The worrying thefts from the Cognacq-Jay and Hieron Museums

France. The two robberies which occurred a few hours apart at the Cognacq-Jay Museum in Paris and at the Musée du Hiéron in Paray-le-Monial (Saône-et-Loire) on November 20 and 21, share many points in common to the point where the We wonder if it’s not the same team. The thieves operated in broad daylight, when there were visitors in the room who did not hesitate to fire shots into the air in Paray-le-Monial to scare people. In both cases, the thugs used violence to steal the works, breaking the window in Cognacq-Jay and dismembering the statue in Paray-le-Monial, entitled Via Vitaea precious work by Parisian goldsmith Joseph Chaumet, dating from 1904 and estimated at between 4 and 7 million euros. Among the five boxes and snuff boxes stolen from Cognacq-Jay (see ill.) and present in the “Pocket Luxury” exhibition, two had been loaned by the Louvre Museum. This violence is reminiscent of the spectacular burglary at the Maastricht fair in June 2022 where four men (also) smashed displays and stole jewelry.

This type of violent attack was made possible precisely because the thieves were targeting objects that were easy to take: small boxes in Paris and statuettes and precious stones that they extracted from the statue in Paray-le-Monial. We also note the proximity of the rooms to the street making it easier to escape, which would not be possible or more difficult in large museums. Specialists are worried about the fate of the stolen objects, they are unsaleable on the legal and even black market, but the precious stones can be removed from their support and sold separately.

However, burglary in broad daylight is not the main modus operandi of art thieves. Spectacular flights often take place at night. In January 2023, individuals entered a room at the Hébert Museum in Isère by a simple ladder during the night from Saturday to Sunday and took jewelry from Princess Mathilde Bonaparte. It was also at night that thugs entered the Chinese office of Empress Eugénie at the Château de Fontainebleau in March 2015 and took away around fifteen objects including the royal crown, offered by the ambassadors of Siam to Napoleon III . The objects were not found. Even more spectacular: in May 2010, Tomic Vjeran, nicknamed “Spider-Man”, managed to enter the Museum of Modern Art in Paris by climbing the walls and fled with several paintings estimated at the time at 100 million euros. The thief has since been arrested and convicted but the sponsor has never been found, let alone the paintings.

Thieves are not always from outside the museum, as evidenced by this British Museum curator who for years stole archaeological objects from storage and sold them on eBay. In France too, such embezzlement can occur, as was the case at the Museum of Fabric Printing in Mulhouse where the conservation delegate stole a number of Hermès scarves to also resell them on eBay.

This list of thefts suggests that the phenomenon continues and this is not false. The open heritage platform (POP) of the Ministry of Culture lists 3,152 stolen and unrecovered objects. A figure which has swelled with the obligation of proofreading in museums, leading to the taking into account of works that have disappeared, sometimes for many years and of which the curators had lost their memory. At the time when it was taking stock of objects stolen from churches, rue de Valois counted 406 objects stolen from Catholic establishments between 2013 and 2022, of which 163 had been recovered. This rather flattering rate unfortunately does not reflect reality, the Interpol site – worldwide – lists no less than 52,000 stolen objects of all kinds.