Curator & Collector

“Poppies near Vetheuil” by Monet. Image from AFP

Today’s museum news:

A “spectacular” (read, “tragic”) theft of Degas, Cezanne, Monet, and van Gogh from the Emil Bührle Foundation museum in Zurich, Switzerland is being reported by Bloomberg today. The heist saw over a hundred and sixty-three million dollars of paintings disappear in an armed robbery, with the thieves limited only by the weight of the frames. (Story also at the Guardian and the CBC.) This was the second art heist in Switzerland in a week, two Picasso oil paintings having been stolen only a few days ago.

We cannot imagine who would want to collect works that have been removed at gunpoint from a curated museum. It’s sad and unfortunate that these thieves didn’t have consciences as well-developed as their aesthetic sensibilities.
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On a more positive note, we note another donation, although a much smaller one than those we have covered previously: Walmart has just donated $250,000 to the Museum of African American History in Boston.