One of the biggest California art thefts in years went down at a warehouse for the Oakland Museum of California, and now the FBI is involved, as thieves pilfered more than 1,000 artifacts and works of art in a 3:30 am heist this month. The fine art world was shocked on the morning of Sunday, October 19, when art thieves pulled off a heist at the Louvre, and rather brazenly did so in broad daylight when the museum was open.
It took less than 10 minutes. At 9.30am on Sunday, four men arrived in a truck outside the Louvre in Paris, driving right up under a balcony and setting up a ladder with a furniture hoist. Two of them casually climbed up to the balcony and cut through the reinforced glass of a window; on the other side of the glass was the Apollo gallery, the most ornate and arguably the most beautiful room in the museum, Helen Pidd hears.
Momotaro, named for the popular Japanese folklore hero who is also often translated as "Peach Boy," was a gift from San Jose's oldest sister city, Okayama, Japan. The relationship between the cities was established in 1957, and the replica of the bronze statue that guards Okayama Station has stood in Guadalupe River Park near the Center for the Performing Arts since 1993. The statue depicts the boy and his dog, monkey and pheasant companions who go on a quest to defeat a band of ogres,
The robbers triggered the alarm at the Adrien Dubouche institute in Limoges early on Thursday. They smashed a window to gain entry, said a source, who asked not to be named. The museum said the gang made off with two particularly important dishes of Chinese porcelain dating from the 14th and 15th centuries and an 18th-century Chinese vase, all designated as national treasures. Police were told the haul was worth about 9.5m (8.2m).
