Suspects Claim FBI Art Crimes Chief 'Ordered' Museum Theft

27 November 2011

Sisley's Avenue of Poplars at Moret.

Seven people on trial for stealing works by Monet, Sisley and Brueghel from a French museum say that the crime was instigated by Robert K. Wittman, the FBI's well-known art detective.

The 2007 heist from Nice's Musée des Beaux Arts yielded the gun-toting thieves four paintings -- Breughels' Allegory of Water and Allegory of Earth along with Alfred Sisley's Avenue of Poplars at Moret and Claude Monet's Cliffs Near Dieppe. Estimated at 22 million euros, the works would fetch only a fraction of that amount on the black market.

Facing 30 years in prison for armed robbery, the men said they acted on a comment from Wittman who was trying to flush out the perpetrators of the unsolved 1990 Gardner Museum heist. Missing from the Boston museum are works by Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Degas, worth about $500 million.

Wittman was working undercover when he met with a Miami-based contact, "Sunny" Ternus, who claimed he knew of the whereabouts of the stolen Gardner paintings.

The suspects' lawyer said that his clients were amateurs who were motivated to do the crime in order to fulfill Wittman's supposed wish for "Dutch paintings" as told to Ternus during a Miami yacht party staged by the FBI.

"These canvasses disappeared in order to recover two key paintings belonging to US heritage. I'm not sure that the US would appreciate it if French agents acted likewise," said the gang's lawyer. He accuses Wittman of "police provocation" and wants the charges dropped.

Read more at Telegraph

More News Feed Headlines

Julien Hudson, 1811-1844 American. Creole Boy With A Moth, 1835, oil on canvas, courtesy of a private collection; photo courtesy of Fodera Fine Art Conservation, Ltd.

First Retrospective of Early African American Artist Julien Hudson at Worcester Art Museum

A groundbreaking exhibition opened Dec. 9 at the Worcester Art Museum entitled “In Search of Julien Hudson: Free Artist of Color in Pre-Civil War New Orleans.” Julien Hudson (1811-1844) is the second-earliest documented portrait painter of African descent to work in the United States. Little-known today, Hudson died an untimely, somewhat mysterious death, and only fragments of his oeuvre survive to tell his story.

'May,' by Alexander Motyl, $25/month to rent ($550 to buy), artsicle.com.

Virtual Art Buying Gets a Boost From New Websites

A bevy of new online ventures are helping to streamline the process of buying art for both beginners and established collectors, facilitating keyboard-click access to information and galleries.

An installation view of the new Tuscaloosa Museum of Art: Home of the Westervelt Collection.

New Tuscaloosa Museum of Art to Showcase Important American Art

Last week, the Tuscaloosa Museum of Art opened its doors, finally giving a home to the art collection assembled by Jack Warner. Earlier this year, the Jack Warner Foundation and Westervelt Company separated, leaving the fate undetermined as to where their respective collections would be housed. Several key works were sold by the Westervelt Co. at auction and privately. Now, more than 800 pieces...

Portrait of a Man and Woman in an Interior, painted about 1666, by Eglon van der Neer (Dutch, 1634–1703). Oil on panel. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Seth K. Sweetser Fund.

Museum Curator as Art Detective

At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Victoria Reed is the first and only endowed curator of provenance at an American museum. Since 2010, her role has been to research objects in the museum's collections, and new acquisitions, in order to determine the right of ownership. At times, Reed's findings have led to restitution...