May 11, 2003

Art heist

Now here's a good, old-fashioned act of art-thievery:

A work of art that has been described as "the Mona Lisa of sculptures" has been stolen from Vienna's art history museum.

The 16th Century solid gold sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini was worth at least 50m euros ($57m, £36m), museum director Wilfried Seipel said.

This is one of the art pieces I studied in at least two of my humanities courses last year. I'll bet you this is going straight to some rich oil sheik's or drug-dealer's vault -- it's the sort of ostentatious gold stuff guys like that dote on.

The alarm sensors in the museum didn't go off. Can you say, "inside job"? I knew you could.

(Via Tim Blair, tomorrow.)

Posted by Andrea Harris at May 11, 2003 05:07 PM
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