AMSTERDAM – In his modest IKEA-furnished apartment, Arthur Brand paces to distract himself.

“I’m nervous,” he says, with the honesty of a man who has learned that bravado is useless in his line of work. He lights a cigarette, leans out the window, and scans the street below.

“The waiting is the hardest part.”

Brand, 56, has made a career out of waiting: for a phone call, a knock at the door, and, every once in a blue moon, a Picasso or a Van Gogh left discreetly on his doorstep.

“Those are the moments you realize it’s worth it,” he says.

Until, of course, everything resets, and the waiting game begins again.

In another life, Brand says, he’ll take his mother’s advice and “find a normal job.” But in this one, he’s helped recover stolen art for two decades — often the cases police can’t solve alone.

Some call him the “Indiana Jones of the art world.” Brand insists he’s closer to a certain Pink Panther character.

“Do you know Peter Sellers, Inspector Clouseau? Well, I’m like that,” he says. “I always follow the wrong lead.”

Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s just modesty. Or maybe it’s Brand’s ability to follow every wrong lead — and keep going — that keeps him in the game.

He says he has recovered more than 150 stolen paintings and artifacts. His cases regularly make international headlines.

There’s the stolen Van Gogh that showed up on his doorstep in 2023, stuffed into a blood-soaked pillow in a blue IKEA bag. The Salvador Dali painting he recovered in 2016. The Picasso he tracked down for a Saudi sheikh in 2019.

Brand’s path into this work wasn’t planned.

“You know, you cannot go to university and say, I want to become an art detective,” Brand says. “This is a job created more or less out of lack of other opportunities.”

He traces his entry point to Michel van Rijn, a notorious Dutch figure in the art underworld who introduced Brand says to a shadowy ecosystem of smugglers, thieves and forgers — and law enforcement.

After making a cold call to van Rijn’s office, Brand says he became his apprentice in London — which regularly involved sitting quietly in a corner while older men swapped stories. “Everybody thought — who is this idiot?” he says.

Van Rijn, Brand later discovered, was straddling two sides. In 2009, he walked away after learning his boss was working with police while still keeping “one leg” in the criminal world.

The experience left him with a simple rule for survival: In a world where people expect betrayal, being honest — and keeping your word — is its own form of power. It’s a lesson that underpins just about everything Brand does now.

A bridge between informants and the police 

Brand says his work lives between two worlds that don’t trust each other: police and the people who might know where the stolen art is hiding.

“The police don’t trust the informants. The informants don’t trust the police. So I want to form a bridge between them to see what can be done. And in most cases, it’s possible.”

The bridge only holds if Brand is seen as independent. “I’m not hired by an insurance company,” he says. “The police, of course, don’t pay me. So I do this work [at] my own costs.”

He supports himself by consulting for art galleries and helping Jewish families trace art looted during World War II. But the majority of his energy goes to the work he does on his own dime — acting as a go-between when someone wants to quietly unload a masterpiece they can’t keep.

Stolen masterpieces, he says, are hard to enjoy and even harder to sell. “Who buys stolen art? You cannot show it to your friends. You cannot leave it to your children.”

Dutch police say Brand’s motive matters.

Richard Bronswijk, who heads the Dutch police art crime unit, says he’s seen private detectives create problems when money is the driver. “I’ve worked before with private detectives who are doing this for the money,” Bronswijk says. “And then it’s always dangerous.”

Brand, he points out, has always been driven by something else: the thrill of the chase.

“Everybody’s in it for the money, and I’m not,” Brand says. “They cannot buy me.”

The art thief and the art detective: An unlikely pair

Still, sometimes Brand’s trust isn’t enough on its own. When an informant is deciding whether to return stolen art, Brand says fear can take over … of the police, of retaliation, of being tricked.

That’s when he calls in his ace — Octave Durham.

In 2002, Durham, already a seasoned bank robber, stole two Van Gogh paintings from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

“You have born soccer players, born teachers, born policemen,” Durham says. “I’m a born burglar,” adding he doesn’t steal anymore but “still can.”

Today, he works with Brand to recover stolen art.

Brand has legitimacy. “But I have contacts on the streets,” Durham says.

“What takes [Brand] sometimes five, six years to figure something out, I could go up to somebody right away.”

Durham says he trusts Brand because Brand’s focus is consistent. “He shows how he works, and it’s all about recovering the art,” Durham says — “and not to send somebody to jail … or go for the reward.”

The Van Gogh in the IKEA bag

In 2020, another Van Gogh — The Spring Garden — was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum. Police caught the thief a year later, but the painting was still missing.

Then Brand says he got a tip from an informant.

A gang, he said, was holding the Van Gogh as leverage until the attention made it too risky to keep.

“Everybody wanted to get rid of it,” Brand says.

Brand says the informant told him he could return it — but only if could be guaranteed confidentiality. And he needed proof he could trust Brand.

So Brand turned to Durham. Durham sent the informant a message on Brand’s behalf. “I don’t know who you are,” Durham texted. “The only thing I can say is that I guarantee you won’t get into trouble if you talk to [Brand].”

It worked.

One afternoon, Brand says he opened his door and found a blue IKEA bag on his doorstep. Inside, he says, was a pillow soaked in blood. Wrapped within it was the missing Van Gogh.

“It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life,” Brand says.

He says moments like the Van Gogh discovery explain why he keeps doing his work — and why, despite the danger, he keeps answering the phone.

He compares it to living inside a thriller. That’s when he has a confession to make.

“It all started with Dan Brown, this whole idiot story,” he says.

Earlier this year, it all came full circle when he met the author at a book signing in Amsterdam.

Brand shows off a framed note Brown gave him at the signing. “To Arthur, the real world Robert Langdon, with gratitude for all you do.”

There is no such thing as a day of rest for artist Kenny Scharf, not even Sunday. “I wake up super early. It’s still dark outside,” the Los Angeles native says.

Rising before the sun anchors his active day. “I always have to keep moving,” Scharf says. “Otherwise, I’ll get very depressed.”

An avid hiker and swimmer, Scharf, 67, also maintains a disciplined yoga practice and cycles daily from his Culver City home to his Inglewood studio. There almost everything serves as a canvas, including painted trash doubling as decor and the silkscreened couch on which he’s seated.

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“I don’t like to waste good paint and silkscreen ink. Why wash it? We apply it everywhere until we use it up,” Scharf says.

Scharf, who grew up in the Valley before making his way to New York City, first gained acclaim in the ‘80s East Village art scene alongside his friends and contemporaries Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, his former roommate. The trio also befriended Andy Warhol, who predicted Scharf’s fame.

Renowned for his self-coined “pop surrealism,” Scharf often populates his bold, colorful work with grinning cartoon faces, elastic blobs, and sci-fi creatures floating through cosmic landscapes. Anxieties about overconsumption and environmental degradation lie beneath the playfulness.

Like their creator, Scharf’s works are always on the move, either rolling down the street on the cars he’s painted — featured in his recently published book “Karbombz!” — or traveling to forthcoming exhibitions in Wuhan, Tokyo and Paris.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

5:30 a.m.: Wake up and feed the cats.

My cats, Cutie and Socks — one’s a tabby and the other is a tuxedo cat — wake me up by mewing and walking on me. They’re like, “Hey, I’m hungry.” So I get up and crack open the cans. They like that disgusting, smelly canned food. And then they go out into the yard.

I got the cats because I went to New York for a show. I was gone for five days and I live next to a park, so there are a lot of animals. I came back and my entire house was overrun by mice. I was like, “What the hell am I gonna do? I need cats.” The mice are gone and now I have these cats. They’re so cute and so much fun. They take over my life.

6 a.m.: Detox

I make lemon and hot water. It’s a good way to start the day and clear out the toxins. Right now, I have a lot of citrus because Ed Ruscha’s studio is across the street from my house, and in the back of the studio he has a citrus farm. I go there, especially during this time of year, and get bags of citrus. It’s like a farm community in the middle of L.A. I love L.A. because you can surround yourself with trees and gardens and kind of pretend that you’re not living in a giant metropolitan area.

8:30 a.m.: Iyengar yoga

An Iyengar yoga instructor comes to my house. I find Iyengar is great for aging. You use ropes and gravity to hang and do different things, using your body weight so you can relax into the positions. I also have a swing to go upside down on. When people walk into my living room, they go, “What’s going on here?” because of the ropes on the wall.

In the summer, I’ll go to the beach in Venice and swim in the ocean. It’s wonderful when I’m out in the water. It’s cathartic and cleansing, and sometimes I see dolphins. I’ll go early in the morning before the crowds come.

11:30 a.m.: Mar Vista Farmers’ Market

It’s fun to go there with my daughter Zena, who’s a chef, and my grandkids. We stroll around and get food. All the food stands are delicious. I grew up here in L.A., so I’m into Mexican food. I don’t really want to eat American food. I’m not into hamburgers. I want all the stuff with the culture. I like hot and spicy.

I also buy apples and berries, whatever I can’t grow, because I grow my own food at home.

And I buy stuff from an Indian man who sells Chyawanprash, which is kind of a jam. It’s really concentrated and like an elixir. He also sells Shilajit, which almost looks like tar. You put a little bit under your tongue and it dissolves, and it’s got like every single mineral in it.

2 p.m.: Painting at the studio

I’m painting seven days a week, but I really love coming here on Sundays because nobody’s here and the phone doesn’t ring. Sometimes, my granddaughter, Lua, will come. She paints. Upstairs at the studio I have a little painting area with easels for my grandkids, but my grandson, Jet, isn’t that into painting. I do my work, and Lua’s up there keeping herself busy painting, and it’s great.

Kenny Scharf in his paint-splattered studio he bikes to every day.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

5 p.m.: Hike

The easiest one is right behind my house. It goes up to the top of the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook where the [Culver City] Stairs go. It’s one of the best views in all of L.A. You can see from the airport to the ocean, downtown, Mount Baldy. You can see almost all the way to Palm Springs, Mount San Gorgonio. The view is amazing.

We also hike a lot in Kenneth Hahn [State Recreation Area].

My grandkids often like to go on a waterfall hike, so there are a couple in Malibu. There are also a couple over in the San Gabriel [Mountains]. We’ll get into the car and drive an hour and hike.

6:30 p.m.: Dinner at a restaurant

Zena, Lua and Jet live close to me, so we have dinner together at least three or four times a week. Because Zena’s a chef, we don’t go out to eat that often, but sometimes we go to a restaurant called Madre that I love. It’s on National [Boulevard]. The food is so good. They often have squash blossoms. They fry them and put a little cheese in them.

I also love Gjelina in Venice. Sometimes I take people from Europe there because it is quintessential California. All the food they make is from the farmers market, so you get a tomato salad with incredible tomatoes.

8 p.m.: Read

I just finished Patti Smith’s latest book, “Bread of Angels.” It’s beautiful. I love her. I saw her perform at Disney Hall recently, and she was selling this book. I actually saw her perform at the Santa Monica Civic [Auditorium] when I was 19. I’d been wanting to move to New York for a lot of reasons, but when I saw her performance, it was, “I’m moving there.” There was so much energy in her.

9 p.m.: Bedtime

Usually I’m in bed by 9 and asleep by 10. When I was young, I was very involved in nightlife. I was working in nightclubs, all of my friends were in nightclubs, so I lived that big time. But now I’m jaded. I don’t want to sound above it all, but I don’t see anything going on that I’m getting excited about the way it was. And I’m not a nostalgic person, so I choose not to go out. I’m happier getting a good night’s sleep.

A version of this essay first appeared in the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here so you don’t miss the next one. You’ll get the news you need to start your day, plus a little fun every weekday and Sundays.

My phone kept going off on Wednesday afternoon with texts from different friends — each wanting to trade thoughts on what felt like the second death of Cesar Chavez. His first death happened on April 23, 1993. He was 66 and died of natural causes. Over 50,000 people attended his funeral in Delano, Calif. And he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.

At that time, I was in elementary school in suburban Chicago, far from California. It was then that I first learned of Chavez and his movement’s hard-fought efforts to secure better wages and improved working conditions for farm workers. As a daughter of janitors and a factory worker, I knew what better pay and the right to a union meant for people like us.

Chavez’s second death landed on Wednesday after a The New York Times investigation revealed he had been accused of sexual abuse and rape. NPR has not independently confirmed the allegations against Chavez in the Times investigation.

For several years before joining Morning Edition as an editor, I covered sexual violence for ProPublica, an investigative newsroom. My work there was often not about catching the bad guys but rather about listening, for extended periods of time, to the people they hurt. This work took me to places such as Alaska and Utah where I met a broad range of people who were assaulted in recent years and some, who like Huerta, never spoke of their experiences for decades.

Consistent with national statistics, the perpetrators whom I wrote about were often family, bosses, clergy or others in positions of power.

“I have kept this secret long enough. My silence ends here,” Dolores Huerta, 95, said in a statement on Wednesday.

JC Olivera/Getty Images for State of the Ar/Getty Images North America

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JC Olivera/Getty Images for State of the Ar/Getty Images North America

This week, many of the voices of the victims I spoke with hearkened back to the experiences that the New York Times‘s investigation revealed in telling of the sexual abuse that Ana Murguia, Debra Rojas and Dolores Huerta shared with the publication. I was grateful to learn Murguia’s and Rojas’ names alongside the much more familiar one of Huerta, the civil rights icon in her own right who co-led the United Farm Workers movement that made Chavez famous.

I’ve learned that there is no timeline for naming what was done to you by people you trusted. I’ve learned that justice for many means the world recognizing the harm done to them — and the difficult work they have done to no longer live defined by it. I’ve learned that people care about protecting others. And that sometimes by sharing their stories, survivors hope to prevent future harm.

My friends and I may be down a hero this week. But, we gained two new heroes in Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, who, alongside Dolores Huerta, showed us it’s never too late to speak up. In fact, it might be the only way out for them and others.