It took thieves only seven minutes to walk out of the Louvre Museum in Paris with their pickings of precious crown jewels, faster than it takes me to catch the next L train when I inevitably miss it on my morning commute.
According to the museum, the items nabbed in the opening-hours heist had “inestimable heritage and historical value.” The suspects, according to the Ministry of Culture, entered the museum’s Apollo Gallery by entering a window using a basket lift-style ladder, a move I may adopt the next time I find myself last in line at an overhyped New York restaurant.
The Louvre closed for a second day after the heist on Monday as an investigation into the robbery continues. But while the museum is at a standstill, the online discourse flows without restraint.
Digital commentators are mocking the museum’s security, making references to the Pink Panther franchise, creating AI images of cats stealing Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa,” and teasingly accusing French President Emmanuel Macron of being the culprit. Some jeers are annoyingly unfunny and tired, while others succeed in placing the fascinating theft in the pop culture conversation.
In a more serious post, the Getty Images Archive recalled the 1911 Louvre heist of Leonardo DaVinci’s Mona Lisa. A former museum employee who had installed the portrait’s protective glass, Vincenzo Peruggia, was discovered to be behind the theft. Like the weekend’s robbery, the 1911 heist was a press sensation. An original suspects list for that heist included none other than Pablo Picasso. The last Louvre theft was in 1998, making this most recent theft a remarkable milestone in the museum’s modern history.
Museum heists attract major public attention in part because they are crimes that (usually) have no immediate human victim, though cultural theft is often linked to criminal networks involved in serious illegal activities, like human trafficking. For the most part, society views art heists as abstract crimes of greed born of an intent to profit, and maybe aspirations of a bit of notoriety.
Whatever the case of this particular incident, one thing is almost certain: It may be the first major museum heist to be memed.
Given its rising popularity after an apparent reference in a new Taylor Swift music video, I wouldn’t be surprised if Friedrich Wilhelm Theodor Heyser’s “Ophelia” (1900) was next.
Help, maybe they just needed the daylight.
She is still in the museum! (Though she was stolen once before, by a Louvre employee.)
She already sleeps with her eyes open …
Louvre heist to mutual aid?
I would probably only take tote bags from the gift shop if I’m being honest.
“They’ll hang us in the Louvre / Down the back, but who cares — still the Louvre,” as proclaimed by Lorde’s song named after the museum, is probably what the suspects were listening to when they snuck in.
HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY THAT THE MONA LISA WAS NOT STOLEN?
He would do such a good job, though.
And there was a frozen banana stand inside of it.
I can’t wait for Shein to make a Louvre Heist x Macron collection.
Meow, your honor.
Mic drop.
It’s definitely not the guy with the cool hat, guys…
