Displaying items by tag: Musee d'Art Moderne

Paris' Musée d'Art Moderne is expanding its collection of photography thanks to a pioneering patronage scheme focused on young collectors, "Le Figaro" reports.

The 21 members of the newly established patronage group have committed to pledge €5,000 each year. This means the museum has secured a yearly budget of €105,000 entirely allocated to the acquisition of international works of photography. Two new female members will join the group during 2015, and the museum is hoping to reach a total of 30 young patrons in the longer term.

Three people are being held in connection with the theft of paintings worth at least 100 million dollars from a Paris gallery last year, but the works are still missing, a legal official said Saturday.

The three, a woman suspected of taking part in the theft and two people suspected of handling stolen goods, were arrested and charged over the robbery of the five paintings, by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Ferdinand Leger and Amedeo Modigliani, and placed in custody on September 16, the official said.

A lone burglar sheared off a gate padlock and broke a window to get into the city-run Musee d'Art Moderne in the brazen operation during the night of May 19 last year.

The paintings were found to be missing just as the museum, a major tourist attraction near the Eiffel Tower, was about to open.

Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe later said one of the museum's alarms had been "partly malfunctioning" since the end of March, and that it was still awaiting repair when the thieves struck.

The stolen Picasso alone -- the cubist "Dove with Green Peas," which the Spanish artist created in 1912 -- is worth some 25 million euros, according to the mayor's deputy for culture, Christophe Girard.