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12/12/12 8:49 AMRotterdam Museum Shuts Down After Seven Paintings Are Stolen Overnight - NYTimes.com
Page 1 of 3http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/world/europe/Picasso-and-Monets-Are-Stolen-From-Dutch-Museum.html
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Art Theft Strips Dutch Museum ofMasterpieces
A Picasso and a Gauguin Are Among 7 Works StolenFrom a Dutch Museum
Peter Dejong/Associated Press
By DOREEN CARVAJALPublished: October 16, 2012
PARIS — With impeccable timing and taste, thieves in the wee hoursof Tuesday morning plundered an art museum in the Netherlandsthat was celebrating its 20th birthday and made away with sevenborrowed paintings, including valuable works by Picasso, Monet,Gauguin, Matisse and Lucian Freud.
The Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam— which was exhibiting a privatecollection owned by the TritonFoundation — was closed to the publicafter the theft, but the bare spaces onits walls were visible to photographersthrough windows in its modernbuilding by Rotterdam’s museum parkand busy Maasboulevard.
The theft was the latest alarm about museum security in
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12/12/12 8:49 AMRotterdam Museum Shuts Down After Seven Paintings Are Stolen Overnight - NYTimes.com
Page 2 of 3http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/world/europe/Picasso-and-Monets-Are-Stolen-From-Dutch-Museum.html
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Europe, now a prime hunting ground for art thieves. In2010 five paintings, including a Picasso and a Matisse,together valued at about 100 million euros, or about $130million, were stolen from the Musée d’Art Moderne inParis; they are still missing.
Police investigators combed the grounds of the museumand studied surveillance video for clues to the burglary,which they said happened about 3 a.m. and set off an alarmlinked to a security agency. But by the time police arrivedsoon after, the works had vanished.
The art, part of a collection amassed by a Dutch investor,Willem Cordia, who died in 2011, was exhibited in publicfor the first time last week at the Kunsthal, which does nothave a collection of its own. The stolen paintings span partsof three centuries: Meyer de Haan’s “Self-Portrait” of 1890
and Gauguin’s 1898 “Girl in Front of Open Window”; Monet’s “Waterloo Bridge, London”and “Charing Cross Bridge, London,” both from 1901; Matisse’s 1919 “Reading Girl inWhite and Yellow” and Picasso’s 1971 “Harlequin Head”; and Freud’s haunting 2002portrait “Woman With Eyes Closed.”
The theft “was carefully thought out, cleverly conceived and it was quickly executed, sothat suggests professionals,” said Charles Hill, a retired Scotland Yard art detective turnedprivate investigator who went undercover to retrieve a version of “The Scream,” by EdvardMunch, after it was stolen in 1994 in Oslo.
“The volume,” he added, “suggests that whoever stole it owes somebody a lot of money,and it’s got to be a major-league villain.”
“My best guess is that someone doesn’t have the cash to repay a loan,” he said.
Marc Masurovsky, a historian and an expert on plundered art in Washington, noted thepossibility that the theft was “a contract job,” adding: “These works were picked out. Couldit be they had been targeted well before the theft, and the exhibit was the opportunity tostrike?”
Willem van Hassel, the chairman of the Kunsthal’s board, announced the closing of themuseum on Tuesday and later held a news conference to declare that adequate securitymeasures had been taken.
At the same conference, the museum’s director, Emily Ansenk, said that night measuresinvolved “technical security,” with no guards but camera surveillance and alarms. Museumofficials said that the police had arrived on the museum grounds within five minutes of thealarm.
Ms. Ansenk told reporters that the burglary “has hit the art world like a bomb” anddescribed it “as a nightmare for any museum director.” Kunsthal officials declined toestimate the value of the stolen works, though experts say they are collectively worth manymillions of dollars, possibly hundreds of millions. Still, it would be difficult for thieves tosell such easily identifiable artworks, contributing to suspicions about underworldfinances.
“I think it’s a form of repayment in kind, a barter — 'I don’t have cash, but I have thesepaintings,’ ” said Mr. Hill, the art investigator.
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12/12/12 8:49 AMRotterdam Museum Shuts Down After Seven Paintings Are Stolen Overnight - NYTimes.com
Page 3 of 3http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/world/europe/Picasso-and-Monets-Are-Stolen-From-Dutch-Museum.html
A version of this article appeared in print on October 17, 2012, on page C2 of the New York edition with the headline: APicasso and a Gauguin Are Among 7 Works Stolen From a Dutch Museum.
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Kunsthal officials vowed that the museum would reopen on Wednesday.
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