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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With David Shillingford

Aired December 08, 2002 - 07:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Authorities in the Netherlands are investigating the theft of two Van Gogh works. The pieces were taken yesterday from the museum named after the 19th century artist. The marketing and operations director for the Art Loss Register in New York, David Shillingford joins us to talk recovering stolen art.
Mr. Shillingford, good to have you with us.

DAVID SHILLINGFORD, DIRECTOR, ART LOSS REGISTER: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: Bring us up to date on this particular investigation, and are you fairly optimistic these Van Goghs will turn up.

Well, I think they will. There are two ways that it can go. One is that they will be recovered in fairly short time, perhaps within 12 months. The other is that it will be many years until they surface. So these kind of thefts can go either way.

O'BRIEN: Statistically speaking, lost art does not have an excellent recovery rate, does it?

SHILLINGFORD: Well, there are two types of lost art. There are art thefts that occur everyday as parts of other thefts. And then there is art that itself the target of a theft. The recovery rate for art crowns (ph) such as this is actually slightly higher than in general.

O'BRIEN: What is the recovery rate?

SHILLINGFORD: Well, looking at the last three years, major thefts such as this the recovery rate is close to 50 percent.

O'BRIEN: All right, 50 percent. Give us a sense of the full scope of this problem. You know, we hear about cases like this that obviously make the news, but you probably have some fairly good figures as to the total problem worldwide.

SHILLINGFORD: Certainly the total problem worldwide is in the billions of dollars, what we see most of is thefts from households that occur everyday. And we have 120,000 items -- stolen items -- on our database. Items such as this are clearly more rare, but this year alone there are over 40 items that are of this range, have been stolen.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's talk about who these people are. Quite frankly, when I think of art thieves, I conjure of the Hollywood image. I think of the "Thomas Crown Affair", for example.

SHILLINGFORD: Sure.

O'BRIEN: Steve McQueen, of course there is a remake with Pierce Brosnan, but nevertheless, how much does that reflect reality, if at all?

SHILLINGFORD: Well, I think, if at all is probably the answer. Hollywood has a romantic and glamorous notion of art thieves. Really their sole purpose is to make money, rather than any love of the art in itself. So I think that we can safely say that it is not with Thomas Crown or Sean Connery or somebody like that.

O'BRIEN: Just people who love the art and do it for the sake of possessing the art, that doesn't exist?

SHILLINGFORD: There is certainly no evidence for that. There was a case this year where a waiter, in Europe, had spent years walking around museums in Europe. Walking out with art, some if it priceless, most of it very valuable and had collected it in his house. He actually lived with his mother.

O'BRIEN: His mother dumped many of them in the river, as I recall?

SHILLINGFORD: Well, certainly, out of the 172 items that he stole, 60 or so were destroyed. Most were recovered out of the river, but it was huge cultural loss as much as anything else.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Shillingford, how do you fence a Van Gogh?

SHILLINGFORD: Well, it very difficult to. It is certainly easier to steal than it is to sell. And whilst its market value may be very high, its value to the criminals is really nowhere near that. And they would be looking for either some kind of a ransom or talking to an insurance company. But that kind of deal is very seldom done, because it just encourages this kind of thing.

O'BRIEN: Let's take a look at your web site for just a moment, Artloss.com is the place to go. And the web is a good place for this sort of thing, because after all, you can put images on there and get people an actual sense of what has been stolen out there.

Some of these go back to the 1930s. I found that of great interest. I suppose this is helpful. Have you actually recovered art by way of the Internet?

SHILLINGFORD: Well, we use the Internet mainly to publicize what we do. Our database is not available to the art world or the general public, via the Internet due to the sensitivity of the information that we have.

O'BRIEN: What do you mean by that, why wouldn't you want to make it available?

SHILLINGFORD: We have to be careful who is using the information that we have on our database because criminals might find it easier to sell art if they know whether it is on our database or not.

O'BRIEN: Oh, I see, interesting. So you're kind of in a catch-22 there, aren't you? You'd like to let people know what is stolen, but in a way that could be a bad thing?

SHILLINGFORD: Actually most of the recoveries that we make are due to our art historians searching the art market, auction house catalogues, and dealers and museums come to us before the acquire art. And that is what leads to most of the recoveries that we make.

O'BRIEN: David Shillingford, thank you very much for shedding some light on all of this. It is an interesting world, not as romantic as you might think, but nevertheless fascinating.

David Shillingford is with the Art Loss Register, joining us from New York.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired December 8, 2002 - 07:38   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Authorities in the Netherlands are investigating the theft of two Van Gogh works. The pieces were taken yesterday from the museum named after the 19th century artist. The marketing and operations director for the Art Loss Register in New York, David Shillingford joins us to talk recovering stolen art.
Mr. Shillingford, good to have you with us.

DAVID SHILLINGFORD, DIRECTOR, ART LOSS REGISTER: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: Bring us up to date on this particular investigation, and are you fairly optimistic these Van Goghs will turn up.

Well, I think they will. There are two ways that it can go. One is that they will be recovered in fairly short time, perhaps within 12 months. The other is that it will be many years until they surface. So these kind of thefts can go either way.

O'BRIEN: Statistically speaking, lost art does not have an excellent recovery rate, does it?

SHILLINGFORD: Well, there are two types of lost art. There are art thefts that occur everyday as parts of other thefts. And then there is art that itself the target of a theft. The recovery rate for art crowns (ph) such as this is actually slightly higher than in general.

O'BRIEN: What is the recovery rate?

SHILLINGFORD: Well, looking at the last three years, major thefts such as this the recovery rate is close to 50 percent.

O'BRIEN: All right, 50 percent. Give us a sense of the full scope of this problem. You know, we hear about cases like this that obviously make the news, but you probably have some fairly good figures as to the total problem worldwide.

SHILLINGFORD: Certainly the total problem worldwide is in the billions of dollars, what we see most of is thefts from households that occur everyday. And we have 120,000 items -- stolen items -- on our database. Items such as this are clearly more rare, but this year alone there are over 40 items that are of this range, have been stolen.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's talk about who these people are. Quite frankly, when I think of art thieves, I conjure of the Hollywood image. I think of the "Thomas Crown Affair", for example.

SHILLINGFORD: Sure.

O'BRIEN: Steve McQueen, of course there is a remake with Pierce Brosnan, but nevertheless, how much does that reflect reality, if at all?

SHILLINGFORD: Well, I think, if at all is probably the answer. Hollywood has a romantic and glamorous notion of art thieves. Really their sole purpose is to make money, rather than any love of the art in itself. So I think that we can safely say that it is not with Thomas Crown or Sean Connery or somebody like that.

O'BRIEN: Just people who love the art and do it for the sake of possessing the art, that doesn't exist?

SHILLINGFORD: There is certainly no evidence for that. There was a case this year where a waiter, in Europe, had spent years walking around museums in Europe. Walking out with art, some if it priceless, most of it very valuable and had collected it in his house. He actually lived with his mother.

O'BRIEN: His mother dumped many of them in the river, as I recall?

SHILLINGFORD: Well, certainly, out of the 172 items that he stole, 60 or so were destroyed. Most were recovered out of the river, but it was huge cultural loss as much as anything else.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Shillingford, how do you fence a Van Gogh?

SHILLINGFORD: Well, it very difficult to. It is certainly easier to steal than it is to sell. And whilst its market value may be very high, its value to the criminals is really nowhere near that. And they would be looking for either some kind of a ransom or talking to an insurance company. But that kind of deal is very seldom done, because it just encourages this kind of thing.

O'BRIEN: Let's take a look at your web site for just a moment, Artloss.com is the place to go. And the web is a good place for this sort of thing, because after all, you can put images on there and get people an actual sense of what has been stolen out there.

Some of these go back to the 1930s. I found that of great interest. I suppose this is helpful. Have you actually recovered art by way of the Internet?

SHILLINGFORD: Well, we use the Internet mainly to publicize what we do. Our database is not available to the art world or the general public, via the Internet due to the sensitivity of the information that we have.

O'BRIEN: What do you mean by that, why wouldn't you want to make it available?

SHILLINGFORD: We have to be careful who is using the information that we have on our database because criminals might find it easier to sell art if they know whether it is on our database or not.

O'BRIEN: Oh, I see, interesting. So you're kind of in a catch-22 there, aren't you? You'd like to let people know what is stolen, but in a way that could be a bad thing?

SHILLINGFORD: Actually most of the recoveries that we make are due to our art historians searching the art market, auction house catalogues, and dealers and museums come to us before the acquire art. And that is what leads to most of the recoveries that we make.

O'BRIEN: David Shillingford, thank you very much for shedding some light on all of this. It is an interesting world, not as romantic as you might think, but nevertheless fascinating.

David Shillingford is with the Art Loss Register, joining us from New York.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com