Museu Chácara do Céu Robbery
Four thieves in 2006 pull off a robbery where they steal some of the most valuable paintings in the world. 15 years later and there has been no sign of the paintings. So how the heck did they do it??
The Museu Chácara do Céu
Museu Chácara do Céu is an art museum located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It, together with the Museu do Açude, form the Castro Maya Museums, federal public museums with the objective to preserve, research, and publicize the art collection of Brazillian businessman Raymundo Ottoni de Castro Maya. The Museu Chácara do Céu actually is in Castro Maya’s old house in Rio in the neighbourhood of Santa Teresa.
The museum’s collection (Castro Maya’s collection) is now divided into four sectors:
European Art with paintings, drawings, and engravings by European masters like Degas, Matisse, Modigliani, Seurat and more.
Brazillian Art featuring more modern Brazillian artists like Guignard, Di Cavalcanti, Iberê Camargo, Antonio Bandeira, Eliseu Visconti and Portinari.
Brasiliana Collection containing old maps, paintings, and other illustrations of landscapes and humans in Brazil in the 19th century made by Rugendas, Chamberlain, and Taunay and featuring more than 500 originals by Jean-Baptiste Debret
The Castro Maya Library which houses about eight thousand books on art, Brazilian and European literature, as well as some publications by the first travellers in the 19th century like Maria Graham, Maximilian von Wied-Neuwied, Henry Chamberlain, William Gore Ouseley, and Victor Frond
So obviously this is a pretty impressive collection. The problem with that is that the works are public, the collection Iis catalogued, and everyone knows just how valuable everything within that house is. Even the least important piece from the collection is still a lure for thieves.
The Robbery
February 24, 2006 was the first night of Carnival in Rio, a huge party where people stay up late celebrating and dancing in the streets. At around 4:00 pm, four men burst into the Museu Chácara do Céu carrying guns and maybe even grenades and other weapons. They forced the security guards to disconnect the security cameras and the building alarm at gunpoint and they mugged five tourists who were unlucky enough to be in the museum at that time. These thieves had done their research, they knew that security guards at the museum were not armed and that during any given shift there were only three guards on duty so it was extremely easy to overpower them and the tourists inside and control the scene.
The fact that it was the first night of Carnival wasn’t an accident. The thieves knew that the party would be super loud and people would be drinking and dancing, therefore distracted from what was going on within the museum, even though they were partying literally right outside. The thieves also knew that even if the police were alerted to the crime in progress, the crowds would slow them down and the robbery could be over before they arrived on the scene.
They definitely didn’t linger inside the museum for long. It seemed as though they knew exactly what they were there for and they quickly grabbed four paintings from the walls along with one book from the library. BTW the paintings themselves weren’t alarmed or fixed to the wall in any way, the thieves just had to lift them off their hooks. They ran through the museum, found these pieces without even glancing at any others or debating amongst themselves what to steal. Highly sus.
In the end they escaped with "The Dance" by Picasso and a book by him titled "Toros"; "Marine" by Monet, "Garden of Luxembourg" by Matisse and "Two Balconies" by Dali. All these works are below (I couldn’t find a picture of the book, sorry).
They relied on speed and violence to pull this off, while they didn’t fire any shots they hit two security guards with their guns when they tried to stop them or grab the paintings out of their hands. It was brave of them even to try this, they could have easily been seriously injured or killed. The museum director Vera de Alencar, like me, thinks that they had a shopping list and that this was a contract robbery. She said “Dali’s picture, for example, is the only one by him in a public exhibition in Latin America” (France-Presse, 2006). Of course, this means that having this Dali in your home would be pretty prestigious (not to mention selfish but whatever) for all of your criminal buddies to enjoy.
Experts estimated (at the time) the paintings were worth around $20 million USD and were among the most important works in the museum’s collection. This theft is sometimes referred to as Latin America’s Gardner Museum theft with millions of dollars in stolen art including one of the most important pieces not only from the collection but in the art world in general. Rembrandt’s only seascape stolen from the Gardiner is frequently compared to Latin America’s only Dali stolen from the Chácara do Céu.
The Investigation
Of course, the thieves had a getaway van waiting for them and they made a speedy exit from the scene after only being there for a few minutes. Once they were gone the police were called to start investigating. Surprise, surprise they didn’t find much in the beginning. A little while later they did find the passe-partout (a frame that holds the glass and backing of the painting together to protect it) from one of the stolen works that had been partially burned. The police concluded, from this one piece of wood, that all the paintings had been burned and promptly abandoned the investigation.
So…?
That is quite literally all the information that there is on this case. And it goes without saying that these paintings are still missing. Because of the way that the thieves ignored everything else in the museum and went for these four specific paintings and one book people have speculated that this could have been a contract job. They were hired by someone who had picked out what they wanted and paid them to carry out the robbery. Perhaps it was someone who carried/carries a lot of power in Brazil or who had the police in their pocket, which would explain why the case was abandoned so quickly and has never been picked back up. Some people think that the police are right and that the paintings really were burned though I find it hard to believe that someone would burn stolen goods in the middle of the street (where they found the passe-partout). Also, it’s odd that there were zero remains found of any of the paintings or frames where they found the passe-partout. If everything was burned there, there would be further evidence of this.
I think, sadly, that I am leaning towards them being in the home of some rich, powerful person in Brazil who wants to show off their power and authority, they can brazenly steal from one of the most well-known art museums in the city during the day and get away with it. We can only hope that they’ll be returned to the Museu Chácara do Céu eventually.
Works Cited
Ferreira, Rute. “Did They Burn Picasso? 12 Years Later The Stolen Artworks From Chácara do Céu Museum Remain Missing”. Daily Art. 2018. https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/stolen-artworks-from-chacara-do-ceu-museum/
France-Presse, Agence. “Brazil Art Heist is Cloaked by Carnival”. The New York Times. 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/world/americas/brazil-art-heist-is-cloaked-by-carnival.html