Art heists with a happy ending

This month, Suffolk-based Artist, Educator and Presenter Grace Adam looks at art heists! However, as it is the season of goodwill, she is sharing the stories of art works that made it back into our galleries

People steal art. Somewhere out there are missing paintings by Van Gogh, Manet, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Matisse, Cezanne, Caravaggio. It’s a long list. The most recent high-profile art heist is October’s 4-minute Louvre theft. Here are a few more.

At 9 o’clock one April evening, 22 years ago, thieves burst through the back doors of the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. They removed 3 paintings: a Picasso, a Gauguin and a Van Gogh, adding up to a tidy £4m. Police could find no clues in the gallery, but an anonymous tipoff led them …to a disused public toilet in the park. There were the paintings, rolled up in a damp cardboard tube, with a scrawled note.

On August 21st, 1911, Vincenzo Perugia, a former Louvre employee, (and two accomplices) hid there in a closet overnight. The next morning, Vincenzo walked into the gallery, unscrewed The Mona Lisa, stuffed it under his Louvre employee-regulation smock and calmly left the building. For two years La Gioconda smiled gently at him from the wall of his Paris apartment. Audacious, yes, but he had not stolen the world’s most famous painting. Enter Picasso and Apollinare; two high profile suspects. Either the avant-garde poet or the modernist painter, the assumption went, must be attacking the old guard with this theft. Apollinaire was held and questioned for a week, despite there being no evidence against either the poet or the painter. The international press went crazy for the story.

Eventually Vincenzo decided to take the painting back to Italy, and contacted a Florentine art dealer, asking for 500,000 lire. The dealer feigned interest and insisted on keeping it overnight to double-check its authenticity. He then called the Police. Vincenzo spent 7 months in jail, claiming the theft was a patriotic act; returning the painting to its homeland. His sentence was lenient, and thousands of Italians flocked to see The Mona Lisa in its temporary home, the Uffizi, before its return to Paris.

Soup, cake, a rock and a teacup are amongst the missiles hurled at Lisa del Giocondo’s likeness. At 15 Lisa became the second wife to a wealthy silk merchant. All of this, a theft and 8 million people staring at her every year. She’s been through a lot, and now she’s very famous.

In August of 1995, a slightly untidy young man liberated Duchamp’s famous Dada work Bicycle Wheel from the very busy Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was not disguised as a workman or a security man. Off he walked with a large bicycle wheel and a stool over his shoulder. No one batted an eyelid.

A few days later Duchamp’s piece was anonymously returned, tossed over the wall of the museum’s sculpture garden. MoMA was deeply embarrassed and issued no statement about the theft, preferring to stay quiet, so I can’t tell you exactly when it was taken or exactly how long the man had it. This borrowing of Duchamp’s readymade was certainly in keeping with an artist who eschewed the very idea of beautiful, of original and even of art. He pushed as many boundaries as he could.

He had little respect for the old order and despised museums being in a position to decide what was good and what was bad.

“Aesthetic delectation is the danger to be avoided”

I think he would have loved it!

Art heists are so much more exciting than other kinds of heists, aren’t they? As it is the season of goodwill, I decided to share the stories of art works that made it back into our galleries for us to enjoy.

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Featured image of Grace Adam – supplied