Security bolsters insurance:
"Our record's been so good that our rates haven't changed, so we keep raising our level of insurance, and it seems to be meeting the highest standards. I think what's happened in the areas where there's been theft--it's not always this way--like that museum in Egypt where the Van Gogh was stolen, it's sort of a private collection, and I don't want to say 'without security,' but certainly not at the standards you would think for something that valuable. And I think a lot of these thefts that occur, they happen in the museums where, for one reason or another, the budget hasn't been adjusted enough to deal with the issue of theft (maybe there's never been a theft). That's when security starts getting weak, when you begin to think it's not going to happen. And of course, that's immediately when it does happen. There's no easy answer. You try to keep looking at your own people."
Why the rash of theft?
"That's a good question. Unless there's a dark market somewhere, which I don't really know about ... there's this theory, which I used to poo-poo, about the idea that there are these rich, idiosyncratic people who pay a dollar on a $10 dollar value to keep for their lifetime a stolen painting in some hidden library. I'm only speculating, because no one admits this, but I think things are stolen for ransom. People get them, and if they don't panic, like apparently they did years ago when the museum up in Boston had those great paintings stolen (the Gardner), [the thieves] eventually get a message to the police or the owners that if they pay them a million dollars, they'll give them back the $100 million dollars worth of paintings they stole. And I think the insurance companies just don't talk about that. I honestly don't know that, but when you hear that the painting's coming back or they've located it--sometimes it's just good police work. I've literally heard of things where the thieves just get scared and abandon them and make a call. But I can't help but think that there have been ransoms."
Art Attack thinks a screenplay is in order.
