While touring the Vatican a few years ago, my friend Whitney and I ruminated about a scheme to quickly pay back our student loans: take a miniature Mother and Child from any one of the dark hallways within the labyrinthian complex and sell it on the black market (i.e. eBay). And who would stop us, the clown-suited Swiss guards with their medieval halberds? We ended up resisting, perhaps influenced by our past reading of Pascal, in fear of the slight chance of eternal damnation.
In just three months, you can learn about the psychology of actual art thieves as well as insight into the black art market, money laundering, and forgery in a new, unaccredited master’s program of Art Crime in Umbria, Italy (so you’ll eat and drink well, too!). The New York Times reports that the inaugural class consists of private security types, art historians, various museum professionals and lawyers who come from as far as the U.S. to attend.
Pictured above is one of only two known portraits of Francis Bacon by Lucien Freud; it was stolen in 1988 in broad daylight from the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. There remains a £100,000 award for its retrieval.
Penses gets the best of us.