Guggenheim’s Spanish Art Exhibit Will Run Without Stolen Goya

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The New York Sun

When the most comprehensive exhibition of Spanish art ever assembled in America is unveiled at the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum on Friday, it will be missing one tapestry design by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes.

There will be no empty space on the wall with a tag that reads “Stolen.” The show’s organizers have already reorganized the remaining 133 paintings to cover up the loss, museum officials said yesterday.

Meanwhile, the FBI’s art crime investigators are hunting for the painting, which was stolen last week. A professional art transport company was shipping the painting to the Guggenheim from the Toledo Museum of Art when it disappeared in the vicinity of Scranton, Pa. It was taken from an unattended vehicle, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Philadelphia division, Jerri Williams, said.

The FBI team is led by one of the bureau’s most senior art crime investigators, a man with nearly two decades on the job and millions of dollars of recoveries connected with his name. The New York Sun is withholding his name to protect the integrity of the investigation.

The FBI has refused to release specific information on when, where, and how the painting was stolen because investigators want to vet the reliability of tips by their level of detail.

Museum officials said in a joint statement that the painting was insured for more than $1 million, and the insurance agency is offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to its whereabouts.

A Spanish art scholar at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, Jonathan Brown, said the loss of the Goya painting was “dreadful.”

“They don’t make two of them,” he said.

The executive director of the International Foundation for Art Research, Sharon Flescher, said the theft was unusual because most thefts don’t occur while paintings are in transit between museums to be loaned for an exhibition.

“Although it is certainly not the first time, just think of how many exhibitions there are at any one time, and how rarely we see this type of theft happen,” she said.

Ms. Flescher said the painting would be virtually impossible to sell in the legitimate market because of the wide publicity of the theft and the work’s detailed provenance.

Stolen artwork is usually entered into several international art theft registries and police agencies across the world are notified of thefts in alerts from the international criminal police organization, Interpol. Auction houses, collectors, and dealers check such lists before buying a piece of art.

The thieves could try to hold the painting ransom, hoping to collect a payout from the insurance company.

When stolen art is highly publicized, it also has a tendency to go into hiding. In 1990, two thieves stole 12 works of art worth more than $300 million from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. None has been recovered, though the FBI still maintains an open case on the thefts.

The Goya painting was the third in a series of seven suites of tapestry designs made at the Royal Tapestry Factory, Mr. Brown said. The final tapestry, with its image of four children playing with instruments and a cart under a tree and floating cloud, was woven for the private quarters of the prince and princess of Asturias at the Pardo Palace outside Madrid. It was delivered to the factory on January 5, 1779, Mr. Brown said.

Goya began painting cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Factory in Santa Barbara at the age of 29 in 1774, a time when he was trying to prove his artistic abilities, Mr. Brown said. Most of the 60 cartoons are still in Madrid, but a few have made their way to museums outside the country, including one at the Museum of Edinburgh.

“Children With a Cart” was acquired by the Toledo Museum of Art from the Wildenstein & Co. Gallery in New York in 1959.

The Guggenheim show that would have included the stolen painting is called “Spanish Painting From El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History.” It will include work from El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and Salvador Dalí. It opens on November 17.

Anyone with information that could lead to the whereabouts of the painting should call the Philadelphia division of the FBI at 215-418-4000.


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