Tara Pippins’s Reviews > The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession > Status Update

From an ever supportive grandma “Museums didn’t have to leave all that stuff lying around.” His father of all people saw the story on the news and wrote him. Crazy that they rekindled their relationship after he was arrested. Mom is in prison because she destroyed and got rid of the art so she was probably an accessory to the crime. Anne-Catherine won’t talk to him so good for her.

The three conjoined panels of the apothecary shop… begin to separate and warp. A skilled professional restorer can gradually untwist wood and reconnect the panels.
Breitwieser tried to fix it himself… a method one curator calls “brutal”, he forces the panels into approximate position and seals them with SUPER GLUE!

Beauty, to be unpoetic but precise, is in the medial orbital-frontal cortex of the beholder

The work was displayed in the museum’s entry room, the most crowded spot”
Madeline was there; then she wasn’t
A work that had hung undisturbed in the museum for 138 years, since it had been given by a private donor so the painting could be seen by the public, had just vanished like a soap bubble into the air

27 - “coup de coeur” (a blow to the heart) for the art and Anne-Catherine

37 - fou de joie (crazy joy)

Breitwieser is an unemployed freeloader holed up in his mother’s house.
An “art liberator”