In 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, and recovered two years later. In 1994, The Scream was stolen from the National Art Museum in Oslo, and recovered three months later.
Those are probably the two most famous art thefts. If you only count thefts from museums, not from private owners, is there any art that has been stolen and is still missing?
Right away I remembered this: March 1990 in the USA:
http://www.forbes.com/2001/02/28/0228connguide_8.html
The paintings are still missing! The current dollar figure attached to the stolen work is $300 million.
The wadyamacallit painting in Ghent has one panel missing.
Thats a pretty famous one.
I just read that there is currently about $100M worth of art missing/assumed destroyed from the World Trade Center. Among all of this was a replica of The Thinker (worth about $1,000,000 USD) that was actually recovered in perfect condition but went missing from an evidence room last December.
The Amber Room was stolen from the Soviets by the Germans in WWII and never found. An entire room of carved Amber paneling.
I assume you’re in the market. These folk can tell you what’s available.
GIGObuster: Ouch!
Cisco: You know I wondered about that. When it happened, I thought, incorrectly, that Sunflowers was in the WTC. It wasn’t, but I knew a lot of other stuff had to be.
Shalmanese: Not that famous, since I don’t know what the “wadyamacallit painting” is. 
Sparticus: Yes, there was a lot of stuff looted during WWII. I wonder how many people ended up with art they could never display.
don’t ask! Tch! I’m not in the market! But thank you for the link.
Shalmanese means the “Ghent Altarpiece” or “Altarpiece of the Mystic Lamb” by Jan (and maybe Hubert) van Eyck (1432, I think-- sorry, this is my area). I think the missing panel is the lower right one on the interior, which has been replaced by a replica. The Adam and Eve were also replaced by replicas for many years (wearing clothes, though, heh) but then the originals were found at one point.
A LOT of things are missing from the war. Often I see works in catalogue raisonees repoduced from really old black and white photos from before the war because they were destroyed or no one has any idea where they are.
Pausanias said that Nero took (IIRC) 500 bronze statues from the Shrine of Apollo at Delphi. I don’t believe their whereabouts thereafter are mentioned. Perhaps the two warrior figures found in the sea off Italy a few years ago (1994?) were two that never got to Rome.
The rune-inscribed golden Gallehus Horns from South Jutland were stolen in 1802 and generally assumed to have been melted down for the gold. A great lost in both art and history.
Made ~5th century AD. Not likely to have been drinking horns.
Not strictly on topic, but I’ve often wondered what the point of stealing famous works of art is. I mean, if everyone in the art world knows it’s been stolen, then how do you go about selling it?
Obviously there are some crooked art collectors around that will buy stolen stuff (or, more likely, have it stolen to order) but what do they gain out of it exactly? They can’t exhibit it in public, they can’t resell it to make a profit, all they can do is hide it away in a vault somewhere. What’s the point? Anyone?
Were any really famous works of art in the World Trade Center when it was destroyed? (Besides the replica of The Thinker)
Not really “art” per se, but the flag that was flown over the WTC clean-up site was stolen recently and, AFAIK, hasn’t been found.
This site – one of the major ones about museum security – has dozens of articles. It mentions on the front page that the illegal art trade is about $10 billion a year. www.museum-security.org/index1.html
There’s a fantastic book on this subject called “The Rape of Europa”. Those who think they’ve heard everything about WWII, try this. (Lynn H. Nicholas, $15) A good read from start to finish.
It’s about things the Nazis stole, but also about people who smuggled art out of Europe to keep it away from the Nazis, and about art trade during the war.
A huge number of things were not recovered for years, or ever.
As for why these things are stolen, answering r_k, most often it’s to be sold to collectors who don’t know or don’t care about where things come from.
The point? To HAVE it. It is ART, and people like art because they like it. If you like a certain work enough to buy it stolen, you don’t care if anyone else sees it. You don’t care about selling it. You want it because you want IT.
Tim
Well, not always. In 1999, some thieves returned paintings they had stolen from the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park in 1978, and most experts think it’s because they spent 21 years trying to sell them and couldn’t. Cite.
Actually, there was the largest private collection of Rodin’s sculptures. Not only the thinker. And they weren’t “replicas” AFAIK, but amongst the original “casts” (sorry…don’t know the correct word in english. I hope I’ll be understand.
There were other major pieces of art destroyed apart the Rodins,(I read a long article about it) but unfortunately can’t remember any others. I vaguely remember there was amongst other things a famous tapestry and possibly a Liechenstein.
If i stole the Mona Lisa, i wouldn’t sell it, but keep it. It’s not like i’d go broadcasting that i have the Mona Lisa in my attic, but just the having it would be satisfaction enough. I’d probably give it back after i die, but stealing the Mona Lisa would make me the greatest theif ever, and you can’t buy that self-esteme! (morality non-withstanding)
Tars: How do you give it back after you die?
In your will you say:
“I, Carmine Sabatini, do hereby leave my painting “The Mona Lisa” to the Louvre Museum.”