If you thought the Ocean’s 8 MET Gala con was unbelievable, or any of the other Ocean’s movies that suggest a large group of men could ever pull off something so complicated by themselves, well have I got a shock for you.
It turns out we’ve been playing in the little leagues while China has been absolutely owning the heist game for nearly a decade.
In an extremely detailed investigation by GQ, Alex Palmer dives into how and why the greatest works of Chinese art keep getting stolen from museums across the world, but mainly in Europe.
The Great Chinese Art Heist https://t.co/CfawW7e7Up / this is one of the greatest articles I've read this year, China… You're doing great sweetie! Take back everything that is yours! I wish our demographic were as serious about looted artefacts sitting in European Museums.
— broodje broccoli (@ashindestad) August 23, 2018
It’s a wild ride with the spree of organised thievery harking back to a raid of the Swedish Royal residence in Stockholm in 2010. They escaped by speedboat and it all took less than six minutes.
A month later thieves hit Norway, descending from a glass ceiling and taking 56 objects from the China Collection at the KODE Museum.
This film is writing itself please won’t someone buy the damn rights already.
Rumours run that the large-scale heist is engineered by the Chinese government, but like any good con-boss the identity of the mastermind remains a mystery.
Whoever is in charge it’s an impressively underground way to rectify the wrongs of colonialism. Apparently the Chinese people and government don’t see the artefacts as ‘stolen’ seeing as they were blatantly stolen from China by the West in the first place.
It’s a very fair and very badass approach to the whole situation to be honest.
The relentless robberies have European museums freaked, and the controversy over whether the museums should have the looted goods in the first place has some with their tail between their legs. They’re profiting off stolen goods that were taken by the brutal force that defined colonialism. It ain’t right.
Some museums have quietly shipped crates of Chinese art back to China where it belongs, as to avoid any run ins with thieves or the Chinese government.
Jokes aside, this would make a killer movie. It could really platform the ongoing pain caused by colonialism and the exploitation of non-western nations.
Also it would be a great opportunity for even more Asian representation in cinema and probably another opportunity for Scarlett Johansson to try to play a role she shouldn’t.