I'd love to say "April Fool!" except this really happened and the only fool involved was a suspect apprehended at lightning speed. In the wee hours of April 1 someone picked up a rock, smashed open a window at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin, Australia, gained entry to its Aboriginal Gallery and scooped up seven works of art before making a hasty exit. The thief, however, appears to have suffered immediate "buyer's remorse" (or perhaps was dizzy from loss of blood--the jagged bits of broken window proved merciless), because he promptly left all seven in shrubbery close to the Museum.

Northern Territory Police quickly recovered the paintings, valued at $500K (AU) but priceless in reality. Curators confirmed any damage was minimal, though art lovers everywhere should be very, very grateful that nothing got wet during what is the rainy season. As for the alleged B&E man, he was nabbed (still bleeding) while sleeping off a bender in a Darwin bus stop. All's well that ends well? Perhaps.

The reason six of these works are described as priceless is that they were created in an extremely small window of time--the very beginning of the Papunya Tula art movement. Papunya Tula is an Aboriginal settlement in the Western Desert whose male elders, in 1971, began painting traditional cultural designs using semi-permanent paints on boards (much as they'd been painting on temporary mediums for centuries). Almost from the first moment their paintings were displayed at an art gallery in Alice Springs, collector interest and controversy ran high. The controversy has never dimmed with these particular early works, because they depict sacred, secret symbolism from male rituals. (In fact, I had an image of one of the stolen boards for you, but have decided not to publish it. The more I investigated, the clearer it became that these are highly sensitive, and wide publication can be cause for shock and outrage within the Indigenous Australian community.)

Some of the stolen paintings were 1971 purchases by the foresightful, then-new Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. This was mere months after the artists began to paint, and prior to their forming the Papunya Tula artists' cooperative in 1972.

By 1973, their initial painting style had already shifted to the "Dot Painting" most commonly associated with Indigenous Australian art in the present day. And this, you see, is where the word "priceless" shows its true worth. The candid 1971-73 board paintings were relatively few in number and fewer yet have survived. Those that exist almost never come on the market, and the minuscule handful that do are subject to strict export controls. (Hint: You'd export a stuffed bald eagle from the US just about as easily. "National heritage," Kids.) The original Papunya Tula painters are all deceased and, with their passing, we lost any chance of public explanation for the rapid early style-shift. Whether or not the artists decided to begin concealing much of the symbolism for sacredness' sake will continue to be debated until people quit talking about art.

So, while it's thrilling to read that these paintings were lost and found so quickly it might seem like an April Fool's prank, trying to educate myself about early Papunya Tula board paintings has opened an intellectual can of worms. If they are as culturally sensitive as they surely seem to be (seriously, I feel remorseful over having seen images another news agency published), where, if anywhere, is it politically correct to have them on view? Should they be moved to a museum only accessible to Western Desert peoples? If so, should only men be allowed to see them? Or should they remain in other museums, only rarely hung but under conservational oversight?

It also seems odd that early reports of the theft mentioned that two people were filmed by security cameras. Last but not least, I'm a bit baffled that an inebriated, clumsy man knew exactly where this small lot of pivotal paintings were housed within a rather large museum. Even if I take my enormous native skepticism out of the equation, and rightfully discount years of youthful Nancy Drew series reading, this still strikes me as awfully coincidental.