Painting was recovered in 2014 after interception by vigilant US customs officers
Pablo Picasso's La Coiffeuse was discovered to have been stolen in 2001 and seized in December 2014. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Picasso’s 1911 painting La Coiffeuse (the dressing table), which was stolen from the Centre Pompidou in 2001, will go back on view at the Paris museum on 24 March. The painting was seized by US customs in Newark, New Jersey, in December 2014, en route from Belgium to Queens, New York, when officers became suspicious that a package described as a $37 Christmas gift would be sent to a climate-controlled storage facility.
La Coiffeuse—which entered the Centre Pompidou’s collection in 1967 after Georges Salles bequeathed it to the French government—was officially returned to the museum last 24 September. But it needed five months of restoration before it was ready to be shown again, having suffered damage due to poor storage conditions for more than a decade.
Visitors to the Centre Pompidou on 24 March will be able to chat with the restoration team, as part of the third edition of Museum Live, a free evening “micro-festival” with special performances and programming for the public to interact with artists, museum professionals and donors.
