Quis Custodief?

The sight that greeted the curators of Milan's Gallery of Modern Art one morning last week looked like another ho-hum piece of conceptual art: 28 picture frames lying flat on the parquet floor. In fact, it was another Italian spe cialita della casa--art theft. In the hours before dawn, thieves had broken in through a window and spirited off about $2.3 million worth of paintings left to the museum in 1956 by Sicilian Industrialist Carlo Grassi. The haul included a Cezanne, a Bonnard, a Renoir, a Vuillard, a Van Gogh, a Gauguin, a Millet and a brace of Corots. The thieves, said Director Mercedes Garberi, "displayed a very refined taste." Giovanni Spadolini, Italy's Minister of the Cultural Patrimony, was already in shock from the theft of two Piero della Francescas and a Raphael from Urbino twelve days before. Said he: "This theft sounds an ultimate alarm against the state of neglect and abandon in which both the national and local museums of this country find themselves."

The crucial bell that did not sound, however, was the museum's own. Although five guards were in the building during the theft, they had turned off the museum's electronic alarm system for fear it would disturb their sleep.

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