Even if you’ve never seen a van Gogh painting or know anything about his work I’m SURE you know that he cut off his ear. There are lots of stories and speculation around why and whether or not he sent it to someone. Let’s get to the bottom of it.

Today we’re going way WAY back and talking about possibly the first ever art heist, I feel like this is probably unlikely but it’s often referred to as the first known art heist. Let’s go!

Some of you may remember an article I wrote back in 2020 about criminals who had taken advantage of the Covid lockdown to steal various painting, one of them being a van Gogh. Well, just a couple weeks ago that painting was recovered! Here’s the story.

Some of you may already be aware of this case but I’ll try to make it fun to relearn about it. In the 1960s multiple cases of art fraud were discovered, specifically relating to the Group of Seven, an iconic Canadian art collective, what ensued landed two people in prison.

I can already hear you asking who Joseph Boehm is. Don’t worry, I didn’t know either. He was a Victorian era sculptor and artist. We’ll talk about his work and of course his scandalous and mysterious death.

Here we have an interesting case, where we examine a huge collection of cultural objects and antiquities that were seized by the FBI in 2014 and then, fast forward to 2022 and even earlier this year in 2023, how the US government is going about repatriating some of these items.

The absolutely iconic movie The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland, was actually not the first colour film but everyone remembers the moment Dorothy steps into Oz and emerges in colour, complete with her ruby slippers. So it makes sense that this iconic pair of shoes would be a target for collectors and thieves alike.

Seems like people in Canada have really latched onto the idea that creating fake Indigenous art is going to get them lots of money. Ultimately, as we’ve seen before and we’ll see again today, these fraudsters always get found out.

This week we’ve got a homegrown Canadian crime for you. One of the most famous photographs of Winston Churchill, shot by a Canadian photographer was stolen from an iconic hotel in Ottawa. But how? And where is it now?

Wow, yet another one from the FBI’s top 10 art crimes list! Here we’ve got a Dutch master’s self-portrait stolen during visiting hours at a gallery in New South Wales, Australia. It is extremely valuable which makes it not super surprising that they haven’t found it yet.

Strap in for a complicated story today of art fraud that spans years, different artists and countries and even involves an aspiring actor from Montreal. This one’s going to be a ride.

Here we go again, this week we’ve got another crime that’s on the FBI’s list of top 10 art crimes. This one’s a bit of a head-scratcher involving the Whitney family and the highest-paid commercial artist during the 1920s.

Unfortunately, there is a large market (or larger than you might think) for paintings made by Adolf Hitler. Selling these paintings is banned in large auction houses and websites but the market is thriving and some of the works, we’re now discovering, are forgeries.

Stonehenge is that huge circle of standing rocks out in the middle of a field in England, you know the one. It’s estimated that it was built around 5,000 years ago. How?? By whom?? And most importantly, why?

This crime is on the FBI's official Top Ten Art Crimes list, so it’s an important one. In 1995 violinist Erica Morini’s Stradivarius violin was stolen from her New York City apartment just days before her death. It is one of the most important instruments in the world and would be worth millions…if anyone could find it.

Not a crime in the true sense today but something interesting to discuss. With artists exploring more and more extreme methods of expressing their artistic intents and making a statement, where should we draw the line between acts of art and just destruction or crime? Or should we not be constraining art at all? Let’s talk about some examples.

This word, literally translated, means art confiscated from private collections, especially from Jewish collectors in Nazi Germany. Yup, we’re talking about Nazi art thefts, but not all of them because that would be way too much to cover (they did it a lot). We’re going to be talking about one specific person and his role in all this.

I had something else planned for this week but I really need to cover this breaking news. Police in Northern Ontario have arrested eight people in connection to art fraud, specifically fraud of a famous, iconic Canadian artist.

I promise this isn’t a clickbait title. There is a painting of the goddess Diana created in 1822 that was believed to have been destroyed at the end of World War 1. Is it possible that it’s been hanging in Madonna’s house?

This is a really mysterious story about a painting being found in the garbage. How did it get there in the first place? And how was it authenticated and finally sent back to its rightful owner? Read on, let’s find out.