Fine Art... Monday

From "Armed Robbers Steal 4 Masterworks in Zurich" (NYT, February 12, 2008):

Three thieves, wearing dark clothes and ski masks, walked into the Emile Bührle Foundation, a private collection housed a couple of miles outside of Zurich’s city center, around 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, a short while before the museum was due to close. The collection is considered to be one of the biggest privately owned collections of French impressionists in the world.

While one held a pistol and ordered visitors and staff members to lie on the floor in the main room of the museum, the two other men removed the four paintings from the wall: Monet’s “Poppy Field at Vetheuil,” “Ludovic Lepic and his daughter” by Edgar Degas, Van Gogh’s “Blooming Chestnut Branches,” and Cézanne’s “Boy in the Red Waistcoat.” Their total worth is estimated at $163 million.

Postscript
I saw exactly eleven minutes and twenty-three seconds of the Grammy Awards program last night: the second half of the dueling pianos in "Rhapsody in Blue" and Amy Winehouse's "Rehab." I have a feeling I saw the only eleven minutes and twenty-three seconds I would have enjoyed. How lucky was that?

Speaking of television, with the writers' strike ending, I was wondering when I might expect to see some new "House." This article was helpful.

All right, then. We just made this year's first batch of saltine toffee, so I'm off to eat, teach, and -- a little later -- work/write.

Read. Think. Learn.

Listen.

Enjoy.