At the Winter Antiques Show at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in January, Japanese-art dealer Joan Mirviss, alone in her booth while her assistant took a break, had her back to a 19th-century bronze sculpture of two frolicking dogs she had just sold for $8,450. When she turned around, the piece had disappeared. Mirviss dashed to the nearby entrance to alert security, but the thief had escaped. Two months later, at the TEFAF fair in Maastricht, robbers made off with a €1.2 million ($1.9 million) vintage diamond necklace from London jeweler Hancocks. Police arrested three suspects, but the necklace—and Mirviss’s small sculpture—were still missing when this issue of Art+Auction went to press.

Art theft may bring to mind midnight break-ins at museums or country manors, but fairs have become enticing targets as well. The Art Loss Register (ALR) keeps no precise count of how many heists occur at these events, but a representative says they probably account for around 5 percent of the annual total. Although that figure is nominal compared with the percentage that occurs in private homes (42 percent in 2007), a partial list of art-fair robberies provided by the alr reveals that even the major shows are vulnerable.

In November 2006, a Max Ernst painting and an A. R. Penck sculpture were stolen from Art Cologne, and last October, Art+Auction’s affiliate Artinfo.com reported that an $80,000 sculpture by Simon Starling was swiped from New York dealer Casey Kaplan’s booth during the Frieze Fair, in London. Frieze representative Camilla Nichols declines to offer details but says the “security measures we put in place are in full force as soon as, and as long as, artworks are at the fair, outside the tents, inside the tents and at each exit.”

Fair organizers are reluctant to describe their safeguards for fear of revealing their methods to thieves, but some have taken additional precautions in the wake of recent incidents. Among the measures being introduced this summer at London’s Olympia International Art & Antiques Fair, where three bronze sculptures were stolen in 2005, are a code word to alert exhibitors to a potential threat, a 24-hour security hotline for exhibitors to report unusual activity after show hours and a heightened police presence.

Fairs also continue to expect dealers to look after their own goods. “Each exhibitor is primarily responsible for the security of his own objects during transportation and presentation of the objects during the fair,” says TEFAF spokesperson Titia Vellenga. Organizers, however, will sometimes help dealers with extra security. A few years ago at the Stockholm International Antiques Fair, five paintings were taken from the booth of Stockholm-based Verner Amell, one of them a landscape by Jan Brueghel the Elder worth €2.6 million ($3.4 million). The burglar hid inside a cabinet before closing and emerged during the night to make off with the booty in a backpack, eluding security guards who gave chase. The following year, the fair offered additional guards to Amell.

Mirviss suspects that her sculpture was concealed under a coat and suggested to Winter Antiques officials (who didn’t return calls for comment) and to Anna Haughton, who runs four fairs at the Park Avenue Armory, that all visitors be required to check their outerwear. Haughton says that can be a touchy issue. “You could get a man coming from his office who wants to spend half an hour at the fair,” she says. “With a long coat-check line, he might just leave. If you want people to buy, they must feel comfortable.”

Haughton adds that after the theft at Mirviss’s booth, she spoke at length with her security team about how far one can go without violating visitors’ civil rights. Her fairs allow guards to search purses and other totes—but not pockets—at the exits. The Armory Show in Manhattan had a mandatory bag inspection a couple of years ago, says director Katelijne de Backer, but dealers complained, and now bags are checked sporadically.

Mirviss speculates that some stealing at fairs is more impulse shoplifting than the planned theft of valuable art objects. Last year, for example, a reveler at the Winter Antiques Fair’s Young Collectors’ Night snapped a butterfly—valueless in itself—off a 19th-century cast-iron statue of Cupid on offer in the booth of New York dealer Barbara Israel.

There was one time, Mirviss recalls with amusement, that she wouldn’t have minded having a few pieces filched. At a show in the Midwestern U.S. some 20 years ago, a prominent woman in the community—and a known kleptomaniac—had to be trailed by an assistant who discreetly wrote checks for the objects her boss swiped. “Unfortunately for me,” says Mirviss, “she didn’t like Japanese art.”

"Artful Dodgers" originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2008 Table of Contents.