mahmoud khalil museum

$50 Million Van Gogh Stolen, Again

Filed under: Art, Crimes and Misdemeanors

Not too many paintings get stolen twice from the same museum. A painting of a vase of flowers by Vincent van Gogh was stolen for the second time recently from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo, Egypt. The AP reports that the painting was also stolen in 1978 and was recovered two years later in Kuwait. The painting is worth a lot more now, an estimated $50 million. The painting known as both "Poppy Flowers" and "Vase and Flowers," was cut from the frame. Egypt's top prosecutor, Abdel Meguid Mahmoud has said that none of the alarms and only a handful of surveillance cameras were working when the painting was stolen. On Sunday, Egypt's culture minister, Farouk Hosni, announced that the painting had been recovered but later it was reported that the painting is still among the missing.

The small one-foot-by-one-foot painting is similar to a flower scene painted by the French artist Adolphe Monticelli and the Monticelli painting also is part of the Khalil collection. It is believed the van Gogh was painted in 1887, during the phase of rapid productivity that marked the years before his suicide in 1890.

Tags: art theft, cairo, egypt, mahmoud khalil museum, poppy flowers, van gogh, vase and flowers, vincent van gogh