Who stole Australia’s most expensive painting, Pablo Picasso’s ‘The Weeping Woman’? It was the question that wracked the collective consciousness of the nation in 1986. Staggeringly, the crime has never been solved. Even more astounding, though, was that no one noticed for two days that the controversial $2 million vision in acid green (uninsured) had been swiped from the walls of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).
It wasn’t until a typewritten ransom note arrived on Monday 4 August, from a group going by the name of the Australian Cultural Terrorists (ACT), that the heist was made known to the gallery. A few hours later, they alerted an insatiably intrigued public. This infamous event is the subject of Framed, a gripping new four-part documentary presented by the Walkley Award-winning presenter of The Feed, Marc Fennell, and directed by Corrin Grant.
The institution was, at the time, struggling to attract more visitors and funds, hence the jaw-dropping purchase by then director Patrick McCaughey. Fennell notes that this wasn’t quite the attention they were after when McCaughey said, “This painting will haunt Melbourne for the next 100 years.” 
When asked if the notoriety inadvertently aided the cause of cultural relevance, Fennell says, “I don’t think anybody inside the NGV past or present would regard the theft as a positive. And, indeed, I must say that the NGV today would very much prefer we weren’t doing this.”
No one noticed the painting was missing for two days. Source: SBS
It really was a shemozzle, though the gallery certainly benefited from beefed up security in the aftermath of the audacious gambit. But who was responsible, and why? The first clue came in that initial ransom note. It took a rather pointed swipe at the arts and police minister of the day, Race (or, as it dubbed him, Rank) Mathews, demanding that he increase funding for the arts and create an annual art prize dubbed ‘The Picasso Ransom’. If their demands were not met within seven days, the ACT insisted they would burn ‘The Weeping Woman’.
The Victorian government did not accede, instead offering a $50,000 reward for any tip-off leading to its recovery. A nationwide investigation was sparked, and the painting was later recovered undamaged in a locker in Spencer Street station on 9 August. Framed attempts to get to the bottom of what was going on.
Fennell speaks to journalists Margaret Simon and Virginia Trioli, art critic Ashley Crawford, detective sergeant Bob Quigley, and former NGV chief conservator Thomas Dixon, among others. But the doco is about far more than simply who swiped the painting. “The whodunnit has always been the least interesting part to me,” Fennell says. “The fact that it was done means a lot of people have kept it a secret. And that already tells you something about the culture of the time.”
There was a great deal of frustration with the NGV, and not just from a general public bewildered by the price tag of ‘The Weeping Woman’. A new generation of contemporary artists rattled sabres at the gallery’s perceived lack of support for local talent. Indeed, one such artist, Juan Davila, painted a replacement, ‘Picasso Theft’, offering it to the NGV while criticising them for precisely that. As Framed reminds us, the timing of this cheeky stunt raised yet more questions, and the re-do was promptly stolen too.
Marc Fennell talks to Virginia Trioli about the heist. Source: SBS
It just gets weirder and weirder, which makes the story irresistible to Fennell. “I covered a $10 million heist of nuts in California,” he says of Audible podcast , also pointing to his ABC podcast series . Of the latter, he says, “One of the things that series taught me is you’ve got to keep an eye on whose story wasn’t told the first time around. And that’s really what this is about. Okay, so there’s this funny, very quirky, interesting crime, but there are a whole bunch of unexpected victims.”
Framed needed to examine the collateral damage. “Sometimes what gets lost with true crime is that there are real victims, and they’re not always the expected ones.”
There’s also the big picture of cultural cringe. “Australia for better for worse, well, mostly for worse, has always looked overseas to validate itself,” Fennell notes. “Our institutions still rely on blockbuster exhibitions from Europe, primarily. The issue highlighted with the theft of ‘The Weeping Woman’ persists. I think we’re getting better, no doubt. And there’s always an inexorable march towards something a bit fairer and a bit more proud. But I do think it speaks to a sense of being unsure what Australia actually means.”
And that’s a bigger question still. “On the one hand, I think it’s good for a nation to constantly be searching for its identity, particularly one as complicated as Australia. There’s First Nations history, then we have white Australia, then wave upon wave of migration. And I think this gets to the heart of what SBS is, to chart that changing identity.”
So many questions: Marc Fennell presents 'Framed'. Source: SBS
How we value Australian art, and who owns that conversation, is central to Framed. “It’s a constant negotiation, and it always will be, because Australia is in a constant conversation as to what it means to be Australian, because of that act of colonisation,” Fennell says.
While he thinks he knows who was ultimately responsible for the theft, he’s keenly aware that duelling opinions allow for many interpretations. It would make for a cracking dramatic feature, he agrees. “The greatest thing about Framed is that you could make 15 different movies and all of them would be plausible. They might not be true or accurate or right.”
The thing with history is, he says, it happens once, but gets told many times. “And every time it gets told, hopefully you get closer to the thing that actually happened. There’s no such thing as absolute truth, but every time you do it, you try and add a different piece to the story that hasn’t been told, hopefully.”
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