Displaying items by tag: Stolen Art

A plaster sculpture of President Abraham Lincoln's hand has been missing from the Kankakee County Museum in northeastern Illinois since at least December 11, and there are no witnesses or suspects. A custodian initially noticed that the hand was missing and alerted the museum's executive director.

A trove of Dutch Golden Age art stolen from a provincial Dutch museum nearly 11 years ago has been linked to a volunteer nationalist militia in Ukraine, the museum announced Monday.

The Westfries Museum in the northern town of Hoorn went public with claims that the 24 paintings snatched in a burglary on Jan. 9, 2005, along with 70 pieces of silverware are now being offered for sale in Ukraine, saying it wants to deter potential buyers.

French police said on Saturday that a painting by the American neoexpressionist and street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was stolen from the owner's Parisian apartment.

The painting by Basquiat, who was affiliated with the American avant-garde artist Andy Warhol, was estimated to be worth 10 million euros ($11.3 million).

According to French police, there were no signs of a break-in into the apartment where the painting was housed, suggesting that the thief's motive may stem from a family dispute.

Stolen in 1982, a large French pastoral tapestry dating to the mid-18th century has been returned to its original home after more than three decades and now hangs in a château in Normandy.

The Art Loss Register, the privately run database of stolen and looted art, spotted the wall hanging in the catalogue of a London auction house in February 2014, but the find has only recently been made public after follow-up investigations.

A former employee of famed glass-blowing artist Dale Chihuly has been charged by authorities in Washington state with first degree theft and three counts of first-degree trafficking of stolen property.

Christopher Robert Kaul is accused of stealing 90 pieces worth over $3 million while working at the Chihuly warehouse in Tacoma, Wash., says the Pierce County Prosecutor's Office.

Two treasured pieces of art — an etching by Rembrandt and an engraving by Albrecht Dürer — have gone missing from the Boston Public Library’s vaunted print collection, and investigators are probing whether the artwork was stolen through an inside job, the Herald has learned.

The library reported both pieces missing to police on April 29, after a BPL supervisor discovered they had gone missing on or around April 8, according to a police report obtained by the Herald.

There's been an art heist at the Sam Simon Foundation in Malibu, California, and police are hunting for two paintings—one by American Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein—worth an estimated $200,000 each, reports the AP. The foundation, which rescues shelter dogs and trains them to become service dogs for the disabled, was founded by The Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon, who died last month at 59, after a long battle with colon cancer.

The paintings were reported missing on April 10, and are thought to have been taken at some point during the previous day.

The recently released movie "The Monuments Men" tells of Hitler's attempt to steal or destroy Europe's greatest works of art, and the men FDR sent into harm's way to stop him. Thousands of works of art and many masterpieces were recovered and returned to their rightful owners. Yet today, seven decades after the fall of the Third Reich, other stolen works of art—some from owners who perished in the Holocaust—hang in museums in Europe and in America.

In the U.S., for instance, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, Calif., is fighting a claim by Marei von Saher, heir of Jewish Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, whose collection was forcibly sold to the Nazis in 1940. The works in question are 16th-century oil paintings by Lucas Cranach. The museum has denied Ms. von Saher's claim on grounds that the statute of limitations on looted art has run out.

Art hoarder Cornelius Gurlitt — whose vast trove of possibly Nazi-looted works has made headlines since its existence was revealed late last year — passed away on the morning of May 5 at his apartment in Schwabing, according to a statement sent today from the office of Gurlitt spokesperson Stephan Holzinger. He was 81.

“After a serious heart surgery and a week-long stay in a hospital, it was the request of the deceased to return to his apartment in Schwabing,” reads the statement from Gurlitt’s reps Stephan Holzinger and Dr. Rönsberg Setz, signed also by his lawyers Christoph Edel and Prof. Dr. Park. “There he was in nursing care and taken care off in recent weeks around the clock.”