Artnet: Sarah Cascone
China has been fighting hard in recent years to reclaim art looted from the country, which may amount to as many as 10 million antiquities since 1840. But what if the government isn’t content to go through official channels? An investigation in GQ looks at a recent string of high-profile museum robberies targeting Chinese antiquities since 2010 and wonders if China itself is responsible for the crimes—or, as it may see it, rogue repatriations.
The recent robberies appear to fit the “stolen to order” bill. The break-ins—at the Chinese Pavilion at Sweden’s Drottningholm Palace, the Oriental Museum at England’s Durham University, the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University, and two thefts at the China Collection at Norway’s KODE Museum—appear to target a shopping list of high-value objects of questionable provenance. …Read More
Pictured: The Chinese Museum at the Château de Fontainebleau outside of Paris. Photo courtesy of the Château de Fontainebleau.