[CPProt.net] Don't scream at the plate glass - it's the price paid for artful robberies

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

August 18, 2005 

Don't scream at the plate glass – it's the price paid for artful robberies
Arts notebook by Rachel Campbell-Johnston
 
 
THIS COMING week marks the anniversary of an audacious art heist. It was on
August 22 a year ago that The Scream, one of the world’s most recognisable
images, was stolen in broad daylight from the Munch Museum in Oslo. 
A pair of armed thugs broke into the crowded central gallery. One held a
pistol to a terrified guard’s head while the other ripped the masterpiece
off the wall. On the way out they tore down another Munch painting, The
Madonna, before making a quick escape in a conveniently parked car. 

  
The robbery roused national outcry and worldwide investigation, but despite
promise of a reward and the arrest of five suspects, neither of the artworks
has been recovered. It was an outrage — not least since ten years previously
another version of The Scream (there are four) had been impudently pinched
(the perpetrator left a postcard reading “thanks for the poor security”)
from the National Gallery in Oslo. 

And only this month, tension mounted further when masked thieves smashed
into an Oslo hotel making off with four paintings that looked like Munch
originals but turned out to be mere replicas. 

So little wonder that Royal Academy officials are starting to feel a bit
edgy. In October the gallery becomes the final staging post for a touring
show of self-portraits by this most coveted of painters. Anxious discussions
have been taking place. But what can museums do about the need for more
security — not least at a time when the threat of terrorism is added to the
mix? 

For the art lover, developments can be almost as distressing as the loss of
the paintings themselves. The draconian measures taken by the recently
reopened Munch Museum mean that paintings can only be looked at through
bullet-proof screens. Visitors run the gamut of X-ray machines and metal
detectors. It is quicker to wait until a work is on loan and then catch a
plane over to see it than to queue to get into the new Fortress Munch, one
local quipped. 

“Of course, the Royal Academy will be taking extra security measures,” said
Adrian Locke, the exhibitions curator. Some publicity-seeker may try to
stage some copycat theft. But the forthcoming show includes only a
lithograph of The Scream. The pastel or oil versions are too hot to handle.
And there were no problems at the previous Stockholm venue. 

Fears are somewhat allayed by suggestions that the Oslo thefts were staged
in a (successful) attempt to deflect police resources away from a criminal
gang. “We hope that our stepped-up security won’t impact on the public,”
Locke says. “It certainly won’t spoil the enjoyment or affect the quality of
the show. Nor will it be reflected in the ticket price.” 

Compared with the average high street bank, the world’s greatest treasure
houses are as open as street fairs, according to Edward Dolnick, author of a
new exposé of art-world theft. And yet extreme measures, he suggests, are
largely self-defeating. As security becomes more robust, criminals grow more
brazen. If a gallery guards itself ferociously by night, robbers will barge
bold as brass through the front doors by day. 

Nor can gun-toting guards provide an answer. A gallery space is hardly the
appropriate spot for a shootout — either for the public or the paintings
that they come to see. And, as far as the latter are concerned, bullet-proof
protection is a sad solution. It has been hard to engage intimately with the
Louvre’s Mona Lisa or the Uffizi’s Primavera since these popular beauties
were paraded, like Amsterdam prostitutes, behind plate glass. 


An increase in security seems to guarantee little but a decrease in
pleasure. And perhaps the only consolation for the committed art lover is
that the more famous the artwork stolen, the more likely it is one day to
turn up. 



PAINTINGS are not the only subject of art-world thefts. You could always be
stolen yourself. Next month, a notorious New York-based artist, Brock
Enright, will be exhibiting at the Vilma Gold gallery in the East End of
London. Enright specialises in kidnappings. People pay thousands for a
tailor-made abduction that comes complete with preliminary consultation as
to treatments that will produce maximum terror. It seems a funny way to pass
a summer holiday, but apparently one can revel in the thrill of “safe” fear.
Even now a Times writer is being artfully stalked. Watch this newspaper’s
art pages for his report on the ordeal.