Eight minutes at the Louvre

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, February 11th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: A heist at the museum. 

Last October, thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris. In less than ten minutes, they made off with more than $100 million in crown jewels.

WORLD reporter Bekah Bernhardt dug into this, and Bekah, I think for many people the word “heist” probably drums up the idea of a movie plot. Maybe Oceans 11? Or Mission Impossible? I mean, heist movies are a specific genre.

But, really, this sounds like a massive security failure for the Louvre. Why is it that this specific museum is such a target?

BERNHARDT: Well, it’s the world’s largest museum. And it’s also famous for being stolen from. The Mona Lisa became a household name because it was swiped in 1911.

MAST: So, it’s about the prestige?

BERNHARDT: Exactly. But here’s the twist: paintings aren’t the hot target anymore.

MAST: Why not? I’d assume that the Mona Lisa is still the ultimate prize.

BERNHARDT: You’d think! But I spoke with Tim Carpenter… he’s the former head of the FBI’s art crime team. He said it’s hard to find a buyer for a stolen painting, especially one so recognizable, like the Mona Lisa. So, criminals often end up hiding it for decades and then try to sell it. Or they’ll give up and destroy the painting.

MAST: Okay, so that brings us to last year...

BERNHARDT: Right, and the Louvre wasn’t the only one robbed. It was one of several museums and most of them were in Europe. And in just about every case, the criminals forced their way in and grabbed as much as they could carry.

MAST: Mm, fascinating. So just really a different approach to it entirely. Well thank you, Bekah. 

And now, for more on the Louvre heist and what the future of security looks like for museums, here’s WORLD’s Kristen Flavin.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: On the morning of October 19th, an eight-minute theft at the Louvre shocked the world.

Audio here from CBS New York:

CBS: Surveillance footage shows the thieves breaking into cases where jewels were stored, stuffing them into their pockets, and getting away. The thieves made off with jewels tied to nineteenth century royalty and more.

The heist made international headlines. But it wasn’t very sophisticated. That’s according to former FBI agent Tim Carpenter:

CARPENTER: Kind of a brute force attack. This wasn't Mission Impossible.

The theft didn’t have to be Mission Impossible.

Carpenter says it’s quite common for high-profile museums to have mediocre security measures.

CARPENTER: You know, I’ve seen museums that have a half a billion dollars in paintings hanging in a gallery, and without a single camera, exit doors that lead out to the parking lot.

Some of the rooms at the Louvre had no cameras, plus, the control room didn’t have enough monitors. That meant the guards couldn’t watch a live feed of the robbery. A 2018 audit flagged the balcony the thieves broke into as a security vulnerability.

As recently as 2006, many fine art galleries put marbles behind picture frames as a safety mechanism. If a thief tried to lift a valuable painting off the wall, the marbles would spill onto the floor and alert bystanders of the robbery.

ANDERSON: Rather rudimentary and rather inexpensive.

That’s Bill Anderson. He’s the president of Art Guard. His company provides sensor technology used in galleries like Sotheby’s and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Anderson says security has gotten better and most museums have moved far beyond marbles. Some use motion-triggered alarms and AI-powered cameras that can anticipate the warning signs of theft. And although it wasn’t enough to deter the criminals, the Louvre did have some measures in place. Alarms sounded when the thieves entered, and staff evacuated tourists.

But criminals have more effective tactics too.

ANDERSON: The target, increasingly, is things that can be monetized quickly...so gold and and jewels become, then, the primary target.

Weeks before criminals broke into the Louvre, a group of thieves stole about $800 million in gold samples from France’s Natural History Museum. In late January, thieves stole an entire collection of silver from a Dutch museum.

Some museums are taking this growing risk seriously. After the Louvre theft, Anderson said he received calls from museum officials around the world asking for security services.

But Tim Carpenter believes the majority of museums tend to underestimate their risk.

CARPENTER: And so there is an institutional victim mentality like "that can't happen here" well, until it does happen.

It took a robbery for the Louvre to get serious. Museum leaders said they will spend more than $90 million on security upgrades. 

Laurence des Cars is the director of the Louvre. She gave testimony to the French Senate after the heist. Here’s a translation:

DES CARS: This plan will double the number of cameras within the 37-hectare Louvre domain. It will completely modernize badge access to the museum. It will put in place a new system of hypersurveillance in the control positions of the museum.

For European museums in particular, it’s difficult to perform security updates.

CARPENTER: What if it's a historic building, like the Louvre, and that building itself is several hundred years old, so that means the building is a piece of art. It too, has to be treated as part of the collection.

But even for American museums, there’s a three-fold tension between showing art, keeping it secure, and the budget it takes to do both.

CARPENTER: They, by their design, are not meant to be Fort Knox. They're not impermeable. They are not intended to be impermeable.

The Louvre intended for visitors to see crown jewels up close. But the emphasis on public interest cuts both ways.

CARPENTER: When I go to a museum, and I've been to a lot of museums, I want a positive experience. I want to be able to go in and have a personal experience with the artwork in the museum. But I also want them to protect it. That needs to be an equal part of every museum's mission is that fiduciary responsibility to protect and preserve the collection for future generations.

Carpenter expects thieves will attempt to copy the Louvre heist in coming months.

CARPENTER: You know, as criminal crews see that this is not as complicated a thing to do as they may have thought it was and that there's some chance they can monetize these commodities and steal them.

Police arrested eight culprits connected with the Louvre case, but authorities have yet to recover the stolen jewels.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin with reporting from Bekah Bernhardt.

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