At about 1.30am this morning (1 January) burglars broke through the glass
roof of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, (the UK's oldest
public museum, founded 1683) and stole the Museum's only Cezanne:
the oil painting "Auvers-sur-Oise" dating from around 1880 (when Cezanne
was living in the area).  Nothing else was taken and though it has an
estimated value of UK£3 million this is not the most valuable painting in
the collection, so the speculation is that it has been stolen "to order"
by intruders who knew exactly what they were looking for.  The Museum
reports that all security systems were functioning normally at the time
and were not in any way affected by the Y2K computer "bug".

A brief Press Association story is on the web site of "The Independent",
http://www.independent.co.uk while the BBC news web site has a photograph
and both audio and video stories: http://news.bbc.co.uk


Patrick


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