Art of the Heist

Prison inmates plan the ingenious heist of two Rembrandts and a Renoir worth $80 million from the National Museum in Stockholm. Authorities assemble an equally brilliant sting operation that leads all the way to Los Angeles.

Disguised as cops, two thieves remove $500 million in art from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the biggest art theft in history. The hunt for the stolen Vermeer and Rembrandts takes investigators from the shady underworld of Boston mobsters to the dangerous turf of Irish paramilitaries.

A songwriter-turned-forger joins a smooth-talking con man to rake in millions selling counterfeit paintings. As Scotland Yard zeroes in on the duo, the cops discover that the scam reaches into the inner sanctums of England's most famous museums, threatening the legacies of the world's greatest artists.

The Scream, painted by Edvard Munch in 1893, plumbs the depths of dread. Its theft from the National Gallery in Oslo leaves authorities equally vexed as they struggle to fathom a motive for the crime. But as the investigation unfolds, the cops discover the thieves' offenses go far beyond art theft.

The robbery of a Cézanne still life from the rustic home of an art collector shocks residents of a sleepy New England town. But as investigators run out of clues, a revelation from an unlikely source puts the investigation into a stunning new perspective.

War-torn Cypress of the 1970s becomes a playground for treasure hunters eager to raid the country's early churches. When an ambitious art dealer sets her sights on a mosaic of Christ as a child, she unveils a patchwork of unscrupulous art dealers, con men, and smugglers.

Gustav Klimt composed more than 200 sketches of Adele Bloch-Bauer before rendering the Austrian socialite on canvas in luminous gold hues. It took the Nazis only one night to confiscate her portrait and set off a battle for possession of the canvas that lasted more than six decades.

An ex-soldier employs an ingenious method of smuggling ancient Egyptian artifacts through customs for a big payday in England. But the discovery in his house of several artifacts--including the sculpture of Amenhotep's head--leads to a harsh crackdown from authorities bent on enforcing international law.

A thief brazenly nabs two Rubens sketches from a Spanish museum, setting off an investigation that stretches from the galleries of Stockholm to the sun-drenched streets of Miami Beach. To recover the 17th-century treasure, cops enlist an art history professor to risk his life in an undercover operation.

When the iconic Mona Lisa painting disappears from the Louvre Museum under the nose of the staff, a cloud of suspicion hovers over a motley collection of Parisians that includes Pablo Picasso. After authorities close in on the culprit, a shocking confession hints at a conspiracy.

After priceless treasures vanish from St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum, authorities target a curator and her family as suspects. But as the investigation widens and more people fall victim to brutal Russian justice, evidence suggests the heist was the work of forces seeking to rock the world-famous museum to its foundations.

A shimmering gold headdress is looted from an ancient Moche tomb in the Peruvian desert. Later, an art dealer is found bludgeoned to death in his Lima apartment. Was it murder, or an ancient curse? The answer may lie with a slippery art collector whose dealings leave a trail of suspicion.

When paintings vanish from a Buenos Aires gallery, suspicion falls on feared members of Argentina's brutal junta. The chase for the canvases leads to Taiwan and London and a black market involving stolen art and guns for the Argentinian regime.

The disappearance of a priceless Renaissance sculpture from the Museum of Art History in Vienna leaves authorities baffled. Why didn't guards answer the alarm? Did a Balkan warlord order the heist? The answers may lie with a handsome security guard who has a way with women--and ample skill with alarm systems.