Egypt launches assessment of all country's art collections

Aug 28, 2010, 15:41 GMT

Cairo - Egypt's Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni formed several committees to conduct an evaluation and inventory of all antiquities and masterpieces in museums across the country in the wake of the theft of a priceless Vincent van Gogh painting, his office said on Saturday.

'All art and national museums will do a comprehensive assessment to gather all data about their collections,' the ministry said in a statement, without elaborating further about the inventory.

The committees, which were created in the wake of an embarrassing robbery of the van Gogh artwork last week, will report on a daily basis to the minister.

Earlier this week, the ministry launched plans to set up a security control room to monitor all museums after thieves made off in broad daylight with a valuable painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist from Cairo's Mahmoud Khalil Museum, on the west bank of the Nile.

The robbery of van Gogh's Poppy Flowers painting, reportedly worth an estimated 50 million dollars, was blamed on on poor security, including broken cameras and a failed alarm system at the museum.

A deputy minister and four museum employees were arrested, accused of negligence and not enforcing better security measures to protect the collections.

A search for the painting is still ongoing, as Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris offered a reward of one million Egyptian pounds (about 175,000 dollars) for information leading to the recovery of of the stolen masterpiece.

In 1978, the same painting was stolen but returned shortly afterward from Kuwait, sparking a debate in Egypt about whether the artwork was a fake.