Two art pieces were stolen and others disturbed from the Skyline Faculty Gallery Exhibition on the evening or early morning between Sept. 10 and 11.
Three days after the gallery’s opening a drawing and photograph belonging to Aya Artola and Arthur Takayama, respectively, were reported missing by the gallery assistant the morning of Sept. 11.
No other pieces were stolen, but several had been moved. Wasan Hasan, the morning assistant, said that some paintings hung askew when the day before they had been straight.
It remains unknown what time the pieces were stolen because no alarms or security cameras were in place at the time of the break-in.
Because of this, Skyline has no viable leads, or suspects, according to Skyline Police Chief Brian Tupper.
The district began installing new cameras and alarms systems last year.
“[The gallery burglary] helped identify one of the gaps in our system: we do have video coverage in the area, it’s just not isolated to the gallery theatre,” Tupper said.
Skyline security finished installing the camera and internal alarm system about three weeks after the break-in before the end of the Faculty exhibition.
It was the first exhibition in memory to have a burglary in the past 19 years of according to Gallery Director Paul Bridenbaugh, who said he was surprised that it happened.
“It’s a very sad thing,” said Skyline President Victoria Morrow, referring to the pieces that were stolen.
The artists replaced their stolen work with new pieces shortly after the thefts, and the exhibition continued until its close on Oct. 12 with no further break-ins.
