posted
And it even wasn't the first time "The Scream" was stolen. It was stolen in 1994 and found three months later in an hotel room.
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posted
What's kind of amusing is the fact it was in the middle of the day. All those long and extremely complicated methods used by theives in the movies in the dead of night and here they just grab and run...
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posted
There's a pretty extensive black market for art, or so I'm told. I doubt there's a shortage of potential customers, though I agree it'll be problematic to find them in the first place.
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posted
Although it could have been a pre-arrangement of the business (they already had a buyer before stealing the paintings).
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posted
And the proud new owner can display the lovely historic piece... in a place where no one else can ever see it.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:Jesus. I thought museums had decent security...
I think the truth runs in the other direction. I can't find it now, but sometime within the past year I know I read a news story about the widespread problem of outdated and insufficient security in museums all over the world. Most don't have the funds to update their security.
The article's point - as I recall it - is that it's a wonder there aren't more thefts from museums, given the lucrative market for art and antiquities.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote: And the proud new owner can display the lovely historic piece... in a place where no one else can ever see it.
Unfortunately, Annie, there is a subgroup of rich collectors who aren't bothered by that at all - nor are they bothered by way the item came to them.
Most collectors enjoy showing their collections and also behave ethically. Obviously, there are enough of the other kind to make thefts like these profitable.
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posted
Drug cartels also buy and sell art. They take a big price cut/hit, but I remember hearing something about that awhile back.
Posts: 1784 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
The Mona Lisa was always small. It's painted on a board and not on canvas, so it can't be cut out.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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When I was younger&dumber, I became curious about museum security when I found myself alone in an isolated gallery full of irreplaceable paintings. And lifted the Man with a Golden Helmet up the wall, high enough to know it was unsupported except by my hands. After a moment of panic wondering if the wires would reset onto the hangers -- thinking I might have to explain an "errrm... Excuse me, I errrm ummm errrm accidently, kinda, took one of your paintings off the wall." -- I let the portrait slide back down until, fortunately, the frame held.
Nothing happened.
I was extremely tempted to confess my actions in complaint to the curator. The only reason I thought of touching even the frame was because of then-recent press uproar about theft and deliberate damage allowed by poor security during public hours in several European museums. But "Boy, was that a dumb thing to do." had finally impressed itself on my mind. And thinking "no sense compounding the stupidity", I left, keeping the incident to myself.
And now is the first time I've ever told the tale of my museum misadventure. Given how gently they clean masterpieces, my fingerprints may well still be on the frame.
posted
Heh. It'd be kind of funny if the thing got stolen and you were accused of the theft based on your fingerprints on the frame.
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posted
Frankly, what I did was so STUPID that I couldn't even fail to see a certain sense of justice if that should occur.
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Yeah, it was fairly stupid; I honestly can't imagine what possessed you to do that. It was also fairly gutsy though, and definitely makes for a funny story. How old were you when you did it? I wonder what kind of trouble you could have gotten into?
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posted
I heard that rather than selling it, the gang will probably try to either get ransom for it or use it as a black market sort of currency among other thugs.
And aspectre - I am totally shocked that security was that lax at such a notable musuem. Perhaps they count on their security at the exits. That's how the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911... the security guard watching the stairwells wasn't paying attention.
Sheesh - I got yelled at at the Art Institute for leaning over the rope while I looked at the painting.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
The turn this thread has taken is putting me in mind of this Monty Python sketch:
quote:(Interior of art gallery. Two figures enter. They are both middle-aged working mothers. Each holds the hand of an unseen infant who is beneath the range of the camera.)
Janet: 'Allo, Marge!
Marge: Oh hello, Janet, how are you love?
Janet: Fancy seeing you! How's little Ralph?
Marge: Oh, don't ask me! He's been nothing but trouble all morning. Stop it Ralph! (she slaps at unseen infant) Stop it!
Janet: Same as my Kevin.
Marge: Really?
Janet: Nothing but trouble ... leave it alone! He's just been in the Florentine Room and smeared tomato ketchup all over Raphael's Baby Jesus. (shouting off sharply) Put that Baroque masterpiece down!
Marge: Well, we've just come from the Courtauld and Ralph smashed every exhibit but one in the Danish Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition.
Janet: Just like my Kevin. Show him an exhibition of early eighteenth-century Dresden Pottery and he goes berserk. No, I said no, and I meant no! (smacks unseen infant again) This morning we were viewing the early Flemish Masters of the Renaissance and Mannerist Schools, when he gets out his black aerosol and squirts Vermeer's Lady At A Window!
Marge: Still it's not as bad as spitting is it?
Janet: (firmly) No, well Kevin knows (slaps the infant) that if he spits at a painting I'll never take him to all exhibition again.
Marge: Ralph used to spit - he could hit a Van Gogh at thirty yards. But he knows now it's wrong - don't you Ralph? (she looks down) Ralph! Stop it Stop it Stop chewing that Turner! You are ... (she disappears from shot) You are a naughty, naughty, vicious little boy. (smack; she comes back into shot holding a copy of Turner's Fighting Temeraire in a lovely gilt frame but all tattered) Oh, look at that! The Fighting Temeraire - ruined! What shall I do?
Janet: (taking control) Now don't do a thing with it love, just put it in the bin over there.
Marge: Really?
Janet: Yes take my word for it, Marge. Kevin's eaten most of the early nineteenth-century British landscape artists, and I've learnt not to worry. As a matter of fact, I feel a bit peckish myself. (she breaks a bit off the Turner) Yes...
(Marge also tastes a bit.)
Marge: I never used to like Turner.
Janet: (swallowing) No ... I don't know much about art, but I know what I like.
(Cut to a book-lined study. At a desk in front of the shelves sits an art critic with a mouthful of Utrillo. SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'AN ART CRITIC')
Critic: (taking out stringy bits as he speaks) Mmmm... (munches) Well I think Utrillo's brushwork is fantastic... (stifles burp) But he doesn't always agree with me ... (belches) Not after a Rubens, anyway ... all those cherries ... ooohh ... (suddenly looks down) Ur'gh! I've got Vermeer all down my shirt...
Wife: (bringing in a water jug and glass on a tray and laying it on his desk) Watteau, dear?
Critic: What a terrible joke.
Wife: But it's my only line.
Critic: (rising vehemently) All right! All right! But you didn't have to say it! You could have kept quiet for a change
That was brilliant. It reminds me of my art history prof telling us last semster, "I don't really know how to interpret children. To me, they're just always coming at you with sticky fingers."
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