Historical Daguerreotype Among 1,000+ Artifacts Stolen in Oakland Museum Heist
At least one historical daguerreotype was among a set of more than 1,000 artifacts that were stolen from the Oakland Museum of California earlier this month.
As reported by SFGate, thieves broke into the museum’s off-site storage facility just before 3:30 AM on October 15.
“The Oakland Police Department (OPD), in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), is investigating a burglary that occurred just before 3:30 a.m. on October 15, 2025, at the Oakland Museum of California’s off-site storage facility,” the Oakland Museum of California said in a press release yesterday. “The suspect(s) broke into the facility and stole more than 1,000 items from the Museum’s collection, including Native American baskets, jewelry, laptops, and other historic artifacts[.]”
About 20 agents from the FBI Art Crime Team have been assigned to the case. Anyone with information is urged to contact the OPD Burglary Section at (510) 238-3951 or the FBI Art Crime Team at 1-800-CALL-FBI.
“The theft that occurred represents a brazen act that robs the public of our state’s cultural heritage,” Oakland Museum of California Executive Director and CEO Lori Fogarty said in the press release, and reiterated to PetaPixel via email. “Most of these objects have been given to the Museum by generous donors. We are working in close partnership with the City of Oakland, the Oakland Police Department, and the FBI to see that these objects are returned.”
Neither Fogarty nor other representatives from the Oakland Museum of California were available for additional comment. The stolen items are a wide variety of different pieces of art, from baskets and jewelry to carved tusks and a daguerreotype from 1854.
The daguerreotype, seen above, is of a woman named Lucy Dodge Johnson who lived from 1797 until 1868. Online records show that Johnson married Joseph Moody Dodge in 1821.
This is the second major theft of art from a museum this month and is likely overshadowed by the other: the far more high-profile robbery of the Louvre in France, where a small group of thieves used a vehicle-mounted mechanical ladder to access the Galerie d’Apollon via a balcony. They used power tools to break into the window, threatened the guards who evacuated the room, and then used those same power tools to cut through the glass of two display cases containing a variety of jewels.
Image credits: Oakland Museum of California
