Thieves Make Off With $160,800 Jean Arp Bronze at Art Cologne

By Elena Vasquez

A gold-colored bronze sculpture by Jean (Hans) Arp, priced at €145,000 ($160,800), was stolen from the booth of Ludorff Gallery on November 8, the final day of the Art Cologne fair. The work, titled S'élevant (Rising) and dated 1962, had been on display at the fair from November 4 to 8.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) first reported the theft. Ludorff has filed a police report and posted a public appeal on its website, asking visitors for information and photographs taken around the time of the theft, between 4:55 p.m. and 5:10 p.m.

"If you are being offered for sale the work … at any point in the future or if you have any information regarding its whereabouts, please contact us or the police," the gallery stated.

The stolen bronze carries the characteristic organic form of Arp's later practice. "It is deeply regrettable that an incident of this kind has cast a shadow over what was otherwise a very successful and enjoyable fair for us," Ludorff added.

The takeaway: a 15-minute window on a fair's closing afternoon is now the focus of a criminal investigation.

Who stands trial over the looted Prince de Conty gold?

Five suspects, including two US citizens, will stand trial in Brest, western France, in May 2027 over gold bars looted from an 18th-century shipwreck, Le Figaro reports.

The defendants face charges of criminal conspiracy in the 2018 online sale of gold ingots believed to come from the wreck of the Prince de Conty, a ship of the East India Company that sank during a winter storm in 1746 near the Île Belle-Île, an island off the coast of Brittany. Some suspects are also accused of laundering stolen goods.

The accused include:

• Three French nationals in their 70s and 80s
• A Florida couple in their 80s: Eleonor (aka Gay) Courter, an author, and Philip Courter

The takeaway: an alleged 2018 online sale of 1746 shipwreck gold reaches a French courtroom in May 2027.

What happened to the Milan October 7th mural?

A memorial mural by aleXsandro Palombo in Milan depicting Hamas's October 7th kidnapping of Nova music festival-goers Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or in Israel was painted over by city authorities, sparking an outcry, The Telegraph reports.

Also in the news

• Paris Photo returns. With protests quieting down but not forgotten, dealers return to the Grand Palais for Paris Photo, ARTnews reports.
• Roman Scotland re-evaluated. A bronze leg dating to about AD 140, found in a Scottish bog over 200 years ago and hidden in a storeroom for centuries, is helping researchers re-evaluate the Roman occupation of Scotland, as explored in a new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, The Guardian reports.
• Botticelli rediscovered. A rediscovered painting by Botticelli, long thought to be merely by the Renaissance master's workshop, is now on display at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, Finestre sull'Arte reports.
• Sydney museum cuts protested. Museum workers have started a petition condemning planned cuts to eight positions within Sydney University's Chau Chak Wing Museum, The Art Newspaper reports.

London wants to push its own 'Bean'

Londoners are joining the viral Bean-pushing phenomenon — directed at the city's Marble Arch, designed by John Nash in 1827, Ocula reports.

A public listing on the platform Partiful invites people to help move the Marble Arch landmark 17.78 cm — 7 inches — to the left. That is the same distance Chicagoans recently tried to push Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park. The stunt did not work; Kapoor's sculpture weighs 110 tons.

In both cases, the stated goal is to free "the man," or multiple people, stuck inside. "We have been made aware that the top floor of the marble arch [sic] was used for incarceration. People could still be trapped inside," the event description reads.

Stuart Semple, the artist known for past disputes with Kapoor over questions like paint color, sent a message to Ocula saying Londoners supported the Chicago bean-pushers. They "are planning to push the Arch to send a clear message that the bloke in the Bean must freed," the representative said.

The takeaway: a joke built on a Chicago stunt has now produced a real-world event listing — and a 110-ton reality check — in London.

With the Arp investigation open, the Brest trial 18 months away, and Paris Photo underway, the autumn art calendar carries more legal and market drama than usual.