COLUMN ONE : One Crime That’s a Fine Art : Precious artworks are second only to narcotics as a lure for global criminals. Soaring prices, and more sophisticated thieves, are fueling the boom.

The wood-paneled offices are tucked away on the fourth floor of the Explorers Club in Manhattan--a nice bit of symbolism--and serve as a central clearing house in the international search for stolen art. When the phone rang on Monday, it was no surprise that the FBI was on the other end of the line.

The agent in the Boston field office wanted to know if the International Foundation for Art Research could print a special bulletin with pictures and descriptions of a dozen priceless masterpieces taken from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston Sunday--the biggest theft of old masters in the nation’s history.

“The FBI and the Gardner Museum want to get the word out,” said Constance Lowenthal, the foundation’s executive director, who immediately began planing a mini-magazine which will be sent to collectors, art dealers, museums, insurance companies and law enforcement agencies around the world.

“They (the robbers) obviously stole it very well,” Lowenthal said. “The next part is more difficult to carry off. It requires a different set of skills to insert these works of art into the art market.”

Her colleague, Margaret I. O’Brien, speculated that the works by Rembrandt, Degas, Manet and Vermeer could well prove impossible to dispose of because of all the publicity. But they could also be held for ransom, or possibly dealt to a collector intent on having a masterpiece no matter what the origin. Art experts said Monday that the astounding haul from the Gardner--possibly the biggest art theft in modern times--underscores what law enforcement officials have realized for more than a decade: stealing art works has become the second biggest international criminal activity after narcotics.

The boom in stolen art is fueled partly by soaring prices, increasing sophistication of thieves and the low priority many thefts get from law enforcement agencies busy focusing on violent crime.

Lowenthal’s group maintains files on more than 30,000 stolen art cases. More than $100-million worth of paintings, sculpture, decorative arts and antiquities are stolen each year on average around the world. A single case like the Gardner theft can balloon that number dramatically. Although the museum will not put a price on the missing masterpieces, some experts say the value could be a quarter-billion dollars.

And while the masterpieces may prove to be challenging to unload, lesser artworks are almost liquid assets in today’s art underworld. Experts estimate that only 5% to 10% of stolen artworks ever finds its way back to the owners.

“You’d be amazed at how many folks are dealing unknowingly with stolen art,” said Milton Esterow, editor and publisher of ARTnews magazine.

“More and more of the thieves know exactly what they are doing. They know the difference between a Rembrandt and a Botticelli,” he said.

“As thieves have become more knowledgeable about the art world, more sophisticated, law enforcement activities in the United States have diminished, and that’s disgraceful,” Esterow added, noting that offenders, when apprehended, often receive light sentences.

“Thefts have gone up for two reasons,” Lowenthal said. “The value of what is stolen has risen so dramatically. Thieves who used to steal other things have learned there is value in art and antiquities. They are willing in some cases to accept 1% of market value when they sell stolen goods. They sell to unscrupulous dealers who don’t ask any questions.”

In the case of the Gardner thefts, “It’s difficult to figure out what the thieves will do with the art if you think of it in the normal manner of buying and selling,” said Detective William Martin, a Los Angeles Police Department art theft expert who has worked in the field since 1980.

“If I were investigating this case, I’d be looking at ransoms and rewards,” he said.

The Boston thieves might demand a ransom from the museum or an insurance company, he said. If a reward is offered, an accomplice “might just happen to be walking down an alley and spot one of the paintings in a trash can,” Martin said.

One case involving a ransom occurred last year, when thieves stole three paintings by Vincent van Gogh from the Kroeller-Moeller Museum in Otterlo, Holland. They demanded a $2.2-million-ransom and returned one of the works. The others were later recovered and four suspects arrested.

It is unlikely the Boston thieves are working for a collector, Martin said.

“Everyone wants to hear that thieves steal to order for some mad collector who will hide the art in a castle . . . (but) the joy of collecting is showing your collection. Theft is done for profit. The basic motivation is money,” Martin said.

Still, occasionally thefts are commissioned for works that cannot be legitimately acquired. One such theft occurred in 1983, when thieves stole Italian Renaissance masterpieces, including Raphael’s self-portrait, from the Hungarian national museum in Budapest.

Investigators found that a sophisticated band of Italian art thieves, armed with cutting tools and high-tech alarm-busting devices, executed a perfect break-in and vanished with the works.

An extensive dragnet eventually snared the thieves in their home country before they could get the paintings to Greece where, it was later found, an olive oil baron had paid a handsome sum for the sake of having the works hang in his home.

“There aren’t many thieves with that sort of expertise,” said Robert Volpe, a former New York City police detective who worked on the Hungarian case and is now a private consultant tracing stolen art around the world. “They were capable of stealing anything.”

Recoveries are relatively rare but when they occur, they are celebrated in “IFAR Reports,” the monthly publication of Lowenthal’s group. The magazine listed 10 important recoveries in 1989 in its December issue.

Among them is “one of 21 Dutch Old Masters stolen at gunpoint in a daylight raid on a Zurich gallery, and allegedly transported to the U.S. in a diplomatic pouch.” The painting by Dutch master Adrian van Coorte was recovered through the efforts of New York dealer Richard Schillay, who was offered some of the works, according to the journal.

A lithograph, “Sick Child,” by Norwegian Expressionist Edvard Munch was returned to an Oslo collector after a citizen’s tip about a suspicious driver led Norwegian police to a cache of stolen art.

Auguste Rodin’s bronze “Mask of a Man With a Broken Nose,” stolen from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, turned up under a sewer pipe in the basement of a Philadelphia truck driver, thanks to an anonymous tip.

Christie’s auction house was responsible for another recovery, listed in the publication. A double-sided drawing by Rembrandt “induced gasps of excitement” when it was delivered to the auction house for consignment, but it was later found to be property stolen in 1979 from the Rembrandt House Amsterdam, the IFAR publication reported.

Documentation is essential to recovering a stolen work of art. When law enforcement officers receive vague descriptions of stolen property, such as “oil painting, multi-colored” or “painting, abstract,” as is typical of thefts from private collections, they can’t help.

But when photographs and complete documentation of stolen artworks are available, as it is for works in major museum collections, the information can be circulated and the items can be easily identified if they are found.

The Gardner thefts prove that American museums have a serious security problem, but they are better prepared than European institutions, which are often housed in antiquated, ill-equipped buildings. Of all the art-rich countries, Italy probably has the greatest difficulty protecting its treasures, some of which still sit around in open churches, Martin said.

“There has been an increase in museum thefts in America during the last two years, principally back east,” Martin said, noting that “there hasn’t been a major museum theft in Los Angeles for a long, long time.” Martin credits that record to effective preventive measures. “The security in major museums in Los Angeles is excellent,” he said.

Art museums have become more security conscious and installed increasingly sophisticated security systems during the last decade, he said. Effective security for a museum includes a “very sophisticated, up-to-date alarm system, 24-hour protection by trained security officers and back-up cataloguing of items in the collection,” Martin said.

Given that effort, the Gardner theft sent shock waves through the museum world. “I’m just devastated. It’s a terrible loss,” said Deborah Gribbon, associate director for curatorial affairs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. “People may get the impression that the Gardner is a lax institution or that it is understaffed, but that’s not true. It’s not a situation where they were a sitting duck,” said Gribbon, who was curator of the Gardner from 1976 to 1984.

The Getty, the Los Angeles area’s most conspicuous center of art wealth, has always been security-conscious, Gribbon said. “But there’s no question that you take a look at what you are doing after something like this,” she added. “The Gardner theft underlines that excellent security people are the ultimate line of defense, and ours are extremely good.”

“Certainly an incident like this causes all museums to reflect on and review their procedures.” said Jeanne Collins, director of public information at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Museums typically do not insure artworks for full replacement value. Rates are prohibitive and the money is better spent on prevention, museum officials and insurance agents agree.

While museums have the most valuable collections and are vulnerable to the largest losses, dealers whose doors are open to the public are probably even more susceptible. Longtime dealers say that security is a relatively recent worry, but an extremely serious one now.

“We didn’t have any security at all when I started out here about 55 years ago; it wouldn’t have occurred to anybody to take a work of art,” said Klaus Perls, owner of Perls Galleries on Madison Avenue in New York.

“It was very hard to get rid of art in any way you wanted to--you couldn’t sell it and there were very few people who wanted it. In the museums, there were some precautions but they were more about fire than stealing.”

Perls was a victim of theft in January, when a mobile by Alexander Calder was stolen through a domed skylight. “You would not believe the kind of fortifications we have in our place now,” he said.

Dealers who exhibit at antique shows across the country deliver objects to armories or halls where the exhibitions are held using unmarked vans or trucks.

“All drive trucks with nothing on the side panels,” said Wendell Garrett, editor of the magazine Antiques. “Anonymity is the best thing.”

It is also the first line of defense for many private collectors. Being identified as the owner of a major artwork once was regarded as a status symbol, but “you go to exhibits nowadays, and most labels say ‘loaned by a private collector’ rather than identifying the owner,” said Jim Reinish, senior vice president of New York’s Hirschel Adler Galleries. Experts say that while spectacular robberies like that at the Gardner Museum may make headlines, smaller thefts are more common.

Each year, the International Foundation for Art Research adds over 2,000 works of stolen art to its files. They include liturgical objects like a 19th-Century silver chalice stolen in Seraing, Belgium; a 16th-Century Gothic clock taken in Zurich; an Egyptian statue of a standing man stolen in New York, and a 20th-Century Tiffany Studios peony lamp taken last June in Beverly Hills.

The foundation put out a special art theft alert offering a $100,000 reward for a private collection of 60 pieces of art, antiquities and Oriental and tribal sculpture stolen last March in New York City. It included a Picasso pastel and pencil drawing and an Egyptian Middle Kingdom standing man.

Goldman reported from New York and Muchnic from Los Angeles. Staff writer Karen Tumulty and researcher Lisa Phillips in New York also contributed to this story.

MAJOR RECENT ART THEFTS

MARCH 18, 1990--Two robbers dressed as police officers steal 11 paintings and an ancient Chinese beaker from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The stolen paintings included works by Rembrandt, Degas and Vermeer. The works are said to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

DEC. 29, 1989--Eight works by Matisse are reported missing from the Nice apartment where the French artist had lived. Police recover the works, with an estimated value of $12.5 million, during a routine traffic stop Jan. 9.

NOV. 5, 1989--Works worth at least $17 million are taken from the home of Picasso’s daughter, Marina Picasso, including seven paintings by Picasso, a Brueghel and a bust by Rodin.

SEPTEMBER, 1989--Works worth $3 million, including 81 Andy Warhol lithographs, are stolen from a gallery near Bonn, West Germany. Authorities recover the works from a Dutch art dealer.

AUGUST, 1989--Two men steal paintings and three signet rings worth $4 million from a New York art collector. The booty includes a 1516 painting worth $3 million and a ring the owner said belonged to the family of Vlad the Impaler, the Eastern European prince who inspired the vampire legend of Count Dracula.

JUNE 1, 1989--A Braque painting worth an estimated $3 million is taken from the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris.

MAY 3, 1989--Six armed men flashing fake police badges steal $30 million to $40 million worth of paintings, sculptures and tapestries from the Chacara do Ceu Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Police recover the works, which include paintings by Dali and Matisse and two Chinese ceramic horses from the 7th Century Tang Dynasty.

APRIL 12, 1989--Three armed robbers take 21 Renaissance paintings worth more than $5 million from a gallery in Zurich, Switzerland. Police recover at least nine of the works.

DEC. 12, 1988--Thieves steal three paintings by Van Gogh, with an estimated value of $72 million to $90 million, from the Kroeller-Mueller Museum in a remote section of the Netherlands. The thieves demand a ransom of $2.2 million for the works and return one of them. Police recover the other two on July 13, 1989.

Source: Associated Press

NO THEFT INSURANCE--The stolen Gardner Museum works were insured against damage but not theft. A20