StolenArt I
n 1911, three men slipped out of the Louvre Museum in Paris with the Mona Lisa tucked under one of their arms. This theft turned a lesserknown da Vinci painting into an overnight sensation—Mona Lisa’s
(Tony Cheng)
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coy smile only added to her mystique. While this, the world’s most famous art theft, was straightforward, in reality, “stolen art” involves a great deal more. Most forms of art theft revolve around stories of the conqueror and the conquered.
Sometimes, stolen art adorns the wall of a world-famous museum, complete with a plaque that reduces the entire history of the people the piece was taken from down to a three-sentence informational blurb. The theft and destruction of
