NEWS – “without comment”
Stolen Artworks – Specialist Investigators
https://www.kuow.org/stories/meet-the-dutch-art-detective-who-tracks-down-stolen-masterpieces
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“https://wapi.org/uk-charley-hill-obituary-charles-hill-art-detective-who-died-20-february-2021/“
AMSTERDAM – In his modest IKEA-furnished apartment, Arthur Brand paces to distract himself.
“I’m nervous,” he says, with the honesty of a man who has learned that bravado is useless in his line of work.
He lights a cigarette, leans out the window, and scans the street below.
“The waiting is the hardest part.”
Brand, 56, has made a career out of waiting: for a phone call, a knock at the door, and, every once in a blue moon, a Picasso or a Van Gogh left discreetly on his doorstep.
“Those are the moments you realize it’s worth it,” he says.
Until, of course, everything resets, and the waiting game begins again.
In another life, Brand says, he’ll take his mother’s advice and “find a normal job.”
But in this one, he’s helped recover stolen art for two decades — often the cases police can’t solve alone.
Some call him the “Indiana Jones of the art world.
He says he has recovered more than 150 stolen paintings and artifacts. His cases regularly make international headlines.
There’s the stolen Van Gogh that showed up on his doorstep in 2023, stuffed into a blood-soaked pillow in a blue IKEA bag. The Salvador Dali painting he recovered in 2016. The Picasso he tracked down for a Saudi sheikh in 2019.
Dutch police say Brand’s motive matters.
Richard Bronswijk, who heads the Dutch police art crime unit, says he’s seen private detectives create problems when money is the driver. “I’ve worked before with private detectives who are doing this for the money,” Bronswijk says. “And then it’s always dangerous.”
Brand, he points out, has always been driven by something else: the thrill of the chase.
Full Article: https://www.kuow.org/stories/meet-the-dutch-art-detective-who-tracks-down-stolen-masterpieces
Posted by: Ian (D. Withers)
www.WAPI.org
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