Vandals Punch Hole in Monet

Group broke into Paris museum during all-night culture festival
By Colleen Barry,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 8, 2007 2:35 AM CDT
Vandals Punch Hole in Monet
Renowned work by Impressionist painter Claude Monet, "La Pont d'Argenteuil," is photographed at the Orsay Museum in Paris, Sunday, Oct. 7, 2007, after intruders entered the museum early Sunday and seriously damaged the painting. A surveillance camera caught a group entering the museum, housing a major...   (Associated Press)

Four or five people broke into a Paris museum on Sunday and punched a hole in a Monet. The group broke open a back door to the Musee d'Orsay and fled when an alarm sounded, but not before tearing a four-inch hole in "Le Pont d'Argenteuil," a scene of a bridge and boats on the Seine painted in 1874. The vandals appeared to be drunk.

The incident, which occurred on Nuit Blanche, an annual Paris all-night arts festival, was caught on security video, but no arrests have been made. The French culture minister said the painting could be restored. She continued, "It's always a heartbreak when an art object that is our memory, our heritage, that we love and that we are proud of is victim of a purely criminal act." (More Monet stories.)

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