Robert Volpe, World-Renowned 'Art Cop', 63
DGH
Robert Volpe; World-Renowned 'Art Cop'
By Adam Bernstein, Washington Post Staff Writer
Robert Volpe, 63, a painter, sculptor, gallery owner and New York
Police Department detective who became internationally known as the
"art cop" for tracking purloined art on the black market, died Nov. 28
at his home on Staten Island, N.Y., after a heart attack.
For years, Mr. Volpe was a singular figure in police work as the only
detective in the country assigned full-time to investigate stolen or
forged artwork as well as dealer fraud and vandalism in museums.
With his dungarees, long hair and thick, handlebar moustache, he looked
less like a cop than an art school bohemian, and he endured peer
ridicule. Police colleagues once placed a nude centerfold in his locker
with a note asking, "But is it art?"
A former art school student and narcotics investigator, Mr. Volpe was
asked in 1972 to gauge the usefulness of an art squad. Until then, art
thefts were lumped into burglary or larceny caseloads.
"Instead of coming back with a report, I started coming back with
arrests and recoveries," he told the New York Times.
He scoured auction houses, raided homes of collectors suspected of
going bad and sometimes went undercover to negotiate with thieves about
returning art.
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."
As a detective and later as a private art-security consultant, he
shared information regularly with Interpol and other police agencies in
London, Paris and Rome. He added that thieves were just as likely to
help in order "to knock out the competition."
Mr. Volpe was born a banker's son Dec. 13, 1942, in Brooklyn. As a
teenager, he painted the tugboats he saw from his Bay Ridge
neighborhood. When a local art dealer exhibited the works, Mr. Volpe
was shocked to see them sell for $250.
He went on to graduate from the High School of Art and Design in
Manhattan and to attend the Parsons School of Design and the Art
Students League, both in New York.
After Army service, he joined the police department in 1964 to support
his art. He was put to work investigating organized crime and drug
dealing.
With his superiors noting the rise in art thefts, he was chosen for his
new assignment. He was the subject of Laurie Adams's 1974 book "Art
Cop" and, as his fame grew, he was occasionally summoned abroad.
He said the Hungarian government once requested his help in finding two
stolen Raphaels and five other paintings taken from the country's fine
arts museum. He concluded that only a rich collector would risk
stealing $40 million worth of government property behind the Iron
Curtain, and contacts in London told him that a Greek olive oil
merchant was the probable culprit. Police arrested the culprits and
recovered the art.
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."
In 1997, Mr. Volpe reentered the news when he came to the defense of
his son Justin, a New York police officer who pleaded guilty to
sexually assaulting Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in a Brooklyn police
precinct station house. Louima had been taken into custody after police
responded to a fight outside a club.
Mr. Volpe's son received a 30-year prison sentence, and a Staten Island
newspaper reported that Mr. Volpe traveled every month to visit his son
at a federal prison in Rochester, Minn.
Survivors include his wife, Grace Volpe; two other sons; two brothers;
and a sister.
islanders
person is a doctor? Run patients, run.
Hyfler/Rosner
"islanders" <islan...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1165006547....@16g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...
> As par the course for DGH, a day late and a dollar short.
> And this
> person is a doctor? Run patients, run.
>
First of all, he finally posted an obit the way it was
written and for this, I'm thankful. Second, it's an Adam
Bernstein obit, so it's worth waiting for.
islanders
Hyfler/Rosner wrote:
>
> First of all, he finally posted an obit the way it was
> written and for this, I'm thankful. Second, it's an Adam
> Bernstein obit, so it's worth waiting for.
Thrid of all you are running low on cooking sherry.
Bill Schenley
> > short. And this person is a doctor? Run patients, run.
>
> First of all, he finally posted an obit the way it was
> written and for this, I'm thankful. Second, it's an Adam
> Bernstein obit, so it's worth waiting for.
Yeah, very cool obit. Adam Bernstein's Volpe obituary was actually
about Robert Volpe. The AP's Volpe obit was more about Justin Volpe,
his son.
BTW, thanks, Dean.
Brad Ferguson
Bill Schenley <stra...@ma.rr.com> wrote:
Likewise. Nice job, Dean.
islanders
Brad Ferguson wrote:
>
> Likewise. Nice job, Dean.
Doesn't this type of post usually end with you offering a blow job?
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Bill Schenley <stra...@ma.rr.com> wrote:
> Yeah, very cool obit. Adam Bernstein's Volpe obituary was actually
> about Robert Volpe. The AP's Volpe obit was more about Justin
> Volpe, his son.
You can't *not* mention Justin in an obit about the dad, but two short
paragraphs at the bottom were just right.
> BTW, thanks, Dean.
Yes. And Adam.
--
_+_ From the catapult of |If anyone disagrees with any statement I make, I
_|70|___:)=}- J.D. Baldwin |am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also
\ / bal...@panix.com|to deny under oath that I ever made it. -T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------