broken alarm system. A sawed-off padlock. A security video of a masked
figure dressed in black slipping through a broken window. And empty
picture frames leaning against a short stone wall facing the Seine.
As dawn broke Thursday, authorities in the French
capital had egg on their faces and a high-profile mystery on their
hands: How did a thief slip into Paris’ Art Deco-style Museum of Modern
Art, across from the
Those coming to grips with the loss said they were impressed by the feat.
“We’re dealing with an extreme level of sophistication,” said
Others in the art world were focused less on the
skill of the thief than on what they regard as malfeasance by museum
management.
“The director of the museum should be fired right
away,” said Ton Cremers, a museum security consultant and former head
of security at the Rijksmuseum in
was spent on a security upgrade from 2004 to 2006. When the alarm
system broke down, a maintenance company was notified immediately, but
the new equipment never arrived.
“I’m particularly saddened and shocked by this theft,” Delanoe said.
The mayor said he wanted an administrative
investigation of the crime, in addition to detective work by a special
police brigade.
Girard said the theft appeared to have taken place
News reports said security video revealed a lone
figure sneaking in through a window. Officials are still trying to
figure out whether it was a solo operation or involved accomplices.
The missing paintings are
Modigliani’s “Woman With a Fan” from 1919, Georges Braque’s 1906 “The
Olive Tree Near l’Estaque,” and
The value of the Picasso painting, a classic Cubist experiment with geometric forms, is estimated at about
Interpol, the international police organization based in
was informed of the theft Thursday morning and immediately sent images
of the stolen works to police headquarters in nearly 200 countries.
Thursday night, after the TV cameras had left, a few
skateboarders were back, practicing jumps on what everyone calls “the
dome,” a U-shaped stone square between the Museum of Modern Art and the
adjacent
“It doesn’t shock me that they got in there,” said
skateboarder Kevin Keubeuze, 16, a regular at the site. “It’s not a
place that’s super watched-over.”
Questions about the level of museum security have
been raised before by the French media. A Picasso sketchbook was stolen
in June from the Picasso Museum in
Stephane Thefo, an Interpol officer with the unit
that specializes in stolen art, defended those responsible for museum
security in
“They are serious people, who work well … but after all, in
Chances are good that the art will be recovered,
experts said. “The more famous an art piece, the harder it is to sell.
We’ve found a lot of paintings that were very well known works of art,”
he said.
“There could be a demand for ransom from the
insurer,” he said. Or the thieves may not be able to get rid of their
booty and simply leave the works somewhere.
That all might take awhile to play out. Cremers said
about half the paintings stolen from museums are recovered, but it
takes an average of seven years. The thieves in such cases, he said,
“are usually ordinary criminals who also steal cars” and “have no idea
what to do with the art.”
Experts say it is highly unlikely that the heist was a theft-for-hire organized by a wealthy collector.
museum, told LCI French television just outside the cordoned-off museum
that “no collector in the world is stupid enough to put his money in a
painting he can neither show to other collectors nor resell without
going to prison.”
“So Messieurs les Thieves, you are imbeciles!” he said. “Bring back the paintings, please.”
———
(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.
Visit the Los Angeles Times on the Internet at http://www.latimes.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
