Priceless wittman5/20/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() It is enjoyable to follow along as Wittman relates the stories behind his recoveries including a Rodin sculpture that inspired the Impressionist movement, a headdress Geronimo wore at his final public appearance, and the rare Civil War battle flag carried into battle by one of the nation’s first African-American regiments. ![]() Wittman often worked undercover, usually unarmed, to catch art thieves, scammers, and black market traders who specialized in a wide variety of looted and stolen cultural patrimony. This is his story of his professional life, trailing his way through two decades worth of art crime cases. Priceless is a memoir, specifically of Robert Wittman who was the founding member of the Art Crime Team. ![]() Historical objects can fall into this category easily (and represent a good portion of the cases covered in Priceless) but art and antiquities are often the stars of the show and two of the major pillars in this world are the Art Loss Register and the FBI’s Art Crime Team and Art Theft Program. While I don’t work in an art museum something that remains a point of interest for me from my days in grad school is the world of stolen and looted art and its recovery. Sometimes professional curiosity places books on my to read list, and that’s certainly how Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures ended up there. ![]()
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