Looting art is often a byproduct of war

Priceless paintings were quickly taken during a 2008 raid of a Zurich museum

Three men walked into Emil Bührle Foundation during open hours. One of the men pulled out a loaded gun and forced the museum staff to the floor, while the others stole four paintings close to the door. The stolen paintings included a Degas, a Monet, a Van Gogh, and a Cezanne, totaling a whopping $160M in stolen art.

Successful art thieves run into the problem of having a painting too famous to sell

This potentially explains why some robbers hold onto these pieces for years, even decades. Security experts say no reputable art dealers, or even black-market dealers, are willing to sell stolen works by famous artists like Van Gogh or Modigliani.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Riveting artwork from the battlefields during World War I

During World War I, the United States government commissioned eight artists to accompany American Expeditionary Forces to Europe to sketch and document what they saw. Drawing tanks, soldiers, shattered villages, and even German prisoners of war, the artists preserved much of the war as a matter of historical record and to rally support back home.

Picasso was on trial for the theft of the 'Mona Lisa'

On August 22, 1911, the world was stunned by the theft of the "Mona Lisa" from the Louvre in Paris. As an international investigation searched for the culprit, a young Picasso was suspected to be part of a group of its thieves. While innocent in the disappearance of the Mona Lisa, he found himself on trial with reasonable suspicion: He was in possession of two Iberian statues that were the property of the same museum.

Breaking down the numbers on art theft trends

Cultural property theft has been on the rise in recent years, and the recovery rate of such artifacts is estimated to be below 10%. Explore dozens of other statistics here.

A stolen Norman Rockwell painting was found in Stephen Spielberg's collection

In 1989, the famed director purchased "Russian Schoolroom" from a legitimate dealer. He remained unaware that it was looted years prior from a gallery in Missouri until his staff spotted the painting on an FBI list of stolen works of art. In 2007, the FBI confirmed its authenticity.

5 works of art that were destroyed and repaired

Art preservation is a delicate skill; art reconstruction is even more challenging, especially when the damaged works are centuries old. This Artnet guide details five of the most famous cases of dismembered works (from Manet, Cézanne, and more) that were repaired by specialists, allowing audiences to see the pieces in the way they were intended.

Picasso's 'Guernica' protested the bombing of a Basque village

By 1937, Picasso's fame and influence had already made him a legend. Yet an unprovoked war crime in Guernica, Spain that same year—where 25 bombers dropped 100,000 pounds of bombs and explosives on civilians—inspired one of his most moving works.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Some argue that appropriation in pop art is simply plagiarism

Some of pop art’s most recognizable works rely on the art of appropriation, lifting advertisements, product images, and—in Roy Lichtenstein’s case—comic book panels drawn by other artists. Artnet dives into a 2023 documentary exploring the complicated legacy of appropriation and high versus low art through interviews with comic artists whose work Lichtenstein copied into million-dollar masterpieces.

Artist Raphael was one of the three supreme masters of the High Renaissance

Raphael was a prolific and versatile painter who worked as a sponge, adopting the practices of other great painters while making them his own. Thanks to his creating many iterations of the same scene, we can analyze how his mastery evolved over his career.

The WWII passport forgers who saved thousands of Jewish lives

Amid the chaos of Hitler's authoritarian Europe in World War II, Polish diplomats based in Switzerland used the classic toolkit of thieves to help free thousands of Jews: they perfected the art of forgery, faking passports secretly donated by sympathetic Latin American countries. Read the incredible tale of heroism here.

Is repatriation the answer to looted museum objects?

For many, the return of stolen art and artifacts to their places of origin is a simple solution. But, as Patricia Marroquin Norby, the Met’s curator of Native American Art, writes in this article, there are sometimes other approaches and factors to consider. Speaking specifically about the collection she oversees, Norby discusses other solutions like co-stewardship, in which collaborative relationships are built with the tribes from whom the objects were taken.

Champagne played a role in resisting the Nazis

When France surrendered to the Nazis in 1940, the invaders occupied the north. This was home to wine regions like Champagne and Bordeaux, which the Nazis were eager to loot. Winemakers took a stand by sheltering dissidents in their cellars, passing intelligence across borders, and even giving their lives to the cause.

Adolf Hitler deeply admired Henry Ford, citing him as an inspiration for "Mein Kampf"

Hitler frequently praised Ford's anti-semitic viewpoints, both before and during the Holocaust. While Ford denied being sympathetic to the Nazi regime, Hitler kept a portrait of Ford on his desk, and Ford accepted the highest military award available to a foreign citizen from the Nazi government.

The Easter story in paintings from the National Gallery

Walk through the entire narrative of Holy Week, painting by painting, from the "Agony in the Garden" to the "Supper at Emmaus" from masters like Titian and Caravaggio.

How Van Gogh painted 'Irises' in an asylum

Van Gogh’s painting titled “Irises” (1889) remains one of his most-recognized works. Created soon after the artist checked himself into an asylum, the oil painting depicts flowers from the overgrown garden in the institution. Discover more about the work and other masterpieces Van Gogh constructed during a personally tumultuous time.

Archaeologists discovered over 11,000 examples of graffiti in ancient Pompeii

Residents drew various figures and announcements on homes, temples, and walls, much of it preserved by volcanic ash. While some were clearly intended to be artistic, scholars have noted that the ancient graffiti has more in common with social media than with the tags and murals we associate today with the art form.

How Lucia Moholy's photography captured the Bauhaus aesthetic

The photographer was one of the few affiliated with the school who photographed its locations, documenting the modern style long after the Nazis had driven its artists from Germany. This podcast episode explores why she went uncredited for so many years.

Holocaust History

Born in Berlin in 1924, to a Catholic father and Jewish mother, Wolfgang Haney survived the Holocaust, though many in his family did not. He spent a large part of his life collecting more than 15,000 objects related to the history of anti-Semitism, before dying in 2017. Recently, the German Historical Museum acquired his collection, as detailed in this article

The artwork at Burning Man is impressive and transient

Huge sculptures, mutant vehicles, concert stages, the Man, and other spectacles created at Burning Man each year are often destroyed by the end of the event. If they aren't burned, they'll often be repurposed or trashed.

Romanticism changed the norms of the artworld

Romanticism’s expressiveness led to a change in the norms of portrait painting, favoring emotion, nuance, and less conventional subjects. One such example is Géricault’s portraits of mental illness, depicting patients, including a kleptomaniac and a “child snatcher,” in states of expressive emotion.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

Explore an interactive map of WW2 shipwrecks

Historians estimate roughly 20,000 ships were sunk during World War II as a direct cause of fighting, primarily in the Mediterranean and Pacific theaters. This mapping project lists about 75% of them, while the remainder lacked specific location data.

Nazi Germany replaced Advent calendars with depictions of family life under Nazi rule

During World War II, the Nazi regime banned printed Advent calendars because of religious messaging. Officials instead produced state-approved versions featuring swastikas, tanks, and Nazi symbols.

Mary Cassatt's mural from the 1893 World's Fair mysteriously disappeared

The massive mural was called "Modern Woman" and was displayed in the Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, better known as the Chicago World's Fair. When the fair closed in October of that year, the mural was put into storage, but it later went missing. It hasn't been located since. All that remains are black and white photos of it, like the one below.

Gustav Klimt featured a lot of gold leaf in his art

Austrian artist Gustav Klimt's most iconic image, "The Kiss," can be seen today printed on tapestries, t-shirts, mugs, and more. The painting comes from a decade in his career where gold held a prominent place. Klimt's family business of goldsmithing, in tandem with inspiration from Byzantine churches, coalesced in his obsession with gold.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

In 1915, workers recovered a submarine-like vessel from the Chicago River, prompting fears of German espionage

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

Poison ivy was sent to Europe in the 1600s as an exotic, ornamental oddity, where it was purposefully grown in the English royal gardens at Kew, the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and a few other locations.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.