ART CRIMES: April 2026 podcast playlist

From graffiti and forged paintings to looted antiquities, stolen comics, and NFT scams, this playlist looks at the many ways visual art can become entangled with money, status, and crime. These episodes travel through street art, galleries, museums, private collections, and digital marketplaces, revealing how value gets assigned, who gets protected, and who gets exploited when images and objects become powerful commodities.

This playlist was curated by members of the Brooklyn chapter.

Podcast Playlist on ART CRIMES

Get the full playlist on your podcast player of choice using these platforms:

* Listen Notes allows you to quickly download all of the episodes using a variety of podcast apps. Here is a quick demo video.

The Economics of Everyday Things: “26. Grafitti” (November 2023, 14 min)
A brisk look at graffiti’s origins, evolution, and economics, asking how one person’s vandalism becomes another’s public art.
Reveal: “Fancy Galleries, Fake Art” (December 2025, 58 min)
This episode investigates a massive art forgery scandal involving fake paintings sold through high-end New York galleries as works by major artists. It also follows the trail of a Nazi-looted painting, showing how questions of provenance, ownership, and accountability continue to haunt the art world.
Dynamite Doug: “Episode 1: Greatest Art Heist” (February 2023, 27 min)
This episode traces Douglas Latchford’s rise in the world of Cambodian antiquities as stolen cultural heritage made its way into elite Western collections. It shows how looting can be recast as prestige collecting when museums, dealers, and wealthy buyers help legitimize the trade.
Stealing Superman: “Episode 01 – Beads of Sweat” (November 2022, 48 min)
When a rare and enormously valuable comic disappears from Nicolas Cage’s collection, the theft kicks off a strange and compelling mystery. The episode expands the idea of art crime beyond galleries and museums, into the world of collectibles, fandom, and celebrity.
The Art of Crime: “The Adventure of the Libelous Painter (Crimes of New York)” (November 2024, 44 min)
This historical episode follows a feud between a painter and his patron that escalates when the artist creates and auctions off an insulting portrait. What follows is a fascinating case in which visual art becomes the basis for criminal libel.
Bonus podcast episodes:

• WSJ Tech News Briefing: “NFT Art Presents New Frontier for Fraudsters” (August 2021, 14 min)
  A short look at how NFT art opened up new opportunities for scams and fraud, proving that even in digital spaces, the old art-world problems still apply.
• Freakonomics Radio: “The Case of the $4 Million Dollar Gold Coffin” (May 2023, 53 min)
  A sharp, investigative look at how a looted Egyptian antiquity ended up at the Met, using repatriation, celebrity, and museum power to expose how stolen cultural heritage gets legitimized.
• Empty Frames: “New // Louvre Heist” (November 2025, 32 min)
  This episode breaks down a recent Louvre jewel heist with enough detail to feel grounded, while the hosts’ conversational style keeps the story moving.
• Hashtag History: “EP44: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft” (September 2020, 43 min)
  Despite its tangents, this episode gives the most detailed and accessible overview on the list of the infamous Gardner Museum theft, still the largest unsolved art heist in history.
• Art Crime Podcast: “The Georgia O’Keeffe 10th Episode Spectacular!” (March 2021, 47 min)
  Less focused on the theft itself than the others, this episode is most interesting for the way it connects Georgia O’Keeffe’s stolen work to larger questions about gender, visibility, and which art crimes get remembered.
• Wine & Crime Podcast: “Ep80 Art Theft” (August 2018, 1 hr 39 min)
  This loose, funny, and very long episode closes out the bonus list with a broader, boozier tour through cultural property theft and the strange stories that surround it.

Conversation Starter Questions:

1. Which episode best captured the relationship between art, money, and power?
2. Where in this playlist did you most clearly see exploitation at work?
3. How do wealth and status affect who gets punished, who gets protected, and who gets to profit in these stories?
4. Did this playlist change the way you think about collectors, museums, galleries, or other gatekeepers in the art world?
5. Which episode most challenged your idea of what counts as an “art crime”?
6. How does the playlist complicate the idea that art is purely about beauty, creativity, or self-expression?
7. After listening to the whole playlist, do you think the art world is uniquely vulnerable to exploitation, or just a vivid reflection of broader inequality?