Police Looking for 'Amateurish' Thieves Accused of Bombing Dutch Gallery in Heists of Warhol Prints

Mar. 15, 2025

Andy Warhol’s “Reigning Queens” (1985).Photo:MPV Gallery

MPV Gallery

About two weeks after the art galleryadvertisedthe “unique” showing ofAndy Warhol’s “complete series” of “Reigning Queens,” the Netherland’s MPV Gallery was robbed in an art heist in which thieves made off with two of the pop artist’s 1985 prints and ruined the rest of the four-piece set.

Mark Peet Visser, the gallery owner, confirmed the costly caper in aninterviewwith the Associated Press on Friday, Nov. 1, saying that in the early hours that day, burglars had bombed the gallery in an attack “so violent that my entire building was destroyed” in an attempt to steal all four queen prints.

Citing security camera footage of the theft, Visser told the AP the burglary was “amateurish,” noting that with the four queens in tow “they ran to the car with the artworks and it turns out that they won’t fit in the car.”

Andy Warhol’s screen prints of Queen Elizabeth II were displayed at Paleis Het Loo, a palace museum in Apeldoorn, Netherlands in October 2024.AP Photo/Peter Dejong

AP Photo/Peter Dejong

He said the thieves “ripped” the prints from the frames, damaging them “beyond repair, because it is impossible to get them out undamaged.”

Police have called for witnesses to come forward in the case, per the AP.

Andy Warhol’s screen prints of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands were displayed at Paleis Het Loo, a palace museum in Apeldoorn, Netherlands in October 2024.AP Photo/Peter Dejong

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The queens – most sold separately – were soon scattered across the globe, and Visser claimed in the release that: “It is unknown how many Reigning Queens series have been broken up and how many remain intact.”

The reunion of the four queens to be displayed and sold together at the art fair later this month was one “offered only sporadically on the art market,” the gallery owner said in the release, adding: “This makes the Reigning Queens series one of the most sought-after series for art collectors, bringing record amounts time and again.”Early Friday, the thieves ultimately fled with queens Elizabeth and Margrethe. Unable to get the other royals inside the vehicle, the gallery owner told the AP that Beatrix and Ntombi Tfwala had been discarded on the street.

source: people.com