- An unnamed businessman left the painting behind while traveling from Dusseldorf to Tel Aviv.
- Working with local police, his nephew discovered the painting worth $340K in a recycling bin for paper.
It’s been a while since I’ve traveled (since, oh, February 2020), but I’m notorious for leaving things behind. My passport in a cab right before an international flight. Or my suitcase at baggage claim trying to make a connecting train. I’ve left purses, backpacks, a trail of beloved possessions behind me. I’d like to think that if something were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, I’d keep closer track of it, but I don’t have the track record to support that hope.
An unattended package that’s worth something.
On Nov. 27, while checking in for his flight from Dusseldorf to Tel Aviv, a businessman set a painting by the French surrealist Yves Tanguy on the counter. It was wrapped in cardboard and, apparently, not a priority in his mind. He left it behind as he went through security and on with his day.
The 16 by 24-inch painting, despite being worth over a quarter million, probably looked to the outside world like garbage. How often do you encounter anything in the world, wrapped in cardboard or otherwise, and think that it might actually be worth something?
You’ve got to empathize with the businessman, stuck on a six-hour flight, unable to do anything about the painting. He must have just been sitting there sweating. Or, maybe he was blissfully unaware until he arrived at his destination, and someone said, “Hey, where’s the painting?”
Tanguy, the painter, was around during the first half of the 20th century, contemporary with Dali, although considerably less notable. You can bet no one leaves Dali paintings behind in airports.
If you want something done right, do it yourself.
Several emails between the painting’s owner and the Dusseldorf airport turned up nary a lead. It’s easy to ignore emails (just look at my inbox. sorry, not sorry). When someone is standing in your face demanding answers, it’s hard to just shrug off lost property. At least theoretically. I’ve stood in lost baggage at airports and had people literally shrug in my face about my chances of finding them.
The businessman’s nephew traveled from neighboring Belgium to speak with the local police. Doing some good old-fashioned detective work, they tracked the lost painting (remember, wrapped in cardboard) to a paper recycling bin.
Crisis averted, and perhaps the only time anyone’s retrieved lost property from an airport.