Important Arctic Native Art Collection Put In A French Museum

French Museums Are Not Secure 

Announcement of opening of Alaska Arctic art museum in France. 

In The Past Year Alone, Low-Tech Thieves Armed With Baseball Bats, Scooters, and Saws Have Stolen Millions In Artwork From Many French Museums 

Alice Rogoff, the millionaire investor who came to Alaska, and bought the Anchorage Daily News, was a collector of contemporary Native art. 

She recently donated the Native art collection she amassed while in Alaska to a place called Chateau Musee, in a small French fishing town, known as Boulogne-sur-Mer. The Chateau (which is a castle) was built in the 13th century in the 1200s. In addition to Alaskan artifacts, it displays Egyptian, Peruvian, and Grecian art. 

The little French coastal village has a long history that has nothing to do with Alaska. 

The town is very interesting historically in its own right. It was founded by Romans, saw Napoleon amassing an army there to invade England in 1895, and was the site of the Battle of Boulogne in 1940. Only around 40,000 people live there. 

French Museums Are Certifiably Unsafe

France's museums are most known today, in October, 2025, for a major lack of security in guarding their artifacts. The country's museums are porous and very easy to break into. 

The world learned this on October 19th, 2025, when, in broad daylight while France's huge Louvre Museum was just opened that day to viewing,  four masked thieves, using primitive equipment and dressed as workers, used a cherry picker and simple disc cutters to steal France's crown jewels. 

But that's not all. There have been a stunning number of low-tech thefts, in just the past year, at French museums.

Several hours after the Louvre heist, that same morning of October 19th,  thieves broke into another French museum, and stole 2,000 gold and silver coins, worth $100,000. 

On September 17th, 2025, a month ago, $700,000 in gold nuggets were stolen by thieves from the National History Museum in Paris, using similar low-tech tools: a blowtorch and a grinder. 

On September 4th 2025, at the Adrien Dubouche National Museum in France, a museum of ceramics, thieves stole $11 million in ancient Chinese dishes. 

On November 20th, 2024, just one year ago, at the Cognacq-Jay Museum in France, which features 18th century jeweled watches, fans and snuffboxes, masked men entered the museum, and smashed the display cases with low-tech axes and baseball bats. They took over $1 million worth of loot.

A day later, on November 21st, 2024, in central France, four men on scooters entered a sacred art museum, and stole pieces of a 10-foot tall statue of Christ with figures covered with diamonds and rubies. The thieves sawed through the display case and took parts of the artwork with them.