The Met's Inside Job: Theft Revealed in "Museum" Book

Jason Kaufman's review in the current Art Newspaper of Danny Danziger's book, Museum (a compilation of interviews with officials and staffers from the Metropolitan Museum) reminded me that I had planned to share with you the one passage in the book that had caused me to do a double-take.

Like Jason, I noted, in my previous post, the general lack of under-the-rug dirt in a volume that seems to promise, given its subtitle, "Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art," some juicy tell-all revelations.

What I didn't know, until I read Jason's review, was that "the Metropolitan was given an opportunity to 'correct' the galleys, which spokesman Harold Holzer says was not a precondition for access. The process involved some minor expurgations."

Somehow, the expungers missed this passage, from the interview with John Barelli, chief security officer:

A worker stole half a million dollars' worth of early Christian jewelry; he broke open a case and took fibulae, pins, brooches and Celtic coins. But we caught and arrested him quite soon after, and I got it all back. He was given probation because he had never got into trouble before, and he is now a doorman on Park Avenue.

I don't remember seeing this disclosed previously. Had it been, one wonders if this fancier of early Christian jewelry could have landed a job guarding the door for bejeweled Park Avenue residents. Doesn't the building management do some due diligence?

And had I known about this incident, I might have taken note if it in my previous post about an inside job at a foreign museum: The Hermitage Heist: Could It Happen Here?

Apparently (with a happier resolution) it already has.