A Picasso painting that pays respect to the people who make our hair look good is being returned to France after 14 years of being missing.
The artist's “La Coiffeuse” — or “The Hairdresser” — turned up in February in Newark. That's where it was seized by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and turned over to Homeland Security following December shipment from Belgium to the United States. After the discovery of the oil artwork painted in 1911 and worth millions, Loretta Lynch, then U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of the United States now U.S. attorney general, began a civil action to win possession. The canvas is a study in blacks, whites, greys and dull coloring. In 2001, staffers at the painting's home at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris discovered it missing from a storeroom.
U.S. officials will return the painting in a ceremony at the French Embassy in Washington on Thursday. No one at the embassy could be reached late Wednesday. “The painting is part of our heritage,” Francois Richard, France's customs attache in the United States, said. “It is also excellent news for the public who will have the chance to see this unique piece of art again.”
Present at Thursday's ceremony at the embassy will be Frederic Dore, deputy chief of the French mission to the United States, Sarah Saldana, Immigration and Customs enforcement director, and Kelly Currie, acting U.S. attorney.
The painting was last seen in 1998 during an exhibition in Munich. When the Centre Georges Pompidou staffers discovered it gone, they were preparing to loan it to India for exhibition. The director and press representative of the center could not be reached late Wednesday, and automatically generated e-mails indicated they were on vacation. A third representative at the center could not be reached. The center was conceived by the late Georges Pompidou, a former president and former prime minister of France. It is one of the most visited tourist sites in France, according to its website.
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