural Repatriation
$17.66Buy NowIn 1897, the British led a punitive expedition to Benin, now modern-day Nigeria. Soldiers pillaged the shit out of the city, most famously looting the Benin Bronzes. The Bronzes are metal plaques and sculptures from the Royal Court of the Obas of Benin City. The artifacts made their way into museums and private collections, where they’ve been sitting behind display cases for the past 125 years.
Hicks takes a hard look at historic colonization and current cultural repatriation (the process of returning cultural objects to a nation or state at the request of a government). The debate is an important one because many museums worldwide proudly display objects in their collections that have been stolen. Since 2021, many museums have agreed to repatriate the Benin Bronzes, except the British Museum, which doesn’t want to give them back.
Pluto Press, 2021
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08/25/2026 03:10 am GMT
$17.95Buy NowAnother riveting account of the Benin Bronzes, sure to make you pissed off but also hopeful for a favorable outcome of this longstanding issue of cultural repatriation. (see above, #11 for more details).
Oneworld Publications, 2022
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08/25/2026 03:11 am GMT
$20.95Buy NowAnthropologist Chip Colwell dives right into the complicated issue of museum repatriation of Native American objects. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) was a game-changer for tribes across the United States, empowering them to recover their looted heritage from museums. Colwell follows four objects’ journey of repatriation: a sculpture that’s a living god, the scalp of a massacre victim, a ceremonial blanket, and a skeleton. Anyone working or interested in archaeology, anthropology, and museum studies should read this book because it asks important questions about the ownership of cultural objects and the ethics of working with Native American culture.
University of Chicago Press, 2019
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08/25/2026 07:02 am GMT
$9.67Buy NowGet ready for a fascinating controversy exploring the issues of rightful ownership and cultural repatriation. This book centers on the Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles. Basically, in 1801, a dude named Lord Elgin took the sculptures off the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. At that time, Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire, and Elgin was a British ambassador. The British Parliament later acquired the marbles and sold them to the British Museum, where they remain to this day.
The issue is that Greece gained its independence in 1830 and has been asking for the sculptures back ever since. The British Museum is like… ummm… no. Many argue that, technically, Elgin’s acquisition of the marbles was legal because the Ottoman Empire okayed it. Those who argue for repatriation, like author Christopher Hitchens, cite moral, artistic, political, and legal reasons for reunifying the sculptures with the Parthenon in their native land. I highly recommend this book to acquaint yourself with this ongoing case.
Verso Books, 2008
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08/25/2026 03:10 am GMT
If you’d like to learn more about art crime on a professional level, check out The Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA) and their Journal of Art Crime.
You can also take Art Crime and Art Law courses at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and Christie’s Education. I’ve taken online classes at each, and they’re highly informative.
For more resources, be sure to check out Best Books about Art Crime: Part 1 for books on general art crime, art theft, and looting. Finally, this is not a comprehensive list, so let me know any additional art crime books you love in the comments.
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