Do you believe in the power of art?

Good art has power. And sometimes we want that power for ourselves. Art thieves are exploiting the minimal security of regional galleries displaying high quality artworks.

In February a burglar smashed into the Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology in Caboolture and grabbed a 2,600-year-old Egyptian cat sculpture, mummy mask and necklace. Police later arrested a man in Moreton Bay and found the artefacts in a camper van parked at a ferry terminal.

Sometimes art theft turns into art hoarding. Stephéne Breitweiser, described by The Guardian as “arguably the world’s most consistent art thief”, went on a spree between 1995 and 2001, admitting to stealing 239 artworks from 172 galleries across Europe and stashing them in his bedroom.

Who can take on this surreal world of art crime? Enter Arthur Brand, art detective.

Brand has recovered more than 200 stolen artworks, including paintings by Dalí, van Gogh and Picasso.

In 2022 Dan Brown, the thriller writer, wrote that “art detective will forever be a cool job title” after Brand helped retrieve an ancient relic said to hold the blood of Jesus. Thieves who’d looted a French medieval church got cold feet and dropped off the heavily gilded copper box with its vials of blood to the doorstep of Brand’s Amsterdam apartment.

The unusual delivery left Brand awed and humbled. “I didn’t curse,” he said. “When I went from the shower to my bedroom, I put a towel around my body so I was not naked.”

Lots of us, like Brand, are believers in the power of art. Could this be because art has always pointed toward spiritual realities beyond our particular doorstep and our particular time? You don’t have to be a thief, an art detective, or believe in relics, to find that a thrilling and slightly surreal concept.

This Thinking Out Loud was first published on Facebook.