A PSYCHOLOGIST will appear in court in Cape Town this week for stealing a Roy Lichtenstein painting from parliament. According to the Sunday Times, the 54-year-old man will be tried for theft after he boasted at a dinner party that he casually walked out of parliament with the pop art painting under his arm. The man was seated next to Kathy Grundlingh, the chief curator at the South African National Gallery, when he made the boast. The untitled painting, valued at around R300000, formed part of collection of works by contemporary artists, called Art Against Apartheid, which was lent to South Africa’s first multiracial parliament by the United Nations and displayed in its corridors for three years.
Grundlingh said the man appeared to believe that he had ‘rescued’ the valuable work of art from an unsuitable position in a dark corner of the legislature.