A Van Gogh in the wild after the burglary of a Dutch museum
[ad_1]
At the first sledgehammer, the exterior window of the Singer Laren Museum gives way. Shards of glass ricochet off the empty sidewalk. On March 30, 2020, at 3:14 a.m., a hooded man blew up a first door, then a second, also glazed, before leaving a few minutes later on a motorcycle, a Van Gogh under his arm. In this wealthy town of 11,000 inhabitants, 30 kilometers from Amsterdam, the neighbors heard nothing. Confined for ten days in their homes with manicured hedges, they have lost all sense of time. Even the house opposite, with its box trees cut into a ball and a thatched roof, slept a leaden sleep.
For Corrado Catesi, coordinator of the works of art unit of Interpol, based in Lyon, this theft is “the best example of crime against cultural property during confinement”. A category of offenses that exploded during the pandemic. In the Netherlands, there have been six thefts of works of art from museums. ” Never seen ! »exclaims Inspector Richard Bronswijk, head of the Dutch brigade specializing in this area, near The Hague.
Singer Laren wants to turn the page. Life has resumed its course, like the clematis and geraniums that have bloomed in the museum’s magnificent interior garden. Security measures have been reinforced, a metal door has been added. Jan Rudolph de Lorm, elegant director of the place, would prefer to tell us about the history of the museum, founded in 1956 by the Singers, an American couple from Pittsburgh. Or mention the enormous donation from the collection of Els Blokker, which financed the extension inaugurated in March. Inexhaustible on his projects, Jan Rudolph mentions not without pride the next retrospective, in 2023, of the Dutch fawn Kees Van Dongen, boasting of loans from the Center Pompidou and the Musée d’Orsay. “It’s a sign that they trust us”insists the director, as if to invite us to move on.
The frame on the sidewalk
The flight of the Van Gogh, the latter experienced it as an earthquake. “It’s the worst thing that can happen to a museum director”, he sighs in impeccable French. Jan Rudolph de Lorm remembers the security guards being called on March 30 at 6 a.m. “It was as if the ground opened up under my feet”, he says, his features drawn behind his thin glasses. Flight ? But how is this possible when, a year earlier, the insurance company had validated the security system? Above all, how to announce the news to the Dutch museum in Groningen, which, in January, lent him this painting valued at 2.5 million euros? “Jan was as depressed as we were”, remembers Andreas Blühm, the director of the Groningen museum. Dispatched a few hours later to the scene of the crime, he had this bitter vision: the frame of the Van Gogh lying on the sidewalk.
You have 71.97% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.
[ad_2]
Source link
