page_title: Theft of The Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria
section_title: The theft
hierarchical_section_title: Theft of The Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria / The theft
caption_attribution_description: English: National Gallery of Victoria - international building. Taken in December 2003 and placed in the public domain by the photographer.
context_page_description: The theft of The Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria took place on 2 August 1986 in Melbourne, Australia. The stolen work was one of a series of paintings by Pablo Picasso all known as The Weeping Woman and had been purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria for A$1.6 million in 1985—at the time the highest price paid by an Australian art gallery for an artwork. A group calling itself "Australian Cultural Terrorists" claimed responsibility, making a number of demands in letters to the then Victorian Minister for the Arts, Race Mathews. The demands included increases to funding for the arts; threats were made that the painting would be destroyed. After an anonymous tip-off to police, the painting was found undamaged in a locker at Spencer Street station on 19 August 1986. The theft still remains unsolved.
context_section_description: The thieves obtained access to the gallery on Saturday 2 August 1986, and unscrewed the painting from its wall mounting. The thieves then removed the mounted canvas from its frame and left the gallery undetected. McCaughey stated that a specialised type of screwdriver not available to the public would have been required to take the painting off the wall. It has been suggested that the thieves knew their art history: the method of the theft was an ironic homage to the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.  (In 1911, Picasso and his contemporary Guillaume Apollinaire, were both suspects in the Mona Lisa theft; they were cleared of any association with the crime.)
  The theft of The Weeping Woman was not noticed until Monday 4 August 1986. The thieves had left a card indicating that the painting had been removed for routine maintenance. Staff had assumed that "ACT" on the card – the initials of the "Australian Cultural Terrorists" – referred to the Australian Capital Territory, and that the painting had been transferred to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.  Initially it was suspected that the crime might have been perpetrated by a gang of international art smugglers, and the possibility of an "inside job" was not considered.
  The painting itself was not insured; then-Arts Minister Race Mathews conceded that the price of insurance was prohibitive for major works of art.
caption: View looking south towards the public entrance to the National Gallery of Victoria
exif: {}