It’s one thing to steal billions in jewels from the world’s most secure muesum, but it’s another thing entirely to not only steal a priceless Vincent Van Gogh painting from a museum but to do it while the building is under lockdown due to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. And yet that’s exactly what happened in the Netherlands.
Speaking of wild museum heists, the GOAT team talk about the biggest jewellery theft in recent memory on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
As everyone in Laren (which is in the Netherlands) was safely self-isolating at home from the coronavirus COVID-19, some opportunistic thieves thought it was the perfect time to stage a heist at the Singer Laren Museum, which was closed due to the pandemic, and managed to run off with a Vincent Van Gogh painting with minimal fuss.
According to police (via Buzzfeed News), thieves broke into the museum through a large glass door at 3:15am local time. While the burglar alarm was tripped, the thieves managed to walk out of the museum with the Van Gogh masterpiece, ‘The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884″, before authorities arrived.
The bitter irony is that the painting was stolen on Van Gogh’s birthday, and the Van Gogh museum sent out a slightly-weird tweet following news of the painting’s theft.
This tweet was quickly surpassed by the reaction from Singer Laren Museum director Jan Rudolph de Lorm in regards to the theft.
Needless to say that he wasn’t too happy and he held a press conference to let everyone know how “shocked and unbelievably pissed off” he was at the theft of the Van Gogh painting, especially during these “extremely difficult” times in trying to deal with the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. While the value of the stolen Van Gogh painting was unclear, it is reported that it was worth anywhere between 1 to 6 million Euros.
Low-brow response to the theft of high-brow art aside, it’s fair enough for Jan to be pissed about this. It’s bad enough that we’re having to deal with the coronavirus COVID-19 crisis let alone having some thieves take advantage of these dark times to make a quick buck, which is unfortunately happening in increasing numbers these days.
Here’s hoping the thieves and the painting are found soon because finding out that a Van Gogh masterpiece is Van Gone on is birthday is not the sort of news we need right now.
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