The theft of the MASP paintings
São Paulo, 2007
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
In the early hours of December 20, 2007, three men broke into the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) on Avenida Paulista. According to the CCTV footage, they raised the entrance door with a hydraulic jack and smashed a glass door with a crowbar. Between 5:09 and 5:12 a.m., during the guards' shift change, they took Pablo Picasso's "Portrait of Suzanne Bloch" and Candido Portinari's "The Coffee Farmer".
The case exposed the museum's fragility: the galleries had no alarm, security was provided by unarmed guards, and the collection was uninsured because the premium was too expensive for the institution. The two canvases were valued at tens of millions of dollars. Police also investigated two failed break-in attempts earlier that year and, on January 8, 2008, recovered the paintings in a house in Ferraz de Vasconcelos, in Greater São Paulo, after arresting two suspects with long records of robberies. The return to the museum was scheduled for the following day.
Sources
In the game
Three Minutes
An art museum on a major avenue in central São Paulo, a Saturday in December, 10 a.m. On Thursday at 5:09 a.m., someone raised the steel entrance door with a hydraulic jack and smashed the glass door with a crowbar.
The game borrows the door raised with a jack at the shift change, the three minutes of the theft, the museum without an alarm or insurance, and the canvases hidden in a house in Greater São Paulo. Characters, paintings, investigation details and outcome are fiction.
