Goya Theft Is Attributed to Inside Knowledge
By DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 — Federal investigators have concluded that thieves armed with detailed shipping information were behind the removal of a Goya painting from a truck en route to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from Ohio last week, law enforcement officials said Friday.

The 1778 painting, “Children With a Cart,” was packed inside several nested crates aboard a locked unmarked truck used by a professional art transporter. The crated painting was removed from an outer shipping container in the truck while it was parked at a Howard Johnson Inn near Bartonsville, Pa.

The two drivers checked into the hotel around 11 p.m. on Nov. 7, according to the motel manager, Faizal Bhimani. He said the white midsize truck was left in an unlighted parking lot adjacent to the hotel, out of sight of the hotel’s rooms and the main office.

When the drivers returned to the truck at about 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 8, the locks had been broken and the painting, insured for $1 million, was gone, law enforcement officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Mr. Bhimani said the hotel’s night clerk had neither seen nor heard anything suspicious.

Mr. Bhimani said in a telephone interview that investigators had reviewed videotapes taken at the motel’s front desk. But he said the tapes had given no indication that other people might have been monitoring the drivers’ movements when they arrived.

Investigators have conducted extensive interviews with the drivers, asking, among other questions, why they left the truck unattended when operating procedures for most art transport companies require that trucks carrying valuable art objects never be left unattended.

Investigators have also asked the drivers why they stopped overnight on a trip that could have been completed in a single day. Officials said the drivers replied that they were scheduled to arrive in Manhattan around midday on Nov. 8 and did not want to arrive too early and wait in New York until the assigned time.

The hotel is off Interstate 80, a few miles west of Stroudsburg, Pa. The motel was identified as the place where the theft occurred on Thursday in The Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre.

The likelihood that the thief or thieves knew that a valuable painting was on the truck and were aware of its location led the authorities to conclude that whoever stole the painting had obtained precise information about the contents and route of the truck, even though such details are closely held at the two museums involved — the Toledo Museum of Art and the Guggenheim — and among employees at the art shipper. Law enforcement authorities did not identify the shipper.

While the authorities said they assumed that the painting had been taken by someone who hoped to profit, they added that selling a recognizable work by such a well-known artist would be difficult. Even a private collector, buying through the black market, could probably never take the risk of showing the painting in any visible setting.

The F.B.I office in Philadelphia, which is in charge of the investigation, has released few details about the case, hoping to use information about the theft to evaluate any tips. But few leads have been forthcoming, the officials said, and there have been no breakthroughs.

No one has been arrested and no suspects have emerged, said the officials, who requested anonymity because of the continuing investigation. Officials at the Toledo Museum of Art, which owns the Goya painting, referred questions about the case to the F.B.I.

Officials at the Guggenheim, who were planning to include the painting in “Spanish Painting From El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth and History,” a sweeping exhibition that opened on Friday, also referred questions to the F.B.I.

The bureau’s Philadelphia office operates one of its best-known art theft units. Jerri Williams, an agent and spokeswoman for the office, said, “It appears that the person or persons knew what they were doing.”

The insurer, who has not been identified, has offered a $50,000 reward for information about the theft. Representatives of other insurers said the theft of fine art is a perennial problem. If carried out by insiders, they said, the crime would underscore the lack of industrywide security standards among fine art shippers, handlers and brokers, which include a few large companies and many smaller niche firms.

“A big concern for us is the lack of uniform standards,” said Christiane Fischer, president and chief executive officer of the AXA Art Insurance Corporation in New York, which she said had not insured the Goya painting. “In an industry that handles billions of dollars of fine art, we feel we are very vulnerable,” she said. She cited the absence of minimum standards for employee background checks and other security procedures.

However, Ms. Fischer said insurers were usually optimistic that they would recover rare paintings. “The good news for us as an insurance company is that our chance of recovery is much higher for this kind of work,” she said. “There is just no way that piece can enter the fine art market.”

Thomas J. Carney, president of Midwest Fine Arts Service and Transportation, a company based in Berea, Ohio, that did not ship the Goya, said reputable shippers normally exercise great care in handling and shipping fine art and antiquities.

He said trucks with multiple locks are monitored by satellite, which records the location of the vehicle, whether the engine is on or off, and even how fast the engine is running. However, individual artworks are not usually tagged with tracking devices, he said.

Drivers are often subjected to background checks, Mr. Carney said, and information about shipments is limited to a few people in each company. Shipments are usually accompanied by two drivers, and sometimes by a third person, a courier, who rides along to make sure the cargo is safe. Shipping documents are kept intentionally vague to avoid disclosing the precise nature of the cargo.

“Usually only two or three people at a museum know what it is being shipped,” Mr. Carney said. “A shipping broker would know. A dispatcher would only know there is an order, but we wouldn’t even say who the artist is.”

bugger!

I love Goya.

Spookymuffin said:

It'll end up in some drug lord's private collection. This sounds like an inside job to me.

applekisses said:

I bum druglords.

Spookymuffin said:

I don't understand, honey...did you just get home from the pub?

applekisses said:

no i got very sick from the pub last night. i'd rather not drink right now.

i'm high on glue instead.

Spookymuffin said:

applekisses said:

Bumming a Capo.

Spookymuffin said:

It'll end up in some drug lord's private collection. This sounds like an inside job to me.

Spookymuffin said:

That has to be some new britisism that I am not familar with!

Spookymuffin said:

That has to be some new britisism that I am not familar with!

applekisses said:

he probably made it up just to sound confusing

applekisses said:

Yes, that is what the article is saying too. With a painting of that importance, I'd imagine the Gug & the TMA would have been very discrete about the details. It will be interesting to see what happens. I think it will turn up eventually (e.g. a couple years--like The Scream that was stolen).

I like Goya, too (even though I prefer Los Caprichos). It saddens me anytime I hear of this happening. I think art should be accessible to [b]everyone, not just the uber-rich[/b]. Having something that you won't even be able to display or enjoy because no one can know you possess it makes no sense to me.

I wonder what the motivation was...will they hold it for ransom? Maybe I need to research the provenance....

applekisses said:

Los Capos = Drug Barons.

Tomo los capos por culo con regularidad.

Spookymuffin said:

Gotcha! And if "culo" means the same thing in Spanish as it does in Italian, I REALLY understand.

fucking stupid art thieves.

evenstar3 said:

EXACTLY!! i'll fucking take them all out! boondock saints style.

I feel that way too...and I think the motivation was pure greed. For sure there is a black market for priceless works of art. Did you hear about the art dealer who was recently making a sale on an original Picasso and tripped and put his arm through it?

$1m Goya gone
Date: November 15 2006


A painting by revolutionary Spanish master Francisco de Goya, insured for more than $1 million, was stolen last week on the way from Ohio to New York for an exhibition, two museums announced.

The 228-year-old painting, "Children with a Cart", was stolen near Scranton, Pennsylvania, according to a joint statement issued by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and Ohio's Toledo Museum of Art which acquired the work in 1959.

The work was to be displayed at a Guggenheim exhibition, "Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth and History," scheduled to open on Friday.

The painting was being carried by a professional art transporter at the time of the theft, the museums said. They added the FBI was investigating the theft.

The museums said it would be virtually impossible to sell the painting on the open market, and the insurer had offered a reward of $50,000 for information leading to its recovery.

Goya, who lived from 1746 to 1828, is considered an early force of modernism in art. He was a painter of Spanish royalty and also depicted scenes of horror in a time of social and political upheaval.

"Children with a Cart" was painted in 1778 as a model for a tapestry. It depicts four colourfully dressed children and a wooden cart at the base of a dark tree, with a billowing cloud in the background.

Reuters

Has anyone seen the movie 'Goya in Bordeaux'?

I thought this was gonna be about seasoning.

sextonseven said:

I haven't...yet...but, it's on my list...it seems incredible.

applekisses said:

I have it on DVD. Love the way Goya's paintings were mixed into the film.

A Phone Call Leads the F.B.I. to a Stolen Goya
By RANDY KENNEDY

F.B.I. officials in Newark and Philadelphia said yesterday that they had recovered a Goya painting that was stolen from a truck this month while it was being transported from the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio to a major exhibition now on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan.

Officials said the painting was recovered unharmed Saturday in central New Jersey after a lawyer called the F.B.I. and told investigators where they could find it while saying that he could not tell them anything else about the theft.

As of late yesterday, no arrests had been made. Because the investigation remains active, officials would not say exactly where or how the painting had been found.

Contrary to earlier law enforcement theories that the theft was carried out by insiders, they did say it appeared that the thieves probably had no idea what kind of art-historical loot they had stumbled upon when they broke into the truck overnight in a parking lot at a Howard Johnson Inn near Bartonsville, Pa.

“This time of year, close to Christmas, they probably thought they’d found a truck filled with PlayStations and broke in and started looking for the biggest-looking box,” said Steve Siegel, an F.B.I. agent who serves as the spokesman for the bureau’s Newark office. “Basically, it’s a target-of-opportunity typical New Jersey cargo theft. There are literally predators — for lack of a better word — who when they see a tractor-trailer or a cargo vehicle parked for any length of time start snooping around.”

Officials at the Toledo Museum of Art said the painting, which was insured for $1 million, would not be included as a late entry in the Guggenheim show, “Spanish Painting From El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth and History,” a sprawling exhibition of some 135 paintings by Spanish masters that opened Friday. Instead, the work, painted in 1778 and titled “Children With a Cart,” will be returned to Toledo.

“We are ecstatic that the painting has been recovered, and we look forward to bringing the Goya home and sharing it again with our community,” Don Bacigalupi, the director of the Toledo Museum of Art, said in a written statement.

Lisa Dennison, the director of the Guggenheim, said the museum would have liked to put the painting into the show but added that it was “understandable that the Toledo Museum would want to bring the stolen painting back to its home after this nerve-racking experience.” She pointed out that the show includes 21 other works by Goya.

The crated painting was stolen either late on the night of Nov. 7 or early on Nov. 8 from a shipping container in the truck while it was parked in an unlighted lot near the Howard Johnson motel. The two drivers checked around 11 p.m. on Nov. 7, according to the motel manager, Faizal Bhimani. He said the white midsize truck was left in a lot adjacent to the hotel, out of sight of the motel’s rooms and the main office.

Law enforcement officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that when the drivers returned to the truck about 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 8, the locks had been broken and the painting was gone. Neither the two museums nor the investigators have identified the shipping company responsible for transporting the painting.

Federal investigators had first said they believed that thieves armed with detailed shipping information were behind the theft.

While that theory appears to have been wrong, other law enforcement officials cautioned that it was not yet known definitively that the thief or thieves had no information about the shipment of the painting.

While Mr. Siegel would not say exactly where the painting was recovered or provide details about how the agents had found it, he did say that it was recovered without a search warrant. He added that several people had been interviewed about the theft, but he provided no details.

Officials declined to identity the lawyer who alerted the investigators and would not say how he learned of the painting’s whereabouts. Nor would they say whether the lawyer was connected with anyone involved in the theft or whether he would be paid the $50,000 reward offered by an insurer.

It was not known whether the authorities had learned the identities of the thieves.

One law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said charges in the case could be filed as early as next week in United States District Court in Newark. Possible crimes could include interstate transportation of stolen property and theft of major artwork, each carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.