Thursday, August 6, 2009

Thieves Swiped artwork from Musuem Twice



From the NY Post by Murray Weiss, Sabrina Ford, and Leonard Greene:

Brazen art thieves swiped two Russian masterpieces right off the walls of an Upper West Side museum in separate heists that police are finding as hard to decipher as an abstract painting.

A cop who happened to be visiting the museum was the first to notice a work was missing from the Nicholas Roerich Museum on West 107th Street near Riverside Drive.

It was 30 minutes before closing time on June 24 when he saw a blank spot on a wall where a picture was supposed to be.

"A police officer was just visiting, and he noticed there was a label and no painting," said a museum employee.

Gone was a $20,000 piece called "The Himalayas," a 10-by-14 inch pencil-on-paper drawing that Roerich, a Russian artist, sketched to mark his days in the 1930s when he was living in the foothills of the Asian mountains.

Four days later, an employee noticed a work was missing from a wall in the same hallway, a 12-by-16 inch oil-on-canvas painting called "Talung Monastery," valued at $70,000.

"It's like getting hit in the head with a hammer twice," said Daniel Entin, the museum's executive director.

"If someone steals your car you can go get another one, but with a painting you can't replace it -- never ever. That's what is the most sad."

Cops said they had few clues in the thefts, and surveillance video of the hallway has yielded little information.

Officials said the museum employs four staffers and receives only about 25 visitors on an average day.

murray.weiss@nypost.com

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