The Art Cop

I wanted to talk about Robert Volpe, the New York City Police Department's art theft sleuth, but the page I had saved is apparently no longer active. Luckily, the very helpful web browser Brave automatically asks me if I'd like to check the Wayback Machine for an archive, which I do, and which it has, and which I will re-paste right here just for furthering the sake of posterity. Although I should note that the main reference here is a New York Times article from 2006 titled Robert Volpe, Art Theft Expert, Dies at 63. You can read more in a book titled Art Cop from 1974 (see below).

Robert Volpe (December 13, 1942 – November 28, 2006), was a painter and New York City police officer and detective, specializing in art theft.

Born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Volpe studied art at the High School of Art and Design, Parsons School for Design and the Art Students League of New York. His art career began with paintings of tugboats during his teenage years, and later, in the 1970s, his abstract work sold for as much as $1500. After a stint in the army, he joined the New York City police force and initially worked undercover on organized crime cases, including narcotics work related to the French Connection. After making several art crime arrests, in 1971 he was appointed the sole member of the New York City Police Department's bureau for art crime, the only bureau of its kind in the nation.

His work was varied, including art theft, vandalism, and forgeries, and he took as many as 40–50 calls per day from around the world. In 1981, he recovered an 1858 candelabrum once owned by the king of Egypt only 11 days after being notified of the theft by British authorities. Over his desk hung a congratulatory photograph from the foreign minister of Italy for recovering two ivories worth $1.5 million stolen from a museum in Pesaro. After Volpe's retirement in 1983, art crimes began to be handled by the burglary division.

Here's an even older article from which I've copied a few portions:

Art People: City's art policeman. By Michael Brenson, New York Times, May 20, 1983. 

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/20/arts/art-people-city-s-art-policeman.html

Mr. Volpe is the art squad of the New York City Police Department. For almost 11 years, he has worked this beat alone in a city he describes as the ''clearing house internationally for art.'' Not only is he the one-man art squad in New York, but he is also the only detective in the United States ''designated to investigate artrelated crimes,'' he said. Internationally, he added, there are about a dozen art detectives, including four-man units in Britain and Italy.

The 40-year-old, Brooklyn-born son of a banker, whose formative years with the Police Department were spent as an undercover agent for the narcotics squad, knows the New York art world as well as many artists and dealers know it. In his boots, dungarees and sweater, with his thick mustache, he is a familiar figure in galleries. ''I guess you could say some of my best friends are dealers,'' he said.

Mr. Volpe also keeps abreast of what goes on at the auction houses. He was at the Sotheby Parke Bernet galleries on April 18, the day before the theft of a diamond valued at $500,000 to $600,000 was discovered. He has been called in to work on the case with detectives of the 19th Precinct, who have jurisdiction over it. ''I know all the players in the game,'' he said. ... collectors, curators, dealers, framers, restorers and packers. 

...

Before Mr. Volpe began the job in 1972, a police art squad did not exist. ''I was brought in to make a survey and see if there was something in this area,'' he said. ''Instead of coming back with a report, I started coming back with arrests and recoveries. So, obviously, there was a need.''

In the last few years, he has been deluged. He said he received up to 50 telephone calls a day, ''anything from reports of theft, to requests from private dealers and from police departments here and around the world, to someone asking me what kind of acrylic brush to use.''

...

[One of his most memorable cases] "of little significance," he said. It involved a Brooklyn artist, now dead, whose sculpture tools, along with seven statues of rabbis he had made, were stolen. The artist was so distressed by the robbery, Mr. Volpe said, that he wound up in an intensive-care ward.

"I did something unprofessional," the detective recalled. "I promised him I'd get them back. I dropped everything I was doing and went out on the street. I talked to hookers and junkies. I found out that a couple of pieces were being sold at subway stops for $5 each. Eventually, the information started fitting together. I got all the pieces back. A week and a half later, he got out of the hospital, and I presented him the pieces and helped him find a new studio."

And another good story about him here:

Robert Volpe; World-Renowned 'Art Cop', By Adam Bernstein, Washington Post, December 1, 2006.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/30/AR2006113001503.html

Once, he portrayed a gay Rhode Island art dealer named Damien Renar. When he arranged to meet the thieves, he was dressed in a white linen suit, and he relished the dramatic showdown, he said, when he could pull his police revolver from its holster and shout, "Freeze, you [expletive]!"

"Grade B movie stuff," he told the Times. "You find you have to behave that way. You don't come off with authority, you're done."

When he retired in 1985, he estimated that he had recovered tens of millions of dollars worth of Byzantine ivories, Oriental rugs, Greek marble heads, Tiffany glass, Matisses, Raphaels and other treasures. For a period, he noted a particularly high trade in faux antique French furniture.

"If all the old French furniture was real," he told the Christian Science Monitor, "there would never have been a French Revolution. Everybody in the country would have been too busy making furniture."

And ^THAT is a good lesson to remember when thinking about the world of fakes, frauds and forgeries. 

Post Script, On the Charm of an Art Thief:

Overall, he said, the recovery rate for stolen fine art was at best 10 percent. He lamented to Time magazine that judges rarely gave harsh sentences to art thieves.

"An art thief is entertaining, romantic," he said. "I've seen cases where the thief has pleaded guilty and gotten no sentence at all."

-Robert Volpe

Notes:

Art Cop: Robert Volpe, Art Crime Detective, by Laurie Schneider Adams on Dodd, Mead & Co. in 1974. ISBN13: 9780396070207. [goodreads]