Today in Art Theft

Lots of international art theft news today. In England, two more bronze statues have become the latest in what police believe is a scheme to grab artworks solely for their scrap value (mentioned earlier here). In Turkey, two 6th Century BC artifacts -- which were returned to Turkey in 1993 after the Metropolitan Museum admitted it had known they were stolen when it purchased them-- have been stolen again, this time from a museum in western Turkey. (The thieves had replaced them with fakes.) Nine people, including the director of the museum, have been arrested. And in Canada, 30 paintings, 10 sculptures, and about 30 pieces of jewelry by various artists were stolen from a group show at the Blink Gallery in Ottawa. They even took the labels for the pieces.