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A review by starwing
Stealing the Show: A History of Art and Crime in Six Thefts by John Barelli
4.0
A lot more memoir than art crime, but I was fine with that.
As I recently visited the Met for the first time, I really enjoyed the amount of detail about the locations of various events and artifacts in the museum.
I think that the title does not accurately convey how much of this book is a memoir, and so people are reasonably disappointed there is not as much content about the art crimes themselves.
I mostly enjoyed hearing the personal details of the author meeting and working with various people, but I can understand why others found this boring. In terms of the name dropping, I’m pretty sure if I spent a day with Princess Diana I’d be putting that in my own memoir haha, so while it’s a bit pretentious it did not overly bother me.
In my opinion, the interesting parts more than make up for the slower portions. There’s definitely enough about art crime to make it worth reading, and if you’re bored by the personal stories you can always skip those portions.
As I recently visited the Met for the first time, I really enjoyed the amount of detail about the locations of various events and artifacts in the museum.
I think that the title does not accurately convey how much of this book is a memoir, and so people are reasonably disappointed there is not as much content about the art crimes themselves.
I mostly enjoyed hearing the personal details of the author meeting and working with various people, but I can understand why others found this boring. In terms of the name dropping, I’m pretty sure if I spent a day with Princess Diana I’d be putting that in my own memoir haha, so while it’s a bit pretentious it did not overly bother me.
In my opinion, the interesting parts more than make up for the slower portions. There’s definitely enough about art crime to make it worth reading, and if you’re bored by the personal stories you can always skip those portions.