OT: Someone stole The Scream!
Jonah Falcon
Stephen Cooke
On Tue, 24 Aug 2004, Jonah Falcon wrote:
> http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/News/2004/08/23/597680.html
And around the world, newscasters are pronouncing his last name like it's
spelled.
swac
Even on the CBC. *sigh*
Andrew
"Stephen Cooke" <am...@chebucto.ns.ca> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.3.95.iB1.0.104...@halifax.chebucto.ns.ca...
:
: On Tue, 24 Aug 2004, Jonah Falcon wrote:
:
: > http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/News/2004/08/23/597680.html
:
: And around the world, newscasters are pronouncing his last name like it's
: spelled.
What *exactly* do you do with a stolen painting anyway? Try to pass it off as a
print?
:
: swac
: Even on the CBC. *sigh*
---Andrew "Shouldn't all of these paintings come with a homing device?" Kunz.
Fish Eye no Miko
> What *exactly* do you do with a stolen painting anyway? Try to pass
> it off as a print?
As has been pointed out on the news, some unscrupulous collectors buy
paintings even if they know they're stolen. Also, paintings can be held
for ransom.
Catherine Johnson.
--
fenm at cox dot net
"A guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... what are the odds
of that?"
-J. Jonah Jameson, /Spider-Man 2/.
Jonah Falcon
"Fish Eye no Miko" <fis...@deadmoon.circus> wrote in message
news:vuBWc.17070$L94.3979@fed1read07...
> Andrew wrote:
>
> > What *exactly* do you do with a stolen painting anyway? Try to pass
> > it off as a print?
>
> As has been pointed out on the news, some unscrupulous collectors buy
> paintings even if they know they're stolen. Also, paintings can be held
> for ransom.
>
They also get more valuable with age, and can be used as heirlooms. Statutes
of Limitations, you know.
Zbu
> Andrew wrote:
>
>
>>What *exactly* do you do with a stolen painting anyway? Try to pass
>>it off as a print?
>
>
> As has been pointed out on the news, some unscrupulous collectors buy
> paintings even if they know they're stolen. Also, paintings can be held
> for ransom.
>
> Catherine Johnson.
I can see it now:
ROBBER: Hand over the money, coppers, or the Scream gets it!
SCREAM: Do it! He's crazy enough to do it! AHHHHHHH!!!
COPS: No deal! Put it down now!
SCREAM: AHHHHHHHHH!!!
ROBBER: Wrong move, coppers! *cocks gun*
SCREAM: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
ROBBER: Shaddup, you!
SCREAM: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH..kay.
--
--Zbu! (humor? You're soaking in it)
To reply, drop the 'work.'
David Crowe
> Andrew wrote:
>
>> What *exactly* do you do with a stolen painting anyway? Try to pass
>> it off as a print?
>
> As has been pointed out on the news, some unscrupulous collectors buy
> paintings even if they know they're stolen. Also, paintings can be held
> for ransom.
A LOT of famous artworks have vanished into the hidden vaults of the
super-rich and jaded (when you're that rich, you want thrills you can't
easily buy). I've heard that a lot of that sort of famous stolen artwork
is ordered destroyed on the "owner's" death, to prevent scandal after the
fact. That's exceptionally unsettling.
--
David "No Nickname" Crowe jet...@getnet.net Website being moved again
"Hey, if the Secretary of Defense is in the Avengers, does that mean the
US is in the anti-US conspiracy?" -Anti-UN protestor, Iron Man #428
George Johnson
news:412eff3c$0$75888$4c5e...@news.getnet.net...
Could be worse... ever hear of the concept of a "SMASH PARTY" (not
related to the concept that "The party was a smashing success")?
In the science fiction story, the super-rich "Mr. Boy" has a "Smash
Party" with his friends so that they can destroy purchased priceless
antiques and works of art for the thrill of it. It is sickening that the
beauty of generations is lost to wealthy heathens, but to some degree I have
to agree with the line in "Zardoz" in the storage room of antiques,
(paraphrasing) [Arthur Friend]: "Look here at all of these Gods and
Goddesses. Pick one to worship if you wish, but they are all dead." ---
[Zed]: "Dead?" --- [Arthur Friend]: "Yes, they all died of boredom."
What is art if it is all reduced to the value of clutter by
mass-produced beauty and skill? What is art if the Internet allows the old
masters to be superseded by the generations of today in quality, quantity,
and popularity? Do we not reduce even the greatest works to trivial posters
when we can render fully animated 3D Mona Lisas with a variety of
personalities to fit any occasion no matter how sublime or banal? And how
is this, oddly enough, a truly bad thing?
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/l.j.hurst/tladinos.htm
[clipped]
This exploration of illusion reaches its grotesque zenith in "Mr Boy", set
in an illogically near future (but not on the same time line as "Think Like
A Dinosaur"), where body shaping has reached the extent of a woman living as
a three-quarter model of the Statue of Liberty, her son the form of a twelve
year old while his thirteen year old friend lives as "a grapefruit-yellow
stenonychosaurus with a brown underbelly". Meanwhile the poor people are
still living on the streets, and the last hippies now run franchises in the
malls where they sell plants and greenery. Treemonisha Joplin is the bored
daughter of hippies - "No one has adventures in the mall" she says. In his
love for her Mr Boy will give up his neotatism and his collection of
post-mortem photographs, then close down his mother.
Mr Boy cannot kill his mother to escape her Oedipal grasp, however, because
he realises that she has long since downloaded herself into a computer. She
is not there in that Statue as he is in his body. He did, though, set out to
kill her before he discovered there was no longer a "she" to kill. In "Think
Like A Dinosaur" there is an equally unmentioned need to kill.
[end clip]
http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton/kelly.htm
Review Date: 31 March 1998. This review first appeared in Tangent, issue
20/21, and is copyright 1998 by Richard R. Horton. Visit Tangent Online.
Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories, by James Patrick Kelly
Golden Gryphon Press, 1997, $22.95
ISBN: 0965590194
[clipped]
Kelly's early reputation was as one of the "humanist" side in the silly and
mostly false '80s dichotomy of cyberpunks (Gibson, Sterling) and humanists
(K. S. Robinson, Kelly). But several of his most striking stories venture
into so-called "cyberpunk" territory. Included here are "Rat", a fast-paced
and intriguing tale of a violent, decayed future, where the title character
smuggles a large quantity of a fashionable drug into the US, and must try to
avoid both federal agents, and the local middlemen who is trying to double
cross; and "Mr. Boy", a long novella which is also part of his novel
Wildlife. Mr. Boy is 25, but his mother keeps him somatically and
emotionally at the age of 12 by repeated "gene twanking". His friends are a
13-year old boy who has been twanked into a dinosaur form, and an artificial
intelligence his mother bought him as a companion/bodyguard. Mr. Boy's life
begins to come apart when some illegal "corpse porn" is traced to him, and
his understanding of his life is shaken when he meets a 17-year old "stiff"
(read: untwanked) girl and starts to fall in love. The background details of
the story are excellent, very Sterlingesque: Virtual Environment parties,
his mother's chosen "twanked" form (Mr. Boy doesn't just live with his
mother, he lives "in" her), smash parties, the mall franchise families, and
so on. The main story itself is affecting, but a bit obvious: we know from
the start just what Mr. Boy needs: to grow up.
[end clip]
http://web.mit.edu/m-i-t/science_fiction/profiles/kelly.html
James Patrick Kelly (1951- )
1,470 words
posted: august 31, 1997
[clipped]
Far from the horrifying moral ambiguities of "Think Like a Dinosaur," this
story sees technology as facilitating a vital human link between two
frightened and lonely people.
Many of Kelly's short stories center on technologies which enable people to
alter not only their virtual identities but their physical bodies. "Big Guy"
opens with the startling sentence: "The last time he linked to Way Out,
Murph had deleted his nipples," before offering us a glimpse of a working
stiff who squanders his pay-check on on-line time and new personas:
Murph's hardware collection went back eleven years. When he first could
afford to link, he had settled for cheap generics. He had a Samson with a
cock as thick as a cucumber, a Sir Knight with three add-on armor modules,
and a Vampire that could change into a bat or a wolf. Later, as he
discovered more sophisticated haunts, he had splurged on the limited-edition
Dragon and a homo habilis. Mirrorman, a custom job, had cost him six month's
savings. Eventually he'd realized it was all kid's stuff. High fashion in
heroware catered mostly to drones who didn't like being who they were. They
were afraid they were too ugly, too boring, too ethnic to attract beautiful,
exciting people -- and they were right. So they hid in anonymous virtual
bodies and played games that kept them from finding out anything important
about one another. Fighting games, drug games, sex games.
The heroware of "Big Guy" seems a logical extension of the on-line
personas and role-playing Sherry Turkle has described in contemporary
cyberculture.
"Mr. Boy," another Kelly story, pushes this idea of body modification even
further, depicting a world where parents have stunting operations performed
on their children to keep their bodies forever infantile: "Even though it
hurts, getting stunted is still the ultimate flash. As I unlived my life, I
overdosed on dying feelings and experiences. My body was not big enough to
hold them all; I thought I was going to explode...You do not have to worry
about laugh lines after they twank your genes and reset your mitotic limits.
My face was smooth and I was going to be twelve years old forever, or at
least as long as Mom kept paying for my rejuvenation." The aptly named Mr.
Boy, whose body is that of a child and whose mind searches constantly for
adult stimulations, lives inside his mother, who has had her body
transformed into a three-quarter scale replica of the Statue of Liberty and
who speaks to her son only through a succession of cybernetic remotes, each
of whom reflect one aspect of her core personality. He inhabits a world
where physical bodies are transformed according to the latest fashion and
the Freedom of Form is protected by the Thirtieth Amendment, where "privacy
is twentieth century thinking" because all human experience has become
information begging to be free, and where pictures smuggled out of the
morgue are the ultimate pornography.
Along the way, Kelly gives us a glimpse of the future of the contemporary
shopping mall, where poor families are purchased by franchises, live in the
stores, and work around the clock. As with his best writing, "Mr. Boy"
combines the elaborate sociological details that make for a plausible future
society, with the psychological and emotional insight that results in
well-drawn characters. Kelly is still proving that the old divides in
science fiction are out-dated.
Many of Kelly's best stories -- ranging in tone from satire to horror, from
fantasy to hard science fiction, from romance to post-apocalyptic angst --
have been collected in the recently published Think Like a Dinosaur and
Other Stories. His novels include Planet of Whispers (1984), Freedom Beach
(with John Kessel), Look into the Sun (1989), and Wildlife (1994). He lives
in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and is an active force in the Boston area
science fiction community.
Stephen Cooke
That reminds me....did they ever recover that Rembrandt seascape that was
stolen in Boston?
swac
George Johnson
news:Pine.GSO.3.95.iB1.0.104...@halifax.chebucto.ns.ca.
..
|
| stolen in Boston?
|
| swac
Short answer --- Not that I am aware of.
3 of the paintings were returned, but the seascape still remains missing
regarding what I can find on GOOGLE.
==============
http://www.museum-security.org/
Good website concerning art thefts and art protection
http://www.museum-security.org/artcrime.html
http://www.museum-security.org/articles.html
==============
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/primetime/WorldNewsTonight/gardner_art_t
heft_040311.html
Art of the Deal
New Clues, Possible Deals in $500 Million Gardner Museum Art Theft Mystery
==============
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/97/09/04/quote.html
The Boston Phoenix
September 4 - 11, 1997
The deal of the art
More than seven years after one of the heists of the century, the case of
the missing Gardner Museum paintings provokes an all-out media war
by Dan Kennedy
It was one of the great art heists of the century. In the early-morning
hours of March 18, 1990, two men passing themselves off as Boston Police
officers pushed their way into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,
handcuffed two security guards to the basement plumbing, and made off with
13 objects valued at $200 million. The prize catch: The Storm in the Sea of
Galilee, Rembrandt's only seascape.
Now the daring raid has become the subject of one of the great media stories
of the decade.
For several weeks Boston Herald reporter Tom Mashberg had been reporting the
claims of William Youngworth, a Randolph antiques dealer and ex-convict who
said he could help lead authorities to the paintings. In return, Youngworth
wanted the $5 million reward, immunity from prosecution, and freedom for his
friend Myles Connor, a notorious art thief who's serving a lengthy prison
sentence.
The rival Boston Globe first virtually ignored the story, then tried to play
it down -- until last Wednesday, August 27. That's when Mashberg, beneath
the front-page headline WE'VE SEEN IT!, reported the startling news that
he'd been shown the Rembrandt masterwork -- or something that looked like
it -- "at a hiding place in a barren and forsaken Northeast warehouse
district." Mailing tubes in a corner of the warehouse were alleged to
contain other stolen paintings.
[skipping down]
Mashberg's next hurdle is likely to be a legal one: federal investigators
are obviously eager to know the location of the warehouse to which Mashberg
was taken, especially now that details he offered to museum officials make
it appear more likely that the Rembrandt he saw under the glow of a
flashlight was authentic.
Mashberg's best defense against a federal subpoena would be to say that he
didn't know the warehouse's location because, for example, he was led there
blindfolded. But neither he nor Costello will say whether that's the case.
The second-best defense, according to Jane Kirtley, executive director of
the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, would be for the Herald to
assert that it has already published everything it knows. Which is precisely
what Costello says in his carefully rehearsed statements.
This is obviously a dicey time for the Herald. Costello and company know
they may have the scoop of the year. But they also know that if the painting
Mashberg saw turns out to be a fake, they'll look pretty foolish, no matter
how careful Mashberg has been to say that he can't vouch for its
authenticity. And if Billy Youngworth's role is shown to be more sinister
than than of a "facilitator," then the Herald will stand accused of
providing aid and comfort to someone who clearly deserved neither.
Youngworth was scheduled to be interviewed on ABC's Nightline Wednesday
night; perhaps the answers to some of these questions will now start to
emerge.
There's talk in some circles that Mashberg and his editors have battled over
how the story has been handled. Asked about that, Mashberg responded, "I'm
very comfortable with the way they're handling this story right now." But
asked whether he and his editors have been on the same page from the
beginning, Mashberg paused before answering carefully: "This has been
uncharted territory for all of us."
[end clip]
=============
(3rd page of a 5-page article)
http://www.courttv.com/news/hiddentraces/heist/page3.html
'He can get these paintings in a half hour'
Myles Connor, the son of a cop and brother of a priest, has earned the
reputation for not only being an art thief, but an art connoisseur often
spotted at gallery openings and art shows.
The Rape of Europa, by Titian
"You can believe I didn't plan the thing, or 'The Rape of Europa' would have
been the first to go," Connor said during a jailhouse interview with Time
magazine in 1997. In a 2001 survey of museum directors conducted by the
Boston Globe, the work was voted the most significant in Beantown, beating
out other masterpieces showcased at larger museums in the city, such as the
Museum of Fine Arts.
According to Connor, he and a former "associate," Bobby Donati, went to the
Gardner in the mid-1970s and discussed how easy it would be to pull off a
robbery. He even says that Donati mentioned he liked the Napoleonic flag
finial, a work of relatively little value compared with the other
masterpieces in the museum.
But Connor said he never followed through on robbing the Gardner. Shortly
after his visit with Donati, a Rembrandt was stolen from the Museum of Fine
Arts. Though Connor never admitted to that theft, he did arrange for its
return in exchange for avoiding prison time for another art theft in Maine.
Connor claims Donati and another associate, David Houghton, arranged the
Gardner robbery on their own. Donati was found dead the following year
hog-tied and stabbed in the trunk of a car, and Houghton died in 1992.
Art investigator Harold Smith
"He said it was his plan. The implication is that these people had heard
Myles Connor's plan, but instead of using art thieves they used armored car
thieves," Smith says.
Connor says his now-deceased friends told him they would leave information
about the paintings' whereabouts if anything happened to them.
While incarcerated, Connor told the FBI that he could find out where the art
was - but that he couldn't do it from prison.
The FBI didn't release Connor, but in 1997 raised the museum's reward for
the safe return of all the works from $1 million to $5 million. On Aug. 18
of that year, Youngworth, Connor's associate, called a Boston Herald
reporter boasting he had the art and would take him to see it.
The reporter, Tom Mashberg, took a 40-minute drive to an unknown location
and saw what looked like Rembrandt's "Storm on the Sea of Galilee." He was
even allowed to take some paint chips with him for proof.
Rembrandt's only known seascape, Storm on the Sea of Galilee
Youngworth said that he would return the art in exchange for immunity for
himself and Connor, Connor's release from prison and the $5 million reward.
The FBI responded by asking Youngworth to return one of the 13 works in a
show of good faith, but received nothing.
The chips were later analyzed, and after some controversy regarding their
authenticity, authorities deemed them fakes.
Youngworth, whose criminal record included more than 60 convictions in
Massachusetts alone, soon found himself back behind bars for a stolen car
rap. He was released from prison in 2000.
"He claims he can get these paintings in a half hour," Smith said of a lunch
he once had with Youngworth in a Manhattan restaurant.
Connor was released on parole in 2000 after serving two-thirds of his
15-year sentence.
Smith seems to believe that the pair could hold the keys to recovering the
art.
"If everyone connected with this case was given amnesty, it would be
solved," Smith believes.
But Prouty is more skeptical of how much the two really know.
"He [Connor] has come to us on a number of occasions with different
theories. In every instance," he says, "it has not been what it has been
purported."
================
http://www.museum-security.org/02/061.html
Pursuing the Gardner heist
Ralph Blumenthal The New York Times Saturday, May 11, 2002
Filmmakers play detective in 1990 museum robbery
NEW YORK If you do happen to know who swiped a Vermeer, three Rembrandts and
other masterworks totaling up to $500 million from the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990, or know where the hoard is stashed, here's
a suggestion: Log on to the Web site www.Find-the-Art.com. Call the listed
number, (1-888) 448-2883, for a shot at the $5 million reward and, barring a
need for anonymity, perhaps even a starring role under the lens of the dean
of documentary filmmakers, Albert Maysles. . In a quixotic bid to help crack
the most costly art heist on record, Maysles - along with his protegé
Rebecca Dreyfus Feig, the veteran art sleuth Harold Smith and the publicists
Nike Communications - is volunteering his time to solicit clues in a case
that has stymied the FBI, Boston police detectives and museum investigators
for 12 years. . Despite many promising leads - including a reporter's peek
at what may have been one of the missing Rembrandts rolled up in a Brooklyn
warehouse in 1997 - the trail has gone cold, entangled, too, in a
long-running scandal over FBI protection for a Boston crime-boss-
turned-informant, James (Whitey) Bulger. . Among the persistent suspicions,
given the connections of some of the players, they said, is that the art may
have been taken to raise money for the Irish Republican Army, which was then
still carrying out attacks on British interests. . The filmmakers share the
hope of a break, but are taking a different tack, basically starting from
scratch. "Because of the morass, the way the case is going to be solved is
by soliciting new information," said Feig, who conceived the project out of
what she calls a mystical attachment to the Vermeer, "The Concert," painted
around 1658-60. Feig, who spent years in Russia making the documentary
"Bye-Bye Babushka," about grandmothers and their memories of communism and
shown on public television in 1999, recruited a producer, Susannah Ludwig,
and Maysles as cameraman for the film, titled "Stolen: The Search for the
Lost Vermeer." . Maysles said he had a hunch that the stolen works might be
recovered through their efforts. Even if they did not unearth the paintings,
he said, they would be spotlighting the mystery, and in the end they would
have a film. "Win or lose, we win," said Maysles. "If we find nothing, we
made the attempt." . Among those they have interviewed is Robert
Fitzpatrick, president of the Boston investigations company IEI Resources,
formerly a career FBI agent, supervisor and profiler who originated the
Abscam public corruption investigation in Miami as a sting to recover stolen
art. . Fitzpatrick told the filmmakers that he thought Bulger, a fugitive
since 1995 who is on the FBI's most-wanted list, may well hold the key to
solving the theft because only an underworld leader of his power could have
compelled silence for so long and could now unlock a flow of information. He
said that one of Bulger's associates, Joseph Murray Jr., once confided that
he held some paintings whose recovery would make Fitzpatrick famous. But
then Murray was shot to death by his wife and the tip died with him. . Anne
Hawley, the director of the Gardner Museum, said that through the years the
museum had dealt with many writers and filmmakers consumed by the theft, but
that with perhaps 1,000 leads already run down, her optimism was tempered by
realism. "This is really a tricky case, and I'm not sanguine about casting
the net out widely for leads," she said. . But Smith, 74, who has 56 years'
experience as a loss consultant for Lloyds of London, Christie's, Sotheby's,
Tiffany and the Smithsonian, among other clients, sees that as highly
unlikely. "There are very few things that happen that someone doesn't know
about," he said, arguing that time was not necessarily the enemy but an
ally. "Relationships change," he said. "Wives become ex-wives. Girlfriends
become ex-girlfriends. Maids become ex-maids. Maybe the person who
engineered this is facing mortality and wants to clean up his act." . The
bare facts of the robbery are simple. Shortly before 1:24 a.m. on Sunday,
March 18, 1990, two men in what seemed to be police uniforms appeared at the
Palace Road side door of the museum, built between 1899 and 1901 by Isabella
Gardner, a voracious art collector, to house her treasures. Claiming to be
investigating a disturbance, the pair got a guard to open up and tied him up
along with his partner. . Over an hour and 21 minutes, they seized the
Vermeer, a Govaert Flinck landscape once attributed to Rembrandt and
Rembrandt's only seascape, "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee." They also took
two other Rembrandts, "A Lady and a Gentleman in Black" and a tiny etched
self- portrait; a Manet portrait, "Chez Tortoni"; five Degas drawings and
watercolors; a 3,000-year-old Chinese bronze beaker, and, having tried and
failed to unscrew a case containing a Napoleonic battle flag, the eagle
finial crowning the pole instead. Back to Start of Article Filmmakers play
detective in 1990 museum robbery NEW YORK If you do happen to know who
swiped a Vermeer, three Rembrandts and other masterworks totaling up to $500
million from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990, or know
where the hoard is stashed, here's a suggestion: Log on to the Web site
www.Find-the-Art.com. Call the listed number, (1-888) 448-2883, for a shot
at the $5 million reward and, barring a need for anonymity, perhaps even a
starring role under the lens of the dean of documentary filmmakers, Albert
Maysles. . In a quixotic bid to help crack the most costly art heist on
record, Maysles - along with his protegé Rebecca Dreyfus Feig, the veteran
art sleuth Harold Smith and the publicists Nike Communications - is
volunteering his time to solicit clues in a case that has stymied the FBI,
Boston police detectives and museum investigators for 12 years. . Despite
many promising leads - including a reporter's peek at what may have been one
of the missing Rembrandts rolled up in a Brooklyn warehouse in 1997 - the
trail has gone cold, entangled, too, in a long-running scandal over FBI
protection for a Boston crime-boss- turned-informant, James (Whitey) Bulger.
. Among the persistent suspicions, given the connections of some of the
players, they said, is that the art may have been taken to raise money for
the Irish Republican Army, which was then still carrying out attacks on
British interests. . The filmmakers share the hope of a break, but are
taking a different tack, basically starting from scratch. "Because of the
morass, the way the case is going to be solved is by soliciting new
information," said Feig, who conceived the project out of what she calls a
mystical attachment to the Vermeer, "The Concert," painted around 1658-60.
Feig, who spent years in Russia making the documentary "Bye-Bye Babushka,"
about grandmothers and their memories of communism and shown on public
television in 1999, recruited a producer, Susannah Ludwig, and Maysles as
cameraman for the film, titled "Stolen: The Search for the Lost Vermeer." .
Maysles said he had a hunch that the stolen works might be recovered through
their efforts. Even if they did not unearth the paintings, he said, they
would be spotlighting the mystery, and in the end they would have a film.
"Win or lose, we win," said Maysles. "If we find nothing, we made the
attempt." . Among those they have interviewed is Robert Fitzpatrick,
president of the Boston investigations company IEI Resources, formerly a
career FBI agent, supervisor and profiler who originated the Abscam public
corruption investigation in Miami as a sting to recover stolen art. .
Fitzpatrick told the filmmakers that he thought Bulger, a fugitive since
1995 who is on the FBI's most-wanted list, may well hold the key to solving
the theft because only an underworld leader of his power could have
compelled silence for so long and could now unlock a flow of information. He
said that one of Bulger's associates, Joseph Murray Jr., once confided that
he held some paintings whose recovery would make Fitzpatrick famous. But
then Murray was shot to death by his wife and the tip died with him. . Anne
Hawley, the director of the Gardner Museum, said that through the years the
museum had dealt with many writers and filmmakers consumed by the theft, but
that with perhaps 1,000 leads already run down, her optimism was tempered by
realism. "This is really a tricky case, and I'm not sanguine about casting
the net out widely for leads," she said. . But Smith, 74, who has 56 years'
experience as a loss consultant for Lloyds of London, Christie's, Sotheby's,
Tiffany and the Smithsonian, among other clients, sees that as highly
unlikely. "There are very few things that happen that someone doesn't know
about," he said, arguing that time was not necessarily the enemy but an
ally. "Relationships change," he said. "Wives become ex-wives. Girlfriends
become ex-girlfriends. Maids become ex-maids. Maybe the person who
engineered this is facing mortality and wants to clean up his act." . The
bare facts of the robbery are simple. Shortly before 1:24 a.m. on Sunday,
March 18, 1990, two men in what seemed to be police uniforms appeared at the
Palace Road side door of the museum, built between 1899 and 1901 by Isabella
Gardner, a voracious art collector, to house her treasures. Claiming to be
investigating a disturbance, the pair got a guard to open up and tied him up
along with his partner. . Over an hour and 21 minutes, they seized the
Vermeer, a Govaert Flinck landscape once attributed to Rembrandt and
Rembrandt's only seascape, "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee." They also took
two other Rembrandts, "A Lady and a Gentleman in Black" and a tiny etched
self- portrait; a Manet portrait, "Chez Tortoni"; five Degas drawings and
watercolors; a 3,000-year-old Chinese bronze beaker, and, having tried and
failed to unscrew a case containing a Napoleonic battle flag, the eagle
finial crowning the pole instead.
==========
http://discoverychannel.co.uk/hotart/feature5.shtml
HOT ART
WANTED!
Art crime continues to grab headlines and bereave museums, galleries and
private collectors alike. Here, we've compiled a list of ten of the world's
most wanted paintings.
Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna with Infant Holding a Yarnwinder (1500-10)
On 27 August, 2003, Leonardo Da Vinci's painting was lifted by thieves from
the Duke of Buccleuch's Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland, UK. The two men
responsible allegedly joined a public tour of the castle and overpowered a
guide before stealing the masterpiece which experts say is worth up to £30
million.
Jan Vermeer, The Concert (c1665-6)
Vermeer's The Concert (one of the greatest of his remaining 36 paintings)
was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, Boston on 18 March,
1990 - the biggest heist in US history. The thieves dressed as policemen and
convinced security they were checking the museum. The priceless work
pictures a man playing the lute, a young woman playing the harpsichord and
another singer.
Rembrandt van Rijn - The Storm on the Sea of Galilee
One of the most stolen artists ever, a worryingly large number of his
paintings are listed as 'whereabouts unknown'. This priceless work - the
only known seascape painted by Rembrandt - was also stolen in the 1990
Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum heist in Boston, USA.
Rembrandt, Self-portrait, (1630)
Another Rembrandt masterpiece whose whereabouts are unknown, this painting
was stolen in the Stockholm National Museum art heist in 2000. Three masked
armed robbers walked into the museum as visitors were milling about, stole
three masterpieces and ran out again. They escaped from the waterfront
gallery by motorboat.
August Renoir, Portrait of a Young Parisian (c1874)
This work by the French Impressionist was also stolen in the art robbery of
Stockholm's National Museum in 2000. The other stolen Renoir - Conversation
with the Gardener - has been recovered in an unrelated police investigation.
Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman (1938)
The head of the woman in this painting (valued at £4 million) is that of
Dora Maar, the half-Yugoslav woman who was Picasso's lover for nine years.
It was stolen from a Saudi's yacht, 'Coral Island', in March 1999 in
Antibes, France.
Paul Cézanne, Auvers-sur-Oise (c1879-1882)
This landscape painting, valued at £3 million, was stolen on 1 January, 2000
from the Ashmolean museum, Oxford, UK. The thief entered the museum through
the skylight. The painting depicts a cluster of small white cottages set in
a tree-filled and lush valley.
Vincent Van Gogh, View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving
the Reformed Church at Nuenen (1882 and 1884 respectively)
In December 2002, thieves broke through the roof of Amsterdam's Van Gogh
museum and stole these two Van Gogh paintings worth at least $10 million
each. View of the Sea at Scheveningen shows a foaming, stormy sea and
thundery sky, executed on the spot at the beach resort near The Hague .
Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen is said to have been
intended for Van Gogh's mother and his father who had become a pastor at the
church in 1882.
Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon (1951)
This portrait by one British painter of another is worth an estimated $1.4
million. It was stolen in broad daylight from the Berlin's Neue
Nationalgalerie on 21 December, 2000.
Lots42 The Library Avenger
> I've heard that a lot of that sort of famous stolen artwork
>is ordered destroyed on the "owner's" death, to prevent scandal after the
>fact. That's exceptionally unsettling.
"Bob...I'm dying. Go destroy the Picasso."
Ten minutes later.
"Bob...is the Picasso destroyed?"
"Yeah, boss. I destroyed it myself. Aaaaall by myself. Nobody saw a thing."
"Good Bob."
CROAK
--
"Argh, the laws of science be a harsh mistress." - Pirate Bender
"If you want to say something relevant to this particular discussion, or
something vaguely logical, you might try to come up with it now."
-- Kettir, to me