[Art] Steven Spielberg: Communist, Art Thief or Sucka

This may not be the most important art story of the week, especially following the heist of two Picasso paintings from the home of a collector in Paris, but it is a great story of art theft recovery. It seems that Hollywood director Steven Spielberg is a collector of great works, and one of those works, a Norman Rockwell painting called Russian Schoolroom (above) actually turns out to be the same one that was stolen from a St. Louis art gallery in 1973, unbeknownst to Spielberg. The New York Post reports that Spielberg bought the painting at a legitimate auction in New York in 1989.

What I love about this story is that there are so many different angles to report from. Is the FBI art theft division completely incompetent for not realizing that a stolen work was being auctioned off publicly in the late 1980s? Will Spielberg be pegged as just another Hollywood elite pinko for owning a painting of a Russian school children facing a bust of Lenin? (Someone Ouija Joseph McCarthy now!) Was Spielberg complicit in the posession of stolen property? Or is Spielberg just a chump art collector for not even knowing the history behind his own collection?

It's so fascinating. But from my purely selfish end, I want the painting returned to the Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. Why? Because I have family there with connections to Norman Rockwell and the museum, and I want to see this painting! Especially because it shows one of the more controversial sides of an artist usually heralded for his portrayals of American values.