Photo: Jonny Baker via Flickr

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

Ovation, the artsy TV network, premieres the first of a two week series of shows dissecting the cash and crimes of the art world.

The not so subtly titled series MONEY MONEY MONEY examines the relationship between money and fine art.

The Mona Lisa Curse, an expose by Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes,  reveals Hughes’ theory that the world’s most famous painting came to influence the over-commercialization of art.

In Oligart British writer and broadcaster Marcel Theroux considers the growing presence of wealthy Russians in the London art market. Profiling the fraternizing circles of these collectors, the documentary offers an inside look at their impact on the contemporary art market.

On a less serious side, the series Art Race follows two artists as they use only their artwork to fund a 40 day race across the country. Painter Kenny Harris hitchhikes and sells classical pet portraiture to get the funds to try to beat out sculptor Ben Sargent, as he bargains with potential nude models for a buck. The competition airs each night this week at 8 PM.

Next week, Ovation profiles the most famous art felonies in It’s a Crime. The greatest schemes and most successful art robberies are the subject of the three-part series Art of the Heist. The Artful Codgers portrays the forgery scheme led by crafty senior citizens creating masterpiece mockeries in their backyard. Stolen features the saga behind the notorious theft of Vermeer’s The Concert from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston. The missing painting is one of only 35 of Vermeer’s surviving works.