For some bizarre reason, Good Morning America has run a segment about the theft of a Warhol print from a Missouri museum. The crime is relatively small and, as with most art crime, more destructive than profitable. But for some reason, GMA’s expert thinks art is stolen by ‘people in the business” when it is commonly known by anyone involved in tracking art theft that it is mostly a crime of convenience undertaken by thieves will little sense of how they will achieve the value of the art:
Big news of a big and strange theft in the art world. Yeah, for sure. The heist took place in Missouri, at the Springfield art museum. The wall once displaying Andy Warhol Campbell’s soup prints is now a blank canvas. This morning, the FBI and INT interpol are on the hunt. Between 5:30 P.M. Wednesday and 8:45 A.M. Thursday, thieves broke into the Springfield art museum taking down there the wall and walking away with at least one iconic Andy Warhol print. The missing pastor piece worth over $30,000.
Usually art is stolen especially high-priced art, it’s stolen by people in the business.
Reporter: The gallery wall, once lined with the pop master’s work, now blank. Museum officials pulling the rest of the collection while they race to find out who is behind the heist. The burglars gain intelligence as to the types of paintings that are in there. How they’re going to get access into the facility. And how they’re going to get out. Over the last six months, the museum has been working on an emergency plan. They had not yet completed the process.
