Authorities at Beijing's Forbidden City made the embarrassing admission today that they had been burgled in the early hours of Monday morning. According to the official report, a lone thief made off with a number of gold and jewel-encrusted purses and mirrored compact cases that were included in a temporary exhibition at the Palace Museum. Nine items with a total value of $1.5 million were reported stolen. Two were subsequently recovered nearby, but the thief is still on the loose.
Once home to China's emperors, the Forbidden City has housed the Palace Museum since 1925. Apart from staging regular rotating exhibitions of its own treasures, the museum also hosts occasional shows of works from other institutions. The stolen items are from the collection of Hong Kong collector Feng Yaohui, and were loaned by the private Liang Yi Museum to the Palace Museum for an exhibition highlighting early 20th century decorative arts, on view through June 27.
A spokesman for the Palace Museum, Feng Naien, was refreshingly frank in discussing the lapses that had allowed the theft to take place. "For this to happen here shows us that, number one, we need to speed up the modernisation and installation of our security systems," Feng told the Guardian. "Certainly we can only blame the fact that our work was insufficient for something like this to happen. However, I hope that people will not lose confidence in the Palace Museum security because of this incident."
Despite the theft, a spokesperson from the Liang Yi Museum confirmed that the exhibition would continue, padded with additional items to replace the stolen goods. Meanwhile China's inveterate micro-bloggers tweeted their amazement at the success of the thief in the face of what had previously been claimed to be the Forbidden City's iron-clad security system. As China's blogosphere, not uncharacteristically, lit up with conspiracy theories, certain microbloggers aired their suspicions that this had been an inside job.
The last time a theft was reported at the Forbidden City was in 1987 when a Chinese visitor took a fancy to a knife once used by the Emperor Qianlong. Secreting himself in the Palace till after dark he attempted to get away with the trophy only to be quickly apprehended. In that case, the hapless thief was sentenced to life in prison.
Author: Madeleine O'Dea | Source: Artinfo [May 11, 2011]
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| The Forbidden City in Beijing, China [Credit: Flickr] |
A spokesman for the Palace Museum, Feng Naien, was refreshingly frank in discussing the lapses that had allowed the theft to take place. "For this to happen here shows us that, number one, we need to speed up the modernisation and installation of our security systems," Feng told the Guardian. "Certainly we can only blame the fact that our work was insufficient for something like this to happen. However, I hope that people will not lose confidence in the Palace Museum security because of this incident."
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| The above artifacts were stolen from Beijing's Forbidden City [Credit: The Palace Museum] |
The last time a theft was reported at the Forbidden City was in 1987 when a Chinese visitor took a fancy to a knife once used by the Emperor Qianlong. Secreting himself in the Palace till after dark he attempted to get away with the trophy only to be quickly apprehended. In that case, the hapless thief was sentenced to life in prison.
Author: Madeleine O'Dea | Source: Artinfo [May 11, 2011]
