Two Paintings Stolen at Nicholas Roerich Museum

A thief swiped two small paintings off of the wall at a museum dedicated to the work of a turn-of-the-century Russian artist, the museum’s executive director said on Wednesday. Daniel Entin, the museum director, said the paintings — a watercolor and pencil piece and a tempera painting, each about 12 by 16 inches — were stolen off the wall about two weeks ago.

The museum only gets between 20 and 30 visitors a day, he said. Entin wouldn’t talk about the value of the paintings, but The New York Post, which broke the story, said “The Himalayas”, one of the stolen paintings, is worth $20,000 and “Talung Monastery” is worth $70,000.

Roehrich, born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1874, was an artist, writer, and philosopher. He painted thousands of paintings – the museum, located in a brownstone on 107th Street off of Riverside Drive, owns about 200 of them, ranging from religious works to colorful vistas from the Himalayas.

The museum had alarms on the doors and windows, but no alarm was set to go off if a paitning was moved, “which has been okay for 30 years,” Entin said. The museum has now installed alarms that will go off when a painting is moved, Entin said.

“Ordinarily people don’t take paintings during open hours of the museum,” he said.

Although Entin said police had been helpful, he doesn’t expect to get the works back.

“When paintings are gone from a museum they rarely find their way back,” he said.

(image of “Repentance” painting courtesy of Nicholas Roehrich Museum)

Art Attack! West Side Museum Twice-Heisted (New York Post)