Vanished Smile (R A Scotti)

Imagine walking up to the Mona Lisa, removing it from the wall, and carrying it down the corridor for a private viewing. Keep it as long as you like! It seems absurd, doesn’t it? And yet that was possible a century ago. Museum policy permitted photographers to remove art from the [...]

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Thunderstruck (Erik Larson)

In this age of cell phones and constant communication, it’s easy to think our generation is the first that can’t get away from everything. We’ve become connected 24/7. I’ve made calls from mountain ridges and remote bike trails. I still enjoy shutting off the phone from time to time, but it’s a temporary isolation. Real [...]

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The Irish Game (Matthew Hart)

There’s nothing like a good art heist movie. A shady collector bankrolls a technically sophisticated theft but eventually gets caught when an even more impressive armada of security forces snare him in a net. Real art heists don’t always involve collectors. Increasingly, art is a commodity for drug traffickers. The works aren’t appreciated as art [...]

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