June 9 (Bloomberg) -- The Paris prosecutors’ office opened an investigation into the theft of a sketchbook by Pablo Picasso from the Picasso Museum yesterday.

The sketchbook was kept in a glass case that could only be opened using specific tools, the French culture ministry said on its Web site. It is worth 8 million euros ($11.2 million), according to Agence France-Presse. The museum alerted the police of its disappearance today.

“There was a great crowd at the museum yesterday for an open-house party,” said Isabelle Montagne, the spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutors’ office. “It could have been organized crime, it could also have been someone who just lifted it as an act of vandalism.”

The theft of the sketchbook, worth “several million euros” according to Paris prosecutors, is being investigated by a special theft unit of the Paris police, Montagne said. There’s no indication that it was linked to other crimes.

The sketchbook has a shiny red cover with the word “Album” written in gold letters on it, and measures 16 centimeters by 24 centimeters (6 inches by 10 inches). It contains 33 drawings and is dated 1917-1924, the culture ministry said.

Inheritance Tax

The Picasso Museum opened in 1985 in a 17th-century building to house more than 500 paintings and sculptures -- as well as thousands of drawings, engravings and archives -- that the artist’s heirs gave the French state in lieu of inheritance tax. The museum’s contents represent a fraction of what Picasso retained until his death in 1973.

Museum Director Anne Baldassari -- chief curator of the 2008-9 exhibition “Picasso et les Maitres” in Paris, which placed the artist’s works beside masterpieces he admired -- is shutting the institution this year for refurbishment.

Baldassari didn’t immediately respond to telephone calls and voicemail messages placed Tuesday afternoon. A spokesman for the Picasso Museum, reached on his cellphone, said he was not in France and could not comment on the reports.

To fund the museum’s refurbishment, which will cost some 20 million euros, Baldassari has been loaning works to exhibitions at select institutions in Europe and Asia.

More Visitors

The museum, which draws tens of thousands of visitors a year, has a complicated layout, steep ramps and stairs, and wiring and air conditioning that need updating. The plan is to move the offices to another building and make space for as many as 700,000 to 800,000 visitors a year.

From February to May 2008, Madrid’s Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia showed “La coleccion del Museo Nacional Picasso Paris,” curated by Baldassari herself -- a survey of the Spanish artist’s career through some 400 paintings, sculptures, ceramics, drawings, engravings, notebooks, and documentary photographs.

From October to December 2008, the National Art Center in Tokyo staged “Picasso: From the Collection of the Musee National Picasso, Paris.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Heather Smith in Paris at hsmith26@bloomberg.net; Farah Nayeri in London at Farahn@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 9, 2009 13:52 EDT