art crime

Art crime is a collective term for criminal acts closely connected to the art world, the art trade or art circles. Under Danish law the concept is not defined as an independent criminal category, but it is used in journalistic and criminological contexts to describe cases in which art is either the object of the offence or forms the environment in which the offence takes place.

The most frequently occurring types of conduct within art crime include theft of artworks, fraud in connection with the purchase and sale of art, forgery and provenance fraud, extortion, and money laundering through the art trade. What these acts have in common is that they exploit the particular characteristics of the art market — high values, subjective valuations and often limited transparency.

In Danish case law, the individual acts are dealt with under the ordinary criminal provisions governing the relevant type of offence. Fraud committed in connection with an art sale is thus prosecuted under the provisions of the Danish Penal Code (straffeloven) on fraud, just as theft of art is handled under the general theft provisions. There is no separate statutory basis bringing these acts together under a single legal concept.

In an international context — and in cases such as that of the American gallery owner Andrew Crispo — art crime illustrates how an exclusive and closed environment can form the setting for serious criminality extending far beyond the art market itself. The Crispo case involved, among other things, extortion and links to violent crime, and it demonstrates that art crime can in practice overlap with far more serious categories of offence.