France battles theft of cultural treasures

FEATURE 01/13/2010 PARIS — French police Col. Stephane Gauffeny started the year with a heavy caseload. His job: investigating the theft of art and treasures in France, one of the best-endowed and most stolen-from countries in the world, which was struck by two major crimes in the week after Christmas alone. In the first, a picture by Edgar Degas worth $1.14 billion was unscrewed from the walls of a museum in Marseille. The colorful pastel of performing singers, titled “The Chorus,” was on loan from the Musee d’Orsay, Paris’ eminent museum of Impressionist art. Three days later, police discovered the theft of some 30 paintings valued at around a million euros, including works by Picasso and…

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France battles theft of cultural treasures

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