What is it with the French and art theft?

Like nearly every Hollywood version of art theft, the thieves don’t just differ from reality, they border on the absurd. Such is the case with the latest iteration of Thomas Crown, this time with Michael B. Jordan portraying the suave art-craving multi-millionaire. The teaser for the film was just released and it looks, well, silly.

Ocean’s Twelve came out 22 years ago filled with the same tropes. The only thing that made sense in that film was the nationality of the art thief. The “gentleman thief” was known as the Night Fox—a French master thief whose true name was Francois Toulour. Toulour is a wealthy millionaire playboy, of course. It’s common knowledge that Hollywood is incredibly risk-averse. That’s why every movie is a remake or a sequel nowadays. But one wonders how depressing it must be to have the talent to write screenplays yet be expected to turn out the same stuff over and over. I suppose the paychecks are worth it.

Unfortunately for L’Hexagone, however, choosing a French thief probably made sense. It seems that France is working very hard to claim the title of the world’s worst place for fine art.

The nation has history on its side in its race towards infamy. Napoleon was one of history’s most notorious art thieves, taking thousands of priceless paintings, statues, and manuscripts from conquered European nations. The 20th century, which was a booming time for art theft, began, of course, with the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. And Stephane Breitwieser, a real-life Night Fox (minus the millionaire playboy status) who was immortalized in Michael Finkel’s best seller The Art Thief, lived in the Alsace region of northeastern France.

More recently, France has seen another theft at the Louvre (October 2025), this time of crown jewels valued at $100 million during an audacious daytime heist; the theft of $5 million in jewels from Musee Lalique earlier this month; and heists from smaller French museums, to include the Cognacq-Jay Museum, the Hiéron Museum (both in November 2024), and the Musée du Pays Châtillonnais (last week) in which more jewels and gold artifacts have been taken.

This recent trend—the theft of high value cultural pieces from museums that are not paintings—is cause for examination. Are thieves in France becoming wise to the fact that museum-quality paintings are far too difficult to monetize and thus turning their attention to items that can be sold much more easily? Or is this the work of a gang focused solely on jewels and gold?

The latter is quite possible. After examining transcripts of police interviews of the Louvre thieves, Le Monde reported that one of them, Abdoulaye N, said they were instructed to, “Break windows and retrieve jewelry from inside the display cases.”

For context, the Louvre has 3,000 of the world’s greatest paintings hanging on its walls. But they were not targeted. The person referred to as “the mastermind” of the heist (most likely a leader of a disorganized crime gang), had no interest in those.

A second thief, Ghelamallah A, said he originally thought the plan was to rob, “a jewelry store where they make jewelry in Paris” and not the Louvre. This latter point is interesting. Could the so-called mastermind also have been behind the Lalique theft? While Lalique is not in Paris, but instead is 4.5 hours away by car in Wingen-sur-Moder, France, it certainly fits the bill as a “jewelry store where they make jewelry.” Perhaps it is a coincidence, but as my mentor Jurek Rokoszynski constantly reminded me: “In this line of work, there are no coincidences, mate.”

All hope is not lost for France, though. This week, The Art Newspaper reported that Culture Minister Catherine Pegard unveiled a “national security plan” at a press briefing, reminding custodians of cultural patrimony “no place is being spared, from the smallest church to the biggest museum.”

The minister’s team has identified more than 3,100 museums, monuments and churches deemed “sensitive places.” Pegard has earmarked €30 million (USD 34.6 million) over three years to improve security at local museums. Used prudently, that amount of money can go a long way towards hardening a good portion of the nation’s most vulnerable institutions. I hope that they take a risk-based approach to spending this money, utilizing experienced vulnerability assessors who understand the best way to mitigate the problems they find.