Gardner Museum art theft
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft is one of the most infamous art heists in history, occurring on March 18, 1990, in Boston, Massachusetts. Early in the morning, two men disguised as police officers entered the museum, claiming to investigate a disturbance. After tying up the guards, they made off with thirteen invaluable artworks, including pieces by renowned artists such as Johannes Vermeer and Rembrandt, as well as additional items like a Chinese wine beaker and a Napoleonic battle flag finial. The stolen artworks are estimated to be worth between $200 and $300 million, yet the theft displayed signs of amateurism, with some pieces cut from their frames carelessly.
The case has drawn significant attention over the years, with various theories about the motivations behind the theft and the identities of the thieves. Notable suspects include notorious art thief Myles Connor, who has connections to organized crime. Despite extensive investigations by the FBI and increased rewards for information leading to the artworks' recovery, the case remains unsolved. The museum continues to display the empty frames where the masterpieces once hung and hopes to recover the lost pieces, reflecting on the lasting impact of the theft on the art world and public fascination with stolen art.
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Subject Terms
Gardner Museum art theft
The Event Thieves steal valuable artworks worth more than $200 million
Date March 18, 1990
Place Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Massachusetts
The largest art theft in US history, the artwork had still not been recovered as of June 2017.
At 1:24 a.m. on March 18, 1990, two men wearing police uniforms persuaded guards to let them into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to investigate reports of a “disturbance.” The men then bound the guards and left, a little over an hour later, with thirteen pieces of art and the film from the museum’s video surveillance camera.
The stolen works included one of fewer than three dozen paintings attributed to Johannes Vermeer, The Concert, two paintings and a tiny etching by Rembrandt, five drawings by Edgar Degas, and a painting by Édouard Manet. One of the Rembrandts, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, is the great artist’s only seascape. The thieves also took a Chinese ku, or wine beaker, and the eagle-shaped finial, or top piece, from a Napoleonic battle flag.
The artworks were estimated to be worth $200 to $300 million, but several factors—including the careless manner in which some of the paintings were cut from their frames—suggest that the thieves were amateurs. Although the Vermeer and the Rembrandt seascape were certainly valuable, the thieves ignored the greatest painting in the collection (and arguably the greatest Italian Renaissance painting in any American museum), Titian’s Rape of Europa. The beaker and the Degas prints were not particularly noteworthy, and the thieves did not even bother to break a glass case in order to remove the Napoleonic flag itself.
The works may have been identified ahead of time by an unscrupulous collector, since the Vermeer and Rembrandt paintings are so well known that they could not be sold openly. Yet another theory held that the works were to be offered as ransom for imprisoned members of the Irish Republican Army. Suspicion focused on notorious art thief Myles Connor, who admitted to “casing” the museum years earlier with associate Bobby Donati. Connor claimed that Donati (whose 1991 murder remains unsolved) hired two men to carry out the Gardner theft.
Although a reward of $1 million (later increased to $5 million in 1997 and then to $10 million in 2017) was offered for the works’ return, and although the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—which at one time had thirty agents working on the case—offered immunity to those involved, no one came forward. However, in 2012, investigators did find a list describing the works of art stolen in the heist and their estimated value following a search of notorious Connecticut mobster Robert Gentile's property. The following year, the FBI, in coordination with the museum's director of security since 2005, Anthony Amore, announced that they were fairly confident in their theory of who was responsible for taking the artwork that night. According to details gleaned from their investigation, they explained, they had reason to believe that the two men were involved with a New England–based crime organization and that the works of art had been taken to high-profile figures in the organization in Connecticut and Philadelphia; many of their suspects have since died. By 2016, Amore was stressing that, due to the confidence in their theory, the focus of the investigation had shifted away from the robbers to simply trying to recover the stolen works of art; with the case remaining open, he and the FBI were still hopeful that the paintings had not been passed around too much and that tips could eventually lead them to finding the pieces. In May 2017, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum doubled its reward from $5 million to $10 million for information leading to the return of the stolen artwork; the offer is set to expire on at midnight on December 31, 2017. “This offer is a sign that our investigation remains active. Our hope is that anyone with knowledge that might further our work will come forward,” Amore said. “Typically stolen masterpieces are either recovered soon after a theft or a generation later. We remain optimistic that these works will ultimately be recovered.”
Impact
Many critics view the Gardner Museum theft as symptomatic of the frantic atmosphere and inflated prices of the art market during the 1990s—factors that fueled a thriving commerce in stolen art. At the time of the theft, it was estimated that the trade in such art amounted to between $1 and $2 billion per year. In the twenty-first century, decades after the robbery, the American public, experts, art enthusiasts, and investigators still remained captivated with the incident and the mission to track down the artwork. The frames from which the paintings were stolen remain empty on display at the museum. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has urged whoever holds the paintings to conserve them in recommended temperatures and humidity levels.
Bibliography
Bowley, Graham. “Gardner Museum Doubles Reward for Recovery of Stolen Masterpieces.” The New York Times, 23 May 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/arts/design/gardner-museum-doubles-reward-for-recovery-of-stolen-masterpieces.html. Accessed 22 June 2017.
Clauss, Kyle Scott. “Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Doubles Reward for Stolen Artwork.” Boston, 24 May 2017, www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2017/05/24/isabella-stewart-gardner-museum-doubles-reward. Accessed 22 June 2017.
Houpt, Simon. Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft. Sterling, 2006.
Lopez, Steve. “The Great Art Caper.” Time, 17 Nov. 1997, pp. 74+.
Mashberg, Tom. “Stealing Beauty.” Vanity Fair, Mar. 1998, pp. 214+.
Murphy, Shelley. "Search for Artworks from Gardner Heist Continues 25 Years Later." Boston Globe, 17 Mar. 2015, www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/17/gardner-museum-art-heist-one-boston-most-enduring-mysteries-years-later/9U3tp1kJMa4Zn4uClI1cdM/story.html. Accessed 2 Feb. 2017.
“Thirteen Works: Explore the Gardner's Stolen Art.” Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, www.gardnermuseum.org/resources/theft. Accessed 22 June 2017.
Trickey, Erick. "The Gardner Art Museum Heist: Who's Got the Art?" Boston, 13 Mar. 2016, www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2016/03/13/gardner-museum-heist/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2017.