Houpt, Simon

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Houpt, Simon

PERSONAL:

Male.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY

CAREER:

Globe and Mail, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, columnist, 1999—. Previously worked on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television program Undercurrents.

WRITINGS:

Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft, foreword by Julian Radcliffe, Key Porter Books/ Sterling Publishers (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

The brazen theft of three Rembrandts and a Vermeer from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 2004 served as the inspiration for Simon Houpt's first book, Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft. Hailed as a well-researched and thorough study, the book explores art theft throughout history and discusses its many consequences. Houpt, who covers art and culture for the Toronto Globe and Mail, includes chapters on war looting, art heists instigated by wealthy collectors, and other incidences of art larceny, and also provides information on various investigations and recovery efforts. Museum of the Missing, according to Library Journal writer Savannah Schroll, is "one of the first books to cut such a wide and incisive swath across the subject." Noting that generations accustomed to the easily reproduced images of the computer age might not fully understand how much cultural damage art theft can do, Schroll added that Houpt's book should be "an eye-opener." A writer for Toronto's Live with Culture called it a "gripping page-turner" as thrilling as any crime novel.

Art theft, Houpt shows, is not merely of interest to museums and other collectors. The activity can have far-ranging consequences; as he observed in an interview on the Web log Intrepid Art Collector, "It appears likely that at least some terrorist activity is being funded by the vibrant trade in antiquities coming out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other trouble spots."

In an interview with Schroll, Houpt said that he hopes his book will inspire readers to spend more time in art museums. In addition, he hopes that the book will serve "as a reminder, to those who may not fully appreciate it, that we all lose something of ourselves when a great piece of art is stolen."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 1, 2006, Kevin Nance, review of Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft, p. 24.

Library Journal, August 1, 2006, Savannah Schroll, review of Museum of the Missing, p. 81; August 1, 2006, "Gone but Not Forgotten: Behind the Book Simon Houpt's Museum of the Missing," p. 86.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 2006, review of Museum of the Missing.