ART CRIME
AUR OFFERS “TRAFFICKERS, THIEVES AND FORGERS”
A NEW COURSE ON ART CRIME OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

8 May 2009: Professor Noah Charney, a world renowned expert on art crime, comes to AUR for the fall 2009 semester fresh from a run at Yale University where he just offered a highly successful course on the subject. His course AH 283 - Traffickers, Thieves And Forgers: Art Crime will meet for thirteen Wednesday evenings beginning on 9 September from 6:15 to 9:15 pm in the Auriana Auditorium on Via Pietro Roselli on the AUR campus. The first lecture is free and open to the public. Those wishing to take the course for credit, as an auditor or as an attendee will be able to enroll at the first class.

Art crime has evolved from a relatively innocuous crime of passion carried out by individuals (often for ideological as much as financial reasons) into the third highest-grossing criminal industry in the world. Today’s art thieves are usually connected to organized crime and stolen art and antiquities are used to fund drugs and arms trafficking and terrorist acts. Professor Charney’s course will explore the history of art crime and its impact upon our society. It will also examine how art can be protected and recovered.

Noah Charney holds advanced degrees in Art History from the Courtauld Institute in London and the University of Cambridge in Great Britain. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in art crime from the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. He has worked closely with law enforcement agencies across Europe to study the phenomenon of art crime and is the founding director of ARCA (Association for Research into Crimes Against Art) www.artcrime.info. He has given many interviews for the media on the subject of art crime and is currently writing a TV documentary on the subject.