Another Hermitage Theft Recovery?
Jean-Léon Gérôme, "Pool in a Harem," ca. 1876
©2003 State Hermitage Museum
UPDATES: Now the Associated Press has picked up this story, and apparently the recovered painting has now been authenticated. And according to Novosti, the Russian news and information agency, the painting suffered "severe damage."
As CultureGrrl previously reported, a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, "Pool in a Harem," was stolen in 2001 by someone who cut it from its frame at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. The Russian museum's director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, had said at the time that the theft might have been an inside job.
And now, this report from Radio Free Europe:
A painting believed to have been stolen five years ago from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg has been handed over to the leader of the Russian Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov.
Zyuganov said an unknown person gave the painting by 19th-century French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme to one of his aides after an anonymous phone call earlier on December 19.
The painting is estimated to be worth around $1 million.
Experts from the Culture Ministry have been called in to verify the authenticity of the painting.
Nothing about this yet on the Hermitage website.
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LEE ROSENBAUM I'm a veteran cultural journalist with many pieces in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and major art magazines. I have been a cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC and WQXR) and have provided arts commentary on NPR and public radio stations in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. I am a HuffPost Arts writer. I've been profiled on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer's Art Beat and in the Chicago Reader. I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at at Investigative Reporters and Editors 2011 Annual Meeting, Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and a conference of the Museum Association of New York, on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University, on arts blogging at American University and on Smithsonian exhibition controversies at Rutgers University.
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