A $15 million Picasso, reported stolen 14 years ago by the National
Museum of Modern Art in Paris, was formally turned over to the French
embassy in Washington on Thursday.
The painting, “La Coiffeusse”
(“The Hairdresser”) was found in a shipping container labeled a
“low-value handicraft” and valued at €30 euros ($33.42) by Immigration
and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations. It was part
of an official inspection
of a targeted shipment in December 2014 in
Newark, New Jersey, according to an ICE statement. “Picasso used to
say, ‘A painting truly exists in the eyes of the beholder.’ Returning to
the Musee National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, ‘La Coiffeuse’ will
come back to life and be seen again by the public,” Frederic Dore,
deputy chief of mission at the French Embassy, said at the transfer. The
painting was authenticated in January by two experts from the Paris
museum and, according to ICE, it had been listed in the Interpol Stolen
Works of Art database since its reported theft in 2001. “As our
world continues to shrink, protecting cultural treasures has become even
more important,” ICE Director Sarah Saldaña said at the official
transfer. This isn’t the only Picasso piece to find itself in the
possession of customs recently. Earlier this month his painting “Head of
a Young Woman” was seized by French customs after a tip that it was
being moved to Switzerland. The painting, said to be worth $27 million,
was seized from a Spanish banking billionaire’s yacht in Corsica, with
the painting being ruled a Spanish cultural asset and not supposed to
leave the country.