Hasta La Ideas

Outside of here at UnBeige and various art blogs and print outlets, art theft doesn’t usually get much in the way of sustained mainstream play, if any. So when this weekend’s heist at Paris’ Museum of Modern Art became all the buzz, we figured there was already enough chatter out there about the robbery that nabbed five paintings worth more than $100 million and we didn’t have anything much else to contribute, so best just let it be. But then, as you might not have heard given all the talk about just that high-profile burglary, the weekend became something of an art theft epidemic. We decided it was silence no longer. The day after Paris’ MoMA was being robbed, an art collector in Marseille (already the site of a recent art theft) was attacked and beaten in his home and the thieves made off with five pieces of art, including a Picasso. What’s more, in the approach to the weekend, shortly before all of this happened in France, in London, model Kate Moss‘ house was being broken into so the thief could swipe her pricey Banksy painting. Although in that case, the police have already nabbed a suspect, all of this art taking isn’t boding well for Europe in the slightest. We know, for one, that we’re no longer planning to bring our Monets to the UnBeige summer palace in Vienna this season.

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