Goya theft update

More on this story today from the NY Times:

Federal investigators have concluded that thieves armed with detailed shipping information were behind the removal of a Goya painting from a truck en route to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from Ohio last week, law enforcement officials said Friday.

But on what basis? The article continues:

The 1778 painting, “Children With a Cart,” was packed inside several nested crates aboard a locked unmarked truck used by a professional art transporter. The crated painting was removed from an outer shipping container in the truck while it was parked at a Howard Johnson Inn near Bartonsville, Pa.

The two drivers checked into the hotel around 11 p.m. on Nov. 7, according to the motel manager, Faizal Bhimani. He said the white midsize truck was left in an unlighted parking lot adjacent to the hotel, out of sight of the hotel’s rooms and the main office.

When the drivers returned to the truck at about 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 8, the locks had been broken and the painting, insured for $1 million, was gone, law enforcement officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Mr. Bhimani said the hotel’s night clerk had neither seen nor heard anything suspicious.

The more information that comes out, the more it suggests a typical crime of opportunity. Here's a good-sized unmarked truck of the sort antiques dealers use, in a region heavily traversed by antiques dealers, parked off in the corner of a motel lot. The crooks rock it a bit and then pry open the back, sitting back for a while periodically to make sure there's no alarm (antiques dealers are typically really stupid about this: you'd think they'd all have their transport vehicles equipped with paging alarms, but no -- and it seems the high-end art transporters aren't any smarter). They find a container inside which was probably too difficult to remove entire, so they break it open and find an easily transportable crated painting inside, probably bearing Toledo Museum markings on the crate, load it in their van and off they go.

From what the article says, conspiracy theorists should be looking at the drivers, not stalking master criminals; personally, I'm more inclined to believe it a case of sloppiness and stupidity (in abundant supply) taken advantage of by opportunistic predators (also, alas, in abundant supply):

Investigators have conducted extensive interviews with the drivers, asking, among other questions, why they left the truck unattended when operating procedures for most art transport companies require that trucks carrying valuable art objects never be left unattended.

Investigators have also asked the drivers why they stopped overnight on a trip that could have been completed in a single day. Officials said the drivers replied that they were scheduled to arrive in Manhattan around midday on Nov. 8 and did not want to arrive too early and wait in New York until the assigned time.

Further background on what security measures one would have expected to be in place, but clearly were not:

Thomas J. Carney, president of Midwest Fine Arts Service and Transportation, a company based in Berea, Ohio, that did not ship the Goya, said reputable shippers normally exercise great care in handling and shipping fine art and antiquities.

He said trucks with multiple locks are monitored by satellite, which records the location of the vehicle, whether the engine is on or off, and even how fast the engine is running. However, individual artworks are not usually tagged with tracking devices, he said.

Sequencing the Neanderthal

A bone fragment that scientists had initially ignored has begun to yield secrets of the Neanderthal genome, launching a new way to learn about the stocky and muscular relative of modern humans, scientists say.

Genetic material from the bone has let researchers identify more than a million building blocks of Neanderthal DNA so far, and it should be enough to derive most of the creature's 3.3 billion blocks within the next two years, said researcher Svante Paabo.

"We're at the dawn of Neanderthal genomics," said gene expert Edward Rubin of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

Full article here.

Another record art sale

A Francis Bacon painting showing a woman who has just taken drugs has been sold for $15m (£7.9m), a record for a work by the Dublin-born artist.

Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe, created in 1968, was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder at Sotheby's in New York. . .

The auction set 15 records in all, one of them for Britain's Anish Kapoor.

Kapoor's untitled carved alabaster sculpture from 1999 generated $2.3m (£1.2m), about five times the sum it had been predicted to earn.

From the BBC.

Goya hijacked

A painting by Spanish master Goya has been stolen while en route across the US, two museums have announced.

The work was stolen near Scranton, Pennsylvania, said a joint statement issued by New York's Guggenheim Museum and Ohio's Toledo Museum of Art.

The 228-year-old work, Children with a Cart, was to be displayed in New York at an exhibition due to open this week.

From the BBC. A few more details in the Guardian:

The operation was meticulously planned and had the benefit of pinpoint accurate intelligence. The van was travelling on a circuitous route through the backwater of Scranton in Pennsylvania, well away from the main interstate highway 80 that led to its destination, New York.

This doesn't smell right. If you are transporting something both delicate and valuable, you don't take roundabout routes. Interstates are faster and straighter, beating up the cargo less and being considerably safer in terms of accident rates, let alone likelihood of ambush. Could this have been an inside job? Or is it standard transport protocol to take routes on which low speeds are OK, on the grounds that high-speed accidents pose the greatest risk?

From what other articles are saying, however, it doesn't sound as if the transport vehicle was stolen or ambushed. From the Toledo Museum press release (.pdf):

A painting by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes from the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art was discovered taken last week while en route from Toledo, Ohio, to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City . . .

"Discovered taken" suggests to me that the truck was left alone at some point, and was then broken into. Which would also suggest that the theft might well not have been the masterly crime so beloved of reporters, but rather the sort of opportunistic highway rest stop break-in familiar to thousands of sadder-but-presumably-wiser antique dealers who thought nothing could happen while they ran inside to get a quick snack and use the toilet.

My bet is that the painting turns up again pretty quickly after the thieves (or whomever they manage to flip it to) discover it to be unsellable, not to mention red hot.

UPDATE:

Spokesmen for the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Stroud Regional Police Department had conflicting information on when the theft occurred.

Special Agent Jerri Williams of the FBI’s Philadelphia office said the theft occurred on Nov. 9.

But, Lt. Brian Kimmins of Stroud Regional said the theft was reported at about 6:30 p.m. Nov. 8. The painting was taken from the Howard Johnson’s on state Route 611, off Interstate 80, he said.

The Associated Press had reported the theft happened in the Scranton area.

Williams and the Toledo museum said the painting was in the care of a professional art transport provider. Neither would release the transport provider’s name, but Williams confirmed the vehicle was temporarily unattended and had been broken into.

Williams said federal agents are looking into the possibility that the vehicle had been followed from Toledo.

From the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader.

Roman ship excavation

A Roman ship, wrecked off the coast of Spain in the 1st Century AD, has been dazzling archaeologists with the array of historical treasures on board.

Thirty metres (100ft) long and holding 400 tonnes, it is the largest Roman ship found in the Mediterranean.

Chief amongst the goods the ship was carrying were hundreds of jars of garum - a fish sauce which was a favourite condiment for rich Romans.

From the BBC. I found this particularly interesting:

Once news of the ship's discovery was announced in 2000, souvenir hunters targeted it, forcing the Spanish authorities to erect a steel cage around the wreck to protect it.

After years of arranging funds, expertise and equipment, a proper exploration of the site began in July of this year.

How many other underwater sites have been similarly caged, and how many ought to be?

More copper theft chaos

Italian rail travellers have faced unexpected delays in recent weeks because of an increase in the theft of copper wire along train tracks.

Hundreds of trains in Rome and Turin have been delayed for at least 30 minutes as signalling equipment and safety devices have become disabled. . .

The price of copper has tripled in the past three years, making it an attractive commodity for thieves.

Usually operating at night, they have been tearing up miles of copper wire running along rail tracks.

From the BBC. Apparently many of the thieves are Romanian, and the copper is being sent to China -- though China has had its own problems in this regard. Previous scrap metal theft posts here and here.

Inverted Jenny: color me skeptical

You've probably already read about the rare stamp supposedly used to send in an absentee ballot in Florida. It's a great story, so no surprise it's been reprinted worldwide.

But I'm dubious. Not such a big deal that the envelope had no return address, but what about the ballot inside that would appear to have been equally untraceable? My bet's that this is all a prank. Original unused US stamps from the '30s and '40s are very common, and can often be bought in quantity below face value (even though they are still valid). Slap a few onto an envelope along with a readily-available fake Jenny -- or fake it yourself -- pop it into the mail, and watch the fun!