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 nearly cinematic. On the afternoon of 24 February 2006, throughout Rio’s Carnival—considered one 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 folks hostage (together with workers 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 biggest artwork theft in Brazilian historical past and one of many high ten on this planet. The works have been collectively valued at greater than $10m on the time they disappeared (round $16m in the present day).
The stolen items have been among the many most necessary 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. Nevertheless, in 2006 the cataloguing of the gathering didn’t replicate 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 felony regulation and considerations solely 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 at some point be recovered.
Museu da Chácara do Céu, Rio de Janeiro Photograph: Fulviusbsas through Wikimedia Commons
Over the previous 20 years, a number of suspects emerged within the heist however not one of the investigations led anyplace. A van driver who mentioned he had been pressured 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 identical time, investigators didn’t revisit an necessary 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), primarily based on 5 years of analysis into the case. Her conclusion was clear. “This can be 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 involved in discovering these works.”
That indifference was mirrored within the dealing with of the case by the authorities. For years, it moved backwards and forwards between the federal police and the prosecutor’s workplace, with repeated requests for extensions and no actual progress. At one level on this bureaucratic change, 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 best way 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. Certainly one of her central conclusions challenges the romantic fable of the collector who steals for the love of artwork. “Artwork theft is nearly by no means performed 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, medication or favours removed from the general public eye.
Tardáguila hopes that at some point 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.”
