Displaying items by tag: amherst college

Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) photo curator David Little is decamping from Minnesota to Massachusetts where he will become the Director and Chief Curator of the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College starting August 31.

In his seven year tenure at the MIA, Little organized more than 20 exhibitions including “The Sports Show,” a pioneering 2012 examination of the history of sports photography.

Amherst College in Massachusetts and the FBI are reopening the investigation into a theft from the campus art museum that took place nearly 40 years ago. In February 1975, three centuries-old paintings worth more than $400,000 were stolen from the college’s Mead Art Museum. Two of the paintings were recovered in 1989 following a federal sting operation in Illinois, but “Interior with Figures Smoking and Drinking” by the Dutch artist Jan Baptist Lambrechts was never found.

Since joining the Mead in 2006, the museum’s head of security, Heath Cummings, has been examining museum files, college archives and old newspaper stories as well as speaking with various art experts and law enforcement agents. Cummings brought his information to the FBI, hoping that the agency would agree to take a fresh look at the case.

The FBI is hoping that the renewed search will generate new leads and tips from the public.