Tuesday, June 02, 2009

More Than Books Get Stolen from Libraries

One library seems to have found out the hard way that it had more to lose than books and computers. Fox News 44 reports on the Proctor, Vermont, librarian who took the art right off the wall...took it to auction, in fact:
A librarian in Proctor has resigned after auctioning off a valuable painting owned by the Proctor Free Library.

Police say head librarian Mary Brough admitted taking "Curly Locks," a 26-by-33-inch Jessie Wilcox Smith painting that for years hung on the wall in a children's section of the library. The 1912 painting was sold for $96,600 to a Massachusetts auction house.
And she thought she could get away with this? What is her husband really saying?

8 comments:

  1. Rather bold, I'd say. You do have to wonder why people think they can get away with such obvious thefts. We have people arrested for embezzlement almost monthly at our outlet mall. You actually make better money if you keep the job . . .

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  2. Who would pay 96K for that? But then again, what do I know about art? I would've let it hang there till the end of time.

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  3. She resigned? She RESIGNED? They didn't fire her? Much less press charges? What is really going on here?

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  4. Bookfool, sometimes I think criminals are just so convinced that they deserve whatever it is they want that they have a hard time believing they will ever be caught.

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  5. I'm with you, Suzy. Even if I had that kind of money, I would have a hard time turning lose of $96K for one piece of art...just not built that way.

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  6. Factotum, I have to think that her husband might have had more to do with this than the she had. The end of the article leaves the whole story wide open for that kind of interpretation, anyway.

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  7. I love to randomly google my friends, and I was shattered to see this. I was a recent import to Rutland County and have been to their home multiple times, always finding them lovely people.

    A part of me is glad you posted this, and a part of me wishes I hadn't seen it.

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  8. I see that the link to the entire article has gone dead, Anonymous, but I remember being very suspicious of both people in this couple...the details are fuzzy now, however. Sorry if this causes you to feel differently about your friends. Hopefully, they have seen the error of their ways now, and they have put this whole episode behind them.

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