Katherine Bernhardt: A Match Made in Heaven

Katherine Bernhardt’s (b.1975) paintings are fun and colorful and kitschy. Fashion designer Jeremy Scott’s designs are just as much fun, just as colorful and have as much kitsch. So, after JoAnne Northrup, chief curator of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City visited Bernhardt’s studio in St. Louis, she came up with the idea of doing a show with works from both Bernhardt and Scott.

 

 

The collaboration worked out well; Forty of Bernhardt’s massive paintings of Doritos, ET, McDonald’s Golden Arches on the walls of four galleries serve as background for more than 500 of Scott’s designs (including the zany dress worn by Katy Perry at the 2019 Met Gala afterparty

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A Match Made in Heaven: Katherine Bernhardt x Jeremy Scott will be on view at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art has been extended and will run through October 26, 2025.

 

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Last Sunday’s jewel heist at the Louvre was a dramatic, and brazen, bit of thievery. It has not only made headlines around the world, but has also sparked a host of memes.

 

 
This was not the first theft at the Louvre, but maybe the most bold.

 

In 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre…and Picasso was suspected and put on trial for theft. The Mona Lisa wasn’t as well-known in 1911 as it is today; it wasn’t even bolted to the wall in those days.

 

No one at the Louvre even noticed that it was missing until a French artist arrived at the museum to paint a copy and saw the empty space. Security guards and police searched the museum but the Mona Lisa was no where to be found.

 

After newspapers offered rewards for information about the theft, a man named Honore-Joseph Géry Pieret went to one of the Paris newspapers with information that he hoped would get him a cash reward.

 

Pieret had worked as secretary for the poet and writer Guillaume Apollinaire, a friend of Picasso. Pieret admitted stealing objects from the Louvre. He said that he had stolen some small Iberian sculptures and sold them to Picasso in 1907. When Picasso heard about Pieret’s confession, he took the stolen statues to the newspaper office. That made the police suspect that Picasso and Apollinaire may have had something to do with the stolen Mona Lisa.

 

Picasso and Apollinaire were charged with theft and taken to court. Both men were eventually set free after a trial, where their pleas (and Picasso’s tears) got the case dismissed.

 

Two years later, in 1913, the actual thief was caught. His name was Vincenzo Peruggia. Peruggia was a handyman from Italy who had spent time in Paris and worked at the Louvre. He said that he took the painting off the wall, slipped it under his coat and walked out of the museum. He was caught when he tried to sell the Mona Lisa to an art dealer in Forence. Peruggia spent seven months in jail. He did manage to make the Mona Lisa one of the world’s best-known works of art.

 

Ironically, a painting by Picasso has gone missing in Spain. The small gouache painting, Still Life with Guitar, painted in 1919, was supposed to travel from Madrid to an exhibit at the Cajagranda Foundation in Granada, along with other works for the exhibit. The police are investigating, looking into reports that the van may have made a stop overnight before delivering the works to the Foundation.

 

When the van was unpacked and its contents finally checked by Foundation staff, they discovered that the painting was missing. The work is owned by a private collector and is valued at about $700,000. 

 

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Please contact us if you would like more information about the works of Katherine Bernhardt and Pablo Picasso available at VFA.

 

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October 23, 2025