Friday’s Art Notes

Paris Modern Art Museum, which was closed after five works — including paintings by modern masters Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso — were stolen. Photo by Bertrand Langlois/ AFP/ Getty Images” src=“http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/images/0521_musee.jpg” width=“550” height=“366” class=“mt-image-left” style=“float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;” />

A woman sits on the stairs at the entrance of the Paris Modern Art Museum, which was closed after five works — including paintings by modern masters Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso — were stolen. The canvases, worth a total of more than $100 million dollars, were discovered missing from the city-run Musee d’Art Moderne when it opened its doors. Photo by Bertrand Langlois/ AFP/ Getty Images

Correction: Art Notes used a figure of as much as $635 million for the value of the stolen works, but late on Thursday that estimate was downgraded to about $112 million.

The Los Angeles Times assesses the security lapses that made the big heist possible.

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Mohammad Nourizad, another imprisoned Iranian film director, has also declared a hunger strike, following his colleague Jafar Panahi, via Reuters.

The Times has a story of a gay Iranian actress who fears violent punishment by her government if she returns after being deported from Britain.

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The Wall Street Journal looks at internal challenges and arguments at the developing Museum of Hip-Hop, including questions about compensation for Hip-Hop legends (coming from those legends themselves).

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The death masks of three members of Germany’s radical leftist group the Red Army Faction (also known at one point as the Baader-Meinhof Group) are on public display for the first time as part of an art exhibit about the 1960s, via The Art Newspaper.

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Arakawa, a Japanese-born artist and architect whose conceptual work challenged the idea of mortality, died Tuesday in Manhattan at age 73, via the New York Times.