The Map Thief by Michael Blanding7/8/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Forbes Smiley III advertisement: The Map Thief. Forbes Smiley III website: The Map Thief. Forbes Smiley III as a young man: The Map Thief. In the end, perhaps we may be enlightened to new ways in which to protect our rare objects and valuable cultural heritage.īeinecke Library: The Map Thief. All total, hundreds of maps worth millions of dollars may have been stolen by Smiley, though he only admitted to a small portion of the suspected thefts.Īll things considered, if any good came of the Smiley case, it is that it pointed out some of the security weaknesses in our revered cultural institutions… highlighting the flaws, some more obvious than others, that made them such soft targets for theft. ![]() ![]() Such lofty contributions to a field he obviously loved made it all the more troubling when it was revealed that he had been slicing maps from delicate books and stealing the objects he had once worked so passionately to preserve. Specializing in maps of early Colonial America, he helped assemble two of the most comprehensive map collections in the United States: the Leventhal Collection in the Boston Public Library and the Slaughter Collection in New York Public Library. With over two decades in the map business, Smiley was a respected connoisseur and scholar. On June 8, 2005, a librarian at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University noticed an exacto razor blade laying on the carpeted floor of the reading room… this chance observation signaled the end of a long three-year series of thefts committed by rare map dealer, E. ![]()
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