Museum Heist Paints a Picture of Swedish Naivete

In a case of locking the barn door after the horse has bolted, Swedes have relaxed their opposition to Big Brother surveillance techniques following the spectacular daytime robbery of $30 million in art treasures from their richly endowed but poorly guarded National Museum.

When robbers made off with a Rembrandt self-portrait and two masterpieces by Renoir nearly three months ago, they left behind no video evidence of the crime or their casing of the site because the museum had no security cameras.

Museum administrators had been asking for better protection for years, said information officer Agneta Karlstroem. But the appeals were rejected by Stockholm county authorities who, like many Swedes, consider videotaping of public facilities to be an intrusion into privacy.

“I never understood it--they have cameras at McDonald’s, but we weren’t allowed to install them,” Karlstroem said. “Only after the robbery did we get permission, and there are still discussions going on about what we can and cannot do.”

Nation Experiences an Increase in Crime

The brazen heist five minutes before closing and at the height of rush hour on the Friday before Christmas was a rude awakening for Swedes. This country has witnessed a steady increase in crime and violence in recent years, but most Swedes still cling stubbornly to values that evolved in an age when people could leave their doors unlocked and their children unattended.

Other high-profile robberies have occurred, such as the theft of paintings by Picasso and another artist from the Museum of Modern Art in 1993. But the Dec. 22 raid at the National Museum likely ranks as the most jolting crime here since the event that shattered national innocence 15 years ago, the still-unsolved assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme.

Masked gunmen met no resistance from the unarmed security guards at the entrance when they walked in calmly at 4:55 p.m. One ordered museum visitors to lie on the floor while two others ran up the stately marble staircases to the French and Dutch collections on the third floor. They snatched a self-portrait by Rembrandt and Renoir’s “Conversation” and “A Young Parisienne,” then sped off in a small motorboat from the quayside only a few yards from the waterfront museum’s main entrance.

Karlstroem was in her office at the time but, like most employees, never had an inkling of what was going on in the busiest venues of the museum.

Distractions Aid Gunmen’s Getaway

All three paintings were relatively small and easily portable, and the robbers clearly knew what they were after, said Stockholm police detective Supt. Gosta Andersson. The gunmen’s getaway was aided by two car bombs that went off near the museum as they were leaving--a distraction attributed to accomplices to confuse police dispatchers when they finally received calls from museum employees reporting the heist. Other cohorts had scattered spikes across the road leading to the museum, which is situated at the end of a short peninsula, hampering the response of emergency vehicles.

The red motorboat was recovered a few hours later, and police were able to trace some suspects through its rental agency. Seven men have been arrested and remain in investigative custody, Andersson said, although he acknowledged that key figures are still at large and that the whereabouts of the paintings remain unknown.

Police and prosecutors are among the most outspoken and frustrated by their countrymen’s outdated notions of security and privacy matters.

“People have a very old-fashioned image of Sweden. There are a lot of crimes occurring nowadays, and we need to take more realistic measures against them,” Andersson said. “I don’t know if we will have problems in prosecuting because we don’t have taped evidence, as the robbers were masked. But surely we would have film of them on earlier visits because this was very well planned and they knew exactly where they needed to go and what they wanted.”

The lack of security precautions at Swedish museums has nothing to do with spending constraints or technical know-how, because this country is a leader in all spheres of information technology, including video surveillance, said Bo Beckestroem, senior project manager at the national Information and Communication Technology Commission.

“Our capabilities in surveillance are limited only by law and social practice. There is always a big debate when anyone tries to monitor people on security cameras,” he said. “Buses now have security cameras for reasons of legal responsibility and safety, but only after a big fight, and it’s still forbidden for many businesses that want them, like banks and jewelry shops.”

The National Museum hopes to have its monitoring equipment installed within the next few months, said Karlstroem, attributing local officials’ change of heart on the privacy issue in part to the staggering loss of the uninsured state-owned assets.

Despite Losses, Many Prized Works Remain

Although the paintings’ disappearance is a blow to the museum’s pride, the facility remains opulently endowed with priceless works by Impressionists, Dutch masters and Renaissance artists, including seven other Rembrandts and five Renoirs. Important works by Rubens, Goya, Degas, Gauguin, Van Gogh and most of Sweden native August Strindberg’s lifework still draw throngs of visitors to the museum, and police have strongly advised its curators to beef up protection.

“This being Sweden, we cannot say for sure. But I think they will now follow our advice,” Andersson said.