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FBI Offers $25K Reward For Andy Warhol Campbell's Soup Painting Heist (networkworld.com)
coondoggie quotes a report from Networkworld: The FBI today said it was offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the recovery of seven Andy Warhol paintings stolen from the Springfield Art Museum in Springfield, Missouri. The collection, which has been owned by the Springfield Art Museum since 1985, is set number 31 of the Campbell's Soup I collection and is valued at approximately $500,000. Each painting in the screen print collection measures 37 inches high by 24.5 inches wide and framed in white frames, the FBI stated. The FBI says that seven of 10 Andy Warhol paintings Campbell's Soup I collection, made in 1968, were taken. Since its inception, the FBI's Art Crime Team has recovered more than 2,650 items valued at over $150 million.
where does the FBI think it has 25K to offer up?? I mean yes its a shame, but shouldnt reward money be paid for by the victim, not the taxpayer???
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
That way everyone can enjoy it and no one can steal it.
Should of replaced it with the fake one you painted
...or is that a Russian ATM?
Given that it happened in Springfield, may I suggest investigating one C. Montgomery Burns, and possibly "Fat Tony" D'Amico?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
crunchy frames, too.
And the FBI implores the public to allow them access to their iPhones and to disable disk encryption to assist them in finding these terroristic painting thieves before more innocent lives are lost!
We can't budge on this people! Encrypt your phone and owners of campbell's soup paintings will starve dead in the streets!
Seems to me that if the FBI has $25k to offer in reward money, it would be better spent on recovering the stolen cars of people who can barely make ends meet and needed their cars to get to work.
Or is that not how these things work?
Thomas Crown was not available for comment.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's curious you'd mention Pollock, because some of his works look like cans of paint randomly thrown onto a canvas. Not all of them, but some certainly do.
I agree with you completely. There's a Pollock at the museum in Omaha that looks for anything like a cat puked on the canvas.
OTOH, a famous Pollock painting will draw you in, and have a sort of fundamental emotional appeal that keeps you wondering why the painting is so engaging.
Scientific American once did an analysis of some of Polluck's paintings, along with other painters who painted in the same style but which aren't as successful as Pollock.
The analysis found that Pollock's paintings have a fractal quality that other painters (in the same style) don't have, leading to the conjecture that it's this quality that makes his paintings so engaging.
There's a Picasso at the Currier Gallery of Art which I think is awful and completely pointless, yet I can stare at Guernica all day.
And finally, if you ever go to the Detroit Institute of Art you'll find Fuseli's The Nightmare, which is completely and totally ho-hum in any reproduction, including images on the internet, but which is captivating when seen in person.
(And I was astonished when I saw my first real Rembrandt portrait (the one at Omaha). These are also ho-hum from a distance and through the internet, but to see one in person... wow!
Many people don't get why art is so pleasing. I suspect it's because they only have 2nd hand exposure, through reproductions, the internet, TV, and so on.
So in summary, I agree with you completely, but note that "art is where you find it". Not every work of every master is a masterpiece, and if you dig in the dirt you'll eventually uncover a few treasures.
I can possibly see the objection to art by living artists (or a single generation dead) who in theory make money off it, but art by artists dead 2, 3, 4+ generations? It makes no sense. Especially when its held by museums who publicly display it -- or worse, have it in their collection and *don't* display it because they haven't the wall space.
I got sad news for 99% of the museums out there, me viewing or even printing life-size versions of their collections isn't going to be why I don't ever pay the admission fee to their museum, buy a snack in their snack bar or shop in their gift shop.
I once read an interesting piece by an economist about art museums that said that most of them should sell a lot more art -- especially what they don't display, and even a good chunk of what they do display to generate capital. IIRC, he thinks the reasons they don't boils down to ego (museums and curators are judged by acquisitions and size of holdings), a certain amount of collusion with art dealers (who fear falling prices) and their own fear that once a lot of pieces start being sold their paper capital will collapse.
According to another site I found it numbered the amount of items recovered between 2004 & 2010 at 2400.
Seems to me that if the FBI has $25k to offer in reward money, it would be better spent on recovering the stolen cars of people who can barely make ends meet and needed their cars to get to work.
Or is that not how these things work?
No, it isn't how these things work,
The most basic distinctions between state and federal jurisdiction escape the geek --- and he never learns and better. The FBI becomes involved on crimes that have a plausible interstate and foreign dimension.
The clunker car you've been driving to work is probably worth more dead than alive.
So you drown it in the lake or set it on fire and file a claim for the insurance. It's a crime, but not a federal case.
The whole concept of [rewards] has gotta be the most wildly optimistic crime-fighting idea. I mean, so how does it work? Okay. I'm on line at the post office. I see [a poster of the stolen item]. I check [around]. If it's not [there], that's pretty much all I can do. Okay? It's not that I don't want to help.
It's weird - why didn't they take all 10?
That way everyone can enjoy it and no one can steal it.
It is enormously difficult to capture a sense of depth and texture in a scan. It is no coincidence that Jackson Pollack began as a muralist. The 23" 16:9 screen doesn't do him justice.
From the article:
"Last year, nine original Warhol prints worth an estimated $350,000 from the late artist's "Endangered Species" series were quietly stolen from a Los Angeles movie business and replaced with color copies, in an art heist that went undetected for years."
So, we're looking for someone either in a phone booth or a 1980s sports car if we want that cool $25k?
(naked) Maude Lebowksi: - Vagina !
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