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<div class="body-head"><b><span class="deck">Thieves take works of Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock from the museum in Scranton.</span></b>
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<b><span class="creditline">By KRIS WERNOWSKY kwernowsky@leader.net</span></b>
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SCRANTON – The works of two renowned American artists were targeted in an early morning break-in Friday at Scranton’s Everhart Museum, according to police and museum officials.

Two pieces – Andy Warhol’s silk-screen print “Le Grande Passion” and a painting by abstract expressionist artist Jackson Pollock titled “Springs Winter” – were taken from the museum’s main gallery at about 2:30 a.m., a museum spokesman said.

Scranton police were notified minutes after the thieves tripped the museum’s motion sensors. The thieves appeared to have been aided by a large tent covering the museum’s back entrance for an event, said FBI investigators and Scranton police.

The burglars broke through a pair of doors to gain entry to the main gallery of the Everhart. None of the other pieces on display was disturbed and no other damage was done to the building, according to museum spokesman Joseph Palumbo. The museum’s surveillance cameras were not working at the time, officials said.

Investigators haven’t determined whether the burglary is the work of professional art thieves or if it is an isolated incident. JerriaWilliams, an agent with the FBI in Philadelphia said it was a relatively quick job, taking less than 10 minutes from start to finish.

“That, of course, will give some indication to the investigators about the sophistication of the burglary,” she said.

The Warhol print is a permanent part of the Everhart’s collection. Warhol created the work in 1984 on commission for an ad campaign for Grand Passion cognac. The piece would have an auction value of about $15,000, art dealer Pierette VanCleve told The Associated Press.

The Pollock painting was on loan to the museum for display from a private collector. Pollock’s 1949 oil-on-canvas painting would be comparable to a similar work of his that sold at auction for $11.6 million in May 2004, said Helen Harrison, director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, N.Y.

Police in Scranton made limited information about the burglary available, saying the matter is under investigation. Sgt. Richard Kryeski said there were signs of forced entry, but no information about suspects was made available Friday.

Scranton police are working in conjunction with the FBI’s Art Crime Division, a subsection of the investigative bureau that started in November 2004. The division consists of eight agents stationed in regional offices in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Salt Lake City who are specially trained in art and antiquity related focus.

Robert Wittman, senior investigator for the FBI’s Art Crime Team in Philadelphia said art is an alluring target for would-be thieves because the values of certain pieces generally become known through highly publicized auctions. For example, at a Nov. 1 event at Christie’s auction house in New York, 60 pieces of Impressionist and modern art sold for more than $160 million.

But unloading works of known masters is more difficult than most imagine, according to Wittman.

“The thieves go in and steal the stuff and they don’t have an idea, at that moment, who they’re going to sell it to. The thieves generally have a very hard time trying to dispose of the paintings. Many times that’s how they are caught.”

Wittman took part in an undercover sting in Copenhagen, Denmark, early this year that led to the arrest of an Iraqi art dealer who attempted to sell him a 16th-century Rembrandt self-portrait for $250,000, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The painting, valued at $36 million, was stolen in December 2000 from a museum in Stockholm, Sweden, Wittman said.

Still, despite the risks black market dealers face in selling valuable pieces, the FBI estimates theft amounts to a $6 billion a year loss for the art world. And most art thieves aren’t nabbing valuable art to display in their homes, said Wittman, who has investigated art crimes for nearly 17 years. It’s mostly for profit.

He said the value of many pieces is diminished by underground sales because to be sold at full value they must include a proven history and a title.

“In today’s day and age, with the Internet, and with our department and Interpol, you can’t sell those paintings anywhere,” he said. “Police departments from Scranton to London are going to know as well as auction houses and dealers.”

<i>The Associated Press contributed to this story.</i>

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<b>Artist</b>: Andy Warhol

<b>Born</b>: Aug. 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh

<b>Died</b>: Feb. 22, 1987, in New York

<b>Why he’s famous</b>: Warhol, who got his start as a successful commercial artist, became popular in the early 1960s for his satirical images of banal products such as Coke bottles and Campbell’s soup cans. He also began painting celebrities, most notably Marilyn Monroe, at about the same time. By 1963, Warhol substituted painting for silk screening. Warhol also dabbled in film and writing.

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<b>Artist</b>: Jackson Pollock

<b>Born</b>: Jan. 28, 1912, in Cody, Wyo.

<b>Died</b>: Aug 11, 1956, in the Springs, East Hampton, N.Y., in a car crash.

<b>Why he’s famous: </b>Pollock settled permanently in New York in 1934, where he worked in several long-running art shows. In 1943 he had his first solo show at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery. He was a pioneering American artist in the abstract expressionist genre whose work was influenced by Pablo Picasso.

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<i><span class="tagline">Kris Wernowsky, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 831-7329.</span></i>

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Everhart robbed of 2 pieces