Museum Won’t Pay to Get Back Priceless Paintings

Culture Minister Jack Lang said today that France will not yield to any extortion demand to recover nine impressionist paintings worth $12.5 million that were stolen by gunmen from a Paris museum.

Police combed the Marmottan Museum and took testimony from guards and visitors who were forced to lie on the floor Sunday while at least five “connoisseur” thieves stole nine works of art, including Claude Monet’s priceless “Impression Soleil Levant,” or “Impression Sunrise.” The work inspired the name of the 19th-Century Impressionist movement.

The Academie des Beaux Arts, which oversees the Marmottan Museum, said none of the nine paintings, including five Monets and two Renoirs, was insured. No paintings in French museums are insured until they are loaned to other museums, the Academie said.

Jean-Claude Vincent, head of the special police unit charged with stolen art objects, said most museum thefts were aimed at reselling the stolen work or getting insurance money through extortion.

“There will be no question of acceding to any sort of extortion,” Lang said. “I know the French police are active and remarkably organized to do the impossible to find the (culprits) and, above all, the artwork.”

The stolen paintings were valued at the equivalent of $12.5 million by museum curator Yves Brayer, but he said the Monet picture was priceless because of its historic value.

The bandits put the paintings into the trunk of a gray car double-parked outside the museum and drove away.