When a Salvador Dalí Sketch Was Stolen from Rikers Island Jail (2003)

In 2003, a Sal­vador Dalí draw­ing was stolen from Rik­ers Island, one of the for­mi­da­ble pris­ons within the Unit­ed States. That the inci­dent has nev­er been used as the idea for a serious movement pic­ture appears inex­plic­a­ble, at the very least till you be taught the small print. A display screen­author must adapt it as not a stan­dard heist film however a com­e­dy of errors, start­ning with the very con­cep­tion of the crime. Plainly just a few Rik­ers guards con­spired sur­rep­ti­tious­ly to switch the artwork­work, which held on a lob­by wall, with a pretend. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for them, they made a less-than-con­vinc­ing exchange­ment, and even when it had been detail-per­fect, how did they anticipate to promote a singular work whose crim­i­nal show­nance can be so obvi­ous?

But the job was, in some sense, a suc­cess, in that the draw­ing was nev­er actu­al­ly discovered. Dalí cre­at­ed it in 1965, when he was invit­ed by Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tion Com­mis­sion­er Anna Moscowitz Kross to fulfill with Rik­ers Island’s inmates. “Kross, the primary feminine com­mis­sion­er of the jail sys­tem, believed in reha­bil­i­tat­ing pris­on­ers with artwork, includ­ing paint­ing ses­sions and the­ater professional­duc­tions,” writes James Fanel­li, telling the sto­ry in Esquire. As for the artist, “so long as town’s information­pa­pers can be there to cap­ture his magazine­nan­i­mous act, he was recreation” — however within the occasion, a 101-degree fever stored him from get­ting on the fer­ry to the jail that day. As an alternative, he dashed off a picture of Christ on the cross (not an unfa­mil­iar sub­ject for him) and despatched it in his stead.

“For close to­ly 20 years, it hung within the pris­on­ers’ mess corridor,” writes Fanel­li. “In 1981, after an inmate lobbed a cof­charge cup on the paint­ing, break­ing its glass cas­ing and leav­ing a stain, the Dalí was tak­en down.” It then went from apprais­er to gallery to stor­age to the trash bin, from which it was saved by a guard. By 2003, it had finish­ed up within the lob­by of one of many ten jails that con­sti­tute the Rik­ers Island com­plex, hung by the Pep­si machine. That nobody paid the work a lot thoughts, and extra in order that it has been appraised at one mil­lion dol­lars, was clear­ly not misplaced on the make use of­ee who mas­ter­thoughts­ed the heist. But although they man­aged to catch his accom­plices, the inves­ti­ga­tors had been nev­er ready authorized­ly to discourage­mine who that mas­ter­thoughts was.

Learn­ers of Fanel­li’s sto­ry, or view­ers of the Inside Edi­tion video on the prime of the submit, might properly discover them­selves sus­pect­ing a par­tic­u­lar cor­rec­tions supply, who suc­cess­ful­ly important­tained his inno­cence regardless of being named by all his col­leagues who did get con­vic­tions. Any drama­ti­za­tion of the Rik­ers Island Dalí heist must make its personal deter­mi­na­tion about whether or not he or some­one else was actual­ly the ring­chief, and it would even need to make a guess as to the ulti­mate destiny of the stolen draw­ing itself. One isn’t total­ly dis­happy to imag­ine it hold­ing right this moment in a hid­den room within the out­er-bor­ough house of some retired jail guard: made in haste and with scant inspi­ra­tion, dam­aged by cof­charge and poor stor­age con­di­tions, and pos­si­bly ripped aside and put again togeth­er once more, however a Dalí nonethe­much less.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Nice­est Artwork Heist in His­to­ry: How the Mona Lisa Was Stolen from the Lou­vre (1911)

How Artwork Will get Stolen: What Hap­pened to Egon Schiele’s Paint­ing Boats Mir­rored within the Water After Its Theft by the Nazis

How Jan van Eyck’s Mas­ter­piece, the Ghent Altar­piece, Turned the Most Stolen Work of Artwork in His­to­ry

When Ger­man Per­for­mance Artist Ulay Stole Hitler’s Favourite Paint­ing & Hung it within the Liv­ing Room of a Turk­ish Immi­grant Fam­i­ly (1976)

Take a Vir­tu­al Actual­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Artwork

Mod­ern Artwork Was Used As a Tor­ture Tech­nique in Jail Cells Dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il Battle

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the guide The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly often called Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.