TJ Walker explains how theft can boost an artwork's fame and value through publicity. He traces this through the 1911 Mona Lisa theft and a recent Louvre heist of Napoleonic jewels stolen in under four minutes, showing how media attention shapes what people care about and why famous stolen objects are nearly impossible to sell.
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As human beings, we're predictable. You can take something that no one really paid that much attention to and say, oh, it was stolen and now, oh, we want to know more. It must be super valuable. That happened to the Mona Lisa, and it's now happened to these Napoleonic jewels stolen from the Louvre. The Louvre jewel heist. According to the Associated Press, the Louvre will stay closed for at least a day after a lightning fast jewel heist stunned Paris and the art world. Thieves used a basket lift, scaled the museum's facade, smashed display cases, and made off with priceless Napoleonic era jewels, all in under four minutes. Someone's gonna have a good movie to write here. I think the robbery happened in broad daylight, just steps from the Mona Lisa, the most famous and one stolen painting on earth. That theft back in 1911 turned the Mona Lisa from a respected portrait into a global obsession. Ironically, experts say history may repeat itself. The publicity from this audacious crime could send the value and cultural cache of the Louvre's collections soaring. Actually, that's a misuse of the word ironically. I apologize. French officials admit multiple security failures. From unsecured windows to the ease of parking a lift outside the building. Eight items were taken, including diamond studded crowns and emerald necklaces once worn by Napoleon's queens. But as with the Mona Lisa stepped over a century ago, the world is now talking about the Louvre again. Not because of what's inside, but because of what was taken. In a strange economy of fame, even a crime can become priceless advertising. Okay, so what's the real message here? When it comes to art and stolen art, as human beings, we're predictable. You can take something that no one really paid that much attention to and say, oh, it was stolen and now, oh, we want to know more. It must be super valuable. That happened to the Mona Lisa, and it's now happened to these Napoleonic jewels stolen from the Louvre. Let's dig a little deeper here. If you've never been to the Louvre, I highly recommend it. I've been a handful of times. Most recently, I guess, a couple of summers ago when my family and I had the pleasure and privilege of living in Paris for a month. And it's, it is what it's cracked up to be. Now, if you absolutely hate art, okay, not your thing, I get it. But if you love art, this is the biggest, best museum in the world, in my opinion. I don't know if that's true in terms of actual square footage, but it's gigantic. It's absolutely gigantic. And its collection cannot be surpassed. I Mean, it makes the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City look like a, you know, an extra classroom built at a school, a modular classroom. It's so big, it's so vast. And it is interesting those of you who are not familiar with the history of the Mona Lisa. Now, it was respected, it was considered and very nice painting, but it was only after it was stolen and all the attention that came to the Mona Lisa that it gained the international renown, that it became the most famous painting in the world. So the creators of these jewels that were stolen are not going to benefit. And Da Vinci didn't necessarily benefit, obviously, because it was stolen way after his death. But these jewels are going to be talked about. It's also, frankly, going to make it very difficult for a jewel thief to sell this on the open market anywhere. Now, they could always sell it to some reclusive billionaire who doesn't want to ever show it to anyone. They just want to be able to say, I've got it in my safe. And when they have a dinner party for three or four other evil billionaire oligarchs, they can say, hey, come on, let me show you what I got. But things like that have a habit of getting talked about and being discovered. So that's one of the problems with stealing a thing versus money. Money's fungible. Now, I'm not here to tell you steal money or steal crypto or hack into someone's bank account, but if I were going to steal something, I don't think I would steal something this famous, because it does bring up the issue of how do you ever monetize it? How do you ever get rid of it? And then how do you not spend the rest of your life worried that people will talk and it comes back to you and you get in trouble. So the other reason I wanted to point out this show, this story on the show, is to reveal how we as human beings like to think. We're completely rational and intelligent and sophisticated. We like to think, oh, I know this particular vintage and year of the Bordeaux is so much better than others. And quite often, we're manipulated by media. We're manipulated by the bottle, the label, an advertisement we saw, where we think it was from research, we think we know the Mona Lisa is obviously the best piece of art in the world. Well, it's good art, there's no doubt about that. But the fact that so many people can name it as the best painting in the world is not a function of its true artistic merit. It's a function of publicity. Of media exposure of the way human beings process story it was an interesting story that in 1911 someone broke in stole the Mona Lisa and they didn't recover it for something like a year later it was quite a while it wasn't like the next day they found it in an alley so it generated lots and lots of media attention My point here is all of us when it comes to our likes, our so called tastes, our insights into the world we're all affected by by media messages, by stories, by mass media we might think we are not it was only a few years ago I didn't even realize the Mona Lisa had been stolen but I of course would have said oh the Mona Lisa is clearly one of the best paintings of the world without knowing why so that's the real power of the news media is quite often it shapes the zeitgeist in such a way that you don't even know why you have a particular opinion.
