Above: The 1656 painting “The Pellkussen gate near river
Vecht in Utrecht” by Jan van Goyen is seen in this image
released by City Museum IJsselstein, Netherlands, Tuesday
May 12, 2009. Art thieves broke into a museum in a small
Dutch town and stole six 17th- and 19th-century Dutch
landscapes. City spokesman Mark de Kok says three of the
stolen paintings were river scenes by Jan van Goyen, a
Rembrandt contemporary. De Kok said two more paintings
were damaged when the thieves dropped them as they
escaped. He said the burglary took place overnight. Monday.
It was the second art heist this month in the Netherlands.

AP
Tues., May 12, 2009

AMSTERDAM – Thieves pried open the emergency door of a small Dutch museum with an iron bar and made off with six 17th- and 19th-century landscape paintings — the second major art heist in 10 days in the Netherlands. Read more.

Review: Ethiopian Artist Elias Simé at Santa Monica
Museum of Art

Above: Simé walks among some of his sculptures at the
Santa Monica Museum of Art. Credit: Michael Robinson
Chavez/LAT.

To step into the fantastically jam-packed installation now at the Santa Monica
Museum of Art is to step into another world: a nuanced universe suffused with compassion, sensuality and wisdom, a place so far removed from the cold calculations and multi-tasking distractions of life in Los Angeles that it seems you have to be a specialist (or very privileged) to go there.

It’s all too easy to see the 60-plus sculptures, 40-odd paintings, seven thrones and five wall reliefs by Ethiopian artist Elias Simé as an anthropologist would: ingenious artifacts from a fully formed culture fundamentally different from our own and probably part of a way of life being squeezed out by global consumerism.

But “Elias Simé: Eye of the Needle, Eye of the Heart” is nothing of the sort. Read more.