[MSN] Dutch Police Detain Two Men in Rodin's `Thinker' Theft Inquiry.

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Dutch Police Detain Two Men in Rodin's `Thinker' Theft Inquiry

By Martijn van der Starre

Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Dutch police said they detained two men in connection
with the theft of seven bronze sculptures, including a casting of Auguste
Rodin's ``The Thinker,'' from a Dutch museum's garden.

Sandra van Veen, a spokeswoman for the police, declined to provide details
about the detainments ``as the investigation is still going on,'' she said
by telephone today. The crime may be connected with recent bronze thefts as
the iron sculptures weren't touched, the police earlier said.

The statues are worth ``hundreds of thousands'' of euros, Lucas Bonekamp, a
spokesman for the Laren, Netherlands-based Singer Laren museum said by
telephone. They were exhibited in the garden of the museum, which was
founded in 1956 by the wife of William Singer, an art collector and artist
and the son of a steel magnate from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Singer
family bought ``The Thinker'' in the 1930s, Bonekamp said.

``It would be extremely bad'' if the art works were stolen to be melted
down, Bonekamp said. ``The sculptures are worth far more as pieces of art.
It's a big loss for Dutch heritage.''

The police asked smelters and foundries ``to keep their ears and eyes
open.''

There are at least 74 castings of ``The Thinker'' in three different sizes,
Clemence Goldberger, a spokeswoman for the Rodin Museum in Paris, said in a
telephone interview. The one stolen in Laren is ``known to be made by the
Francois Rudier factory in Paris, but wasn't stamped accordingly,''
Goldberger said.

``The Thinker,'' which Rodin started work on in 1880, was the sculptor's
first work to be exhibited in a public place, the Rodin Museum says on its
Web site. The statue was inaugurated in front of Paris's Pantheon in 1906,
the museum says.

To contact the reporter on this story: Martijn van der Starre in Amsterdam
vanderstarre at bloomberg.net