Moved items to date:
a chair
a cone
many bags of leaves
I feel like an integral part of the relationship between the art thief and the objects of his attention is something akin to the art's "karma". If anyone has seen the movie The Red Violin, I think you know what I'm talking about.
Culturally, we also see this in movies like Indiana Jones, where a white excavator or outsider "steals" an artifact or art object culturally relevant to the group it is being stolen from. It seems like, thinking about Indiana Jones, all that remains from a native culture are its ghosts (represented by the artifacts), and those representations embodied by the objects awaiting transformation - they have an established karma or collective vibration (often represented in indigenous/native cultures as a kind dark "other"). This karma awaits intercession by an outsider, a colonizing force that can see through the chaos contained in the images and rescue its essence, bringing that "light" to the inherently reasonable West, which can discern all things good and pure.
I'm not sure what' s accomplished by the actual stealing of the art, but I suppose we can look at it as a kindly elder, or more responsible person, "rescuing" the natives from an evil force (wholly created by them) that is confusing and damaging to their way of life. It's a paternal influence that is upheld (all the while painting Indy as an outsider or hero pitted against impossible odds), a white, reasonable, wise presence that is needed (for "as long as it takes" to get the job done) to transform both culture and cultural artifact. An irony is established here, because the artifact being stolen is seen as containing something of value, as, we presume, the culture being robbed holds some type of humane value, however backward or degraded. But the object itself, as its negative association of power with the indigenous group shows, contains a type of power unavailable, useless, or simply harmful to the group that created it. It is for colonizing forces to rescue the power trapped within the cultural object. In fact, the original place of rest for the cultural object is described as profane, in Indy's quest to steal it back to America, where it can find repose among more sacred viewers, people more suited to reflection than the sensuous, subjective tribe that has just been stolen from.
