The chapters are part essay and part memoir, and the author admits the stories were chosen as part of his own ''internal museum of loss.''
He covers many major losses to artistic culture, including even some works that never existed. But in intensely personal writing, Gekoski reveals how the stories raise greater questions about our relationship with art.
No surprise that there is a chapter on the world-famous stolen and retrieved Mona Lisa, but New Zealanders might be flattered (or is it flabbergasted?) that the second of the 15 chapters concerns the theft of the Urewera mural here in New Zealand - I wondered if artist Gretchen Albrecht (acknowledged in the ''Afterword'') helped with this information?
Other topics include: how the tale of a long-lost document led a desperate forger to plant bombs in Salt Lake City, destruction of Graham Sutherland's portrait of Winston Churchill, burning of the memoirs of Byron, how the most extravagant book binding ever made sank with the Titanic, and how a James Joyce poem has disappeared without trace.
I was surprised to learn that art theft today is the world's third-largest criminal industry, exceeded in total value only by arms and drug dealing.
The FBI is quoted as estimating $6 billion worth of art is stolen every year. Contemporary art theft doubled in value between 2001 and 2011, a time when spectacular auction prices occurred (the era of the $100 million painting arrived) to tempt thieves.
The author suggests that the thieves may be audacious, but often lack any clear idea of how to profit from their crimes - important works of art are well-documented and hard to profit from. There is not much evidence to support the prevalent belief that much art is stolen to order for anonymous and reclusive wealthy art collectors. In fact most stolen art is either sold foolishly into the trade at bargain price or held to ransom, when insurance companies may pay a low percentage of the work's value to recover it.
The most interesting content, though, is the way Gekoski raises and debates many questions: whether provenance is as important as the work itself, whether owners should be allowed to destroy art that could have importance to a nation if preserved (such as historic houses), and whether it is best to repatriate objects from museums to their original countries and thereby to deny knowledge and delights of other civilisations and cultures to people who live in other countries. On the last point, the controversial Elgin Marbles are discussed, but not Maori artefacts. Gekoski provocatively looks at such questions from both sides of the argument, but you probably will suspect which one he favours most.
This is a good book to read and keep - not lose or shred.
Geoff Adams is a former editor of the ODT.
