The Weeping Woman theft: what NGV’s 1986 case still teaches

Diagram of layered security around an artwork: perimeter, building shell, interior zone, display or store, and the object

Four screws. Thats roughly what was left on the picture rail at the National Gallery of Victoria on the morning of 2 August 1986, once someone noticed Pablo Picasso’s The Weeping Woman was no longer hanging where it should have been. No smashed glass, no forced door, no dramatic struggle. Someone had simply unscrewed the […]