Five masterpieces stolen from Paris museum
(May 20, 2010)Five masterpieces stolen from Paris modern art museum
Page last updated at 15:06 GMT, Thursday, 20 May 2010 16:06 UK
One of the stolen paintings was Picasso's Dove with Peas (Photo:
Bridgeman Art Library)
Five paintings by Picasso, Matisse and other great artists have been stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, French officials say.
The paintings are estimated to be worth just under 100m euros (£86m; $123m).
They were taken overnight on Wednesday and reported missing early on Thursday, officials say.
The museum, across the River Seine from the Eiffel Tower, has been cordoned off by investigators.
Security camera footage reportedly shows someone entering the museum through a window during the night.
"This is a serious crime to the heritage of humanity," Christophe Girard, deputy culture secretary at the Paris Town Hall, told a news conference.
The theft was committed by "one or more individuals who were obviously organised", Mr Girard said.
He added that investigators were looking into how the museum's security system and several guards were outsmarted by the thief or thieves.
Mr Girard put the value of the stolen paintings at just under 100m euros (£86m; $123m). They had earlier been estimated to be worth some 500m euros (£431m; $618m).
The five missing paintings are said to be Dove with Green Peas by Pablo Picasso (painted in 1912), Pastoral (1905) by Henri Matisse, Olive Tree near Estaque by Georges Braque, Woman with a Fan by Amedeo Modigliani and Still Life with Chandeliers by Fernand Leger.
Broken padlockMuseum officials discovered the theft early on Thursday, when they found a smashed window and a broken padlock which had been cut to gain access to the five paintings.
It is still unclear why the alarm systems did not alert staff earlier, reports the BBC's David Chazan in Paris.
There has not been anything comparable since the 1990 theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston of a Vermeer, several Rembrandts, Degas and other masterpieces, says BBC Arts Correspondent David Sillito.
None of these works has yet been recovered.
Though there is often speculation that works have been "stolen to order" for dishonest collectors, experts in the field say that in reality this is virtually unheard of.
Investigators think that international criminal gangs use art works effectively as a form of currency; if you're dealing in drugs and weapons, a rolled up painting is a very good way of carrying very large amounts of "currency" around, even if it is one tenth of the value that it would be if it was at auction, our arts correspondent adds.
The Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, located in the east wing of the Palais de Tokyo building, is separate from the bigger and better-known national collection of modern art at the Pompidou Centre
