Less than a year after royal French jewels worth €88 million (about 137.2 billion won) were stolen from the world's largest Louvre Museum in October last year, the Renoir Museum in southern France was hit this time. Although the French government said it would strengthen security at museums and art museums and even unveiled measures, critics say the backdrop to French museums and art museums repeatedly becoming targets for thieves is a long-accumulated lack of investment in security. Analysts also noted that as ad hoc criminal groups formed through social media (SNS) have emerged, the very methods of museum theft have grown bolder, exploiting lax security nets.
According to Reuters and other outlets on the 8th (local time), at 6 a.m. that day, two works by Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir were stolen from the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer near Nice in southern France. Initially, the perpetrators tried to flee with four Renoir works. But when police responded to an alarm and gave chase, they abandoned two works, "Madame Pichon" and "Coco Reading," in the garden and ran.
The works currently missing are "Portrait de Madame Colonna Romano" and "Young Woman at the Well." Both pieces belong to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and had been on lending to the Renoir Museum. The Marseille prosecutor's office opened an investigation on suspicion of organized theft.
It is not the first time a museum or art museum has been robbed. On Oct. 19 last year, four thieves used a vehicle-mounted lift to break into the Louvre Museum in Paris and made off with eight royal jewels worth €88 million (about 137.2 billion won). On Jul. 24, "The Torque of Vix," a gold necklace of the Celtic people about 2,500 years old, was stolen in broad daylight from the Musée Pays Châtillonnais in the Burgundy region.
◇ Security investment sidelined for decades… France moves belatedly to reinforce
As thefts targeting art museums and museums continue in France, a vulnerable security regime is being cited as the cause. According to a report released this year by the National Assembly of France, a 2024 survey by the Ministry of Culture of museums and art museums nationwide found that only 54% of the 616 institutions that responded to security-related questions had video surveillance systems. In effect, nearly half lacked video surveillance. Only 23% had emergency and risk prevention plans, and 25% had completed cultural property protection plans. Just 64% had official security guidelines.
Staffing has also fallen. According to the French cultural union (CGT Culture), the number of permanent staff responsible for visitor services, monitoring, and storeroom management decreased 18% to 3,100 in 2024 from 3,776 in 2012. The National Assembly of France noted in the report that decades of underinvestment in museum and art museum security had an impact. In many facilities, security budgets were treated as items to be adjusted according to fiscal conditions or were pushed down the management's priority list. It was found that security levels also vary widely depending on the scale of the facility and the operating body—national, local government, or private.
The French government and museums have also begun to strengthen security. After blind spots in surveillance cameras and other security gaps were exposed during last year's Louvre theft, the Louvre decided to install 100 additional exterior surveillance cameras by the end of this year and to set up a police base on museum grounds. In July, the Ministry of Culture also unveiled 33 security enhancement measures and created a €30 million (about 4.66 billion won) security fund to prioritize support for 482 urgently needed security projects nationwide.
Even so, less than two months later, another theft occurred at the Renoir Museum. The Ministry of Culture called the incident "a brutal exposure of museums' vulnerability" and urged all institutions to immediately implement necessary emergency security measures. The ministry is also identifying facilities that urgently need additional support in 2027.
◇ "Ad hoc groups" gathered via SNS instead of professional theft rings… Changing art crime
Another problem, observers say, is that the very methods used to target museums are changing rapidly. Europol, the European Union (EU) police agency, released a report on Aug. 24 titled "Changing tactics, changing targets: the evolving nature of museum heists," analyzing that museum theft in Europe is shifting from past nonviolent, organized property crime to more direct and bolder forms.
The way criminal groups are organized has also changed. Instead of rings specializing in art theft, cases have emerged of temporary groups assembled via social media (SNS) participating in crimes. It was found that they hesitate little to use force, deploying large hammers, explosives, and even firearms during break-ins. High-value precious metals and jewels, as well as culturally important artifacts, are prime targets.
French museums and art museums now must both remedy existing security weaknesses and respond to rapidly changing criminal methods. Brienne Masson, the mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, said of the Renoir theft that "we must sound the alarm on the issue of protecting museums in the face of new forms of art crime."