Ransom for a Stolen Chagall: An Israeli-Palestinian Peace By C. J. CHIVERS New York Times August 20, 2001 Two months ago, when a painting by Marc Chagall was stolen from its place on the wall in the Jewish Museum, the authorities were confounded. The theft was discovered the morning after the museum held a cocktail reception attended by more than 200 potential witnesses, and the painting vanished with little trace other than a lone metal screw that was left on the carpet. Now, the authorities said, there is an equally confounding clue. The museum has received a letter from someone claiming to be involved in the theft and making a demand far outside the world of curators and exhibitions. It is not money the letter writer seeks, nor fame, but something far more elusive: the painting, the writer said, will not be returned until peace has been achieved between Israel and the Palestinians, the authorities and a museum official said. The incident appears to be a highly unusual instance of art being stolen for political ends. The last time anything comparable happened, one art expert said, was the 1994 theft of Edvard Munch's "Scream," which was briefly the subject of demands from abortion opponents in Norway. In that case, the painting was recovered, and the authorities said the demands were made by someone who had not actually taken the painting. In the Chagall theft, the letter to the Jewish Museum was postmarked in the Bronx on June 12 and signed by an organization that F.B.I. and police officials said they had not heard of, the International Committee for Art and Peace. The authorities said they had no other evidence of its existence. Although they were not sure whether the theft was driven by a genuine political motive, the authorities were confident that the letter itself was not a hoax. The envelope also contained information about the work that could come only from someone in possession of the 1914 oil painting on canvas, "Study for `Over Vitebsk,' " showing a man floating above a village. "Our investigation to date supports that whoever sent this letter has knowledge about the whereabouts of the painting," one investigator said, adding that it was not clear whether the letter was sent by the thief or an accomplice. People with political motives have long sought to control the display of art, and some political organizations � like the Taliban in Afghanistan, Serbian nationalists in Sarajevo and the Nazis in Europe � have actively campaigned to destroy it. But the authorities and art experts said that the motive for theft is almost always economic. "There are very, very few political thefts," said David Shillingford, a spokesman for the Art Loss Register, an international service that maintains a database of more than 100,000 pieces of stolen art. "If you talk about theft and not destruction, you can go back many years, before the Second World War, before the First World War, and you're talking about a handful of cases." The letter in the Chagall theft was typed on 8-by-11-inch paper and mailed inside a plain envelope, the investigator said. Only the address was handwritten. Its arrival at the museum, at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, was kept secret until after it had undergone extensive forensic testing, but museum officials were quite relieved, a spokeswoman said. "We are extremely distressed about the missing painting, and this communication gives us hope for the possibility of recovering the work," said Anne Scher, the spokeswoman. Law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to release the letter or to show it to a reporter. But they said the writer apologized for embarrassing the museum and said the painting was "being taken care of." The officials cannot tell whether the letter writer's sympathies lie with the Palestinians or Israel, the investigator said, and it was not clear exactly what peace conditions would secure the painting's return. "Study for `Over Vitebsk,' " valued at $1 million, was on loan to the museum from a private collection in Russia. It was taken from an exhibition, "Marc Chagall: Early Works from Russian Collections," which opened in April with the display of 56 works Chagall completed from 1908 to 1920, including paintings, drawings and murals for the State Jewish Chamber Theater in Moscow. The theft occurred sometime between the start of a cocktail reception for singles on June 7 and the next morning, when a custodian found a small screw on the carpet near where the painting and its frame had apparently been forced from the wall. The 8-by-10-inch painting was small enough to have been hidden in a briefcase or even under the thief's shirt, officials said. F.B.I. agents and detectives from the Police Department's major case squad have interviewed nearly 300 people, including most of the people who attended the cocktail reception, and nearly 20 people who called investigators with tips after the museum offered a $25,000 reward in mid-June. "There were a lot of leads that we had to cover, and they have all been ruled out," one investigator said. Officials said they hoped that the letter's demands might prompt a new round of tips to the F.B.I. at (212) 384-1000 or at the Police Department's Crime Stopper line at (800) 577-TIPS. Munch's "Scream" was stolen from Norway's National Gallery in Oslo on opening day of the 1994 Winter Olympics, so the thieves managed to capture the attention of the international news media. Five days later a Norwegian abortion opponent, trying to take advantage of the publicity, hinted on a radio show that the painting might be returned if the national television station would broadcast "The Silent Scream," an anti-abortion film. The film was not shown, and after the police recovered the painting later that year, they said the abortion opponent was not involved in the crime. The Chagall case has put the Jewish Museum in an unenviable position, Mr. Shillingford said, since the museum's staff and Chagall's admirers cannot reasonably be expected to have any influence over the peace process in the Middle East. "If you compare it to the case of the Munch, the people were asking in that instance whether it was realistic or not to play a film clip," he said. "In this case, they are asking for something, while I'm not saying that it's not going to happen, it's not going to happen because a Chagall painting was stolen."
