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Theft of 'The Weeping Woman' from the National Gallery of Victoria
- nomilk 11mo ago> It has been suggested that the thieves knew their art history: the method of the theft was an ironic homage to the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. In both cases, the thieves unscrewed the painting and took it. Feels a bit over the top to call it an homage, let alone an ironic one.
- cjs_ac 11mo agoI think the irony is that in 1911, Picasso was accused of the theft, whereas in 1986, one of Picasso's works was stolen.
- jvanderbot 11mo agoTo say that is planned irony is a bit much
- jamal-kumar 11mo agoI think the irony today is that in 2025 the password to the security system for the Louvre's security cameras was "Louvre" https://abcnews.go.com/International/password-louvres-video-surveillance-system-louvre-employee/story?id=127236297 https://abcnews.go.com/International/password-louvres-video-...
- hau 11mo agoIn 2014. >2014 cybersecurity audit performed by the French Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) at the museum's request
- Jeff-Collins 11mo ago[flagged]
- jtokoph 11mo agoThe painting was recovered undamaged. I’m not sure there was a huge loss
- 317070 11mo agoYeah, don't mind Jeff the Large Language Model.
- Loughla 11mo agoWhat's the point of doing that?
- igleria 11mo agoEroding our sanity little by little, perhaps.
- gosub100 11mo agoI could ask the same thing about many human commenters with irrelevant or as-predictable-as-a-robot talking points.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 11mo agoAt least that question has the possible answer of "an attempt, however misguided, at human connection".
- Loughla 11mo agoYeah but those make sense. They're trying to connect in a safe way. But to have an account that just automatically replies with obvious LLM answers? I don't see a point to that is what I'm saying.
- Jtsummers 11mo agoThere are several accounts doing this now. People are weird, who knows why they do stupid things. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alan-jordan13 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alan-jordan13 This one has been shadowbanned, for another example.
- kylecazar 11mo ago"the possibility of an "inside job" was not considered." Given the circumstances, it probably should have been... But then again, this has a happy ending. The painting was returned undamaged, nobody's hurt. Cool read.
- sharkjacobs 11mo agoArt theft is a pretty cool crime.
- lenerdenator 11mo agoOnly if it's a proper heist. I don't need more guys just walking in and taking something like they're shoplifting a candy bar. I need guys meticulously planning and executing a theft that dodges the very latest in alarm and anti-theft technology.
- JKCalhoun 11mo agoTopkapi (1964)
- Nicholas_C 11mo agoAgreed. If no one uses gymnastics to traverse a laser filled room it's actually pretty lame.
- WalterBright 11mo agoSee "The Hot Rock".
- accrual 11mo agoBonus points for any rappeling and using tools that cut circular holes in glass.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 11mo agoTaking the discussion seriously, a case study of a well-planned heist that culminated in someone walking in at the right time and just taking the thing could actually be pretty interesting.
- dylan604 11mo agoRight, all of these amateurs wanting to spend all this money on special glass cutting tools, rappelling equipment, bypassing alarms, or even some Ocean's 11 EMP ridiculousness when you just need a ~$10 tool and a big pair of brass ones to pull it off.
- wan888888 11mo agoGreat video about this “incident” and art theft in general https://youtu.be/EwK24E7QryU https://youtu.be/EwK24E7QryU
- highway900 11mo agoThe timing of the post suggests this episode was the genesis
- kazinator 11mo ago> McCaughey stated that a specialised type of screwdriver, not available to the public, would have been required to take the painting off the wall. Why bother with measures such as alarms and security cameras when you have the Super Secret Screws!
- WalterBright 11mo agoBeing regularly confronted with wretched special screws, there are all kinds of ways to get them out. The usual go-to tool is one designed to unscrew stripped screw heads. Just the other day, I was confronted with a security screw that instead of having 4 flutes on it (Phillips head), it had 3. I just drilled it out.
- nighthawk454 11mo agoNothing worse than a screw you dont have a driver for. I resolved to just have drivers for everything https://www.ifixit.com/products/mako-driver-kit-64-precision-bits https://www.ifixit.com/products/mako-driver-kit-64-precision...
- ghurtado 11mo agoAfter going through several brands over the years, both domestic and foreign, that's the best set of driver bits that I have ever owned. Kinda pricey, but well worth it.
- Rebelgecko 11mo agoNo slotted Robertson :(
- pugworthy 11mo agoIt very well could have just been Torx back then. I remember opening my original 128k Mac in '85 or so to do the 512K memory upgrade, and a weird specialized screwdriver (Torx) was required to open the case.
- 11mo ago
- niccl 11mo agoIn reference to the suggestion that the 1986 theft was an homage to a 1911 theft: > In 1911, Picasso and his contemporary Guillaume Apollinaire were both suspects in the Mona Lisa theft > but were cleared of any association with the crime being dead is quite a good alibi
- drabbiticus 11mo ago> being dead is quite a good alibi Maybe I'm misreading either TFA or your comment, but both Picasso and Apollinaire were alive in 1911? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Apollinaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Apollinaire Some more details from the Apollinaire wikipedia page: > On 7 September 1911, police arrested and jailed Apollinaire on suspicion of aiding and abetting the theft of the Mona Lisa and a number of Egyptian statuettes from the Louvre, but released him a week later. The theft of the statues had been committed in 1907 by a former secretary of Apollinaire, Honoré Joseph Géry Pieret, who had recently returned one of the stolen statues to the French newspaper the Paris-Journal. Apollinaire implicated his friend Picasso, who had bought Iberian statues from Pieret, and who was also brought in for questioning in the theft of the Mona Lisa, but he was also exonerated. In fact, the theft of the Mona Lisa was perpetrated by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian house painter who acted alone and was only caught two years later when he tried to sell the painting in Florence.
- mrkpdl 11mo agoI laughed out loud at this part, perfect Aussie humour: “Chilean Australian artist Juan Davila painted a work titled Picasso Theft and offered to donate it to the National Gallery of Victoria in place of the stolen painting. Davila wrote that "mine is a real one".[25] Davila's Picasso Theft was exhibited in the Sydney Avago Gallery, and then itself was stolen.”