Monet, Van Gogh, Degas and Cezanne Stolen: Worth 163 million

Chip Cain — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 03:55:40 +0000

The New York Times has reported that “Three thieves, wearing dark clothes and ski masks, walked into the Emile Bührle Foundation, a private collection housed a couple of miles outside of Zurich’s city center on the shore of Lake Zurich, around 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, a short while before the museum was due to close. The collection is considered to be one of the biggest privately owned collections of French impressionists in the world.”

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation puts losses from art and cultural property crime at $6 billion a year. The biggest U.S. art heist was of some $300 million of Rembrandts and other works stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in 1990, according to the FBI Web site.

It is sad that the art has been stolen and taken out of the public forum and adding insult to injury it was for the investment they represent and not the artistic works they are that they were stolen. We can only hope the thieves and the art are found soon.

Creative Ashes » Art Theft.

Monet, Van Gogh, Degas and Cezanne Stolen: Worth 163 million