Museums of fakes?

The theft of the Vix torque (ill. 1) is certainly the last straw. Works of this type, threatened by melting down, should have been put into safekeeping while solutions for protection against burglaries were being found. Let us recall that, during the hearing of the Inspection of Cultural Affairs before the French Senate Culture Committee, the latter explained that “in the aftermath of the theft that occurred at the Louvre, the ministry wrote to the heads of institutions and to the DRACs, to remind them of the risks weighing on these collections and the security recommendations to be implemented, among which that of drawing up an inventory of the exhibited objects presenting a particular risk of theft and of proceeding to their removal from the exhibition rooms if a certain number of security conditions were not met.”

Manifestly, nothing was done at Vix, all the more so as it has been learned that the work had already been the object of two attempted thefts. What can one conclude in the face of the ease with which this crime was committed, in broad daylight, and in a matter of minutes? On the one hand that, if something was done, it was very poorly done. More probably that hardly anything was put in place, unless it was not identified that the torque “presented a particular risk of theft,” which would then be even more serious? Be that as it may, responsibilities are obviously engaged, and in the first place that of the Ministry of Culture which should obviously have inquired into the conditions of exhibition of this masterpiece in gold, therefore liable to be melted down. Let us recall that, immediately afterwards, this same ministry decreed a major plan to secure the works in museums, one of the first measures of which (and obviously the most urgent) was to “put into safekeeping, in suitable places that will be identified for each département, the most…