A bronze sculpture at the Government Museum in Chennai. The illicit trade of cultural goods is big business. Upper estimates of the market’s annual value reach nearly $10 billion.
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/BloombergThese Art Sleuths Are Taking on Traffickers in a $10 Billion Black Market
Antiquities smuggling is big business. A growing network of novice detectives, scattered across time zones, is trying to change that.
From a tiny office in southern India, S. Vijay Kumar scans case files on his laptop with the precision of a forensic scientist. To an untrained eye, the width of a bronze Shiva’s nose or the definition of its knuckles are invisible details. To Kumar, these are clues on a statue that unlock some of history’s biggest art heists.
For more than a decade, Kumar has devoted himself to a singular cause: recovering smuggled artifacts from the world’s richest collectors. Along with other civilian detectives scattered across time zones, he has roiled an insular art crowd, helping to seize scores of pieces from major museums and auction houses.