Twenty years after one of many largest artwork thefts in Brazilian historical past, the statute of limitations has expired. This implies nobody will ever face jail time for stealing 5 works by Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso in 2006 from the Museu da Chácara do Céu in Rio de Janeiro. The 4 work and e book of prints have but to be recovered, and people accountable have been by no means recognized.
The crime was virtually cinematic. On the afternoon of 24 February 2006, throughout Rio’s Carnival—one in every of Brazil’s largest annual celebrations—with the steep streets of the Santa Teresa neighbourhood full of music and parade crowds, a gaggle of thieves entered the museum, overpowered three safety guards, took 9 individuals hostage (together with employees and guests), disabled the safety cameras and took the surveillance tapes. Minutes later, they fled on foot with the artworks, disappearing into the crowds outdoors. On the time, this was the most important artwork theft in Brazilian historical past and one of many prime ten on this planet. The works have been collectively valued at greater than $10m on the time they disappeared (round $16m at the moment).
The stolen items have been among the many most essential within the museum’s assortment: Monet’s Marine (1880-90), Matisse’s Le Jardin du Luxembourg (1903), Dalí’s Les Deux Balcons (1929) and Picasso’s La Danse (1956) in addition to a e book of his Toros prints. The works have been later included in worldwide databases of stolen artwork, such because the Artwork Loss Register, and are nonetheless formally listed as lacking.
Chácara do Céu is the previous house of the businessman and artwork collector Raymundo Ottoni de Castro Maya; it was become a museum within the Nineteen Seventies. The museum is now managed by Brazil’s Ministry of Tradition and consists of porcelain, silverware and furnishings, in addition to the nation’s largest assortment of artwork by Jean-Baptiste Debret and a big trove of Candido Portinari work. Nonetheless, in 2006 the cataloguing of the gathering didn’t mirror its significance.
In a press release to The Artwork Newspaper, a spokesperson for the museum mentioned its management “deeply regrets what occurred in 2006”, including: “The statute of limitations is a authorized establishment supplied for in prison regulation and considerations completely the procedural sphere. It doesn’t alter the museum’s institutional dedication to the reminiscence of what occurred nor to the preservation and eventual restoration of the works.” The items are listed in Brazil’s register of lacking museum belongings and in Interpol’s database, in hopes that they might sooner or later be recovered.
Museu da Chácara do Céu, Rio de Janeiro Picture: Fulviusbsas by way of Wikimedia Commons
Over the previous 20 years, a couple of suspects emerged within the heist however not one of the investigations led wherever. A van driver who mentioned he had been compelled to move the thieves was briefly arrested and later launched for lack of proof. The main target then shifted to a small group of French nationals linked to the neighbourhood and the artwork world, once more with out stable proof. On the similar time, investigators did not revisit an essential truth later highlighted by a journalistic investigation: the museum had already been robbed in 1989, and among the works stolen in 2006 had additionally been taken in that earlier theft and recovered.
In 2015, the Brazilian journalist Cristina Tardáguila revealed the e book A Arte do Descaso (The artwork of neglect), based mostly on 5 years of analysis into the case. Her conclusion was clear. “It is a failure to guard cultural heritage of nice worth. It’s the failure of everybody concerned: the general public administration, the museum itself, the Ministry of Tradition, the police, the prosecutors and the press,” she tells The Artwork Newspaper. “There was a complete disregard. Nobody was actually thinking about discovering these works.”
That indifference was mirrored within the dealing with of the case by the authorities. For years, it moved forwards and backwards between the federal police and the prosecutor’s workplace, with repeated requests for extensions and no actual progress. At one level on this bureaucratic alternate, the three volumes of the investigation disappeared—they resurfaced months later amongst stacks of paperwork. For Tardáguila, the case was merely swallowed by administrative routine. “Given the way in which Brazil protects its cultural heritage, one thing like this might occur once more at any time,” she warns. (In December, works by Matisse and Portinari have been stolen in a brazen daytime heist at a library in São Paulo; among the suspects have been arrested, however the artwork has not been recovered.)
Tardáguila’s analysis for her e book led her to London, Interpol and Italy’s Carabinieri to attempt to perceive how main artwork thefts are investigated. One among her central conclusions challenges the romantic fable of the collector who steals for the love of artwork. “Artwork theft is sort of by no means finished by somebody who loves artwork,” she says. “A murals turns into a bargaining chip. It’s stolen as a result of it’s a lot simpler to rob a museum than to rob a financial institution.” Stolen work, she says, usually function collateral in clandestine networks, exchanged for weapons, medicine or favours removed from the general public eye.
Tardáguila hopes that sooner or later the stolen works will reappear, maybe discovered by chance throughout an unrelated investigation. However even then, she says: “Nobody will ever go to jail for this.”
